47 CSS Tips & Tricks To Take Your Site To The Next Level

CSS is a wonderful language for presenting web pages. It’s not too difficult to learn, though like most things, it does have a learning curve. Where many people seem to get tripped up is in specific solutions to specific problems. Fortunately there’s a good chance that someone before you has… read more

Ultimate Photoshop Tutorials to Enhance Your Skills

Ultimate Photoshop Tutorials to Enhance Your Skills

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How to Make an Inspired, Golden Painting in Illustrator

In this tutorial we will travel back in time to recreate the painting style of one of the most outstanding symbolism artists – Gustav Klimt. His works are full of warm golden colors, simple ornaments, irregular patterns, natural symbols, and asymmetric shapes. We will work to produce this style with… read more

17 Logo Design Case Studies

Although there are a lot of quality tutorials available for designing logos, case studies from real-world projects can prove to be even more valuable as a learning resource. Case studies are excellent for showing more of the entire process, the steps that are involved, and putting it into the context… read more

15 CSS3 Navigation and Menu Tutorials and Techniques

CSS3 is slowly but surely creeping into mainstream web design, more and more designers are using it, albeit in small doses, but it is certainly gathering momentum. It really is an exciting time for web design.
A few weeks back we published an article called 20 CSS3 Tutorials and Techniques… read more

50 Hot New Tutorials (Part2)

Tutorials can often be your greatest source of inspiration when trying to design that project you have been putting off. In this post, I have rounded up a collection of very useful tutorials from around the web from the month of February. You’ll find everything from a super easy neon… read more

Best of the Week #110

It’s time for our best news of this week. We have a lot of graphic and web design, a bit of architecture, ads, tech news, awesome reads and other crazy stuff! So take a look at the links we’ve selected for your inspiration and to keep you updated about what’s… read more

Plasticine Art Showcase: Shape Your Imagination

Do you remember?.. The first time you played with pieces of modeling clay, melting them in your hands and going deeper and deeper into the colourful plasticine world where your imagination was the only limit. Since the 19th century, when Franz Kolb and William Harbutt independently of each other invented… read more

How to Create a Realistic Fountain Pen – Screencast

How to Create a Realistic Fountain Pen – Screencast

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90+ Smoking Cinema 4D Tutorials and Best Techniques

Cinema 4D is a 3-D application that is popular amongst matte painters in film production, largely due to the BodyPaint 3D functionality. It is equally popular amongst motion graphics artists, thanks to its excellent integration with compositing application pipelines, and a very artist-friendly, customizable workflow and interface. It has been… read more

45 Fresh Useful JavaScript and jQuery Techniques and Tools

Yes, this is another round-up of fresh and useful Javascript techniques, tools and resources. But don’t close the tab yet, as you might find this one very useful. In this selection we present calendars, forms, buttons, navigation, debugging, optimization and compatibility tables as well as handy resources and tools.

We also… read more

Advance Level PHP Tutorials & Scripts

Advance Level PHP Tutorials & Scripts

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How To Create a Steel Wristwatch in Corel Draw

In this tutorial we will learn how to create a steel wristwatch using Corel Draw. The basic technique used in this tutorial is the x, y coordinates position. The x, y coordinates position is very important to obtain symmetrical results. We will also use some gradients to create the steel… read more

Quick Tip: Working with the Group Selection Tool

A quick look at the little-known, but very useful Group Selection tool in Adobe Illustrator. This tool allows you to select individual object within groups, as well as sub groups within groups. Watch the demonstration video to learn the usefulness of this tool and how to work with it.

Subscribe to… read more

Layers TV: Episode 128

RC talks about some of the new features in Lightroom3 Beta. Corey sits down Larry Becker to discuss the benefits of being a member of NAPP and dishes out a quick tip on creating star shapes in Adobe Illustrator.

You can download each episode by subscribing to the podcast on iTunes.

