MyInkBlog » MyInkTrail

MyInkTrail: Best of the Design Community – March 2011

James Vincent — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 13:30:31 +0000

Another month in the books and another MyInkTrail for you so you can soak up all of the awesomeness that happened around the design community in the past 31 days.

Below are links to the top articles, tutorials, resources, inspiration & random goodness that came out of the design community in the month of March, 2011.

Articles

Logo design process and walkthrough for biothemes

Chris gives us all some insight into the process that he took when designing the amazing logo for BioThemes. I personally love the logo at full size but on the live site it’s a bit too small to appreciate fully when you see it in the header note: the logo is shown full size if you scroll to the bottom.

Essential Factors to Consider When Designing a Website

A good post covering the fast changing development of the world and what it means for your web designs & how you can capitalize on it all.

Thursday Theory: 6 ways to make your work more original

Not everyone can (or should) design like the more well known designers in the industry because, after all, it’s the unique way you design that sets you apart from the rest and this post shows you 6 ways you can make your work even more original.

7 basics to create a good design brief

Want to make your life as a designer a million times easier? Check out these 7 things you should have in your design brief that will make the beginning phases of a design project a breeze.

Top 5 reasons why you shouldn’t create trendy designs

Some good information that often gets overlooked when you’ve spent too much time on sites like Dribbble and Forrst and all you want to do is create something trendy – even when you know you shouldn’t.

Give a touch of creativity to your resume

Looking for a job as a designer? Got a resume that looks just like everyone else’s? If you answered yes to both of these questions you NEED this post in your life.

Inspiration

Design Inspiration: Paper textures in web design

One of my personal favorite styles, Vandelay Design features a bunch of paper textures in web designs for your inspiration. Definitely one to check out to get your creative juices flowing.

Showcase of 20 Minimalist grid based web designs

Clean, easy to view web designs will never lose its hold on designers and this post is a premium example of why minimalist designs will never die – so much awesomeness.

10 fresh and inspirational HTML5 one-page portfolios

So many different trends are packed into this one showcase it’s crazy. HTML5 use – check. One page portfolios – check. Awesome jQuery effects – check.

Showcase of websites with illustrated backgrounds

Another one of the design styles that I personally favor because each of them are unique in their own way even though they all utilize hand drawn elements in their designs. Line25 put together a great set of 30+1 websites that have illustrated backgrounds, so make sure you check it out.

Logo design trend showcase: Retro emblems and badges

While I really like this type of design, as you can see from this showcase there’s a time and place for trendy designs and if too many people are doing the same thing, nobody stands out. Regardless, there’s some awesome logos in this post to check out.

25 Amazing freelance designer portfolios

I think it’s safe to say that most of us here are freelance designers so this round up of 25 freelance designer portfolios should definitely inspire us to create something amazing today.

Freebies

10 Free Vintage PNG icons

For anyone who designs and uses a vintage style, these PNG’s will most definitely come in handy for the quick fix when you’re stumped and need something retro looking to pop into your design. Well worth the ten seconds it takes to click and download ;)

47 gorgeous & fresh free fonts

PSD Fan put up an awesome collection of fresh, free fonts for you to use for your next design project. I found at least 10 new fonts I haven’t seen before, so it’s something to check out and the fonts are top notch.

Nine vignetted vintage paper textures

Lost & Taken is famous for releasing awesome textures on a regular basis and this set is not a disappointment at all. Full sized, awesome textures you can use for any project.

Subtle grunge Photoshop brush set #3

Liam has released two sets previously and this month he put a third set out that was made by textures submitted to him from readers of his blog. They turned out awesome and they’re definitely a requirement for your next design project :)

33 sets of free smoke Photoshop brushes

Instead of spending your time scouring the web looking for individual sets, YouTheDesigner has put together a list of 33 awesome smoke Photoshop brush sets all in one post so you can download them quickly and get on with your day.

Prestige Logo PSD

Great looking free logo design from the folks over at LogoInstant. Layered editable PSD file included.

Snow – a slick and modern UI kit

Brought to you by MediaLoot through the Spyre Studios website, this is an awesome UI kit that can easily be used in your next web design project.

Tutorials

How to design a 1980′s movie poster in Photoshop

If you’re like a lot of designers, you were either A: born in the 80′s or B: a huge fan of the 80′s so this tutorial should be right up your alley.

How to apply textures to uneven surfaces in Photoshop

A good tutorial for anyone who is looking to learn a bit more about photo manipulations, which would translate well for poster designs, cd covers, etc.

