I am looking to take on writers for the Elite By Design team. I am looking for both guest authors and regular writers. As of now, I hope to take on two new regular writers who will be able to write one post per week. Topics to write on include anything related to design (inspiration, tutorials, guides), photoshop (tutorials and tips), web design (inspiration, guides, tutorials), and WordPress (Guides, tutorials, tips, hacks).

If you are a freelance writer or a blogger simply looking to pick up some extra cash and exposure, this is the right job for you. I will be more than happy to work out either weekly or monthly payment plans to any new writers.

I am hoping to get two new writers who will be able to write weekly and stick with Elite By Design for a time down the road. If you are interested, please email me right now at brian[at]elitebydesign.com.

I would also like to mention that if you would like to guest post for Elite By Design that is also an option. Again, email me if you are interested.

So why should you write for Elite By Design? Well, obviously besides the monetary benefits, there is tons of exposure. All writers are allowed to link to themselves throughout posts and will get their own special author’s area on the site in which they can actively promote their own websites and blogs. With over 150 thousand unique visitors in September, exposure will be huge for any author on Elite By Design as we continue to grow throughout the last few months of 2008.

I hope that I am able to get some new writers to help pump out some more fresh content to the site. Again, if you are interested, email me right now: brian[at]elitebydesign.com.

Thank you.

45 Beautiful And Creative WordPress Themes

WordPress provides designers utmost control over a theme - resulting in unprecented flexibility in the layout and design direction he or she can take. WordPress - in the title - is inside parentheses because the designs you’ll see below are wonderful designs despite of the publishing platform they use (which just so happens to be WordPress).

Visit Source

.

220+ Stunning Creative Skateboard Graphics

T-shirts, album art and skateboard graphics are often used by designers and illustrators as a blank canvas to express their personal creativity, with no limits holding back the creative ideas there are many stunning examples to be seen. This collection of 223 skateboard deck graphics from various designers and illustrators will be sure to get your creative juices flowing!

Visit Source

.

25 More Incredibly Artistic Website Designs (Part 3)

If you enjoy getting inspiration from artistic designers, here is a collection for you. It’s a follow up to the first two popular collections: 25 Incredibly Artistic Websites and 25 Incredibly Artistic Websites Part II.

Visit Source

.

10 Challenging But Awesome CSS Techniques

Most designers and web developers only scratch the surface of the potent language that is CSS. In terms of programming languages, CSS has a fairly simple learning curve. That doesn’t mean that CSS isn’t a powerful language. Sometimes it’s the small things that make a huge difference in a website design.

Visit Source

.

100 Nice And Beautiful Blog Designs

We spent weeks going through hundreds and hundreds of blogs in the blogosphere, looking for blogs with nice and interesting design. We marked down those with great interface, graphically beautiful, unique personalities and styles. Here we bring you - 100 Nice and Beautiful Blog Design.

Visit Source

.

21 Inspirational Typography Artworks from DeviantArt

The inspirational collection here ranges from portraits made from just Typographic characters to abstract art design using 3D software and type elements. I have on occasion tried to replicate this type of artwork and I have found it to be very painstaking and time consuming. So I praise the artists who have managed to make these beautiful artworks and designs look so stunning and graceful.

Visit Source

.

The Web Designer’s Typographic Glossary

Though there are some great examples of web designers writing on typography recently, one thing that I’ve always wanted is a quick little reference to help me remember both the terms and how the typographic toolkit should be used. This is the beginning of such a reference.

Visit Source

.

20 Insane Comic-book Style Photoshop Effects

Comic books and graphic novels combine two things every designer aspires to meld: real meaning and pure, unadulterated eye candy. Here we introduce 20 of the best ever tuts on using Photoshop to create stunning comic-book style art.

Visit Source

.

70 Cute and Cheeky Vector Animal Characters

This collection of 70 cute and cheeky vector animal characters provides a roundup of some fantastic fauna-based illustrations from across the web. We’ve got everything from bears to beavers to… well, weird—and strangely fat—Japanese-style bunnies. Time to put on your cute-resistant specs and dive in!

Visit Source

.

Resources for Freelance Web Designers

Being a freelance web designer is definitely hard work! But if you are willing to put in the time and effort it takes to be a good one (i.e. make a living), it can be both financially rewarding and fun! Here are a few articles, links, and tools to help you along on your freelancing journey…

Visit Source

.

Grunge Type Photoshop Tutorial

Ok, today we are going to look at how to make grunge / worn style type to use in your art.
The process is actually quite simple, and you can get endless variations.
This is a great tutorial brought to you by You The Designer.

Visit Source

.

Simplicio: A Free Icon Set

We are always looking for creative and talented artists and designers. Once we find them, we ask them to cooperate with us and release something for free. We provide them with the full freedom to showcase their professionalism and express their creativity. Every release helps to make the Web a nicer place. In fact, the results are quite often pretty impressive.

Visit Source

.

10 designers worth following on Twitter

Twitter is a popular hangout for geeks and techies, and you are almost guaranteed to find everyone from the layperson to mini-celebrities on Twitter. Here is a list of awesome web designers on Twitter worth following. Note that conversation value has been given importance (how active they are on Twitter, and how much of tweets is design-related).

