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(Image credit: Tutorial 9)

I was led via Twitter to this great post by Tutorial9: 9 Things You Can’t Forget When Designing A Blog. Really, really great stuff… and with very helpful links to further resources on the “how to’s”.

1. Design a Favicon
2. Subtly use gradients, textures, shadows & single pixel lines
3. Use Icons for navigation
4. Leave ample Whitespace
5. Design using Alignment grids
6. Choose appropriate Typography
7. Choose/Decide on what to Emphasise
8. Have Styling Lists & Blockquotes
9. Separate Comments from Trackbacks

Soleri says Suburbs are bad or at least he seems to use the word as if it is something totally negative. I understand what and why he is saying/thinking that but I think he loses sight of the idea that the suburb is a reflection of the need for human gradients in the flow of things. Indeed this is in my interpretation a Taoist idea. More practically in permaculture design one of the basic laws is all of nature operates from gradients and if you will vortexes. The patterns most obvious in the weather such as the difference between high and low pressure weather systems are a major morphological event in the cast of the reality of earthly life. Yet I would say that gradations in relation to the design and observation of systems and most specifically in relation to built environments – geography – go beyond weather.

We have urban gradients that stem from natural features but also from decisions people make as they evolve the built environment.  These urban gradients have led to a natural diversity of density within the urban space.  Suburbs descend from this reality as growth increased exponentially during industrialization and traditionally urban cores overflowed. Soleri argues that suburbanization is a violation of natural law and is explained in his Arcology CMD thesis.

I would say that partially yes he is correct. However, suburban Taipei in the form of Dongshui is very different than say suburban Phoenix in the form of Scottsdale. The question I guess is whether over the next 100 or so years, we will want to revert to a super-compact urban core and abandon the suburbs. The practical question is what would get people to do such a thing? Soleri might say if we make the urban effect of the Arcology powerful enough that will do it. Let’s say just to give him the benefit of the doubt – yes, we have this massive reverse migration to the urban core over the next 100 years. Suddenly we have miles of suburban wasteland and trillions of dollars of wasted infrastructure investments globally. What do we do with it; with all this mess of rusted infrastructure and debris? Yet I see the need for a different approach. Suburbs are here they are a reality. we must learn to live with them and possibly even embrace them. How do we make them better and more sustainable with an eye on making them more compact with cores for shopping and work that are neighborhood friendly, have many natural corridors and provide ample alternatives to the car and its ecologically burdensome support structures.

I guess I am still not completely sold on the idea that seems to the major focus of the project I now live and work at. Yet, honestly coming to Taipei I see that the beauty of the urban form cannot and has never been about the work of one person. It is about collective IQ and creating a culture in a society where people come together to play the music from a mosaic of past experiences. Taipei has inspired me in that I see it as a success in that it enables people to play their music in relation to the larger sum of the city.

Taipei has developed an urban vibrancy through the proliferation of the many different perspectives being allowed to mold and evolve the urban reality and experience. So that creates a richness in the urban space that facilitates the urban effect. Without that richness of the diversity of past human experiences that carved out the urban space there would not be for me that sense of an urban effect.

Thus, it is problematic this idea that one person (or even for that many by some urban planning committee) could design an urban architecture at a very large scale (such as a Lean Linear City) that would go on for many miles and house many thousands of people and would have a monolithic design. The idea of the monolithic form in architecture won’t facilitate the Urban Effect. Indeed monolithic forms only foster a culture or more precisely a cult of bigness and have historically been a way to promote a centralized system of command and control in a society or civilization. This is not to imply that Soleri is trying to create a cult, but rather consider this idea that the worship of large things in our society is indeed a cult in that it reflects a monoculture way of thinking. Such thinking does not have never promoted and facilitated that inherent diversity of life. Who and what we are as human beings which is seeking to coming up and from us indeed reflects the overall diversity of the universe. As progressives and visionary idealistic thinkers, we need to ask ourselves do we really want to live in a space that is monolithic form rather than something like what we see in Taipei or New York? So in considering Arcology, we might do well to ask ourselves how might an Arcology either be a smaller scale development within the city or even as a stand alone settlement in a rural area, where it can demonstrate the benefits of a more integrated approach to development in relation to sustainable development.

http://photoshop.vn/home/article/50-new-css-techniques-your-next-web-design-435.html

(Photoshop.VN) – CSS is almost certainly one of the best developments in web design since the first graphical web browsers were adopted on a wide scale. Where tables created clunky, slow-loading pages, CSS created much more streamlined and usable web pages. Plus, CSS has allowed designers to achieve a number of different styles that used to only be possible with images.

One of the best parts of CSS is that it’s so simple once you know the basics. Where tables used to make incredibly complex and sometimes impossible-to-decipher code, CSS keeps things clean and simple. Add a few comments to keep everything organized and it becomes an absolute dream to work with.

Below are 50 fresh CSS tricks, techniques and tutorials that will help you to improve the quality of your next web design. Be sure to check out our previous article: 53 CSS-Techniques You Couldn’t Live Without.

1. Security and Performance

While CSS is often thought of as merely a styling language, there are ways you can use it to add security to your site. There are also ways you can optimize your CSS to improve page load times. Both are discussed below.

