Whether you are just starting out or a seasoned veteran these tools, tutorials, lists and other resources are great sites for any web designer. Organized into helpful categories (design inspiration, CSS resources, web design guides, color tools, free fonts and more) this collection not only has useful resources but also categorized links to other lists with 100s more. If you’re not a designer but still need to create sites you still might be best off spending a few bucks on a web page creation tool with a simple GUI than hiring a designer but can still use the first section below and these great wallpapers to get design inspiration!
With the new free online version of Photoshop in play now is as good a time as any to brush up on your Photoshop skills and learn some new Photoshopping tricks. Photoshop Express will work for all kinds of computers and browsers so no more excuses not to get started right away!
SmashingMagazine just came out with a great Top 60 List of Photoshop Video Tutorials that are all over the map. Some of them are aimed at teaching you a particular trick or tool and others illustrate the general processes for accomplishing specific goals in Photoshop. Helpful thumbnails/screenshots are provided next to the links.
These 33 Body Enhancement Photoshop Tutorials are a great way to get started on editing human forms. They range from minute details associated with particular body parts and organized by type (eyes, hair, teeth, etc…) to general approaches to improving features on people using Photoshop.
Most of us never consider that a customs official could confiscate our laptops as we travel across borders, copy information from it and return it to us hours (or days or weeks) later - but it happens. C|net has created a handy guide for frequent travelers who are concerned about this issue and wish to protect their personal or professional data from prying eyes.
OK, so we’ve all probably considered what it would be like to be one of those poor saps who falls victim to online con artists - but how many of us have thought about what it would be like to think like one of these con artists? This ‘guide’ takes you on a brief and somewhat disturbing tour of how to approach cons and respond as a con artist would on the internet. Strange but interesting.
In most cases people would like to think they would at least know if they had been hacked even if they were unable to prevent it in the first place. However, many people remain completely oblivious to the fact that things as private and important as their email have become compromised. MakeUseOf has created a guide to making digital ‘tripwires’ so you’ll know if you have been hacked.
Before jumping into more Photoshop tutorials it is always inspiring to see some of the possibilities out there. This collection of animal/fruit hybrids is a great set of examples showing the power and potential of Photoshop.
Sometimes you really want to pop in a reflection into a body of water that simply refused to cooperate while you were taking a photograph or otherwise Photoshopping a scene. It is surprisingly easy to do this in a convincing way. As with many Photoshopping processes you just can’t become too obsessed with any single step or appearance along the way - in the end it will look great!
This next tutorial is a bit more involved and has more artistic than strictly practical applications. Still, if you are interested in creating any kind of space-themed logo, website or other graphic design this kind of thing can really come in handy for creating original backgrounds. Here is the tutorial on how to create great space explosions virtually from scratch.
If you have to stare at something for 8 or more hours a day, why not make it something interesting? Sure there are tons of places to find wallpaper on the web … but a lot of them are hard to navigate and highly disorganized. Divided into five helpful categories, with introductory descriptions and sample screenshots, here are over twenty of the best collections, communities and other resources on the web for finding excellent desktop wallpaper. Continue Reading »
This is more than just an absurd design tutorial video series - it is an epic saga any design geek can appreciate. In his latest example he speaks in a fully deadpan voice as Donnie describes how you can impress your new girlfriend by Photoshopping a go-kart door into your house to show how much your first date meant. Sound stupid? Well, so did Napolean Dynamite but that was a smash hit on the big screen. Who knew? Well, just watch and see above … then if you’re as hooked as you should be watch the rest of the series below. Continue Reading »
SmashingMagazine recently featured an article on award-winning print designs and reopened the age-old discussion of print versus web design. Of course, any designer knows that design is design whatever the format but transitioning between these two seemingly similar media is not as simple as it would seem.
Both print and web design are of course concerned with readability, hierarchy of information and other essential elements common to most kinds of design (even beyond print and web). SmashingMagazine also adds that grid-based design and a liberal use of white space are parallel trends in both contemporary print and web design.
There, however, most of the similarities end. Print and web design differ in terms of navigation, fixed versus fluid layouts, response time, resolution, canvas size, multimedia, interactivity and many other ways. The essential differences can be summarized as follows:
Print design is based on letting the eyes walk over the information, selectively looking at information objects and using spatial juxtaposition to make page elements enhance and explain each other.
Web design functions by letting the hands move the information (by scrolling or clicking); information relationships are expressed temporally as part of an interaction and user movement.
Of course the differences don’t end there and also extend to issues of resolution, applicable image file types, fonts and so on - with the computer reading experience being highly varied as compared to the exceedingly controlled experience of reading a fixed-format, equally sized and homogenized printed product. Does this mean web design is more difficult to control? Perhaps, but viewed the other way around it takes the focus off of the ‘finished product’ aspect of print design and provides more freedom and positive variability in a well-wrought, flexible and adaptable web design.