Visit Source

.

40 Creative Design Layouts: Getting Out Of The Box

In the showcase below we present 40 creative out-of-the-box layouts that break the boring 2- and 3-columned, boxed layouts. We have collected pure CSS -designs, CSS+JavaScript -layouts as well as Flash -designs. Most designs presented below risk their site structure and content presentation with unusual approaches.

Visit Source

.

25+ Essential Articles For Every WordPress Beginner

With thousands of new blogs springing up every day, it can be quite daunting for a new user to be thrust into a new interface and blogging platform. That is why today I am taking WordPress back to the basics with 25+ essential articles for every WordPress beginner.

Visit Source

.

How To Master Photoshop In Just One Week

So you want to master Photoshop huh? You’ve come to the right place. This is the first part of a three part series that will help you to master Photoshop in and out in just one week. Today’s part is all about getting to know the basics of the program and how to operate the complex software - nothing amazing, but you need to crawl before you can walk!

Visit Source

.

Irresistible Websites Part Four: Energy

What gives a website design energy? The way I see it, a website displays energy if the design is not only well crafted but also generates its own atmosphere. The design elements may be simple (even minimalist) or bursting with detail, but with one aspect in common: they create an ambience based on a sense of location, time or mood.

Visit Source

.

Type Chart

Typechart lets you flip through, preview and compare web typography while retrieving the CSS.
This is a great resource for finding good web typography, and how you can use it yourself on your own website.
I would highly recommend this resource to designers new to web typography.

Visit Source

.

DelliPack: A Free Icon Set

Today we are glad to release The DelliPack! icon set. This set of “delicious icons” contains 5 high-quality icons: a folder icon, a paint icon, a safe icon, a building icon and a printer icon which can be useful for both corporate and personal projects. The set includes a PSD-source file as well. You can use the set for free — without any restrictions whatsoever.

Visit Source

.

Interview with Alen Grakalic of CSS Globe

Most of you are probably familiar with CSS Globe. If you’re not, it is a very popular site run by Alen Grakalic that provides design news (through user submissions) on a daily basis. Alen also publishes some original tutorials and articles on the site.
CSS Globe is a great resource for both print and web designers.

Visit Source

.

The Process of Designing a Killer Logo

Designing a killer logo has everything to do with concept and little to do with technical prowess or how well you can use a design program. Also, when it comes down to it vector is the most versatile and useful format for logo design.
A must-read for any logo designer.

Visit Source

.

How to Create a Wordpress Theme from Scratch

Creating a WordPress Theme, The Homepage Following on from the recent article on “PSD to HTML”, this tutorial will look at taking a HTML/CSS template and turning it into a functioning WordPress theme. There is so much you can do when creating your own theme we couldn’t nearly cover it all.

Visit Source

.

10 Masterful Mobile Phone Tutorials

As new advancements in mobile phone technology continue to appear, so do the mobile phone tutorials. As these new cell phones are released many tutorial writers become inspired to recreate these beautiful new phones in Photoshop and Illustrator, so designers can master the techniques and use them to create their own illustrations, icons, web designs, print ads and so forth.

Visit Source

.

9 Web Design No Nos for the Newbie

I admit I’ve committed just about every crime against web design on this list. That’s probably why it flowed so smoothly from my mind. They are all easily avoidable sins that, if transgressed, will cost a web designer big. So if you want to avoid humiliating yourself in front of clients and burning unnecessary midnight oil, take heed. It will save you a lot of anguish to learn from my mistakes instead of your own.

Visit Source

.

76 Unique Wordpress Themes

Wordpress is one of the most used CMS around the world. In this list, you will find Blog, Gallery and Portfolio Themes. All this designs are unique, creative and attractive. This list is a good way to find inspiration for your next blog :).
A collection of beautiful and inspirational blog designs.

Visit Source

.

20+ Inspiring Pixel Artists, Tutorials, and Resources

Let’s take a look at some of the top pixel art studios and artists that will leave your mouth dripping with wet little squares. Then we’ll review a wide range of beginner to comprehensive pixel art tutorials. And don’t miss all the articles, resources, and collection of other cool stuff to be found in this solid collection of pure pixel love.

Visit Source

.

35 Beautiful Examples Of Rain Photography

Below we present over 35 beautiful examples of rain photography. This post is supposed to provide you with some inspiration for rainy motifs and is not supposed to be the ultimate collection of best photographs. All photos are linked and lead to the sources from which they were taken. Please feel free to explore further works of these photographers on their Flickr collections or their personal sites.

Visit Source

.

30+ Adobe Illustrator Tutorials : Mastering Your Tools and Options

In this post we present a collection of excellent Adobe Illustrator tutorials that shows you exactly what needs to be done in order to create professional artworks using which tool and option. These tools and effects may or may not be new to you, but I am sure you will find them interesting.

Visit Source

.

Interview With Chris Spooner

I recently had the opportunity to interview Chris Spooner. I’m sure many of you are followers of his blog, Blog.SpoonGraphics.com. Chris has just recently made the jump to full-time freelancer, and I hope you will enjoy getting to know more about him.
Chris Spooner’s blog covers various design topics from tutorials to inspirational posts.

Visit Source

.

