Best of the web for Design and Web Development January 2017

• January 30th, 2017
• News

The first monthly round up of the year to kick start 2017. The round up features a collection of Photoshop and Illustrator tutorials from unique Photoshop text effects to learning how to create icon illustration. The round up also includes web articles published through out the month from CSS posts to how to create an SEO audit.

Photoshop

How to Create a Lollipop Inspired Text Effect in Adobe Photoshop

This tutorial will show you how to use a couple of text and shape layers, along with a bunch of layer styles, textures, and filters, to create a realistic lollipop text effect.

How to Create an Emotional, Molten, Shattered Statue in Photoshop

Photo composites often require several Photoshop tools and techniques to achieve a desired effect. In this tutorial we will combine several photos to create a statue from a photo of a model. We will then explain how modify the statue to create cracks, and molten rock using layer masks, adjustments, and several blending and painting techniques.

How To Create a Stipple Illustration Effect

In today’s Adobe Photoshop video tutorial I’m going to show you a technique I come up with to replicate those intricate stippled illustrations that are made out of thousands of tiny dots, but without the tedious process of dabbing each dot with a pen.

How To Create a Vintage Film Title Text Effect in Photoshop

In today’s Adobe Photoshop tutorial we’re going to have some fun replicating the classic film title styles from old black and white movies of the 30s and 40s. Three dimensional effects were often used, along with low key lighting. To replicate these aesthetics in Photoshop, we’ll make use of the 3D feature available in version CS6 and beyond, which will automatically generate realistic lighting and shading to our text.

Illustrator

Put a Hex on Your Designs with this Hexagon Pattern Vector!

Create a folded paper style Rainbow Hexagon Pattern Vector with a single hexagon, a few line segments and a few triangles. Layering gradients really makes this hexagon pattern vector pop!

Bright Light Bulb Vector: Lights On in Under an Hour

Turn on the light with this icon and illustrative light bulb vector. In the tutorial below you’ll create the light bulb vector from simple shapes, manipulate gradients, gradient meshes, and blending modes all in pursuit of a semi-realistic light bulb vector design.

How to Create a “Share the Love” Icon Pack in Adobe Illustrator

You’re going to be creating all three icons using basic geometric shapes combined with some of the primary tools that you probably already work with on a daily basis.

How to Kickstart an SEO Audit for Your Startup – Whiteboard Friday

Launching a startup is a huge task all on its own. While it can be a challenge to factor SEO into the mix, it’s an incredibly important consideration. In today’s Whiteboard Friday, Rand shares a comprehensive plan to kick off your new SEO audit and grab a piece of that organic search pie from the get-go.

How to Host a Node.js App on Digital Ocean

Digital Ocean is a great host that makes hosting Node apps easy.

Ack for CSS Developers

Ack is a powerful and very user-friendly alternative to grep. Designed for programmers, it’s purpose-built to run searches over source code. By default it will ignore your .git or .svn directories, and you can tell it which types of files you’d like it to search in. For example: