Goodie Bag #1

I spent loads of time today creating one part of my boyfriends birthday present but in between that I found an ickle bit of time to compile a list of stuff that I found very useful to have/ interesting to read about. I can’t believe the weekend is already almost over…

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These fireworks outside my window start to annoy me and I blame all nonsense I write today on them

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I will try to categorise the things I have a little bit.

Icon Sets

I suppose all of us are always interested in icon sets and I found quite  a few different ones during the day. I really need to check my feeds more often…

Blogwiese.de: icon sets sorted by service

A collection of social media icons sorted by service instead of icon set

Blogwiese.de: Feed Icons

A nice collection of feed icons

Blogwiese.de: Social Media Icons

Social Media Icons in style of bottle tops

Webdesignfan.com: Hand drawn icons set

Various different gorgeous sets of hand drawn icons.

Usability

Webia.info: Contact Forms

Part I of a series of articles about the message your contact form sends to people

Inspiration

spyrestudios.com: Grunge Style

A good collection of pages that use a grungy style

spyrestudios.com: Sexy Logos

A literally hot collection of good logo design. Check it out.

webcreme: a great inspiration with great webdesign

get your daily dose of inspiration here

Useful Stuff

list of google wave extensions

well, that’s a list of wave extensions. I know, you would have never guessed that…

Tutorial

nettuts: From PSD to HTML tutorial

A good tutorial on how to turn your psd file into html

And last but not least something to drool and wish you were in a different place than your stinky old bedroom. DROOL NOW.

12 mins to go till Curry cooking. I’m off.

 

 

Glow Logo

I have recently been asked to design a logo as a birthday present. The company will provide personal training and shall be named Glow. The logo should incorporate the well-trained body as well as mental fitness. The typeface should be clean and curvy.

I am currently gathering ideas on this topic. So here is my collection of thoughts so far:

Typeface

I prefer a sans-serif font for this one and very much liked the clean and rounded look of Calibri.

Colour

As colours I chose a dark blue (very much black with a tiny hint of blue) and a lighter blue similar to Barclays blue. The letters G,l,w will be in the dark colour and the o will stand out in blue.

Mental Fitness

My idea on incorporating the aspect of Mental Fitness is kind of evolving around the name Glow and the o shape that stands out. So I decided to try and turn the o into a glowing light bulb.

Fitness and Body Image

I am trying to have a muscular body stand underneath the word Glow (with the o as a light bulb) holding it up, the light bulb being in the position of the head of the body.

Problems

Trying to draw a human shape without a graphics tablet, on a laptop seems to be virtually impossible…

Images and Inspiration

Muscles 1

Muscles 2

Muscles 3

Muscles 4

Well, I will go on working on this. I am so far very happy with the way the typeface looks, and the lightblub integrates well with that. It’s now time to deal with the shape of the body…

Pictures will be up as soon as I don’t have to be embarrassed about this utterly bad drawing anymore

Stay tuned.

Web 2.0 Design Tutorials

I have been wondering for quite some time how Web 2.0 style is actually defined. Is it all just about empty space, gradients, funky colours, glossy buttons and reflections?

Here are my favourite tutorials on glossy buttons and shiny surfaces:

Web 2.0 Design Kit – by photoshoplab

Glossy Buttons – Hongkiat

Smashing Magazine – a whole list of tutorials everything from buttons over lines to gradients

Blending with gradients

Finally I feel able to actually switch on my brain and look at some photoshop stuff. Working with kids really leaves you tired out.

I found this great tute by tiff about blending in pictures with the background simply by using a gradient and a layer mask. Very helpful.

Photoshop – Transform

Working in Photoshop I just had one of these frustrating moments where you know what effect you want to reach in the end, but you have no idea how to get there. AND you can’t google it cause you don’t know how to search for it.

In my case the solution was so easy:

Transform Menu –> Perspective

While I was googling around I found this helpful tutorial on the transform tool. Short and to the point.