Graphic Design | 9photoshop.com

Posts Tagged ‘Graphic Design’

10
Jan
2012

The Art of Creating Proposals your Clients will not Refuse

The most successful and important proposal in my life was a quick win. With the ring decision aside, it was based on three fundamentally important ingredients: clarity, timeliness and problem-solving power. My intentions were clear and unambiguous, the offer was made in due time and solved a relationship evolution dilemma that all couples inevitably face, sooner or later.

Simply put, it was a win-win that both of us have been enjoying ever since. But can this personal success tactic be easily copied and applied to an online business, where mutual interest is short-lived, where opportunities may suddenly come in plenty and vanish just as fast, and where competitors line up to pick your client an instance after you make a mistake?

Proposal and Contract image from Shutterstock

Turns out it can – given that you have the right attitude and tools.

Imagine that you have been building up a pre-sale relationship with a client for some time (it doesn’t matter whether it’s been hours or months) and you need to make the final move and present your proposal. Although few of us actually manage to roll a perfect strike with the first ball and meet all of the customer’s expectations to the last point, the goal is that you do, or at least come close. Having a well-structured and detailed proposal submitted which leaves no room for ambiguous interpretation of its clauses usually gets the first prize or unlocks the door to further negotiation, leaving your competitors behind.

This is exactly why your proposals should be prompt and well rounded, and every person on your sales team should follow this rule. Your guys can achieve this goal with efficient communications, thorough analysis of requirements and also with an impeccable presentation of your ideas. If you think you score high on these requirements, ask yourself a question:

“Do I send prospective customers proposals that really stand out from the crowd of similar quotes?”

If you paused for more than a couple of seconds, the answer is most likely no.

Solution

Follow these recommendations to create great looking and easy to interpret business proposals:

Address the problems identified by the client (or deduced by you from the client’s RFP) in your document and describe how the proposed solution will solve them. Any project or effort must solve a problem or even several problems at once– otherwise, it not worth starting altogether. The value of your proposal lies in its problem solving power and transparency, not in a perfect description of a complex system with a vague purpose. For example, if you are a fruit wholesaler or an owner of a small deli shop supplying premium bratwurst to local sport pubs, this principle applies to your business just as much as a web design outfit. Smaller daily shipments of fresh oranges can help a juice factory optimize its work flow, while a steady supply of top-notch sausage can easily increase customer loyalty at your client’s pub. These are two problems solved – and all of these seemingly minor details can and should be reflected in your proposal.

Be very clear about the items you are quoting on. Don’t let vague definitions appear on your list. The fewer questions the client has about your initial cost breakdown, the better. If you can’t explain the scope or meaning of a proposal item on the spot, you may lose what little credibility and trust you’ve managed to win so far. Avoid terms like “miscellaneous”, “other” and – God forbid! – “etc”. Lack of clarity creates understandable suspicion and can also be used against you later on with references to these vaguely described items.

Be sufficiently detailed. A very general quote always incites customers to ask for more details. However, an extremely detailed breakdown may also raise questions (e.g “How come this will take you 2 hours? I can easily do it on my own in half this time!”) and leave no room for a risk buffer. So the rule of thumb here is to provide customers with just enough information for them to be happy and ask a minimum amount of questions (if at all). So unless your lead is a deeply technical person (and you are OK dealing with such an inquisitive and all-doubting client-to-be), try keeping things on a layman’s level to prevent unnecessary and time-consuming negotiations.

Do your math homework. Always check and double-check numbers. Miscalculations tend to create a bad impression with customers who look for perfect accuracy from day one. Utilize an Excel spread sheet to eliminate errors, or you can resort to specialized online proposal management services to create mathematically sound proposals.

Keep the timing right. Being the first one to submit a proposal does not necessarily mean you are going to win the bid. Sending your proposal too soon is risky if it is not yet a quality contract, so take your time and do your best work possible – but keep in mind that time is of the essence.