Photo retouching tips and tricks in Photoshop

Looking for around thirty tips and tricks for photo retouching that you probably don’t know about yet? I figured you were and so did the fine folks at Smashing Magazine.

Design a blue corporate website design in Photoshop

An awesome tutorial on how to design a cool corporate website design in Photoshop. Design it and have someone code it into a WordPress theme and you’re bound to get some sales from it.

How to create a vector sketchbook in Illustrator

They call it a sketchbook but I call it what it clearly is – a moleskine. Regardless of the name, this is a really nice tutorial that shows you how to create a notebook in Illustrator.

Create a vibrant space themed poster in Photoshop

Head over and learn, in some serious detail, how to create your own space themed poster design in Photoshop. This is a must-read tutorial in my opinion because the techniques can transcend from poster designs to so many other mediums.

Featured Stuff

TumblrThemr

Develop tumblr themes locally while using data from your live Tumblr blog. This could possibly solve the problem of having to hack and save code numerous times while working on themes, which will save you time, frustration & broken computer screens.

Love For Japan

This month we have seen a terrible tragedy hit Japan and this is just one of the many, many projects started by designers to support those who were devastated in Japan on March 11th. Draw a heart, upload it and it’ll be featured in a letterpress poster for sale with all proceeds going to help Japan.

Design bundle for Japan

The awesome folks over at PSD365 & Design Moo have put together an enormous design resource package you can purchase for $5, with proceeds going to the Red Cross in Japan. They’ve currently raised $7,280 – go help them hit the $10,000 mark!

25 Essential Android apps for web workers and designers

The iPhone & iPad may have a stronghold on most designers but a lot of designers are using Android phones so this post is going to come at the perfect time because it’s got tons of awesome apps for your Android phone.

MyInkTrail: Best of the Design Community – January 2011

Roberto Blake — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 07:50:33 +0000

The first month of 2011 has already come and gone. It was an exciting month for MyInkBlog, because the site now has a new team. We are working hard behind the scenes to bring out fresh new content for 2011.

Here are the best articles, tutorials, freebies and more from the design community for January 2011.

Articles

11 Most Popular Blog Design Styles

This post breaks down 11 popular blog styles, and has an exhausting showcase of inspiring examples.

The History of the Ampersand and Showcase

I’ve joked on this blog before that nothing says typography quite like the ampersand sign. This history of the symbol and showcase of examples should satisfy the inner typography nerd in most of us designers.

Curating Comment Threads

The most current versions of WordPress include all kinds of awesome options to improve how you handle comments on your blog. This post covers much of that, and an interesting take on using a feature/bury plugin.

A Guide to Utilizing Facebook for a Freelance Career

This article explores the many ways Facebook can be used for business and productivity, particularly for Freelancers. A lot of useful info here.

How to effectively organize, manage and maintain your freelance design business

Brian Hoff discusses ways to increase your efficiency in an effort to make running a one person design business possible. The post is chock full of awesome advice, everything from syncing your files to writting contracts.

A Brief History of Eye-Tracking

Usability has always been an important topic of interest for me, that interest has grown now that I just finished reading the ever popular Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability. Of course we can improve the user experience only if we understand how users browse the web. This post takes a look at the history of eye-tracking, and how people utilize it.

Mastering Photoshop: Unknown Tricks and Time-Savers

I love keyboard shortcuts! This post lays out all kinds of Photoshop time savers, but mostly it’s a nice bookmark of useful shortcuts.

HTML5 Grayscale Image Hover

This HTML5 and jQuery trick will dynamically change the color of images, without the need fro image editing software like Photoshop. See it in action with the demo.

Inspiration

Beautiful Designs with Smoke Typography

Smoke typography is an awesomely unique niche. Predictably so, this is a roundup of inspirational examples of smoke typography.

Gorgeous Typography Examples in Advertising Design

I must be on a typography kick this month because this post features more cool typography examples, this time within advertising design.

Freebies

7 Hi-Res Bokeh Textures

The bokeh effect seems to be here to stay, and rightfully so, it’s a beautiful effect. Here is a collection of 7 bokeh textures that can help your next design.

Woven Fabric Social Media Icon Set

I love to add icons to my design arsenal. This is a unique set of social media icons made of woven fabric.

Vector Social Media Icons

It’s one thing to make an awesome set of social media icons, but it brings it to another level of awesomeness when you realize these icons are designed in vector format, meaning that you can use them at any size you wish.

Tutorials

How To Create Depth And Nice 3D Ribbons Only Using CSS3

This is a great example of the sort of graphical elements you can create using just CSS 3.

Create a Gnarly Snowboarding Themed Web Design

This tutorial is rockin’ cool no matter how you slice it, but you add ‘gnarly’ to the title and it just goes off the charts.

