A great article covering a subject which many designers forget to focus on - that a good design is one that achieves its purpose and not one that looks good. I would add to the 6 points - 'Understand the business and the market�. Factors such as the business' culture and style, it's competitors and market conditions will influence the design. I'd also change �Brand image� to �Branding� as a brand is much more than just the look - the copy (what you say) and the user experience (which you point out) are important in a brand. There's also not much mention of the actual content. It is the content that will do most of the work on a website to achieve the strategic goals and will have the greatest influence on a design. There are some articles on using content as a strategic design tool Link [www.webdesignerforum.co.uk]. Thanks again for a great article for getting designers to think about more.
Allow me to share with you my top 10 different styles of ampersands. Some are similar, but each have their own personality. In an effort to limit my sample selection, I have only chosen ampersands from freely available sans fonts.
Apart from that, one should notice that this is not the usual Smashing Magazine showcase delivering beautiful blog designs, minimalistic designs, big typography designs or whatever the topic might be. As stated in the introduction, this posting aims at giving an overview of web design within the music industry. And it does this very well.
However, to master Adobe Illustrator isn't easy; and the creating process of professional illustrations requires both time and patience. Therefore tutorials can turn out to be real life- and time-savers as they show exactly what needs to be done in order to create professional illustrations and how masters of illustration actually manage to do their magic. One year ago we've presented a hand-picked collection of Illustrator tutorials. Now it's time for a fresh portion of healthy and creative Illustrator material.
It's been about 7 months since the original Illustrator Tutorials - Best Of was published, and in that time there have been many more noteworthy tutorials released. With all of that new content , it's only appropriate to put out a second edition of the best Illustrator tutorials. In this post you'll find some basic tutorials on getting started with certain aspects of Illustrator and some of its specific tools. You'll also find more advanced tutorials that deal with all of the potential that Illustrator brings to graphic design.
Shine, this site provides tutorials of Photoshop + Illustrator to let the users create MORE interesting web stuff. I think, such a round-up of issues increases the richness of this site. And that's why I'm always turning back to here. Should SmashingMagazine never close down! Well done.
Some good tutorials, a lot of dead links: all in all, a good presentation of the marketing shite that is Web 2.0. Still, if it means more suckers pay more bucks for more sites, who gives a damn?
Thanks for such a great post. I was in a decision stage about choosing a cms-blog platform for an upcoming project and also for future projects. Before I used Joomla for several projects, they made a huge step with version 1.5 but still have major weak points like absence of custom fields. And template mechanism is still painful. Wordpress is a good choice for blogging and has a great community support but it seems hard to use it as a cms. Expression Engine, I just download last week and I can say that it is really great. But needs a little bit attention in the beginning to understand the platform. It's so flexible. Everyday I love it more and more :) Textpattern, I installed yesterday. So your post will help me a lot to discover it. MovableType will be next step. I am sure, soon you will publish a toolbox for MovableType =) Thanks again�
This post showcases over 50 breathtaking typographic posters designed by artists across the globe. We feature Oriental, Iranian, Hebrew, Japanese, Chinese and Russian typographic posters as well as a number of further references. This isn't a �best of�, there is no ranking and the collection isn't supposed to be complete; it's rather subjective and quite random. All screenshots are clickable; however, links not always lead directly to the corresponding image (e.g. it's impossible in Flash-based sites) � sometimes you'll need to search for it.
Unfortunately, many of the designs we are considering in this showcase have one major shortcoming: they use overly vibrant visuals too often and often for the wrong purpose. Designers try to make pricing plans look as attractive as possible, and, apparently, numerous green check marks and red crosses are supposed to help to achieve this effect.
Very often clean right angles and lines are used instead of rounded and uneven edges. Rounded graphic elements, the main clich??e of Web 2.0, and the uneven edges seen in grunge style are avoided in minimalist Web designs.
We also genuinely thank our readers for your attention, criticism, ideas, suggestions and numerous emails and links over the last year. We have tried our best to improve the quality of our articles and increase its value for designers and developers. In this post, we review what has happened on Smashing Magazine over the last year: smashing highlights, setbacks and small sensations of 2008, in a brief overview, month by month.
We continue to collect high quality freefonts, which can be used for both private and professional projects without any restrictions whatsoever. A nice found of the last week is Fontin Sans, a new sans font released by Jos Buivenga few hours ago.