Be creative. Customize your proposals. A document with a nice header, footer, proper formatting and a click-able table of contents will definitely score higher than a lackluster list of items that is hard to navigate, so do your best to make your proposal aesthetically pleasing. If you are a design company, make this proposal a demonstration of your skills. If you are quoting for business analysis and application modeling services, make sure that the client sees how good you are at interpreting high-level business requirements into specific tasks and pieces of functionality. Be professional and creative – and rest assured that your client will notice your efforts.

Here is one BIG tip that will really aid you in this process. To make things easier on yourself, you can use specialized tools for proposal creation and editing, one great example being QuoteRoller.

But the bottom line is this: don’t rush and don’t be late with your proposals, suggest possible solutions of the client’s problems and be creative. If you did everything right, there is a pretty good chance that your client will give your proposal the green light and your pre-sale relationship will finally turn into a successful commercial marriage.

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Tags: app, Application, CSS, dev, freelance, Graphic Design, Javascript, resource, Resources, template, theme, web, web design, Wordpress
Posted in Design, Photoshop

05
Jan
2012

Designers’ Guide to Float through the Invoicing Process Successfully

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Designers are one of the most interesting professionals of the world. They love their work and do it at their best; however, most of them absolutely freak out when the project comes down to the invoicing process. Basically, all creative professionals find it difficult to handle the money matters, however, money is what they work for and money is what runs all the business. Therefore, it is absolutely crucial for designers to deal with this nightmare in order to run a thriving business.

The efficiency of the invoicing process is integral in maintaining a healthy cash flow of your business. Smart invoicing enables you to streamline the payments from multiple clients and enables you to get paid in time and according to your desire. No matter what your current invoice process is, you can take steps to help improve both timely payments and customer relations.

Automated Invoicing vs. Manual Invoicing

If you are a salaried designer, your invoicing and billing is taken care of by your employee, however, invoicing is actually a menace for freelance designers who constantly have to generate invoices for their projects. Since, sending quotations and invoices is an important part of your work; it is important for you to decide whether you want to go for automated invoicing or just do it manually.

According to the data management company Formscan as per their recent survey, 48% of UK’s businesses still use entirely manual invoice processing systems. This is very typical of orthodox organizations to have strange hesitation towards automated processes, however, these days a lot of software and online tools are available to make things easier for the people (like freelance designers) who handle multiple responsibilities at work. No matter you opt for a server-based invoicing or a computer-based online invoicing, finding the right one is your task and with some good research it is not really that hard.

Automated Invoicing vs. Manual Invoicing

First Thing First, a Background Check

In order to conduct a smooth invoicing process, you should be careful in the very first place. Before getting into a legal contract with a certain client, it is suggested that you conduct a background check of the client’s payment habits. You can do so by doing a little research about the client’s reputation in the market regarding payments.

Moreover, (though companies don’t usually share their financial information with outsiders) if possible, you can ask your client to provide you with information regarding their outstanding bills and payments. A background check will enable you to figure out how seriously this client is going to take you billings.

First Thing First, a Background Check

Map out Your Invoicing Terms

When you are dealing with different clients at the same time, chances are that you may easily get dodged when it comes down to the financial matters. Most of this dodging happens when certain confusion arises between the two parties. Therefore, in order to minimize any confusion what so ever, it is good to map out some invoicing terms and present them to the clients beforehand. Some of the most important things to highlight can be:

• Determine your advance fee
• Number of days you would need to complete the task
• What is going to be the fee which you will charge in case of late payments
• Whether you will deliver the completed project before or after the complete payment
• What will you charge in case of re-do
• What should be the mode of payment

Although there will be situations when you will have to bend a few laws, however, try to stick to these principals as much as possible.

Map out Your Invoicing Terms

Detail of Charges

It is always a good idea to avoid any surprises in your bills. Therefore, provide a comprehensive detail of charges in your invoice i.e. you have charged the X amount for the XYZ service etc. If you don’t give the details and roll out a lump sum invoice, there are chances that the client gets confused and resulting in an unwanted payment delay. Although you can do it in the manual invoice as well, however, almost all invoicing systems have this feature by default or allow you to customize your bills accordingly. Remember, that the clients have all the rights to know what services they are being charged for.

