Someone emailed me and asked how did I do the illustration background on Next2Friends. It inspired me to write this article. He asked "Did I do it in Photoshop or Illustrator?" Well, it is a mixture of both. First I created the artwork in Illustrator, then polished it in Photoshop. Here I will unveil all my secret techniques. This tutorial includes 9 Photoshop techniques that will show you how to add more depth, color, contrast, and texture into your vector art.
What do you think of the recent PayPal redesign and the new PayPal branding? In my opinion, I think the new design is very unprofessional and lack of consistency. My very first reaction to the new PayPal redesign was "What happened to PayPal? Got hacked!?" PayPal has made such a drastic change that it doesn't even look or feel like PayPal (the PayPal that we used to). I think it will take us a while to adapt to the new design. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying change is bad. Changes are good if the results are positive. Here are my thoughts on the new PayPal design...
Last tutorial, I showed you how to design a watercolor effect menu in Photoshop. This tutorial I will show you how to slice up the menu design (step by step) and put them together with CSS. Most of you probably know how to code a horizontal or vertical CSS list menu. Now let's take it to the next level — code an advanced (un-typical) list menu utilizing the CSS position property.
This is a two-part tutorial on how to create an artistic and un-typical CSS list menu as seen on Web Designer Wall. In the first part (this article), I will show you how to design a watercolor effect menu in Photoshop. Then in next tutorial, I will show you how to slice the menu and code in CSS. If you need some inspiration on creating an artistic menu, visit our previous post on artistic websites. Ready? Let's begin Part 1. (Update: Part 2 is ready - Advanced CSS Menu)
Don't miss out the hottest upcoming design event, Future of Web Design 2007, New York, USA. It will take place November 7, 2007 at the Javits Convention Center, New York (read the venue page for details). There will be numbers of great web designers sharing their thoughts on the future of web design. Some of the speakers include: Joshua Davis, Jeffrey Zeldman, Andy Clarke, Khoi Vinh, David Martin, and Elliot Jay Stocks (see the speakers page for more). The conference pass is $195 and student pass is just $50. Visit the Future of Web Design official site for more information.
There are several thousands of WordPress plugins in the WordPress community and new plugins are coming out everyday. However, not all plugins are useful, in fact some are very bad written that will mess up your site or harm your WordPress installation. So how do you know which plugins are right for you? Well, here is a list of plugins that I have used or played around before. Hopefully you will something useful here.
WordPress was originally created as a weblog or blog platform. But now WordPress has grown so powerful that you can use it to create any type of website and use it as a Content Management System (CMS). In this article, I'm going to share some of my WordPress tricks with you on how to make a better WordPress theme. I'm not a programmer nor developer, so I will focus more on the frontend development. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that WordPress has made it so easy that even a non-programmer (designer like me) can build a wonderful website. My WordPress sites included: N.Design Studio, Best Web Gallery, Web Designer Wall, and some free WordPress Themes.