background preloader

Articles

Facebook Twitter

Illustrator tutorials: 80 amazing ideas to try today! | Illustrator. Since its release, Adobe's Illustrator has grown to become the designer's right-hand man when it comes to creating premier vector graphics and elements. There's so much you can do with it that it can be difficult to know where to start. Happily, we're here to round up the best Adobe Illustrator tutorials, covering everything from illustration to logo design, adding depth to your typography and much more, to help you get the most from this amazing app. Jump directly to a section using this handy category guide, or just get started browsing the whole list! With so many to choose from, you're sure to find a project to inspire you, whether you're using an older version of Illustrator or are signed up to the Creative Cloud. Adobe Illustrator for beginners: 11 top tips If you're just starting out with Illustrator, here's a fantastic guide to some of its tools.

Setting up a new document In this video tutorial presented by Angie Taylor, you'll learn how to set up a new Illustrator document. Noupe - The Curious Side of the Web. The Do's And Don'ts Of Infographic Design. Advertisement Editor’s Note: You might want to read Nathan Yau’s article The Do’s And Don’ts Of Infographic Design: Revisited1 here on Smashing Magazine which is a response to this article.

Since the dawn of the Internet, the demand for good design has continued to skyrocket. From Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 and beyond, designers have remained on their toes as they define the trends and expectations of our online universe. The Internet is a great designer’s playground, and online businesses are growing more and more appreciative of what can be gained from a bit of well-executed eye candy. Over the past two years, this fact has become the backbone of a growing trend in online marketing: the infographic. Infographics are visual representations of information, or “data viz” as the cool kids call it these days. Of course, just as Web 2.0 changed 1.0, today’s infographics are far more eye-catching than simple pie charts and bar graphs.

Wrapping Your Mind Around Data Viz Show, Don’t Tell Tell a Story (al) 5 things you didn't know Sublime Text 2 could do. CSS3 drop shadow. Until a while ago, web developers were forced to learn Photoshop or count with a trustful graphic designer to help them with things like shadows, gradients and stuff, this because there was no method to create these elements directly on CSS.

Then the world saw the release of CSS3 with its fantastic features, which included of course making shadows. On this post we have gathered a big list with some of the best resources to let you know a little bit more about CSS3 shadows, you will find useful tutorials, great plugins and code examples, shadow generators and a few extra links. Our best of the best Without wanting to sound pretentious, we’ve just released a fantastic (and FREE) CSS3 shadow generator in ThemeShock, the tool incorporates tons of features and great accessibility to help you make the most astounding shadows with CSS only.

Open CSS3 Shadow Generator Open CSS Text Effects Generator Tutorials Advanced pure CSS3 boxes without using images Box-shadow: shadow effect on elements in CSS3. 30+ Brand New jQuery Plugins To Change the Look and Feel of Your Website. 120 Tips, Tricks, and Tuts from 2009 Worth your Time. Now that we're down to the end of 2009, what were some of the best web development and design tutorials and articles from the year? We'll take a look at 120 of them! Jump to a Month January How to Build a Login System for a Simple Website In today's video tutorial, we'll be building a login system with PHP and MYSQL. Many, many features will be covered; including MySqli, Prepared Statements, jQuery, Classes, Sessions, Cookies, etc.

I bit off more than I could chew for today's screencast. Run Your Own TinyURL Service With Phurl Jan 13th, 2009 in Other by Thord Hedengren URL shortening services are a must if microblogging services like Twitter are to work. Slice and Dice that PSD In today's video tutorial, we'll be slicing up a PSD, dicing it for the web, and serving it on a warm hot plate. The Definitive Guide to Creating a Practical jQuery Plugin 15+ Tips to Speed Up Your Website, and Optimize Your Code! Once you've been coding for a while, you begin to take something for granted. February. Progress Bars Design Inspiration - 46 Lovely Examples. Progress bars have once been very popular on the internet and you used to see them on a lot of sites at that moment exclusively for loading a site. Since then, designers avoided them a lot, until, once again they became popular. Nowadays, they are not used only for loading a site, but rather an inner page, a video, a song or various other purposes.

The new rise in popularity is also caused by the use of jQuery and CSS3 which are making these really cool design elements easy to code and implement within a site without using Flash and causing the site or page to load incredibly slow. Enjoy these 46 lovely progress bars and subscribe to the site via the social media accounts if you want to see more design inspiration like the article presented here.

