I think resources are a very vital thing to have and use. They help aid you in a design, help you come up with ideas when you hit a blank, and help you design ideas, whether it be AI or using them to inspire your work. You can use resources for a lot of helpful things. These are three resources I recommend and like to use myself to help me. Either for ideas or for design, these resources have helped me a lot and I probably will keep using them to be able to create great work and writings in the future.
First of all, I probably say that I use AI the most, ChatGPT specifically, for a resource. I don’t abuse the use of it or ever use it word for word at all. I like to use it to come up with some ideas or prompts when I can’t think of something or to get product or brand name ideas for projects in my classes. One example of this is when we had to do a package design in one of my classes and I had to come up with a brand name. I had no idea and my only knew was that I wanted it to be a beauty sponge brand. I went to ChatGPT and typed in “makeup sponge brand name ideas.” It then comes up with lots of ideas on where you can base your name from. I then put two different parts of two different names I liked together and was able to come up with “Blendipuff.” This helped me come up with the name and allowed me to not waste any time just trying to think of a name for the brand.
Another resource I like to use probably used just as much as ChatGPT, is Grammarly, which is also considered AI. Grammarly is used to be able to check grammar, punctuation, spelling, and much more. I am using Grammarly right now to write this blog. I use it for almost, if not, everything to be able to write effective and well-written work. Again it is entirely me writing it but it just checks and makes sure it is spelled correctly and professionally. I mostly used Grammery in my Media Writing last semester. I made sure everything I turned in was professionally written with correct grammar and spelling. This was always advised as a resource to use. One of my instructors would always say that one spelling mistake could cost you joy or the company lots of money. So being able to check and make sure everything is correct is very important, especially in this industry.
Lastly, one resource I like to use for my designs to either use or see how it would look in the design is Dafont.com. I use this as the main place to get free-to-use fonts for my designs. Of course not all of them are free but a lot of good ones are free to use and help in the typography of your designs, besides having the ones just from Adobe. Adobe has a lot of free-to-use fonts at fonts.adobe.com. They both are very good to use but I find myself using Dafont more because of the layout and all the different unique fonts you can find.
But overall you still need to be wary and careful how you use them. Some resources, like fonts, are free but some do cost money. Also, some do have creative rights you need you need to look out for, to not get in trouble in the future. So you always want to be careful what you use and see if you can use it. But as long as you do, you are always free to use things to help yourself. One thing my instructors told me in college was to “use your resources.” They always said not to make things more difficult than they have to be. I agree with that statement and I think as long as you don’t plagiarize and follow all the laws that come with it, using resources is entirely ok.