Articles - Page 215

Business / 18 Jul 2011

Are Print Designers Doomed? an Important Look at the Facts

We constantly hear blanket statements about how print is in decline and the future of design is digital. Meanwhile, many print-only designers wonder if they should be taking steps to begin the overwhelming journey of learning a new career.

Today we’ll put rumors and speculation aside for a moment and take a look at some real data to see the actual projections for the print design industry and what actions, if any, print designers should be taking as a result.

Freebies / 15 Jul 2011

Weekly Freebies: 25 Incredibly Useful Photoshop Custom Shape Sets

Photoshop custom shapes allow for quick and easy vector insertion into your artwork. Countless artists have spent hours building some amazing shape sets and distribute them free! Today we’ll have a look at the best sets we could find from deviantArt and other sites.

Graphics / 14 Jul 2011

Build Awesome Color Palettes Effortlessly in Illustrator

Here at Design Shack we can’t get enough of good color schemes. We recently discussed some Awesome and Unusual Places to Steal Color Palettes From and today we’ll follow up that discussion with some tips on how to build your own awesome color sets in Adobe Illustrator.

We’ll go over the extreme basics of working with color in Illustrator and jump into how to use the excellent built-in Color Guide to get you on the path to lightning-fast generation and manipulation of custom color schemes.

CSS / 13 Jul 2011

CSS Attribute Selectors: How and Why You Should Be Using Them

Today we’re going to learn about Attribute Selectors. What are they? How do I use them? What are the new CSS3 Attribute selectors? We’ll answer these questions and more.

Graphics / 12 Jul 2011

5 Quick & Simple Design Tricks to Liven Up Any Project

Sometimes you have a perfectly good layout, but your design needs a bit something extra to finish it off. Unfortunately, it’s easy to get stuck and become completely void of ideas.

Today we’re going to help you solve this problem by highlighting five random design ideas that you can incorporate into your back of design tricks. Let’s get started!

Business / 11 Jul 2011

How to Teach Someone Graphic Design

Do you have a friend, family member or colleague who is considering design as a profession and looks to you for guidance? Your instruction could mean the difference between a meaningful career and a non-starter.

Today we’ll offer up some basic advice that everyone should consider before attempting to teach someone to be a graphic designer.

Freebies / 8 Jul 2011

Weekly Freebies: Exclusive Wooden Texture Pack Pt. 2

Last week we brought you an exclusive wooden texture pack with three textures built from scratch in Photoshop specifically for our readers. This week we’re following that up with a photographic pack of seven real wooden textures once again created just for you guys.

Keep reading to get a peek at these great free textures, which you can download and use in all of your projects completely attribution free!

Inspiration / 8 Jul 2011

10 Unbeatable Premium Memberships and Courses for Professional Design Training

As a professional designer, it’s absolutely crucial for you to stay up to date with your skill set. With web design moving along at a rate so fast that even the best quickly fall behind, it’s helpful to have a solid lifeline to quality educational resources.

Today we’re going to look at ten awesome premium design memberships and sources for training courses that will help you learn a plethora of new skills and help you stay current on the topics that you’re already versed in.

CSS / 7 Jul 2011

Helpful Tips & Tools for Web Design Experiments

Today’s article encourages you to get into the habit of devoting time to little experiments. Testing ideas and solving problems in a low-pressure and possibly even fun environment can massively boost your education and lead to awesome innovation.

We’ll start with some benefits and tips for experimenting with web development projects and finish up with a brief look at a few of the tools that I personally use to compose my own experiments. Let’s get started!

CSS / 6 Jul 2011

Rolling Your Own Grid Layouts on the Fly Without a Framework

Do you hate CSS grid frameworks but love the rapid layout benefits that they provide? Do you struggle with the math and code necessary to create your own flexible multi-column layouts on the fly?

Today we’re going to walk you through creating your own basic, reusable system for creating multiple columns that you can implement anywhere any time with only a few lines of code. No bloated code or non-sematic class names required!

CSS / 5 Jul 2011

3 Must-Learn CSS Techniques for Perfect Web Typography

This article presents an extremely useful set of tips and best practices for those who are still fairly new to working with typography on the web.

We’ll go over the most popular methods for embedding web fonts, sizing fonts and setting a solid line-height.

Business / 4 Jul 2011

Webmaster Quick Tips: Optimizing Your Website for Search Results

The process to set up and launch a full scale website requires a lot of hard work and dedication. It’s not an easy task to build up new templates and reform them every so often. However, as webmasters it is our responsibility to market and promote each of our launches and give each website a proper branding experience.

Today we’ll go over some extremely helpful search optimization techniques which have been passed down from web designers across the globe.