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Creative Bookmarks: Best of July 2009
Author: bonnard | Category: Articles
Don’t miss any of June’s best Tutorials: We got’em all right here! Over 40 outstanding tutorials, articles, and freebies for you to feast your eyes on!
Photoshop Tutorials
Design an Awesome Space Dancer Scene with Nebula Texture in Photoshop
In this tutorial, you’ll learn the processes used to design this awesome space dancer scene with a Nebula Texture in Photoshop.
Super Cool Watercolor Effect in 10 Steps
In this tutorial we will create water color effects using Masks and Watercolor brushes. This technique is inspired by the great digital artist Scott Hansen (the mind behind ISO 50).
Create a Wooden Stack Dock Icon in Photoshop
In this tutorial you’ll learn how to create a wooden stack icon for your dock or any other programs using icons. We’ll use some wood textures and different filters to design a nice box we can fill with icons.
Digitally paint portraits
Create digital paintings that look like high-end comics from photos with great Photoshop tips from David and Sarah Cousens.
Draw Fairy Tale Characters in Photoshop
During this tutorial you will learn how to use Burn Tool, and Dodge Tool to create wonderful designs. To create such drawings will take you a lot of time.
Create a Clean and Colorful Web Layout in Photoshop
This photoshop tutorial teaches how to create a colorful and clean corporate website layout based on the Griminati Business Website Layout.
How to Create a Fantasy Atmosphere Style Car Ad
The initial concept was the creation of an ?atmosphere’ – a background for the car. Using images and some painting techniques over that images I made a fantasy scene. This tutorial will explain some of those techniques and how various Photoshop tools work. Let’s get started!
How to Mold Paint Splatter to a Face in Photoshop
In this tutorial, we’ll learn how to take splattered paint Photoshop brushes and apply them to the contours of a model’s face. This is a relatively simple technique, which yields excellent artistic results. Let’s get to it!
Self-initiated abstract art
Out-of-this-world work doesn’t require a brief, says JUN, just careful choice of source material, a few hours and a little imagination.
You Will Stand Alone Photomanipulation
Another photomanipulation tutorial from PSD Essential, this time called You will stand alone. In the tutorial you’ll learn to create a dark and creepy effect by blending various images together and adjusting several settings.
Illustrator Tutorials
Create a Cute Furry Vector Monster in Illustrator
Follow these steps in Adobe Illustrator to create your very own super cute fuzzy monster character. We’ll be working with the basic shapes to start, then use a variety of gradients to add depth. We can then finish it off with some detailed fur effects to really lift the design from the screen.
How to Draw A Realistic Vector Light Bulb From Scratch
In this tutorial, I’m going to show you how I build a light bulb from scratch in Illustrator. We’ll use numerous shapes and effects to create this illustration. I’ll take you through each step in creating this bulb.
How to Create a Mosaic Portrait from a Photograph
This is a fun way to turn a photograph into an interesting vector portrait. Get sophisticated results with just a few easy steps, then modify it using a wide range of Illustrator’s live effects.
Create a Realistic Candy Bar in Illustrator
In this tutorial, created exclusively for WDD by Wendy Ding, she’ll be guiding you step by step through the stages required to create a realistic candy bar using Illustrator.
Turn Any Font Into a Sketch Font
There are some popular sketchy fonts available that are great for grungy and hand-drawn designs and illustrations. My problem is, I want to be able to use this sketchy style in any font. Turn’s out, it is actually really easy to do in Illustrator. Moreover, you can create a Graphic Style and easily apply the style to other editable fonts!
How to Create a Stinking Zombie Flesh-Eater in Illustrator
In this tutorial, I will show you how to create a cartoon zombie in Illustrator. Starting by creating a fresh corpse, we will then ?yuck’ it up using a number of techniques.
Design lettering with negative space
Jawa and Midwich reveal how to utilise hundreds of illustrations to build up a positive space containing negative letters.
Web Tutorials
8 Tips for Maintaining a User Friendly Site in One Hour a Month
When you create a website, you put time and effort into making sure that every part of it is perfect. You (hopefully) test it thoroughly and go through it with a fine tooth comb to make sure it’s wonderful for your visitors.
404 Best Practices
A 404 error on the web is what a web server responds with when it is tasked with serving up a resource that it can’t find. This article takes a look at some 404 Error best practices.
How To Use Multiple CSS Backgrounds, a Tutorial
For a dynamic visual effect, layering different textures can do the trick. Graphics and multiple patterns can be meshed together by the browser creating new life in a design.
Outside the Box Navigation with jQuery
Just about every website uses the regular navigation concepts we’re all used to. After awhile this can get pretty boring, especially for designers who thrive on creativity. While mimicking the OS X dock and stacks isn’t new, it’s certainly not common.
How to Make a Slideshow with a Transparent PNG Frame
By the end of this tutorial we’ll have created a basic slideshow that uses a combination of PNG transparency and layered positioning to create the effect of each slides being held in by the bottom corners.