Make your pages load faster by combining and compressing javascript and css files

This tutorial shows you how to create a PHP script to compress and combine multiple CSS and/or JavaScript files with gzip when they’re called for by a browser. It speeds up the page load times while making it possible to still edit the individual CSS or JavaScript files without having to combine and re-compress everything each times.

Informal testing showed that a group of JavaScript files were reduced from 168Kb (and 1905 ms to transfer) to 37Kb (and 400 ms). There wasn’t any data available for the effect it had on CSS files, but I’d guess it’s probably pretty similar.

The Definitive Post on Gzipping Your CSS

This post covers the best and most recent methods for using GZIP to compress your CSS. It currently covers two different methods, both equally effective. One involves adding a bit of PHP to your CSS file (and renaming the file with a PHP extension instead of CSS) while the other method involves using the same PHP code with some additions but in a separate file.

Clickjane.css: A CSS User Style Sheet to Help Detect and Avoid Clickjacking Attacks

This post covers how to use clickjane.css to prevent clickjacking, a class of security vulnerabilities kind of like phishing scams and more formally referred to as user interface redressing. It’s cross-browser compatible but, admittedly, probably only covers a small range of potential clickjacking vulnerabilities. It’s still a good place to start, though.

5 Step Style Sheet Weight Loss Program

This post shows five different ways to trim the size of your style sheets. Techniques range from learning how to group selectors to using CSS shorthand. Each technique is thoroughly explained and includes related resources.

2. Page Layout

This is what CSS was built for. The options are almost endless, especially as CSS3 becomes the new standard.

Aligning Inline Images with the Vertical-Align Property

The default vertical alignment for inline images in text sometimes looks not-so-great. This tutorialshows you how to better align inline images with your site’s type. It goes over the different types of vertical alignment and what they mean in relation to type.

CSS Centering

This post includes instructions for centering liquid layouts with CSS. It’s very simple and straight-forward and works in virtually all browsers. Basically, it just uses left and right margins combined with some additional code to make it cross-browser compatible.

Making Your Footer Stay Put with CSS

Keeping footers at the bottom of your pages can be a real hassle with CSS, depending on how the rest of your page is set up. This tutorial shows exactly how to keep your footer where it should be—below the rest of your content! It’s a very thorough post, with complete, step-by-step instructions.

Vertical Centering with CSS

This post covers five excellent ways to center your content vertically. It includes the good and bad for each method along with complete instructions for implementing them. The methods range from using divs that act like tables to using absolute positions.

Handy Tips for Creating a Print CSS Stylesheet

This post is filled with great tips for creating better print stylesheets. It includes instructions for everything from including link destinations after the link text to splitting comments onto a new page. Pick and choose from the techniques offered or copy the whole stylesheet.

Fluid Images

Fluid layouts are great. They generally look and function just fine until you start introducing fixed-width elements within them—like images. This post shows how to make your images fluid, too. And it works for most embedded video. And while the basic technique includes just one CSS property, there is a workaround necessary to make it work on Windows machines.

Flexible Equal Height Columns

This tutorial shows how to create completely versatile equal height columns using valid and semantic markup. It’s cross-browser compatible and works with both fixed, fluid, and even elastic designs. It’s a very complete tutorial but not at all complicated.

CSS Columns with Borders

This is a technique for creating equal-height columns with CSS that have borders. It uses a series of nested divs to achieve the effect instead of images. The end result is fantastic.

Creating a Polaroid Photo Viewer with CSS3 and jQuery

The photo gallery created with this technique is absolutely awesome. The HTML and CSS aren’t super-complicated, and everything is explained really well. While CSS3 isn’t supported by every browser, this does appear to degrade gracefully, making it perfectly fine to use as long as you don’t mind some visitors not getting the full effect.

A Killer Collection of Global CSS Reset Styles

An incredibly complete collection of global resets, this post covers pretty much every reset you could possibly need. Some are short and sweet, consisting of only a couple of properties, while others are very complete and reset everything you might consider resetting.

Making Module Layout Systems

This tutorial gives complete instructions for creating modular layout systems using CSS. This makes it practical to use different grid-based divs as needed for individual content elements. The end result provides tons of flexibility for dealing with everything from images to text while keeping everything uniform and balanced.

Multiple Backgrounds (CSS3)

This tutorial shows how to implement multiple backgrounds using CSS3. It’s currently only supported by Safari, but the tutorial includes tricks to make it work in non-supported browsers. Currently, it doesn’t validate, but once the CSS3 standard is completed it’s likely it will.

CSS3 Multiple Columns

Here’s a tutorial for creating multi-column layouts with CSS3. The CSS is pretty simple and straight-forward, much easier than most current solutions to multi-column layouts. Unfortunately, this only works with Firefox, Safari and Chrome at the moment.

Smart Columns with CSS and jQuery

This tutorial shows how to create smart columns inside liquid layouts using a combination of CSS and jQuery. Basically, it fits as many columns into the base column size as possible and then distributes any leftover white space among the columns there. A very elegant solution if you want to allow for a variable number of columns without ending up with a bunch of leftover white space in your design.

