Search Results For: photoshop

Graphics / 12 Jan 2012

When the Photo Doesn’t Fit the Space: Tips and Tricks for Making It Work

You’ve been there a thousand times, staring at a big empty canvas that simply doesn’t seem to work with the photo that the client has provided. Perhaps you have a vertical space and a horizontal photo (or vice versa), or maybe the image is simply too small to resize without unacceptable quality loss. What now?

Today we’ll go over some tricks of the trade and teach you how to cope with images that don’t fit where you need them to. The next time you run into a problem, you’ll be ready!

Typography / 4 Jan 2012

Typography With Perspective: Learn to Wield Illustrator’s Perspective Grid Tool

Today we’re going to take a look at how to use the Perspective Grid in Adobe Illustrator. This awesome and fairly new tool allows you to automatically flow vector elements onto a prebuilt three dimensional grid.

You might think that you need to be an artist to use this tool but there are in fact all kinds of practical uses for it in every day design. We’ll use it to lay out some type like in the example above.

Layouts / 27 Dec 2011

Utilizing Grids in Print Design

The basic organization of a design project typically begins with a simple concept – the grid. Whether you decide to work within its constraints or intentionally move away from it, deciding how to use a grid tends to be one of the first steps in the design process.

Print designers have been working on grids since the first newspapers rolled off the presses hundreds of years ago. Most magazines also employ a grid; books are put together using the grid format. The grid can be part of a publication’s identity and helps create a sense of space and organization. Understanding the basics of grid design – from how it originated, to developing your own grid and using it in your workflow processes – will make working within vertical and horizontal constraints a snap.

CSS / 20 Dec 2011

Make It Snow on Your Website With CSS Keyframe Animations

The holiday season is at its peak and for some lucky people in weather appropriate climates, winter is in full swing. I live in Phoenix so real winter, and consequently snow, is really just a distant dream. Thus I am forced to turn to nerdery to get my fix!

Today we’re going to go over a super simple CSS technique that you can use to make it snow on your website. It’ll only take you a few minutes at the most and it serves as a great introduction to using multiple background images and keyframe animations in CSS.

Layouts / 15 Dec 2011

Tips and Ideas for Designing With Blurred Images

“The supreme accomplishment is to blur the line between work and play.”
– Arnold Toynbee

The topic of today’s discussion is blurry photos. No, not the kind that you accidentally take because your kids won’t sit still. The intentional kind, the use of which can serve several practical purposes in design.

We’ll learn all about how to use blur effects to help make text more legible, direct the viewer’s attention, and just make backgrounds more fun. We’ll also take a look at some different types of blurs and how to properly apply selective blurring.

CSS / 14 Dec 2011

Four Simple and Fun CSS Button Hover Effects for Beginners

Today we’re going to take a step back from advanced discussions about CSS preprocessors and return to some good old basics. We’ll work up four super simple CSS buttons, each with a unique animated hover effect.

Follow along with me and create your own fun button styles. Also feel free to grab my code and use it on your projects. If you’re a CSS newbie looking for a good way to make your buttons more interesting, this article is for you!

Graphics / 22 Nov 2011

Three Quick Design Tricks: Break Out Screenshots, Easy Starbursts and Vector Grunge Textures

Today we have a small collection of completely random but very useful design tricks that you should keep in the back of your mind the next time you need a new idea.

I’ll show you a quick way to make a software screenshot more interesting, how to create awesome vector grunge textures and a super fast way to build a vector starburst.

Business / 17 Nov 2011

The Ten Commandments of Writing Copy That Wins Clients

Web design companies and freelancers should never underestimate the power of good copy. Likewise, they should never doubt how much bad copy can hurt their chances of winning clients.

Follow along as we discuss then ten commandments of writing simple and effective copy that will convince your potential clients that you can successfully meet their needs and blow away their expectations.

CSS / 24 Oct 2011

What Is CSS? Back to Basics

This is the third article in our back to basics series where we’re taking a look at the absolute beginning concepts of web development. If you’re a designer with little to no knowledge of web programming, this series is for you.

In our first article, we went over what HTML is and in our second article we outlined the basic anatomy of an HTML document. Today we’ll jump to a new topic and answer a very important question: What is CSS?

Business / 10 Oct 2011

Establishing a Hierarchy of Goals for Everything You Design

What one thing above all else makes for a great design? Where should your focus lie? More importantly, is it possible or even desirable to focus on a single goal at the expense of others?

Today we’ll take a look at why goal-oriented design is good design and discuss how being a designer means weighing several competing factors. We’ll also discuss how to decide which goals are the most important and how establishing a hierarchy for each project will make for a better experience for the client, the user and the designer.

HTML / 8 Oct 2011

What Is HTML? Back to Basics

Since I have a background in print, I’m always eager to help designers from other areas get a start in web design and basic development. I know from experience that the transition is an extremely intimidating one that many people simply don’t think they can manage.

Fortunately, I can also attest to the fact that it’s probably not as difficult as you might imagine. In the world of hardcore coding, HTML and CSS rank pretty low on the barrier to entry scale.

Today we’re going to start a series that examines the basic building blocks of web development. HTML, CSS, JavaScript; if you’re a complete and utter beginner who might not even have a basic grasp of what these technologies are much less how to wield them, then this series is for you.

Layouts / 3 Oct 2011

Doing More With Less: Tips for Designing With Limited Resources

Today we’re going to tackle some common issues that arrive not with having too much scattered content but with too little. How can you flesh out a design when your client has barely given you anything to work with?

We’ll go over some quick and easy tips for crafting gorgeous designs that don’t feel empty despite using very few resources.