Best Of Web And Design In August 2012

• August 30th, 2012
• News

The end of the summer is a approaching. The nights begin to get darker and colder, the perfect time to spend some time doing some Photoshop and illustrator tutorials. This months round-up features a great collection of tutorials, alongside some awsome web related articles worth reading through. I hope you enjoy the monthly round-up, and would really appreciated if you left your thoughts in the comments section below.

Photoshop Tutorials

How to Create a Lighter Illustration from Scratch in Photoshop

In the following tutorial you will learn how to create a lighter illustration from scratch in Photoshop.

Quick Tip: Create a Candy Flavored Text Effect in Photoshop

In this quick tip tutorial you will explain how to create a candy cane-style text effect in Photoshop.

Create a Trendy Retro Cityscape Design in Photoshop

Follow this step by step Photoshop tutorial to create a cool cityscape poster design with the trendy retro style and effects that are so popular at the moment. We’ll use a range of texture resources and Photoshop techniques to give the design an aged and distressed appearance and send it back in time a few decades.

Create a Polished 3D Gold Bars Text Effect

A great gold text effect that will be created from scratch using layer styles and filters

Illustrator Tutorials

How to Create a Trash Bin Icon with Adobe Illustrator

In this tutorial you will learn how to create the trash bin icon using such techniques, as 3D modeling, gradient mesh, blend tool and blending modes, as well as tracing raster images. This tutorial is made by Iaroslav Lazunov and a professional Ukrainian designer Sergii Korolko.

Learn How to Draw Metallic style Gradients to Create a Mincing Machine

Creating metallic objects can be a challenge, so here’s a tutorial that will show all the techniques you will need to create the elements of a 3D metallic object. You will learn helpful skills in rendering metallic effects, how to draw objects in 3D and some great tips on working with the Gradient Mesh.

Create a Cool Ribbon Style Logo Graphic in Illustrator

Follow this step by step Illustrator tutorial to create a cool ribbon style logo graphic with gradients and effects in Adobe Illustrator. We’ll create the graphic as a vector design to allow scalability as a logo and add flat and mono versions to keep the logo versatile.

Create a Simple Drop-Down Menu

In the following Adobe Illustrator tutorial you will learn how to create a detailed web element, a simple drop-down menu. We’ll start with a bunch rectangles and simple paths, some basic vector shape building techniques and the Rounded Corners effect. Once we have our starting shapes we’ll continue with the colors. We’ll use multiple fills and strokes along with the Drop Shadow effect and some simple blending techniques. Finally, we’ll add the text.

Web and design articles

How To Become A Top WordPress Developer

First, let’s set a few things straight: becoming a top WordPress developer is hard work — very hard work. It’s going to take a lot of time, energy and determination. If you’re looking for an easy checklist or some “fast pass” to the top, you’re going to waste your time. Being one of the best is hard, and statistically speaking, the odds are stacked against you.

Beautiful Button Design in Action: Examples & Tips for Creating Effective Buttons

Designing beautiful buttons for the web is an art form in and of itself. The best buttons often appear simple and easy to design, yet are deceptively difficult, and are often comprised of many subtle design elements, backed by solid marketing theories. Today we’re going to look at some of the principles behind great button design, and give you some practical tips to improve your own website’s buttons, and boost your conversions/click-through rates.

101 Ways to Improve Your Freelance Brand

Here are 101 branding tips to help you improve your freelance identity and help your business succeed.

Don’t Worry. We All Feel Overwhelmed

Acting as the Distilled Community and Content Assistant is as new to me as it is to the company. There’s certainly a lot of emphasis in marketing placed on generating a strong community and raising web visibility. You can find a whole host of posts relating to such matter – MackWeb Solutions talk you through a manageable content and social media marketing process on their recent SEOMozpiece with aplomb but what of those with new domains, starting out and struggling with the bewildering task of manning these social channels?

The mistakes killing your conversion rate

You probably pride yourself on being a great web designer, right? But did you know that some elements of your website designs might actually be lowering the conversion rate and revenue of your website without you knowing it?

Learning SEO – Where to Start

When you talk to SEOs about how they got into the industry, the stories are always pretty varied.  There is no standard route into SEO given that it isn’t taught at University or College, at least not as a stand alone course.  Many people tend to fall into SEO by accident and catch the bug, that bug is usually getting one of their own websites to number 1.