CSS Hack for Chrome, Safari and Internet Explorer

This tutorial shows how to apply different style sheets based on the browser your visitors are using (at least in IE5-8, Google Chrome, and Safari 1-4). A very valuable technique if you want to use styles only supported in certain browsers without making your site look bad in unsupported browsers.

3. Menu and Navigation Customizations

Menu and navigation styles can really set your site apart if done well. Just remember, menus need to remain usable and functional no matter how they look.

Overlap That Menu!

Have you ever wanted to create menu items that overlap? This relatively-simple tutorial shows you how to do just that using unique classes for your menu items. It also tells how to reorder the navigation items using the z-index. It’s a nice effect that isn’t difficult to achieve.

Super Awesome Buttons with CSS3 and RGBA

With a little CSS3 magic, you can created a scalable set of sexy buttons with nearly half the CSS it would have taken with hex colors. Give it a go in your next project and see how it can help add that extra polish you want without huge impact on your code.

Custom Buttons 3.0

This page shows a variety of rounded-corner (1px radius) buttons that don’t use images (other than for the optional background gradient). Just look at the source code for the page to see how it’s done.

Centered Tabs with CSS

This tutorial provides an alternative to the sliding doors method of creating tabs in CSS that allows tabs to be centered instead of only right- or left-aligned. It’s a multi-step tutorial but isn’t complicated.

Styling the Button Element with CSS Sliding Doors

An updated tutorial on sliding doors buttons that now includes creating them with CSS image sprites. It’s also been simplified to work with a single block of CSS in all the major browsers (including IE 6-8). The markup is simple and straight-forward and the end result is perfect.

Styling Buttons to Look Like Links

Sometimes you have to use a button (like with forms), but realize your design would look so much better with just a simple text link. This tutorial gives a complete overview of how to make your buttons look like text links using CSS.

Simple, Scalable CSS Based Breadcrumbs

Breadcrumbs can be a great addition to your site’s navigation and can really improve your site’s usability. This tutorial shows you how to create breadcrumbs with CSS. The code used is simple (the HTML portion is just an unordered list) and there are only six CSS styles defined.

Recreating the Button

This article covers how to make a button that look very similar to regular HTML input buttons but can handle multiple types of interaction (like dropdowns or toggle functions). These buttons were originally developed at Google and are skinnable with just a few lines of CSS. The buttons created are entirely CSS-based, including the gradient background.

List of 10+ Usability-Conscious Link Styles

This page offers a good overview of different effects you can use for links, including color and underline, backgrounds, and animations. It’s a good starting place if you’re trying to figure out exactly how your links should look and act to make them more user-friendly.

Create Vimeo-Like Top Navigation

Here’s a tutorial to create a drop-down top navigation bar similar to the one Vimeo.com uses. It’s all done with images, CSS and HTML and isn’t particularly difficult, though it is a bit complex. It’s explained really well, with images illustrating the structure and very well-written CSS.

Beautifully Horizontal Centered Menus/Tabs/List

This tutorial explains how to create cross-browser compatible, centered menus or other items in CSS with no hacks and no JavaScript It’s compatible with liquid layouts, too. Not only does it give the code to achieve the effect, but it also fully explains exactly how and why it works.

4. Typography

Here are a few tutorials and tricks for creating advanced typographic styles using CSS. There’s everything from line-wrap functions to faux anti-aliasing to adding gradients and shadows.

Wrapping Text Inside Pre Tags

This tutorial shows how to wrap text within pre html tags. It’s useful for displaying code on your site, especially when lines of code are quite long and end up breaking your site’s layout (especially in IE). It’s a relatively simple and there are a few different options presented.

Make Cool and Clever Text Effects with CSS Text-Shadow

Creating text effects without the use of images is a big advantage in terms of both file size and the time required for maintenance. This tutorial shows how to take advantage of the text-shadow property in CSS to style your text. While this effect doesn’t work in IE, it does in most other browsers. And it looks incredibly cool if done well (I’m a big fan of the “milky text” example).

Safari’s Text-Shadowing Anti-Aliasing CSS Hack

This tutorial shows how to use the text-shadow CSS property to create an anti-aliasing effect on your text. It only works in browsers that support text-shadow (so not IE), but the look is pretty awesome. It can definitely make text more readable, just don’t overdo it or you end up with text that’s blurry.

Safari’s Text-Shadowing Anti-Aliasing CSS Hack Revision

This is a revised version of the technique above to create a slightly different anti-aliasing effect, especially useful for light text on dark backgrounds. It uses an extremely transparent black background to force Safari to render the text more legibly.

Snazzy Pullquotes for Your Blog

If you have a blog or other site that’s text-heavy, using pull quotes to highlight important bits can look really awesome while also making your content more scannable. This tutorial shows how to format those pull quotes with CSS. It shows how to create both left and right aligned pull quotes while also preserving your regular blockquote style.

Codename Rainbows

Here’s a technique for creating two-color gradients for text using a combination of JavaScript and CSS. It also works to apply shadows and highlights to text. The possibilities for the use of this technique are pretty endless. Of course, this is also one of those things where a little bit goes a long way (ie, limit gradients to your headers, titles, and other text you want to stand out—not your site’s body copy).

