Blog entries tagged design

Drawing Realistically Simple Clouds in Photoshop

Melissa Burnham — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 04:41:39 +0100

I didn’t realize how difficult it would be to draw realistic-looking clouds in Photoshop. I didn’t want to just slap on a picture of some heavenly fluffiness and have to mess with cutting, pasting and arranging layer upon layer of duplicated images. Neither did I want to make Mickey Mouse cartoon clouds that any preschooler could sRead More...

Designing Custom Reflections

Melissa Burnham — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 05:00:00 +0100

There has been an enormously popular trend going around throughout websites, and design in general, but it’s mostly hoarded by Apple. The effect is the reflection, as if the object or image undergoing the effect is sitting upon a sheet of glass or any shiny surface. As I said, this is extremely popular so my little tutorial on how to reproduce it may seem (un)fasRead More...

Web Design that Breaks Borders

Melissa Burnham — Fri, 22 May 2009 05:00:00 +0100

I had an art project once to make a sculpture out a rectangular block of plaster molded from a milk carton. I had to be somewhat delicate with it to make sure it didn’t break into a million pieces, which is mostly the reason why the sculpture retained some of its blockiness. In the end, it had a good, interesting design, but you could still follow the lines around it and decipher its original form.

Now, my forte is not sculpting obviously, but the same principle can be appRead More...

Designing with Type in Mind

Melissa Burnham — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 05:00:00 +0100

One of the geeky aspects of being a graphic designer is memorizing fonts. It’s not easy, but after years of designing, all the fonts just seep into your head like osmosis. Then you’ll be criticizing every website you visit, saying, “Why did they use Copperplate as a header title?!” or “Is that the font from Star Wars?”

There are a few rules and regulatiRead More...

Color Vision

Melissa Burnham — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 05:00:00 +0100

Color deserves some serious respect. We first learn about color as a game when we are kids. It's fun to mix each one to see what kind of mess you'll get next. For designers, color is a fascination that started from that innocent beginning. Little did we know that color would rule our designer lives from then on.

The use of color can be a very delicate art. ItRead More...

The Client - Web Designer Relationship: Communicating with your "Web Guy"

Daphne Hager — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 05:00:00 +0100

The relationship between a business and its web designer is not one to be overlooked. A happy, professional interaction can lead to a fruitful transaction, while a distant or uninvolved relationship will most certainly hinder the potential of your website or web application.

Obviously, we can say be nice. Still, there is so much more. If you would like to get the absolute most out of your website - and there's no reason you shouldn't - you should absolutely heed these notes.
Read More...

Neat Halftone Patterns in Photoshop

Joseph Leon — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 06:00:00 +0100

I learned how to make neat half-tone patterns in Photoshop this week. Here is a step by step guide on how to create neat halftone textures. I will assume you already know how to open Photoshop and make simple operations within Photoshop.

Step 1: Open Photoshop and make a new document about 600x600 pixels. Create a new blank layer.

Step 2: Select the Brush Tool anRead More...

Creative Graphic Barcode Design

Joseph Leon — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 05:00:00 +0100

There are some really interesting new design ideas about barcodes. Those completely boring and dull barcodes are being completely redone. A Japanese company named D-barcode has come up with many interesting twists to the old barcode.

Just to help you out if you do not know any Japanese, when you go to their site just click the top left image of a guy throwing away paper wads. ThisRead More...

The New Illustrator CS4

Joseph Leon — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 05:00:00 +0100

Adobe just came out with Illustrator CS4. The new Illustrator doesn't impress you with a plethora of new tools or flashy gimmicks. It instead improves upon usability and helping the user get more accomplished. It is all about workflow and streamlining your projects. CS4 is to graphic design what windshield wipers are for Read More...

HiMA Interactive Strategies '08 - Helping Us Help You

Daphne Hager — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 05:00:00 +0100

Yesterday, Matt and I hit up the Houston Interactive Marketing Association’s Interactive Strategies Conference at the Angelika Theater downtown. The event ended up being an awesome learning experience, which means good news for our clients.

We stayed in the SEO/SEM track for the entire day and heard four top search engine-marketing gurus spill on vertical search, SEO for sites, techRead More...

Joomla! TotW: 01 - Strip Formatting When Pasting

Greg Rivera — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 05:00:00 +0100

You may have noticed that when you copy content and paste it into the back-end of Joomla!, it also copies the formatting of the content. This can cause inconsistencies with the rest of the content on your site.

To avoid this you must first strip any formatting from the content before pasting it into the back-end of Joomla! To do this, just follow these steps:

Open a plain textRead More...

New Website

Matthew Hager — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 05:00:00 +0100

We finally have built ourselves a new website! We have been so busy working on client websites, ours got pretty neglected. We are planning on adding many new features that will help our clients and our company alike.

We will be adding live support chat, customer portal, tutorials, and a support ticket system... so check back soon! Please leave us feedback on what you think about the new siteRead More...

Creating a Page in Photoshop and Slicing It

Matthew Hager — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 05:00:00 +0100

Here is a screencast I made on creating a single page in Photoshop and how to slice it. This is the first screencast in a series. Later in part 2 I am going to show you how to take the sliced up image and create a HTML and CSS page out of it. In part 3 I will show you how to take the HTML and CSS page and turn it into a template for Joomla! and WordPress.

Check back in the coming weeks for the rest of the screencasts in this series.

CSSEdit - The Way Editing CSS Should Be

Matthew Hager — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 06:00:00 +0100

I recently purchased the MacHeist bundle priced at $49.00 because I needed a copy of Snapz Pro X which was included. By itself Snapz Pro X runs $69.00 so this was a steal. I decided I would try out some of the other software that came in the bundle and found CSSEdit. As soon as CSSEdit opened I could tell it was meant to be.

CSSEdit takRead More...