We continue to collect most beautiful high quality freefonts, which can be used for both private and professional projects without any restrictions whatsoever. They are hard to find, but the search is definitely worth it.
We grow our creative talents through experience: whether it's learning from a veteran designer about how things came to be or finding fresh delight in Smashing Magazine posts, no great artist exists without inspiration. Famously declared in reference to scientific progress: �If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants�, said Isaac Newton.
This tutorial is quite complex and long, it shows you how to beef up your ride using Photoshop, specifically this tutorial will show you how to duplicate wheels and extend the body of a car.
Good morning everybody, or so it is here. Today I will be showing you a very simple way of doing a magazine page curl effect with adobe Photoshop so just keep reading.
In the days of working with film products, creating images with splashing water was an incredible challenge. Today, digital capture provides a control we never had before. Just shoot the splashing water over several images and combine the best parts into one-in Photoshop CS, of course.In many cases, to create the illusion of splashing water, photographers would have to resort to creating splash molds made of acrylic plastic to get the water exactly the way they wanted. These molds looked okay to the casual eye, but a closer glance would reveal the static look of the acrylic water prop.
[...] Nesting Smart Objects for Multi-Mask Effects in Photoshop Learn all about nesting smart objects in Photoshop to smoothen and sharpen details in a photo. [...]
1. Here's a detailed look at how to achieve an Open Magazine Effect. Some basic shapes, a photo, some 'Pen Tool' manipulation and the Liquify Tool helped achieve this. So follow along to see how.
You probably have seen this look many time in magazines and some ads on t.v.,This is a grainy and epic looking style that is easy to achieve with photoshop and a nice Image to work with. Below are 5 pictures from a very talented artist over at www.garylandphotography.com, This look is very impressive and only takes a few steps to complete. While picking a Photo to use remember that you want a bit of texture as well as color.
I agree, for the 1st time, Smashing Magazine gives us a draft article that misses a lot. The article concerning CocaCola (I didn't read them all) is extremely strange and doesn't seem to be written by anyone familiar with corporate identity. Indeed, we would expect more red, but as Sam said above concerning McDonalds, the client doesn't expect to find a coke can on the site (just open your fridge for that) but a communication, offers, news, games� Website building involves ergonomy, lisibility and usability rules, they are different from print design rules due to RGB, screen reading and average time spent by a user on a website. For that purpose, it's very understandable that Coke decided to use a gray background, 1st of all, because it's modern (web 2.0), it's the kind of colors that doesn't bother anyone, it goes nice with red (gray + red = nice contrast + good energy), and it allows a good reading. On the other hand, gray has also been used by Coke Light (Diet Coke in the US) -> For the client, gray is not a new color for Coke. More over, the article is called �* corporate *�, which caracterize the business nature of a company. Corporate design is nothing like popular and therefore won't use flashy colors� Could you imagine the headache, if the coke red was used in the background ?
You probably have seen this look many time in magazines and some ads on t.v.,This is a grainy and epic looking style that is easy to achieve with photoshop and a nice Image to work with. Below are 5 pictures from a very talented artist over at www.garylandphotography.com, This look is very impressive and only takes a few steps to complete. While picking a Photo to use remember that you want a bit of texture as well as color.
Aerial photography offers a drastically different perspective than the one you get from shooting on the ground. It includes photographs taken from aircraft, helicopters, balloons, rockets, kites, skydives, etc. It can be a rewarding, challenging and enriching experience. It can produce unique shots that look different than any other ground shot you have ever taken. Scenic flights can give you some great, memorable photos.
Below we present over 35 beautiful examples of high-speed photography, which are supposed to provide you with some inspiration of what can be done with high-speed photography. We also showcase some truly stunning slow-motion videos. All the examples are linked to their sources. You can also explore further works of the photographers we???ve featured below.
Can you see a difference? As I mentioned, I enjoy shooting with my point-and-shoot digital camera. For my pro work, however, I'll stick with my digital SLRs when shooting people, wildlife, scenery and action photographs.
If you've been following Smashing Magazine for a while, you know that almost all posts from the Monday Inspiration series are pretty colorful and eye-catching. This post is an exception. Compared to colorful designs where catchy colors help the design to stand out, in black-and-white designs the ability to stand out depends only on its ability to communicate rather than on its appealing visual presentation.