10 Amazing Graphic Design Magazines Part 1

Graphic Design Magazines are a key way for active graphic designers to further immerse themselves into the design community. They can inspire you, inform you and keep you up to date on the latest trends, hottest studios and new design talent.
Are you subscribed to any of these?

Visit Source

.

Top 7 Most Overused Techniques & Elements Used In Graphic Design

Are you following graphic design trends subconsciously? These are two questions to ponder over the next six weeks in this six part series showcasing the most overused techniques used in design today.
Are you using these elements?

Visit Source

.

The Top 10 Premium Specialty Themes for WordPress

Premium themes ideally will separate themselves from free themes by achieving a better, more professional look as well as through added functionality and options from within the dashboard. Here are 10 of the best premium specialty themes available today.

Visit Source

.

40 Icon Tutorials for Photoshop

There are a growing number of excellent Photoshop tutorials creating for your own icons. Here are 40 of the best.
A creative and inspirational collection of beautiful icon designs and how you can recreate them in Photoshop.
Enjoy!

Visit Source

.

Huge Collection of Adobe Illustrator Resources

If you’re interested in improving your skills with Adobe Illustrator or finding resources that can make you more effective and efficient with your time in Illustrator, this is the collection for you.
A must-read resource for vector artists!

Visit Source

.

40 Stunning Vector Landscape Illustrations

A common feature seen in all the examples is how the use of vector graphics results in a unique crisp and stylized image, ranging from colourful ‘cartoon-like’ designs to more abstract and geometric illustrative works.
Stunning vector artwork collection.

Visit Source

.

50 Creative Photoshop Text Effects

Learn how to soak your text in bubbles, splatter it with blood, turn it to glass, then to ice, melt it into water, grow it into grass, cut it from metal and riddle it with bullets. Explore these 50 creative Photoshop text effects.
Have you used these yet?

Visit Source

.

15 Design Blogs To Promote your Articles

Getting the word out on Digg/Stumble Upon can be tricky when no one knows your blog, but luckily for design related articles, there are many high traffic blogs that have community link features where you can submit your design articles and receive decent amount of traffic.
How many are you using?

Visit Source

.

20 Firefox Add-ons to Enhance your Web Development

Which are the best add-ons that can really help you as a web developer or designer in terms of time and effort? So here’s 20 extremely useful Firefox Add-ons that can help developers create websites.

Visit Source

.

How to Create a Trendy Retro Type Treatment

In this Illustrator tutorial, I’ll show you how to create a trendy retro type treatment with a free font, gradients, blends, and some scatter brushes. It’s a relative easy tutorial containing techniques that can be quickly applied to many other type treatments and various graphic elements.

Visit Source

.

Illustration Artists Showcase and Inspiration - Part 1

This collection is mixture of more traditional illustration to photography and illustration, when I look at illustrations like this I always think about how there made, such as paint splatters did the designer take a can of spray scan it in and manipulate it, stuff like that can add a whole new dimension to the illustration.

Visit Source

.

10 Amazing Graphic Design Magazines Part 2

Today we will list 5 more important magazines covering similar topics to the previous part and in addition more technical topics such as tutorials and tips for using important design programs such as Photoshop and Illustrator.

Subscribe to them today!

Visit Source

.

75 (Really) Useful JavaScript Techniques

Developers and designers are using more and more JavaScript in modern designs. Sometimes this can be a hindrance to the user and take away from the simplicity of the design, and other times it can add greatly to the user’s experience.
Have you tried any of these techniques?

Visit Source

.

Web Design : Religious Sites

Since my friend and I are developing our church’s web site, I start to research tendencies for this kind of site. And my surprise is that there are really awesome sites out there about it! From vintage style to illustration, flash elements, gradients, photographic background… there are many trends, but all of them are really well done.

Visit Source

.

39 Masterpieces Of Creative Advertisements

I am calling this collection as “39 Masterpieces of Creative Advertisements”. Maybe most of you guys already had a look at some of these but we tried to make this compilation very inspiring, interesting and entertaining for everyone and specially for our exclusive readers. Just take a look at them.

Visit Source

.

Finding Inspiration In Type + Color

Today I am focusing on type + color, and have written a line or two underneath each choice I have made to display below. It’s crazy how many combination’s can be created with color + type and movement too. You may find yourself going back to these sites to look at them more closely.

Visit Source

.

Creative Tabbed Website Navigations & Tutorials

Navigation is arguably one of the most prominent and important aspect of any web design. It allows for a clear navigation and a way for visitors to explore deep into a website’s archives. The purpose of a navigation is to construct a concise and easy way for visitors to find their way around.

Visit Source

.

15 Amazingly Free Magazine and Headline Fonts

A very neat collection of free magazine and headline fonts perfect for creating bold typography and elegant web designs.
Be sure to check this source if you are in need of typographic inspiration.

Visit Source

.

Tribute To Graffiti: 50 Beautiful Graffiti Artworks

In this episode of Monday Inspiration series we are presenting a tribute to street art and graffiti — over 50 examples of beautiful and impressive graffiti artworks. Hopefully everybody will find some inspiration at least in some of the works showcased below. Feel free to explore the works of artists by following the links to their sites.

Visit Source

.

