1. You are beautiful

2. Yoo Tae Han

3. Whitey Clean

4. We make it live

5. Ungarbage

6. The Typographic Desk Reference [TDR]

7. Supersize

8. Rebecca Ruth

9. Ponto Criativo

10. Pomade

11. Pixel Mind

12. Onskelista

13. Nuova Design Lab

14. Neutra (Free WordPress theme)

15. Minimal

16. Midiaweb

17. Meta Maniera

18. Maqina

19. LG

20. Langoor

21. Jump To

22. Jerlyn Thomas

23. Inkd

24. I am Dan

25. Hugo Miniero

26. This is grow

27. Gaaraa

28. Forrykt

29. Feedweaver

30. Exehill

31. Eco Service

32. Digital Podge

33. Design by Silnt

34. Danny Blackman.com

35. Cynosura

36. Cups Calgary.com

37. Charles Elena.com

38. Craig Wilson

39. Cool White

40. Concise

41. Concept

42. Clogg

43. Cartier

44. Best Before

45. Bee Creations

46. Martin Balhar

47. Artypapers

48. Arrival Design

49. Area 17

50. Andrew Lindstrom

51. Alt Backspace

52. Alex Trochut

53. Agencia Moby

54. Aaron Kato

55. 3e Etage

On windows there are actions in some subfolders of the photoshop installation folder depending on photoshop version, preferable in ‘Required’ and ‘Presets\Photoshop Actions’. You can also keep your actions in a different folder, even on a different drive. Just tell PhotoShop to load the actions, and navigate to their location. This way you can keep your downloaded and custom actions in a safe place.

1. Image Flow Photoshop Action

2. Image Flow 2 Photoshop Action

3. Image Flow 3 Photoshop Action

4. HardBack Book Action

5. Photoshop DVD box action

6. 3D render of software packaging mockup

7. Amazing Compact Disk eCover Action & Templates

8. DVD/CD Mockup Generator (Actions & Templates set)

9. Product Box Action

10. DVD Case Action

11. Paperback Book Action

12. 3D Box Generator Action set & Templates

13. Comic book effect action

14. Photoshop Business Card Action

15. Cartoon/Comic-book effect Action

16. CD Case Mockup Generator

17. Hand-colored Vintage Photo ATN

18. Oriental fan action

19. The out of boundseffect have never been easier

20. Magnifying glass action

21. Reflection wall

22. Reflections

23. Photoshop stamp action

24. Image Stack / Display Actions

1. Upload 10 of your original logo designs to 99designs
2. Customers will buy your logos from 99designs
3. You will customize it for them by adding their business name
4. 99Designs will pay you a % commission on every sale

I am sure you have a lot of good designs what aren’t meet the way of client vision. Instead to keep them just on backups,  upload them in a market where you can earn some money. More then that, those can act like a live portfolio page for your corporate identity works.

1. Zaum and Brawn

2. Outstander

3. XP CodecPack

4. Unleaded Software

5. Two 24 Studios

6.Tedler Montov

7. Tap Tap Design

8. Switch Mediaworks

9. Studio Nash Vegas

10. Start Fitness

11. Starbucks Coffee

12. Something Interesting

13. SilverMusic

14. Saizen Media

15. Red Million

16. Quasar – Free joomla template from RocketTheme

17. Pixelosaurus Design

18. Osvaldas

19. Nue Media

20. Miriel Design

21. Mike Precious

22. Made Frog Designs

23. Livid Media

24. Life Platform

25. Kavoon Web Design Studio

26. Kardo Ayoub

27. Icki Sports

28. Honky Tonkxxx

29. Haris Vision

30. IDC

31. Esteban Munoz

32. Cleo Annex Salon

33. Gutmann Freerider

34. Gomu Project

35. Future of web design

36. Fully Illustrated

37. Brett Nyquist

38. Black Portfolio

39. Adam Hickey

40. Black Admin Template

41. Arrowhead

42. BootB

43. Blaxk

44. Magnifico – A free PSD file of this website is available for download here.

45. Different

function onMouseMove(e) {

Before to any variables, paste this code to make it to work and on IE browsers:

if (e == null)
e = window.event;

Otherwise, your javascript code will be stoped by IE.

Even isn’t a big deal at first sight, following a recent list with javascript animantions, i saw that many was not working on Internet Explorer. We like or not, over 35% from internet users (over 45% according to other statistics) use IE browsers – 10% are just for IE6!?!

To access the global brush dimensions, double click on tool, on warp tool for instance. From there, change the sizes of width, height, angle etc. Another way to change the mass distortion tool without to open this settings box, is to use two keyboards: SHIFT and ALT. Press the SHIFT+ALT key and move the mouse to change the size of brush. In case you need to change and the angle of brush, then press just the ALT key and move the mouse along x and y axis to achieve the wanted angle.

Builded like a single page website, each section of vCard is presented in a nice card animation. The bottom rainbow is the vCard menu. Click on colors to get the page displayed. You can change the order of cards, changing the order of section divs from “index.html”. The portfolio page can display images, a group of images, swf files, videos and iframe content. Nice jQuery pagination is included. Template contain a layered psd file with elements for cards, form, background, pattern and icons.

Is really easy to make a new look to the template. Simply replace the pattern and background holder for cards and your theme will look unique. In case you want to replace the colors for cards, with different gradient or palette, use the psd file and save the slices.

Do not forget that is a bio vCard, do isn’t builded for heavy content. If still you need to use a lot of texts, take care at spacing, because the cards aren’t flexible on height. Use Colorbox plugin included to load more text.

Features:
• Unique and clean layout
• jQuery Animation
• xhtml w3 validated
• Portfolio with pagination and Colorbox
• Ajax Contact form with validation
• Layered PSD file
• Extensive Documentation

See the demo of working vCard template here.

License sold.
Please contact me if you are looking for something similar or custom, or, take a look on those vCards.

What you get:
• html template
• layered psd file
• pdf help file

The problem is screen printed above. The css background attachment property loaded like default in IE6-7 is “scroll”. For IE6 you can make the background attachment “fixed” and no more scrolling. Not so with IE7.

Since Microsoft “corrected” the background attachment issues with IE7 and now is no way of having an overflow of text in a input or textarea element and not having the background scroll with the text, and if you try “background-attachment: fixed;” the background doesn’t even display.

Because is no really css hack what fix the problem, you need to think out of css. Instead to style just the textarea element, make a supplementary div like container for textarea and apply the background image to the div, instead to textarea. Let the textarea without border and background to make a proper overlay.

#contactForm textarea {
border:none;
background:none;
width:200px;
height:85px;
color:#c8c8c8;
padding:10px 0 0 10px;
overflow:hidden;
}

#contactForm .textarea {
width:215px;
height:100px;
background: url(../images/input-text.png) no-repeat;
}

The home page layout can be used and like a landing page. Compatible Browsers: FireFox 2, FireFox 3, IE7, IE8, Opera, Safari and Chrome. You can see here a working demo. Theme have 2 grey color styles. Use the “Theme Switcher” function from blog category to test both of them.

Features:
• 2 Grey Color Styles
• Featured Projects Slider
• Nice Slide Gallery Page
• Last Twitter entries
• Dynamic testimonials
• Custom search results
• Working Contact Form
• Full Theme Options
• The new WP 2 .9 thumbnail feature
• Extensive Documentation

Usage: portfolio, image gallery, architecture, corporate business, landing page.

Style: dark grey, light grey, black & gray, clean and simple.

1. Make a full contour the character.

2. Duplicate it and apply an “offset path” with 3px.

3. Make the following shape for coat with “Pen Tool”. You can draw it above the sketch. Apply a blue gradient to it. To use same colors like mine, use a free and simple color picker like “pixie“. Will be more easy for you to copy the code of color instead writing it.

4. Make the pants. Use the following gradient settings.

5. Make the legs shape, using same “Pen Tool”.

6. For shoes we will use three layers (in second one we mix and the socks). First shape:

7. Second one, with socks:

8. Third one:

9. With “PenTool” and “Ellipse Tool” make the following shapes for laces.

10. Details for cloth. Same, use “PenTool” and “Ellipse Tool”.

11. For face, make a shape close to this and apply the gradient from screenshot. Same one like gradient for legs, just is “radial”.

12. The next shapes are used for face details:

13. Student hat shapes. The shadow shape is a black color shape with opacity at 40%.

Your vector character should look like this:

In case you want to add a shadow, copy the first layer created and add perspective.

Thanks for reading.

2. Go to filters again, and from Texture / Grain choose “Film Grain” like in next image:

3. Make a new layer (light) and on top for background and apply a big soft brush with a light grey shade.You need to do that on a new layer because later, on html integration, will be a more easy job to set a background noise-grain pattern for body and the light like png to a div, instead to save a big image like background. This will not overload the size of graphics used and also, on any resolution the background will look good. In case you are just web designer, do not forget to develop and a programmer thinking.

4. Put your logo over the light layer. In my case i used one done with basic shapes. Doesn’t matter now the color or effects. In case you are doing it in Illustrator, let it simple, with no effects, gradients etc.

5. For slogan, i used the blending options like following:

6. For logo:

The logo should look now like:

7. Make a bar menu (centered to layout) using “Rounded Rectangle Tool” with 25px radius. Width: 940px and height: 42px. Apply same blending options like on logo, except the stroke will have a more less opacity (the stroke should have a more contrast)

8. For menu items background, use again the “Rounded Rectangle Tool” with 25px radius. Width: 200px and height: 30px. Using “Rectangular Marquee Tool” copy a part of noise-grain background and mask it with the new created shape.

Use same way to make the “hover” effect for any menu item.

9. Let’s make a slider. Make a shape using “Rounded Rectangle Tool” with 25px radius. Width: 940px and height: 305px. Apply same blending options like on menu bar. In fact, that engraved effect will be used for most of other shapes.

10. For slider buttons, use “Ellipse Tool” to make a circle 80×80px and center it along slider border. But, to make the circle to be part of slider shape, before that, is need to click on “vector mask” of slider shape layer, select the “add to shape area” option. Do the same to the right side.

11. Make an arrow. You can use the “Custom shape tool”. Apply same blending slider options. Increase the opacity for stroke and put a small shadow.

12. In bottom area will be 3 columns. Each heading will have an icon. The icons i use are standard symbols in Adobe Illustrator CS3 and in case you need to change them in same style, but with different shapes, go to your Illustrator and open the “web symbols” group of icons. By default, those symbols are hidden from symbols windows. Drag the icon needed to your artboard and expand appearance, copy the icon and paste it like smart object in Photoshop.

13. Under each icon layer, make a new shape using “Rounded Rectangle Tool” with 25px radius. 60 x 45px size. Same blending option like the menu and slider shapes.

14. For icons, apply blending settings like in following screens:

15. For text separation, in columns, use two 1px lines with two contrast grey shades. One lighter one darker.

16. We have to deal now with footer area. Using 25px radius “Rounded Rectangle Tool”, make a shape 380 x 100px. Select the “vector mask” and with “Rectangle Tool” subtract the bottom of shape area. Course, same blending style like on menu, slider and icon holder.

17. Using brushes, 1px lines, shapes with gaussian blur filter applied, make the following effect (i am not detailed here because exist a lot of “web 2.0″ brushes available for download or tutorials about that kind of effect)

You are done. See more screenshots of template. If you like the design, you can buy a xhtml/css template version with just 10$. It comes with 4 layouts in 7 pages and with predefined classes for common elements needed in website, from lists to tables.The package contain layered psd files, logo sources, detalied instructions for customizations, thematic animation / slider and working contact form

The W letter show a lot of potential in many design purposes. Is one of my favorites. Now, make a mouth for w-ram becoming shape.

Your shape should be like this now:

The W look now more like a sheep because is no horns there. To make it, use “pen tool” and make a simple shape like in following image. Select it and make a new art brush from it, using setting from screenshot.

Select “pencil” or “paintbrush tool” and using new created brush, draw shapes close to horns look. The “smooth tool” is doing a great job here.

Once you found the perfect shape, ungroup it and delete the path (line). duplicate it and transform / reflect one horn.

Place the horns in top of W brackets.

Be sure you make a proper alignment with top of W letter.

Now, combine all shapes, W letter, the mouth and horns. Note: Like you can see, the anchors points aren’t same on right side like on left one. That is because of W shape letter design. In case you want to balance it, you can move some anchors.

Final w wild logo letter:

From here, play more if want, using “offset path” or other vector shapes and layers combinations.

