If you’ve been doing design for any amount of time you can probably relate to the feeling of being burned out. Most of the designer’s that I’ve spoke with consistently put in 60+ hour work weeks. It’s no wonder so many of us get so drained. Working that much can bring your productivity and creativity to a screeching halt.

It’s impressive how quick and simple it is to create realistic drawings in Photoshop through the use of textures, layers and gradients. This tutorial explores some of these techniques while designing a realistic chalkboard.

About a month ago I teamed up with uPrinting to offer the awesome readers here a chance to win either 1,000 business cards or 1 canvas print. 61 people left comments in an effort to win this generous giveaway, 2 were chosen. I picked the two winners at random using a the query below.

Another month in the books. MyInkBlog’s 1 year anniversary is creeping up dangerously fast, I’m still brainstorming how I’ll be celebrating that. Till then, enjoy this month’s roundup of the best stuff from the design community.

Few things in the design world are more difficult than trying to get on the same page as your client. Let’s be honest, for most of us, communication is not our strongest attribute. So any time a product attempts to improve my communication skills it’s ok by me. This week I got the pleasure of testing out a product that is awesomely simple and helpful!

One of my absolute favorite design books is, Robin Williams Design Workshop. It looks into practical design theories and showcases awesome examples. One of the areas of focus that I’ve taken into all my designs are the four major design principles. They include: contrast, repetition, alignment, and proximity.

Aaron Carlino is one of those developers that make writing code look completely effortless. Aaron is a strong advocate for Silverstripe and has contributed to its community with a number of awesome modules. Recently I got a chance to send him the questions that follow. His responses are thoughtful and witty. Enjoy!

I love the look of hand drawn effects in web design, and I don’t think I’m alone in this. I have no idea what gene that’s in us web geeks, but I’d say most of us have it.With that in mind, I’ve compiled this list of the best inspirational sites, resources, freebies and tutorials that utilize hand-drawn effects. There is so much more available, but these are many of my faves.

Web design trends come and go. You should be very wary not to jump on the latest ones that have no real staying power. Recently, I’ve spotted more and more gorgeous watercolor effects in web design. I’ve created this post to serve as a bookmark for inspiration, resources and tutorials on designing these effects.

A blog/website is driven by the number of people you can reach. In this article you’ll learn more about some Wordpress plugins that can help increase the number of visitors to your site. Let’s take a look at some plugins that do automatic search engine optimization tasks, learn more about your visitors, and allow your visitors to submit your article to social bookmarking sites.

The awesome folks at UPrinting are sponsoring this chance for you to win 1,000 free printed business cards or one 18×24 canvas print! In case you haven’t heard of UPrinting before, you should know that they are one of the best and most popular online choices for printing.

MyInkTrail is my monthly roundup of the best of the web from the design community. This month proved to be another learning experience. I found myself focused a lot on usability and style. Check out the links below, you’re sure to find some awesome advice and resources.