In design at 10:18 pm March 08th, 2010
Yes yes, I gave in, I purchased my third Apple product, but this time it was slightly bigger then my previous two purchases a 16GB iPod Touch an headphones. This time it was around 8 times the price of the iPod, I decided to pick up a 27″ iMac.
Ever since I was interested in design I have always been told Apple Macs are the way to go, but I could never justify spending that amount of money on something my Dell 5150c computer could *just about* do. I upgraded the RAM to a massive 2GB :S and I hooked up dual 20inch wide screens as my single 17inch was a little small.
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In design on February 22nd, 2010
I was not sure on what too title this but I though that NAF(non active fading) worked, basically the function below fades out the not active siblings to make the element you are hovered over stand out.
I got this idea after seeing this site. After trying out many ideas and failing I knew there must be a way of selecting the not active siblings. A quick look through my Packt jQuery Reference Guide and I found .not() under the filtering methods.
In design on February 07th, 2010
Recently I have been asked to produce a brand for a car sales company called Accent Motors, which is a new start up company selling used cars. I always enjoy designing when its a subject I have a passion for, I find it makes its a lot easier for the ideas to flow.
In design on January 22nd, 2010
After 31 months of working for Blue Solutions a leading software distribution company in Wokingham I am leaving for a new job working for a digital agency in Basingstoke. I felt the time was right for a new challenge and my iPod was running out of tracks. We only learn by challenging ourselves and I felt the challenge had stopped.
In design on December 15th, 2009
This tutorial is about how to make a gallery using Jquery, without the need for a plugin. I’m not saying don’t use a gallery plugin, but like me you might not want to, so this is an alternative. We will make this work by attaching an image to each thumbnail using the rel attribute, then replacing a div with an image.
In design on November 16th, 2009
You can easily switch an image using CSS but that’s a straight switch, which is fine for most things. I wanted a smoother method which would fade the image from black and white to colour. This is not the most challenging of tasks but its worth doing, it is so easy to implement to multiple images.
In design on November 03rd, 2009
I want to make a jquery sliding panel but make it a little different. I always see tutorials on sliding panels pretty much all coming from the top and sliding down into view. I don’t know about you but that’s pretty boring now, the best one I’ve seen recently is by Jon Phillips click here to view. It appears from a point behind the button then returns to that point.
In design on October 23rd, 2009
After my last article on a jquery image caption I have continued to fiddle with jquery and something I felt would be good to have is a FAQ slider, a bit like an accordion. I am sure you have seen one around but if not its basically a list of Questions and once clicked apon the answer is show below.
In design on October 21st, 2009
This is my first tutorial on jquery so just bare with me…Jquery seems to be something I really want to learn but I just cant find the time to learn it. Everytime I open my Learning Jquery 1.3 book from Packt a deadline comes up, so the book it placed back on the shelf to gather dust! But finally I found a perfect moment to fiddle with it. So I have put together a simple effect using an image and a caption which slides up when hovered over. It was actually pretty easy to achive.
In design on October 19th, 2009
I sit at a desk pretty much all day I have noticed many websites using natural elements in there web projects, from wood panel backgrounds to full on field of grass. By using such textures you can give the illusion of your site being 3D also its something we can relate to, maybe you have a memory of rolling in the mud when younger or laying in a corn field with someone your fond of! I’m going to run through a few of my findings.
In design on October 14th, 2009
If you didn’t know I am a huge sports fan so I have been waiting for the new EA sports 2010 versions to come out, and I must say the covers are amazing this year! EA sports have slightly modified their trademark plain white with a cut out player and added some grit!
In design on October 03rd, 2009
The days of flat/block color text are dead you can apply many effects by just being a bit creative with CSS, CSS3 makes it a little bit easier with the text shadow style BUT until ie6 dies designers are having to find alternative ways to create text effects.
In design on August 25th, 2009
I have always been looking around for an easy way of having custom fonts in web designs. As the web is evolving so quickly designer must make their designs stand out as much as possible and one way of doing this is using a custom font for a project.