1. Find a “P” font letter close to the classic look.

2. Crop the left side of the “P”, like in the following image:

3. Duplicate your new “P” letter shape. Go to effects and from 3D, choose rotate. From 3D rotate options select in positions list “Isometric right”.

4. Same things for the second “P” letter shape, except the position from 3D rotate options will be “Isometric left”.

Your new isometric letters:

5. The “P” letters look how we want but we cannot play to much with the shapes. For more flexibility, expand the appearance. Click right on letter, ungroup, click right again and release the clipping mask, then delete the rectangle path.

6. Fill the letters with 2 different orange colors.

7. Align both shapes to the left, and be sure the alignment is pixel perfect.

8. Group the letters and duplicate (copy / paste) the group. This will be used for left side of the graphic. Transform / reflect the group.

9. Fill the new pasted shapes with two different grey colors. Align them to the left of orange letters.

10. If you want to make a shadow for logo, select all the shapes and combine them. Fill the new shape with a very light grey, and transform it using skew or perspective tool.

Make a new layer and paste the last two shapes done. Hide the first layer with the star basic shape. Fill the shapes with blue and orange color grandients.

Now, arrange the shapes to form a star like the basic star shape is. For the next step you need to make 3 new shapes (with Pen Tool) for a small 3D star effect. Those shapes will have a more dark orange color or gradient. Each star corner will meet the center of shape. Left one will have a full orange color, middle one a 90° angle grandient, right one at 45° gradient.

This is how you image look now:

Place a shadow shape like in following image and make the happy face star. Copy now all shapes and combine them, fill the new shape with a light grey and place it behind the character. Use Free Distort effect to create a perspective character shadow.

Done. Bravo. You are a star!

In the middle of November was released a new premium ecommerce theme for WordPress by Sarah Neuber. Click here to see the shop working. For membership test, you need to make an account  (with a valid e-mail address). You’ll love it. Once logged, you can play with a 100% customized interface without to see the classic WordPress admin panel.

Furniture Store theme and Clothes Shop Template it look like anything else but not WordPress. When is talking about ecommerce, this is a true quality. With a true CMS solution like Furniture Store a large palette of shops can gain power of WordPress SEO and its light and clean ways to customization. How offen is happen that to build for a client a shop on a classic open source ecommerce solution from where you use just 5% from facilities? What just mess the not tech savyclients minds and make you to losing time with client tutoring? You will discover that is more cheap to pay few dollars for a right cart solution then spending time writing instructions.

Is really nice to see that are developed new ecommerce systems, more light, and using just necessary administration options.

Yesterday was launched a new framework and from a short play with it, i can say is very flexible, light and clean. The main goal of this framework is to provide a solid base for all of your front-end projects. It will help you go through the initial steps of creating a master template quickly, without having to worry about browser rendering issues for certain elements, including numerous JavaScript plugins to perform simple tasks or even worry about CSS naming conventions.

The idea behind it is to reduce the amount of time spent on setting up the basic master HTML template by reusing the same coding techniques. Easy Framework includes all 3 layers of front-end: structural, presentational and interactive what makes it the true all-in-one solution for your next front-end project.

Easy Framework is available for download with 2 licenses. For free use you need to follow some rules mentioned here. In case you want to use it for your freelance work or for your agency projects and want it clean from copyright notes, you can choose a developer license for just 49$ (Special launch price).

For Easy Framework demo, click here. For download, click here.

Carrie and Ben

Corny Jack

Cotton Eye Jim

Cuba the scuba

Francois le chef

Landon loud

Nosy Ned

Perry the pirate

Q-Pack

Rocky Rock. A painting tutorial for this doll was featured in 2DArtist Magazine. You can see it here.

Taliban Joe

In this tutorial you can learn how to use the Path Tool and shapes to make resizable logos (path / shape) in Adobe Photoshop. Because of monogram logo tutorial done in Adobe Illustrator i had many visitors coming from search engines looking after “monogram logo” keyword, what show that are a many peoples around looking for monogram ideas. So, let’s make another monogram logo, but with a different software and style.

For this tutorial i will use an idea developed for a client some time ago. Instead his original company name, use now a generic Clock Starter company name, from where i isolate the CS characters for monogram. The CS letters will incorporate a clock look. To achieve that, i am using simple paths like circles or rectangles with “substract” and “add to area” options.

