A Month In The Creative Community: An October Round-Up
Falling into the winter’s grip, we leave another month behind shuffling towards the year’s end. October has drawn to a close and that means it is time for the FYC monthly round-up. So we scoured the feeds and stopped by our favorite cyberspace hangouts to grab the best content that the creative community had to offer in October. Whether you caught them the first time around or you are seeing them for the first time, the showcase below is what we believed should not be left behind with the days we dropped along the way. So we hope you enjoy these fantastic features!
Inspiration
45+ Inspiring Examples of Vintage in Web Design
Who said old style was never been cool in web design? In fact, using Vintage photo, paper and fashion became trendier now a day. If you’re looking for Vintage Web Design inspiration, then this is what your looking for. Today we will showcase some of the best sites applying vintage concept on their layout.
30 amazing packaging designs for your inspiration
Packaging is one of the aspects of design that we see the most, we get packaged products at home, work or wherever we go. The following are great example of well done packaging that add value to the product.
30 Beautiful Examples of Illustrated Twitter Backgrounds
Twitter can be a powerful tool to communicate and connect with people through words, but it can also be a great way to promote your brand through visual design. Twitter does limit you when it comes to customizing your page, but you do have full control over the background image.
35 Smart Logos With Second Thought To Make You look Twice
One more logo showcase, but in this one you really will need to look twice! Every logo is carefully picked with second thought and I think such logos are really hard to create. Get inspired, hopefully this article will help you to look different at logo creation – it’s not always just about typography, good looking font and nice animation.
50 Mind-Blowing Examples of Macro Photography
I love the amazing details you can find in these shots. When we want to we can find a whole other world, the world of the small. Its a very alien looking world to say the least but a beautiful one at that. I hope you enjoy these shots as much as I have.
Awesome Brochure and Print Design Inspiration
Print design is becoming quite influential in web design, we have seen more and more websites using big headers, lots of white space and nice font size contrasts. As I am looking for print design references for a brochure I am working on, I decided to select some nice brochures and print design examples to share with you.
Interviews
Interview With Jacob Gube, The Man Behind Six Revisions
I have had the pleasure of connecting with Jacob, the man behind the very popular design blog Six Revisions, on multiple occasions through various social sites and I recently interviewed him for SpyreStudios. I hope you’ll enjoy this interview with Jacob! Make sure you stop by in the comment section and feel free to ask Jacob questions!
Chris Spooner, the guy behind Blog.SpoonGraphics and Line25 was kind enough to take the time to answer some questions for us this past weekend on the topic of Creativity and Inspiration. Chris is a self employed designer, who earns a fulltime living with a mix of blogging and the odd design project.
Designer’s Studio: 7 Amazing Premium Wordpress Theme Designers Explain
The WordPress following could be compared to the one of any given religious group. By the core of this community stand the ones who have dedicated their whole portfolios and businesses to develop some of the most sold, used and appraised WordPress themes – The Premium Wordpress Theme Designers.
Interview With Steven Snell From Vandelay Design & DesignM.ag
I first connected with Steven back when I used to run Freelance Folder almost 2 years ago (Steven wrote some great articles there) and we’ve been in contact ever since. Here’s the interview I did with Steven recently, I hope you like it!
A Chat With Ace Graphic Designer Francesco Mugnai
Six months ago I returned to designing and blogging after a sabbatical of almost 5 years. As I slowly started sifting through the plethora of websites and blogs that were out there, I came across a page so blue, it brightened my whole demeanor.
Creative Interview with Richard Darell aka @Minervity
This week I had the opportunity to chat with one of my very good designer friends, founder of the well known Minervity.com, Richard Darell (@Minervity). If you are active at all on twitter you will no doubt recognize him as an extremely active member of the community as well as an excellent source of Information for Design, Tech, and Inspiration.
