Intro

You may have noticed some minor changes here on MyInkBlog. I’ve been doing some small spring cleaning and have more to come, so stay tuned for that.

The design community has shelled out some more great content recently. Check out some of the stuff that came through my feed reader this month that caught my eye.

Articles

Logo Design Process and Walkthrough for Vivid Ways

This is a superb walkthrough of the logo design process from sketch to vector. Includes design theory and illustrator techniques.

8 Simple Ways to Improve Typography In Your Designs

This article features some quite simple, but often overlooked techniques that will improve your designs and readability. Everything from leading to windows and orphans.

How to Spot Quality within Web Design: Examples & Tips

Liam at Function writes some of the most useful design articles on the web. This one focuses on what makes up quality web design. The content is spot on and the examples are very bookmarkable (hooray for made up verbs!).

Hover Effects in Web Design: Best Practices and Examples

This post features the dos and don’ts of hover effects as they relate to web design. A huge compilation with useful commentary throughout. Very handy and yes… very bookmarkable.

For the Next 7 Days, Stop Trying to Get New Readers

This is a unique perspective that at the very least will make you stop and think about your blogging priorities. The article points to focusing on your current readers rather than pouring all your energy into getting new readers. This is something I truly hope I can do more of, although maybe not to that extreme.

How Fluff is Driving Away Your Viewers

A well-written discussion on how less can be more, and how content like frivolous welcome messages could actually be driving your traffic away.

Thoughts on Design Integrity. Getting what you want from your client

Sound advice from the folks over at GoMedia about how to properly handle client relations. They showcase how important effective communication is throughout the design process.

You are only as good as your content

Aaron writes some of the most genuine and thoughtful blog posts in the design community, so it stands to reason that an article by him about the importance of quality content would be top notch. Check this out this post, and gain some great perspective.

Compilations

50 Creative Business Cards of 50 Graphic Designers

This is a fantastic showcase of business cards by creatives in the design community; plenty of inspiration to draw from here.

Showcase of Big Backgrounds in Web Design

Large backgrounds on websites are becoming more and more common as bandwidth speeds continue to increase. It’s a style that generally looks great, this post showcases a lot of terrific examples.

Tutorials

How To Create a Realistic Water Text Effect

Just check out the final result of this tutorial; such a cool, slick effect. It’s really pretty simple to create, check out the tutorial for the easy to follow steps.

Unique Author Comment Styles in WordPress

A quick and easy tutorial about how to add some style to author comments in a WordPress blog. So well-explained, I added the feature to MyInkBlog :)

Freebies

25 Fingerprint Brushes Volume 2

This is a really uniquely cool set of 25 Photoshop brushes that would make for a nicely textured mystery style background.

Weather Graphic Set

Free weather icons and graphics are a rare find. Dezinerfolio comes through with this great looking set.

New York Concrete: 10 Free Hi-Res Textures

This is a fantastic set of 10 high res textures based on NYC surfaces. Perfect for subtle grunge textured backgrounds.

20 Free Original Hi-Res Ink Stained Paper Textures

I can’t get enough of these ink style textures in my repertoire. This is a cool collection.

24 Free Exclusive Vector Icons: ‘Handy’

This is indeed a ‘handy’ collection of icons to have. They’ve got a really cool hand-drawn feel to them.

Interviews

10 Questions With Collis Ta’eed

Collis is the fellow behind the Envato network. This is a good interview that features very unique questions by the one and only Niki of Design O’Blog

Ryan Putnam Interview

Ryan Putnam is the fantastically talented, vector artist behind vectips. This interview tackles design trends, future plans, and plenty of helpful advice.

Five Questions with Soh Tanaka

Soh Tanaka Design Blog is one of my favorite blogs in my reader. The content is always fresh out and extremely useful. Chris over at CSS Tricks asks Soh five dynamic questions, that make for a very good read.

Cool Sites

One Up

This is a project by Aaron of This Is Aaron’s Life. It’s a social bookmarking site for design with a beautiful minimalistic feel.

We Love Typography

This is a new site by the same people who brought you I Love Typography. It’s a cool looking bookmarking site with a tremendous amount of typographic inspiration.

Typographica

This is an absolutely awesome redesign with a plethora of inspiration, reviews and commentary.