Stop Counting Clicks!
The 3-click-rule is the Freddy Kreuger of web design advice. You think it’s finally dead and then it comes back and starts slashing up sensible debate about usable design. I’m hoping to convince you to stop talking about the 3-click rule. I don’t mean substituting it with the 4-click rule or the 5-click rule. You should stop counting clicks as a measure of usability altogether.
Using Content to Grow Customer Relationships
Want to keep your customers despite tough economic times? Don’t add yet another feature to your Web site. Stop worrying about redesigning it. Instead, take a hard look at improving your site’s content.
247 web usability guidelines
Although designing usable systems requires far more than simply applying guidelines, guidelines can still make a significant contribution to usability by promoting consistency and good practice. We use this list of guidelines in our consultancy work. For best results, remember to interpret the guideline in context — this requires a bit more thought but ensures you will get a lot more from your review.
Freebies, Inspiration & Resources
Free Social Media Icon Set: Woodgrain
With 18 social networks represented alongside astandard RSS icon in PNG format, this is a beautiful collection that can be used for a wide variety of purposes.
Birdies: Cute Free Twitter Icons For Your Blog
In this post we release Birdies: A Free Twitter Icon Set, a set of 12 beautiful and lovely Twitter icons. This set was designed by IconEden and released exclusively for Smashing Magazine and its readers.
Watercolor Free Icon Pack
This free icon pack features 36 colorful watercolor icons. Add some of these to your website design to instantly give it a high-quality artsy polish.
Free WordPress Theme: WP Typo
This theme was built by WP Coder as a demo, and is now available for your perusal and download. It’s called WP Typo and it’s a purely typographical theme (zero images used).
6 Free PSD/(X)HTML-Templates
A couple of weeks ago Smashing Magazine released DelliStore, a professional CSS/(X)HTML-template with PSD-sources. In the poll and in the comments, readers asked for more (X)HTML/CSS-template, so here are 6 more professional template that you can use without any restriction for your private or commerical projects. The template were designed by Templateworld and released for free especially for Smashing Magazine and its readers.
Free Vector and Pixel Pattern – Stylized Clouds 1
Another free vector pattern by Pattern Head. This time the theme is a subtle blue sky and stylized retro clouds.
Free Texture Tuesday: Floral
These textures were made in Photoshop by layering various grunge and paper textures together along with floral patterns. They may not have a wide variety of uses, but I think they’ll really come in handy when you find a place for them in your designs.
Free Vectors – 15 Paint Brushstroke Illustrator Brushes
A Pack of 15 high-quality paint brushstroke Illustrator Brushes. They came out really cool, and could be used subtly, and for details, as well as full blown paint brush strokes.
Download ?Gallery?: A Free WordPress Theme
Another free WordPress Theme released by Smashing Magazine. Gallery is a theme that is specially tailored for portfolios and showcases.
10 Beautiful Web UI libraries
Are you looking for any interesting and beautiful Web User Interface libraries for your next web site or Rich Internet Application ? Take a look at this list with ten WUI I suggest you to try in order to simplify your work and develope faster beautiful and usable user interfaces.
35 Examples Of Stunning Macro Photography
In this inspirational showcase, we’ve collected some beautiful macro pictures, as well as some useful macro photography tutorials – for people at all levels of experience.
10 Creative Brochure designs
A good brochure must be clear and attractive to the intended audience. Think of the brochures that you or your friend kept from an event you went to, or a place you wanted to go. You may not have identified exactly what design aspect made it unique, but these brochures definitely captured the essence of the event or the company.
40 Top-Notch Print Based Tutorials
It seems tough to find a few nice print related tutorials online. That’s why we’ve taken the liberty of highlighting 40 top-notch print articles from around the web.
10 Reasons Why You Should Be Using Firebug
Firebug is one of the most popular tools used by web developers. In this article, we’ll take a closer look at ten of its most attractive features.
Users Place More Weight on Design
The demand for good web design is increasing, revealed a recent Webcopyplus online poll. Almost 25% of web users indicated ?poor visual presentation? as the number one element that drives them away from websites. Only 6.6% of web users who participated in a similar 2007 online poll indicated ?poor visual presentation? as the main reason to abandon a website. That equates to a 267% increase during the two-year period.
Ultimate list of Typography resources: inspiration, tutorials, tools and books
Typography is a fundamental field of graphic design. Here I have collected lots of useful resources that can allow you to learn the basis of typography: books, inspirational works, tutorials etc.
10 Tools to Improve Your Site’s Usability on a Low Budget
In this article, we’ll review 10 tools that you can use to improve your website’s usability even if you’re on a low budget.
Interview with David Leggett
People give me way too much credit and interview me. Someone even called me famous, and the Paris Hilton of web design in a spiteful comment elsewhere (something my roomate won’t stop bothering me about)! Anyways, here’s a recent interview I did with @timothybsmith (Timothy Smith). Hope you enjoy 
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