Best of the web for Design and Web Development October 2016

October 31st, 2016
News

That time of month when Creative Nerds becomes your one stop shop for the freshest design tutorials for refining your skills in Photoshop and illustrator. We have also collated together the best web and design articles too from the month some really good standout articles from the month are updates on Gmail embedded styles and media queries as well as a really good in-depth article on designing Grids.

Photoshop tutorials

How to Digitally Paint a Haunted Doll in Adobe Photoshop

Learn how to create this portrait from start to finish using the Brush Tool and Adjustments Layers.

Paint Halloween-Inspired Skull Makeup

In this quick video, Melody Nieves will show you how to create an easy skull makeup look using Adjustment Layers and the Brush Tool in Adobe Photoshop.

How to Create a Freddy Krueger Inspired Text Effect in Adobe Photoshop

In this tutorial It will show you how to create an easy text effect inspired by Freddy Krueger from the horror movie A Nightmare on Elm Street, using patterns and a layer style.

Selective Color Photo Effect in Photoshop

Adobe Photoshop video tutorial will show you how to create a popular photo effect that goes by many names, including selective colour photography, spot colour photography, colour isolation photography, partial colour photography, colour splash photography, colour accent photography and many many more! No matter what you want to call it, it’s where a photograph is converted to black and white with a single colour preserved to highlight specific areas.

Illustrator tutorials

How to Create a Scream Mask in Adobe Illustrator

Scream is a classic slasher movie series, and in this tutorial, you will learn how to draw the famous scary mask of the mysterious killer known as Ghostface.

Create a Halloween Set with Pumpkins in Adobe Illustrator

This tutorial will focus on the Pen tool, Pathfinder palette, Gradient tool and some basic effects. First, you will learn how to draw a pumpkin. You will continue with the pumpkin faces: the laugh, the angry and the surprised faces.

How To Create a Flat Style Vector Map in Adobe Illustrator

There’s some fantastic examples of flat style map designs out there on the web that depict a city or country with ultra simplified illustrations with basic shapes and flat colours. I really fancied giving the style a try myself, so I thought ‘why not make a tutorial to share my process with others?!’. Follow along with today’s guide to learn how to build a creative vector illustration of a landscape with trees, roads, mountains and towns using a range of tools in Adobe Illustrator. Working in the flat design style involves simplifying an object to its most basic form, so Illustrator’s various vector shape building tools are ideal for crafting your illustrations.

Video Tutorial: Trendy Folded Logo Design in Illustrator

In this Adobe Illustrator tutorial I’ll show you how to create a design based on the letter M, but this folded style gives you plenty of options for producing various initials, or an abstract ribbon type icon. We’ll create the full colour primary logo graphic, then follow up with flat and mono versions that would be used in specific design scenarios.

Web and design articles

Shutterstock Editor Is the Simple Way to Impressive Designs

We launched Editor in beta last winter so that small businesses, social media managers, content marketers, or anyone who simply needs high-quality creative could meet the growing demand for beautiful design across departments and industries. Since then we tested features and refined them. Now, we’re introducing Shutterstock Editor out of beta, and it’s more powerful than ever.

With new editing tools and improved functionality, Shutterstock Editor has everything you need to create visuals that reflect your brand and engage your audience. Whether you want to make quick edits to a photo or create a fully-customized image, Editor will save you time on professional-looking designs.

The State of HTML5 Input Elements

Recently I was working on a project where we required date and numeric fields. Being a purist, my preference is and always will be native elements over some bloated JavaScript library. “Polyfills can cover outdated browsers,” I thought, “that way we keep the best experience on modern browsers.

A Guide for New Web Developers – from a newbie to another

This post is for those who’re looking to start web development, and don’t really have a background in coding. It also applies to those who’re just looking to start coding in general. It’s a length post, so pick the parts you want to read based on the headers.

Gmail Update: Support for Embedded Styles and Media Queries has Arrived!

Gmail has just released a bevy of important updates to their email client, bringing it into the 21st century and enabling email developers everywhere to leave behind old tools and techniques. Earlier, we provided some analysison the Gmail announcement. This blog details what we’ve found out now that the changes are live.

Why Friday’s Massive DDoS Attack Should be Terrifying

Friday’s massive DDoS attack made a number of hugely popular websites unavailable for much of the country for large parts of the day. Our service wasn’t directly affected by this incident, but the nature and scope of this attack is tremendously worrisome.

Designing Grids

I’d be telling you the obvious if I said that grids are important in web design. You already knew that. You probably have even coded a few grids with frameworks like Foundation or Bootstrap. You may even have created a custom grid manually, or using a grid layout tool like Susy.