DON’T MISS: The Best Graphic Design Articles from April 2008

As usual each month I round up the best graphic design articles from around the web and this month is no exception except only it has doubled in size. There is only one or two articles from a singular blog to ensure quality and differentiation!

Articles have been broken into categories:

• Personal Favourites
• Graphic Design
• Freelancing
• Tutorials
• Typography
• Web Design
• CSS
• Other
• Just Creative Design Posts

Just incase you missed them, here are the best articles from January, February or March 2008.

Personal Favourites

• Web 2.0 Reflections – How to do them properly- from Colboy Design
  A rant from a Brendan about web reflections and how they are meant to be done. A great article.
• Blog Design Style Guide – from Blog Design Blog
  A full guide on how to make your blog look good and you can tell it will work, just look at their design!
• Graphic Design Resume Guide – from You The Designer
  Make your resume the best it possibly can.
• ReThinking Blog Comments – from Dosh Dosh
  Not design but I found it a great read. It explains the benefits of long term commenting and how you shouldn’t think of the short term.
• Designing With Type Characters – from Cameron Moll
  Some tips from Cameron on how to design with type. I will be coming back to this for sure.
• 50 Essential Photoshop Text Tutorials – from Vandelay Design
  Pretty much what it says. I have used a few of these now. Great list.
• Mastering Photoshop Masks – from Creative Curio
  A four part series on photoshop masks. I learnt quite a few things I didn’t know here.
• Three More Devastating Mistakes Every Designer Will Make and How You Can Avoid Them – Also from Creative Curio
  The mistakes to watch out for: Bleeds, Masks, Spot Colours.

Graphic Design

• 13 Sites for unique textures – from Essential Key Strokes
  A list of the best sites for getting free unique textures.
• Logo Design Love Awards – from Logo Design Love
  After weeks of voting the votes are in and the winners announced. JCD got 1st place.
• Awesome Light Graffiti Pictures - from Adubzeedo
  A nice collection of Light Graffiti Pictures (photos with long exposures).
• 25 MORE Reasons You Might Be A Hardcore Graphic/Web Designer - from BittBox
  In no particular order here is proof that you love (or hate) design.
• Ultimate List of Books for Freelancers & New Designers - from All Graphic Design
  A great list of the best books with good explanations.
• Vintage and Retro Design - from Smashing Magazine.
  Pretty much what it says, and it’s from Smashing Mag so you know it will be good.
• Ranking 80 of the Top CSS Galleries - from Vandelay Design
  You know how there are so many galleries out there, this shows you the best ones.
• 49 Professional and Innovative Websites - from Inspiredology
  A great collection of professional websites for inspiration.
• 20 Blinding White Portfolios – from DesignFlavr
  Our sponsor Designflavr has collected a great set of white portfolios.
• 10 Dark Business Card Designs from Laughing Lion DesignOne card designed by Jennifer and 9 other great designs you prob haven’t seen before
• 10 Tips For Writing A Graphic Design Brief - from David Airey
  Sharon provides some great tips along with many comments with even more tips.

Freelancing

• The Pros and Cons of Going Solo – from Inspiration Bit
  Vivien sums up the best and worst bits about going solo as a graphic designer.
• Tips for Attracting Local Clients - from Vandelay Design
  Some invaluable tips from Steven about tips for getting local clients.
• 5 Comebacks to Client Questions - from Graphic Design Blog
  Danny Outlaw from Outlaw Design Blog has a guest article on Graphic Design Blog.
• 10 Clever Ways to WOW your Clients - from Small FuelGreat list of things to improve your freelance business.
• Deciding When to Use Project Pricing - from Wake Up Later
  Billing by the hour is the most common way to make money in the freelance world, and it can be both safe and profitable. But it does have a few drawbacks, find out when to use it.
• How to Be Your Own Boss (Without Acting Like One) - from AnyWired
  Skellie writes how to be your own boss.
• Is Charging More Really the Right Thing to Do? - from Men with Pens.
  Pricing is a very common topic for freelancers. This post takes a different angle than most.
• 3 Steps to Creating a Freelancing Brand that Sells - from Freelance Folder.
  Another excellent post from Dave Navarro. Here he breaks down three simple steps that every freelancer needs to consider.
• How To Get The Vacation Time That You Sorely Need And Desperately Want – from Freelance Folder
  Laura explains how to plan and not stress about getting that vacation you deserve.
• Why Giving Clients What They Want is a Bad Idea - from Positive Space Blog
  Why giving client’s exactly what they expect is a way to ensure that your work is complacent and how it avoids creativity.
• 12 Practical Ways for Freelance Designers to Increase Leads - from Freelance Switch
  Steven Snell does get around, here he writes about different ways to find potential clients and 12 things you can do to increase the number of leads you receive.
• How Freelancers Utilize LinkedIn to Successfully Network Online - from All Freelance.
  Learn how to get the best out of LinkedIn.

Tutorials

• How To Build a Sleek Portfolio Site from Scratch - from NetTuts
  Tuturial on how to make a website from scratch in Photosop and HTML, CSS.
• How To Get sIFR to Work - from Design Intellection
  sIFR is pretty much letting you be able to use any font on the web. Follow this tutorial to get a basic understanding of how sIFR works.
• How To Create a Powerful Mental Wave Explosion Effect - from PSD Tuts
  In Photoshop create a crazy explosion, very awesome effect.
• Create Abstract Backgrounds – from VecTips
  Using Gradient Meshes, Steps Blends and Opacity and masks you can quickly create abstract backgrounds
• Create a Vector Home Cinema Design - from AIBurn
  A great and well detailed tutorial from Tom. Good for electronics and icons too.
• How to Use Adobe Illustrator to Create a Unique Distressed Text Effect – from Dev Lounge
  Learn how to make your own grunge font in illustrator.
• Create a Spiral Ornament in Illustrator – from Veerle
  Another great tutorial from Veerle, this time on how to create a simple spiral ornament.
• Create a Rotatable Globe in Adobe Illustrator - from Spoon Graphics
  Chris goes through how to make a globe, also useful for creating packaging mockups.

