1- Become a collector
Each time you see a design that inspires you, collect it, bring it home and file it away. I have hundreds of brochures, posters and other collateral that I have collected over the years that is stacked away in folders and boxes that I can quickly access - great source of inspiration when needed. Even Starbucks gives out creative weekly mini-newspapers.
2- Buy books
Having an extensive book collection is always essential to learning. I try buying a new book at least every 2 weeks that range from inspirational, educational and technical topics.
3- Read design-related blogs
I can’t stress enough how much information I have learned by reading other great designer’s blogs. The web in an invaluable resource of information - take advantage of it and actually use it!
4- Start a design blog
Having started this blog only a couple months ago, I have found it to be extremely useful and educational for myself. It has made me more aware of the design community and more analytical of my own work.
5 - Join and be active in the design community
As a freelance designer, joining the online design community is a must. Not only does it keep you up-to-date in the design world, but is also great for feedback and critique. Being your own boss is great, but not having anyone to answer to as a freelancer also has it’s down sides. No one to criticize your work and help you improve.
6- Take lots of photos
Solves the problem of not being able to take home designs you like - Camera phones are great for this kind of thing. Just snap a photo and file it away for later. I use Evernote for this type of thing; pictures of building designs, textures, shapes of shadows on walls. Basically anything that interests me from a design stand point.
7- Create fake projects
Whenever I find myself with free time (which is getting less and less lately) I create fake projects. Create a fake brand for a company. Design a logo, stationary, brochure, website - the whole nine yards. It’s good to do this once in awhile because it keeps design fun and let’s your creativity run wild without limitations. It’s often easy to get caught in a rut when clients start dictating and your work no longer becomes “yours”.
8- Redo other people’s design
Don’t want to create a fake brand to design? Try redesigning other people’s projects. This help’s you evaluate what “they” did wrong and what you could do better.
9- Redo your old designs
I know what it feels like to look at your early days of design and think “Oh my! What was I thinking?! I need to get rid of that immediately”, but is important to keep that work. It will help you see if you’re moving forward and improving your skills. Instead of throwing away or deleting old projects, try reworking them.
10- Attend lectures
Every few months I make it a point to attend lectures of other designers speaking at local schools and universities. Always learn a new thing or two.
11- Network with other designers
Attending lectures is a great way to meet other designers. I always try to search out the designers that have more experience and talent than I do. I know - it’s hard to admit someone else is better than you, but networking with people of higher skill levels will push you to work harder and learn more.
12- Take classes
Many local college allow you to register for classes without enrolling full-time. It will not only teach you some new things technically, but also put you back in a classroom of your peers.
13- Interview other designers and studios
A year ago, a friend of mine, started a ‘national studio tour‘ where he toured and interviewed with over 100 different design studios. He said the experience was amazing and learned so much by asking questions that design school could have never answered. He also met a valuable useful contacts ;)
14- Travel
Every time I travel to another country, I come back feeling extremely inspired. I usually find myself designing all day for a few weeks straight. Experiencing new cultures and seeing their artwork, opens your mind to a whole new world. Just wish I could travel more!
15- Learn something new
Whenever I am in a creative slump I try something new or do something completely unrelated to design. Getting your mind off things and into something new, usually has a funny way of working itself back around.
16- Sketch, sketch and did I mention trying sketching?
Helps you work through ideas quickly and without limitations of design software. Has made a HUGE difference in my designs. See what other designer’s say about the importance of sketching
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Friday, February 20, 2009
Pixel Maps
First off, let me explain how this is going to work. I am downloading a font called Dingmaps. Click the link to download the font. Then after that I will place the font at a large size and fill it with a pattern. Above is a sample of a finished product.
Start off by selecting the text tool and typing 1 on your keyboard using the font “Dingmaps” which you downloaded in step one hopefully. Make sure it is set to a large size like 300+ so it will have a better result.
Next, find your Magic Wand Tool and click on the big black state. Now create a new layer. To create a new layer look on the bottom of your layers window and hit the icon that looks like a paper (6th icon from left to right).
Step 4:
Now it’s time to make a pattern. To do this simply create a new document (File>New). Make the document size set to 2×2 pixels. Select your pencil tool with a #000000 (black) color and fill in the top left corner with a 1 pixel block.Then after you created the pattern, go to Edit>Define as Pattern. Now go back to the original document with the map on it. Click in the selction (with the magic wand tool) and use the pant bucket to put the pattern in there.