… read more

Create an Organic Spring Lettering Illustration – Vector Plus Tutorial

We have another great Vector Premium tutorial available exclusively for Premium members today. If you want to learn how to create organic lettering, with digitally drawn lettering, then we have an awesome tutorial for you. This tutorial covers all the techniques in creating this lettering illustration and gives advanced coloring… read more

How to create a distinguishable textured web layout in Photoshop

How to create a distinguishable textured web layout in Photoshop

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Re-Create a Logo in Illustrator Based on a Photo

Have you ever worked on a layout that required a specific logo but all you had was a photograph of that logo, and no matter how hard you tried you couldn’t find a nice high-res or vector version to use? In this tutorial, we’ll take you through one example of… read more

50 Examples of Creative 404 – Page Not Found Pages

There are two ways you can go when designing a 404 page for your website – you could go the sensible route and make it usable and try to help the reader find exactly what they were looking for or, you could design a 404 page that not only defines… read more

45+ Nice Typography Photoshop Tutorials

45+ Nice Typography Photoshop Tutorials

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Most Wanted Twitter Hacks and Plugins for WordPress

Most Wanted Twitter Hacks and Plugins for WordPress

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Uncovering Toy Cameras and Polaroid Vintage Effects (With Photoshop Tutorials)

Since its emergence, the digital photography market has gradually supplanted the traditional one. APN and digital SLR cameras entered our lives, and some people announced the death of silver-based images. This is not all lie, and yet old-fashioned images have been particularly popular in the past few years. All we… read more

Interview with Christian San Jose

Christian San Jose is a graphic designer and illustrator based in Pasig, Philippines. By day he is a senior web designer for an internet marketing company, and by night he works as a freelance illustrator. His list of clients include Nike Phil., The Coca-Cola Company Phil., ABS-CBN Broadcasting Corporation,… read more

FileMaker 11 now available with charting, reporting improvements

Launch

Right off the bat, the introduction screen is new (after the splash screen “wobbles” into view). It’s wider with more options, like a link to the online resource center. There you’ll find video tutorials, starter solutions (more on that later) and access to consultants. They’re all extremely useful… read more

Using Adobe Bridge to Create a Mosaic

Get Creative with Adobe Bridge

Many people, understandably, think of Adobe Bridge as a visual file browser, and of course, that’s its strength. But thanks to the Output module, Bridge also offers some interesting design possibilities. In this example, we’ll use Bridge to create both a filmstrip of images and a… read more

25 Useful CSS3 Techniques and Tutorials

It is essential today for a web designer to know about CSS3 and there are many tutorials and resources for the CSS3. Below i’ve listed 25 Useful CSS3 Techniques and Tutorials to get you started with CSS3, hope you find this collection useful read more

How to Make an Attractive Vector Butterfly

In this tutorial I will show you how to make a vector butterfly using the blending mode from transparency box and the gradient mesh. The techniques shown in this tutorial will help you make shades on objects and liquid transition of colors. Believe me it is very easy.

Step 1

Let’s start… read more

Astounding Ajax/CSS Forms: 30+ Modern Trends , Tips and Techniques

This article with the title 30 amazing css ajax form will explain the various techniques, tutorials, examples relating to the form. read more

This Weeks Twitter Design News Roundup N.27

This is our weekly Twitter Design News Round-Up, a collection of fresh design related resources that we have shared via Twitter in the past week.

Just in case you are not one of our Twitter followers, click here: twitter.com/speckyboy, and you’ll be kept up to date with loads of design news… read more

50 Hot New Tutorials (Part1)

Tutorials can often be your greatest source of inspiration when trying to design that project you have been putting off. In this post, I have rounded up a collection of very useful tutorials from around the web from the month of February. You’ll find everything from a stunning retro futuristic… read more

Make your own jQuery slider using XML

Make your own jQuery slider using XML

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Creative Use of Blur in Digital Photography

If you’d like to download the images used in this tutorial to practice these techniques, visit www.layersmagazine.com and navigate to the Magazine section. All files are for personal use only.

Sharpness is an important element in any photograph, but a creative use of blur—whether from shallow depth of field, motion blur,… read more

Design & Code a Cool iPhone App Website in HTML5

Design & Code a Cool iPhone App Website in HTML5

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Draw a Glowing, Vector Pocket Watch – Front and Back

In this tutorial you will learn how to draw the front and the back side of a pocket watch from scratch. This tutorial is detailed and by the end you will know how to draw all kinds of shapes, like cog-wheels and small screws. You’ll learn to create the scatter… read more

Progressive enhancement: pure CSS speech bubbles

Speech bubbles are a popular effect but many tutorials rely on presentational HTML or JavaScript. This tutorial contains various forms of speech bubble effect created with CSS2.1 and enhanced with CSS3. No images, no JavaScript and it can be applied to your existing semantic HTML.