For beginning, start in your Photoshop a new document 640 x 480 px. Set the background color to #202020. Add a noise effect as it is shown bellow:

Make a new layer and apply a soft brush with 675px diameter, opacity to 76% and a light grey color. Then, set the blending mode of the layer to “screen”. You can play here with layer opacity. Mine is set at 70%.

Your background should look like in this image:

Before to start the play with paths, make 2 guides on horizontal and vertical positioned at 50%, what mean the perfect middle of the work area.

Now, select the Ellipse Tool and draw a shape of circle with 375px diameter and #505050 like color.

Select the “substract from shape area” option for shape, and draw another circle with 319px diameter.

Align the circles. To do that, use the Path Selection Tool (A – same key like in Illustrator), and select both shapes while you press the shift key. Align the circles to center.

Now, using the RectangleTool, with same “substract” option activated, draw a rectangle with 28px wide. Use the Path Selection Tool to move it. Place it in left of the vertical guide (use the snap). Transform the rectangle (Ctrl+T) and make it like in this image:

At this moment, the left side is our “C” letter. For “S”, we will use indicators (3 o’clock) to transform the right side of the clock in a “S” shape. Select the left rectangle. Copy / paste (Ctrl+C / Ctrl + V). Move the new pasted rectangle (after paste will be placed exact over the source) to the right of the vertical guide. Select from top bar “add to shape area”. Make the rectangle to indicate 12 hour. The bottom of rectangle will snap with the horizontal guide. The top of rectangle will not exceed the area or the circle.

Copy the 12 hour indicator, rotate and place it under the horizontal guide, on right side of the vertical guide (3 o’clock).

The right side of the clock look now like a 9 instead of “S”. Copy the 3 hour indicator and place it above the horizontal guide. Select “substract” option from top bar icon and resize it on length.

The final monogram shape should look now like this:

Look nice but is too flat. Follow this screens and apply those layer styles:

Your monogram logo look now like here:

See, wasn’t that hard to make a clock logo monogram. Just keep in mind that for very small logo applications, Adobe Photoshop isn’t ideal. For that kind of use, exist Illustrator or Corel Draw where you can transform and the texts in curves. But, like i said at beginning, for web design use logos, Photoshop is doing a great job.

We’ll start to make the menu bar. Select the Rounded Rectangle Tool (U), set the radius to 5px and pick the grey color #b1b1b1. Size of menu bar: 740px / 37px.

Apply a gradient effect to the new shape created.

Your layout should look like this now:

On the right side of the menu bar place a new shape what will be a search field. Select the Rounded Rectangle Tool (U), set the radius to 25px and pick the green color #aab82e.

Add inner shadow:

Add the text for menu labels.

Apply to the menu labels an engraved effect. Place separators between labels. Draw with pencil 1px brush grey vertical lines. For depth, you can make for each one another light grey line.

Is time to create the header. Select the Rounded Rectangle Tool (U), set the radius to 5px. Chose the size for shape according to your needs. The color doesn’t matter now because the rectangle will be used for clipping mask. My size is 740px / 380px. Make a copy of this layer.

Chose an image according with the theme of website and place it in a layer above the new created shape. Right click on image layer and choose “Clipping Mask”.

Now move the copied rectangle layer above the clipping mask and set the following blending options for stroke and inner shadow:

Now you should have the following header:

Put the first layer from header in Multiply mode.

On the bottom corners of the clipping mask, for slider, will be the place of arrows. Select the Rounded Rectangle Tool (U), set the radius to 25px, press the shift key and drag a white color rectangle. Place it in a left bottom corner.

Duplicate the layer and move it on the right corner.

For “crop” corners shadow, make a shape using Pen Tool with color #bababa and apply a gaussian blur with 3px radius.

Duplicate the “shadow” shape and flip it horizontal. Place the blurred shapes above crop corners rectangles. Using clipping mask, make the header to look like:

Using Custom Shape Tool place arrows for left and right buttons of slider.

Split the content area in two columns with a line draw with the pencil and #b5b5b5 color. Delete bottom part of it with a soft round brush. Place the texts and pictures. For text i used Tahoma font and Futura BT Medium for titles. Like colors, #ee9802 is used for links and #a8b814 for green words. Use rectangles with rounded corners (5px) like masks for pictures. Apply to clipping mask shapes a stroke with 8px size positioned outside with #efefef color.

