Hi,

I am a Web and Graphic designer living in Colorado and have been asked by the folks at reencoded to write some articles for their blog.  I’ll be doing some pieces on Photoshop and web design. In my tuts I will be original and always include two or more downloadable full-sized images or practical code demos that you can hopefully use for something right “out-of-the-box.”

Today I’m going to begin a Photoshop tutorial on textures and blend modes. This technique is one I use often when designing web graphics. I’m going to focus a lot on what’s happening rather than just re-tracing the steps and mouse clicks I used to create a single image. Hopefully, this will allow you to understand the process to the extent you can create your own images and not just an identical copy of mine.

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Adobe released details this week about Creative Suite 4, its first update to the impressive lineup of design and editing tools since Adobe CS3 launched about 17 months ago. In no particular order, here are some articles from around the blogosphere. Continue Reading

Admit it, effects are cool. Drop shadows, gradients, glows, bevels and the like can be a lot of fun and are ridiculously easy to apply to your designs. However, once you discover the powerful effects waiting inside today’s graphics suites, it’s easy to get carried away. Take a look at the sample logo below:

It’s a pretty simple, text-based (font: Segoe IE) logo with only 2 colors. In some cases, this logo may be exactly what the client is looking for, but for most applications (especially the increasingly bold and bright internet) you need something that pops off the page a bit. The answer? Effects. Continue Reading

Right now, artistic designs are very hot! With CSS becoming the standard, designers are becoming much more important part of the internet world, allowing the awesome effects that were once reserved for print designs.

This tutorial will teach you how to quickly create a “grunge” effect for your photos using ONLY Photoshop. And while you might not need a grunge image, it will show you how to create a vector mask which will give you a tool to create numerous effects easily.

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Opinions are bound to vary on such a crucial and potentially controversial subject but … when do you think a design is done? Sure, there are goals to be met, clients to be appeased, but at the end of the day it is the designer who decides when something is actually finished. Is it alright to simply meet the expectations of someone else or do you need to have your own goals continually in mind as well?
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