Posts Tagged "Smashing Magazine"

Modern Art Movements To Inspire Your Logo Design * By Daniel Eckler It’s always nice to go to a bookstore, grab a book of logo designs, sit down, inhale that new-book smell and absorb the goodness. But knowing where all of these designs, fonts and creative elements have come from is also good. In this article, we look at modern art movements and a series of diverse logos inspired by those movements. You may be surprised by how easily these colors, shapes and strokes can be adapted to logo design. Have a look, see how logo design works and maybe even draw inspiration for your own creativity. via Modern Art Movements To Inspire Your Logo Design - Smashing Magazine.

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Ultimate Guide To Using WordPress For A Portfolio * By Cameron Chapman * April 29th, 2009 WordPress is often thought of as just a blogging platform. But it’s capable of so much more. Even WordPress’ documentation includes an entire section on using WordPress as a content management system. Because WordPress is such an easy-to-use platform, it makes sense to consider using it as a platform to build just about any kind of website, a portfolio website included. Whether you’re a photographer, graphic designer, Web designer or any other kind of visual artist, WordPress makes an excellent starting point for developing your online portfolio. And with the wealth of plug-ins and ready-made themes available, you can usually get a perfectly presentable website up and running in a matter of hours. via Ultimate Guide To Using WordPress For A Portfolio - Smashing Magazine.

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Smashing Highlights 2009 * By Smashing Editorial * December 29th, 2009 2009 was a very successful year for Smashing Magazine. It was a year of ambitious goals and an intense time schedule, which brought many changes over the past year. In 2009 we published more posts than ever (on average, 8 posts per week). We broadened our areas of interest: for instance, we explored freelancing and the business side of web development, but also tackled user interface design and mobile web design. We also discovered new formats, such as the “Global Web Design” series and Q&A-Sessions — unfortunately, the latter (the Ask SM series with Chris Coyier) lasted only a couple of months. Smashing-128 in Smashing Highlights 2009 None of this would have been possible without the tremendous support of our authors, contributors, and editorial staff. We express sincere gratitude to them for all the ideas and hard work they’ve put into articles published here on Smashing Magazine. We also want to thank you, the readers, for your attention, criticism, ideas, suggestions, emails, tweets, and links over the past year. Smashing Magazine is driven by your support which is why we are always listening to you and we truly appreciate every message we receive. We have tried our best to improve the quality of our articles so as to increase their value for designers and developers. In this post, we’ll review what has happened on Smashing Magazine over the past year: smashing highlights, setbacks, and small sensations of 2009 — which we present in a month by month timeline. You can compare the highlights of 2009 with those of 2008 or 2007 (which, by the way, include links to some really useful articles). via Smashing Highlights 2009 - Smashing Magazine.

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50 Must-Have Photoshop Brushes * By Daved Brosche * November 10th, 2008 * Graphics by Daved Brosche Having a good collection of Photoshop brushes is essential for any designer. There is certainly no shortage of Photoshop brushes on the Web these days. The problem with Photoshop brushes isn’t in finding brushes, but in finding quality brushes. Below you’ll find a collection of quality brushes that every designer should find handy. These 50 Photoshop brush sets are ones I find myself using over and over in a variety of projects. This collection is the result of years’ worth of downloads, trials and experiments. I hope this list helps you find some new Photoshop brushes that improve your collection. via 50 Must-Have Photoshop Brushes - Smashing Magazine.

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Unveiling Photoshop Masks * By Thomas Giannattasio * December 17th, 2009 Design is a fluid and shifting process in which layers are constantly modified and tweaked. As complexity builds, so does the need for preserving data in a flexible way. Learning non-destructive editing techniques helps you produce documents that bend along with your creativity. Photoshop Masks are the cornerstone of this process. Not only do they preserve important pixel data, but they allow for the creation of flexible interface elements as well. In this article, we’ll explore the technical aspects and creative advantages of incorporating masks into your workflow. Photoshop offers five methods of masking: Pixel Masks, Vector Masks, Quick Masks, Clipping Masks and Clipping Paths, all of which define pixel opacities without affecting the original data. Each of them has its own pros and cons, and knowing which method to use is extremely important for creating clean, flexible and properly masked layers. via Unveiling Photoshop Masks - Smashing Magazine.

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50 Beautiful Free Icon Sets For Your Next Design * By Vitaly Friedman * December 14th, 2009 Round-ups of beautiful and useful icons are almost legendary here, on Smashing Magazine. While some readers complain about the annoying “list”-style of some of our articles, we are confident that useful round-ups of relevant resources are very valuable and useful for designers. This is why over months we collect useful links and then present them in posts in the magazine. via 50 Beautiful Free Icon Sets For Your Next Design - Smashing Magazine.

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50 Fresh Useful Icon Sets For Your Next Design * By Paul Andrew * June 7th, 2009 Beautiful and free icon sets always come in handy. Used properly and moderately, icons can be helpful to provide users with memorable metaphors and illustrations that would provide a visual support for otherwise unspectacular text blocks. For instance, in web-applications memorable icons can be very helpful as they can make it easier for users to memorize how to perform some specific task or where to find some specific functions. This large collection of recently released icon sets is supposed to help designers improve their designs on their web-sites and in web-applications. All icon sets are free. Please read the license agreements carefully before using the icons — the license can change from time to time. The icons provided below may turn out to be useful and helpful in corporate designs, portfolios, blogs, magazines and in Web-applications. Please feel free to suggest more icon sets in the comments to this post. via 50 Fresh Useful Icon Sets For Your Next Design - Smashing Magazine.

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The Ultimate Collection Of Maya 3D Tutorials * By Vailancio Rodrigues * August 27th, 2009 * Tutorials Ever wonder how animated films like Ice Age are made? Maya is the answer. Maya (or Autodesk Maya, having recently been acquired by Autodesk) is powerful 3D modeling, animation, texturing, rendering and visual effects software. Maya was developed for the film industry and is now being used for design, visual effects, games, film, animation, visualization and simulation. The most significant thing that sets it apart from other 3D packages — and the reason it is used so widely in these major industries — is that it is highly customizable. Big studios can write custom code to suit their productions using the software’s development kit. This makes Maya highly adaptable to any workflow. Below, we feature tutorials that address most Maya-related topics for beginners and advanced users. These tutorials cover almost everything Maya has to offer, from modeling to the final rendering process. via The Ultimate Collection Of Maya 3D Tutorials - Smashing Magazine.

40+ Excellent Freefonts For Professional Design * By Vitaly Friedman * November 8th, 2007 * Design, Fonts * 283 Comments Advertisement The importance of typography in design can’t be overestimated. The accuracy, precision and balance of geometric forms can give letters the elegance and sharpness they deserve. Besides, elegant fonts can help to convey the message in a more convenient way. In fact, while there are many excellent professional fonts (we’ve presented some of them in our article 80 Beautiful Typefaces For Professional Design) there are literally thousands of free low-quality fonts which you would never use for professional designs. via 40 Excellent Freefonts For Professional Design - Smashing Magazine.

Fresh Free High-Quality Icon Sets * By Paul Andrew * September 16th, 2009 The most important aspect of designing an individual icon is that it has to be instantly recognizable, you have to know its function, and you need to know exactly what it is. If you are designing a set, the actual design becomes a lot harder, the designer has to face two initial challenges: each icon they design has to be individual and distinctive from the other, and, they also have to have similar features to show that they are related, completing the set. Not an easy task. Perhaps that is why we love those small indispensible graphical images so much, it’s an appreciation of the hard work, creativity and talent of the designer. And to think, all those hours spent in front of a laptop crafting these little marvels, and then, allowing everyone else to download them for free. To all icon designers we say: “thank you”. In this post we present a round-up of fresh high-quality icons that are available for free download and (sometimes only for personal) use. Please make sure to read license agreements before using icons in your designs – they can change from time to time. You may be interested in the following related posts: * 50 Fresh Useful Icon Sets For Your Next Design * 50 Free High-Quality Icon Sets via Fresh Free High-Quality Icon Sets - Smashing Magazine.

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