Best of the web for Design and Web Development May 2017

• June 1st, 2017
• News

No better way to wrap up the end of the month by reflecting back on the past month, in the online design community by looking back at some of our favourite posts from Illustrator tutorials to design articles.

Some of our favourites from the round up include how to create an 80s style text effect using Photoshop. Its  a really good tutorial on how you can use Photoshop layers style to create a awsome text effects. There’s a good post included on graphic design trends from 2016, which are still popular in 2017 which is a fascinating read. There’s plenty good of posts we certainly recommend reading through. If  your a designer, or a front end developer theirs certainly something included to wet your appetite.

Please feel free to share any of your favourite blog post from the month of May in the comments section, and maybe we will even include it in the roundup.

Photoshop

How To Create a Vintage Style Large Letter Postcard Design

You’ll use Adobe Illustrator to produce the 3D text style, then import the artwork into Adobe Photoshop to replicate the picture effects within each letter. The addition of some image filters and textures will give the digital design the aesthetics of a vintage print.

How to Create an 80s-Inspired Silver Text Effect in Adobe Photoshop

This tutorial will show you how to use Photoshop’s layer styles and filters, along with actions, textures, and patterns, to create a retro 80s-inspired silver text effect.

Vintage-look collage techniques

Ciara Phelan shows you how to hone your cut-out skills to prepare images for collaging. You’ll also learn some handy tricks to give your images a vintage look.

How to Create a 3D Text Effect Action: Photoshop in 60 Seconds

This is is in Photoshop a 60 Seconds series, in which you can learn a Photoshop skill, feature, or technique in just a minute!

Illustrator

How to Create a Spring Meadow in Adobe Illustrator

In this tutorial, you will learn how to use the Mesh Tool and the Gradient Tool in Adobe Illustrator to create a spring background with a bright white fence!

5 Steps for Easy Flat Work Icon Design

Hop onto trendy design with 5 quick steps to creating fantastic flat work space illustrations and icons!

How to Create a Cute Cartoon Kitten in Adobe Illustrator

Ever wanted to illustrate a kid’s book or learn to design cute cartoon characters? This tutorial might be interesting for you! We’ll go through a fun and easy process of creating a cute Siamese kitten in Adobe Illustrator, using simple shapes, Warp Effects and the Pencil Tool with a bit of freehand drawing.

Create Lightsaber Vectors in Adobe Illustrator

In today’s tutorial we will create intersecting futuristic lightsaber vectors with the help of the blend objects, blending modes, and gradient fills. The tutorial is relatively simple and can be applied to many other Illustrator projects.

Web and design articles

SEO: Typical Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

The path to a successful SEO is a rocky one already. Don’t stand in your own way on top of that!

4 Reasons Why Segmenting Your Lists Dramatically Impacts Your Success

Gone are the days when digital marketers would send the same generic email blast to their subscribers. Now, every savvy digital marketer knows that segmenting their email marketing list is key to running successful email campaigns.

9 Graphic Design Trends From 2016 That Are Still Popular In 2017

A couple of weeks ago I wrote an article about 9 graphic design trend designers need to be aware of and it was very successful. People and designers for that matter, like to stay abreast with the latest news and trends from the graphic design world. This is why I decided to take a look back at the trends that were popular in 2016 or before and are still really popular this year.

Dealing With Design Theft

Not long ago, I was the victim of design theft. A dozen of my products were copied without my knowledge and sold without my permission to chain stores.

Writing Tidy Code

I spend a lot of time reading other peoples’ code, and honestly, most of us could do better. Something I urge everyone to bear in mind is that pride in your work is something that transcends all skills levels.

From Idea To Development: How To Write Mobile Application Requirements That Work

Why write requirements? Well, let’s imagine you want to produce a mobile app, but you don’t have the programming skills. So, you find a developer who can build the app for you, and you describe the idea to him. Surprisingly, when he showcases the app for the first time, you see that it is not exactly what you want. Why? Because you didn’t provide enough detail when describing the idea.

Web Developer Security Checklist

Developing secure, robust web applications in the cloud is hard, very hard. If you think it is easy, you are either a higher form of life or you have a painful awakening ahead of you.

7 Sass techniques to help you write better code

Sass (syntactically awesome stylesheets) is a powerful tool that helps users write CSS with ease. If you’re reading this, however, you probably already knew that. In this post, I explore the more advanced possibilities of Sass. Following are seven techniques to help developers write more efficient code.