Tutorials added on September 28, 2008

When scouring the design field, searching for stand-out artistic expression and fluid composition, one area that should always catch the eye, is poster design. Moreover, concert poster design, which has produced some truly revolutionary artists and works for generations now, should be paid particular attention to. Fluidity of design is especially key in poster layouts, as there is a finite space, and numerous points to capture and pass along within these confines. The designer must encapsulate not only the band’s attitude and tone with the work, but also impart the feel of the album or tour that the poster is announcing. And speaking of announcements, the posters must seamlessly incorporate the typography that tells the reader the names, dates, and places of import. All the while maintaining the impact of the piece, and not overworking or overfilling the area and detracting from it’s overall arrangement. So many shining examples of this exist in the art community, and in this episode of Monday Inspiration we present 60 inspiring concert poster designs from 10 amazing artists. The links at the bottom will take you to sites dedicated to showcasing other wonderful works from the concert poster genre.

There are a lot of different ways, how to create logotype - it can be unique icon tied with company name or the field company is working, it can be stylized text - 3D text, outlines - actually there are unlimited opportunities how to fulfil this task. I just wanted to show You one more easy and effective way, how to create nice logotype in few easy steps. I love this way, because I am not so great in sketching, so here is my opportunity to do job effectively and maybe Your’s too!

I have wanted to be a graphic designer since I got my first clipart program and dot matrix printer back in the day. I knew after I printed my first real “garage sale” flyer that this is what I wanted to do. As I grew older, the one thing that always caught my design eye was creative movie posters and box covers. Im not talking about the crappy movie posters that just shows faces of the big name celebs in a flick, but the really creative ones. Below is a list of 50 of my favorite DVD covers and movie posters for TV and film. Most of these pictures came from Movie Goods. If you like any of the posters here and want to buy them, I suggest checking their site out. They have a ton of great original posters and classic reprints.

Following up on yesterdays post on blue website designs; today’s post showcases 40 logos that harness the power of blue. All of these logos do a nice job of using the color blue, but it seems many are all using the same color blue.

I know I’ve been on a texture kick recently, but I’m hoping you all don’t mind. These are the textures I created in order to make my most recent set of Photoshop Brushes. I didn’t see a reason to let then collect dust on my hard drive, so I thought I’d share the source files. They look quite different in full color :) You can click on each image to view at Flickr, or download all in a zip at the bottom.

Here are forty abstract glow brush packs taken from the net. This is a good collection. If you are into using glow brushes, go ahead and download them.

As promised in yesterdays post, here is today’s colorful inspiration. This post is a collection of over 30 websites that showcase the color blue in all its shades and boldness. What do you think of all these blue websites?

This font is the first font release by the Outlaw Design Blog. It is a simple but original spin on a grunge font. They add some of their own style to the font. You should download it and put it to the test in your artwork.

We are always looking for creative and talented artists and designers. Once we find them, we ask them to cooperate with us and release something for free. We provide them with the full freedom to showcase their professionalism and express their creativity. Every release helps to make the Web a nicer place. In fact, the results are quite often pretty impressive.

2008 has brought some big changes in the design trends. One of the major ones was the end of the so called “glossy revolution“, the wrongful design interpretation of the web 2.0 current. You know what I am talking about : the glossy, vivid and colorful logos and website designs, the major usage of reflections and two tone colors. This style is used less and less, and some new design trends are starting to emerge (the vintage style seems to be catching on) The sites below are the most representative designs, collected by us for our CSS and Flash Web Gallery. Apart from the showcase we added a little description of each website so you can get an idea what’s it about.

Is time kickin’ your ass? Well, learn to defend yourself! Master these killer Photoshop keyboard combos and you’ll find yourself with more time for the important things (e.g. Facebook trivia questions). These combos assume you’re using Photoshop CS3 on Windows platform with default keyboard shortcuts.

Over 80 portfolios later and I am still amazed by the amount of quality work out there that I am able to find. For this collection I spent over 5 hours reviewing the work, which really speaks for its quality. Note: This is not a series about the websites themselves. That said, enjoy the amazing design work located within the portfolios below.

I found this unique large piece on Deviant Art and I was very curious about how the artist made such a nice design with vibrant colors; And then luckily I see that there was a tutorial featured for this design. This design features manipulation of older artwork to make something new and original. There is also a lot of focus on detail that will improve your next design.

As you can see from the web design here at Blog.SpoonGraphics, I am quite a fan of the distressed and craft like feel of brown paper. These five textures are straight from my collection of resources, scanned from the likes of parcel wrapping, grocery bags and old envelopes. At 300dpi each they are larger than you will ever need for the web, whilst having the resolution to also be used for print.

Volume 3 of my Dot Splatter brush series.

In the past 5 years we’ve seen an increasing trend of designers using a hand drawn style on their websites. As designers have gotten better and better at designing and developing websites we expect more out of them — we expect them to look cleaner, we expect them to function better, and we expect them to look more artistic. Including these hand drawn elements is an easy way for web designers to make their interface more artistic and less technical. Whoever is viewing the site doesn’t want to see the source code behind it or think about the unending lines of 1’s and 0’s that their computer is translating to create the image on the screen; they want an aesthetically pleasing, easy to navigate web experience and the use of hand drawn text and illustration is one popular way of accomplishing this. Here are some great examples of the use of a hand drawn style in web design.

QuadGrunged pack contains 10 grungy abstract brushes compatible with PS 7 and up!

It’s Photoshop Brush time again, and I’ve got a new set of 10 high res brushes for you. These aren’t traditional spraypaint brushes, so “Messy Spraypaint” is as close as I could get to an accurate name. Most of them are 2500px, and I also included PNGs for anyone not using Photoshop. CS1 & CS3 brushes, PNGs, screenshots after the jump.

It seems that most of you seem to LOVE my Photoshop brush sets, so this inspires me to make more. In this set you’ll find grungy textures, as well as some rocky cracks. There are 12 brushes in the set, and they are all 2500px. Available for CS3, CS1, and in PNG format for everyone else. All of these brushes were made from the images of the textures I gave away in a previous post. Hope you like them, and don’t forget to upload your designs to the BittBox User Showcase group over at Flickr. Brush previews after the jump.

Fellow design blog Spoon Graphics must have read my mind when he did his post on 220+ Stunning Creative Skateboard Graphics. I was just thinking about how some of the artwork that graces the bottom of a skateboard is worthy enough to hang on my wall. If you have never really checked out your local skate shop, you should. These boards could be just the inspiration you need.