Build Better CSS Font Stacks

This article gives some great guidelines for creating better CSS font stacks. It includes information on the most common font stacks currently used and then goes on to cover Tuck’s Definitive Font Stacks and Ford’s Better Font Stacks. It’s a great resource when you’re determining a site’s typography, with the information presented in a very scannable, well-organized format.

CSS3 Embedding a Font Face

Here’s a great tutorial on how to embed fonts using CSS3. While it’s still not widely supported, this technique makes it much easier to embed special fonts into a site without having to resort to images.

CSS Gradient Text Effect

This little trick makes it easy to create gradient text by applying a 1 pixel gradient PNG to it. It’s a quick and easy way to create gradient text pretty much anywhere on your site. There’s even a fix to make it work in IE6 included.

5. Other Cool Techniques, Tips, and Tricks

Below are a ton of other techniques and tricks you can use to really make your CSS stand out.

3D Cube Using CSS Transformations

This is probably one of the coolest CSS techniques I’ve seen. This tutorial shows how to build a 3D cube with text or other content on each side of the cube. It does it entirely with CSS; there’s no canvas, SVG, imagery, or JavaScript. There’s even instructions for creating multiple shaded cubes on a single page. The only real drawback is that it’s only supported in recent WebKit and Gecko browsers.

Nine Ways to Obfuscate E-mail addresses compared

This article gives two different methods for obfuscating email addresses with CSS. One involves using the display:none attribute while the other involves reversing the code. Both supposedly cut the amount of spam received to zero.

Forms Markup and CSS – Revisited

Here is a CSS template for form styling. The markup of the form is based on the Accessible Forms Markup from Derek Featherstone. The template is semantically correct, flexible and accessible.

iPhone CSS

A very short and simple tutorial on how to make certain elements of you CSS render differently on the iPhone. It’s surprisingly simple and easy to implement.

Improving Your Process: Faster Front End Development

While this post offers plenty of information on things other than CSS, it also offers some great advice for improving your efficiency with CSS: mainly, write your CSS in blocks. This technique is usually done progressively as you get used to coding in this manner. The steps are simple, though, and it’s sure to make you a much faster designer.

Image-Free CSS Tooltip Pointers – A Use for Polygonal CSS?

This tutorial explains how to create triangles (to be used for pointers) using CSS, without the need for any images. The end result is great, though it only works for single-color images. The CSS used is incredibly simple while still being really versatile. You can create a triangle of almost any size using just a single div.

How I Implemented My Cookie-Based Switcher

While not strictly a CSS trick, this post shows how to create a cookie-based CSS theme switcher for WordPress. It allows users to choose to use a different theme when they visit the blog while allowing new users to see a nice, simple, easy-to-read theme that puts the primary focus on the content.

CSS Swap Hover Effect

This great technique will replace any image with another image when you hover over it. The tutorial shows it applied to a portfolio site, but the possibilities are endless. It’s very slick and cross-browser compatible (though IE6 does require a bit of a workaround, as usual).

CSS Stacked Bar Graphs

Here’s a tutorial for creating stacked bar graphs using CSS and some images. It’s a pretty in-depth process, but the result looks fantastic.

Changing HTML Images on Hover / A Quick CSS Trick

Here’s a quick and easy CSS technique for swapping out images on hover. It’s pure CSS, no JavaScript required. The biggest issue this technique solves is that when the page is printed, the base image is the only one that shows up.

10 Properties that Were Impossible to Implement in IE6

This collection of CSS tricks shows how to implement a number of styles that were supposedly impossible in Internet Explorer 6. It includes tricks for opacity, fixed positions, and text shadow, among others.

10 Challenging But Awesome CSS Techniques

Sometimes the coolest things just take a bit more effort. This collection of tutorials covers ten different CSS techniques that aren’t exactly easy to achieve, but the end results are well worth the extra effort. Techniques include pull quotes, dynamic variables, and style changes based on the time of day or even the weather, among other awesome examples.

Recently I have been focussing on how to put together `higher level` objects made from multiple curves and straight lines. An `object` in this sense is, for example, a solid filled irregular shape which might require a few or even many curves, straight lines, corners etc to complete it. The idea is to be able to build such objects with commands that `add a curve`, `add a point`, etc. When the shape is finally closed then it is ready for rendering. I’ve got most of the code done to make this happen.

The flow of object construction sort of goes like:

a) Create a bunch of control points which either will define curves or individual polygon vertices
b) Join then all together sequentially in a bunch of arrays ready for conversion to vertices
c) Pass the arrays to a system of `generators` which take the control data and turn it into vertices/triangles
d) Pass the vertex data to OpenGL for rendering.

Eventually this might be optimized, like a single function call that creates objects and tessellates and renders them with texturing and gradients all in one step. It could optimize the speed.

Another thing I’m working towards is filled gradients and texturing. I haven’t written any code on the gradients yet but I have some stuff for textures that is partially done. The idea with gradients is that you either are generating them in realtime as a triangle mesh with vertex colors, or you are doing that at some point and saving it to a texture ready for later texturing. Somewhere along the line there should be gradient and texture warping ie where you can drag around `vertices` within the gradient mesh to shape it how you want it. Of course there’ll be the usual standard gradients – linear, radial, spherical etc. I still have to think about how to translate a realtime gradient mesh into the vertex colors of a bezier shape – it will require some interpolation.