Create a Cool Typography Effect in Photoshop

Wow, I was really into the subject of typography this month. This tutorial shows you how tor create a cool typography effect using layer styles, color blending and images.

Featured Stuff

Wordmark.it

Awesome web based tool that displays a word in all the fonts installed on your system. Really useful when you need to quickly choose the right font.

Art in My Coffee

I’m not sure what to think of this art style other than it’s really unique and clever. This site is a gallery of coffee art images.

Why It’s Better To Pretend You Don’t Know Anything About Computers

Anyone who works with computers can definitely relate to this hysterical comic about why it’s best to keep you computer know-how a secret.

Design Instruct

This is a new design site created by the folks who brought you Six Revisions. Design Instruct is a web magazine that aims to teach designers and digital artists useful techniques by way of detailed and step-by-step tutorials.

Readability

I’m not sure I’ll use this all that often, but I like the idea and it’s ease of use. Basically it’s a bookmark you can add to simplify a website to just display the content you’re reading rendered in simple nice fonts.

iPad

Yeah, I’m featuring the iPad on MyInkTrail. Love it or hate it, it was a huge event. I’ll leave a review up to the talented pen of Rob Bowen for an upcoming post.

Dummy Image

I could see myself using this now and again when I mockup web designs. Basically the site takes in width and height values and dynamically creates a dummy image for you to use in your design. Sort of the Lorem Ipsum of images.

MyInkTrail: Best of the Design Community – May 2010

Andrew Houle — Fri, 28 May 2010 23:33:03 +0000

The more MyInkTrails that I do, the more I am convinced that less is more. I’m now much more focused on quality over quantity. Plus, I’m frustrated with the lack of creativity with some blogs in the design community. Regardless, I dug deep and found some quality reads, and I’m sure I missed a few others. I hope you enjoy my favorite articles, tutorials, freebies and featured stuff from my trek through the design community for May 2010.

Articles

Grid Based Web Design Simplified

I absolutely love these uniquely styled posts by Design Informer. This post covers the importance of grids in webdesign and some tools and tips for how to create them.

Usability Testing: Don’t Guess Test

I don’t think the design community focuses quite enough on usability. I love the quote that this article begins with, “Remember, just because nobody complains, it doesn’t mean all parachutes are perfect.”

Complete Guide to WordPress 3.0 Awesome New Features

WordPress 3 is currently in public beta and should be released very soon. This new version brings with it all kinds of exciting new features, here is a breakdown of quite a few of them.

Beginners Guide to Using the Power of Color in Web Design

This post covers how to make smart color decisions in web design based on harmonious combinations. Complete with inspirational examples for each of the 6 color combination categories.

The dawn of the redesign

The new Design Cubicle looks so sweet! Awesome typography, great color choices, and amazing attention to detail. This post covers Brian’s design process.

Redesigning The Boarding Pass

Tyler Thompson gets fed up with how ugly airplane boarding passes are so he takes it upon himself to design something. The result is strikingly better!

18 Great Examples of Sketched UI Wireframes and Mockups

Sketching is so important to my design process. It helps me think clearly and get my ideas down without limitations. This post showcases 18 great examples of sketched mockups. Not that your sketches have to be this good, but it’s nice inspiration.

Tutorials

Designing an Infographic with HTML, CSS & jQuery

Infographics have been getting all kinds of pub lately in the design community. And that’s just fine by me. I love to see quality design incorporated into otherwise mundane numbers. This tutorial shows you how to create a slick infographic, then takes it a step further by coding it into HTML.

Quick Tip: Highlight Current Category Menu Item for WordPress Single Post

As the title indicates, this is more of a quick tip than a tutorial, nonetheless, highlighting the current category is a nice usability enhancement for a WordPress site. Something I should add to MIB very soon.

Freebies

Hand Drawn Sketchy Icons of Your Favorite Social Sites

Not much needs to be said about these awesome hand-drawn icons. Just take a look.

Featured Stuff

Our Solar System

This is a cool attempt to recreate the solar system using CSS3 features such as border-radius, transforms and animations. Be sure to check this out in a webkit browser (Chrome or Safari).

Google Font Directory

Google has joined the web typography revolution with a new open source font directory. It’s a small list now, but it’s sure to grow, and awesome to see web typography progressing.

Wireframe Showcase

I think I’ve probably told you a few too many times that I love sketching and think it plays an extremely important role in the design process, needless to say, I like this new sketching showcase site.

SpiderOak

I love Dropbox, but SpiderOak seems to be another great option for online backup and file sharing.