Detail of Charges

Provide Multiple Modes of Payment

In the world of cut-throat competition, the standout factor is what vouches your success. Especially, if you have plans to convert part-time freelancing into a full-time freelance career, it is important for you to discover and develop your standout factor that will enable you to survive in the freelance world of growing competition. This standout factor may be your client dealing, special discounts, a unique way for marketing or some value added service (on-spot delivery, professional copywriting or printing services etc).

Moreover, as mentioned earlier, your clients should be aware of all the modes though with you can accept the payments. Making transaction easier for them and communicating clearly is always a good thing for increasing the likelihood that you will be paid on time.

Provide Multiple Modes of Payment

Follow-up your Outstanding Bills

There are only a bunch of clients in the world who pays their vendors immediately after receiving an invoice from them. A follow-up is thus an integral part of the invoicing process. As your invoices reach their due dates, take out some time to follow-up with the client regarding its status.

As suggested earlier, if you have already mentioned the due date of payment in the invoice, start a gentle follow-up a day before the due date. Once the due date passed, start a rigorous (but not annoying) follow-up till you get paid. Also, keep reminding them that they will owe you some extra bucks for late payment.

Follow-up your Outstanding Bills

Send It to the Concerned Person, Only!

Many designers face the issue to late payment merely due to sending the invoice to the wrong person. This is particularly the case when you are dealing with a large organization where your invoice mostly ends up generating no response when it’s not sent to the concerned person. Therefore, before initiating the invoicing, be sure to know the name and other contact details of its right recipient. This will result in a smoother and faster invoicing process at your client’s end.

Send It to the Concerned Person

Final Thoughts

Although invoicing is a bit difficult and problematic process, nevertheless; as a designer who is making a livelihood through his freelance business, it is absolutely unavoidable. Make sure to be clear in your communication and avoid all kinds of confusions as much as possible. Always remember that invoicing process doesn’t involve sending the invoice only; you need to take different careful steps to ensure its seamlessness.

Illustrating & Painting with Photoshop

How to Color Inked Line Art

This tutorial gives you a general overview of how to digitally color an illustration, covering scanning, cleaning, flatting, coloring, rendering, and texturing techniques. This tutorial won’t focus on any specific way to blend or choose colors; it’ll assume you have knowledge of the basics.
How to Color Inked Line Art →

Photorealistic Electric Guitar

You’ll be shown how to create a realistic electric guitar learning a lot of techniques that can help you create complex photorealistic compositions. This tutorial is quite extensive and may take you a few hours to complete.
Photorealistic Electric Guitar →

Creating ‘Broken Link’

This advanced tutorial focuses on using radial gradients, overlay layers, and clipping mask layers. It does assume you have a good foundation level of artistic skill.
Creating ‘Broken Link’ →

Undress a Giraffe

This cool tut will demonstrate how to undress a giraffe by removing its spots and then turning its spots into an outfit that will be draped over an ironing board.
Undress a Giraffe →

Glowing Light Painting Effect

An easy, and very fast, way to create a light painting. It uses a photo of a street on a foggy night and layers a picture of walking figures over it. Nice technique.
Glowing Light Painting Effect →

Underwater, Vector-Style Illustration

How to create a fun, underwater, vector-style illustration. While Photoshop wasn’t originally designed to create these types of illustrations, it does have the capability to produce illustrations that can meet or exceed that of Illustrator (which is the traditional choice for vector illustrations).
Underwater, Vector-Style Illustration →

Making of Knight

With this tutorial you will learn how to paint a J.R.R. Tolkien-inspired scene that features knights, galloping and an awesome battlefield. Awesome!
Making of Knight →

Venom Tutorial

Venom Tutorial →

Hair Tutorial

This tut will show you how to paint a portrait, paying particular attention to the detailed hair.
Hair Tutorial →

Flaming Car

Flaming Car →

Dragon from a Hamburger

How to create a dragon from a hamburger. It includes directions on drawing a dragon in grayscale, overlaying the grayscale image of the dragon with parts of the source image, creating the wings, and building the background from the source image.
Dragon from a Hamburger →