As far as texturing is concerned, it’s going to work much the same as the gradients – either applying a single texture across a shape, or making it out of a mesh, or even my `SuperTexture` which is a collage of multiple textures. Getting that to map to the vertices of a bezier shape is also going to be tricky, especially to deal with how the bezier moves and deforms, and especially if I do anything in 3D. Being able to manipulate vertices of a mesh which don’t map to vertices of a vector shape is the hard part. The first step is just to get a single texture mapped to a curved shape, which should be straightforward.

Gradually I’m working toward a simple editor where I can add tools to manipulate and generate shapes, apply textures, edit gradients and add other effects, so that I can actually start to use it toward a game. I am still aiming for a small game to be released this Christmas, but I am not sure there is time – only about 3 months to go!

I know I said no non-wedding design for a week, but I had to share this:

I LOVE gilded edges. I LOVE gradients. Win : Win

Studio Lin created these lovely little cards in house after they couldn’t find a printer willing to experiment with the process of gradient gilding. A tutorial on operating an airbrush, and they were smooth sailing!

For Erwan Frotin’s Wildflowers exhibition at Art+Commerce. Collaboration with Lisa Naftolin. Winner of an AIGA 365 Award.

It’s pretty confusing to discover blogs I’ve started before promptly forgetting… like the one on WordPress before bigsquiddesign. I’m just glad I chose an username that’s not to embarrassing. For all I knew, I could have logged in and discovered my username was OMGiLuvJensonAtwood.wordpress.com…… no seriously. I’m totally a teeny bopper for Jenson Atwood.

So, upon revisiting this site, I relived the entire confusion of where to sign in and the ‘Oh, what is this download button… HUH? What are all of these folders. This doesn’t look like where I’m suppose to blog…. (????)’. I’ve been reading articles I don’t really understand about how WordPress superior to other blog options due to all of the advanced and technical blah blah blah options. I’m pretty excited to be working in WordPress to try to figure some of that stuff out.

Okay, onto my post…

Recently, a friend who works in software development suggested that I give Windows7 a try. I left Windows a long time ago for Mac OSX and recently, Linux, but curiosity got the best of me. I started researching a bit about it if only to see how Microsoft intended on saving itself after dreadful Vista. What I discovered is that instead of copying Mac OSX, Microsoft has decided to copy Linux’s KDE desktop environment this time around.

Let’s take a closer look at KDE:

Pretty nice. Nice vector gradients, some transparency going on, thick desktop panel…

Again, KDE

Again, KDE… OOPS! Not KDE? Windows 7?

KDE…

Or Windows 7….

This is so confusing. Desktop Environment identity crisis. Windows 7 folks, the new linux that you pay for. Let’s just hope it runs as nicely as linux. Cough*bloatware*cough.

Now that’s over with, maybe I’ll go practice making software graphical mockups.

(Photoshop.VN) – How to make your next website design pop!
Web design is one of those areas that, when done right, you just know it. The finished site looks refined and well done—it pops! There are a number of ways that you can achieve this by polishing off your design in Photoshop. Here we look at some of the ways to do just that.

How to make your next website design pop!

web design is one of those areas that, when done right, you just know it. The finished site looks refined and well done—it pops! There are a number of ways that you can achieve this by polishing off your design in photoshop. Here we look at some of the ways to do just that.

1 [LAY OUT THE funDAMENTALS]
Before you go about making your website pop, you must first have your fundamentals in place. By this stage you should have done the research, laid out your website appropriately, and done most of the basic design work—but you haven’t applied the polish. In the following example, we’re going to look at some techniques used for a chocolate delivery website; however, these same techniques can be applied to any website.

<img src="http://www.layersmagazine.com/images/tutorials/design/photoshop/2009_04/01.jpg" alt="Photoshop for photographers Tutorial Image” />

2 [CHECK ALIGNMENT AND SPACING]
Alignment and spacing in website design creates order, organizes the page, and groups parts of the website for easy navigation. In the screenshot above you can see the guidelines in place ensuring everything is aligned (the grid is from www.960.gs). Notice how the logo and all of the text is left aligned? Also take note of the even spacing around the boxes and text. Use guides in photoshop to ensure all of your elements are aligned. To add a guide to your document, drag it from one of your rulers (press Command-R [PC: Ctrl-R] to turn rulers on).

3 [APPLY ANTI-ALIASING TO text]
Something that’s often overlooked when designing for the Web is anti-aliasing text. For those who don’t know, anti-aliasing is the technique of minimizing distortion artifacts. There are a few ways to minimize this distortion in your text but the best way is to make use of the anti-aliasing options in your Options Bar (or Character panel). You can choose between None, Sharp, Crisp, Strong, and Smooth. Experiment to see what works best, as different fonts and sizes will yield different results; however, the Sharp setting usually prevails in most cases.

