Library Guides: Digital Media Design: Finding Websites

Evaulating Websites

The internet contains a lot of great information but not all of it is accurate. Since anyone can publish anything on the web it is sometime difficult to know if a website contains factual information. Print sources, such as books and journals go through a peer review or editing process meaning that the information found using them is often more reliable.

Use our guide as a starting point to help evaluate a website’s credibility.

Digital Media Design Websites

The Branding Game
Looks at all different types of products and services and why their marketing techniques and brand imaging are successes or failures.
Branding Magazine
"Our dedicated team of writers strives to keep readers informed and intrigued with unique work from brands across the globe, concentrating on fresh brand strategies, executions, identities, development, and overall evolution. "
Branding Served
Personal and corporate branding projects that can be rated. Designers create accounts to upload their work.
Designing a Brand Identity
Defines the difference and relationship between a brand, an identity and a logo. Contains great real world examples of the major phases of branding/rebranding as well as additional resources.
Entrepreneur - Branding
Articles by Entrepreneur about branding. Gives both advice on creating your own brand as well as dissecting global brands.

Mashable
"Mashable is a leading global media company that informs, inspires and entertains the digital generation. Mashable is redefining storytelling by documenting and shaping the digital revolution in a new voice, new formats and cutting-edge technologies to a uniquely dedicated audience of 42 million monthly unique visitors and 23 million social followers."
digitalmediawire
"Digital Media Wire (www.dmwmedia.com) is a media company that provides strategic consulting and manages marketing campaigns for digital media brands, and owns and produces industry conferences. The company also publishes daily newsletters and operates the popular www.dmwmedia.com news and community portal."

Envato Tuts+
Envato Tuts+ tutorials are available to you completely free—all 20,950 of them!. Based around specific projects, they include step-by-step written instructions and screenshots to help you practice and master the skills needed to create a practical outcome.
Spoon Graphics
Features: Tutorials to show you how to create awesome designs; Freebies to use in your own artwork; and Articles to share theory and inspiration from various creative genres. Every week you'll find a new post that falls into one of these categories, alongside periodic updates letting you know about cool deals and site news.
Vectips
Vectips is a site dedicated to Adobe Illustrator® tips, tricks, and tutorials. Whether you are a seasoned Illustrator user or just starting out, Vectips can help.
Veerle's Blog
Tutorials by graphic/web designer Veerle Pieters. Website features graphic and web design tutorials as well as professional advice.

Digital Photography Resource Guide
A collection of photography resources and tutorials put together by Review Lab. Includes guides for novices, blogs & magazines, podcasts, and more.
National Geographic Photography
Contains photos in the fields of geography, archaeology and natural science. Articles include information on photography and the subjects.
Photo.net
"Photo.net is robust, collaborative peer-to-peer educational platform for photographers ranging from hobbyists to professionals. We have created an online community that brings people together and provides lively forums, competitive photo contests, information about the hottest gear, tutorials to help you on your journey, inspirational interviews, and more. Most importantly, we offer the chance to put your photography in front of top rated photographers from all around the world to find out specifically how you can improve. You'll have the opportunity to share your knowledge as well. Teaching, after all, is the best way to learn. By participating in Photo.net and joining this worldwide community, you'll be in good company: the site receives more than 3.6 million visits each month, and more than 4.8 million photographs have been uploaded to the site since its founding more than 20 years ago."

Library of Congress Digital Collections
The Library of Congress is the nation's oldest federal cultural institution and serves as the research arm of Congress. It is also the largest library in the world, with millions of books, recordings, photographs, maps and manuscripts in its collections.
morgueFile
Offers thousands of free images almost all that have no restrictions or agreements attached. Also, the site requires no login to download the high quality files.
Pixabay
All images and videos on Pixabay are released free of copyrights under Creative Commons CC0. You may download, modify, distribute, and use them royalty-free for anything you like, even in commercial applications. Attribution is not required.

Noupe
"Noupe passionately delivers stylish and dynamic news for designers and Web developers across the globe on all subjects of design; ranging from CSS, Ajax, JavaScript, Web design, graphics, typography, advertising & much more! Our goal is to help you communicate effectively on the Web with an engaging website and functional interface."
Graphics.com
"Graphics.com brings you daily graphics and design news, articles and inspiration. We welcome news and content submissions."