In the second part of this series, Rick Sammon shares some of his tips for creating backgrounds, shooting in controlled conditions, and using different lenses for close-up photography. www.ricksammon.com
In this edition of our Monday Inspiration series, we present 60 examples of beautiful smoke photography and smoke art: a round-up of some of the best examples of photos and artworks where smoke dominates. At the bottom of this post are some links to tutorials on creating your own smoke photographs, as well as other resources on the subject.
Once you click OK, Photoshop CS creates a PDF file for you, ready to e-mail to your client. When your client opens your e-mailed PDF, it launches the Adobe Reader, goes into Full Screen Mode (your photos on a black background), and the presentation begins. (Note: To view the transitions correctly you have to view the PDF in Adobe Reader 6 or later.) The capture below shows the first slide in a PDF Presentation, right before it transitioned to the next photo.
Smashing Magazine celebrates the diversity and livelinesss of the world???s streets by presenting you 50 excellent examples of street photography, urban photography and photojournalism. There are links to the photographers??? websites and also some useful links to articles and tutorials at the bottom of the post.
The following tutorial is courtesy of �Mac Design Magazine� One of the challenges of photography is to capture the image that you see with your camera. With modern cameras performing all of the light measurement and changing the settings, in most cases when you press the shutter button, the image that you capture is an accurate representation of what you saw; that is, until you attempt to photograph a scene that has extremes in lighting. When you're out shooting a sunset, for example, you can see both the foreground and the sunset quite clearly, but after taking the photograph, the sunset looks brilliant and the foreground is black as pitch.
Another day � another fresh freebie. Today we are glad to release Splatter and Watercolour Photoshop Brushes, 3 sets of 21 high-quality brushes, with the average size of 2500px or 2200px. These brushes were created for Adobe Photoshop CS, CS2 and CS3 and also work with GIMP 2.4.
I like to play with different styles when creating Photoshop brushes. Inspiration for new shapes can be found just about anywhere. Once, with a little help from my scanner, I made brushes out of the items that were laying on my working desk, including my mobile phone. Today, we live in the era of grunge shapes and swirls which, somehow, suits me fine and as a professional designer I always wanted to have some kind of �swiss knife� brushes set. One set to serve them all. (Kind of resembles �One ring to rule them all� but that's just me being a Tolkien fan.) So, making a free brush set for Smashing Magazine readers turned out to be a great chance to do it.
Today we are glad to release Innocent Invaders Photoshop Brushes Set, a set that features a curious cast of characters who are ready to infiltrate your creative projects. Inspired by designer vinyl toys, this high resolution set includes a collection of 15 different creatures accompanied by 10 background illustrations.
�As you will see, there are different shapes, subjects and topics covered in this set of 67 Photoshop brushes. The theme of this set is health and beauty. All of the brushes were created from scratch, and all of you, I hope, who do vector graphics from scratch will know and appreciate the work behind them. But what can we do? We all know what Smashing Magazine's standards are and I wouldn't dare to send Vitaly anything less than this.
Now make your changes. For instance, in this example we changed the �Lavender� label to �Eucalyptus & Lavender�. To make the changes, target the photo layer in the Layers palette and add a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer above it by clicking the �Create new fill or ad-justment layer� button at the bottom of the Layers palette and choosing from the pop-up menu. In the Hue/Saturation dialog box, turn on the Colorize option, move the Hue slider, decrease the Saturation, and increase the Lightness until you have the green color, then click �OK.�
In this tutorial you will learn how to create the look of an aged, hand-tinted photograph by using masks, fill and adjustment layers, blending modes and layer styles.
To start this tutorial off you'll want to use some high resolution photos such as of a celebrity, etc. that will be your cover story focus. Teen magazines will often have stories of celebs or scandals, etc. with the main focus being this image. So start with this and then we can build up the rest of the magazine around it.
One of the many great things about Photoshop is that you can start with a basic idea and then just start experimenting (a.k.a. playing) to see what you get. Although the following technique was originally designed to make water droplets (and discovered through playing�I mean experimenting), it's easy to apply the same idea to type and graphics of any kind.