Typography

• 5 Principles and Ideas of Setting Type on the Web from Smashing Magazine.
  This is an excellent post from Sean Hodge that can also help with your typography.
• On Choosing Type - from I Love Typography
  Choosing type can be sticky business and often result in going back and forth. Check out these guidelines to keep you safe.
• 101 Awesome Downloadable Fonts for Designers- from Reward Programs
  A nice list of free fonts categorised by font style.

Web Design

Steven did a good round up of web design based posts and here are some of the links he recommended plus a few more added by me.

• The Beginner’s Checklist for Learning SEO from SEOmoz.
  Danny Dover covers the basics that new SEOs will need to learn.
• Web Form Design: Modern Solutions and Creative Ideas from Smashing Magazine.
  Forms are usually boring, but as you will see from these examples, they don’t have to be.
• 4 Uber Cool CSS Techniques for Links from CSS Globe.
  As usual, Alen has an excellent tutorial for some new CSS techniques.
• 14 Inspiring CMS Showoffs from Most Inspired.
  Ty Gossman lists many of the leading options for CMS.
• 63 Impressive Website Background Images: Trends Resources and Tutorials from Noupe.
  Large background images are becoming more and more common, and this is a great mini gallery of some of the best uses of creative background images.
• In the Background: Simplifying and Demystifying CSS Backgrounds from Bits O’ NewMedia.
  While Noura collection above provides an excellent gallery of background images, Matt’s post will explain how to use background images with CSS.
• 101 Adobe AIR Resources to Add to Your Toolbelt of Awesomeness from Jason Bartholme.
  This is a huge categorized list for anyone that has an interest in Adobe AIR.
• Unusual WordPress Blog Designs from Noupe.
  If you’re looking for some inspiration for creating something unique with WordPress, Noura has put together an excellent categorized collection.
• IE CSS Bugs That’ll Get You Every Time from CSS Tricks.
  Hate dealing with Internet Explorer? Chris beaks down some of the most common CSS bugs with IE and how you can get around them.
• 7 Incredibly Useful Tools for Evaluating a Web Design from Six Revisions.
  Analysis is critical for any website. Here is a quick look at seven tools that can help.
• 60 Great RSS Icons for Your Blog from Pro Blog Design.
  Don’t want to use the same old RSS icon that every other blog uses? Take a look at this collection.
• 30 Must See Comment Designs for Web Designers from Blog Design Blog.
  The design of the comment area is often overlooked. Vinh has done a nice job researching to find 30 excellent examples.
• Sparkle Backgrounds Madness! from You the Designer.
  A nice collection of graphic design work with popular sparkling backgrounds.
• How to switch the “on” state of navigation links for dynamic pages – from Askthecssguy.

CSS

As seen on Noupe here are some great CSS Links with some added by me.

• Awesome CSS Code Snippets from Outlaw Design Blog
  No other explanation is needed.
• The Highly Extensible CSS Interface
  The Highly Extensible CSS Interface is an excellent 4-part series of articles, now gathered together on one page for easy reference.
• Hartija – CSS Print Framework
  Hartija is “mini” CSS Framework for web printing. The goal of this framework is to improve and ease the creation of “printer friendly” pages with minimum effort.
• CSS Gradients, Transforms, Animations, and Masks
  Safari / Webkit shows the future of CSS! Gradients wirh CSS and without any image.
• Combine Your CSS Media Styles Into One File
  Using some easy CSS, you can combine your CSS medias into one file!
• CSS do’s and dont’s Part 1: CSS Selecting
  Css Globe is starting a series of lightweight articles named “CSS do’s and don’ts”. This series is aimed at pointing out some of the bad habits when it comes to css and web standards in general.
• Date Stamps
  A list of all six styles, each with an example of the timestamp and the code you can use to create it.
• Simplifying and Demystifying CSS Backgrounds
  A great article to show how to use background images with CSS.
• Web to Print: Restyling Pages on the Fly with CSS
  Matthew is sharing the experience he gained while writing a print stylesheet for Bits O’ NewMedia.

Other

• May 1st is RSS Awareness Day – from RSS Day
  May 1st is RSS Awareness Day. Teach others about RSS!
• 12 ways to make the most of your downtime – from Creative Briefing
  What to do when you just arn’t feeling yourself.
• Free Revolution Blog Theme Now Available from Brian Gardner
  Yet another awesome release.
• How to: 5 Surefire Tips To Blast Your Way To Blogging Success – from Alpha Blog Designs
  Armen notes the top 5 ways in a spot on fashion.

Just Creative Design Posts

Below were the most popular articles this month on Just Creative Design plus some other articles I was apart of this month.

• The Best Graphic Design Articles from 34 Top Design Blogs as Chosen By The Authors Themselves
  I went around to the top blogs and got them to choose their best article.
• Logo Design Process for Just Creative Design’s Award Winning Logo
  Explains the process behind the logo at the top of this page.
• 92 Must See Creative Photographs
  Hugely popular article with over 200,000 visits. Worth a visit.
• Graphic Design Interview with Jacob Cass
  I was apart of an 8 way group interview on the topic of graphic design.
• Freelancer Focus
  I also had an interview with Jennifer on Graphic Design Blog.
• How To Customise Your WordPress 2.5+ Log In Screen
  A brief tutorial I wrote on how to customise your log in screen.

And there we have it, the best graphic design articles from April 2008.

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