Entries Tagged as 'Design'
How to Create a Scratches Photoshop Brush
Published August 24th, 2012 in Design, Tutorials - 4 Comments
Grunge effects like textures and scratches can be used create backgrounds, to distress text, or just to add a subtle texture to an element in a design. One of the easiest ways to add texture and scratches is through the use of Photoshop brushes. In this tutorial we’ll show how you can create a custom scratched surface brush that will be highly useful in your own design work.
This is the same technique that was used to create our set or Scratched Surface Brushes that are available at Vandelay Premier.
20 of the Best Design Blogs for Freebies
Published August 22nd, 2012 in Design - 15 Comments
Web and graphic designers are in the fortunate position of having a lot of quality free resources at their disposal. The huge number of blogs and websites in the industry and the massive audience of designers has led to a number of websites and blogs that distribute valuable resources for free.
Designers can often get things like textures, Photoshop brushes, icons, vectors, and even website templates for free. The difficult part can be finding the freebies and finding the right blogs to follow in order to know when new freebies are released. To save some of your time I have compiled a list of the best blogs to follow if you want to get your hands on these free resources.
One of the best sources for a wide variety of high res textures.
35 Fresh and Free Photoshop Actions
Published August 13th, 2012 in Design - 8 Comments
Every now and then we like to showcase freebies that can designers can use to save some of their own time. Quality Photoshop actions can be great resources to have in your arsenal because in the right situation they can drastically reduce the amount of time that you have to spend to get the photo effects that you are after.
It’s been almost a year since we published our last collection of free Photoshop actions, so we thought it was time for an update to showcase some fresh, new actions that have been released since that post was published.
In this post you’ll find a variety of different types of actions to create all different types of effects. Hopefully you’ll find a few that can prove to be useful by saving some of your own time.
10 Tips for Creating Effective Digital Displays
Published July 31st, 2012 in Design - 3 Comments
Have you heard about digital signage?
Maybe you’ve heard people in the design industry discuss digital displays. If you’re new to the topic it’s alright. There are many folks in the industry that are just learning about the opportunity digital signage offers for companies with physical locations.
As a designer, digital signage offers a unique opportunity to expand your offering. If you have clients with physical locations you can sell them more services to increase your revenue.
It’s a win-win situation for you and your client.
Here is a general overview of what digital signage is and where it’s used.
What are Digital Display and Digital Signage?
You would probably recognize digital signage if someone told you what it was when you were looking at it. Digital signage is typically displayed on a monitor in a restaurant, university, or any other location where people visit.
A Guide to the Most Loved and Hated Fonts
Published July 27th, 2012 in Design - 27 Comments
The type used to communicate a message is every bit as important as the language used to do it. Different typefaces, or, in this digital age, fonts, signify different levels of sincerity, whimsy, or authority. Some fonts automatically feel more official, while others cannot help but feel like fun. Some are easier to read while others are more of a struggle for the eye. Is there a computer-using, high school or college student who hasn’t played with different fonts and font sizes to try and extend a paper that is running a bit short of a required page length? Ultimately some fonts wind up being consistently more popular across discipline, user population, and purpose. The following is a guide to the top five best-loved fonts and top five most hated.
Most Loved Fonts
Helvetica
Helvetica was created in the late 1950’s by two Swiss designers looking to create a sans-serif typeface. Sans-serif is a design term, which indicates the lack of the projecting flourishes at the termination points of letters. To many readers this gives Helvetica and other san-serif fonts a cleaner, more modern look that is easier to read. Sans-serif texts are commonly used for online reading because they are easier for the eye to trace in a slightly flickering, digital interface. Since its creation, Helvetica has become the most commonly used font in the world, especially for official printing like municipal signs and notices. It may also be the only font to boast its own Documentary, a 2007 film called, what else, Helvetica.
