Picasso’s Blue period spawned some amazing pieces from within the artist’s self-proclaimed torment of that time. In my Blue period, I have created some abstract vectors all containing a certain geometric-ness.

3D text effects are a growing and awesome design trend. They can add angles, lighting and interest that many 2D text effects can’t bring. Here is an awesome Showcase of 3D Typography that was put together a little while back by Angie Bowen. I’ve also been seen and been inspired by tutorials like 3D Text on Fire and this Fresh Text Effect.

About three weeks ago we announced a giveaway from the awesome folks at SnobbySlice. Thanks to everyone who participated.

John Resig and the jQuery team recently released Sizzle, a new CSS selector engine as a spin off from the jQuery project, announcing its release when jQuery 1.3 was made available for download.

It’s no secret around here, that I like letterpress design, and think that it’s a growing trend (and it would seem that I’m not alone on that. I even wrote a tutorial on how to achieve the look in Photoshop. Armed with my fascination for this style, I combed gallery sites for business cards that showcased beautiful letterpress designs.

MyInkTrail is a monthly roundup of the best from the design community. Here you’ll find my favorite articles, compilations, tutorials, freebies and sites from August 2009.

Most of us in the design community love working on projects, but dread the small rather important details like time tracking and invoicing — at least I do. My lack of zeal for invoicing has led me to look for ways to make that part of the job a little more tolerable.

I love being able to giveaway free stuff to the awesome readers here at MyInkBlog. It’s a great way to say thanks for reading and contributing.

I recently attempted to add a jQuery tooltip to my website, but I had some trouble putting together a decent solution. Through that experience, I’ve assembled this round up of some of the best and most popular plugins.

You see the label everywhere cropping up all over the cyberspace landscape these days as people pridefully rush to establish their dominance and touting themselves as a Social Media Expert.

If you’re a web designer charging a reasonable rate for your services, you’ve likely been really discouraged when you’ve looked at job boards in the past—lots of jobs that pay very little and want the moon. Or, worse, the jobs that want a designer to merely clone a pre-existing site.

The more blogging and freelance work I do, the more I realize how terrible I am at time management. I spend far too much time getting distracted by Twitter, Emails, RSS feeds, Facebook, sports, news — oh wait… where was I? Oh, that’s right, be careful not to get too distracted.