For those of us who are interested in always learning new tricks and improve our design skills, we’re fortunate to have a number of very valuable websites and blogs that regularly publish high quality, informative tutorials. In this post I’d like to take a look at some of my favorite places for tutorials, and I encourage you to share your favorites in the comments.
PSDTUTS
While there are plenty of blogs and websites for Photoshop tutorials, PSDTUTS is the king. In recent months their team of writers have been publishing a new tutorial almost every day. You’ll find very high quality work here in a variety of different areas. I frequently work through their tutorials and always learn a lot from the process.
From the Archives: Create a Dark Themed Web Design from Scratch, Creating a Stunning Digital Smoke Effect.
Veerle’s Blog
Veerle Pieters is one of the best graphic designers you’ll find anywhere, and she posts some outstanding tutorials for Photoshop and Illustrator.
From the Archives: Creating Geometric Patterns in Illustrator, Creating a Coat of Arms in Illustrator.
CSS Tricks
Chris Coyier’s blog CSS Tricks is one of my favorites for CSS-related tutorials. In addition to publishing the typical blog post tutorial, Chris regularly publishes screencasts that will give you a nice change of pace.
From the Archives: Using Weather Data to Change Your Website’s Appearance through PHP and CSS, “Checkmark” Your Visited Links with Pure CSS.
CSS Globe
CSS Globe is a leading community site for web designers that publishes links to relevant posts from other blogs (submitted by users), but Alen also posts his own original tutorials on CSS Globe. Alen’s tutorials are always insightful and well-explained.
From the Archives: Creating and Styling Resizable Buttons, Create Resizing Thumbnails Using Overflow Property.
Web Designer Wall
Nick La of N. Design Studio and Best Web Gallery also runs the very popular blog Web Designer Wall where he publishes some very helpful tutorials and a variety of aspects of web and graphic design. Web Designer Wall is not updated as frequently as most of the others on this list, but it has a large following because of the quality of Nick’s work.
From the Archives: How to Design Mini Icons, Chroma Wallpapers.
NETTUTS
The new sister site to PSDTUTS is well on its way to being a leader in design/development tutorials. NETTUTS already has some great content on the site, and if it’s anything like PSDTUTS, Collis and his writers will continue to ramp things up over the next few months.
From the Archives: Building a Sleek Portfolio Site from Scratch, Creating a PayPal Payment Form.
Vectips
Vectips specializes in providing Illustrator tutorials. While there are plenty of sites that focus on Photoshop, there are fewer that target Illustrator users. If you’re looking to learn more about Illustrator, Vectips is a great choice.
From the Archives: Create a Wood Grain Texture, Creating Halftone Effects.
David Airey
While graphic designer David Airey’s blog is not the typical tutorial blog, he frequently publishes his entire process of designing a logo for a client. In these posts David reveals all the steps that he goes through during the process of creating a logo, and he explains his thought process for each step. These posts really serve as tutorials for anyone looking to learn more about logo design.
From the Archives: Logo Design and Card for Jigsaw Internet, Logo Design for Tudor Bourn.
Tutorial Blog
With over 8,000 subscribers, Tutorial Blog is one of the most widely-read blogs on this list. They provide frequently posted tutorials on just about all aspects of design, from CSS and HTML, to graphics, to JavaScript, to Flash, and then some.
From the Archives: How to Make a Unique Website for Your Twitter Updates, Make Repeating Seamless Tile Backgrounds with Photoshop.
Abduzeedo
Abduzeedo is the home of Fabio Sasso, one of the writers of PSDTUTS. Abduzeedo publishes more than just Photoshop tutorials, but this is a must-read for those looking to learn more about Photoshop and graphic design in general.
From the Archives: Sparkling Hot Girl in Photoshop, Amazing Photoshop Light Effect in 10 Steps.
Just Creative Design
Jacob Cass is a graphic design student, and his blog Just Creative Design is growing very quickly. The tutorials that Jacob writes are not quite the same as the tutorials from many of the other sites. He frequently publishes a step-by-step process that he has worked through as part of his education. Personally, I enjoy seeing the projects, it’s almost like going to graphic design school for free.
From the Archives: How to Design a Logo, How I Designed 3 CD Jackets Just by Listening to Music.
WebsiteTips
WebsiteTips.com is one that I have just recently come across, and they have a good amount of helpful tutorials in their archives. Some cover graphic design and Photoshop, and others cover aspects of coding.
From the Archives: Creating Pixel-Sharp Diagonal 45-Degree Scanline Patterns with Photoshop, Selecting with Photoshop Channels.
25 comments from readers
1 Chris Coyier May 28, 2008 at 8:44 pm
These are totally my favorites too. Hadn’t heard of Vectips or WebsiteTips until today though, definitely gonna check them out.