Captain America Shield

The whole process of this tutorial is quite simple and won’t take you more than 45 minutes. You start from scratch by drawing a red circle, and then you proceed to fill it in with details from the additional circles and star shape and then onto the textures, light & shadow.
Captain America Shield →

How To Make A Digital Painting

How to make a digital painting – just like the title says. This is a simple and general-purpose step-by-step tutorial.
How To Make A Digital Painting →

Detailed Vintage TV from Scratch

How to create a detailed vintage TV from scratch using Photoshop’s vector editing capabilities. You’ll start by drawing the shape from scratch and then proceed to add textures and fill in the details.
Detailed Vintage TV from Scratch →

Create a Nebula Cosmolady

How to create a nebula cosmology using an outer space background and a picture of a girl. After manipulating the space image, you layer the girl picture over it and proceed to touch up and add the fantastical droid-like elements.
Create a Nebula Cosmolady →

Cinematic Aerial Scene

The idea behind this tutorial was to create a dramatic scene that looked like it is from a movie. By using free stock photos, some simple techniques and basic graphic design rules such as perspective, lighting and overlapping, you can easily accomplish this task.
Cinematic Aerial Scene →

Making of Hellboy

How to digitally create the character Hellboy from the comic book series of the same name. It goes through each step one-by-one, starting by sketching the figure, then adding the background, and eventually fleshing out the figure.
Making of Hellboy →

Paint a Surreal Scene

How to create a fantastic surreal scene drawing by Hatice Bayramoglu. It starts with a simple sketch, then a color palette is selected, and then a step-by-step guide shows how to draw and flesh out the tree and background.
Paint a Surreal Scene →

Stunning Dragons Attack with 3D Features

How to create a sort of video-game style image with dragons, fire, smoke, robots and other crazy things.
Stunning Dragons Attack with 3D Features →

Glowing Superhero

How to turn a basic illustration into a retro-futuristic artwork. You’ll use the Marquee and Pen tools to create various forms, and generate atmosphere with glow effects made using Adjustment layers and Layer Styles. You’ll also use motion blur for a dynamic feel.
Glowing Superhero →

Paint an Alien Diner Scene

How to paint a fun scene illustrating a hungry alien in a classic greasy spoon diner. Great practice for taking your digital painting skills to the next level. Like with many other tutorials, you’ll start with a sketch and proceed to fill it in with colors, texture, and light and shadow.
Paint an Alien Diner Scene →

Create Stunning Comic Book Fan Art Illustrations

How to use a tablet to create a stunning comic book fan art illustration. It reviews some tips and tricks when working with a digital tablet and Photoshop. The artwork used is a fan art illustration of the Knights of the Zodiac character, Capricorn Shura (Masami Kurumada) that the tutorial’s author drew.
Create Stunning Comic Book Fan Art Illustrations →

Making of the Imaginary Paint Dancers

After creating the background, you’ll use pictures of paint jars and dancers to create the effect of paint dancers splashing out of those jars.
Making of the Imaginary Paint Dancers →

Photo-Manipulation with Photoshop

Making of the Futuristic City

How to make a digital painting of a futuristic city using a photo of a city. The painting is not made from scratch – the photograph is used as a reference and starting point.
Making of the Futuristic City →

Manipulation of Smoky Water Scene

How to manipulate a simple photo scene. You’ll use some simple techniques to give this image a realistic look. While the tutorial uses a particular image, since the effect can be universally applied, you can use any photo for this tutorial.
Manipulation of Smoky Water Scene →

Amazing Mechanical Horse

How to create a robotic horse by combining photos together. You’ll learn how to use stock photos of metal parts and overlay them on top of the horse. This technique can be used to make other types of robotic animals.
Amazing Mechanical Horse →

Night Light

How to create a night light image using one stock photo, two sets of splatter brushes, and a single texture. It explains the tools, thought process, and techniques used to create the image, getting into specifics only where necessary.
Night Light →

