Entries Tagged as 'Design'
5,000+ Free Photoshop Gradients for Designers
Published August 29th, 2011 in Design - 19 Comments
Gradients are commonly used in web and graphic design. Having a large collection of gradients already prepared will allow you to try new gradients quickly, speeding up your design process. Of course, there will be times when you want to create your own gradients, but for other situations a library of gradients can be an effective tool.
In this post we’ll showcase 35 free sets of gradients that are being offered by various designers. If you see something you like, click through to the source where you’ll be able to download the gradients.
Web 2.0 Gradients (1,000 gradients)
100 Sets of Free Photoshop Brushes
Published August 22nd, 2011 in Design - 8 Comments
Photoshop brushes can be extremely useful for designers by making it quick and easy to implement different effects, textures, and elements into your design. There are a lot of brush sets out there but it’s sometimes difficult to find what you’re looking for. We have collected 100 sets of free Photoshop brushes and categorized them according to type.
Watercolor Brushes:
25 Free Vintage and Retro Fonts
Published August 8th, 2011 in Design - 10 Comments
Last week we posted a showcase of vintage advertisements, and so we thought it would be helpful to provide a list of some resources that can be used in your own vintage or retro-inspired design.
These fonts are ideal for creating that vintage feel in your work. If you find some fonts that you like, click through the links and you’ll be able to see more about the font and download. The license and terms vary from one font to the next, so be sure to check those details before using.
50 Fireworks Tutorials for Designers
Published July 21st, 2011 in Design - 10 Comments
Although Fireworks doesn’t get as much attention as Photoshop, for web designers it can be as good or a better tool for many tasks as compared to Photoshop. One of the challenges of working with Fireworks is that most of us simply feel more comfortable in Photoshop because of having more experience with it. In the absence of experience, quality tutorials can become a very valuable resource to help with the learning curve.
In this post we’ll link to 50 tutorials that will help designers to learn more about Fireworks and what can be accomplished with it.
The Abduzeetles Rockband Website in Fireworks
Create a Drippy Spray Paint Vector
Published July 14th, 2011 in Design - 5 Comments
Spray paint and splatter effects are very commonly used in web and graphic design. There are a number of Photoshop brushes and vectors available that can be used to add these effects to your work, but sometimes you may not be able to find exactly what you are looking for, or what you find may not be licensed for what you need.
In these situations you can create your own, and it’s not as difficult as you might think. In this tutorial we’ll create a spray paint vector that can be used in any number of different ways. The vector that we are creating here is a part of the spray paint vector set available at Vandelay Premier. Here is a look at what we will be creating:
The Best Email Newsletters for Designers
Published July 5th, 2011 in Design - 8 Comments
The web/graphic design community includes a huge number of active blogs that post articles, tutorials, inspiration, and other types of content. Design blogs are a part of the daily routine for many designers, but there are also several quality email newsletters that cover topics related to design and development.
In this post we’ll highlight some of the best newsletters out there for designers. If you enjoy getting helpful information and news in your inbox, take a look at the newsletters on this list and see if there are any that are of interest to you.
Smashing Magazine
Smashing Magazine not only runs the most popular blog for web designers, they also have an email newsletter that is published every two weeks. Their newsletter issues include industry news, inspiration, and links to useful websites and apps.
Create Re-Usable Button Styles in Photoshop
Published June 30th, 2011 in Design - 6 Comments
Buttons are an extremely common design element that are used by almost every website. Web buttons are critical for usability and navigation, and they can also be used to help direct the action of the user as you encourage them to add a product to a shopping cart, take a tour, get more information, or contact you.
Creating new buttons while keeping the same style can be very simple by using Photoshop’s layer styles. In this post we’ll take a quick look at how you can create your own button layer styles to save yourself some time.
You may have had situations in the past where you found yourself creating multiple buttons for a mockup and adding the same layer styles over and over again. Or you may have wanted to create a new button that matches the style of an existing button, but you can’t remember the details of the layer effects that were used. Both of these situations could be made much easier if the button effects were saved as a layer style that could be re-used at any time.
Layer styles are a preset in Photoshop, like brushes, patterns, and custom shapes. Layer styles can be saved as an .asl file and then can be loaded at any time, or distributed with others working on the project.
Creating Button Styles
Let’s start by creating a basic button in Photoshop.
Set the foreground color to #166ecc and the background color to #4495ee. Select the rounded rectangle tool with a radius of 10 pixels and draw a rectangle that is 250 pixels wide and 40 pixels high.
Ultimate Round Up of Free Photoshop Patterns
Published June 21st, 2011 in Design - 14 Comments
Photoshop users can save a lot of time and create beautiful designs by using patterns. Photoshop’s presets (like brushes, styles, patterns, custom shapes, and gradients) are highly-powerful tools when used effectively.
Whether you are creating your own custom patterns or using pre-made patterns that you have downloaded for free or purchased, having an arsenal of patterns at your disposal will allow you to quickly create high-quality work.
In this post we’ll showcase 50 sets of free Photoshop patterns for your own use. You may also be interested in our recent post, Ultimate Collection of Free Photoshop Styles.
Ultimate Collection of Free Photoshop Styles
Published June 7th, 2011 in Design, Tools - 23 Comments
Photoshop users can save time during the design process by making use of layer styles. Whether you are saving your own custom style to be used multiple times throughout your design (such as with a button), or using pre-made styles created by other designers, taking advantage of this feature in Photoshop can greatly speed up your workflow.
In this post we’ll link out to a number of useful Photoshop layer styles that can be downloaded for free. Many of them have been created especially for text, others for buttons, and some are more general. Download the styles and apply them to your layers for instant results.
How to Create a Set of Hand-Drawn Design Elements
Published May 25th, 2011 in Design - 15 Comments
Some of the more popular resource packs at Vandelay Premier have been those that are created to be used with hand-drawn or doodled designs. While we aim to provide resources that are as useful as possible, there may be times when you need a specific design element that you can’t find anywhere. In that case, you can create your own, and in this tutorial we’ll show you how.
We’ll be creating a small set of hand-drawn resources, but using the techniques covered in this post you’ll be able to create as much or as little as you need. While stock resources can be great for saving time in your design process, creating your own resources can often be a lot of fun, and with hand-drawn design this is definitely the case.
