Designer Dustin Wax says you can bolster your design skills by learning four basic principles: C ontrast, R epetition, A lignment, and P roximity—or CRAP. If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Windows only: Freeware application ColorPic is a simple but powerful utility for designers that determines the HEX and decimal code of onscreen colors and manages color palettes for broad design or web-safe color use. Not only is ColorPic strong on features and simple to use—it’s also very light on system resources (which is a nice bonus if you’re used to having system-heavy image editing programs open). Another nice aspect of ColorPic is that it doesn’t grab colors based on mouse-clicks, but rather through the keyboard, meaning you can still interact with open windows...

If you don’t much feel like shelling out the dough on a pricey image editing program, then you’ll want to check out design blog’s snap2objects list of the 45 best freeware design programs out there on the Web. If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Have an unused nook and cranny in your home? Do some clutter-busting and put your unused space to good use with the tips from Popular Mechanics If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!