12 Excellent CSS3 Button and Menu Techniques | Tutorials. 1139 shares 20 Fresh CSS3 Tutorials The design industry is probably one of the fastest changing and growing. Designers have to keep their eyes on everything, including new trends in visual design, as well as interaction technologies like jQuery, HTML5, and CSS3. Designers are using these technologies to express more creativity in design production and make user experience richer.

Read More 559 shares Developing Streamlined and Efficient CSS Styles CSS can be compared to the sculptor’s tool set when crafting a sculpture. 30 Free Business Card PSD Template in High Resolution. Conceptualizing a business card is usually a challenging job for those who think that they lack the essential expertise. A business card is among the most important materials of an organization. It could be small yet it functions as a tremendous advertising resource in building a brand identity. Thus, it is advisable that you create your business card with optimum attention. For you to create a business card, you would probably choose to get help from templates. Business card templates are pre-designed cards which could make the process of card designing less complicated.

Here are the 30 Free Business Card PSD Template in High Resolution. Splatter Business Card Template Source Free Minimal Business Card Design PSD Template Source Fashion Business Card Source FREE Social Media Business Card Template Source PSD Business Card Mock-Up Vol 1 Source Modern Red Business Card Source Minimal Business Card Template Source PSD Business Card Mock-Up Vol 2 Source FREE Photographer Business Card Template V1 Source. Serif Fonts and Their Peculiarities. Apr 09 2010 Typography obviously belongs to the cohort of the fine arts, where even the smallest details and elements are meaningful and can influence the overall perception of the final creation, whether it is a picture or a text, printed with a particular typeface.

In terms of fonts design, serifs are those tiny elements, which add a particular character to a typeface, contributing to the unique feel and look every font is characterized with. By definition, serifs are the small lines or strokes at the ends of the main strokes of the letters in a particular font. Sometimes, serifs are also descriptively explained as “hooks” or “little feet” at the ends of the vertical and horizontal strokes of a letter.

Consequently, fonts with serifs are usually mentioned as Serif fonts, for example, Times Roman, Garamond, Souvenir, etc. Stemming out of the ancient Roman alphabet with the letters carved into stone, Serif fonts have passed a long way of development and evolution. Old Style Serif Fonts. How to Create a Simple Custom WordPress Widget. The Principles of Good Web Design Part 1: Layout. 17th September, 2009 Tom Kenny Articles Good web design doesn’t just appear out of nowhere, there are many aspects of design that come together to achieve this. The first one that we’ll be looking in this 4-part-series is layout. Layout is an interesting beast. There are no definitive right or wrong ways of approaching it.

What you need to do is make sure that the layout works for the site that you are designing. Layout primarily consists of the following aspects: Whitespace Whitespace is space between elements on a page. Five Simple Steps Effective use of whitespace as seen on Five Simple Steps As you can see above, Mark Boulton has done a great job of using whitespace to promote his book, allowing elements such as buttons and text paragraphs to ‘breathe’ giving them the attention they deserve. Flow Flow in web design is the act of guiding the user through page. Fever The website for Fever is a superb example of flow in web design Alignment Alignment helps create a good flow. How to use Twitter Bootstrap to Create a Responsive Website Design. "Welcome to the responsive web! " In the last year or so this term has been thrown around everywhere, so often that even a lot of my clients are asking for a responsive design from the get go.

This, to me, is really interesting because they never asked for a mobile or tablet version back in the day. One would argue that mobile wasn't so mainstream and everybody was trying to imitate the IOS interface on the web, and I agree, it was bad, but that's not the only reason why clients are asking for responsive!? Somehow they think we turn responsive design on or off as we please and that it's just normal to have, so the price should stay the same. Well, it's not that easy.

How to use Twitter Bootstrap to Create a Responsive Website Design Responsive web design is an approach, I often call it a mindset, because you have to change the way you think when you're going responsive. The idea of responsive design relies on CSS3 media queries that target specific screen resolutions and sizes. That’s it! Javascript For Designers: Getting on Your Feet Fast. Aug 04 2009 Web designers are a special breed – we’re one of a small group of professionals that actively seeks out to improve ourselves and our craft through any means possible.

This generally means on our own, from each other, and through an awful lot of ‘guess, test and revise.’ Web design isn’t for the faint of heart or those with any fear of failure. The most daunting ‘learning experience’ for developing developers is to make the jump from the HTMLs and the CSSs of the world to web scripting. It looks good from the outside – all that added interactivity and animation and cool effects and features – oh my.