For next step, select the Rounded Rectangle Tool (U), set the radius to 5px, pick the grey color #a7a7a7 and create 4 boxes with 150px / 95px sizes. Use guides for a perfect alignment. Now, for blending options, follow the next screens:

Your boxes should look like in this screen:

You need now 3, 4 icons for those 4 boxes. For 3 boxes i used 3 icons from Milky set released by iconeden.com . Download the icon set from here. Change the colors in Adobe Illustrator like in following image:

Place the icons in boxes. I made the orange color too strong. Because of that, after importing the vectors like smart object in photoshop, i duplicated each icon layer 3 times with following blending options: Pin Light, Luminosity, Pin Light. Using Ellipse Tool, place a very light shadow under each icon.

On footer, create two grey horizontal lines and place between them the copyright note and a short bottom menu.

You are done! Your template should look like mine (click on image for 100% size):

From years, digital matte painting is more then a movie feature. Like a part of 2D digital painting and exceeding the professional uses, now is an area for pure imagination exercises. Almost all 2D painters started with matte painting. In fact, you will see that some tutorials are based 100% on digital painting. For such kind of tutorials you need a bit of drawing skills, many hours spend with pencil in front of your paper (yes, the basics cannot be replaced by any digital painting tutorials), studies about proportions and architectural perspective.

Like you can see, Adobe Photoshop (or any other performant paint software) is not a skill saver or a patch for our missing artistic education. Yes, using them you can save time and can make more many things with more low costs, but when you are looking at tutorials or on other matte painting showcases, think at how many hours was spent in background, many of them with unsuccessful results.

1. Cleopatra Queen of Egypt. Matte paiting tutorial by Frederic St-Arnaud. Web: www.starno.net

2. Dark House. Matte paiting tutorial by Sébastien Gaucher. Web: www.seb4d.com

3. Making Of The Lost World: Temple of Nature. Matte paiting tutorial by Tiberius Viris. web: www.suirebit.net

4. Digital matte painting.

5. London National History Museum. Matte Painting tutorial by Sorin Bechira. web: www.bechira.com

6. Extend a live action set with custom matte painting. Video matte paint tutorial by Andrew Kramer. web: www.videocopilot.net

7. Create a mystic night scene with rainy atmosphere. Matte paint tutorial by Shantanu Jahagirdar. web: www.thesign.info

8.  Winter. Matte paiting tutorial by Sébastien Gaucher. Web: www.seb4d.com

9. Making of “Distant Shores”. Matte painting tutorial by Andreas Rocha. web: andreasrocha.com

10. Matte painting Environment – Tunnel. Tutorial by Henry H. Pashkov

11.  The Making of The Decline of Babel Myth – Jacobsen War. Matte painting tutorial by Frederic St-Arnaud. web: www.starno.net

12.  Making of Neokathmandu. Matte painting tutorial by Sarel Theron. web: www.sareltheron.com

13. Creating Movie Matte Paintings with Photoshop. Tutorial by By Thibaut Granier.

14. From Speedpainting to Matte Painting2D/3D Production Pipeline. DVD tutorial by Sebastien Larroude. web: www.rainfx.com

15.  Matte Painting Production Techniques. DVD tutorial by Chris Stoski. web: www.stoskidigital.com

16. Matte painting – tornado wallpaper tutorial

17.  Mountains

18.  Making Fire Energy. Matte painting tutorial by Shailesh Pahuja. web: www.freewebs.com/artbaazi

19.  One Year As A Lion.

20.  Making of Urban. Matte painting tutorial by Pierre Fabre. web: www.gkaster.com

21.  The Castle. Matte painting tutorial by Dragos Jieanu. web: www.jieanu.com

22.  Fable of the Night. Matte painting tutorial by Andrew Teng.

23. Venice. Matte painting tutorial by Daniel Hammonds. web: www.wade.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk

24.  Making of The Lost World (another one). Matte painting tutorial by Somnath Patra.

25. The Techniques ofChristian Lorenz Scheurer 2. DVD tutorial by Christian Lorenz Scheurer. web: christianlorenzscheurer.com

Even you consider all your articles worth to be read by all the peoples from internet, don’t acting like a mass submitter. When you discover a good source for your exposure, do not submit all your blog articles. Also, be patient and flexible. If your article isn’t published there, don’t take it personally. A good website is filtering their content. Maybe next time you will be published. Sometimes, this can be a reason to review again your articles, to find what can to be improved. There will be always something to do. The originality is not an easy standard.