Dark Statue with 3D Tentacles

How to create a dark statue photomanipulation using Photoshop and Cinema 4D. It will show you how to turn a photo of a woman into a statue, creating the tentacles in Cinema 4D and adding them to the photomanipulation, and many other techniques for adjusting the lights, the textures and the colors of the final image.
Dark Statue with 3D Tentacles →

Give a Portrait a Cosmic Makeover

How to transform a simple fashion shot into an eye-catching work that captures power and beauty. The result would suit a wide range of purposes – from an ad campaign to a poster to the cover of your favorite creative magazine.
Give a Portrait a Cosmic Makeover →

Futuristic Abstract Portrait

How to create your very own futuristic artistic portrait. The great thing is that these techniques can be applied to virtually any portrait, meaning you can give yourself a creative self portrait, or even Photoshop the faces of your friends and family to surprise them.
Futuristic Abstract Portrait →

Photo Manipulation of a Flooded City Scene

How to manipulate a simple photo into a flooding torrent of a scene. You’ll use some relatively simple techniques to give this image a semi-realistic, stylized feel.
Photo Manipulation of a Flooded City Scene →

Dark Surreal Urban Scene with Space Brush

How to design a dark surreal urban scene with Space Brush. Along the way, it will show you a few simple photo manipulation skills that might be useful for your future designs, including some lighting tricks and image adjustment techniques.
Dark Surreal Urban Scene with Space Brush →

Mix Hand Drawing Sketch With Photo

How to create a nice unique photo effect from a sketch and your photo. You will use many tools of Photoshops tools. Also in this tutorial you will be able to learn the Photoshop technique of how to use a sketch and combine it with a real picture. The result is a highly unique.
Mix Hand Drawing Sketch With Photo →

Photo Manipulate a Falling Angel

How to create a photo manipulation of a falling angel using a jumping girl photo. You start off with a textured background, you’ll then create the actual background using cloud images, and then you’ll proceed to add the jumping girl photo and manipulating it to look like she has wings and is falling.
Photo Manipulate a Falling Angel →

Abstract Drawing with Photoshop

Slick Abstracts with a Limited Palette

How to create an imposing mixed-media image using limited shades. You’ll build a visually striking collage-style image using silk and material elements, and a limited color palette. The tutorial explores how to create an abstract feel with the addition of natural elements–such as a horses head and human hair–and experiment with a different grid structure to give the piece its ultimate impact.
Slick Abstracts with a Limited Palette →

Abstract Golden Circle with Smoke Brushset

How to create an abstract golden circle with a smoke brush set. Along the way, it introduces the use of custom brush sets and the free transform tool, as well as some selection and masking techniques.
Abstract Golden Circle with Smoke Brushset →

Poster Design with Photoshop

Classic Serif Poster

How to manipulate serif type in your design work to design a classic serif poster. Graphic designer golden rules tend to be: the message must be clear, the color must have some harmony and the text needs to be balanced and readable. But sometimes, in order to create something different or something that stands out, you need to take those rules to the limit, mix them up, or even break them. That’s what this tutorial is all about.
Classic Serif Poster →

Retro Space Themed Poster

How to create a striking vintage-style poster design inspired by cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin’s journey into space. You will combine stock photos, textures and brushes with blend mode techniques and filters.
Retro Space Themed Poster →

Clock Up Wallpaper

How to create a wallpaper using cool 3D text as the main design element. Since adding 3D features, Photoshop can now be used to create 3D objects and effects, which is what this tutorial focuses on – rather than relying on a separate 3D-rendering application.
Clock Up Wallpaper →

Dynamic Nature Poster

How to create a nature poster using stock images, vectors and brushes. A floral vector pack, paper texture, dry earth, and pictures of a girl, parrot, branches, bonsai, and splashes will be used to create a collage of a dynamic nature poster.
Dynamic Nature Poster →

Text Effects with Photoshop

Unique Break-Apart Text Effect with Urban Background

How to create a unique break-apart text effect with an urban background. The text itself is made up from a wooden texture, along with some particle brush effects. You will be using techniques such as layer blending options, warp tool, image adjustments, and some paintings with custom brushes. This is an intermediate level tutorial so some steps may be tricky.
Unique Break-Apart Text Effect with Urban Background →