Design
3 Powerful Ways To Make Typography Talk On Your Website
Typography is a very powerful tool in a web designer’s arsenal. We have seen simple websites glorified in an instant with the use of proper typography. We have seen brilliant websites pale because the “type” tone they used was all wrong.
5 Helpful Tips for Design Students
Myself being a graphic design student and freelancer, I am constantly being pushed to my limits, balancing school work and client work that actually puts money in my pocket. It’s a tough challenge, but something that many of us tackle each and every day. But, what if you are a student and don’t seem to be gaining that many clients for freelance projects, leaving your portfolio full of projects that 50 other students have in theirs?
How a design blog is attractive to clients
I often find myself getting asked the question, “Does your blog bring you business, and how so if it’s mostly targeted at inspiring and helping other designers?”
Development
WordPress Theme Cheat Sheet for Beginners
There are many codes to memorize just to modify a WordPress theme, so it helps to have a mini cheat sheet if you are looking to make minor changes or even developing your own theme. This is why we have decided to list a few codes that you can probably use for reference when editing themes.
5 Rules To Write More Readable CSS Files
Complex CSS files can often be difficult to manage especially if you don’t use a structured way to write and organize their code.
jQuery for Absolute Beginners: The Complete Series
over the course of about a month, I posted fifteen video tutorials that teach you EXACTLY how to use the jQuery library. We start by downloading the library and eventually work our way up to creating an AJAX style-switcher. I’m very proud of this series; possibly more than any other that I’ve done for Envato.
Freebies
I have collect 5 Awesome, high resolution and high quality Peeling Paint Textures. In this showcase you will find 5 awesome Peeling Paint Textures that you can use for any purpose, whether it’s commercial or personal. They’re extremely large-scale in dimension.
Abstract Grunge Photoshop Brushes & Texture Pack
Today’s first web treat is a combo pack of 5 high resolution abstract grunge painted textures and corresponding high resolution photoshop brushes.
Parting Ways: Free November 2009 Calendar Wallpaper
This post is part of the free calendar wallpaper series. Each month I create a new wallpaper featuring the current calendar. Looking at the same image over and over again is not very stimulating. Hence having a new desktop background each month should help getting your creative juices flowing.
Tutorials
Create a Twitter Icon in Six Easy Steps Using Photoshop
You do not need to be a Photoshop pro or Iconist to create a simple icon. Just have an idea of what you want to create and start from there. In this post we are showing you how to create a simple twitter icon for your blog or website in six easy steps.
How to effectively clean up a logo in illustrator with the pathfinder tool
Over the years I have been passed many a logo to “clean”. I also learned while I was in college that I was of the few that actually knew how to make a logo one shape so it would appear correctly on any background color.
Freelancing
How To Maximize Your Freelance Income
Freelancing income often seems as though it is a limited commodity. It seems limited by time, limited by ability, and limited by the number of opportunities available.
Freelancers: Do You Need a Business Plan?
If you tell someone that you’re going into business for yourself, he may ask to see your business plan — unless you tell him that you’re planning to freelance. There’s a certain assumption that freelancing is so plain and simple that anyone can do it, with no business plan needed.
Grab the Feed
Awesome post! Some great stuff here from last month!
Thanks so much for mentioning Richards Interview! He definitely deserves it!
Keep up the good work!
Thanks for this wonderful roundup Angie! I was so psyched to see two of my articles make the cut. You are the best!! :)
I wish I could spend the rest of the day simply exploring everything you posted. I will definitely bookmark this for a rainy day… and being in Seattle I’m sure it will be any time now. :)
I love vintage design, it’s nice to see other designers appreciating it..
cool posts of October month, vintage designs are really good. thanks
Thanks for the comments everyone, I’m glad I could give you all some new reading material :)
The vintage design is lovely, it’s one of my favorite styles.
Thanks for icluding our interview with Chris Spooner! Great roundup. I especially love Franz’s calendar for november.
Hey Angie, thanks a lot for mentioning the interviews I did with Jacob and Steven. Much appreciated :)