1. Noupe

Submit here design news related. The news get exposure and on smashingmagazine and drweb.

2. instantShift

Submit here useful resources and downloads, tutorials and inspirational works.

3. Abduzeedo

Registration is needed to can share news and sites with the Abduzeedo community.

4.  Webdesign News

The title is clear. You can submit web design related links.

5. Colorburned

Submit graphic design articles, resources and tutorials.

6. Nettuts+

Submit links about css, programming, templates, wordpress etc.

7. Phototuts+

Sumbit photography related articles and resources.

8. Psdtuts+

Place for your photoshop tutorials, templates and design related articles.

9. Vectortuts+

One of most big vector and illustrator community. Submit your works, tutorials, freebies etc.

10. Css Globe

You need to be a member to can submit your articles. About profile, i think the title is clear enough.

11. Design Bump

Design community ready to get you live there. You need to make an account before to submit your web design related articles.

12. The Web Blend

In same niche like designbump with quite same features.

13. Designrfix

Submit design related articles.

14. Design MAG

They are looking about articles and posts that have unique content (like all of us).

15. HongKiat

Sumbit here latest news and tips about design.

16. Design Newz

Only submit articles that are relevant and useful to the design community.

17. Smashing Post

Share your design and development knowledge.

18. Graphic rating

Submit fresh graphics articles, tutorials, downloads etc.

19. Tripwire Magazine

Sumbit links to good inspirational work (Designs, Photos, Web Sites, Logos etc.), tutorials, resources, downloads etc.

20. Design Moo

Yes, you got it! Submit mooarticles, mootutorials, mooresources. You need to be a moomember.

21. Fuel Your Creativity

Submit here useful resources and downloads, tutorials and inspirational works.

22. Arbent

On the sidebar, you can sumbit design related links.

23. Crazy Leaf

Submit your design news, resources and tutorials.

24. ShareBrain

A bit confusing at first, but if you get in the right place after making a member account, you can post your design news.

25. Here should be catswhoblog, but i see that there is no user links news anymore. Then, with your will, i will post reADactor user news section.

I like to read (mean links accepted) things related in special to vectors, Photoshop, CSS, WordPress, Joomla, jQuery, After Effects etc. Links will get exposure on user news section and on sidebar for internal pages.

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When you are a regular submitter, you’ll learn about each website behavior. On some, links are approved once on few days. That mean if you are at begining of links submited, after approval, you will get direct to “page 2″ of section, or something like that. On others, you need to avoid the friday day for your submission (yes, the weekend).

The user links community is not a panacea for your popularity. Your content can be. Work hard, be patient and put pleasure on what you provide in time what you are looking for quality, and in time, your website can have loial readers and not just accidental ones. Look in your stats at how many pages are read by visitors from websited listed above. If almost all are reading just the page clicked, then, you are not on the right way.

AdMob is a Mobile Advertising Platform what made exceptional progress in a very short time. After a serious economic crisis such a serious investment show an image of the future development of internet advertising wich will be more present on mobiles. “Mobile advertising has enormous potential as a marketing medium and while this industry is still in the early stages of development…” said Google VP of Product Management Susan Wojcicki.

I don’t have any doubts is true, because according to Reuters, in 2008, Google revenue from mobile ads was nearly $22 billion in 2008. Last month, Google said its mobile searches increased 30 percent quarter-over-quarter in the third quarter. Not far from last month, Google CEO Eric Schmidt also said that the company was interested in resuming its acquisition efforts, after taking a breather during worst of the economic downturn. Schmidt said Google would acquire on average one company a month. It seem that the things get started.

Given that this is such a unique giveaway, you need to do something different than the traditional comment/tweet to win type thing. For this contest   submit your designs to be judged by a group of five designers, with the top design getting the prize. Your site design can be for an upcoming project, or something from scratch that you think up just for this contest.

All submissions must be in no later than January 4, 2010 to be considered. Their is no limit to the number of submissions you can make.  Read more about contest.

