There’s this very big issue among many designers of making all the necessary information above the fold (that being a standard of about 600 / 700 pixels high). So they try and they try to fit everything that’s “important” in there. In a typical layout that gives us 960 x 660 pixels of space that the most users will instantly see. Which is about this much of this website :
We believe a package doesn’t need to be a boring thing. It can very well sell a product. Or attract the attention of a potential customer. And to prove it we have found some splendid works from various designers from all over the world. Click on an image to see the authors page.
Some nice uses of glyphs. Click on the image to see the author’s flickr page.
And more after the break.
The guys from “Pixelmator team” are back! And after the long wait they present the next, 1.5.1 version of this supercool raster design software. This is a small update as it only fixes most bugs and adds some nice little features. But finally you can organize your brushes and the way this is done shows, that they don’t want to copy others, instead creating very usable workflows on their own. There’s also the announcement of the next, 1.6 version called Nucleus that they have started working on and that just adds to the overall excitement! Only three more functions (a proper text tool, layer styles and groups) and I’m dumping photoshop forever :)
You can check the software out (Mac only!) at pixelmator.com
I’ve been extremely busy lately, doing a couple of projects at once and I realized a pretty good way (aside from the treadmill I use to “take a break”) is to open up all the projects, however different from each other they might be, and work on each for a couple of minutes, adding touches and changing the overall user-perspective. It really can help you look at your new business layout (no people in suits please!!) in a totally new way.
We reached 10,000 views on our iPad parody recently, and currently we’re working on the next “visual” thing that will be available really, really soon (probably on monday).
There are some new authors around here, so keep the RSS feeds handy, since each one is an expert in his field, and we can all learn a lot from that collaboration.
Since a lot of people are still in the dark with this, I decided to shed some light on the matter. First of all – I have tried many apps, and I do dislike a lot of things about photoshop. Mainly the price and it’s interface which actually went better in CS4, but in general is bloated and not intuitive at all. Oh and did I mention that some universal things don’t work in all adobe apps? Like alt + scroll wheel doesn’t zoom in / out in Flash. How cool is that when they’re selling it as a very pricey creative suite ? Well anyways, I do use photoshop at work and it has a lot of advantages over the rest of the software mentioned, but for most of the time, they’d do fine. Because the tasks photoshop is better at are usually those rare ocasions. I’ll focus on both PC and the MAC and talk about two alternatives that I think are the best as far as price-to-features ratio.
PC world : Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo
This is a very close one to the photoshop killer. Mainly because it’s more intuitive and the price is a couple of times lower. There are things lacking though, like a good handling of layer groups, layer styles and more. But the thing lacking the most is a good text tool, with plenty of options. Sure there are quite a lot, but the resulting effect is odd for some reason. It does not render text nicely at all. If you’re making a website, that alone can make a difference between good and bad layout. Sure a lot can be done in it, but the bad text rendering and no “justify text” option are likely to become drawbacks while designing. I did use this software for a couple of years though, because it was a lot cheaper and had most of the same possibilities. Still like it and I think you should try it for it’s price.
Corel PhotoShop website
MAC : Pixelmator
At 59$ you can’t really ask for a lot of features. But you get them anyway. A great painting engine for tablet devices, fast and reliable, cool looking interface. But there’s almost no text-tool. I mean it’s so basic it’s like it’s not there at all. And there’s no grouping of layers or layer styles so that makes it a lot harder. But the pixelmator team is working hard on it, so I guess they’ll eventually add all those things there, just like they’ve recently added an amazing save-for-web feature. They do think a lot about the interface, and speed / ease of use and that’s a big big plus. It’s got about 80% of what a webdesigner needs right now, and I can’t wait for the new versions.
You can get it at pixelmator website
Where do you usually start when designing a website? Pasting a logo into a blank document, building a header around it? Think about this for a second : forget the logo and header. Sure they’re the eye-candy and eye-catching things, but once in a while it’s nice to do it differently. Take the content. Paste it all over a solid background. And then play with it. No menu, no logo. Just the content, columns, tables, charts, images. Put them in an order that makes them fit into each other. And after you’re done playing with it – THEN add the header and logo. You’d be surprised by how good the content looks now. Usually, with the “normal” way of doing this, you’d make an awesome header and logo, with really great graphics that you like, but often you’ll feel like something is lacking just below that great header graphics. Maybe that is the point – try and organize the substance before the form. You know, that age-old struggle of form vs substance ? Maybe it’s not so corny after all…
Well in many cases they are. Maybe not if you’re into minimal style graphics with just white background and solids, but for all of us that like to do stuff as bitmap as possible textures sure come in handy.
3d modellers would also love some new additions to their texture library. That’s why I’d like to recommend to you a great website that’s all about free textures. Go check out CG Textures !
A while ago I designed the cover artwork for the “Krop” music project. The idea was to be as “from outer space” as possible, and at the same time have some of that 80’s look to it. Since that’s the decade the aliens came to earth anyway.
I used pixelmator pixelmator a 59$ photoshop wanna-be app for the Mac. It’s faster than the big brother, has a lot of the same tools (some stuff is lacking but we can’t have everthing for 59$, right?) and is pretty easy to use. If you own a mac and want to have a cheap photoshop alternative go give it a try.
I used a lot of duplicates of the character with different blurs and color settings + some painting over with a rainbow gradient and masks.
Then some noise with low opacity was added to give it a feel of the 80’s even more. I will also be in charge of the music videos to follow, so I guess it’ll also be about similar effects there too.
Go check it all out at kropband.com
Computer icons have found their way into creative contemporary design. How about a “My documents” folder or an 8bit tie ? Now you know what to buy your nerdy programmer friend for Christmas.
More pictures after the break and at : Design Boom site
Continue reading
Amazing subway photography. Too bad most of the subways are so dull and boring, but as we can see here it doesn’t have to be this way. More photos after the break, and on this Link Continue reading
Logan Walters has put together an awesome compilation of modified space invaders. My favorite is of course Homer ;) It brought back a lof of memories of crouching by an old atari computer, with a cassette game still loading, avoiding sudden moves or it might not load, and then shooting furiously at those pixelated sprites.They had more soul than many new, naturally rendered characters in modern games. Those were the days …
The modifications after the break.