Step 5:
Go back to the original text (the map actually) and change the color of it to WHITE or whatever the background color is on your document (mines white). Now add a drop shadow, use the following settings below. Everything else as default.Opacity: 19
Distance: 1
Spread: 0
Size: 0
Now you should be completely finish and have something like you see above Step 4. If you don’t, you might have messed up when creating the pattern. Look back at the step and read it more carefully. If you have anymore problems
Download the PSD file here.
Sunday, February 15, 2009
10 Icon Design tutorials
As you already know we all love icons around here. That’s why here at IconsPedia.com we strive to offer you the best free icons around. Ever wanted to know how this icons are designed? We have picked 10 icon design tutorials that will guide you trough icon designing. Maybe next time you need an icon and you don’t find exactly what you are looking for you”ll go and create it yourself.
 | Learn how to design a glossy arrow in Photoshop with this great tutorial. |
 | Create a great looking world icon in Adobe Photoshop. |
 | Illustrate a Traffic Cone Icon in Photoshop, cool icon for "under construction". |
 | Learn about designing a 3D social bookmarking icon in Adobe Illustrator. |
 | Great tutorial that will help you master your Blend techniques in Adobe Illustrator while replicating the iTunes icon. |
 | Step by step turorial that will show you how to design a glossy, clean graduation cap icon. |
 | Learn how to create a Windows Vista erroe icon using basic Photoshop techniques. |
 | Creat a great looking yewllow helmet icon starting from a photo. |
 | Design a simple alarm clock icon. |
 | This tutorial will teach you how to create a round RSS icon for our website or blog.. |
Sunday, February 8, 2009
Adobe photoshop CS4 EXtended Full Version
Adobe photoshop CS4 EXtended Full Version
Adobe® Photoshop® CS4 Extended software delivers all the features in Photoshop CS4, plus new features for working with 3D imagery, motion-based content, and advanced image analysis.
Did you know…
3D painting and compositing gives you full, high-quality 3D power
Nonmodal input and output of 3D, with the ability to apply cloning, healing, painting, selecting, and volume edits to 3D content as easily as to 2D, saves valuable time. You can now export to popular 3D formats, and the new ray-tracing rendering engine enables print-quality output.
Easily work with multiple open files by using tabbed document display or n-up views.
Extensibility
Get and share Adobe Flash® technology-based panels that developers create to accomplish customized tasks. Plus, get tips and tricks from the thriving worldwide community of Photoshop users through the new Adobe Community Help online service.
Design a Professional Laptop Advert
Final Image:
Here is the final image that we will be creating:
Step 1:
Open up a new document 1000px wide and 600px high. Then paste an image of a laptop into your document. Create a new layer set called ‘laptop’ and put the layer containing your laptop image into this layer set.
Step 2:
Now I want to create a vanishing point for the screen of the laptop. Many Photoshop users, including myself, don’t yet have Photoshop CS2 or CS3, so this tutorial won’t utilize the useful vanishing point filter available in these versions. Instead, we’re going to manually create a fake vanishing point.
Select the screen part of your laptop using the lasso tool. Then copy your selection, create a new photoshop document, and paste in the selection. Go to image>image size and double whatever your image size is. In this case the original screen was 204px wide, so I simply doubled this to 408px.
Then paste this new larger screen back into your original document. Positioning it roughly where you think it looks good in terms of perspective.
Step 3:
Now select your line tool and a nice bright color for it and draw lines each corner of your large screen through to the matching corner of the original screen and past to a vanishing point. Do this with each corner of the laptop screen, until you have something like the image below:
Step 4:
Now duplicate your larger laptop screen and select edit>free transform. Then in the menu near the top of your screen (see diagram below) change the W (width) and H (height) percentages from 100% to 90%.
Move this resized image so that it matches up with the perspective lines that you created earlier. Be sure to place this resized screen layer behind the largest screen layer but above your original laptop photo layer.
Repeat this process of duplicating/resizing/aligning using the resizing percentages of 80%, 70%, and 60% from your large screen layer. Remember that your original laptop photo is 50% of this large screen layer.
This is how your image should look after you have created this new screens and lined them up correctly:
Step 5:
Now create a new layer set called ‘photo 1′. Paste in the image that you want to manipulate. View a grid over your image and then use the free transform tool to resize your photo to fit nicely into the grid squares. Make sure that the photo fits into an even number of grid squares for it’s height and width. In this example the photo is resized to be 8 grid squares wide and 6 high.