One of the most creative ways to use the Displace filter in Photoshop is to �map? an imported graphic so it follows the contours of an object in a photo; for example, adding an Illustrator logo to a photo of a T-shirt in a realistic way. Add the editability of vector smart objects and you have a match made in heaven.
BestPSDtoHTML.com is hosting a �TWEET & WIN� contest. The winner will get flat 50% off on Professional Package of PSD to HTML conversion service. We would love to see your name at the contest. Among many this single TWEET can make you win the deal.
Get paid for commercial fashion, magazine & product advertising design?!? Yes you! Learn the skills of Madison Avenue Advertising Designers here. (opens in new window)
Create a new layer and select the Brush Tool, choose a nice light blue color. You will have to downsize the bubble brushes to go over the text. Make sure to rotate some of the splatters using the free transform tool. The brushes wont fit perfectly and this can be a bonus too giving it more of a splatter effect.
Create a new layer underneath the text layer, bring out your newly fresh brush pack with and select a blueish color. Bearing in mind that this tutorial is based on your own inspiration I'm not going to say exactly what brush I used and place where and what colors etc.. I'm leaving that to you! the blending mode I mainly used though was �Soft Light�.
Shotgun Mag teaches you how to create this beautiful slow shutter text effect. Back due to it???s popularity on SGM2, this new tutorial offers an enhanced method of creating this great lighting effect. By listening to your comments from SGM2 we have ensured that the new version is loads easier to follow! Get stuck in!
Possibly one of the most confusing aspects of dealing with digital imagery is resolution-specifically, what it really is and how changing it affects an image. You'd be shocked at the number of brilliant designers who don't know how to change an image from 72 dpi to 300 dpi-without turning it into a pile of pixel mush. That is, until now.
It's been about 7 months since the original Illustrator Tutorials - Best Of was published, and in that time there have been many more noteworthy tutorials released. With all of that new content , it's only appropriate to put out a second edition of the best Illustrator tutorials. In this post you'll find some basic tutorials on getting started with certain aspects of Illustrator and some of its specific tools. You'll also find more advanced tutorials that deal with all of the potential that Illustrator brings to graphic design.
Some good tutorials, a lot of dead links: all in all, a good presentation of the marketing shite that is Web 2.0. Still, if it means more suckers pay more bucks for more sites, who gives a damn?
We continue to collect high quality freefonts, which can be used for both private and professional projects without any restrictions whatsoever. A nice found of the last week is Fontin Sans, a new sans font released by Jos Buivenga few hours ago.
We continue to collect most beautiful high quality freefonts, which can be used for both private and professional projects without any restrictions whatsoever. They are hard to find, but the search is definitely worth it.
This tutorial is quite complex and long, it shows you how to beef up your ride using Photoshop, specifically this tutorial will show you how to duplicate wheels and extend the body of a car.
Good morning everybody, or so it is here. Today I will be showing you a very simple way of doing a magazine page curl effect with adobe Photoshop so just keep reading.
In the days of working with film products, creating images with splashing water was an incredible challenge. Today, digital capture provides a control we never had before. Just shoot the splashing water over several images and combine the best parts into one-in Photoshop CS, of course.In many cases, to create the illusion of splashing water, photographers would have to resort to creating splash molds made of acrylic plastic to get the water exactly the way they wanted. These molds looked okay to the casual eye, but a closer glance would reveal the static look of the acrylic water prop.
The Top 30 Photoshop Text Effects Tutorials of 2008 - Which is the Best? You choose (vote at the bottom of the post).
[...] Getting Dirty in Photoshop This simple tutorial shows you how to create a grungy, roughened look using a layer mask and filters. [...]
[...] Nesting Smart Objects for Multi-Mask Effects in Photoshop Learn all about nesting smart objects in Photoshop to smoothen and sharpen details in a photo. [...]
Can you see a difference? As I mentioned, I enjoy shooting with my point-and-shoot digital camera. For my pro work, however, I'll stick with my digital SLRs when shooting people, wildlife, scenery and action photographs.
Once you click OK, Photoshop CS creates a PDF file for you, ready to e-mail to your client. When your client opens your e-mailed PDF, it launches the Adobe Reader, goes into Full Screen Mode (your photos on a black background), and the presentation begins. (Note: To view the transitions correctly you have to view the PDF in Adobe Reader 6 or later.) The capture below shows the first slide in a PDF Presentation, right before it transitioned to the next photo.