2 Vandelay Design May 28, 2008 at 8:50 pm
Hey Chris,
Vectips is one of the few sites that I know of that specializes in Illustrator tutorials. So many others do Photoshop, but Vectips has some good stuff for Illustrator. WebsiteTips is new to me too, but the archives looked pretty decent.
3 Jacob Cass May 28, 2008 at 8:52 pm
Hi Steven, good list you have here, I think I am going to write a top 10 list now of blogs I couldn’t live without or something along those lines.
I didn’t know about websitetips.com so I’ll go check em out.
4 Qbrushes May 29, 2008 at 3:30 am
thanks for Not using “the top ten best” type of title
Dugg
5 David Airey May 29, 2008 at 3:58 am
I scrolled through the first part of your post, then thought to myself, “I’ll have to bookmark this”, then I kept scrolling, and found my own site mentioned… thanks!
6 Razvan May 29, 2008 at 5:24 am
Good list, thanks!
7 ksan May 29, 2008 at 8:40 am
Those are some of my favorite as well - great list. I’ve been going through the tutorials at http://www.techtutor.tv/ lately - they are really high quality video tutorials of photoshop, illustrator plus some others. Tons of beginner ones but some advanced tuts as well.
8 socialcmsbuzz.com May 29, 2008 at 11:43 am
My Favorite Sites for Web Design Tutorials…
For those of us who are interested in always learning new tricks and improve our design skills, we’re fortunate to have a number of very valuable websites and blogs that regularly publish high quality, informative tutorials. In this post I’d like t…
9 SARAH May 29, 2008 at 11:50 am
Collection is great. I really love psdtutus.
10 Meet Women May 29, 2008 at 12:51 pm
css tricks is good.
11 Turoriales de diseño — Tablosign May 29, 2008 at 1:56 pm
[…] con los mejores sitios de tutoriales sobre diseño. 0 […]
12 Stephan Miller May 29, 2008 at 2:30 pm
Great list of sites for help, because most of the time I need all the help I can find.
13 Bryan P. May 29, 2008 at 10:19 pm
That looks like a great list of tutorials! I find it really helpful to have a list of sites to review when I am trying to get a site concept together.
14 JD May 30, 2008 at 9:56 am
A very nice list.
I love many mentioned.
PSD tuts and Net tuts are good.
15 diy help May 30, 2008 at 10:16 am
Oh my gosh!! I’ve been looking for these tutorials for so long and here they are! You saved me!!! lol, thnx a lot for posting this up!!
16 SOB Business Cafe 05-30-08 - Liz Strauss at Successful Blog - Thinking, writing, business ideas . . . You’re only a stranger once. May 30, 2008 at 1:35 pm
[…] My Favorite Sites for Web Design Tutorials […]
17 Marc Klein May 31, 2008 at 11:26 am
If some one is in need of some material related to web designing and want to learn more techniques about web designing then he can search the internet and find a lot of new ideas. He can also have talks with some expert people.
18 Os melhores sites para tutoriais de web design. - 2.0 WEBMANIA - Portugal, a Web 2.0, o Mundo e a Internet May 31, 2008 at 9:20 pm
[…] Vandelay, blog vastas vezes mencionado por estas bandas, publicou uma lista com aqueles que o autor considera os melhores sites para encontrar tutoriais de w…. Na lista podemos encontrar nomes bastante famosos - e com razões para tal - como o PSDTuts, […]
19 Top 10 Graphic Design Blogs May 31, 2008 at 11:19 pm
[…] Steven from Vandelay Design listed his “Favourite Sites for Web Design Tutorials” and JCD was one of the twelve mentioned due to my unusual tutorials that walked through my […]
20 Karl Hardisty Jun 2, 2008 at 10:33 am
Good to see there are a few sites listed that I already frequent. Nice to know I’m not alone in the appreciation of these great sites (Nettuts.com should be a shoe-in for rookie of the year so far!)
21 Biodun Jun 2, 2008 at 3:41 pm
Great lists, some are still new to me, thanks for sharing this useful tutorial. Its always nice visiting your site.
22 HighFivez.com: Your Guide Through The Blogosphere. Find Blogs and Blog Posts. Jun 3, 2008 at 2:26 pm
[…] Favorite Sites for Web Design Tutorials […]
23 0tutor Jun 4, 2008 at 10:17 am
Great stuff, some I knew already, but there was a couple I didn’t know of. Just Creative Design looks very interesting
24 Adam Jun 10, 2008 at 6:56 pm
Nettuts is my favourite of the list you have here. I personally really like this site.
25 If I Could Only Read 10 Blogs… | Dalton Trent's Blog Jul 8, 2008 at 5:42 am
[…] Steven from Vandelay Design listed his “Favourite Sites for Web Design Tutorials” and JCD was one of the twelve mentioned due to my unusual tutorials that walked through my […]