Step 6:
Now duplicate your photo layer, as you want to retain a copy. Be sure to hide the duplicate layer and go back to your original. Select your single column marquee tool from your selection palette (it’s under the Rectangle and Elliptical marquee tools). Using your grid click the grid line that marks the center point of your image and delete a central 1px column. Then switch to the single row marquee tool and do the same to delete a 1px line across the center of your image. You want these lines to be a little larger than 1px though, so grab your magic wand tool and click somewhere outside of your photo image. This will select all of the area surrounding the photo, but also the 1px lines cutting through it. Then go to select>modify>expand and expand the selection by 3px. Then hit delete to achieve an effect like the image below:
Step 7:
Now hide all of your duplicate laptop screens except the smallest one (the one that is 60% of the size of your largest). With your photo layer selected (the one you’ve just cut up using the grid) go to edit>transform>distort and distort the photo so that it fits exactly over this smallest laptop screen image. To fit it well you make need to reduce the layer’s opacity to allow the screen underneath to show though. The image below shows the transformed photo layer at 57% opacity, allowing some of the screen underneath to show through. Be sure to move this photo layer below the next largest laptop screen layer, so that it is mostly covered by it.
Step 8:
Now go back to your original photo layer. Duplicate it again, and using the same technique as before with the single row/column marquee tools cut it into 2X2 squares using the grid. As the image is 8 squares wide and 6 high, this will result in 12 squares each 4 grid squares in size. Again, use your magic wand tool to select the area around the photo and the lines cutting through it, then expand your selection by 3px and hit delete. Then use the distort transform tool to fit your new image to the 2nd smallest laptop screen. Remember again to move this photo layer behind the next largest laptop screen layer. The image below shows the result of this, with the photo layer again at 57% to allow me to nicely fit it to the screen image beneath.
Step 9:
Now repeat these steps, but make your squares half the size each time. So using the grid that will then be 1X1, 1/2X1/2, 1/4X1/4. To cut the photo into 1/2 and 1/4 grid square pieces I would recommend just using your judgement, but if you want to be really picky you can use rulers. Another tip is to duplicate the photo after cutting it into the squares, as this will save you having to repeat the slicing process right from the start each time.
Step 10:
Here is the same image but with all duplicate laptop screen image layers hidden and all photo layer’s with 100% opacity.
Step 11:
Now is the time-consuming part. Hide all of your photo layers except for your smallest photo layer. Use your magic wand tool set at 255 tolerance to select entire squares and delete them to leave a checkerboard effect. To do this simply go down each column deleting squares, being sure to leave a square remaining between each two that you delete. Then move onto the next column and repeat, but make sure that no squares you delete are next to an already deleted square, deleted squares should be diagonal to each other. The image below shows the various stages of doing this with each photo layer:
Step 12:
You should still have your original photo layer, as it was duplicated for safe keeping near the start of the tutorial. Duplicate the layer again, and move it so that it is the first layer above your laptop image layer. Then go to edit>transform>distort and fit the photo nicely over the laptop screen. Then hide all of your vanishing point guidelines and make sure that all of your checkerboard photo layers are visible. Seeing as all these layers are within the same layer set select the layer set and drag it to make the graphic more central in your document.
Step 13:
Right click on one of your photo squares layers and click blending options. Apply the drop shadow settings shown below. Then once this has been applied right click on the drop shadow shown in your layers palette, select ‘copy layer style’ and paste the layer style to all of your other photo squares layers. The outcome is shown below:
Step 14:
Now create a new layer set below your laptop/photos layer set called ‘background’. Hide your laptop/photos layer set. Create a new layer and fill it with a white to light gray radial blur.
Step 15:
Paste a metal texture onto a new layer above your radial gradient layer and reduce it’s opacity to 20% for a subtle textured effect.
Step 16:
Now create some bendy lines across your background using the pen tool. Be sure to have a white 1px brush selected and then once you have created your bendy pen line right click on it and select ’stroke path’. Then simply duplicate your line layer until you have multiple white lines across your background. I merged all of my line layers together and reduced the merged layer opacity to 30% for a more subtle effect.
And we’re done!
To finish things off I added some cool text. Click the image below if you want the full sized version.
Website:http://psdfan.com/designing/design-a-professional-laptop-advert/
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