Text-Shaped Buildings

How to create building-shaped typography using photos that you have taken yourself – or a photo of the Nairobi skyline that the tutorial provides. You’ll stretch the photo to a perspective and use repeating textures to draw and create the shapes for the letters that look like buildings.
Text-Shaped Buildings →

Stitched Text Effect for an iPad Wallpaper

How to create a custom stitched text effect for an iPad wallpaper. You’ll first create the background texture, then the actual background, and afterwards proceed to create the actual text in a stitch style.
Stitched Text Effect for an iPad Wallpaper →

Exploding Light Text Effect

How to create an exploding light text effect. You’ll use a thick heavy font with portions that are corroding and breaking apart with various explosions, and you’ll use some dramatic lighting to punch it up a bit.
Exploding Light Text Effect →

Creative Block Text Effect

How to create a smashing composition text using the words “creative block” to figuratively smash creative block with this effect. This effect could be used on a variety of design projects.
Creative Block Text Effect →

Special Effects with Photoshop

Human Disintegration Effect

How to create a powerful and emotional human disintegration effect. You’ll start with a cloudy sky background, proceeding to use images of a person, meteors, light, and splatters to produce the effect of a person disintegrating in the sky.
Human Disintegration Effect →

RAWZ Light Effects

How to create a slick futuristic Tron-style light effect. It’s a beginner/intermediate tutorial, and it will take you about 45 minutes to do. After starting with a black background, you’ll create a texture and make it the background–along with adding a subtle gradient–and afterwards you’ll drop in the logo and proceed to create the neon light effect.
RAWZ Light Effects →

Realistic Laser Beam Effect

How to create a realistic laser beam effect. This is actually an abstract text effect with a metal texture and cloud effect. You’ll mainly be using brush options and filter effects to render this laser beam.
Realistic Laser Beam Effect →

Chaotic Disintegration Effect on a Face

How to create a chaotic disintegration effect on a face. You’ll be using an image of a face and a branch, and you’ll also use shatter glass and bird brushes to create this effect, which will be manipulating the face.
Chaotic Disintegration Effect on a Face →

Fake X-ray Effects

How to create an X-ray effect. You’ll discover how to re-assemble the inner workings of a computer mouse using a variety of blending modes to reveal hidden detail. Next you’ll add some distress layers to add interest to an otherwise clinical illustration. Finally, you’ll add some 3D renders to really finish off the effect.
Fake X-ray Effects →

What Are Your Favorite Photoshop Tutorials?

Your turn: what are your favorite Photoshop tutorials? What’s missing from this list? Feel free to share your useful additions in the comments section below.

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Tags: app, Application, book, Effects, font, forms, Graphic, Graphic Design, illustrator, Logo, magazine, showcase, text, theme, tutorial, typography, vector, video
Posted in Design, Photoshop

30
Dec
2011

Our Top 20 Posts from 2011

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2011 has been Speckyboy’s best year yet in terms of growth. More great readers and followers, more great authors, more great sponsors. However, at the core is (hopefully) great content here on Speckyboy. And just to recap some of our best content, here are our top 20 Speckyboy posts of 2011.

45 Free eBooks for Developers and Designers

This post covers visual design, accessibility, CSS, JavaScript/jQuery, mobile, optimization, UX, and much more. All of the 45 books in this post are completely FREE and can be either downloaded in digital format (PDF) or viewed in HTML format.
45 Free eBooks for Developers and Designers →

50 Free Tools and Apps for Web Designers and Developers

Here you will find free web design and development tools and apps that will improve your work-flow, resources that will clean and validate code, apps that will allow you to collaborate with any number of colleagues, bookmarklets that let you create mockups within your browser, productivity checklists, sites that will track and keep a watchful eye on your sites, and so much more.
50 Free Tools and Apps for Web Designers and Developers →