MyInkTrail: Best of the Design Community, April 2010

Andrew Houle — Wed, 05 May 2010 23:10:56 +0000

Another busy month in the books. This month’s MyInkTrail is short but very useful. Here are the best articles, tutorials, freebies and more from the design community for April 2010.

Articles

Why Web Design Doesn’t Cost £40

Grace Smith puts together this compelling argument about why web design doesn’t come cheaply. When you add it all up, web design takes a lot of time and effort.

Quick and Easy CSS @font-face Code

Getting @font-face fonts to render in every browser isn’t too difficult, but it can be a little tricky to remember all the code you need. This post makes for a nice bookmark the next time you need to use @font-face.

WordPress Caching: What’s the best Caching Plugin?

A very comprehensive study about the best WordPress caching solutions available. Awesome descriptions and graphics of each solution.

Smashing Magazine Redesign: Photographs & Screenshots

In this post, Liam of Function discusses the Smashing Magazine redesign they did. It was very interesting to read through the process and check out some of the elements Smashing decided to leave out.

The Myth of Inspiration?

I think at times I’ve been a victim of the myth of inspiration. The truth is we can be inspired by work found at gallery sites, however Matt suggests that “Inspiration is not a product to be picked off the shelf. It is much more vital, much more organic and far less predictable.” Well said!

Tutorials

Retro 3D Arcade Text Effect in Illustrator

I couldn’t help but include this retro tutorial. I love the old school look of this arcade style text effect.

Build a Simple Image Slideshow with jQuery Cycle

jQuery sliders and slideshows have been covered more than enough at this point, but I like the straight forward simplicity of this tutorial.

Touch The Future: Create An Elegant Website With HTML 5 And CSS3

This tutorial is a great learning tool if you are trying to learn or get better at using HTML 5 and CSS 3. Good code + good design = great tutorial.

Freebies

Plain Fabric Textures: Free Hi-Res Photoshop Brush Set 1

This is a really handy set of 12 high resolution texture brushes to grunge up your designs with an organic feel.

Free Marker-Style Icon Set

Be sure to download this beautifully simple marker style icon set from the very talented Nick La.

42 More Subtle Grunge Textured Photoshop Brushes

Function has some of the highest quality freebies in the design community and this brush set doesn’t disappoint. I love that they are subtle enough to build up some awesomely organic textures.

Featured Stuff

This Is Apple’s Next iPhone

With about 10 million page views this story has taken on a life of its own, but in case for some strange reason you missed it, Gizmodo allegedly found and showcased Apple’s next iPhone.

Dribbble

Dribbble is an invite only design community where designers participate in a game of show and tell to gather feedback and be inspired. I’m still eagerly awaiting an invite.

1STWD Q&A E-book : Interviews With 25 Popular Bloggers

This is a free e-book that includes 5 questions with 25 popular bloggers. I was flattered to be a part of this compilation.

UpThemes

UpThemes is a new premium WordPress Theme site offering up some very good looking themes at very reasonable prices.

MyInkTrail: Best of the Design Community, March 2010

Andrew Houle — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 15:56:23 +0000

There was plenty of good stuff to see and learn on the interwebs this month. Here are the best articles, tutorials, inspiration and more for March 2010 from my trek through the design community.

Articles

I wish I would have known: Answers from 11 top freelancers

Some of the top freelancers in the design community share their insight about things they wish they had known when they first started freelancing. I once heard it said that a wise man learns from his own mistakes, an even wiser man learns from other’s mistakes.

To Sketch or Not to Sketch

Those of you who have been following my blog lately know that I’ve been focusing a lot on the importance of sketching in the design process. So it should come as no surprise that I enjoyed this writeup that explores just how crucial that process is.

Books in the Age of the iPad

An awesome and well-thought out post about the role that the iPad will have on the transition from print to digital books.

A Look into Color Theory in Web Design

This is a very detailed post on color theory. It’s topped off with explanations of the feelings evoked by certain colors and examples of colors used in big company sites.

The Slippery Slope of Creeping Scope

Creep scope is a dirty word in the design community. This post goes over a bunch of useful techniques for dealing with this all too common issue.

Bad Design Vs Good Design: What You Should Be Doing (Part 1)

Tom over at PSD Fan explores the nuances that separate good and bad design. Things like color, typography and branding. His points are reinforced with examples throughout.

HTML5 Rocks My Socks Off

HTML5 is only useable in modern browsers, but with a bit of javascript you can pull it off (even in IE). With all the cool new features it’s definitely worth starting to learn now. This post clearly explains 11 new tags that you can use.