CSS Typography: Contrast Techniques, Tutorials and Best Practices

The main advantage of elegant CSS typography lies in its ability to be both attractive and improves the user experience. When chosen wisely and used carefully, it can be very effective to support the overall design.

Visit Source

.

Design blogs making an impact

Since then I’ve been on the lookout for designers and bloggers who have come up with their own great ideas to generate awareness or fundraising for worthwhile causes, much like James West did earlier this year.
Is your blog making an impact?

Visit Source

.

Photoshop Tutorial: Designing a Unique Bookmark Box

In this Adobe Photoshop tutorial we’ll be learning how to create a unique, and professional-styled bookmark/promote box for your personal Blog, or maybe even your website.
How did you like this tutorial?

Visit Source

.

25 Beautiful Minimalistic Website Designs - Part 4

A few of the most popular posts on this blog are the 3 collections of inspirational, minimal web designs (see part 1, part 2, and part 3). So why stop there? These 25 sites are also clean and attractive.
Do you like minimalist?

Visit Source

.

65 Places to Find a Graphic Designer

There are many outlets designers use to promote themselves nowadays, most of which are online such as design galleries. By knowing these places you will be able to find the perfect designer for your business!
Are you using these outlets?

Visit Source

.

WordPress Developer’s Toolbox

With all of the WordPress development that is going on, there is a need for an organized collection of resources to educate, inspire and equip developers to improve the quality and efficiency of their work. This post provides all kinds of WordPress-related resources to do just that.

Visit Source

.

Top 7 Most Overused Icons, Shapes & Symbols Used in Graphic Design

Is all design looking the same to you? Are you following graphic design trends subconsciously?
These are two questions to ponder over the next six weeks in this six part series showcasing the most overused techniques, effects, icons, shapes, concepts, fonts, stock images and clichés used in design today.

Visit Source

.

50 Amazing Gig Posters Sure to Inspire

The gig poster scene isn’t exactly the best kept secret among music fiends like myself. It is a tradition that started in the 60’s and is still going strong.
The following are 50 hand picked gig posters whose creativity and imagination blew me away.

Visit Source

.

20 Cool Custom Calendar Printing Examples

Custom Calendar Printing is an extremely popular business promotion method and many popular applications include the automobile, photography, fashion, corporate, retail and travel industries. They are also great for in-house use at your office, they can be given out for free or even sold to make a profit while still marketing your products or services.

Visit Source

.

40+ Beautiful Icon Sets Hand-picked from deviantART- Part 2

So today we would like to present another 40 incredible icon sets which you can use for your web designs or your desktop. Let’s take a close look at some of the most beautiful icon sets we’ve found on deviantART.

Visit Source

.

10 Websites with huge list of resources for web designers and developers

These are the sites which have a huge list of links that are divided up into categories and then thrown together on one giant page of resources for web designers and developers, all these website covers mostly all topics in design and development, such as Icons, Templates, Fonts, Scripts, Color tool, CSS and more.

Visit Source

.

25 Tasty 3D Graphic Design Treats Part 2

Previously we made a post on the topic of 3D typography called 25 Tasty 3D Graphic Design Treats and since that post the amount of designs created in this niche has grown tremendously! This has inspired us to make another post on 3D type showcasing some sick new designs.

Visit Source

.

28 Killer CSS Menus - Inspiration

There’s nothing like a big fat truckload of style to get those creative juices flowing, and it’s with no end of pleasure that I deliver to you the first of many collections of usable web eye candy, this time looking at navigation.
Are you inspired?

Visit Source

.

Top Designers and Their Inspiration

In the 2nd part of my design inspiration article series I asked 2 top designers to let me know what inspires THEM in order to see how they come up with their ideas and what artists, websites, and sources they use.
What’s your inspiration?

Visit Source

.

Due to the Credit Crunch, This is your New Office

So the financial markets are in an epic turmoil, and everyone’s cutting back. Office equipment is an area where many firms could really make a saving. Here’s a complete solution:
(Office humor)

Visit Source

.

Make an Inspiring Artistic Poster with Drawn Elements

In this tutorial, we’ll create drawn elements, use design brushes, bring them into Photoshop, and merge them into a unique poster composition that feels hand-made, stylistically unified, and personalized.

Visit Source

.

45 Character Illustrations in Web Design

Having a character illustration is a must get your visitor’s attention. The visitor will easily associate the character with your site or your web services. All these vector characters make the website very attractive. This list is a good way to find inspiration if you decide to use a character in your Design.

Visit Source

.

35 Tutorials for Mastering Photoshop Brushes

Regardless of your skill level in working with brushes you should find some tutorials here for you. Some cover the basic uses and functionality of brushes, some will teach you various ways to create your own custom brushes, and some will help you to develop your skills by using them as an integral part of a design.

Visit Source

.

18 Truly Awesome Hand-Picked Designer T-Shirts

If you are like me, you love your t-shirts and this is why I have hand picked 18 awesome, cool designer t-shirts for your pleasure. All of these shirts come in men and women’s sizes and are on sale from $19 at Design By Humans by affiliate.

Visit Source

.