25 jQuery Plugins to Help with Responsive Layouts

A responsive layout allows you to offer a specific and optimised screen size based on whatever device (mobile, tablet…) the visitor uses. You would typically use Media Queries to resize the overall layout, but what about all of those individual elements and features that make your page unique? Navigation, forms, images, sliders, carousels… they all need to be optimised as well. This post highlights 25 jQuery plugins that will help you optimise and resize those trickier web elements.
25 jQuery Plugins to Help with Responsive Layouts →

10 Completely Free Wireframing and Mockup Tools

The wireframing process is the straight-to-the-point and completely non-tech stage of any web project. It only requires that you define a skeletal outline of essential page elements such as headers, footers, navigation and content area and should illustrate how to cater and respond to any possible interaction from a user. It is the most important, yet underused, stage of any web or apps development. And this post showcases wireframing and mockup apps that are not only highly effective and easy to use, they are also completely free.
10 Completely Free Wireframing and Mockup Tools →

20 New Frameworks for Web and Mobile App Developers

Web development is about getting stuff done, not figuring out how to get it done. Frameworks and libraries help you, the web developer, focus on creating rather than figuring stuff out. Rather than reinventing the wheel, you can use a framework or library to delegate brunt, non-creative and repetitive work, freeing up your time and energy to create the actual website or application. This post highlights 20 new frameworks and libraries that will help speed up and make your web development more effective.
20 New Frameworks for Web and Mobile App Developers →

30 Fantastic New jQuery Plugins

With jQuery now being used in over 40% of all web sites, the demand for up-to-date and feature-rich plugins has never been greater. Thankfully, the jQuery community has always met its popularity head on by offering a constant influx of new plugins that constantly push the boundaries of functionality ever-further. This post brings you up-to-date with some of the latest and greatest jQuery plugins.
30 Fantastic New jQuery Plugins →

40 New Web, Mobile and Application GUI Kits

Every designer who has spent many hours mocking up web pages or mobile apps will tell you how important it is to have a reliable set of re-usable, editable and uniform GUI elements that they can rely upon for the initial rapid prototyping stage of any project. This post showcases some fresh (and freely available) complete web and mobile GUI kits as well as some comprehensive wireframe kits and application design kits. All of the kits are are fully editable and are primarily available in .psd format (there are also some in .png, .ai and Omnigraffle formats).
40 New Web, Mobile and Application GUI Kits →

30 Fresh Photoshop Tutorials for Graphic Designers

Photoshop is near-ubiquitous with graphics design. Even if you don’t consider yourself a graphic designer, having some Photoshop skills can really come in handy with your poster design/photo/text/etc. work. And tutorials take a lot out of the learning curve, since you can just follow the steps and get up to speed fairly quickly with a certain technique or style. This article shares with you the 30 new Photoshop tutorials for graphic designers.
30 Fresh Photoshop Tutorials for Graphic Designers →

15 Lightweight and Minimal CSS Frameworks

The CSS framework you decide to use should ideally not be based only on a personal preference, as most web designers tend to do. Instead a framework should be based on your current web design projects complexity and functionality requirements. Something that offers only absolute essential tools, something with a shorter learning curve, something that would allow you to implement your prototype faster, debug quicker and, when all of this is put together, will optimize your development time and ultimately improve your productivity. This post highlights 15 of the best lightweight CSS frameworks that we feel you could consider for your next project.
15 Lightweight and Minimal CSS Frameworks →

20 More WordPress Code Snippets and Hacks

When coding WordPress themes, especially if you do it regularly, its really useful to have a selection of code snippets in your toolbox to just ‘copy-n-paste’ as and when the functionality needs. Not just your most commonly used code, but also some snippets that can, when required, extend WP even further. This post highlights 20 very useful code snippets, covering many areas of theme development, including tracking page-views, custom shortcodes and widgets, custom title lengths and excerpts, and much more.
20 More WordPress Code Snippets and Hacks →

50 Free PSD UI Kits and Templates for Web Designers

For every web designer, having a selection of pre-designed and editable web UI elements is key to organizing and optimizing work-flow. Not only do web UIs allow you to rapidly prototype multiple web pages with uniformity, they also aid your personal creativity by having each elements basic structure in-place allowing you to give each your own personal design touches. This post showcases 50 beautifully designed and editable pre-designed Web UI kits, all in .psd format, covering all of the major UI requirements of the modern web designer.
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Posted in Design, Photoshop

22
Dec
2011

How many colours are there?