Read more at nicolasgallagher.com →

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14 Free Mobile Application Development Icon Sets

The gap between the desktop/laptop and the mobile device is becoming smaller and smaller, it has never been a better time for mobile app development – The market is huge, very lucrative and highly profitable. Our ever growing appetite for more powerful and better mobile devices has pushed the demand… read more

40 Outstanding Photo Manipulation Tutorials

Photo manipulation is an art that requires lots of patience along with the expertise in Photoshop and other photo editing tools. With your creativity and imagination, you can manipulate any photograph the way you want! Now it’s all about your imagination and using Photoshop’s effects and other tools cleverly.

You simply… read more

Quick Tip: Working With Illustrator’s Workspaces

Learn how to work with Workspaces in Adobe Illustrator. Workspaces allow you to arrange the Panels and other interface elements in Illustrator. Learn to work with the built-in default Workspaces Illustrator CS4 comes with, as well as how to customize your own workspaces to suit the type of job you’re… read more

The Basics of CSS3

The Basics of CSS3

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Interview with Dacosta!

Dacosta is an independent artist currently based in Vancouver and is the founder of Chocolate Soop, Inc. He specializes in vector graphics and character design. This self-taught designer has over 10 years of professional experience. He’s influenced by Japanese culture, graffiti and industrial design. He works in a variety of… read more

Playing with Watercolor Brushes and Masks in Pixelmator

I have already created some tutorials about watercolor effects; however, I also want to create a workflow that is extremely simple but that produces a beautiful result. Therefore, I invented this tutorial, which uses only basic watercolor brushes, a photo, and a layer mask.

This tutorial is part of a series… read more

Our Favorite Tweets of the Week Feb 28-Mar 6, 2010

Every week we tweet a lot of interesting stuff highlighting great content that we find on the web that can be of interest to web designers.

The best way to keep track of our tweets is simply to follow us on Twitter, however, in case you missed some here’s a quick… read more

Freebie: High Res Spray Paint Textures

Today we have a high-quality set of 8 spray paint textures to release to DesignM.ag readers. The textures are from Sebastiano Guerriero of WeGraphics. This is a follow up to the first set of spray paint textures released at WeGraphics.

The textures are free for personal or commercial purposes (which includes… read more

10 Free 8×5.5″ Photo Albums by Pixable

Taking pictures of every moment in life is the norm these days, now that we have cameras in our phones, laptops and other mobile devices—not to mention ever smaller dedicated point and shoot cameras. You share all those photos on Facebook, Picasa, Flickr and similar sites, but what about doing… read more

Create Tilt-shift Miniature Effect in Photoshop

Create Tilt-shift Miniature Effect in Photoshop

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How to Create a Shiny Vector Strawberry – Vector Premium Tutorial

We have another great Vector Plus tutorial available exclusively for Plus members today. If you want to learn how to control the lighting in your illustrations while creating a juicy strawberry, then we have an awesome tutorial for you.

This Tutorial is Filled with Creative Techniques

In this tutorial we will learn… read more

Print Magazines for Web Designers, Digital Artists, and Photographers

Although much valuable information for all sorts of web and print professionals can be found online, it is often difficult to weed through all the noise and find good quality content. I believe it’s vital that professionals in different creative fields supplement their online learning and research through well-edited and… read more

Redesign and Other Tuts News

Over the last three days we’ve been steadily rolling out a new Tuts+ theme across all 8 sites. The new design is a refinement more than a big change, with lots of little improvements in usability and more suited to big screens. Read on to learn more about the redesign… read more

Join Over a Quarter of a Million Photography Enthusiasts and Improve Your Photography Today

One of the most popular parts of dPS is our weekly newsletter. Each Thursday/Friday (depending where in the world you are) we send it off to 276,501 subscribers (that number is going up every minute or two as new people join).