14 Great Abstract Photoshop Brushes For Light Effects

One of the best ways to create spectacular abstract effects in Photoshop is by using brushes. They save you time and make the process less complicated. However, taking the time to find high quality brushes isn’t all that fun, so I’ve compiled a list of 11 high quality abstract brushes from various designers which I hope will be useful to you.

Visit Source

.

10 Excellent Dark Designs for Your Inspiration

Often overlooked given the recent craze surrounding Web 2.0 have been dark designs. Choosing a dark design is a massive branding choice when setting up on the Internet, so here I’ve gone ahead and picked 10 usable, well organised and appealing dark designs from around the Web.

Visit Source

.

10 Beautiful icons set for web developers and designers

This post contains a collection of 10 beautiful and very popular icons set useful to be used in your web applications or your websites.
A great resource for all web designers!
Which set of these beautiful icons is your favorite?

Visit Source

.

30 Kick-Ass Vector Based T-Shirts from Top Designers

This collection of 30 stunning T-Shirt designs is an inspirational roundup of examples from some of the best names in the apparel world, each with their own unique take on vector illustration.
Do you own any of these excellent tees?

Visit Source

.

A Comprehensive Guide: Illustrator’s Paintbrush Tool and Brush Panel

Illustrator’s Paintbrush Tool and Brush Panel are some of it’s most powerful tools. With these you can dress up your vector paths into compelling flourishes, patterns, tapered edges, and more.
How skilled are you in Illustrator?

Visit Source

.

Top 10 Sources of Logo Design Inspiration

If you’re a logo designer or interested in learning more about logo design, there’s no doubt you’d like to see some excellent examples for the best logo designers around for your own inspiration. The ten sites listed below are all great places to visit when you’re in need of some inspiration, and many of them will also allow you to share your own work with others.

Visit Source

.

45 Explosively Colorful Photoshop Effects

Imagine a world without color. Then, imagine a world without Photoshop. Depressed yet? Don’t be. Let us cheer you up with 50 Photoshop effects that will have you manipulating vibrant colors like a pro. Our palette crosses the full range from subtle and elegant to vivid and high-impact.

Visit Source

.

WordPress Archive that *works*: StepxStep Guide and Plugins

One of the advantages of using WP Archives page is the amount of information that it can provide to help the visitors easily browse your blog and find what they’re looking for. It can also act a your blog’s sitemap which is perfect for search engines.

Visit Source

.

Create a Custom Mac OSX Style Ring Binder Address Book Icon

Today I’ll show you how to create an Address Book replacement icon for Mac OSX. When you are a beginner, it’s better to start with designing replacement icons to get some practice. Let’s get started with personalizing the icons in our workspaces.

Visit Source

.

25 Refreshingly Blue Website Designs

Whatever you design situation may be, its nice to be able to quickly look over websites with similar color schemes to get an idea what has been done. Our large showcase of blue websites should help you get into the “Blue Zone” if you ever find yourself working with this color. How blue is your web site design?

Visit Source

.

20 Free Handwritten Fonts And Resources

Handwritten font can really say something special personalizing communications with Your visitors. Actually there are a huge amount of great fonts out there, we never heard of. I wanted to dig a little deeper and so I created my own selection with some very special handwritten fonts.

Visit Source

.

500+ Photoshop Brushes for Creating Textures

Textured graphics are obviously very popular right now, and fortunately there are tons of free Photoshop brushes that will help you to quickly and easily get the textured look you want. This post is a showcase of some of the best sets of brushes available anywhere for creating textures.

Visit Source

.

28 Excellent Free Mac Apps for Graphic and Web designers

A great collection from Specky Boy on twenty eight free mac applications that are perfect for graphic and web designers. This is a great resource to find an app that can quicken your workflow and make your life as a designer easier.

Visit Source

.

15 must-have features for modern design blogs

Design blogs are popping up all around the web these times, the newest ones trying to reach a wide audience through long compilation-style posts on all possible subjects related to web design, while already established names hire guest writers to renew their content at a breathtaking pace.
Are you using these features?

Visit Source

.

30 Creative Website Headers

One of the first things new visitors will notice upon arriving at your website is your header. Some sites are able to make an excellent first impression by featuring an artistic or creative header. This mini gallery post is a collection of some of the more inspiring headers out there.
A great place to get inspired for your next web design.

Visit Source

.

Issues Involved with Website Communication

Regardless of what type of website you’re developing, the success of the site will hinge on being able to communicate effectively with visitors and readers. On the subject of communication, there are a number of potential issues that need to be considered:
Are you having any of these issues?

Visit Source

.

Getting Creative With Javascript: 15 Websites With Cool Slider and Scrollers

The Most Important thing is not -what you say, the important thing is -how you say and when you say , While some days before we are using flash for buttons, gallery etc, later now JavaScript frameworks like mootools , scriptallicious and prototype replace the flash with a light weight code and we can get the same effect like flash

Visit Source

.

Guide to Blogging for Freelance Designers

The blog was originally planned to just be an occasional article that would ideally draw some search traffic from potential clients, however, in just a few months it became much more than that when I started to understand the potential of blogging and how to produce results.
Are you a freelancer and blogger?

Visit Source

.

15 must-have features for modern design blogs (part 2)

In part 2, we will finish the roundup of features every design blog must have. Next post, part 3, will dive into the different types of content modern design blogs usually fancy publishing.
Are you using these features?

