Last year Guax made a killer list of resources to help y'all make some good looking submissions. I expanded a bit on it with some new stuff!
Tools and Tips:
- How to make cool TTRPG pamphlets by Gontijo is a pamphlet that shows and tells nice ways to make your material look amazing.
- Layout and Grid by Clayton Notestine is a must-read about using grid to your layout focusing on the TTRPG view.
- 5 Principles of Graphic Design is a great piece to read if you have no idea where to start.
- Type Scale is a great tool to set hierarchy on your texts.
- Safe Color is useful if you use a tool that doesn't support CMYK and you want to make the print and digital look (quite) the same.
- Color Contrast Checker is algo a very good tool to check if you're not losing readability with your color choices!
- Figma is a tool for UX and UI prototyping but is great for real time collaborative layout.
- Gimp is a classic software for image manipulation. Hard to grasp, but quite powerful.
- Krita is a great tool for drawing and kinda similar to photoshop if you're used to that.
- Hemingway Editor is a text editor in English — exceptionally good if English is not your first language.
Images:
- Old Book Illustrations is a curated collection of public domain images, great for that old school vibe.
- Unsplash has a great collection of photos free to use (using actual photos in TTPG is pretty underrated btw).
- Raw Pixel has this public domain artists page — making a game based on a single artist can be very inspiring.
- Flicker feels like thrift shopping — it can be an effort but sure is worth it. Make sure to use the search options and filters.
- Heritage Library has some curated vintage graphics you can use freely.
- Walter Licínio released a bunch of his illustrations as CC BY 4.0
Fonts:
- Fontesk is the coolest site to get some custom fonts free for commercial use for your project.
- Font Squirrel is also dedicated to having fonts free for commercial use
- Google Fonts, won't elaborate.
- 1001 Fonts another great website to search free for commercial use fonts.
- Gems and Dicier are two great fonts for dice icons .
- Fonts in Use and Typoteque are great sites for inspiration on how to use fonts in interesting ways.
- Font Pair is a great way to see some font combinations and chose one for your project if you're unsure around typefaces.
- Fontjoy is great for testing font pairings. Also very addictive to play with it.
- Typography Tutorial in video form. These 3 minutes will change your life.
Templates:
- Modelo simples para panfletos de aventura by Bruno Prosaiko, one of the best pamphlet templates — beautiful and easy to use!
- PocketMod Figma Template by @cosmogorynych is the best template for PocketMod/Figma.
- EZM by @alienmelon, is the coolest tool for making zines (not a joke — this is pretty cool you should check it out).
- Mockup Design has a ton of mockups to make your zine/pamphlet/book presentation look super sexy.
Feel free to add more to this list if you have any suggestions — also feel free to use this space to ask whatever questions you have about design!