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Fundamentals of Graphic Design Typography: Part 2
Greetings and Salutations budding graphic designers! In the second part of our discussion on typography, we will be looking at the secrets of contrasting type effectively. In our last article, we saw the different categories of typefaces and examined their historical origins. With that knowledge in hand, it’s time to apply it to our work. […]
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Fundamentals of Graphic Design – Typography Part 1
Greetings and Salutations budding graphic designers! This article is the first of many addressing a pressing need within the Web Design community. Many beginners learn how to work with HTML and CSS but never seem to be able to recreate some of the fantastic looking websites professionals build for their clients. The main reason can […]
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Fundamentals of Graphic Design – Part 2: Contrast and Focal Point
Greetings once more budding graphic designers! In our continuing series on the fundamentals of graphic design, we will examine the basic principles that will help your website design look more professional. In our previous articles, we looked at typography and the many ways it is used successfully in the design world. We also looked at […]
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Fundamentals of Graphic Design – Part 1: Alignment
Greetings and Salutations pixel twisters and graphic designers! In our continuing series on the fundamentals of graphic design, we will examine the basic principles that will help your website design look more professional. In our previous articles, we looked at typography and the many ways it is used successfully in the design world. We now […]
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How To Make Glass Buttons Using Adobe Illustrator
In this simple tutorial, we are going to use Adobe Illustrator make buttons that have a glass-like look to them. I’m using Illustrator rather than Photoshop because once you make your button in Illustrator, you are left with a much more flexible button graphic that can be used to make more buttons of different sizes. […]
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From Header To Footer: Designing a Layout with Adobe Illustrator
In this tutorial, you’ll learn to properly plan and design a website using Adobe Illustrator. After that, we’ll convert your Illustrator layout into HTML and CSS. PREPARATION: Site Map Creation and Content Gathering Your website shouldn’t be complicated and tedious for users, and it won’t be if you take the time to plan it out […]
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The Dubious Advantages of a Web Design Degree
I got a call last week from someone who was considering a three year college program in web design. The whole thing was going to cost him tens of thousands of dollars … and that’s just what you have to pay the school! He called to ask about my video tutorial courses; he saw that […]
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Smart Web Designers Play to their Strengths
One of the biggest mistakes people make, is trying to develop skills in areas that they suck in. For example, you maybe good at writing HTML and CSS code but in the end, your pages don’t look all that great. … Let’s face it, some people just don’t have that artistic/designers eye. Play to your Strengths
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Pixarra TwistedBrush Review
Pixarra rebranded its digital drawing Sketchbook program into the new TwistedBrush application and I don’t like it. The program claims that it is “one of the most versatile and powerful brush engines in existence packaged in into an easy to use program”. TwistedBrush has over 5,000 brush styles, with all the customization choices, but I […]
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Professional Web Designer’s Roadmap
The skills of a professional web designer are constantly changing because the Web is constantly changing. This fast-paced nature of the Web is considered good by some (because it opens up opportunity) while others hate it because you have to be ready to learn new web design skills regularly. … Personally, I see it as […]
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Adobe Illustrator CS4 Review
At version number fourteen, finding more features to improve the already near-perfect Illustrator app is probably quite the challenge for the developers at Adobe. Yet, they’ve managed to do it again and we’ll go into these features in just a moment. The basics about Illustrator: it’s compatible with both Mac and Windows, has a bevy […]