IE9 May Actually Be a Fantastic Browser

The preview version of IE 9 has been met with mixed reviews. It may not be perfect, but it’s definitely a step in the right direction.

CSS In Depth Part 2: Floats & Positions

The first part of this series looked at margins, padding & the box model. This second part focuses on floats and position.

My Love/Hate Affair with Typekit

Web standards leader and advocate Jeffrey Zelman looks at the pros and cons of using Typekit for web fonts.

Know How To Plan Your Website Redesign & Get Inspired

This post features examples of successful blog redesigns and advice as to how to redesign and why.

Tutorials

Grid Accordion with jQuery

This tutorial will walk you through creating a clever jquery accordion. And the example is complete with your favorite comic book heros.

Creating Glassy Objects Using Layer Styles

I’ve always been impressed by the awesome effects you can create in Photoshop by tweaking layer styles. Matt Ward of Echo Enduring recreates his logo with a glass effect and describes all the steps and theory along the way.

Freebies

Decorative Elements Pack â€“ 33 Free Vectors, Brushes, and Images

Media Militia consistently rocks out some of the best freebies in the design community. Here are 33 incredible decorative elements to make you look good in your next design.

30+ New Social Media Icons

MediaLoot has some incredible graphics under their monthly subscription. They also offer the occasional freebie. Be sure to grab this top notch social media icon set.

Free Texture Tuesday: Subtle Grunge

Awesome and free subtle grunge texture set, nuff said.

Featured Stuff

March Interview Madness

Inspired by the madness of the NCAA tournament, Brian brings us 31 days worth of interviews from many of the top names in the design community (somehow I slipped into this awesome list).

WebStorm

After checking out this screencast I decided to give WebStorm a try. It’s definitely a worth a download, and yeah, it’s free.

MediaLoot

MediaLoot opened up shop this month. It’s a new subscription based site that serves up awesome icons, Photoshop brushes, textures, vectors, print templates, and more. To help MediaLoot celebrate their launch, I’ve teamed up with them to offer you a chance to win a free 1 year account.

Colosseo

Be sure to check out this breath-taking project by Cameron Moll. It’s an amazing artistic rendering of the coliseum with type.

CSS3 Please!

I love this site! It’s a quick and easy way to produce all the css3 syntax (webkit, moz, and ie filters) in one easy to use site.

WordPress Madness

WordPress Madness offers up some really nice looking premium WordPress themes for only $5.

Spanning Sync 3

I just picked up this awesomely handy software. It syncs (both ways) your iCal with Google Calendar and Address Book with Google Contacts.

@Font-Face Generator

This is such a handy little tool to produce a zipped file of everything you need to use @font-face fonts across pretty much every browser.

Find Icons

This is a new icon search engine. You can search their database for over 280,000 icons and sort by size, color, category and rating.

Opera Logo with CSS

David Desandro recreates the Opera logo using only CSS to showcase the flexibility of CSS3.

MyInkTrail: Best of the Design Community, February 2010

Andrew Houle — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 00:38:30 +0000

I was definitely preoccupied this month with the MyInkBlog redesign, so this MyInkTrail is shorter than usual. Nonetheless, I did stumble into some great stuff. Here are the best articles, tutorials, inspiration and more from the design community for February 2010.

Articles

The Principle of Contrast in Web Design

This post goes into great detail about the importance good contrast can play in web design. It’s broken down into color, size and alignment.

A Few Steps Back

I love the honesty with which Jeff writes. In this article he calls out some of the design community for lack of originality and the commercialization of social media, amongst other things. This is a very thoughtful and interesting read that will certainly have bloggers looking in the mirror, myself included.

Unique Blog Posts and WordPress Tips

Some blogs have started to customize each and every blog posts that they create. It’s an awesome trend, that requires creativity and commitment. This post showcases a bunch of blogs that are using unique blog posts.

Yet More on the Unfolding Future-of-Flash-and-the-Web Saga

The drama that is unfolding between Apple and Flash is quite interesting. The politics and motives involved make it intriguing to follow. Get some perspective on the issue from this well-written article.

Tutorials

Lost in Space Typography in Photoshop

Another sweet typography tutorial from the folks at Abduzeedo. It includes a bokeh effect and some awesome lighting effects.

How to Build a Custom WordPress Theme from Scratch

This tutorial walks you through creating an original WordPress theme from start to finish. It’s well written and a great starting point for anyone who already has basic css/html knowledge.

Create An Editable Stitched Label Type Treatment

If you like Illustrator, and you haven’t already, you should definitely bookmark Vectips. They are a consistent source for awesome vector tips and tutorials. This tutorial shows you how to create a slick stitched label, that’s easily reusable.