4 [ADD A 1-PIXEL stroke]
Something that really makes a difference in making a website pop is the use of a 1-pixel stroke inside borders and lines. Take a look at the zoomed-in screenshot above—see the inner purple line that runs alongside the inside of the box on the right? These stroked borders really add that extra crispness to the design as it provides extra contrast to the surrounding elements and gives the design more depth. You can add two strokes by selecting the object, choosing Edit>Stroke, and applying the 1-pixel stroke to the Inside. With your selection still in place, go back to Edit>Stroke and apply your second stroke to the Outside.

5 [ADD SUBTLE gradient EFFECTS]
gradients are popping up everywhere in Web design and for a reason—they add depth and real aesthetics to the design. Unlike print design where gradients seem flat, onscreen they make a design come alive. Notice the slight dark to light purple gradient in the screenshot above? Also take note of the slight transparency. These effects give the design a new dimension, making the image come off the screen, so to speak. Use Gradient Overlay in the layer style dialog to create these nice subtle (emphasis on subtle) effects.

6 [ADD SUBTLE DROP SHADOWS]
Use subtle drop shadows in conjunction with the gradients and stroked borders. Once again, these shadows add a new depth and dimension to your design as it makes the different elements on the page play against each other and pop out at you. Notice in the screenshot above that the logo, text, and boxes all have subtle drop shadows applied to them, which break them away from the other elements. You can use the Drop Shadow layer style to achieve these effects—but make sure you use them in moderation.

7 [HIERARCHY & CALL TO ACTION]
When someone first visits your website, what is the first thing they’re going to do? Is there a clear hierarchy of what to read or do first? What is the purpose of the site? These are all questions that you should have considered at the start of the project; however, now is a good time to go back and reflect on these decisions. Can you adjust the colors, size, or position to achieve better results? Notice in the screenshot below that the call to action on the UKE website is the “Pick a Basket” button, which is placed conveniently after the main opening slogan.

8 [COLOR CORRECTION & SHARPENING]
In Web design, photos, icons, and images are usually quite prominent, so you should ensure that they’re of the highest quality. Check the color balance, sharpness, and contrast of each image and make certain that it balances with the rest of the page and other images. A good way to do this is to make use of Levels, Unsharp Mask, and Curves in photoshop. A quick search at www.layersmagazine.com will yield results on how to do this—these functions go beyond the scope of this tutorial.

Before

After

Less Is More

In Web design, the old saying goes, “less is more.” After completing your website design, have a break and come back to it. Then ask yourself these questions to see how you can further improve your site:

1. Is there anything that I can remove, fix, replace, move, change or edit?
2. Does one element take up too much space or draw too much attention?
3. Are there too many colors?
4. Is the site balanced?
5. Is there consistency?
6. Can I make use of more white space?

When you set out to design your next website, you can also ask yourself these questions:

1. Do I have the basic fundamentals in place?
2. Can I improve my alignment or spacing?
3. Have I used the appropriate anti-aliasing?
4. Can I sharpen my images or text with strokes or borders?
5. Can I give more depth to the page by using gradients or drop shadows?
6. Is there a clear hierarchy with a call to action?
7. Are all of the images color corrected, balanced, and sharpened?
8. And last of all, ask yourself—does the website pop?

<span class="Apple-style-span" style=”font-style: italic; “>ALL IMAGES BY JACOB CASS UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED 

Source: Website Design Tips Using Photoshop CS4

#1 – Gradients Web 2.0

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I know what you are thinking, I am a horrible person due to the fact that bad design makes my day.  Hell, sometimes it makes me smile, laugh, or on a very rare occasion it may make me shoot diet coke out my nose at a high velocity.

That being said, I do belive there is a tremendous lesson to be learned from almost all examples of bad design, thus the elements that make it “bad”.  If these elements were to change, would the design become good?  One would think that this would be the case, but as we all know, this is often the farthest thing from reality.

Lets talk about what makes things bad…

1)  You use Comic Sans as your font of choice.  I know this is obvious, but we still see it everywhere.  You don’t have to admit your usage of Comic Sans, but please choose another font.  For more on this pressing topic visit bancomicsans.com.

2) The Dreaded Gradient.  Gradients can be used well if subtial and designed with purpose and taste.  On the other hand, we often see them used more like this.

3) My Personal Favorite…The Naughty Logo.  Be aware of what your logo may actually be saying.

This is just dusting the amazingly cluttered surface of bad design, but it is just enough to start you in the right direction.

And remember, friends don’t let friends have bad logos.  Tell your friends when they are a victim of bad design.  It may hurt in the beginning, but it is a favor that will last a lifetime.

(Photoshop.VN) – Hi. KillianDB here, with my very first tutorial. In this tutorial I will learn you how to make a beautiful design from just a photo. The images in this tutorials are ALL thumbnails, so to see the images in high quality, please click them. This tutorial is not for just started beginners in Photoshop. It is recommended that you know the basics first. This is the outcome:

Step 1 – Setup

First you find a photo of some hot chick. It’s preferred that the top of her body is perfect and fits the image size well. I found a very nice photo at a site for pictures of models called Skins.be. Open it in Photoshop, change the image size if you like. For the final result i used a 16:9 (wide screen) comparison. Why? Because I like it! This is the original file:

Step 2 – Gradient(s)

Now lets start off with the gradients. You’re about to insert 3 gradient maps. Click on the adjustments and insert a first gradient map, the standard green to red (REVERSED) one. Set the blending mode to Color Dodge and the opacity back to 30%. The second one is a blue to orange one with the same settings. Now insert a black to white gradient, but set this layer’s blending mode to Screen and the opacity just to 30%.