The free weekly newsletter is:

a recap on the newest tips… read more

Create Photo Albums for Print with InDesign

Recently, I attended a seminar taught by wedding photographer David Ziser. While I learned a lot of good photography tips, one thing that caught my attention was an app David showed for laying out wedding albums. Typically, a wedding photographer has to narrow down his shoot to about 100 photos… read more

70+ Fresh and Inspirational Single Page Website Designs

As you already seen in our previous posts about Single Page Website Designs that showcasing your work in single page design is a hot trend now days. It’s kind of ironic to see what designers can do with single pages as modern age designers love to experiment with things and… read more

Falling Off the Wall Text Effect – Photoshop Tutorial

At some time or another we have all seen it – neighbourhood walls with old and deprecated graffiti or, just as common, you may have seen some flyers or posters that have been stuck for so long on these walls that they start to peel and hang on by their… read more

25 Mega Menus for Your Design Inspiration

Navigation is a critical element to any website. Mega menus are a current trend that take drop down menus a step further in attempt to make it easier for visitors to navigate through a large site.

In this post we’ll showcase 25 examples of mega menus in use. For more, see… read more

How to Kill the Design Community

Recently, the notion of killing the design community has come up on a few blogs (sometimes indirectly), creating many intense conversations on the direction the design community has taken over the past couple of years, and what can be done about it.

The possibility that such discussions… read more

Create A Briefcase Icon In Illustrator

Create A Briefcase Icon In Illustrator

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How To Build a Vector Clock Graphic in Illustrator

How To Build a Vector Clock Graphic in Illustrator

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All About Transformation in Adobe Illustrator

In this tutorial you will learn everything you ever wanted to know about one of the most powerful Adobe Illustrator Tools – Transformation. Discover how it works, learn multiple ways of transforming objects, study the tools of transformation, and many other useful techniques.

Tutorial Details

Want access to the full Vector Source… read more

Get Noticed And Grow Your Business With MyTemplateBox

The Internet is filled with useful resources for business owners and especially for web designers and developers. From free icon sets to CSS templates, and from web design inspiration to stock images, websites like these have everything one may need. There are a number of tools, useful pieces of advice,… read more

Extend the Firebug Console with these 15 Extensions

There are a lot of useful tools for web designers and developers, they do tend to come and go and it usually depends on personal preference whether or not any tool is used. There is only one tool that has lasted the test of time and is not only universally… read more

Top Articles On The Web Design Billboard In February’10

A perfect layout, A Good Design and Nice Resource can produce a creative output. Layout, textures, typography and patterns are used more often than one may think but the outcome of different combination can result verity of excellent designs. Professionalism is built upon knowledge and experience. However, When it comes… read more

Free HTML/CSS Template for Download

A few weeks ago we published a tutorial How to Design a Blue Marketing Company Layout in Photoshop. Our friends at SnobbySlice have taken that design, coded it, and made it available for free download. The template includes the homepage design that was created for the tutorial, as well as… read more

How To Create a Reusable, Dynamic Badge Effect in Illustrator CS4

In this tutorial I will explain how to make a Shamrock Badge for St. Patrick’s Day using the Appearance Palette in combination with some simple effects. The result will be a reusable dynamic badge effect. You are welcome to try this with any shape or colors.

Final Image Preview

Below is the… read more

80+ Incredible Collection Of Inspirations, Tutorials And Resources For Designers To Discover The Best Of The Web In February

We are always in search of great free resources, tips, tricks, etc. for our readers. Every day we work hard to find new resources and inspiration for designers like you. Today, we have another great post, “Discover the Best of the Web” on SmashingApps. In this, we made a list… read more

Ask the Expert – Speaking About Startups with Collis Ta’eed of Envato

Speaking About StartupsEnvato has emerged as one of the most exciting companies in the creative world. Can you please give us a brief history of your startup?

Envato started out about four years ago initially to build a marketplace for Adobe Flash files. Back then we were… read more

This Weeks Twitter Design News Roundup N.26

This is my weekly Twitter Design News Round-Up, a collection of fresh design related resources that I have shared via Twitter in the past week.

Just in case you are not one of my Twitter followers, click here: twitter.com/speckyboy, and you’ll be kept up to date with loads of design news… read more

Best of the Vector Web – February 2010

Hello everyone! It’s time for yet another monthly round up of the vector design community. As you know, each month we round up some of the best vector content from around the web. It seems like each month it gets harder and harder to choose which articles to showcase, but… read more

Creative Bookmarks: Best of February 2010

February was a great month full of awesome tutorials, interesting articles and interviews, and stunning showcases for inspiration.

