FORM Studio
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INSIGHTS

Blog posts, insights, and musings from FORM on branding, identity design, and visual culture at large.

"CHEAT CODES"

Here at the studio, we all come from different backgrounds – culturally, educationally, and societally. We’d be remiss if we didn’t give credit to the various places, people, and resources that have helped us become the creatives we are today. And if anything, this Resource list for creatives, agency founders and business owners is largely inspired by Virgil Abloh’s “FREE GAME” series.

We’ve also included a list of other agencies, designers and partners you can work with, in case there is a better fit for your project needs, if you’re a potential client. We’re here to help you succeed.

If there are any resources, agencies or studios you can think of that are valuable and not listed, let us know and we will iterate on this collection. Everything in real time.

As a note: While most of the resources listed here are free, some are paid. We encourage you, if you have the means, to support your favourite font foundries, mockup creators, and business where applicable.

DESIGN RESOURCES

The Futur – Whether you are just starting out, or have been a creative professional for some time, we thank the Futur for a large part of our success as a studio and are constantly upskilling with their Courses.

Michael Janda – For anything related to business-fundamentals while running a creative agency, or even as a solo designer, we’d recommend the Freelancer Business Course. Not only is the information invaluable to beginners or seasoned creatives, but the templates for Proposals, SOW’s and templates alone are worth it.

It’s Nice That – Go beyond Instagram and Behance for your design inspiration. Not that those are bad places, but it’s where everyone looks, thus, if you want your work to standout, go elsewhere. INT is a great inspo.

Fontshare – Not only are there free (stellar) fonts here, but great recommendations on font pairings for your next design/creative project.

Typewolf – Speaking of font pairings, Typewolf is one of the ultimate guides to the do’s and don’ts for font strategies and free font alternatives to your favourite (more pricey) typefaces.

Bento Grids – As stated, this is a site entirely dedicated to Bento Grid inspiration for you to use while displaying work from your latest projects. We f*cking love bento grids.

Typeeverything – One of our favourite font foundries for display typefaces.

Unblast – Our advice generally is: pay for mockups. They aren’t expensive and they support the creators to do more mockups for less in future. But if you’re just beginning, and need a place other than Behance/Gumroad/Envato, Unblast is a great option.

Mockup Republic – If you’re looking to go the extra mile when it comes to Mockups, head here. These mockups are used by Pentagram, Motherbird, and a few other killer studios and agencies. These are paid (but the full bundle is like, $69.99, which is a steal).

Noun Project – Free icons and stock photos for everything. Whenever creating a logomark for a client’s brand identity, if we’re stuck, we sometimes go here to lookup the shape and form of related icons.

Supply Family – Again, on the subject of mockups, SF is stellar.

Holke 79 – There are a plethora of channels and places to learn Motion Design – Holke is one of our favs.

Motion Circles – Learning motion design took our studio from good to great. While daunting to beginners, learning and integrating motion is essential for creating and showcasing dynamic work – MC is one of our favourite channels and places to learn the fundamentals.

MISC CREATIVE RESOURCES

“Hey Whipple, Squeeze This!” – We as a team revisit this guide to copywriting at least once a year. Every new hire for FORM reads it. It’s free, it’s full of gold, and we couldn’t recommend it more for building better concepts and strengthening your copywriting across the board.

Wave Accounting – The free version of Wave is stellar, the UX/UI is amazing on both mobile and desktop, and the paid version really isn’t that expensive. It’s a great place to start – or stay – for your business.

Ad Professor – If you’re looking to get a masterclass in writing and designing ads, you found it.

Asana – While we use Notion at the studio, we started on Asana for creative project management.

Notion – We haven’t found a better, more all-encompassing way of managing projects and studio operations, than Notion. We’d highly recommend it.

Cargo – We desperately need to rebuild our site, and when we do, it’ll be in either Cargo or Framer. Ready to use templates, no-code, beautiful solutions.

FORM Radio – You need something to listen to while working and we have just the thing.


Ryan AntooaFORM Creative Agency, Brand Identity, Brand Strategy, FORM Studio, Business Strategy, Operational Strategy