Visit Source

.

40 Photoshop Tutorials On Rain Showers and Water Drops

Adding the illusion of water and rain to photographs using Photoshop can be a bit tricky. Many times the effect feels forced and cheesy, as if you’re looking at a grainy picture instead of an authentic rain shower. The tutorials below will give any designer inspiration for incorporating water scenes in fall designs and showcase some amazing water work by excellent designers.

Visit Source

.

40 Brilliant Mid + Hi-Res Wallpapers for Photoshop Lovers

If you love Photoshop, you need a desktop wallpaper that demonstrates your allegiance to killer digital art. Something that inspires you every time you look at it, to be better, more skillful, work harder. You will find that here.

Visit Source

.

20 Sites You’ll Love if You’re New to the Web Industry

Today I decided to share the best of my web design bookmarks with you. Whilst there are heaps of tutorials and blogs out there, these are amonsgt those I’ve found the most useful. I’ve also tried to provide a good cross-selection of sites covering everything from Photoshop to CSS to JavaScript.

Visit Source

.

How To Write An Effective Design Brief and Get The Design You Want!

How do you get the design you want? The perfect design you envision in your head? … The design brief is the answer. Whether you are a designer or a client, an effective design brief is the single most critical factor in ensuring that a project is successful.

Visit Source

.

Use Whitespace to Indicate Relationships Between Content Elements

One of the most important tools in a designer’s toolbox is whitespace. Whitespace is just that — it’s space between various content pieces, like paragraphs, headings, buttons and so on. This space can be tweaked to achieve different effects — such as to separate elements apart from each other by increasing the amount of space or group related things together by tightening it.

Visit Source

.

60 Concert Posters From Ten Amazing Artists

So many shining examples of this exist in the art community, and in this episode of Monday Inspiration we present 60 inspiring concert poster designs from 10 amazing artists. The links at the bottom will take you to sites dedicated to showcasing other wonderful works from the concert poster genre.

Visit Source

.

Create a Vibrant 3D Pixel Type Treatment

In this tutorial, I will show you how to create a fun 3D pixel font type treatment. Using a free font, gradients, and Illustrator 3D filter, you will easily create a type treatment that you can apply to many other fonts.
This is a spectacular effect!

Visit Source

.

25 Typography Flickr Groups Designers Should Join

Flickr is a great place for inspiration. There are numerous groups dedicated to the topic of typography, but vary in what they focus on such as found type, signage, calligraphy, graffiti, type design and more.

Visit Source

.

30 cool wallpapers for designers

I’ve been wanting for a while now to write a designer wallpaper-list article. As a designer finding nice wallpapers that you actually like can be quite an adventure.
A great resource to spruce up your desktop!
Which wallpaper is your favorite?

Visit Source

.

45 Amazing Illustrations for Inspiration

Now and then we stumble at various artists whose work we find inspirational. In a week or so we might not remember the name but the image will still be there. It’s great to keep the record of their locations, whether in your computer, or in your bookmarks, etc.
A fantastic inspiration piece!

Visit Source

.

Top 7 Most Cliché Stock Images Used in Web Design

Sometimes clients ask us to implement ‘not-so-unique’ elements into our designs and sometimes it seems almost impossible to convince them otherwise, however, hopefully this post can suggest some reasons why not to use the old web design stock imagery clichés.

Visit Source

.

How To Create WordPress Themes From Scratch Part 1

I’m going to show you how to create a wordpress theme from scratch in these 3 parts of tutorial series. I will cover from Structuring, designing in Photoshop, slicing, coding into fully css based html, and finally wordpress implementation.

Visit Source

.

30+ Websites that Feature a Hand-Drawn Style

While the content of these sites is still presented in a very clean and relatively simple format, the visual field is dominated by a single illustrated image or by a series of hand drawn elements throughout the background. Here the designers are using their “art” to frame the content.

Visit Source

.

30 Brilliant Vector Logo Designs, Deconstructed

A kick-butt logo design is of great importance to any business. Often seen as the first impression of a company, its logo must be tailored to communicate specific values and ideals in an instant.

Visit Source

Again, it has been a fantastic month. I can’t wait to see more in October!

So you want to master Photoshop huh? You’ve come to the right place. This is the third and final installment of a three part series that will help you to master Photoshop in and out in just one week.

Today’s part showcases advanced tutorials that will really push the skills you learned in part 1 and part 2.

I am in full understanding that a program so complex as Photoshop cannot always be mastered in one week, as I have titled this post. Today, while showcasing advanced tutorials, I also wish to show you how you can continue to advance your Photoshop skills and knowledge over the next days and weeks.

Remember, learning is a journey that takes time - so enjoy learning more about Photoshop as you expand your knowledge of the program and its tools.

I sincerely hope that you have all enjoyed this series – I know that I sure have. It has been a great way to refresh my own understanding of Photoshop, as well as learn some new tools and techniques that I can use.

If you enjoyed this series and would like to get free updates of future posts from Elite By Design, just subscribe to the feed.
.
.

.
.
Jump to a specific section of tutorials:

• Tutorials
• Sites
• Articles & Inspiration

Tutorials

How To Digitally Paint An Abstract Face Portrait
.