The Psychology of Color in Web Design
Published July 24th, 2012 in Design - 8 Comments
Web design needs to do several things at once. It must look good. It must make sure the navigation of the website is clear. It must hold an internet user’s attention for as long as possible. And it must gently lead the user down the conversion funnel, quietly urging the user to do whatever action the site owners have as the goal of the site.
Because web design needs to have an influence over people’s behaviour, more and more designers have been looking to the psychology of color to help them create websites. They can play on cultural references to suggest trust, urgency or mystery to the target audience.
Read on to find out which colors are associated with which feelings. Please note, cultural differences can also have a big impact on these details.
Red
Red is a stimulating, exciting color. It is associated with passion, power and sometimes anger. It can be used for warnings or to show danger, but it can also suggest strength, determination and boldness.
Warmer reds, like brick or maroon, and strong and comforting – good for sites that want to suggest the lasting qualities of a brick wall. Brighter reds, like true red or tomato, are great for youthful websites that want to suggest energy and eagerness to leap before they look.
You Only Have 8 Seconds
Published July 20th, 2012 in Design, Design Process - 5 Comments
It’s important to realize that web design is not just about making a site look good. Just focusing on the visual appeal will not enable your site or business to achieve the goals that you have set.
Do you know that an average website visitor takes just 6-8 secs to decide whether to stay on your site? Most of the visitors are not ready to grant you more time. So, what can you do in these 6-8 seconds to convey your real message, when you already know that other websites are just a click away? If you don’t really understand how they think, behave, what influences them, how to persuade them and how they finally make their decision then you have a problem. We will take a quick tour of few important things that matter in the very first seconds.
Improving the Usability of Your Website
Published June 15th, 2012 in Design - 9 Comments
The term “Usability” scares me. It’s a small word with a very large meaning. In context of websites, an entire industry has formed – called User Experience (UX) – around the idea of improving how visitors to your site can interact and consume the content. If you can make it easy to find what they’re looking for, they’re more likely to hang around and continue reading/watching/interacting. Such a huge impact for such an ordinary word.
In light of the big implications of usability, this article discusses some of the higher level concepts around UX, and in doing so gives you some practical steps to improve the usability of your site today.
Check on Several Versions of Browsers
Time to Ditch the Bad Stock Photo Habits
Published June 6th, 2012 in Design - 6 Comments
Stock photos can be a great way to make a website pop. They’re easy to find, relatively cheap, of a high quality and are available in a wide range of subjects and genres. The problem is, many web designers don’t take advantage of this breadth, sticking instead to a few tried and true photos and looks that do little to separate a site or business from the pack. It doesn’t have to be that way, just as long as web designers think creatively about choosing, applying and editing stock photos in unique ways.
Avoid Cliches
While no formal study has yet to be completed on the exact number of times the image of sanitized-looking business people shaking hands has appeared on the front page of a business website, we’re betting it’s formidable. Using clichéd photos like this says to consumers, “We’re neither innovative nor up to date on the latest trends, and we don’t care what this says about us.” Stay away from tired imagery, including anyone laughing into a salad or struggling to drink water, families laughing together in fields, and a woman at a call center smiling into the camera.
Modernize your imagery to create more powerful response on a much cleaner design. Compare your website to real world architecture and recognize trends. Feel free to get a little bit riskier in your design, and react appropriately. You cannot A/B test enough.
Adobe Illustrator CS6 Tutorials and Guides
Published June 4th, 2012 in Design - 4 Comments
We recently took a look at some of the new features and highlighted helpful tutorials for Photoshop CS6, and we thought it would be appropriate to do the same thing for Illustrator. The new features and changes in Illustrator are probably not as drastic as the changes in Photoshop, but there are still some improvements and new tricks to be learned for working with Illustrator CS6.
Here we’ll link to 15 tutorials that teach new features and guides that explain the changes in CS6. Some are step-by-step tutorials for new and improved features like creating patterns and applying gradients to strokes, and others are guides that explain new features or changes to the user interface.
Image Trace in Illustrator CS6
