Rapid Fire #6: Sticky Notes

Sticky notes are little pieces of bright-colored paper with an adhesive strip on the back, allowing you to jot down reminders, checklists, or *gasp* passwords and post them onto a surface.

This Adobe® Fireworks® tutorial will show you how to recreate them digitally, with a certain degree of realism, for your own design projects.

{by BrownBatteryStudios}

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Manipulate Smoke to Create Hyper-Real Images

Learn to apply the Warp Tool effectively and a few other tricks to make smoke look like a skull.

This technique has a variety of outcomes and works well with water, clouds and a whole bunch of other stuff.

This is probably more for intermediate users, as I guide you through the process well, but not every Warp Grid point handle move.

Let’s get started!

{by PsdTuts}

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Logo Design Process For FITUCCI

In this article I will guide you through my design process of creating the logo for Fitucci, offering insights into not only the thought process behind creating the logo but also the creation of the logo itself.

{by JustCreativeDesign}

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How to Create a Cubist Masterpiece in Illustrator

Cubism is one of the most outstanding movements in abstract art. Geometric shapes, vivid colors, simple figures, and textures are all distinctive features of this style.

Let’s try to recreate the cubist painting in Illustrator inspired by works of Pablo Picasso – after learning some simple techniques you’ll be able to easily paint your own cubist composition.

{by VectorTuts}

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Fireworks Patterns

Draw a vector on the canvas. In the Properties window click on the Fill category and select Pattern, a range of patterns appear. Select one of these and your vector gets filled with this pattern.

When you enlarge the vector the pattern gets pixilated, so avoid resizing the vector, instead draw the exact size of the vector and then fill it with the pattern.

You can also create custom patterns and add it to the Fireworks pattern list.

{by EntheosWeb}

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Cool Typography with the Blend Tool in Illustrator

I have written some Illustrator tutorials in which I've used the Blend Tool to create swirls and other shapes, but I have never used it to create a text effect. Then we received this email suggestion from one of our readers quite a few months ago asking us how to create that effect. I really like the text effect and decided to give it a try.

So in this tutorial I will show you how to create a text effect using the Blend Tool in Illustrator and then we will use Photoshop for some final retouches to make the effect more subtle.

The technique is very simple and it won't take more than 30 minutes to achieve the same effect.

{by Abduzeedo}

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Giacom brand identity design

Giacom is a leading provider of Internet services to the private and public sector in the UK, Europe and beyond.

Giacom’s portfolio of services includes scalable Internet hosting and outsourced message filtering/archiving systems.

Discover the design benefits of using simple mind-maps by downloading a free chapter from my book – Logo Design Love: From Pencil to PDF (1MB download size).

{by DavidAirey}

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The Power (and ease) of Patterns in Illustrator

In my last post I gave away some seamless vector patterns, and one in this post.

Many of you have questioned how to put these to use, and the answer is: Lots of ways. I’m going to illuminate a few different ways to take a seamless vector pattern and put it to use. And believe me, these are not the only ways.

Hopefully you can take these tips and find some unique uses for your own personal designs.

{by Bittbox}

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Do You Make These Classic Photoshop Mistakes?

As you learn the ins and outs of Photoshop, you’ll definitely make some mistakes, but from those mishaps we learn new and better ways to improve our workflow.

For those who are still in the learning process, here are a few classic Photoshop mistakes that you can easily correct:

{by LightStalking}

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Rapid Fire #5: Image Editing Tricks Part II

We conclude our two-part Rapid Fire special with a technique that will save you from manual-erase horrors that come with placing one photo over another.

Using vector shapes and the Multiply blend mode in Adobe® Fireworks® allows us to create adjustable superimpositions and preserve the shadows of the superimposed image.

This works best with photos of objects with a flat white background, standard among stock photos.

