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Today we’re going to learn all about how to make convincing reflections in Photoshop. Text reflections, 3D reflections, product shot reflections, all kinds of crazy reflections. We’ll discuss everything from custom transforms to blending modes and beyond. Whether you’re a beginner or a pro, you’ll probably learn a thing or two.

You might be thinking that reflections were all the rage a few years ago, but are currently losing a bit of steam, and you’d be right. However, you can still see plenty of them in practice on Apple.com and other sites. You should definitely beware of over-using them and adding to bad web 2.0 trends, but also know that once in a while they can add class to a boring item.

Graphics / 5 Jan 2011

Illustrator Typography: Using the Appearance Palette

Adobe Illustrator is a fantastic app for creating complex vector typographical arrangements. The application is so big and complicated though that it can take years to figure out how to recreate some of the cool effects that you’ve seen elsewhere without coming up with complicated workarounds.

Today we’ll remove some of the mystery of working with strokes and fills by diving into the appearance palette to see not only how it works, but how to manipulate the items within to create some really cool effects.

Typography / 8 Dec 2010

12 Stylish and Free Slab Serif Fonts

Slab serif fonts are quite stylish and attractive and are versatile enough to be used in many different contexts. They’re also currently very popular among web designers everywhere.

If you’ve been wondering where other designers are snagging these great slab serifs, look no further than the collection of twelve free fonts below.

JavaScript / 5 Nov 2010

Effortless Full Screen Background Images With jQuery

Today we’re going to build a simple and fun webpage for the sole purpose of showing off Fullscreenr, a great little jQuery plugin that makes it easy to add a background image to your site that automatically adjusts to the window size.

We’ll also throw in some @font-face and rgba action to keep things modern and educational on the rest of the build. Let’s get started!

Graphics / 27 Oct 2010

Photoshop Blending Modes: Beginner’s Tips and Tricks

Photoshop’s blending modes are a source of constant confusion for many designers. There aren’t really any sort of built-in examples for you to see and the blending mode names are no where near intuitive suggestions of what the effect actually does to the appearance of your document.

Today we’ll help remove a little of the mystery by discussing how a few key blending modes work in addition to some hints for how to use them effectively.

HTML / 22 Oct 2010

How to Build a Website With Flux 3: A Coder’s WYSIWYG

Flux is a WYSIWYG website editor for Macs. Now, before you curse under your breath about how much you hate WYSIWYGs, you should know that Flux is different and is both powerful and flexible enough to be used by professional web developers.

Today I’ll introduce you to Flux by creating a super simple web page from scratch (no annoyingly rigid templates). Along the way we’ll see what a typical workflow looks like and why it just might be the best visual web editor I’ve ever used.

Typography / 21 Oct 2010

Ultimate Web Font Resource Roundup: 50 Awesome Sites

The idea that web designers ignore typography is officially dead. In recent years countless tools and services have sprung up to meet the need of making the web a more type-friendly place, and they’re succeeding.

Today we bring you a huge list of awesome websites for all things related to web fonts. You’ll find sites offering free fonts, web font services, font building tools, previewing utilities, and a lot more!

Layouts / 15 Oct 2010

Create a Stunning Wooden Website Template in Photoshop

Today we’re going to build an awesome website template in Photoshop utilizing a number of advanced techniques.

I’ll take you through the entire process in ten easy steps and provide you with a link to download the finished template. Let’s begin!

Graphics / 14 Oct 2010

5 Super Easy Illustrator Typography Tricks

Beautiful typography goes much further than finding the right font.

Today’s post will help you break out of the nasty habit of simply typing out a headline and calling it a day by showing you how to craft standard text in Illustrator into something more interesting and unique.

Below you’ll find a fairly random collection of tricks that I’ve picked up in the last few years. Each method is highly open to interpretation and you should definitely try to tweak and customize them to your own preferences.

CSS / 13 Oct 2010

Introducing the LESS CSS Grid

In the past we’ve taken a look at several CSS grid systems. We’ve also gone over how LESS.js can add a lot of flexibility to the way you style web pages. Today we’re going to combine these two ideas and create a grid system that utilizes LESS.

Read on to see why on Earth we would do such a thing. If you understand the concept, you can also skip the tutorial and go straight to the download. Let’s get started.

Software / 8 Oct 2010

Mastering Variable Width Strokes in Illustrator CS5

Photoshop CS5’s fancy new feature set has garnered a lot of attention and tutorials, but Photoshop was by no means the only app to gain a little awesomeness. Illustrator CS5 has a few really stellar new features that make it even easier to create complicated vector art.

Today we’ll go over how to use one the many new features in Illustrator CS5: variable width strokes. With the new “Width Tool” you can make complex line shapes in seconds using only a few quick click and drag motions.

Graphics / 24 Sep 2010

How to Make Your Spreadsheets Less Lame

Spreadsheets are lame. There’s no two ways about it. We designers hate spreadsheets because they’re a shining example of boring data presented in a boring manner.

Unfortunately for designers, spreadsheets are a necessary evil and could even be called a great and essential tool in the business world. Today we’re going to see how to improve both the aesthetics and readability of your spreadsheets with a few super basic design principles that literally anyone can follow. Let’s get started!