Search Results For: photoshop

Business / 27 Aug 2013

10 Digital Design Terms You Need to Know

Design jargon is everywhere. And you need to be able to speak the language. Working on digital projects has its own set of terminology. From dither to color values to fluid or fixed layouts, there are a few terms every designer needs to have a grasp of.

So we’ve made it easy for you, and put together a list of digital design terms you need to know. This list started as a top 10, but we added some bonus jargon for comparative purposes. How many of these terms are you already familiar with?

Business / 7 Aug 2013

10 Printing Terms You Need to Know

More and more designers these days are working in a variety of mediums — both digital and print. But it can take a different set of specifications to put together a successful project for each. Print design has its own jargon.

Understanding how printing works (and how to speak the language of printers) is important for any designer. Don’t think this applies to you because most of your business is web-based? Consider this: At some point a client will ask for print components to go with the website, whether they are business cards or posters or just a great handout for presentations. Knowing the printing basics and terminology will help you bridge the gap. Here are ten key terms you need to know.

CSS / 2 Aug 2013

Code an Awesome Hire Me Card With Your Gravatar

It’s been a while since we polished our HTML and CSS skills with a fun little demo, let’s end that streak with a project that’s both super attractive and super practical.

Today we’re going to build a card-style “Hire Me” widget that you can quickly drop onto any web page. Along the way we’ll learn a bunch of great stuff about CSS positioning and how to use pseudo elements to pull off some cool effects.

Graphics / 8 Jul 2013

Using Moo.com for Your Wedding Stationery

Weddings can be an expensive business. Photographers, venues, food, drink, entertainment, and all manner of other things to consider. But it’s also a fun opportunity for some design work! Wedding “branding” and stationery has the potential to be another big wedding expense, but by thinking a little creatively, you can not only give your special day a personal touch, but also cut down on the cost.

Today I’ll be sharing a little insight into how you can use your copy of Photoshop, and Moo.com, to create a fantastic array of different wedding stationery. We did it for our wedding a couple of weeks ago, and it went down brilliantly.

Inspiration / 1 Jul 2013

10 Key Features of Popular WordPress Themes

WordPress is the framework behind many of the websites and blogs you visit every day, including this one. Latest numbers from WordPress attribute the framework as the backbone of 17 percent of the web.

The platform is simple to use, and thanks to plenty of theme builders it can be customized in a variety of ways for everything from blogs, to portfolio sites, to e-commerce. Themes are the element that take WordPress to the next level, giving almost anyone of any skill level the ability to create a site that doesn’t look like a basic template. There are a few key components that set the best themes aside from the rest. The most popular WordPress themes – both paid and free – tend to have 10 key features in common. Let’s take a look at them.

CSS / 29 Jun 2013

Create Shaped Avatars With CSS and Webkit

In case you haven’t noticed, square avatars are so 2010. These days circles are all the rage. Every app worth its salt, from Path to Basecamp, is jumping on board this fad and waving goodbye to the squares who are stuck in the past.

Ever the forward thinker, I asked myself, “what’s next?” Let’s look beyond squares and circles and into the future of the avatar! Using CSS and Webkit, we can use pretty much any shape as the mask for an avatar. Let’s see how.

CSS / 6 Mar 2013

How to Center Anything With CSS

Recently, we took a dive into the very core concepts behind CSS layout and explored the differences between absolute and relative positioning. We’re going to follow that up with another CSS layout talk, this time based around a fundamental question that almost every new developer asks: how do you center something?

There are a bunch of different types of web elements and layout situations, each calling for a unique solution for centering (both vertically and horizontally). Today we’ll go over a bunch of these scenarios so you can wrap your mind around how they work and come away with the confidence to center anything!

CSS / 16 Jan 2013

Code a Spinning Circular Menu With CSS

Don’t be a square, break outside your boring box and try on a circle for size. Today we’re going to build a circular navigation menu that spins to different points as the user hovers over an anchor.

Along the way we’ll have to overcome several obstacles like how to structure our HTML to be conducive to a remote hover and how to position all of the elements just right so that everything works. It’s a fun challenge and there’s a lot to learn, let’s get started!

CSS / 10 Jan 2013

Perform a Split Reveal With CSS

CSS can pull of a lot of really great image tricks: size manipulation, desaturation, even blur. One limitation that we run into though is that you can’t really slice an image into multiple parts. For instance, if you wanted to cut a photo in half and animate the separation, you couldn’t really do it with pure CSS. Could you?

Today we’re going to code up a work around that allows us to achieve this very trick without an ounce of JavaScript or extra files. Let’s see how it works.

Software / 19 Dec 2012

No Coding Necessary: Build a Striking Website With Breezi

Breezi is the website design application for beginners. It is a great tool for those who maybe don’t have the coding ability to produce a site that looks like they would hope. The tools are easy to use, there are almost limitless options for customization and even a few templates to help you get started.

Here we look at the web-based tool. And if you think Breezi is for you, you can enter to win one of five pro licensees that the company is giving away to Design Shack readers. (Enter using the Rafflecopter at the end of this post.)

Business / 25 Oct 2012

Meet Creative Market: A New Platform for Buying and Selling Creative Resources

The folks that brought you COLOURlovers have cooked up something new and exciting: Creative Market, a beautiful and simple way to buy and sell digital creative goods online.

Join us as we jump in to see what Creative Market is all about and how they’re uniquely positioning themselves in this market.

CSS / 8 Oct 2012

Battle of the LESS Mixin Libraries: LESS Elements vs. LESS Hat vs. Bootstrap

LESS is a friendly, easily-approachable CSS preprocessor. Though ultimately, Sass and Stylus are more powerful and robust, LESS has a certain charm that keeps it as a forerunner in the battle of the preprocessors.

If you’re a Sass fan, then you can take advantage of Compass, an incredible framework that makes coding with complex CSS3 properties a breeze. But what about LESS users? Where’s their Compass? Today we’ll look at three awesome mixin libraries that will help fill that void.