.
.

Hell Of A Tutorial In Photoshop
.

.
.

Creating A Realistic 3D Flag
.

.
.

Design A Photo Manipulation From Sketch To Color
.

.
.

>Create A Realistic Wine Bottle Illustration From Scratch
.

.
.

Realistic Clouds Tutorial
.

.
.

Create A Vector Style Illustration In Photoshop
.

.
.

Realistic Denim Jean Texture From Scratch
.

.
.

Super Cool Frilly Bits Typography
.

.
.

Illustrating A Cool Glass Of Beer
.

.
.

Creating A Vector Style MacBook From Scratch
.

.
.

Design A Coldplay/Apple Inspired Portrait In Photoshop
.

.
.

Sites

Tutorial 9
.

.
.

PSD Tuts
.

.
.

Good Tutorials
.

.
.

PSD Fan
.

.
.

Tutorialized
.

.
.

Naldz Graphics
.

.
.

PSD Learning
.

.
.

Photoshop Tutorials
.

.
.

Tutzor
.

.
.

Tutorial Park
.

.
.

Adobe Tutorialz
.

.
.

Eyes On Tutorials
.

.
.

Photoshop Essentials
.

.
.

Abduzeedo
.

.
.

Photoshop Star
.

.
.

Articles & Inspiration

• Photoshop Freebies
• 101 Typography Resources For Designers
• 8 Resources For Creating Color Schemes
• 31 Sources Of Quality Free Icons
• 75 Insane High Res Photoshop Brushes
• 50+ Designers To Follow On Twitter
• 23 Most Incredible Photoshop Tutorials
• 30 Beautiful Photoshop Text Effect Tutorials
• 25 More Most Incredible Photoshop Tutorials
• 25 Beautiful Fantasy Photoshop Tutorials
• 24 Perfect Photoshop Vectors
• 100 Awesome High Resolution Photoshop Brushes
• 105+ Logo Design Tuts And Resources
• 50+ Excellent Body Enhancement Photoshop Tutorials
• You Know You’re Addicted To Photoshop If…
• 4 Easy Photoshop Techniques To Make Your Pictures Pop
• 21 Best Photoshop Text Effects
• Top 10 Photoshop Tutorial Websites
• 40 Dark And Futuristic Photoshop Effects
• 53 Killer Photoshop Illustrator Effects And Tutorials
• 7 Steps To Developing Originality In Your Design And Illustration Work
• High Quality Photoshop Brushes Resources And Tutorials
• 10 Techniques That Are Essential For Successful Photo Manipulation Artwork
• 40+ Extremely Beautiful Icon Sets Hand Picked From deviantArt
• How To Create Step-By-Step Photoshop Design Tutorials
• 50+ High Quality .PSD Files And Tutorials
• 7 Principles Of Effective Icon Design
• 12 Ways To Tap Into An Endless Well Of Creativity
• 5 Important Criteria That Make A Great Photoshop Tutorial

Got your own resources you would like to add to this collection? Simply drop a comment and I’d be glad to add yours!

Get free updates of future posts on Elite By Design by subscribing to the feed or subscribe via email below!

So you want to master Photoshop huh? You’ve come to the right place. This is the second part of a three part series that will help you to master Photoshop in and out in just one week. Today’s part is all about utilizing the skills you mastered in part 1 and learning how they can be used in real designs. This post is a collection of easy to medium level Photoshop tutorials that will get your creativity rolling and will hopefully take your understanding of Photoshop and all of its complex features to the next level.

Part three will be coming up on Monday, so feel free to take your time going through these resources. To get free updates on the next part of the series, just subscribe today!

Part three has been posted. Click here to read!
.
.

.
.
Jump to a specific section of tutorials:

• Typography
• Web Components
• Photo Manipulation
• Buttons
• Other

Typography

Create A Trendy Typographic Poster Design
.

.
.

Colorful Glowing Text Effect
.

.
.

Transparent Glass Lettering In Photoshop
.

.
.

Tutorial : Smooth Glass Type
.

.
.

>Light Burst Text Effect
.

.
.

Dark But Vivid Text Effect
.

.
.

Scrabble Text
.

.
.

Create A Layered Glowing Text Effect
.

.
.

6 Quick N’ Dirty Photoshop Text Effects From Scratch
.

.
.

Bling Bling - Simple Gold Text Effect
.

.
.

Recreate The Bee Movie Text Effect
.

.
.

Vibrant Pop Text Effect
.

.
.

Web Components

A Guide To Exporting To The Web In Photoshop
.

.
.

Light Tabbed Content Box
.

.
.

Professional Dark Header
.

.
.

Stylish Dark Menu Bar
.

.
.

How To Create A Modern Purple Preloader In Photoshop
.

.
.

How To Create A Simple Sleek Web 2.0 Site Footer
.

.
.

Making A Sign Banner Using Light And Shadow
.

.
.

How To Showcase Your Work Beautifully
.

.
.

Sleek Banner Tutorial
.

.
.

Stylish Web 2.0 Navigation
.

.
.

Create A Dark Content Box With Glowing Navigation
.

.
.

Vista Style Navigation Bar
.

.
.

