— DANIELLE O'HANLEY

Last summer, I started hearing rumblings (chirps?) of something called Ladies Learning Code on Twitter. A group that was geared towards women, offering monthly workshops on everything from HTML to WordPress to programming. I took their one-day crash course in Ruby in October, and then last month’s mobile workshop at Xtreme Labs. The first was an intense first intro to programming, while the second gave me a nice ego boost when I realized I am a (tiny) bit more adept at HTML/CSS than I thought.

Yesterday I experienced the other side of Ladies Learning Code as a mentor at the Photoshop/InDesign/CSS workshop at George Brown. I got to help a crew of super ladies navigate the murky seas of Abobe, which was pretty rewarding. By the end of the day, they had all created mood boards, a Twitter background, personal logo, a fancy new Timeline cover photo, and edited their profile pictures. A great takeaway, and a good exercise in personal branding.

Cheers to the team of mentors, organizers and head instructors who came up with an ambitious (but totally manageable) course plan for the day. To the participants, here are a few resources that I find helpful:

• Computer Arts (step-by-step projects in Illustrator, Photoshop, Flash and more)
• SpoonGraphics (some more Photoshop/Illustrator tutorials)
• PSDtuts+ (moar tutorials!)
• Communication Arts (my bookcase is filled with their design annuals, which I always turn to for inspiration when I’m stuck)
• daFont (amaze-sauce fonts to download)
• Brusheezy (free Photoshop brushes)
• stock.xchng (free stock images)
• Color Lovers (community-based colour/palette trends)
• DeviantArt application resources (user-created Photoshop actions)

Enjoy! Also, thanks to Ladies Learning Code, I’ll be attending FITC Toronto at the end of April. Really excited about this!