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Taking Type to the Next Level with Alternate Characters

Taking Type to the Next Level with Alternate Characters
Are you sick of your type looking plain and boring? Many OpenType fonts have alternate characters built into them that can transform your type into a beautiful piece of art. By using these alternate characters you can add things like flourishes and flair to your type with ease. Some type faces have alternate characters that can help out with legibility at smaller sizes. How do you tell what fonts have alternates? Ligatures – This is where two or more characters are linked together. Logotypes – This is where a word is stylized as a logo to be included in your type. Biform characters – These alternate characters can make capital letters have a lowercase look or lowercase letters with capital letter look while keeping the same size and weight. Swash characters – This is where a certain letter can have a fancy look to them. To gain a better understanding of how you can benefit from using alternate characters, we should first look at how you can access them. Step 1 Step 2 Step 3 Step 4 Step 5

3D Text Shatter Effect – Tutorial I’m going to show you how to make a 3D text shatter effect. This effect is made in two programs, Cinema 4D and Photoshop.If you haven’t heard of Cinema 4D before it is a relatively easy to use 3d application, it is quite similar to 3dsMax or Maya. I will go pretty in depth with the Cinema 4D part, for all the inexperienced users, so bare with me if I go too slow. Required Resources In this tutorial we will be using some resources you will want to download before starting: (Optional) Cinema 4d material *NEW* – We just released a font that you can download that creates a similar effect. Final Image Preview Step 1: Creating the basic text Open up Cinema 4D and make a text object Write “Media Militia” in the text object Now rotate your text object: 90* on the X axis and -90* on the Y axis Create an Extrude NURBS object And drop your text in it Change the object properties of the Extrude NURBS to 0 / 0 / 35 Now take your ExtrudeNURBS object and hit “C” (this makes your object editable) Make a floor

Awesome Minimalist Disney Posters FTW Something about minimalist art just looks great on movie posters. Combine that with Disney movies and you get a whole new edge. You might think most of these posters are for some dark, avant-garde indie film, not a cute animated kid’s flick. Also, be sure to check out: Minimalist Posters of Cult Classics and Awesome Minimalist Book Covers FTW (image) Liverpool graphic designer Rowan Stocks-Moore designed these. The above (and others) are all available in poster form on Rowan Stocks-Moore’s Etsy account He has recently had a lot of requests for his stuff so expect to wait about 14 working days for a print, longer for United States customers. Awesome Minimalist Disney Posters FTW How To Create Vibrant Lighting Effects From Scratch Incorporating lighting effects is a great way to bring energy and flow into your designs. In this tutorial, I will show you how to create some amazing lighting effects from scratch using a free open source program and then adding final touches to the image inside of Photoshop. Required Resources Download the Resources (Includes the final PSD) Final Image Preview Take a look at the design we’ll be creating. Step 1 To start off this tutorial you will be creating the main glowing object using a program called Apophysis. Note: If you would like to skip the creation process using Apophysis, I have included the rendered output in the resource files. After you have downloaded and installed Apophysis. Step 2 In the left hand panel of Apophysis, double click on different flame titles until you find one that you like. Step 3 Hopefully you found a good flame to use. Tip #1: You can mutate flames. Tip #2: Try Zooming in and out Step 4 Once you have perfected your flame, go to Flame > Render to Disk. Step 5

Collection of Awesome Things (63 pics Dec 14/11 Collection of Awesome Things (63 pics) Another collection of some very creative and awesome stuff. Which one of this would you like for Christmas? External Tip – 12 Tutorials and Instructions For After Effects In this category we want to give you an advice to other great sites, where you can get a lot of very useful information, inspirations and materials. Here I collected 12 great tips and tutorials for After Effects, which can help you to expand your skills. Coin Stack Text Effects Tutorial Creating Additional Graphical Interface Elements Create an Ethereal Morphing Letter Canvas Grow From Young To Old In 2.5 Seconds Light Glow Magic Tracking Blast Wave After Effects CS5: Roto Brush After Effects CS5: Color Finesse Mechanical Mania Human Perfection

10 Most Creative Packaging Design One of the things that identifies a product is its packaging. Qualified and differentiated packaging design is a must for a product in today’s highly competitive world. There are hundreds of companies manufacturing the same kind of products, what distinguishes one product from another is its packing design. A packing design can be bizarre, cool, creative, weird or unusual, but it just should be different. Even a product is not better than its competitors, it can still sell itself with a creative design. Check out ‘’ 10 Most Creative Packaging Design ’’ below. 10 – Coffin Smoke Box Coffin Smoke Box 09 – Creative Juice Box Creative Juice Box 08 – Dino Teeth Gum Dino Teeth Gum 07 – DKNY Candy Apples Parfume DKNY Candy Apples Parfume 06 – Evian 2005 Limited Edition Bottle Evian 2005 Limited Edition Bottle 05 – Quick Fruit Packaging Concept Quick Fruit Packaging Concept 04 – Pop-Up Popcorn Pop-Up Popcorn 03 – Panasonic Note Box Panasonic Note Box 02 – Creative Milk Carton Creative Milk Carton Hanger Tea Box

Dem bones, dem bones, dem light bones - Page 12 Photographer Darren Pearson, aka Darius Twin, creates some of the most stunningly detailed light paintings we've ever seen. Designer by day, light painter around Los Angeles, California, by night, Darius Twin produces pieces of light art that fire our imaginations while at the same time leaving us scratching our heads as to how he does it. We technically do know how — he moves a torch like a paint brush in front of an open camera shutter — but the depth of detail shown in his work is just incredible. So we asked him. The images are created by using a long exposure: setting the camera up on a tripod and leaving the shutter open at night.The characters are made by a light pointed toward the lens during the exposure. But with each exposure only taking around five to seven minutes, the skill that he demonstrates with each painting — which date all the way back to 2006 — is just superb. For those who want to get out and try it for yourself, he explains the technical details in the video below.

20 Awesome Products And Design Ideas September 2, 2011 | 48 Comments » | Topics: Design, Pics Hot Stories From Around The Web Other Awesome Stories Free Photoshop Filters That Resemble the Look of Instagram Photos Want to mimic the look of Instagram’s filters using Photoshop? We’re happy to announce that we have a set of Photoshop files that allow you to do just that. Designed exclusively for PetaPixel by Eric Öhman of Skellefteå, Sweden, the pack comes with 20 filters that imitate the look of the popular mobile photo sharing app. Let’s get started! Download the Files Click here to download the 16MB zip file. Using the Curve Presets Some of the filters can be applied as simple curve presets (others require some additional layers). Using the .psd Files The more complicated filters are recreated using .psd files. The adjustment layers are the ones that do the magic. We might add additional filters in the future, and if we do we’ll simply update the download file in this post to include them. Have fun playing around with these free filters! Download the Filters for Photoshop [MediaFire] Update: We’ve added 12 more filters to the pack. Update: The filters have been taken offline for some reason…

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