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Upcoming design contests you should enter

Brian — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 15:06:16 +0000

Hurry and enter these cool graphic design contests before it’s too late to submit in ‘09. I’ve hand-picked a few of the most original upcoming design contests out there, just for you!

Get your work in the official Best Designs of 2009 book put out by Design and Design

Young Talent Award via I.D. Mag – worth a cool $10,000

A really cool contest by HUGO that has few rules and a lot of potential

A chance to create art for laptops and get paid for it … sweet!

This contest awards the best use of stock imagery in design

Do you design posters? Enter the poster of the year competition

Image use CC License via Flickr.

15 must-see Photoshop tutorials

Brian — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 15:31:10 +0000

If you love Photoshop, you’ll love it even more after learning the techniques in these tutorials:

Coloring skin and body in Photoshop and how to mimic the natural play of light upon the body.

How to create a professional Twitter background – a quick-and-easy tutorial for customizing your Twitter page.

Remember how fun watercolors used to be? You can recreate a watercolor effect with Photoshop!

Pop art a la Lichtenstein – really cool stuff for the poppy designer!

Very, very cool Photoshop tutorial on how to transform a woman’s photograph into an eerie doll face and more.

How to design a website using the 960 Grid System, an oft-employed web design technique that looks great. This tutorial includes a free 960 GS download so you can quickly deploy an original 960 design.

A tutorial that covers how to make a DVD cover with Photoshop. The techniques used here could also be applied to movie posters.

Dioramas are cool, especially when you combine several images and blur/focus PS techniques to highlight your subject.

Want to master the Photoshop warp tool? This tutorial shows you the way…

Paint splashed over the face of a photographic subject – nice. What’s really neat is that this liquid Photoshop technique can be used in many, many design applications.

Yet another awesome website design tutorial. This has a clean Web 2.0 feel that many designers like to emulate.

A very unique and creative – yet clean and easy-to-follow – website design. The techniques employed here are invaluable.

Learn how to use the Photoshop mask tool to create this model effect from a photo.

When the outer glow blending option doesn’t quite cut it – use these tips to achieve an outstanding glow emanating from your subjects.

Super cool fallen angel tutorial that shows you how to blend a woman and a bird on a textured background.

What are your favorite Photoshop techniques?

Productivity software for graphic designers

Brian — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 21:06:10 +0000

Productivity software is generally described as software that makes businesses (or people) more productive. Simple and self-explanatory. But each niche profession (or personality) has a unique set of tasks that productivity software can automate or otherwise make more efficient. For graphic designers, programs such as Adobe’s Suite (Photoshop, Illustrator, Fireworks, Flash), QuarkXPress, and MS Virtual Basic would all be considered productivity software.

But what about the simple, time-intensive tasks graphic designers tediously undertake? Things such as identifying a font, changing a CSS style, or choosing a complimentary color can take hours away from more “important” tasks such as creating your designs and choosing imagery. The creative can be stifled by the banal.

Some of my favorite productivity software for graphic designers include:

FileZilla — An FTP application that lets you instantly edit server-side files. This comes in handy when you need to make a simple CSS change or swap a banner image.

7-ZIP — Lets you compile, compress, and unpack a myriad of file types that the built-in Windows application can’t. If you work with large file transfers, Z-ZIP and FileZilla are necessities.

IdentifFont — Identify a font by name, style or by answering a series of quick questions.

Open Source CMS systems — Content Management Systems, once put in place, save time and money. When you need to make a portfolio update, you simply fill out a form and upload your file. If you want to change content, add products or do anything else in a flash, there’s probably a CMS that facilitates the action. Learn to design and find a good developer (if you don’t code) for systems such as Wordpress, Joomla! and Drupal. Content is still king, and Open Source CMS is here to stay.

Color scheme generators/color wheels — Here’s a great list of 25 color scheme generators.

Whatsitscolor.com — Upload an image or submit a link to an image and Whatsistscolor generates a color scheme based on the colors in the image. This is valuable if you like the look of a website, brochure or postcard and want to emulate its color scheme. Color Hunter does the same, perhaps slightly cleaner.

Don’t forget that Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, Quark and other software have add-ons, plug-ins, actions and a whole host of other time-saving devices available for free download. Try this list of Photoshop plug-ins for starters.