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Colour. It’s something that we all use in our web or print work and finding the right colour to highlight, emphasise and stand out from the crowd can be easier said than done. Trying to make a decision about which hex code to use got me thinking, how many colours are there?

3 or 4?

Depending on whether you work predominantly in web or print your answer might be 3 or 4. Red, green and blue or Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black.

Why 3 or 4?

Well you might have said 3 colours because Red, green and blue are the (additive) primary colours that are output through your TV, mobile and computer monitor. When added and mixed together these primary colours can produce a whole sub-set of different colours, including white in the right intensity.

Printing Press Inks image from Shutterstock.

But then again, you might have gone for 4 colours, particularly if you are a graphic designer primarily producing print work. Colour printers use cyan, magenta, yellow and black to produce countless secondary colours through a range of different printing techniques: halftone, pantone etc.

CMYK Gift Bag on White image from Shutterstock.

RGB or CMYK both produce a sub-set of colours but at their core are made up from 3 or 4 colours.

216 or 256?

If you’re saving as a GIF or a PNG or creating something for screen you might say 216 or 256 web-safe colours.

Why 216 or 256?

You might have started off saying 256 as this is the number of colours in monitors of the time. A 256 colour display. When saving as a GIF you have the option to save with 256 colours, as a GIF is palette based. If you wanted to reduce your file size of your GIF further you might start to reduce the colours used in the palette while trying to retain the quality of the final image. As the web continues to evolve and Internet speeds keep increasing, file sizes of images will become less of an issue, meaning that you can keep your 256 colours in your GIF.

You might also say 216 as while there are 256 colours in the web-safe palette, operating systems reserved some of the colours for their own use resulting in 216. This number is also easily divisible by 6 and so allows for 6 different shades of red, green and blue to create one colour. These 6 different shades, or hexadecimal, can be used in HTML either through the hex code or through the different RGB values.

Open Pantone Sample Colors image from Shutterstock.

Too many to count?

With all the advances in technology we’re moved on from the initial ‘web-safe’ colours and we’re now enjoying far more colourful days in front of our screens, 16 million colours to be precise. 16384 of which most modern monitors are capable of displaying according to the w3c: www.w3schools.com/html/html_colors

Lynda.com summaries the issue of why web-safe colours were first introduced succiently and is credited as creating the web-safe palette. It’s still an interesting and useful read today: www.lynda.com/resources/webpalette

Does it matter?

Well in a nutshell, yes. With some caveats of course!

If you’re designing for screen, colour, and more specifically colour contrast, can play a huge part in making text accessible to people with visual impairments. Your audience might also be based somewhere without our technological advances and be using a basic monitor and browser and using a colour outside of the web-safe 256 might affect your content/design.

If you’re designing for print using black, how do you make sure that you are using black? While all blacks look the same on screen there can be noticeable differences when printing resulting in a different result than expected: www.printernational.org/rich-black-plain-black.

Interestingly while the number of web colours have increased from the initial web-safe palette, the number of print colours have remained the same since the introduction of the modern process. Although Pantone introduced their Hexachrome system, within recent years, adding orange and green to turn CMYK into CMYKOG.

It’s a colourful life

Color Pencils image from Shutterstock.

At the end of the day it’s a colourful life and there are plenty of resources out there to make life easier for us such as: www.colorsontheweb.com. But it’s important to use colour wisely, it’s easy to get carried away with an entire rainbow at the end of your mouse but keeping it simple will help focus a user’s attention and not overwhelm or distract from what you really want them to focus on, whether it’s a link, email address or text.

How many colours would you say there are? Is it possible to provide a definite answer? Or does it depend on how, or what, you are creating?