In 2008, this website celebrated a number of exciting milestones. In May, I officially launched this site as a means to display my personal portfolio to prospective employers. At the time, I had just lost my job and I was looking to start fresh in a new design job somewhere. As time went on, the focus of this site changed from a means to showcase my portfolio to a platform to share my opinions and design resources with other designers. Since then, I've published some really great articles, freebies and tutorials but since this site is relatively new I decided to review some of my favorite posts just in case some of you guys missed them. Thanks again and I hope everyone has a wonderful New Year!
Recently, I had the opportunity to try out Filter Forge, a plugin for Adobe Photoshop. There are a lot of Photoshop filters and plug-ins out there. Some are good, some are bad and some are just plain awesome! Filter Forge falls into the "just plain awesome" category. I was so impressed with the software that I decided to contact the developers and give away a free copy on my website to help spread the word.
This week I had the opportunity to interview one of my favorite illustrators and tutorial writers Ryan Putnam (AKA Rype) of Vectips. Some of you may immediately recognize Ryan from his website, others may know him from some of the amazing tutorials he has written over at VECTORTUTS or even from some of the many illustrations he has for sale on iStockPhoto. I have been very impressed with Ryan's work as well as his blog and I highly recommend that you guys take a look at his website as well as his tutorials. He has a lot to offer some one looking to learn more about Illustrator or illustration in general. As always, scroll down to read more about Ryan and when you're done, feel free to connect with his using the social network of your choosing.
As you guys know, each month I post a review of all the things that I've been up to on this site. December was another great month, I was able to get a lot of things done in what seemed to be a very short amount of time; especially with the Holidays coming at the end. This month I was able to post quite a few articles, tutorials, freebies and of course contests in addition to some other exciting projects that I am working on. So, if you missed anything because of the holidays, please feel free to review some of the things I've been up to this month.
There are a lot of ways to set up a Wordpress theme. As a designer, my first instinct is to open up Fireworks or Photoshop and start designing a custom theme. After that, I cut it up into CSS and HTML. Then, I bring it into Wordpress and convert it into a fully functioning blog and CMS. This however can take up quite a bit of time and money depending on your knowledge of HTML/CSS. That's why many designers have begun to rely on premium Wordpress themes to get their work done faster.
There are a lot of Wordpress theme sites out there. If you haven't checked out Elegant Themes already and are an avid user of themes than I would definitely suggest that you take a look.
Happy Holidays everyone! Today, I am announcing the winner of the two copies of Knoll Light Factory that I'm giving away on this website. Before I announce the winner however I'd first like to thank Digital Anarchy for graciously offering this wonderful Photoshop plugin to my readers. I quickly fell in love with Knoll Light Factory and think you will too. To find out who the winner is, watch the video. If you were selected, you should be receiving an email from the people at Digital Anarchy within the next few days. If you weren't one of the lucky winners, please consider purchasing a copy of the software for yourself. This is one of those purchases you really won't regret! I hope you guys have a Merry Christmas, a Happy Hanukah and a wonderful New Year!
With just 3 days until Christmas, I wanted to post a quick reminder that there are only 4 days left to purchase all 300 premium high resolution textures in the Colorburned Shop for the amazing price of just $15. That's just 5 cents a texture. To redeem this discount, simply enter the discount code HAPPYHOLIDAYS during checkout. This discount code will deduct $55.40 USD off the original price. So go ahead and purchase these textures today. The price will go back up on December 26th!
This week I had the pleasure of interviewing Lisa Sabin-Wilson of E.Webscapes Design Studio. E.Webscapes is a blog design studio with a huge client base of over 1,000. She's an experienced blog designer and author of the "Wordpress for Dummies" book. In this interview Lisa offers some fantastic advice as well as some very interesting insights into how she got her start as a designer. Scroll down and learn more about Lisa and when you're done, feel free to visit her website and to connect with her using the social network of your choosing.
If you have ever tried to create arrows in Illustrator you probably know that there are a lot of ways it can be done. If you've ever explored some of the menus in Illustrator you probably have noticed quite a few options that allow you to create arrows rather quickly. The problem is that each option has some pros and cons. For instance, if you need a quick arrow, you can create one from scratch using basic shapes. This is pretty easy to do but if you need a lot of them it can become rather inefficient. Another way to do it is to do so by adding effects to paths. You can do this by going to Effects > Stylize > Add Arrowheads. This is a fairly decent way of adding arrowheads to lines but this too can be time-consuming and cumbersome if you are adding arrowheads to lots of lines in an illustration. You may also have noticed a couple of art brush sets that ship with Illustrator. These work great unless you need your arrows to have corners tiles. As you may have noticed, art brushes don't do corners that well. Pattern brushes however can. That's why I decided to create a set of 10 arrowhead pattern brushes for Illustrator. These brushes will enable you to quickly draw arrows in Illustrator with very few draw backs. I hope you enjoy them and can use them in your designs.
I love giving away free stuff on this site and this week I've got 2 copies of Knoll Light Factory to give away to you guys. Knoll Light Factory is a plug-in for Adobe Photoshop that allows you to design photo-realistic or enhanced lighting effects and can be used to add flare or sparkle to any photograph or image. Knoll Light Factory was originally designed by Photoshop co-creator John Knoll to generate Photon Torpedoes for the Star Trek movies. So if you're looking to create some amazing flares or effects in your designs, Knoll Light Factory is really what you need.The folks at Digital Anarchy were kind enough to donate 2 copies of this amazing plug-in to you guys just in time for the Holidays. So please leave a comment for a chance to win this great tool for Photoshop.