CSS3 Dropdown Menu

Learn how to create a Mac-inspired menu using CSS3 attributes such as border-radius, box-shadow, and text-shadow. This is a terrific example of the proper use of CSS3 to create progressive enhancements in web design.

Inspiration

15 Excellent Splatter Typography Examples

This is a really sweet compilation of splatter typography that is sure to inspire you.

Designers Sketchbook Showcase + Win 10 Free Sketchbooks!

Wow, my sketchbook doesn’t look half as good as some of these. This is a cool glimpse into the sketching stage of the creative process for some designers.

Featured Stuff

BLANK WordPress Theme

When starting a WordPress theme from scratch it’s nice to start with just the skeleton. I usually grab Starkers by Elliot Jay Stocks, but BLANK by Chris Coyier provides another nice option.

PV.M Garage CSS Gallery

PV.M Garage has added a css gallery that showcases only really great designs. I really like the colors and tags you can use to sort through the designs.

PSDFAN VIP Area Launches

PSDFAN has relaunched their members area. It’s stocked full of source files and member exclusive tutorials.

MyInkTrail: Best of the Design Community, January 2010

Andrew Houle — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 20:39:50 +0000

Well the first month of 2010 has already come and gone. It was an exciting month for MyInkBlog, with some quality (mostly guest) posts, and a lot of progress on my redesign. Stay tuned for the release of that coming up sometime soon in February. Complete with a new logo, and some refined personality.

I’d also be remised if I didn’t mention Apple’s new iPad. Everyone seems to have an opinion on it, so here’s mine. I think it looks like incredibly slick, and will gain popularity as the 2nd and 3rd generations further improve the design, functionality and add new features. I understand the giant iPod or small MacBook sentiments, but I think it will find a niche, and ultimately prove successful for Apple.

Articles

11 Most Popular Blog Design Styles

This post breaks down 11 popular blog styles, and has an exhausting showcase of inspiring examples.

The History of the Ampersand and Showcase

Curating Comments Threads

Principles of Great Design: Craftsmanship

This post speaks about quality craftsmanship as it relates to design. Then it shares practical advice about how to become a better craftsman.

How to effectively organize, manage and maintain your freelance design business

A Brief History of Eye-Tracking

Mastering Photoshop: Unknown Tricks and Time-Savers

I love keyboard shortcuts! This post lays out all kinds of Photoshop time savers, but mostly it’s a nice bookmark of useful shortcuts.

Design Trends (Predictions) in 2010

A look at some of the top trends in web design that are more than likely to take off in 2010. Not only are they good predictions, most of them are good suggestions for progressive, improved design.

Inspiration

Beautiful Designs with Smoke Typography

Smoke typography is an awesomely unique niche. Predictably so, this is a roundup of inspirational examples of smoke typography.

Gorgeous Typography Examples in Advertising Design

I must have been on a typography kick this month because this post features more cool typography examples, this time within advertising design.

Freebies

7 Hi-Res Bokeh Textures

The bokeh effect seems to be here to stay, and rightfully so, it’s a beautiful effect. Here is a collection of 7 bokeh textures that can help your next design.

Woven Fabric Social Media Icon Set

I love to add icons to my design arsenal. This is a unique set of social media icons made of woven fabric.

Vector Social Media Icons

Tutorials

How To Create Depth And Nice 3D Ribbons Only Using CSS3

This is a great example of the sort of graphical elements you can create using just CSS 3.

Create a Gnarly Snowboarding Themed Web Design

This tutorial is rockin’ cool no matter how you slice it, but you add ‘gnarly’ to the title and it just goes off the charts.

Create a Cool Typography Effect in Photoshop

Wow, I was really into the subject of typography this month. This tutorial show you how tor create a cool typography effect using layer styles, color blending and images.

Featured Stuff

Art in My Coffee

I’m not sure what to think of this art style other than it’s really unique and clever. This site is a gallery of coffee art images.

Why It’s Better To Pretend You Don’t Know Anything About Computers

Anyone who works with computers can definitely relate to this hysterical comic about why it’s best to keep you computer know-how a secret.

Design Instruct

Readability

iPad

Yeah, I’m featuring the iPad on MyInkTrail. Love it or hate it, it was a huge event. I’ll leave a review up to the talented pen of Rob Bowen for an upcoming post.

