Entries filed under 'Design'
Simple Photoshop tricks: Creating interesting drop shadows
Filed under Photoshop, Design on 23.06.07
Continuing my series of very simple little techniques you can use in Photoshop, here’s a quick tip for making drop shadows on sidebars or similar look a little more interesting.
Fire up Photoshop and on a new layer create a sidebar-shaped rectangle that is the same colour as your background (I’m using white here). Now duplicate that layer, name it ‘Shadow’, and drag it below the sidebar layer in the Layers palette.
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Grid Calculator 1.1
Filed under Design on 10.05.07
I’ve just made a slight update to the Grid Calculator I made last week—it now includes a representation of the columns and gutters at the bottom of the page, so you can get an idea of how the relative widths look together, and also start to visualise how different combinations of columns might work with each other.
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Designing with Grids - finding the right width for Column, Gutter and Page
Filed under Design on 4.05.07
Like many other designers, in the last year or two I’ve come to learn the importance of grid-based design, and now consistently use grids when mocking-up site layouts.
However, one of the annoyances when you first sit down to turn your initial sketches into a Photoshop mock is calculating the precise width to use for the various elements that make up the grid. I like to ensure that there is a relationship between the type and the dimensions used for the columns and the gutters, but finding the ideal combination of widths—while still ensuring that the total width of the page fits inside your chosen minimum browser resolution—can be a tedious exercise in calculation.
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Working Designer
Filed under Digital-Web, Design on 20.03.07
Over at Digital Web we’ve kicked off our new Working Designer column with an absolutely fantastic article from Jesse Bennett-Chamberlain on his design process for the new Expression Engine site. Fascinating insight from a master at work.
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Using Personas to inform design
Filed under Design on 10.10.06
I’ve been doing some research into developing user personas at work this week. Aside from Alan Cooper’s seminal book, The Inmates Are Running The Asylum, there are plenty of great resources to be found around the web – here are some of the most useful I’ve come across:
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Simple Photoshop tricks: Thick lines for definition
Filed under Photoshop, Design on 25.08.06
Time for yet another simple Photoshop trick, although technically this one isn’t so much about Photoshop as it is a design or layout idea.
Say you have a list of something on your page, be it products, comments or whatever; and each item has a mix of content – heading, text, list, image(s) – which make it difficult to clearly see where one item ends and the next begins.
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Simple Photoshop tricks: Finding a complementary colour
Filed under Photoshop, Design on 11.07.06
Continuing my series of stupidly simple Photoshop tips, here is how I select a complementary colour when I need a highlight (or lowlight) for a design element.
I’m useless at picking colours that go well together, so when designing I rely heavily on tools like the Well Styled Color Scheme Generator, the Color Schemer and (my personal favourite) Behr’s ColorSmart tool to pick colours that go well together.
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Simple Photoshop tricks: Soft Light
Filed under Photoshop, Design on 22.06.06
If you’re anything like me (a developer-cum-codemonkey working as a designer), you probably feel pretty dumb when it comes to working up design comps, especially when ‘proper’ graphic designers make it seem so effortless. You might have a pretty good handle on the theory behind layout, typography, colour selection and all that jazz, but when it comes to converting that knowledge into a great design… the final product sometimes seems to be so much less than the sum of its parts.
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Browse by colour
Filed under Design on 7.06.06
How cool is this interface? I like the way you can fling items off the screen as well.
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Reboot the BBC!
Filed under Design on 27.04.06
The BBC has announced their own reboot – the chance to redesign the homepage of www.bbc.co.uk, apparently inna web-2.0-stylee.
Intriguing – I may have a bash, time allowing, and it will be interesting to see what is submitted; I hope a certain redesign-friendly gentleman enters…