The following tutorial is courtesy of �Mac Design Magazine� One of the challenges of photography is to capture the image that you see with your camera. With modern cameras performing all of the light measurement and changing the settings, in most cases when you press the shutter button, the image that you capture is an accurate representation of what you saw; that is, until you attempt to photograph a scene that has extremes in lighting. When you're out shooting a sunset, for example, you can see both the foreground and the sunset quite clearly, but after taking the photograph, the sunset looks brilliant and the foreground is black as pitch.
Double click the layer to open layer style window. Apply settings as shown.
Now make your changes. For instance, in this example we changed the �Lavender� label to �Eucalyptus & Lavender�. To make the changes, target the photo layer in the Layers palette and add a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer above it by clicking the �Create new fill or ad-justment layer� button at the bottom of the Layers palette and choosing from the pop-up menu. In the Hue/Saturation dialog box, turn on the Colorize option, move the Hue slider, decrease the Saturation, and increase the Lightness until you have the green color, then click �OK.�
In this tutorial you will learn how to create the look of an aged, hand-tinted photograph by using masks, fill and adjustment layers, blending modes and layer styles.
To start this tutorial off you'll want to use some high resolution photos such as of a celebrity, etc. that will be your cover story focus. Teen magazines will often have stories of celebs or scandals, etc. with the main focus being this image. So start with this and then we can build up the rest of the magazine around it.
One of the many great things about Photoshop is that you can start with a basic idea and then just start experimenting (a.k.a. playing) to see what you get. Although the following technique was originally designed to make water droplets (and discovered through playing�I mean experimenting), it's easy to apply the same idea to type and graphics of any kind.
One of the most creative ways to use the Displace filter in Photoshop is to �map? an imported graphic so it follows the contours of an object in a photo; for example, adding an Illustrator logo to a photo of a T-shirt in a realistic way. Add the editability of vector smart objects and you have a match made in heaven.
Step 2: Duplicate the background layer by pressing Ctrl+J. Go to Image> Adjustments> Desaturate or press Ctrl+Shift+U.
Step 2: Duplicate the layer. Go to Filter> Blur> Gaussian Blur and apply these following setting:
BestPSDtoHTML.com is hosting a �TWEET & WIN� contest. The winner will get flat 50% off on Professional Package of PSD to HTML conversion service. We would love to see your name at the contest. Among many this single TWEET can make you win the deal.
[1]-First of all Open New Document of Custom size, Height & Width 420�400 pixels,Resolution 72 & Mode RGB Color
Original Images
Now go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur
Mail (will not be published) (required)
My Poorly Drawn Icons:
Before we start here are the resources for the tutorial, there is a .PSD included at the end of the tutorial.
Get paid for commercial fashion, magazine & product advertising design?!? Yes you! Learn the skills of Madison Avenue Advertising Designers here. (opens in new window)
Create a new layer and select the Brush Tool, choose a nice light blue color. You will have to downsize the bubble brushes to go over the text. Make sure to rotate some of the splatters using the free transform tool. The brushes wont fit perfectly and this can be a bonus too giving it more of a splatter effect.
Create a new layer underneath the text layer, bring out your newly fresh brush pack with and select a blueish color. Bearing in mind that this tutorial is based on your own inspiration I'm not going to say exactly what brush I used and place where and what colors etc.. I'm leaving that to you! the blending mode I mainly used though was �Soft Light�.
Note: This tutorial is continuation of previous: Skin Retouch. Patch tool. Please read it before to continue.
Shotgun Mag teaches you how to create this beautiful slow shutter text effect. Back due to it???s popularity on SGM2, this new tutorial offers an enhanced method of creating this great lighting effect. By listening to your comments from SGM2 we have ensured that the new version is loads easier to follow! Get stuck in!
Possibly one of the most confusing aspects of dealing with digital imagery is resolution-specifically, what it really is and how changing it affects an image. You'd be shocked at the number of brilliant designers who don't know how to change an image from 72 dpi to 300 dpi-without turning it into a pile of pixel mush. That is, until now.
Horror Film Lighting Effect:
As the picture states, set the Radius to 2.0 pixels.