Of course, software suites such as Microsoft Office and OpenOffice deserve a mention, as well as the many commercial project management applications. For free and simple project tracking, check out FreeMind.

Image CC License Flickr.

Three places every graphic designer should visit

Brian — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 20:47:13 +0000

Paris, New Orleans, Washington, D.C., the Amazon, Egypt, the Far East: There many places graphic designs should visit for inspiration. From ancient Greek and Roman architecture to even more ancient natural wonders of the world, the Earth is a repository of stunning design that masters the combination of form and function.

In tribute, I’m offering three places every graphic designer should visit. I’ve kept them stateside for convenience.

The Florida Keys — Wonderful natural colors on shore and underwater serve as breeding grounds for the imagination. Shapes, lines, and naturally mixed complementary colors are different in the Keys, and you can tap into the design features of a Triggerfish or Dolphin for your next creative piece. The flora and fauna are truly amazing, and if you look you’ll find Native American, Cuban, Caribbean, Spanish, English and other architectural influences throughout the 1,700-plus islands.

Hocking Hills, Ohio — Ohio rarely, if ever, comes up in a conversation about the most beautiful places in the United States, but that’s only because it’s overlooked by being buried in the middle of the Midwest. The natural formations rival those of Appalachia and the Southwest in grandeur if not in scale, as the area features waterfalls, caves, plateau’d vistas, and water running through deep woods that resonates with the grounded graphic designer.

Crater Lake — The power of subtle hues peppered by passionate explosions of color make Crater Lake the ideal spot for learning how Mother Nature does more with less. You can emulate the rich shadows, icy blues, soft whites, earthy terrain patterns and flora color splashes of the greater Crater Lake area in your designs.

What can you add to this list?

Persuasive colors: How color motivates response

Brian — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 20:42:44 +0000

If you haven’t done so already, you should study color psychology in marketing. It’s quite amazing how colors motivate response. It varies among consumer demographics, niche markets, cultures and many other factors. For example, there’s definitely a reason blue is often used on e-commerce websites: It’s thought to create a credible, trustworthy environment. Reds and yellows are found in many fast food restaurants, because they’re thought to encourage customers to eat and run.

Once you’ve … ahem … digested as much color psychology theory as you can stomach, throw it all out the window. Knowing the theories and practicing/testing them is good, but breaking the rules is always better. It isn’t difficult to find out that Heinz made $23 (MILLION???) off of a green ketchup campaign — not because the ketchup was green, but because it wasn’t red. It was out of the ordinary, so it attracted attention. This is the ultimate lesson of color psychology.

If you give people what they expect, you’re unremarkable. If you really want to motivate response through your designs, give them a captivating surprise that intrigues. They’ll respond, because they’ll want to know more.

Image CC license Flickr.

The lost art of typography

Sonia — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 15:00:27 +0000

By Jason Moore

Looking to take your design to the next level?

When pulling a design together you work with the layout, colors and levels of contrast as you tweak or otherwise fine tune the look of the piece. But have you ever gotten everything looking just right, but it just needs that extra something to really shine?

Take a cue from the folks over at I Love Typography and consider how your type might be effecting your look.

“iLT was born from a desire to bring the subject of Typography to the masses. All too often, articles on typography are rather bland and, although informative, do little to elicit feelings of wow.

So, iLT is designed to inspire its readers, to make people more aware of the typography that’s around them. We really cannot escape type; it’s everywhere: on road signs, shampoo bottles, toothpaste, and even on billboard posters, in books and magazines, online … the list is endless, and the possibilities equally so.”

A simple change in font choice, an adjustment in your leading (the space between lines of text) or tracking (the space between letters) can make a huge difference in your reader’s experience and the overall impact and effectiveness of your design.

So, if you feel like your latest project is lacking or if you’re coming down with a case of designer’s block, simply take a look around and see what works for the many types of media that surround us every day. I’m not saying that you should go out and copy everything you find, but take it all in and make it your own. Who knows, maybe your next piece will be what others will start turning to for inspiration!

Jason Moore is an Adobe Certified Expert in Photoshop CS3 and manages the Photoshop Blog, “Jason D. Moore Photography.”