Wednesday Design Digest
Posted by Jennifer Farley | July 31, 2008 | Leave A Comment
Ok, it’s Thursday but I did start this post on Wednesday but called away to more pressing matters, like sleep. Anyhoooo, here’s some links to some design inspiration, design resources and some interesting visual oddbits!
Super duper post of 50 Movie Posters by Thomas at Sharebrain.
Same Photo Twenty Years Apart - This is pretty bizzare and cool.
The amazing body painting of Guido Daniele.
Create your own fonts online with Fontstruct. It’s free and the editor is pretty simple to use.
Six Move Tool Tips For Photoshop
Posted by Jennifer Farley | July 29, 2008 | Leave A Comment
So naturally enough, the main function of the Move Tool in Photoshop is to move objects around the document window. It’s basically your index finger for pushing stuff around, but by combining it with some modifier keys you can add to it’s functionality. Here’s six MoveTool tips to speed up your workflow.
- With the Move tool selected, hold down the Ctrl (Win) / Command (Mac) key to temporarily turn on the “Auto Select Layer” feature. Once Auto Select Layer is turned on, just click in the image area over the desired layer to select it, without having to go to the Layers palette. To select additional layers, add the Shift key while clicking.
- To quickly select the Move tool while another tool is selected, hold down the Ctrl (Win) / Cmd (Mac) key while another tool is selected. Releasing the key returns you to the previous tool.
This shortcut does NOT work for the Pen, Path and Direct Selection, Shape and Hand tools and the Slice and Slice select tools.
- Selecting multiple layers (or selecting linked layers) in the Layers panel using the Move Tool allows them be aligned and distributed by clicking the icons in the Options bar at the top of the screen.
- Holding down Alt (Win) /Option (Mac) makes a copy of a layer while moving it in the image area with the Move tool. The cursor will change to a double-arrow when you hold down the modifier keys.
- On an image with multiple layers, right mouse-click (Win) / Control (Mac) in the image area to select a layer from the context sensitive list.
- To easily find the centre of any layer (except the background layer), select the Move tool and click on the “Show Transform Controls” option in the Options bar.
Design Resources: iStockphoto Freebies
Posted by Jennifer Farley | July 24, 2008 | Leave A Comment
A couple of nice freebies for your image library, courtesy of iStockphoto.
Design Resources : Vector Magic
Posted by Jennifer Farley | July 23, 2008 | 4 Comments
If you haven’t come across the Vector Magic website before, and you’re interested in creating vector graphics, then go and visit it now! You can upload your rasterised images to the site and they will be converted to a good quality vector. It’s particularly useful if you have a logo in jpg or gif format and you need to get it into a vector form. It saves you quite a bit of time over trying to reproduce the same thing in Illustrator.
In the example below you can see a scanned image of a monkey (yes that’s supposed to be a monkey!) I drew on a piece of paper. On the right hand side is the vector created on the vector magic website.
When you upload your image you’ll find there are several settings you can choose from to get the best quality vector. There are various price plans available for using the service and there is also a desktop version available. If you find you’re converting a lot of bitmaps to vector, I think it would be worth paying for this service.
Photoshop Tutorial: Type Effects with a transparent overlay
Posted by Jennifer Farley | July 22, 2008 | Leave A Comment
This is a quick tutorial to show you how to use a Layer Effect in Photoshop with a little bit of a spin. As you might know, the Layer Effects allow you to easily add things like drop shadows, glows, strokes and more. This method uses the same layer effects but plays around with blending modes and the Fill Opacity.
- Open a file and add some type. I’m using a font called Base02 – quite a grungy font here. It doesn’t matter what colour you choose because we’re getting rid of the colour anyway.
- Double-click on the name of the Type Layer in the Layers palette. This opens up the Layer Style dialog box. I’ve added a drop shadow and a red stroke to the text.
- And now for the magic bit…. Click on the Blending Options Default option while still in the Layer Styles dialog box. Under Advanced Blending, reduce the Fill Opacity to 0 – this removes the colour of the text completely while holding onto any effects you’ve applied. Pretty cool.
This technique is not just for Type layers either. It works with all layers. The joy of making the fill transparent is that you don’t have to worry about background colours. Here’s a few more examples created using the steps above.
Wednesday Design Digest
Posted by Jennifer Farley | July 16, 2008 | Leave A Comment
Here’s a collection of articles and blog posts that I found interesting/funny/inspiring/useful. All are related to design in some shape or form and are not necessarily new.
Designers Tell How Music Influences Creativity from HOW magazine.
It’s, ehm, art, apparently. Minimilist Design Packaging on the Dieline blog.
Inspirational Eye Candy on the Best of Phirebrush 2005 website. There’s also links to the best of 06 and 07.
A List Apart has tons of good articles, including this one. Designing Through The Storm.
A short article on the use of the hyphen. Using Dashes in Typography
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About
Hi, my name is Jennifer Farley and I am a designer and design instructor based in Ireland. Read more about Laughing Lion Design .
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