{by BrownBatteryStudios}

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40+ Striking Adobe Fireworks Tutorials

Now Adobe Fireworks is getting famous then before, because this growing prototyping tool for designers, many web designers find different techniques, experiments and learn how to work with various characteristics of Adobe Fireworks to interest up tedious pictures and make them into works of arts, in these of all listed tutorials many ways to get more inspirational stuff for design industry, If you’re interested in improving your skills with Fireworks, here are some of the best tutorials available.

{by TutorialLounge}

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Take Vector Paths from Photoshop into Illustrator

Many times in the past I had found that I wanted to take a vector path from Photoshop (CS) and somehow get it to Illustrator for further use.

There are lots of great and free Photoshop custom shapes out there, many of which might be more useful to you in Illustrator, if that’s what you prefer. That’s what Illustrator is for, right? Vectors.

{by BittBox}

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Complex Circular Design Techniques

Creating intricate circular designs and patterns may look difficult because the shapes can be very complicated, but you will be surprised at just how easy making these shapes can be.

I will go over some neat tricks, tools, techniques, and settings that will have you pumping out perfect circular designs in no time using Illustrator.

{by Bittbox}

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5 Advanced Google Tricks to Help You Become a Better Web Designer

You can use some simple Google tools in very creative ways, as well as use some more advanced ones to:

• find high-quality tutorials for any web design software tool, and find them easier and faster
• find decent alternatives for the current web design software you’re using
• search for what Spanish (or ) web designers are talking about

…and much more!

You’ll learn all of this in the text below. I’ll use specific examples to illustrate my points, but that doesn’t mean you can’t use your own examples when you understand the points. So let’s get started, shall we?

{by 1stWebDesigner}

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Adobe Fireworks Tutorial - Creating Orbs

The Simple Orbs Tutorial is a very simple technique, yet it could add some dramatic touches to your design.

It is just one layer object but you can replicate it over and over, and change the sizes.

{by Blue2x}

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Grunge Text Effect in Illustrator

In this tutorial we will make a grunge text effect like in a logo of Getaway TV series.

You can find the original Getaway logo here: www.thegetaway.co.uk

{by DesignSpice}

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How To Install & Use The Photoshop Frames & Borders Free Brush Set

This tutorial will walk you through installing and using the Frames & Borders Free Brush Set (zip/6.5MB) by Stephanie of Obsidian Dawn. It also includes tips on using specific brushes from the set to insure that they come out their best!

You'll find a description of each of the 28 brushes at the end of this tutorial.

If you are familiar with how to install and use Photoshop brushes already, skip down to the "Using the Brushes" section.

{by PhotoshopSupport}

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Retouching Photos with Background Textures

Our Tip #3 deals with line drawings and how to create a watercolor from them using Photoshop.

In this installment, we will take a photograph, and overlay textures to create a "watercolor". 

To keep the tutorial simple, I've kept the layers and therefore the effect to a minimum.

Having said that, sometimes subtle effects are more impressive than ones that  are overwhelming.

{by WetzelandCompany}

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80 Best-Of Adobe Illustrator Tutorials, Brushes, .EPSs and Resources

For months, we have been bookmarking interesting, useful and creative Adobe Illustrator tutorials and Resources, so you can now rest assured that you will have the necessary tools to get the job done.

Due to this phenomenally vast amount of vector packs, brushes, patterns available, you can now add dirt, rust, floral effect, swirls, mold, oil stains in your artwork and to give it any look you want.

So in today’s post, you’ll find an assortment of top-notch tutorials, brushes, patterns, vector packs, tips & tricks and .EPS downloadable files that others have freely contributed to the design community.

{by Noupe}

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Rapid Fire #4: Image Editing Tricks Part I

This dual serving of Rapid Fire demonstrates some basic image compositing techniques in Adobe® Fireworks®.

This is the first of two parts, and will serve as a simple intro showing how to create and match perspectives using the Distort Tool. 

And what better example than putting a screenshot over an empty screen?

{by BrownBatteryStudios}

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