are.na
If you aren't aware of what are.na is, it's basically Pinterest but a thousand times better. I use it as a personal design archive—if you're looking for inspiration do take a look!
Friends around the small web.
Links to cool things I've found while traversing the web. Warning: this page is long as fuck. I recommend using the navigation below.
“A digital archive of graphic design related items that are available on the Internet Archives.”
An awesome visual timeline of some of the mobile phones released in Japan from 1986 to 2021, as presented by phone carrier au.
American department store catalogs and wishbooks.
Probably my favorite source for design reference. Cataloging and analysis of design movements in popular culture from the 70s to the present day.
Comprehensive reference for UI within games.
Huge image albums of design objects from the 70s to the 00s.
Unbelievably amazing collection of design objects.
Another virtual museum dedicated to mobile phones, this time focused on phones from around the world.
The Northwest Historical Annual Reports Collection is a growing digital collection of annual financial reports of companies currently or historically based in the Pacific Northwest.
Archive of scans of ads in Brazilian magazines.
Huge archive of Brazilian ads.
“Searchsystem is an ever-growing collection of references and tools for designers.”
I am a MASSIVE autist for Olympic design, so this website (and the books) are everything I ever dreamed of.
A virtual museum dedicated to websites and the changing trends in web design throughout the three decades (so far) of the internet.
A delightful archive of the most butt-ugly godawful websites you’ll ever see.
Learn about typography and make your first font. I can’t believe this is free.
More glitch art stuff.
A collection of resources to get you started with glitch art.
Mind-bending interactive piece on grids.
“An educational project covering the fundamentals of design: typography, grid, color, and animation”
A German designer who creates old-timey styled fonts.
Beautifully designed colour palette generator. Used to be my absolute favourite until the addition of a paywall for 6+ colour palettes, but I still use it because I don’t generate big palettes very often.
A reference for when you want to draw and paint heads. Both female and male versions are available.
Freeware fonts from a Japanese design studio.
Freeware program that applies intricate painterly effects to photographs.
Swedish font foundry. Some really Web 1.0 looking fonts here, if you’re into that.
“Open digital production tools for comic artists, cartoonists and zinesters.”
“We create online tools for people creating pixel art and other restrictive digital art.”
Detailed information for every colour. Codes, harmonies, colour system equivalencies and a coherent naming system.
Color combos least/most used by designers. The least used ones are pretty cool (if lower in contrast), actually.
“Over 2500 Free SVG icons for popular brands.”
Generates complex colour palettes.
Basic papercraft template generators.
Are you as sick of “Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet” as I am? Get replacement placeholder text generators here.
“Full index of the world’s biggest collection of classic text mode fonts, system fonts and BIOS fonts from DOS-era IBM PCs and compatibles”
Are you tired of waiting 100 episodes for characters in anime to finally… hold hands? With this list you can skip that and get to the good shit. Manga version if you prefer that.
“Anime openings from hundreds of series in high-quality.”
A portion of Flashpoint’s collection of games, now available online emulated on Ruffle so non-Flash-browser-having peasants can enjoy.
Tons of Japanese doll dress-up games.
Catalogue/archive of 2000s and early 2010s Brazilian Flash game compilation CDs.
More than 20 thousand retro PC and console games, seriously, what’s not to like?
Do you want to play the shitty Barbie Flash games of your childhood again? Thanks to the folks at Web-Back-Then, you can do it again!
Catalogue/archive of 90s and 2000s Brazilian educational game CDs.
“All charts provided here are to be used as an entry-point into a genre, allowing you to gain a basic understanding of what a genre could have to offer.”
Extensive, interactive taxonomy of music genres based on Spotify data. Excellent for discovering new music.
“Catch multiple collabs and streams using our multiview tool, find clips and listen to music/karaoke/covers from your favorite vtubers.”
CSS framework that imitates Windows 7.
CSS framework that imitates Windows 98.
“Just-add-water CSS animations.”
Cute claymorphism CSS framework.
Huge library of hover effects for buttons.
8-bit style CSS framework.
“A tiny library to glitch anything on the web.”
CSS framework that imitates Windows XP.
Template collection, mobile-friendly templates.
Small but comprehensive collection of pixel icons, backgrounds and dividers.
Awesome materials and a big collection of templates.
Stylish web materials from a Japanese design studio. Illustrations, pixels, icons, photographs, backgrounds.
Huge collection of graphics. Pixels, stamps, emotes, stamps, buttons, blinkies.
A template specifically for publishing webcomics.
High-res patterns and backgrounds.
You know the drill. Backgrounds, icons, buttons, dividers, counters, and a few templates.
Tiny, very simple blogging engine, great for beginners.
Massive collection of pop style materials.
My personal favourite web graphic collection. Backgrounds, icons, buttons.
Directory of Japanese material websites.
Early 2010s style Japanese web materials.
Graphics and 2000s style templates.
Directory of Japanese material websites.
Early 2000s directory of Japanese material websites.
Easy, lightweight masonry layout script.
“The #1 place on the net to obtain free, original DHTML & Javascripts to enhance your web site!”
“Filter & sort magical layouts.”
“The tool of choice for beautiful galleries with eye-catching effects, and user friendly lightbox for images and videos.”
“Easy to use, simple to code, fully featured, interactive JavaScript tables and data grids.”
Neat flexbox cheatsheet. Check out GRID too.
This is where I first learned how to do all this web crap.
A game where you write CSS grids to grow a carrot farm.
Mozilla documentation on web technologies.
“The Front-End Checklist Application is perfect for modern websites and meticulous developers!”
Do I even need to link this one?
Generates clip-path code.
Easy CSS gradient generator.
“Start your web project by generating and downloading your custom HTML Boilerplate.”
Visual timeline-based CSS animation tool.
Very easy-to-use CSS grid layout generator.
Easily generates @font-face rules so you can use your own fonts in your website.
“WAVE is a suite of evaluation tools that helps authors make their web content more accessible to individuals with disabilities.”
“Code generators for front-end development.”
melankorin.net is my only and one home online, and nothing could ever replace or overshadow it. But I am (unfortunately) present elsewhere, and I've decided to link those places here in case you're interested.
If you aren't aware of what are.na is, it's basically Pinterest but a thousand times better. I use it as a personal design archive—if you're looking for inspiration do take a look!
Witness my shitty taste in dumb animated kids' movies.
Witness my shitty taste in animus and mangos.
Witness my shitty taste in pretentious Japanese indie rock music.