Resourcefulness: Tips to Design on a Short Deadline and Tight Budget

As a graphic designer you are always facing deadlines and as an artist you strive to create original masterpieces every TIME. It's time that is a major factor when working with deadlines, so how do you cut down all the time it takes to source images and textures? Ideally it'd be great to spend time searching and photographing the right textures or staging beautiful photography sessions but there's another factor involved: BUDGET.

Short Deadlines + Modest Budget = Resourcefulness!

This generation of designers in my opinion have the world at their fingertips-literally! Numerous professional stock photo sites, free textures, open source code, robust community support and the mighty digital camera. Anything is possible and on a small budget! My latest find is an amazing site called CGTextures.com. Check out the FAQs though, there is a 24 hour quota of 15MB, so don't go buck wild and binge if you have a deadline. Yes they are free and LARGE and you can use them on any commercial project but don't be rude and resell the textures on their own.

I am in texture heaven...

...happy re-sourcing!