Published April 9th, 2009 in Reviews
I recently had the opportunity to use the services of Markup4U, a company that offers coding services for designers. There are no shortage of PSD to HTML service providers, and from a designer’s perspective it can be difficult to know who you should hire for these services. Over the past year or so I’ve received a number of emails and comments from designers who were looking for a quality service provider in this area. I thought it would be useful to review Markup4U’s services here so that readers can get a better feel for them and how they work.
Published April 7th, 2009 in Design
There are a lot of great Photoshop tutorials online that will teach you all kinds of techniques and tricks, but sometimes you may find that the basics of the tools are not always covered in the tutorials. If you’re looking to step up your Photoshop skills, understanding the basic tools and knowing how they work will make a huge difference in your work.
This post features more than 20 tutorials that will teach you essential techniques in Photoshop. In addition to tools, we’ll also showcase some tutorials that cover the Photoshop basics of layers and actions.
Pen Tool:
Photoshop’s Pen Tool: The Comprehensive Guide
Published March 31st, 2009 in Design
One of the great things about using WordPress as a content management system is the huge community of users and all of the resources that are available. While all plugins could be used by theme developers, the ones featured in this post have features that can be especially helpful for various aspects of theme development.
If you design and develop themes for you own use, custom themes for clients, premium themes for sale, or free themes to distribute, I think some of these plugins will be very useful to you.
Theme Switch
When you’re designing and developing a WordPress theme, you obviously won’t want the public to see your theme until it is ready. However, it’s helpful to also be able to test the theme in a live environment in attempt to find any flaws before officially changing over to the new theme. The Theme Switch plugin will allow you to control what theme is seen by logged in users with specific access privilege, and what theme is shown to regular visitors. This is a great way to test your theme before going live. It’s especially useful when you’re designing a new theme for an existing site or blog.
Published in Tools
Navigation menus are important to any website. Well designed navigation can improve the look and appearance of a site as well as the usability. For larger sites with a lot of content or pages, drop down menus are popular because the can make it easier to move through the site with less clicks. In this post we’ll feature 25 scripts for drop down menus that you can use on your own site.
jQuery Multi Level CSS Menu #1
Published March 26th, 2009 in Galleries
Highly creative and artistic designs are an excellent source of inspiration. More and more websites are going with this style of design, so I’d like to continue the series of posts that features outstanding design of this style. To older additions are available here:
ANidea
Published March 22nd, 2009 in Galleries
Those of you who read this blog regularly probably know that I enjoy browsing through inspirational designs that make use of lighting effects. I’ve showcased a few collections of lighting effects in the past, and today we’ll look at a 3rd collection. For more lighting inspiration, please see:
Published March 19th, 2009 in Galleries
During the past year or so, I have published 3 collections of colorful websites. Today we’ll take a look at another 25 sites that make exceptional use of color. There is a wide variety of color schemes and design styles represented here, so I hope the work of these designers provides some inspiration for your own work.
By Marina
Published March 17th, 2009 in Design
With Photoshop, amazing results are possible for photo manipulations. In this post we’ll feature 30 tutorials for creating your own photo manipulation. The tutorials shown here will teach a wide variety of techniques and will work towards end results of all kinds.
Combine Photo Elements to Create a Surreal Photo Manipulation
Published March 12th, 2009 in Galleries
Inspiration or web design can come from anywhere. An increasing number of websites are including elements from nature in the design. Background images, photos, illustrations… nature can be used a number of different ways in web design. In this post we’ll look at 25 excellent examples.
For more nature-inspired web design, see 25+ Inspiring Designs by Land, Sea and Air.
Revyver
Published March 9th, 2009 in Design
While Adobe Illustrator is the preferred tool by most designers for illustrating and drawing digitally, Photoshop can also be used for some types of illustration. This post includes a selection of tutorials that cover the process of drawing various objects in Photoshop.
Creating a Cartoon Hot Air Balloon Scene
