design
30 Fantastic Fantasy Illustrations
Dec 16th
Fantasy illustrators have the incredible ability to imagine phenomenal creatures and scenes and then capture their ideas on digital and physical palettes. Some artists enjoy fantasy design purely for their own pleasure, others create for the purpose of using for poster printing or canvas printing, and others are required to create worlds for games or other animated projects. Many designers prefer to use Illustrator or other digital drawing programs to create their ideas from scratch. Others like to first create a sketch that they then upload to a program to add digitalized effects. Some artists enjoy More >
Dress to impress, It’s what I say!
Nov 19th
I like to think of blogging like going out on a date or inviting someone into your home. First impressions mean everything to our human species. We make fast judgments on other people we see and come to conclusions of who they might be or what they will act like. These same first time impressions are happening when you get traffic to your blog. People are judging you just in case you didn’t know.
What’s your style? What are people saying about your blog? Guest what? You will never know because they say it behind your back. When I visit your More >
Fluid Vs Fixed Design: Which is Better?
Jul 18th
For as long I can remember, the question I am always asked or ask myself when working a design is, “Which is better? Fixed or fluid design?” This is a great question and the answer is it depends. Personally, I prefer a fixed design.
Today, I decided it was time to talk about fixed and fluid designs. I will go into short detail about what each layout is and the pros and cons of both. This article was written for those just getting into design or those that are not familiar with design layouts and are wanting to know more so More >
Tips for Choosing Website Colors
Jun 16th
Selecting the appropriate colors for your site is as vital as choosing content and graphics. Colors affect people in many ways. Certain colors can arouse particular emotions in people. These emotional reactions can influence your company’s image in the mind of visitors and have a major impact on your brand.
If you doubt that colors arouse emotion, think of the phrases ‘seeing red’, ‘in a black mood’ or ‘green-eyed monster’. Green-eyed monster refers to jealousy, a black mood is a reference to depression and seeing red refers to anger. People associate colors to particular moods. Research has proven that colors can make More >
3 Ways To Find Scripts and CMS’s Running on a Website
Jun 9th
Have you ever come across a website and wondered what CMS (content management system)they are using or what plugins a site is using, maybe what JavaScripts/jQuery scripts the site has installed?
If so, then you are in luck. Recently, I found three tools that can help you find out more information about a site.
Why Would You Want to Know What Scripts and CMS’s Are Running On a Website?As a designer, I am always looking for new trends in design. So when I come across a site with a great design. I like to check out how the site was designed. More >
Organized to Attract: Why Organizing Your Site is a Traffic Turn On
May 20th
As businesses grow and expand, so do their websites. Unfortunately, many webmasters confuse content with clutter. Growth and expansion is a good thing as long as it’s managed and controlled. But site managers often let themselves get carried away with the notion that bigger is better. What they fail to realize is that when it comes to websites, they are better off adhering to a different motto—less is more!
Coming from the storage industry, I am often intrigued but rarely surprised by what I see when storage unit doors are opened up. The biggest turn-off is a unit which has been More >
11 of the Best PhotoShop Tutorials Created in March
Mar 31st
Its that time again for our monthly series that showcase the best PhotoShop Tutorials created each month. Instead of listing all tutorials created each month as some sites do, we only share those we feel are the best, our favorites, or will be useful for most of our readers. If you missed last month’s showcase, check it out here.
PhotoShop TutorialsI can’t believe March went by so fast. There was so much to do and so little time to get all done. I am just glad I had time to check out this month’s PhotoShop Tutorials. This month there was a More >
Finding That Perfect Color – Web Safe Colors
Mar 26th
In our last article we talked about HTML color/hex codes. But we really didn’t really go into detail about web safe colors and why we might want to use them. In this article, I will go into more detail about color safe colors.
Using Web Safe ColorsA few years back, well a lot of years back, when computers only supported 256 colors a web standard was set that gave designers a choice of 216 colors to choose from that were considered web safe and 40 other colors were reserved for fixed system colors.
But today, its not all that important to More >
Finding That Perfect Color – HTML Color Code
Mar 25th
Designers in general use color everyday in their designs. But if your not a designer, you like to design your own websites and profiles on different social media sites, you need to know color. By knowing color, not only do you need to know the name of the color you want to know, but you need to know the hex code as well.
Why Knowing Color Hex Code Is Important?Memorizing every color hex code is not important and impossible for most. But being familiar with the hex codes and where to find a color chart is important. Having a good color More >
CSS3 Properties Exposed!
Mar 24th
Now that Microsoft finally released Internet Explorer 9 designers do not have to worry as much about their designs if they use a lot of CSS3 on their sites. With the release of IE9, all those die hard IE users can now see those killer CSS3 properties that previous versions of IE could not read. Don’t get me wrong, not everyone will upgrade and there still quite a few IE users still use IE6 and refuse to upgrade. I for one haven’t upgraded my IE browser to IE9 and I have several old test computers still running IE6 and and IE7 with More >
5 High Quality Fabric Textures
Mar 9th
Hi guys, its that time again for our weekly texture series. This week I was looking through some textures over at DeviantArt and came across some fabric textures that just had to share with everyone. These are just some of the great fabric textures available on DeviantArt. Before using them make sure to check the designer’s rules of use, they are all creative commons, but they do have rules you have to follow when using their work.
1. Leafy Fabric 2. Gothic Texture 2 3. Red Web Stuff 4. Wall Paper Texture
7 High Quality Cracked Textures
Feb 23rd
This week’s texture series is all about cracked textures. typically you will find cracked textures in web design that is grunge or trying to get a dark theme. In graphic design, you might see these types of textures used to create building that decayed and abandoned. Sometimes they are even used to take pictures with people in them and make those everyday photos look as if are zombies or turn them into a demon / monster. But using cracked is only limited to your imagination. Use them however you want to…
This week’s series is a small set of cracked textures More >
