This tutorial is just in time for Halloween, with an eerie background and 3D text with textures. In Photoshop CS5 the Repousse abilities give you a lot of flexibility, especially with textures, so you can create some really interesting work. This is only available in...
I really love to work with Adobe Fireworks when making graphics for the web. It is simple, intuitive, and has a few features that give you a little more control than what you find in photoshop. It is almost like Fireworks is a combination of Illustrator and Photoshop...
The economy is in a rough place right now, despite what the media says about no longer being in a recession. None of us can afford to bomb an interview, so I thought I would share some tips and things to think about when going for a big interview. 1. Be confident, not...
Enexis is a branding brainchild of the branding and design powerhouse EdenSpiekermann. EdenSpiekermann was founded b the famous and ingenious Erik Spiekermann, co-author of Stop Stealing Sheep & Learn How Type Works. This book is considered a must-have for anyone...
I recently came across a case involving Pentagram, where one of their designs were blatantly ripped off by a famous clothing company Sean John, owned by the famous rap artist known as P Diddy. Sometimes you can argue that a work is inspired by someone else's work, and...
You can control the opacity of each individual color of a gradient inside of Adobe Illustrator. This is fantastic for flexibility with colors. Simply click on the color swatch of the gradient, and there is an opacity setting on the gradient panel. You can also double...
You can easily control the opacity of colors in Illustrator. You can Control the opacity of the stroke and the fill individually by using the appearance panel. Directly under each stroke and fill layer in the appearance panel, there is an opacity section, where you...
This is a great method to get great masks in Photoshop. You can actually have 2 masks on an image at the same time. You can use a vector mask and use a custom shape to mask out an image, creating a clean mask for sharp edges. The pixel mask is great for creating...
After being constantly attacked last week for ruining their logo, Gap decided to revert back to the old logo that everyone knows and loves. They admitted that is was a wrong step for the company, and that the customer comes first, which is great. They should come...
First, take your image and duplicate the background layer, so you can go back to your original if you need to. Hide the background layer and work from your copy. Go into the channels panel and hold down the command key (CTRL on the PC) and click on the RGB channel to...
Red Giant Software has announced the newest version of Knoll Light factory, Version 3.2. This is great because the new version supports Photoshop CS5. It also supports 64-bit systems and it even includes a few new custom lens presets. They have included Blue Halo,...
Something came to my attention yesterday that I just couldn't keep quiet about. Gap unleashed their new logo yesterday, and the media has been buzzing around this decision since. They have had the same logo for about 20 years now, and everyone seems to know the blue...
Many companies and designers think that branding and identity begins and ends with a logo, but there is much more to branding than simply creating a pretty logo. The whole point of building an identity or brand is to build trust with a client and create a connection...
I was asked a question yesterday that really got me thinking: What do you think the future will hold for design and advertising? What will be the next big platform to design for? I thought about this for a long time, and my guess is as good as yours. People are always...
I frequent a lot of design blogs, simply because I like to know what is on the mind of other designers, and also because I like to have my ear to the ground regarding our industry. One thing that I caught wind of was a discussion about designers and web designers and...
First off, I want to thank everyone that participated for their invaluable comments for this post. There are many aspects to branding and corporate identity, and I think each comment touched on a different aspect. Branding is a vital part of marketing and building a...
For those of you that love good plugins, Knoll light factory is a very cool time saving addition to After Effects. The new edition works with CS5, and has a few new features as well. if you own an older version, you can upgrade for a reasonable price of $99, but if...
I got this question yesterday, and thought that it would be a good topic for the day. If you want to fit text to a certain shape, you have a couple of options. The first option is to do what is called an envelope distort. First, you make your shape, and then take the...
Create a Psychedelic image in Photoshop This is a neat trick that will give you some really interesting and extremely colorful results. To start off, create a new document. It can be any dimension that you want, and click ok. Mine is set at 1024 x 768. Then, create a...
Create a 3D Rainbow With the addition of 3D in Photoshop, you can now create dazzling effects without using another program. In this tutorial, you'll learn how to create a 3D rainbow from scratch, all inside of Photoshop. First, I am starting out with a black...