Published October 28th, 2009 in Design
Pricing pages are very common for sites of web apps, web hosting and other types of services. These pages are critical to the success of the company because they will have a significant influence on the visitors who are trying to make a buying decision. Pricing pages typically give the necessary details regarding the various plans and options, and they encourage visitors to take action.
In this post we’ll look at a number of trends in pricing page design, along with several examples for each.
Emphasis on One Option:
Most of the pricing pages that we are looking at in this post include some sort of table or chart that shows the various options that are available for purchase. Obviously, this is helpful for buyers to be able to compare their options and determine which is the best choice for them. However, sometimes having too many possible choices can actually make things more difficult. Some pricing pages are using an emphasis on one option to help it stand out to visitors. In some cases it is listed as the most popular or best value, and in other cases it is simply emphasized in some way.
Aside from attempting to make the decision easier for visitors, emphasis also gives the designer the ability to control which of the options will get the most attention from visitors. In some cases it is used on the most expensive option, but in many cases it is not. Let’s look at some examples.
Crazy Egg
Crazy Egg emphasizes their basic plan (the lowest-priced option) by using a green background color compared the the gray background of the other plans, plus the column background is also a little bit larger.

Published October 19th, 2009 in Design
One of the great things about Photoshop (and others from the Adobe Creative Suite) is the ability to extend the possibilities with 3rd party plugins. In this post we’ll feature more than 50 plugins/extensions/add-ons for Photoshop, some are free and others are premium.
Premium Photoshop Plugins:
Bokeh – $199

Published October 12th, 2009 in Design
This post features tutorials for designing various characters and cartoons in Illustrator and Photoshop. Characters are often used for branding websites or companies, so it is certainly a useful skill. For other tutorials, you may be interested in:
Create a Super Happy Octopus Character

Published September 28th, 2009 in Design
The examples in the post show a variety of different ways to show off your best work. Many are using JavaScript, jQuery sliders are especially popular right now. Others will make use of Flash, and some will use only CSS and HTML.
Electricurrent
Electricurrent’s portfolio includes a list of clients. Click on one of them and you will see some images from the project, along with a brief description and a link to the live site. The list of clients remains so you can quickly move through several clients without going back and forth.

Published September 21st, 2009 in Design
Pixelmator is a popular image editor for Mac OS X. While Photoshop is the industry standard, Pixelmator has a lot to offer for Mac users. In this post we’ll feature 45 tutorials for using Pixelmator, including a number of video tutorials. Some of the tutorials are rather basic and will help you to get familiar with the interface and tools, and others teach specific techniques. You may notice that some of these tutorials are re-makes of popular Photoshop tutorials, except this time showing how to create the same end result in Pixelmator.
80’s Style Text Effect in Pixelmator

Published September 17th, 2009 in Design
If you’re interested in learning some new tricks and improving your skills in Adobe Illustrator, there are plenty of great tutorials out there that will lead you through the process. In this post we’ll feature some of the best Illustrator tutorials that have been published within the past few months. For more Illustrator tutorials, see the following posts from our archives:
Create a Character Mascot with Adobe Illustrator CS4

Published September 14th, 2009 in Design
One of the most important things a designer can do for his or her business is to create an attractive portfolio site that communicates effectively with visitors and draws in potential clients. In this post we will look at various resources and articles that can help you to create the right portfolio site for you. We will look at several sources of portfolio design inspiration, tutorials that will lead you through the process of designing a portfolio, scripts that can be used, helpful articles and tips for portfolio design, and WordPress themes and HTML/CSS templates.
1. Inspiration for Portfolio Design:
Checking out examples of creative, effective portfolio sites from other designers can help to give you some ideas that you may be able to use in the design of your own portfolio. While many web design/CSS galleries include a lot of portfolio sites, there are some galleries that are focused exclusively on showcasing well-designed portfolios.
Folio Focus

Published August 31st, 2009 in Design
Advertisements often display a lot of creativity in design, and Photoshop is an excellent tool for those who are designing advertisements. Fortunately there are a number of tutorials specifically for designing advertisements, and others that demonstrate techniques that are effective for advertisements. In this post we’ll feature 17 different tutorials that can help you in your own advertising design.
Create an Amazing Ad in Photoshop

Published July 29th, 2009 in Design
E-commerce web design and development presents some unique challenges that you won’t always face with other types of web design. For sites that exist primarily to sell products, it’s very easy to look at sales and have a measuring stick to use when evaluating the success of the website. However, there are any number of factors that can influence the success of an e-commerce site, and identifying areas of strength and weakness is not always so simple.
In this article we’ll look at nine specific factors that are generally present on well-designed e-commerce websites.
Published June 24th, 2009 in Design
With some creativity you can create amazing text effects with Photoshop. In this post we’ll feature 25 of the best tutorials for creating 3D text effects. There are a variety of different types of effects, so hopefully you can find some new tricks to learn.
If you’re looking for examples of inspirational uses of text, please see our new gallery site, TypeInspire.
Awesome Milk Typography Effect in Photoshop

Page 1 of 1312345»...Last »