What I Talk About
- 3ds Max
- 3ds Max Tutorials
- Books
- Brave New Network
- Clarion Media
- Clients
- CSS
- Design
- Design 101
- Design Tutorials
- Hardware
- Internet
- Java
- Java Tutorials
- JavaScript
- JavaScript Tutorials
- Life
- Making Money
- Meta
- Movies/TV
- Music
- Networking
- OOP
- PHP
- PHP Tutorials
- Programming
- Software
- Technology
- Tutorials
- Tweets
- Video Games
- wapClix
- Web Development
- Windows 7
- XHTML
- XHTML/CSS Tutorials
When I’ve Posted
- December 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- August 2009
- July 2009
- June 2009
- May 2009
- April 2009
- March 2009
- February 2009
- January 2009
What I’ve Posted
What I’m Doing
Thauwald Funeral Homes, Inc.
Here’s another project I recently finished for a client. Thauwald Funeral Homes, Inc. is a funeral home service that dates back to 1952. They were looking for a website that would be easy to update, so I made a nice design that’s built on the Joomla CMS. Click here to see the live website.
Wetball Nation
I’m going to start spotlighting my clients as I finish work for them. I’ll begin with a logo I just finished designing for “Wetball Nation.” Wetball Nation is an intramural basketball team at Iowa State University. They needed a logo for printing on shirts, etc. so I created a vector graphic which can be blown up infinitely big without pixelation. They loved the design I came up with. I created it with Adobe Illustrator.
Design 101: Creating a Website
So you want to make a website? Anyone can throw together a simple site using a WYSIWYG editor like Dreamweaver or Microsoft Expression Web, but that usually results in non-valid code and a very “cheap-looking” website. Taking a design and turning it into raw, standards-compliant code may seem like a daunting task, but after you get through this tutorial, you’ll be using “DIV”s and styling with CSS like you’ve known it your whole life! That’s right, I said DIVs, no tables here (don’t worry if you don’t know what a div is)! This is a massive 4-part tutorial that will teach you the very fundamentals of design and give you the tools you need to make professional, high-caliber websites. It will walk you through conceptualizing the website, designing it, turning it into valid XHTML/CSS and lastly coding it to the blogging software WordPress. We’ll make a web designer out of you yet!
10 Things Every Web Developer Needs
There are a lot of tools that are vital to the development of a website. This list is intended to condense all of the many different things a web developer needs into just 10 resources. Think of this list as a web developer’s survival kit. These are the essential items in no particular order.
Creating a Website (Part 2: The Design)
In the previous part of this tutorial, we conceptualized our website, which is a travel blog, by deciding on a color scheme and structure and by brainstorming some ideas. Now it’s time for the fun part, designing! Open up Photoshop and let’s start. (more…)
Creating a Website (Part 1: The Concept)
Before a designer jumps straight into designing, it’s generally good practice to first understand what direction you want to take with your website. What goal is the website trying to achieve? What’s the site’s theme? What will it look like? How will it be structured? These are some of the questions you should ask yourself before you even touch Photoshop. This is what I call the conceptualizing process. Thinking about these questions will help us in our design decisions and give us focus. Otherwise, the design process becomes, more or less, a series of trial and error (although trial and error is still very much a part of designing). (more…)
Favorite Design Resources
The web is a great resource for designers. There are TONS of websites out there that offer free stuff like brushes, icons, textures, vector graphics, and other awesome stuff. That being said, I wanted to share with you some of the sites that I go to for design resources. I’m sure you’ll find these places very helpful to your designing. Let me know what you think and if there are any site you think I should add! (more…)
Design 101: Type Along Paths and Shapes
Here’s an easy one. Ever wonder how to curve your text without warping it? The answer is actually quite simple. Typing along paths! We can also type along shapes. Here is an example of what we can do:
Design 101: Installing Photoshop Brushes
Here’s a quick tutorial on installing brushes for Photoshop. There are a TON of free brushes you can download online which can be very useful when it comes to designing. My favorite place to download brushes is DeviantArt because they have a massive collection. Before we do this tutorial, we obviously need a brush to install. Brushes usually come in packs with multiple brushes in a pack. Head over to DeviantArt or anywhere else that has brushes and download some. Here is the brush pack I’ll use for this tutorial. (more…)
Design 101: Reflection Effect
This is a great technique that gives us a nice reflection effect. It doesn’t have to be applied to text, but for the purpose of this tutorial, we’ll use text. This is another nice and short tutorial also, only seven steps! Here’s the final result of the tutorial:
