For designers and creatives everywhere the whitespace dilemma has been one of the hardest issues to deal with while working with clients. It's important to remember who's paying the bills and bec patient and understanding as you justify your creative use of the "blank" space.

What is whitespace? Whitespace is any space on a layout that is not actively being used. This can apply to something with a black background, colors or a literal white page. Don't be confused into thinking that it has anything to do with the color "WHITE". It doesn't it's simply negative space that designers use to allow elements on a page to "breathe".

Fonts are the foundation of a good design. Depending on the budget of the project you may need one that's free or perhaps you can afford "the perfect" font for your piece. Either way, here are some great free and "perfect" fonts.

Top 10 Font Resources:

1. DaFont Great categories and searches.
2. Urban Fonts Select from free and for purchase fonts.
3. 1001 Fonts Excellent selections of categories and styles.
4. Font Diner Great retro fonts!
5. Veer.com Excellent original typefaces.
6. 1001FreeFonts Free. What more do you want?
7. I Love Typography Blog resource with great information on type and fonts.
8. Typography.com Original and breathtaking fonts.
9. Abstract Fonts Cool collections uploaded by users.
10. My Fonts News and font updates.

If there is one thing I've learned as a designer for nearly 10 years it's to SAVE everything. a lot of work has been eliminated through the years because I have been able to go back and quickly put my hands on a certain file, font or stock photo that was previously used for a project. Unfortunately, you probably already know that SAVING EVERYTHING can take a lot of time and space. This week a fellow designer and colleague asked about my file practices. I realized this is an area where we can certainly all learn from each other as we share our methods and increase our efficiency.

So, here's what I do:

My file structure is first broken down into clients. Sometimes by their names or their company names.Inside those 'client' folders, I break each client down by projects.Such as: Business Card Bookmark CD Covers Website

Now, within each of those "project" folders, I include folders for all the parts of the projects: Such as: Concepts Stock Photos Fonts Final Revisions

As I mentioned, so many times, this has saved me being able to go back and pull some random part from a project quickly. Depending on the size and scope of the project, sometimes within that structure I'll also have to break it down into layered files and flattened files, so I may also have a directory for JPEGs, PSD, INDD etc. Just depending on the program used and project specifics. That's me and how I handle my files. What about you?

A couple of weeks ago I was approached by an online printer with the possibility of doing a free giveaway of their product via In Search of Design. Unfortunately, I wasn't familiar with the company in question, "NextDayFlyers.com" so I explained that without first hand knowledge of their product quality I wouldn't feel comfortable introducing my readers to their company.

The sales rep that I had spoken to set me up with a free order of these cards as well, so that I could see their quality first hand, no strings attached. If I liked the cards, we could do the giveaway, if not, no problem. All that to say, when the cards arrived last week, I was very pleased with the results! The card stock and gloss quality are as good as any I've seen and what I've dealt with from a customer service angle thus far has been great. Next Day Flyers specializes in quick turnaround on everything from business cards to brochures.

All that to say . . . .

TODAY if you’d like to receive 500 FREE (TOTALLY FREE) business cards from Next Day Flyers, all I need you to do is comment on this post with what you want the cards for and the sales rep from Next Day Flyers.com will be selecting a winner on Wednesday and I’ll announce it here at the blog! Be sure to include a valid email, because if you’re the winner, They will need to contact you for your shipping address!

Here are the specs on what you’ll be winning:

• 500 Standard Business Cards (Square Corners)

• Full color front / Black back

• Next Day Printing

• Ground Shipping to Continental U.S.

Winner will be contacted via email! Good luck!!

Is your photoshop work lacking a little something? Could it be that you need a some new brushes to spice up your designs? Here's a list of some of my favorite resources for photoshop brushes. The one I use the most? Brusheezy! They  have great stuff! So I made them number 1!

Free Photoshop Brushes at Brusheezy!

Photoshop Brushes - Brusheezy is the a HUGE collection of Photoshop Brushes and Photoshop Patterns to download, or upload your own!

