Best of the web for Design and Web Development January 2018

• February 2nd, 2018
• News

This is the first best of the web from 2018. This is a great kick start to a new year with a great collection of Photoshop and Illustrator tutorials, alongside great web articles certainly worth readying through.

Photoshop

CREATE ABSTRACT PHOTO MANIPULATION WITH TREE BARK TEXTURE AND BRUSH ELEMENTS

In this tutorial, I will show you the steps I took to Create this Abstract Manipulation with Tree Bark Texture and Brush Elements. Along the way, you will learn how you can apply layer masks to image adjustment layers to create unique effect, as well as learning to blend texture and to use various elements to create great abstract effect.

Create Realistic Frozen Text Effect in Photoshop

In this tutorial, I will show the process I used to create this realistic frozen text effect in Photoshop. We will be using a number of ice textures and custom brush to achieve this effect. We will also be using adjustment layers and filters to perform the touch-ups.

How to Create a Galaxy-Inspired Self-Portrait Photo Manipulation in Adobe Photoshop

In this tutorial, I will show the process I used to create this realistic frozen text effect in Photoshop. We will be using a number of ice textures and custom brush to achieve this effect. We will also be using adjustment layers and filters to perform the touch-ups.

How to Create a Glittering, Festive, 3D Text Effect in Adobe Photoshop

This tutorial will show you how to use Photoshop’s 3D Tools, adjustment layers, and a couple of textures to create a dazzling, glittery, festive text effect.

Illustrator

How to Create a Candy Monster Character in Adobe Illustrator

In this tutorial, you will learn how to draw a candy monster cartoon character in Adobe Illustrator.

How to Create a Lego Text Effect in Adobe Illustrator

In this tutorial, you will learn how to create a fun and colorful Lego text effect in Adobe Illustrator.

How to Create a Mac Icon in Adobe Illustrator

In this tutorial, you will learn how to create a fun and colorful Lego text effect in Adobe Illustrator.

How to Draw an Ultra Violet Collection of Presents in Adobe Illustrator

In this tutorial, you will learn how to create a fun and colorful Lego text effect in Adobe Illustrator.

Web and Design articles

Tiny Wins

Over the years, I’ve worked on many important, large-scale projects, from figuring out high level strategy and blue sky products, to overhauling core flows and IA, to implementing design systems from the ground up.

10 Quick Tips: How to Make Your Website Homepage Design Better

For the small business owner, your website homepage is like your shop window: It entices people into your store, gives them an idea of what you provide, and it’s their starting point for exploring the rest of your shop. This also means that how your website homepage looks greatly affects both your branding and your sales.

How the BBC builds websites that scale

Here are seven techniques the BBC uses to create sites and apps that can handle millions of users simultaneously.

SEO ranking factors in 2018

In 2006, before iPhones and Androids, a Google document mentioned the search engine uses “over 200 signals” for ranking. There are probably thousands of ranking signals now and we can’t pretend to know what they are. What we do know is how much of an impact optimising for the most significant ranking factors has – and how easy it was to get that done in the real world.

Bootstrap 4

It’s literally taken us years to do it, but Bootstrap 4 has finally arrived! Words cannot begin to describe the elation the entire team and I have for this release, but I’ll do my best. Thank you to everyone, especially to the team, and to everyone who’s contributed code in a pull request or opened an issue. Thank you.

Building links in 2018: Think like a PR, act like an SEO

Publications are no following links or have a strict policy to not link externally at all. Google is looking for quality links which drive engagement (in other words, links that people actually click on), and there’s simply more competition.