I created this Halloween-inspired slightly creepy montage (entitled Scarred) for the October 2008 Graphics.com/Photos.com Challenge. In this monthly contest, users create designs using the images provided (this month they provided background textures) plus whatever other images/graphics you like.
My Work: Scarred
Interestingness
There's nothing like photos for visual stimulation and relaxation. I also like viewing photos to inspire colors, shapes and composition for my design projects. Interestingness (interes.tingness.com) is a daily photo wall of randomly generated interesting photographic inspiration from Flickr. Neat!
Threadless
Threadless.com is an on-going tee shirt design competition. Anyone can submit their design and if it gets a high enough score (and is chosen by the Threadless crew) it will be printed and sold from the site. Threadless.com has many unusual, unique, fascinating and sometimes disturbing designs. T-shirts, the contemporary art form.
Here are a few designs that caught my eye. I especially love the minimalist grace of the fox illustration.
Welcome to My Portfolio
My portfolio is officially up online. Whew, finally! I've been busy with other projects but this has been on the back burner for too long. So I invite you to browse my portfolio.
When Post-Its Aren't Enough
I read organizing books for fun. (Yes, a bit nerdy but I really do enjoy it.) Julie Morgenstern is one of my favorite authors so I was excited when I got her latest book from the library: When Organizing Isn't Enough, SHED Your Stuff, Change Your Life. The cover design is pretty boring but what got me the most was the pitiful post-it notes. So here's how to create some better post-it notes:
- Create a new document in Photoshop.
- Draw a square with the rectangle Shape tool and fill it with light yellow.
- With the Convert Point tool (under the Pen), manipulate the 4 corners of the shape. Turn up the corners and add movement.
- Duplicate the yellow shape layer and move the copy below the original layer. Fill the copied layer with light gray. Choose Edit > Free Transform (Cmd-T) and expand the copy by 110%.
- With the Convert Point tool, manipulate the gray shape so the bottom corners show and top corners are hidden beneath the yellow post-it layer.
- Duplicate the gray shape layer and rasterize it. Apply Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur of 5 px. Turn off the original shape layer. (I always keep the original vector just in case.)
- Add a light yellow to medium yellow gradient above the yellow post-it layer and on the fly-out menu on the Layers panel, choose Create Clipping Mask.
And the book has been interesting, helpful and well-written so far. I just couldn't help commenting on the design.
My Work: Fire in the South
Fire in the South 2 is a 32 page magazine/report on (obviously) fire in the South. It presents the comprehensive research of the Southern Wildfire Risk Assessment to legislators and fire professionals. The first Fire in the South report wasn't professionally designed and it showed. For this second report, my clients wanted a punchy, colorful magazine look that emphasized fire and fire colors.
I've been working pretty intensely on this project for the last week and a half. I've just sent off the final proofs to my client today. Yeah!
Blue Soul
Nature does it best: gorgeous color combinations and delicate tints of color. From fotocommunity galerie.
Web Inspiration: Background Patterns
I like how these background patterns add subtle texture and color while supporting the overall page design. The websites:
www.mousetominx.co.uk
www.kylberghansson.se
www.lotusphotography.co.uk
Tricks for Selecting Table Strokes
I've been doing a lot of tables for a report I'm working on. These two tricks came in handy for easy selection when applying strokes.
1. To stroke only the outside or only the inside of a cell or cells:
- Select the cells you'd like to stroke
- To stroke the outside of those cells, double click any inside line (turns inside lines off)
- To stroke the inside of those cells, double click any outside line (turns outside lines off)
2. To stroke only one side:
- Select the cells you'd like to stroke
- Triple-click any highlighted blue line (turns all lines off)
- Select the side you'd like to stroke
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