In design on August 24th, 2009
The Color Replacement tool is great for touching up photos or dramatically changing the color of an element. Really simple tool in Photoshop but I think many people over look it and try duplicating layers and using Hue/Saturation (ctrl+U) to get the desired effect.
In design on August 20th, 2009
Tool tips can be a great addition to any website, they can display additional content to a certain web element with the user hovering over a section, this then frees up your site from looking cluttered as a lot of content can be hidden.
In design on August 17th, 2009
Lately I have managed to get a copy of Flash CS4 at work and as I have not used Flash in a while I thought I would see how much I could remember. CS4 isnt massively different from previous versions so it was pretty easy to get back into the flow of it.
In design on August 04th, 2009
As I have started taking an interest in Photography I have been joining groups on flickr and one is lumix HDR. HDR photos are becoming more and more popular with people just to change there photos and give it a specific effect so im going to show you how to make a fake HDR effect.
In design on August 01st, 2009
Create your own Skectchy font using Ai and following a few simple steps. There are alot of sketchy fonts/handwriten out there to choose from but what if you just want something a little different you can make your own very easily.
Latest logo I designed was one for CATS-i. Which is a tracking company. After a limited brief and multiple changes to that limited brief throughout the design stage made it quite a tricky one to get finished, but this is what I ended up with. Below are the stages I went through to produce it.
Post from css-tricks.com, i couldnt have worded it better myself.
I used to work in pre-press before I got into web design. I worked at three different somewhat large printing shops. Pre-press is the department that is in between clients (designers) files and actually getting those files to press. It might not
In design on January 25th, 2009
This weekend I have spent it in the house as the cold I have has got worse, so I have been messing about on photoshop. Frilly bits like flowers and swirls starting cropping up all over the place towards the end of last year and still seems very popular today.
In design on January 09th, 2009
I have been asked by the GBHIS Chairman (Great Britain Hockey Inline Southern) to design a few concepts for the Southern Snipers jerseys. The Southern Snipers are the best players in the south who go through trials to get into the team. Later in the year there is a weekend in sheffield where they play agasint Midlands North and scotland maybe wales if they show up.
In design on December 31st, 2008
So with all this time off i have got round to updating my website. I needed to really update my work page as it was all graphics and no real text and this was just taking far to long to load also I wanted to use a different lightbox, it was using script.aculo.us and i [...]
In design on November 23rd, 2008
You sometimes see this effect in films, I think vacancy was one that used this sort of effect in the opening titles, i think its really effective. Not really sure how you can get a high res version I guess you would have to redraw it all in Ai becasue you only get an option to save it in their gallery
In design on October 26th, 2008
Can the designer be wrong? as he hears people say “really he done that! what was he thinking?! he should of done this….”
I find that most people dont have an idea of what is technically possible today, in my opinion anything is possible theres always a way to make it work, i love experimenting and [...]
In design on October 26th, 2008
Just a small post, say you put 5 concepts together, i can guarantee that your client will pick the one you think is the weakest out of your 5. Clients seemed scared to dare what they can get away with in the market…
sometimes it comes down to them not actually knowing what is possible in [...]
In design on October 18th, 2008
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Praesent accumsan erat sit amet dolor. Quisque porttitor tortor. Maecenas velit. Phasellus ultrices aliquet ante….dont worry your eyes aren’t playing tricks on you im just getting you ready for when you look at this site!
In design on October 18th, 2008
After alot of work the very popular gifts site has a new look. A very strong brand of orange an blue (almost like play.com) has been reworked into a much cleaner and clearer look.
with a very specific brief and a few of my touches I have turned a table based site into a full css [...]
In design on October 15th, 2008
At my Place of work Blue Solutions ltd. we have launched a side company called purelywebstores. We have just rolled out our first site called purelygps.co.uk.
Since i had started at the company i had mainly been the graphic designer so print adverts, emails etc, but now I have a chance to learn new things by [...]
There’s been many mixed opinions on the New London 2012 logo, to be honest most are against it!
Take a look at the logo design. What’s your first reaction? Crap, waste of money, a 5 year old could do better…. etc etc, but what if i said to you that the designer was given a brief of :