NOTE: You can do very much you want here, just experiment with it for surprising combination.

Now let’s fix her hair and a bit of her body. Insert 3 gradients:
1: Black (0%) – Yellow (50%) –  White (100%)
2: Black (0%) – Magenta (50%) – White (100%)
3: Black (0%) – White (100%)
First press Ctrl+i on the masks of the gradients. This should make the mask empty and the gradients invincible. Now you can start brushing her hair and her body. I prefer to keep the body with little colors and more black/white.

Step 3 – First filling

Create a new empty layer and go ahead to fill the background parts with a dark color (for example dark gray) Make it look nice, screwing around with the blending modes and opacity. Now create another new empty layer. Get you brushes and brush a bit around the edges of her body (also hair). Make the bushed parts look a bit abstract and dynamic by for example erasing a bit at the sides of them. Apply the layer styles that are below this text to it. It should look good and do this again in another new layer, but now use yellowish colors instead of magenta.

Now add some lines. Use the line tool with a maximal width of 2px and preferable with a white color. Also add some big SOFT brushed dots with magenta and yellow colors to the image. It’s time to fill the image up even more. Get your brushes and use them like you’ve never used them ever before. I recommend you use splatter brushes in combination with normal (soft) brushes and other nice brushes. I used the brush pack made by AxeRaider70, available here (NOT FOR COMMERCIAL GOALS!!!).

Step 4 – Changing colors

When you’re done with adding brushes insert a gradient map. The colors are green to red (REVERSED) and set it to overlay and 100%. Delete everything again from the mask and now brush only the darker parts. Create a new layer and get a grey-blue-green-ish colored brush and start brushing the background. Now create another layer and brush some magenta and yellow stuff to fill the image up again. Now go to the channel mixer and change it to:
Output Channel: Red
Red: + 25%
Green: + 0%
Blue: + 112%

Step 5 – Clipping Masks

First of all create a new layer. Press Alt, go to Image -> Apply Image. Now you have 1 layer including your complete image. Create a new layer and place a good visible big dot using your Marquee Tool and Bucket Tool, or just the Brush Tool. Take a soft eraser brush and make it look like the the dot fades away at just 1 side of it. Now change the order of the 2 layers. The dot is supposed to lay underneath the applied image. Right-Click the image layer and click Create Clipping Mask. No difference yet? That’s right. Just move the image layer around a bit. Now you should see clearly difference. You now can brush more dots on the dots layer and see more difference.

Step 6 – The Face

Create 2 layers. One for the eyes and 1 for the mouth. First the eyes: Get a small hard brush and change the color to yellow. Now brush around the eyes and just change the blending mode to Darken. Now for the lips in the other layer fill the parts you want to change with magenta and set the blending mode here to Overlay. Play a little with the Opacity to make it look more realistic.

Step 7 – Finishing touches

Almost done here. First you probably wanna fill the image up again. Do it. If you think it still isn’t good enough, make it better. For this is used the same technique explaint in step 5, with the clipping masks for the thick lines you see. To make the contrast better a good way is to get you Burn Tool and burn the dark shadow-ish parts you’d like to make even darker. Now add a little Photo Filter to it. I used the following settings.
Filter: Warming Filter (81)
Density: 91%
As finishing touch i inserted Level-adjustment, set the black *arrow* underneath the histogram to 19 and kept the rest as it was.

Finally

Damn, a whole lot of work, wasn’t it? But it was worth it I think. I’m pleased if you liked this tutorial!

Source: How to make a Girl Look Pretty

(Photoshop.VN) -
How to Create a Shiny Button
The shiny button is widely used in web 2.0 style websites. The following tutorial will show, how to create a Shiny Button using gradients, selection tools, and basic transform operations. Let’s have some fun with this.

Step 1 Lets start the tutorial by creating a new layer as shown in Image A.     Creating new layer (Layer A)   It’s look like the above image (Layer B)   Create a circle using eclipse tool from toolbar. Hold down shift key and drag the eclipse tool till desired size is achieved. Select the Ellipse Tool Drawing circle   It’s look like the above image

Step 2 Right click on the layer & select “Blending options“.   Blending options Apply Gradient overlay as shown in IMAGE A. IMAGE A IMAGE B :Apply stroke a as shown in IMAGE B, use gradient for stroke.

Step 3 Now duplicate the above Layer (Layer B) and choose “Clear layer style” by using right click option on the current Layer.         To apply Gradient effect to the ring, right click on the layer & choose blending options. In blending options select Stroke > Fill type: Gradient. For gradients choosed colour codes as shown below. After applying the gradient, Set the Fill option at top to 0%.

Step 4 To obtain an inner shadow effect, create one more ring by using Marque tool as shown below       Create new layer and draw a circle using marquee tool . Apply the stroke of 8px “Inside” using Edit > Stroke.           Apply a Gradient effect from Gray to white. Keep the angle to 110 degrees shown below.