Dummy Image

MyInkTrail: Best of the Design Community, December 2009

Andrew Houle — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 05:36:48 +0000

It was so nice to have a little Christmas break. I feel re-energized to come back with some great posts and continue work on improving this blog into the new year. I’ve got some redesign elements to introduce, including a new logo which I plan to reveal in the coming months. This month’s MyInkTrail was relatively small, but its still packed with interesting design articles, tutorials, freebies and more.

Articles

Comic Sans: The Font Everyone Loves to Hate

I always cringe when I see comic sans in design, it’s just so rarely used correctly. This article dissects the reasons why so many of us designers dislike the font.

The Weaker Side of Usability Guidelines

This article contains very practical and common sense advice for usability. We would all benefit from knowing and applying these principles.

WordPress 2.9 Enhancements Every Developer Must Know

With WordPress 2.9 coming out recently this is a timely article that showcases 29 enhancement tips that will help you improve your WordPress site.

Make Your Mockup in Markup

Even though I do all my mockups in Photoshop, I really appreciated the benefits described with mocking your designs in code as shown in this witty post, plus you’ll learn some cool css3 tricks.

How to Develop WordPress Themes Behind the Scenes

This is a quick little article that explains the best ways to develop a WordPress theme behind the scenes.

Tutorials

How to Display Your Twitter Status in a Unique Design

This is a helpful walkthrough that shows you how to display your twitter status in a slick design.

Playing with CSS3

Here are some more CSS3 tricks to put into your design arsenal. Abduzeedo is one of the sites that have really started to add these practices on there own blog.

Compilations

40 Outstanding Typographic Poster Designs

Check out these awesomely inspiring typographic posters.

15 Biggest Internet Controversies of the Past Decade

Revisit the 15 biggest controversies of the past decade. Everything from the Digg revolt to Facebook privacy policy changes.

The Best 40 Photoshop Text Effects from 2009

Check out the top 40 photoshop text effect tutorials according to Specky Boy.

Freebies

108 Mono Icons: Huge Set of Minimal Icons

This is a wonderfully simple black and white set of 32px icons for personal and commercial use.

Circular Social Media Icons Repack

This is an updated set of some well designed circular social media icons.

Featured Stuff

There Is No Page Fold

I’ve ranted about there not being a fold in webdesign for some time now. Although this opinion is not shared by all designers, it’s a common school of thought, and this site makes a clever attempt to further that point.

The Week Before Christmas! (a freelance parody)

This poem definitely put a smile on my face. It’s a clever little spin on “The Week Before Christmas” with a geeky designer spin.

MyInkTrail: Best of the Design Community, November 2009

Andrew Houle — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 03:23:17 +0000

Introduction

MyInkTrail, is my trek through the articles, tutorials, freebies and general news from the design community for each month. November was a fast moving month filled with quality design articles, resources, and plenty of turkey and family. There was also a couple of good looking books from familiar names in the design blogging world.

Articles

Selling Ad Space: Tips from Top Design Blog Owners

A design community interview that reveals tips for selling ad space on your blog. The interview questions cover: what type of services bloggers use, how they set their pricing, solicitation methods, and what are their best performing ads.

How To Become A More Effective, Proficient and Informed Designer

In the never ending search to discover ways to make more time in a day, finding ways to be more effective and proficient are invaluable. This post explores ways to organize some of your daily tasks.

If You Had To Marry A Browserâ€¦Which One?

This is a comical design community interview that looks into what browsers people like. I love the answers that revolve around IE’s many short comings.

How To: Successfully Launch a Web Design Startup with Social Media and No Budget

This article is chocked full of practical advice for launching a web design startup. The best piece of advice from this post, may very well be… “The real cost is time.”

Grunge In Web Design: Samples And Best Practices

This is a really well put together article about the best practices for using grunge in webdesign, it includes lots of great inspiration.

Bold Web Predictions for 2010

David Walsh makes some bold predictions for 2010 about social media, browsers, operating systems and more.

Color: The Next Limited Resource?

This is an interesting and quite frightening article about the potential of big businesses owning the rights to certain colors.

Transparency: Benefits and Best Practices

I’m trying to be more transparent and personable here on MyInkBlog, so this article about the benefits and best practices came at a good time for me.

Stories behind your favourite blogs

Get the story behind a lot of the top blogs in the design community and how their name originated.

Tutorials

Mega Drop Down Menus w/ CSS & jQuery

These huge dropdown menus are getting more popular by the minute, and they are a great way to handle navigation for large sites. Learn how to create one with the use of css and jQuery.

How To Create Great Typographic Wallpaper In Photoshop

Check out how to create this clever, but simple typographic wallpaper in Photoshop.

Create Your Own Set of Multi-Colored Illustrator Paint Brushes

This is an awesomely detailed walkthrough of how to create a custom set of multi colored paint brushes for Illustrator.