Quick Nav:

Photoshop TutorialsIllustrator TutorialsWeb/Blogging TutorialsFreebies, Inspiration, & ResourcesPhotoshop TutorialsSuper Easy Typographic Portrait in Photoshop

This tutorial, from Abduzeedo, will show you how to use the Displace filter and some Blend Modes to a great… read more

The Ultimate Collection Of Brilliant Web Design Tutorials

By Callum Chapman

In this ultimate collection, we bring you a massive selection of great Web design tutorials from all over the design community. All of the tutorials use Photoshop for the main application. By the end, you should have a pretty good idea of where and how to start designing… read more

25 Amazing and Fresh jQuery Plugins

Keeping up with the new jQuery plugin releases and developments sometimes feels like a full-time job! Every other day something new and better crops up that catches the eye and you think yourself “Wow, that looks good, I could use that!“.

For this post I have collected 25 of the best… read more

How jQuery is Killing Flash + jQuery Tutorials & Plugins to Beat Up Flash Animations

In most cases, jQuery can do better than Flash. We’ll round up some tutorials and jQuery plugins that are simply awesome. Each of these teaches how to get a desired Flash effect, but with jQuery instead. read more

Photos Out of Bounds – Photoshop Effects

Photos Out of Bounds – Photoshop Effects

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How to Create a Stylish Phone in Illustrator

How to Create a Stylish Phone in Illustrator

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50 Useful Cartoon Character Design Tutorials

50 Useful Cartoon Character Design Tutorials

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How to enhance your subjects with striking light effects in Photoshop

How to enhance your subjects with striking light effects in Photoshop

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Creating a Typographic Portrait in Pixelmator

In this tutorial, I will show you how to create a typographic portrait using only Pixelmator. But what does that mean? A typographic portrait is a portrait composed of text. The technique is pretty simple. We will also play with Blending and basic filters.
Step 1

Open Pixelmator and create a new… read more

60 Photo Manipulation Tutorials for Photoshop

60 Photo Manipulation Tutorials for Photoshop

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HML5 for Beginners. Use it now, its easy!

HML5 for Beginners. Use it now, its easy!

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Interview with Jonathan Patterson

Fans of Vectortuts+ are certainly familiar with the vector tutorials of Jonathan Patterson. He’s obviously a talented vector illustrator, there is however a wide variety of work he produces in addition to his vector artwork. Jonathan is a Michigan native working as a Senior Art Director at an advertising agency…. read more

Best of the Week #108

It’s time for our best news of this week, the first one of 2010. We have a lot of graphic and web design, a bit of architecture, ads, tech news, awesome reads and other crazy stuff! So take a look at the links we’ve selected for your inspiration and to… read more

88 Ultimate Round-Up of Photoshop Photo Manipulation Tutorials

When it comes to Image editing or photo enhancement, Adobe Photoshop is usually the primary option to consider. However, the software package itself is a quite hard to learn — and extremely hard to master.

Display beautiful images is a potent element in web and graphic design, where there is less… read more

Usability Review of Charity Websites Taking the Lead

Over the years designers have pushed themselves to create unique and inspiring designs. Companies have yearned to have websites which are innovative and make them stand out against their competitors. Yet charity websites have not progressed along with trends and expectations — they seem to have been designed for launch… read more

30 Creative 3D Concept Logos from Deviantart

DeviantART stands out as one of the most popular means of showcasing your design portfolio, were users of any artistic level can upload there art and allow others to offer a critique.

In this article, written by Richie Thimmaiah, he has rounded up some of the most awesome looking 3D… read more

Create Textured European Goldfinch Characters

Make a unique character design of a European Goldfinch with paint splatters and textures. The techniques used will be Live Trace, Pathfinder, Transparency, Distort, Warp and Clipping Masks. We’ll give this character a unique look and fun personality.