Step 5 Now create a new circle in the center of main circle and apply gradient overlay effects for this as shown below.     Apply a multicoloured gradient effect as shown below,

Step 6 To get a shining effect create a oval shape at the top of inner circle and apply� gradient effects as shown below. To give finishing touches to the shining effect just create a small circle at the bottom right of oval shape as shown in Image C IMAGE C

Step 7 Now create a curved shape using pen tool at the bottom as shown below & apply gradient overlay effect to get the nice look as shown below.

Step 8 Next step is to create a 3D glossy look by creating few shapes at the right and left of inside circle using pen tool. Use Pen tool to create it as shown below. Apply gradient overlay style.

Step 9 To make the button more realistic, give shadow effect by creating a new layer at the lower bottom For this choose Select >> Modify >> Feathers from the menu bar. Give the Feather radius value as shown below. Set the Grey Color (#b8b8b8) at the foreground . Here we come to the end of this tutorial. The same effect can also be re-created using different colors.

Source: How to Create a Shiny Button

Click to Download

Author : SkinCorner

Example Page : http://redleaves-btemplates.blogspot.com/

With the readership of the inkscape tutorials weblog steadily increasing over the past year, there are many great tutorials deep in the blog archives that newer readers may not have discovered yet. Therefore to celebrate the forthcoming milestone of 1.5 million page views of this site, we have decided to list the top 10 inkscape tutorials that have been featured on the inkscape tutorials blog to date.

Text and Simple Styling An awesome tutorial from Troy Sobotka detailing how to create a colourful outset text effect.

Creating a Business Card Template and Basic Business Card with Inkscape Create a business card template using inkscape, and learn how to populate it with a simple business card design.

Shattered, Smashed and Grungy Text in Inkscape A step by step on creating a smashed and grungy text effect using inkscape..

Create a Lightbulb Icon that follows the tango! guidelines. This tutorial provides a detailed how-to on creating a lightbulb icon that uses the tango! icon set guidelines.

Create an impressive stick man cartoon character / avatar A super detailed guide to creating a stick man cartoon character using inkscape.

Draw A Realistic Vector Guitar in Inkscape In this tutorial,  Nick Roberts demonstrates in detail how to illustrate a “Fender Stratocaster” type guitar. The final result is stunning, and the author has detailed the steps superbly with many super useful screen shots.

Creating a Coffee Cup using inkscape Another detailed and impressive tutorial from the vectortuts website. This tutorial demonstrates how to draw a coffee cup using inkscape.

How to make RPG map elements with inkscape. This is a great tutorial on creating RPG map symbols using inkscape. The tutorial outlines a workflow for creating a simple jailhouse RPG element.

chrome text effect From the same author as the “Text and Simple Styling tutorial”, Here is a another that demonstrates how to create chrome text effect using inkscape.

sticker with a folded / dog ear edge here is a cool tutorial for creating a simple sticker / decal with a folded down edge.

Digg this! | reddit

Here is a great tutorial for creating business cards using Inkscape. This tutorial has two main sections.

The first details how to create a printer ready template from a PDF guide using clones and guides. Using clones in this fashion to create a template in inkscape is awesome; once the template is created correctly, the changes that are made to the original populate thoughout the rest of the tempate!

The second section provides a detailed process for creating a basic business card (with a nifty pinstripe background). This portion of the tutorial is a great introduction into basic fill / stroke techniques, pattern fills and text editing and kerning.

This tutorial is published by worldlabel.com , a maker of labels. Worldlabel are quite active over at the open clip art library producing the “Clipart of the Week” and have also donated a substantial amount of public domain clipart to the library.

Here is a great tutorial providing a detailed and easy to comprehend introduction to creating and manipulating gradients using inkscape. It is aimed at the absolute beginner, but even the seasoned inkscape professional may glean a useful tip from this comprehensive tutorial. It also inadvertently provides a great introduction to the most useful dialog in Inkscape: Fill and Stroke.

Como esse vai ser um blog eclético assim pretendo, não estranhem a mistureba de posts…

Segue abaixo um ótimo site para quem trabalha muito com photoshop, nesse site vc irá encontrar diversos de styles, gradients, shapes e etc… aproveitem:

http://ladyoak.com

abs

Вот что пишут о своём сайте созадтели:
Все интересное что есть в сети для Photoshop и Corel Draw мы собираем у себя на сайте. У нас вы найдете много различных плагинов для фотошоп ( Photoshop ) , кистей для фотошопа ( Photoshop ) , интересные стили и градиенты порадуют вас, красивые шрифты будут полезны любому дизайнеру. Новичок сможет найти у нас уроки фотошоп ( Photoshop ) и мастер-классы. Огромная коллекция клипарта будет интересна для тех спешит сдать заказ клиенту. Архив рамок для фото удовлетворит любого фотоманьяка.
Очень интересно, правда?
Незнаю, так или нет, но заглянув туда я обнаружил что там лежит очень большая коллекция смайликов, гламурные костюмы для монтажа, текстуры, шаблоны, стили, обои, кисти, плугины, и очень оригинальные рамки для фото.
Интересно, что сам сайт называется http://ps-plugin.Ru так же как плагины (или плугины plugin) для фотошопа.