Photo Manipulation

How To Draw An Electronic Angel From A Picture Of A Girl
.

.
.

Creating A Stunning Stone Cursed Man
.

.
.

Create A Realistic Graffiti Text And Image On A Nice Clean Wall
.

.
.

Give Your Photos Awesome Lighting In Just 10 Steps
.

.
.

Create A Surreal Environment Using A Photo
.

.
.

Giving A Mafia Look To A Business Photo
.

.
.

Transforming A Daylight Image Into A Wild Night
.

.
.

Awesome Photorealistic Coloring Techniques
.

.
.

Creating X-Ray Style Images From Mechanical Objects
.

.
.

Enhance Your Images With Selective Color Adjustments
.

.
.

Change The Color Of An Eye
.

.
.

Easy Photo Grunge Effect
.

.
.

Buttons

Basic Sleek Button
.

.
.

Nice Simple Subscribe Badges
.

.
.

Web Button Making Tutorial 1
.

.
.

Web Button Making Tutorial 2
.

.
.

Building Buttons In Photoshop
.

.
.

Sleek Black Glossy Buttons
.

.
.

Buy Now Button
.

.
.

Professional Glossy Download Button
.

.
.

Stylish Black Buttons
.

.
.

Aero Glass Vista Button With Photoshop
.

.
.

Orb Button Effect
.

.
.

Aqua Style Button With Photoshop
.

.
.

Other

How To Create A Super Shiny Pencil Icon
.

.
.

Create A Mobile Phone Styled Like The HTC Touch Diamond
.

.
.

Create A Space Explosion In Photoshop
.

.
.

Create An Amazing Ad With Photoshop
.

.
.

Really Cool Eclipse Effect In Photoshop
.

.
.

Time Machine Icon In Photoshop
.

.
.

iMouse - Creating An Apple Mouse
.

.
.

Beautiful Lighting Effect In Photoshop
.

.
.

Creating A Mac Type Background In Photoshop
.

.
.

Creating Interface Orbs
.

.
.

Keep an eye out for part three coming out this week - get free updates by subscribing to the feed or subscribe via email below!

Alex
Jeff
Larry West
Bryn

To choose the winners, I used a random number calculator to pick a number between 1 and 31 (number of comments). The number that was picked was then correlated to a comment. If the comment was a valid entry with a working email address, a winner was chosen.

I will contact the winners to let them know how they can get their free business cards via email within the next few hours.

Thanks everyone for your participation, and keep your eye out for more giveaways in the future!

So you want to master Photoshop huh? You’ve come to the right place. This is the first part of a three part series that will help you to master Photoshop in and out in just one week. Today’s part is all about getting to know the basics of the program and how to operate the complex software - nothing amazing, but you need to crawl before you can walk!

Part two will be coming up in a couple of days, so feel free to take your time going through these resources. To get free updates on the next two parts of the series, just subscribe today!

Part two has been posted. Click here to read!
Part three has been posted. Click here to read!
.
.

.
.
Jump to a specific section:

• The Interface
• The Tools
• Pen Tool
• Shortcuts
• Tutorials

The Interface

Familiarizing Yourself With The Photoshop Interface
.

.
.

Video: Photoshop 101 - The Interface
.

.
.

Photoshop Crash Course
.

.
.

Getting Started In Photoshop
.

.
.

The Tools

Photoshop Tool Basics
.

.
.

Photoshop’s Toolbox
.

.
.

The Selection Tools
.

.
.

Video: Burn, Dodge, And Sponge Tools
.

.
.

Painting Tools
.

.
.

Drawing And Type Tools
.

.
.

Retouch And Healing Tools
.

.
.

Understanding Blending Modes
.

.
.

Pen Tool

Pen Tool Basics
.

.
.

Learning How To Use The Pen Tool
.

.
.

Video: Vector Tracing And The Pen Tool
.

.
.

Photoshop Paths Explained
.

.
.

Drawing With Photoshops’ Pen Tool
.

.
.

Shortcuts

Photoshop Keyboard Shortcuts
.

.
.

18 Exceptionally Useful Photoshop Shortcuts
.

.
.

28 More Exceptionally Useful Photoshop Shortcuts
.

.
.

48 Greatest Adobe Photoshop Keyboard Shortcuts
.

.
.

Create Your Own Custom Keyboard Shortcuts
.

.
.

Layers

Working With Layers In Photoshop
.

.
.

Video: How To Use Photoshop Layers
.

.
.

Understanding Layers In Photoshop
.

.
.

Life Without Photoshop Layers
.

.
.

Video: Layers Basics
.

.
.

Tutorials

10 Useful Tips For Beginners
.

.
.

Stylish Clean Avatar
.

.
.

Combining Two Photos For New Effect
.

.
.

Add Visual Texture In Three Easy Steps
.

.
.

Guide To Halftone Pattern
.

.
.

Video: Floating Borders
.

.
.

Easy Glass Orb
.

.
.

How To Extract People And Objects In Photoshop
.

.
.

Keep an eye out for parts two and three coming out this week - get free updates by subscribing to the feed or subscribe via email below!

Thanks everyone for your help and my apologies for the issue.

On a side note, today’s my birthday and I will probably not be able to respond to emails for the rest of the day. Thanks!