Photoshop Brushes

Photoshop brushes, patterns, custom shapes, tutorials, styles and gradients - all for free - just download and enjoy this great collection!

PS Brushes.net - Photoshop Brushes, Your Number one source for ...

We offer over 500 photoshop brushes all for free, with those kind of numbers why would you search for photoshop brushes anywhere else?

Free Photoshop Brushes - Grunge Brushes and Photoshop Tutorials

Grunge Brushes, photoshop brushes, Free photoshop brushes.

Free Photoshop Brushes - Adobe Photoshop Brush DIRECTORY ...

Directory of free Photoshop brushes, with information on how to create and install Photoshop brushes.

Top 50 Free Photoshop Brushes Resource Sites : Speckyboy - Web ...

Free (cca 50) Photoshop Brushes sets that are even free for commercial use.

100 Awesome High Resolution Photoshop Brushes

A great contribution to all the Photoshop brushes starving hordes of designers and artists, including myself: 100 Awesome High Resolution Photoshop Brushes.

Photoshop Brushes: 150+ High Quality Free Photoshop Brushes

Featuring the best Adobe Photoshop brushes on the net and their authors, free PS brush downloads.

I've been a bit under the weather the past couple of days so I'm gonna take this opportunity to do a little "sponsoring" and offer a shout out to Adobe. If you still haven't made up your mind whether or not you need to take the plunge and  upgrade to CS4, you might as well bite the bullet and go for it!

At the ministry where I spend my days we JUST upgraded to CS3 about 6 months ago, but I plan to have my girls go ahead with the smaller version jump to CS4 as soon as possible. We have to face it, Adobe OWNS desktop publishing. As designers, if we want to stay "in-the-know" we are going to have to stay as up-to-date as possible!

Margins. They are as important as the text, the photos and the composition itself. Oh wait, they help to MAKE the composition.

A margin is the area around the outside edge of the page in terms of graphic design. This area can be from top to bottom or left to right. The amount of white space you leave in your margins will determine the overall feel to your layout.

Well folks, the vote is in! Next Day Flyers used Random.org to select the winner. And the winner is . . . Jim Laughter Congratulations Jim! And I hope that you enjoy the cards! For the rest of you, don't give up!! Next Day Flyers is already planning another giveaway for January! So be sure to keep reading and watch for your chance to enter! Also, while your comments didn't necessarily impact your winning, I thoroughly enjoyed them and it was so nice to actually hear from my readers!!

I had a request this week to add some posts that are a little more basic for beginning designers. These articles will be housed in the Beginner's Corner category. I'll also be adding the 'Beginner's Corner" tag to them.

The first request was for a series on color basics.

Adobe's done it again. Introducing a new suite of software that will be available in late October, the company has raised the bar for graphic design, web development and production creatives.

Is it all hype?

Collecting resources and opinions from a variety of designers and production professionals, the overall opinion seems to be positive. As designers we may dig our heels in for a while hoping to avoid the $600 upgrade fee, but in the end we know that we will have to adjust and move with the times or we will be limiting ourselves and our work flow with others.

The new edition of Photoshop is not without some new and promising features. Just to barely scan the surface, here are few to get you started:

• New configuration settings for the Burn and Dodge tool make more realistic looking changes, in contrast to the previously washed-out or over-exposed results that were so common with novices using the tool in the past.
• New "adjustments" dialog to quickly access effects and enhancements that were previously housed in various menus.
• New "real edge" features which take into account things like fur and hair
• For photographers there is a new depth-of-field feature that assists with short focus issues.

For the suite as a whole, Adobe is proud of their new level of cross-compatibility with more media, web and mobile integration. Interestingly enough, thats a subject I had trouble finding "actual" specifications on.

One thing I do know, as a designer I will be forced to take the plunge and buy the upgrade once it's released. And truth be told, I'm pretty excited about it regardless of the price!