1. Make a background using two shapes (square and triangle) and a white line.

Use this color and gradient settings to illustrate the table for cakes.

2. Make a new layer for plate. Add a white stroke with weight of 1px for a better contrast over table.

3. Copy the shape and using “Direct selection tool” move down the top anchor. Select bottom anchor and drag a bit like in this image.

5. Copy the first layer of the plate and place it behind. This will be used for shadow of plate. Apply a “feather” style with 25 pixels radius. Change the color to a more dark grey.

6. Let’s start the work for cookies. Using the pen tool make the bottom of cookies like in bellow screenshot:

7. Add a new layer with a more dark brown.

8. Add a new layer with a very dark brown for dark cookie areas.

9. Spice the vectors with some details.

10. Make a new layer for shadows and place it behind the cookies.

11. Apply a gaussian blur effect. Like you can see in photo, the image have a depth of field and the closer cookies shadow is more sharp then shadows from depth of plate. Use for first two shadow shapes a gaussian blur with radius of 2 pixels.

12. For far shadows use gaussian blur with 5 pixels radius.

13. Select all shadows for cookies and change the opacity to 50%. Select “multiply”.

14. Select the the last 2 cookies and apply a gaussian blur effect with radius of 1 pixel.

15. Your vectors should look like this:

16. For folded table napkins make a new layer and a triangle. Duplicate it to have 3 same triangles. First one will have the texture, second one is for background and last one for shadow.

17. For texture, open your Swatch Library, go to Patterns, Decorative and select Decorative_Classic. The swatch used for this texture is “Plaid 3 color”. For triangle used like shadow use the following settings and apply a gaussian blur with 2 pixels radius.

18. Move the triangles one above another one rotate a bit the shadow triangle. In fact, here you can use also pen tool to move a bit anchors from white shape and from shadow to achieve a more realistic napkin. Group the napkin and duplicate it.

18. For second napkin, go to: Object / Envelope Distort / Make with Mesh (3 x 3) and play with the mesh points to make it to look like in image. Don’t forget to add the table shadows for second napkin. On this shadow shapes will be not used any blur effect.

Bon appetit

Form contest brief:

“Project aim – improve ouronline presence. We target Forex traders worldwide.
In our advertising campaigns we mainly communicate our trading platform, promotions, new services, etc. We are looking for fresh creative concepts and implementation in 2 main groups:

Prizes:

Per group:
1st prize – USD 2500
2nd prize – USD 1500
3rd prize – USD 500
2 encouragement prizes each of USD 250
Total prize amount per group – USD 5 000

Total contest prize amount: USD 10 000

Contest Duration:

Start: 22 October, 2009
End: 12 November, 2009

Read more about contest here.

1. Write the letters for logo monogram. I used for this tutorial the Vivaldi font. You can buy it from here.

2. Convert the the text to outlines (curves) and using the “knife” and “direct selection” tools make the letters like in following image.

3. Apply the “logo steel 1″ gradient swatch.

4. Apply a 60% transparency

5. This will be the very first layer of the logo.

6. Duplicate the layer behind the original one and apply a white color to monogram with no transparency.

7. Move / stretch the shape a bit.

8. Duplicate the white shape layer behind the original one.

9. Apply offset path. Menu / Object / Path / Offset Path.

10. Expand and combine the result and make it black.

11. Duplicate the black shape layer behind the original one. Apply the “logo steel 2″ gradient swatch.

12. Move the monogram to the right side a bit.

13. Duplicate the white shape layer behind all the layers and apply a yellow color to the monogram.

14. Apply offset path. Menu / Object / Path / Offset Path.

15. Expand and combine the result and make the opacity to 65%.

16. This is the logo so far.

17. Duplicate the yellow shape layer behind the original one and apply the “logo yellow” gradient swatch.

18. For a more deep effect to the R letter use the a shape like in image and apply the “R” gradient swatch. You can draw the shape or you can use a part of the R letter with a big offset path, expanded.

19. Now is time to make small touches to logo to hide or mask some layer duplication. For top shape mask use “covers” gradient swatch.

20. For bottom masks use “covers 2″ gradient swatch

21. Here too.

22. At corners you can make light effects at free will. Color used here is yellow with 55% opacity.

Here is the final result.