Inspiration

Design Meltdown regularly highlights good design solutions on different types of websites. Recently they highlighted a number of Portfolio sites my students may find inspirational

Also Chris Nielsen is a digital illustrator who uses Illustrator heavily. Sean Hodge of Aiburn interviewed Chris Nielsen about his work, his process and his use of the Adobe CS3 suite particularly Illustrator

 

Using the Fibonacci spiral in a composition

Digital Arts Magazine has published a very good tutorial titled Creating art using the golden ratio. Using the golden rectangle (a rectangle shaped according to the golden ratio) as the canvas the tutorial divided the space into “golden sections” which becomes a spiral.

Not mentioned in the article but related is that the math behind this is based on a the Fibonacci sequence. Yep, that series of numbers that got our hero and heroine excited in the Da Vinci Code.

If you want to explore the Golden ratio and the Fibonacci spiral further check out Wikipedia there is a good article
Image credit: file from the Wikimedia Commons.

 

Popup books

I love popup books and found this 3D ABC on YouTube. As each of the three dimensional letters moved before my eyes I wanted to make them dance to the 30s music.

 

Photoshop and Illustrator goodies

Obsidian Dawn has released some new distressed brushes and I also discovered these 26 Silhouette brushes of people for Adobe Photoshop.

I came across this Photoshop tutorial on Creating A Cool Vintage Collage Design

There are also 10 high res brushes “Messy Spraypaint” brushes from Bittbox and there is some new free vector graphics this time it’s flowers!

Nenodesign made a great find in a garage sale and has scanned the part of a collection of design motifs from a copy right free publication on design

In the process of creating a simple tools icon Veerle demonstrates the use of the Pathfinder and Align tools in Illustrator and has a new tutorial on the Pucker and Bloat Effect

On the tutorial blog you can find out how Make Repeating Seamless Tile Backgrounds with Photoshop which led me to Pixblix which houses ‘useful web graphics’

 

The Peace Symbol turns 50

It is not often we can see the birth and rise of popularity of a symbol.   Time magazine has done a photo essay on the use of the Peace Symbol since it has turned 50. Apparently the the symbol first appeared at a nuclear disarmament rally in April 1958.

“…the little sectioned circle has become so familiar, it feels as if it had no genesis, that it just emerged out of a collective folk culture, like the Star of David or a nursery rhyme. But in fact it can be traced to a single inventor, Gerald Holtom …” the rest of the article is here

 

How Google got its logo

Sonia Zjawinski of Wired has produced this gallery of the various iterations that Ruth Kedar, the graphic designer who developed Google’s logo, went through before settling on the final logo. How Google Got Its Colorful Logo steps through each iteration and Kendar explains the design shifts and reasoning behind them.

 

ArtCloud

ArtCloud is a free service which aims to bring the benefits of online social networking to artists. You can put your folio online, explore and discover art and artists that interest you, share what you find with friends, add art events to your personal calendar and you can also create interest groups to share information and work.

It is free, browser based and the site is easy to use. You can release your work at what level copyright you choose and provides access to Creative Commons license.

 

Art Demonstrations online

For anyone who is interested in developing their drawing skills pay a visit to ArtDemonstrations.com as the site is a blog in which the author collates together links to tutorials, instructional material and art demonstrations on the web.

 

FotoFlexer

FotoFlexer is an free and easy online digital photo editor which enables you to upload an photos and have access to standard image manipulation tools such as crop, rotate, resize, flip and red eye fix.

FotoFlexer takes standard image manipulation a step further and it is possible to add  text draw over an image colour and erase. Smooth or sharpen an image are available and you can apply effects to images such as turning it sepia, inverting the colours, turning the image into an ink stamp, fresco or film grain. Pinching, twirling , bulging and stretching the image is also possible. It is even possible to layer images forming composite pieces.

To keep up with news about this little free web based app there is the FotoFlexer blog too!

 

Design Tutorials and advice

Patrick McNeil of Design Meltdown has written a good series on the Principles of Design McNeil breaks design fundamentals down into the basic principles of emphasis, contrast, balance, alignment, repetition and flow, and then applies the theory to sample sites. Through the analysis of these samples McNeil makes his point.

Collis of PSD Tuts has listed 9 Essential Principles for Good Web Design. In the process Collis discusses leading the eye around the screen by using colour, contrast, position, design elements and the use of white space or negative space. Consistency, navigation, and orientation tricks like bread crumbing are covered including usability. The basics of typography, and layout are also touched on. That is a lot to cover in a short article. After each point, Collis has directed the reader to further sources which are worth delving into at a deeper level.

8 Web Design Mistakes that Developers Make from Wake Up Later briefly lists key attitudes to web design that lead to bad design. It is aimed at developers that turn their hand to designing but members of the general public would find it useful too.