How to Create a Crafts Inspired Vector Kids Illustration

This tutorial teaches you how to create clever kid illustrations with plaid textures and stitching in Illustrator.

Freebies

Free Hi-Resolution Paint Stroke Photoshop Brushes

I realize I post a paint brush freebie almost every month, but they are awesome to use for design, and this is an exceptional set.

Glassical: A Free WordPress Theme

Hooray for high quality free WordPress themes! They can be really helpful for time pressed design jobs, or they can just provide a nice starting point. This is a refreshingly simple and clean theme.

Featured Stuff

Workstation Setups

A new site to get inspiration for your home office. Check out the workstations of Chris Spooner, Jon Phillips, Andy Soward, yours truly and many others.

Myows

This is a new site created for designers, photographers, bloggers, writers, musicians and anyone who creates copyrightable work.

Digging Into WordPress

Chris Coyier of CSS Tricks and Jeff Starr of Perishable Press team up to bring 400 pages of practical WordPress information.

Freelance Feed

Grace Smith brings you this quality, hand-picked aggregator of the most valuable articles and resources for the Freelance community online.

Logo Design Love

An upcoming book from the very talented David Airey that will be stocked with great logo examples and best practices.

MyInkTrail: Best of the Design Community, October 2009

Andrew Houle — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 23:51:46 +0000

I know I say this often, but I really can’t believe that another month has already passed. This month the trail was an eclectic grouping that ranged from CSS3 to an SEO rant.

Articles

Mastering CSS Coding: Getting Started

A detailed overview of CSS that will help you master everything from padding to position. The end of the post features a thorough roundup of more tutorials to take your CSS skills even further.

Most Used and Abused Web Design Trends of All Time

I can’t say that I avoided all these, but I suppose that all of us, and how they became used and abused in the first place. Regardless, this is an entertaining look back at some of the trends we’ve seen come and go in web design.

How a design blog is attractive to clients

Brian Hoff goes into detail about the benefits of running a blog and how it can help you attract clients.

Spammers, Evildoers, and Opportunists

Man, I loved the satire of this article. Just to get your attention, the first line reads… “Search Engine Optimization is not a legitimate form of marketing. It should not be undertaken by people with brains or souls.”

Browser support for CSS3 and HTML5

Ever wonder what CSS3 and HTML5 techniques work in which browser? Look no further, this is an awesome bookmark that breaks it all down.

Freelancers Preparation for Vacation

This post serves as a nice checklist of things to think about if you are a freelancer planning to go on vacation.

Live and Let Die: A Creative Discussion #4 Wrap-up

This post is a wrap-up of an earlier design community discussion. I love the conversation that was generated.

Tutorials

Create a Cool Wet Ink Typography Effect in Photoshop

This tutorial shows you how to create a really cool wet ink text effect. Something that you know that I can really appreciate here on MyInkBlog :)

Really simple CSS trick for equal height columns

If you’ve ever tried to create equal length columns in CSS you know just how tricky they can be. This tutorial gives you an alternate approach that is pretty simple to create.

How to Create 3D Text Blocks in Photoshop

I wanted to make sure to include this tutorial in this month’s MyInkTrail because it is so unique. You’ll learn all kinds of cool techniques along the way.

Drag to Share

This is a technique that I first saw on the Abduzeedo redesign. It’s a great way to offer share links for your posts, check out how it’s done.

Compilations

55 Adobe Illustrator Icon Design Tutorials

If you want to learn Illustrator this is a great list to start with. It offers 55 of the best Illustrator tutorials for icon design.

8 Hand Drawn Icon Sets For Bloggers

This handy bookmark features a roundup of 8 of the best hand drawn style icons sets for designers.

26 awesome Firefox add-ons for web workers

For me, the plugins are what separates Firefox from other browsers. Here is a list of 26 plugins, that will make your job as a web designer easier.

Freebies

10 Free Original Hi-Res Fully Stained Paper Textures

Here is a quality set of 10 hi-res stained paper textures from the Max at Design Shard.

Free Textures – 31 High-Res Grunge Remodeling Textures

This is a uniquely awesome set of 31 textures of grungy stripped walls.

Free Hi-Res Photoshop Brushes: Acrylic Textures

Be sure to add this fantastic set of acrylic texture brushes to your design toolbox.

Featured Stuff

Bidsketch

Bidsketch is a new design proposal service that allows you to create, track, customize, and design beautiful proposals.

WordPress Custom Login Plugin

It’s often handy to customize the wordpress admin, this plugin makes it easy to change the look of the login page.