Final Image Preview

Below is the final image we will be working towards. Want… read more

Finding Inspiration in Uncommon Sources: 12 Places to Look

Inspiration can be a fickle thing. Most designers, when lacking ideas, turn to design galleries to find ideas. But there are a few problems with that approach. The most obvious is that when taking inspiration from similar mediums, there’s a fine line between “inspired by” and “copied”. To some extent,… read more

How to create CSS Image Maps: 11 techniques

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Retro Drawing and Shading with Adobe Illustrator® – Vector Plus Tutorial

We have another great Vector Plus tutorial available exclusively for Plus members today. If you want to learn how to take your retro character illustration to the next level, learn how to shade your characters, compose scenes, and other tips, then we have an awesome tutorial for you.

This Tutorial is… read more

Designing User Interfaces For Business Web Applications

Business Web application design is too often neglected. I see a lot of applications that don’t meet the needs of either businesses or users and thus contribute to a loss of profit and poor user experience. It even happens that designers are not involved in the process of creating applications… read more

Showcase of Beautifully Designed Brochures

Brochure design is a key component to the marketing of many businesses large and small. A well-designed brochure can present a positive image of the business while providing helpful information about the products or services offered.

In this post we’ll showcase 25 examples of well-designed brochures for your own design inspiration…. read more

Create an Abstract, Textured Artwork in Illustrator

Ever wondered how to create a textured, abstract piece of art only using Illustrator. Well, here your challenge is to learn how to do it! We’ll be using mostly the Blend Tool, Paintbrush Tool and textures to enhance the image. A basic understanding of each and every tool is advised.

Final… read more

10 Amazing Adobe After Effect Tutorials

10 Amazing Adobe After Effect Tutorials

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How To Design a 3D Glass Icon in Photoshop

Learn How To Design a translucent 3D Frosted Glass Box based on the Safari Icon in Adobe Photoshop.

Quick Nav:

TutorialDownload the PSD (Source Files)Step 1: Setting Up

Make a new document with these settings:

Next, select the fill tool (G) and fill it with #626262. Now, we need to make a new… read more

Top 20 Free Fonts for Distinctive Headlines and Titles

Whether you are reading a printed magazine or a web article it is very rarely the content that draws you in at first, the hook is always the title or the headline. A well written and thought out title or headline are fundamental, it has to not only describe with… read more

CSS3 Dropdown Menu

CSS3 Dropdown Menu

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Quick Tip: Rapid Vector Portrait Process

This Quick Tip tutorial will guide you through the process of making a vector portrait rapidly. A picture will be used as a guide for black and gray paths. We’ll review some shortcuts that will allow you to achieve good quality results with few steps and minimum fuss.

Final Image Preview

Below… read more

How To Make an Olympic Gold Medal In Adobe Illustrator CS4

Today we will be making a 2010 Olympic Gold Medal similar in style to those used in the current Vancouver Winter Games. In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to create an interesting warped metal effect using the Gradient Mesh Tool. You’ll also learn some interesting ways to create and use… read more

This Weeks Twitter Design News Roundup N.25

A couple of days ago our follower count crossed over the 10,000 mark – which is simply awesome! A little flattering, but awesome all the same. Thanks to everyone that follows us.

Anyway this is our weekly Twitter Design News Round-Up, a collection of fresh design related resources that I have… read more

185+ Very Useful and Categorized CSS Tools, Tutorials, Cheat Sheets

In this article you will get access to one of the largest collections ever of CSS Tools, Tutorials, Cheat Sheets etc.

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40 Photoshop Actions for Designers and Photographers

Photoshop Actions allow designers and photographers to quickly edit photos in a specific way. The right action can save a great deal of time as opposed to doing all of the work manually.

In this post we’ll feature 40 free Photoshop actions (many are actually sets of multiple actions). Our past… read more

Our 13 Most Popular Photography Tips of All Time

Yesterday I was doing a little analysis of the statistics behind dPS as I did a little planning for the coming months on the site and as I looked at them I realised that some of what I was seeing would probably be interesting for you our readership.

I’ll share a… read more

Happy Cog’s Redesign of VisitPhilly.com: An Exemplary Modern Website

In January, Jason Santa Maria sent out a tweet announcing that visitphilly.com had been redesigned by world-renowned design studio Happy Cog. My interest was piqued, and I couldn’t help but take a peek.

I can honestly say that I’ve never been more impressed with a website redesign than… read more