But for some designers, it proves to be a difficult lesson to learn, as scripting can require more focus, logic, and organization than the coding that you are used to. Getting on Your Feet Fast Let’s take a look at bulletproof ways to ease into Javascript at an accelerated pace. Websites That Teach Javascript Javascript learning sites spend more time on simple logic and processes. The Grid System. 19 Unique jQuery Tutorials for Web Developers | Tutorials. jQuery is the premier library for coding JavaScript page effects. Most popular content management packages run jQuery for both admin and frontend design effects. As a web developer jQuery can be a fun library to spend some time learning and offers tremendous design potential.

It seems there are so many references and guides out there it’s easy to get lost. Below we’ve compiled 19 unique jQuery tutorials to help develop your skills as a frontend developer. Form validation from scratch Develop a simple and powerful jQuery script for common HTML form validation. Incredible jQuery Login Form Learn how to code a structural jQuery login form with sliding animation. Creating a Digg Style Signup Form Digg has been an innovator for web apps for years. Color jQuery & CSS3 Sliders Here you are taught about using jQuery and the new transformation features brought by CSS3 to create a dynamic slider effect. Working with Events – Part 1 Part 1 of a detailed series teaching about events in jQuery. 629 shares.

All 2012 in review articles | Tags. 100 Essential Web Development Tools. Mar 16 2010 By Neil Skirrow As web technologies constantly advance, the skills a developer is expected to have are constantly increasing. Web users are beginning to expect Ajax interfaces, charts and graphs and a whole host of other tricks and features.

This means web developers not only have to be skilled with HTML and a server-side programming language such as PHP or Perl, but they now also need to be JavaScript gurus, Flash experts, and skilled graphic designers. When developing your applications, you simply can’t create every element yourself. In an effort to save you a few hours crawling the web in search of the perfect third-party solution, we have compiled this list of essential development resources. 1. You can find a whole array of pre-made classes and functions to help save development time. The following CAPTCHA systems can be easily integrated with your applications: SecurimageSecurimage is a free open-source PHP CAPTCHA script for generating complex images and CAPTCHA codes. 2. 7 Things You Didn’t Know Adobe Illustrator Could Do. The BIGGEST ever list of design resources! - ProofHQ. Following the huge success of last year’s “World’s Biggest Ever List of Graphic Design Blogs”, we’ve decided that we should turn it into an annual event – after all, more people than ever before are blogging and the talent pool continues to grow.

This year, we’ve added in some additional categories including typography and image sourcing sites to help you along your way. The list is at least 40% larger than last year and is the one stop shop for all that you could need in terms of inspiration, reference material or tools for you to use. So, without further ado, ladies and gentlemen…. drum-roll please! Graphic Design 1stwebdesigner Blog by Dainis Graveris in Latvia covering all things design and freelance. 2expertsdesign A blog filled with tips – whether it’s graphic design, logo design, web design, advertising, branding or typography. There’s something there for everyone! 72dpi Graphic design inspiration. BearSkinRug A blog by the illustrator and designer Kevin Cornell.

Freelance Life. 30 HTML Best Practices for Beginners. Stroll.js - CSS3 Scroll Effects. 80+ Photoshop Actions for Giving Your Pictures a Vintage Look. Photoshop actions are great. With just a click of a button you can apply a complicated effect to a photo instantly.

One of the most popular type of actions is the vintage or retro style. With the popularity of vintage-inspired Instagram filters and film emulation, the older style is desired with many photos. Fortunately, there are plenty of quality Photoshop actions that will help you to get vintage effects quickly and easily. In this article, I’ve rounded up over eighty Photoshop actions that will add very cool vintage or retro effects to your photos. Instagram Filters (13 actions) Lomocam (10 actions) Lomo Action Hard Lomo Action Holgarizer Vintage Light Leak Action Vintage Heaven Action Vintage Dream Action Retro Cross Action Vintage Matte Action Faded Film Action Old Film Action Retro Style Actions (10 actions) Instant Hipster (10 actions) Prestalgia (10 actions) Vintage Gold Action Aged Black & White Action Glory Days Vintage Actions (7 actions) Muted Colors Vintage Action Old Tones (6 actions) Useful Photoshop Tools and Techniques For Your Workflow.

Free All-in-One Graphic Design Starter Kit. How To Create A Vibrant Image Using Photoshop. 20+ Must See Fresh and Useful jQuery Plugins from 2011. 20 More Excellent AJAX Effects You Should Know. 20 Very Useful Photography Tips And Tricks. Smashing Magazine. Perfect Full Page Background Image.