Just getting started in design? Tempted to try out crowdsourcing or spec work? Before you head down that path check out these 99 alternatives to build your portfolio, expand your skill set, and make a few bucks.

There’s been quite the uproar from the design community in the last few years over the phenomenon known as crowdsourcing. Hailed to be the answer for cheap, easy design projects for businesses, crowdsourcing is the process of sending out design requests to a large number of designers with the expectation to pick from finished work rather than pitches or proposals. Dozens, if not hundreds, of designers “compete” to win a bid based solely on their best guess at what the client requires from their brief. This article looks at one instance where a designer can benefit from the crowdsourcing model.

Fire photography captures moments of the awesome power of vapors and flames. This collection of 22 fire photography examples displays various states of it’s existence and qualities, from the spark of a match to the explosion of a fireball.

Articles, resources, tutorials and inspiration from around the web. Kick off your weekend with some tasty snacks.

When starting out as a designer, especially a freelance designer, it is easy to focus solely on expanding your design skill set. Learning about design, working on design, and showing off your designs comes natural because that’s what a designer’s suppose to do, right? But many times you may be required to take your creative hat off and put on some business pants in order to become a successful freelancer. I’ve compiled several of the best in the business of talking about the business of design, especially freelance design.

Credibility on the web is not easily earned. To be a successful designer, you need people to recognize you as skilled, competent and professional. When someone needs something designed they turn to you because you’ve proven yourself to them as capable and reliable. That’s web cred! Here are some tips to put your name out there and earn some legitimate Web Cred.

Articles, resources, tutorials and inspiration from around the web. Kick off your weekend with some tasty snacks.

In this tutorial we’re going to put together a cool grungy poster design for the upcoming Vancouver Olympics. We’ll go over several basic Photoshop techniques and combine some basic image manipulation with some grunge text treatments to create some cool effects. This is an easy step-by-step tutorial that even Photoshop beginners should have no problem with.

Green Thumb is a free, vector-based social media icon set designed exclusively for release on Visual Swirl. The package contains icons for the following sites: Delicious, Design Bump, Design Float, Digg, Facebook, Linkedin, Myspace, Reddit, RSS, Stumbleupon, Technorati, and Twitter.

Articles, resources, tutorials and inspiration from around the web. Kick off your weekend with some tasty snacks.