Every Design School on the Planet Should Make ‘HTML and CSS Web Standards Solutions’ a Required Textbook.
— Jon Tan

Reading this book felt like I was at the web design school I never had the chance to attend. It’s truly a course in a book: it explains the basics that every web designer should know.
— Yaili

More than just another book: it’s a textbook. Each chapter builds appropriately on the previous and each chapter ends with an exercise for the reader. The exercise enforces what has been learned up to that point and sets the stage for the chapter to come.
— Jonathan Snook

About the Authors

In addition to their role as lecturers in interactive design at the University of Ulster at Belfast, where they have been active in promoting a web standards-based curriculum, Christopher Murphy and Nicklas Persson are practicing designers and digital artists. Their work has featured in a variety of design books and magazines alongside numerous internationally respected designers and they are regular speakers at design conferences and workshops worldwide.

The What

3 copies will be divvied up among the participants and winners will be notified on August 23rd 2010.

The How

Fairly simple: follow @fuelcreativity as well as @standardistas and tell us something you love about design on the web. It could be your favorite site, the coolest thing you’ve ever seen, the best site you’ve ever designed or a just a reason why you think web design is awesome. There is no wrong answer as long as it pertains to web design.

Need more Standardistas?

Follow them on twitter

Dig through their site

Buy the book on Amazon

Winners

Elizabeth Bartoccini @ebartoccini

Rowell Cruz @rowjie

Robin Doty @dakotadesigner

Contact me at chad(at)fuelyourcreativity.com to get things set up for shipping & receiving prizes!

Sponsored by

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Fuel Brand Network 2010 cc (creative commons license)

Web Standardistas Book Giveaway **Updated With Winners**

To enter, submit a design for a desktop background that is big enough to cover the wide field of view that Eyefinity provides: spanning from, at a minimum, 5760×1080 up to 7680×3200 pixels. Three winners will be chosen—one by popular vote, one by AMD, and one by Icrontic editorial staff.

Entries can be renders, photography, or original artwork—anything that takes advantage of the enormous resolution made possible by Eyefinity—but must include the Eyefinity logo somewhere in the design.

Rules are as follows:

* Artwork must be your own design—no using any copyrighted artwork!

* Artwork must include the Eyefinity logo (provided here)

* By submitting your artwork you give express consent to PowerColor, AMD and Icrontic to use your artwork.

* The deadline for entries will be 11:59 P.M EST. June 20th, 2010

* The winners will be announced on June 23rd, 2010

* The contest is open to all countries, and AMD will pay shipping, but taxes and tariffs for import (if your country levies them) is the winner’s responsibility.

Prizes are:

Popular vote winner: PowerColor Eyefinity edition 5770

AMD-chosen winner: PowerColor Eyefinity edition 5670

Icrontic staff-chosen winner: PowerColor Eyefinity edition 5670

To enter, one must have an Icrontic forum account, and your profile must be filled in with an accurate email address, since we will notify winners via email. Submit your entries to the comments, and best of luck!

Checkout the full rules and where to submit over at Irontic.

Sponsored by

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Fuel Brand Network 2010 cc (creative commons license)

AMD + Your Design = Powercolor Video Card

What’s this conference all about? In their own words:

New Riders’ Voices That Matter: Web Design Conference, now in its fourth consecutive year, will take place June 28-29 in San Francisco and the timing couldn’t be better! Web design is undergoing an historic transformation: while the basics of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript haven’t changed, the new and evolving functionality in the HTML5 and CSS3 specs, the number of new ways in which people access the Web, and the rise of social media mean that Web designers need to know more than ever.

Don’t miss this opportunity to meet face-to-face with industry greats and discuss Web design’s most critical topics! We’ll open with a keynote address from Jesse James Garrett, author of The Elements of User Experience: User-Centered Design for the Web and close with a keynote address delivered by Steve Krug, author of the well known book Don’t Make Me Think and the brand new book Rocket Surgery Made Easy: The Do-It-Yourself Guide to Finding and Fixing Usability Problems. From start to finish this conference will blow you away.

How to Enter

Enter to win a free pass (a $595 value) to the conference:

• Visit this post on Fuel Your Coding and just leave a comment (just say anything you like!) and we’ll pick one lucky commenter at random this Friday, May 14th!

Bonus: Special Savings

All FUEL readers can save $150 off the conference fee by providing priority code WBNBLGA when registering. Register before May 14th and save $250 as this $100 discount is combined with the early bird pricing!

Sponsored by

Advertise on Fuel Brand Network.
Fuel Brand Network 2010 cc (creative commons license)

Giveaway: Voices That Matter Web Design Conference Pass

The best part is that we are giving away entries to both events! By commenting on this post, you will have the chance at winning your choice of 1 LessConf ticket or 1 of 3 Front-End Design Conference tickets! There is a catch, though: We want to know why you attend events like these.

So, check out the information on each conference and leave a comment using the guidelines at the bottom of the post. We will draw the winners on Friday, May 7th.

LessConf 3010

May 21st-May 22nd, Atlanta, GA - www.lessconf.com

LessConf is a conference with talks ranging from startups to design tomarketing to business. It’s a casual two-day event in Atlanta Georgia with awesome speakers to inspire you. It’s for people creating “things”, communities, followings, businesses offline & online.

Do you LOVE design, user experience, marketing, entrepreneurship or social media? Then you should attend this conference! The awesomeness includes amazing speakers like Jason Fried, Cameron Moll, Saul Colt, David Heinemeier Hansson and bacon filled pancakes for breakfast, don’t forget the bacon filled pancakes!
- @lessallan

You can follow the event at @lessconf or Register Now while there are still seats available.

Front-End Design Conference

July 23rd, St. Petersburg, FL - www.frontendconf.com

Front-End is a single-day web design conference focused on content, presentation and behavior.

Front-End Conf was created for anyone interested in front-end design to spend a day learning and hanging out with a bunch of like-minded peeps. The topics are intended to cover as much of the spectrum of front-end design that we can squeeze into a single day.

FUEL has supported this event from its beginning and attendees will actually get to see FUEL’s co-founder, Adelle Charles, speak this year!

You can follow the event at @frontendconf or Register Now!

How to Win

Comment below with:

• Which conference you would like to attend
• Why you attend conferences
• Your Twitter Name (Optional, of course)

We will draw the winners on Friday, May 7th. Good luck!

We used random.org and put the names and requests into a list. Thank you to @kragit for tweeting back the random number of 6, which we used to randomize the list 6 times.

So, here are the winners:

LessConf: Brian McDaniel
Front-End Design Conference: Jeff Bridgforth, Estelle and Natalia

Sponsored by

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Fuel Brand Network 2010 cc (creative commons license)

**Updated with Winners** LessConf and Front-End Conf: Business and Design Events

The competition will award over 40 winners.  The first place winner will be awarded $20,000, one Wacom Intuos4 medium tablet, and Autodesk industrial design software.  The second place winner will be awarded $10,000 and Autodesk SketchBook Pro software, and the third place winner will be awarded $5,000 and Autodesk SketchBook Pro software.  To reward as many people as possible in the name of creativity, LG will also be giving out a whopping 37 honorable mentions at $1,000 each.

This year’s competition marks the inaugural participation of Russell Bobbitt, a world renowned movie prop master.  Bobbitt has worked on a variety of visually stunning films such as Star Trek, Iron Man and Iron Man 2™.  He recently received the prestigious “Behind the Camera” prop master award for his work on the first Iron Man film.  Bobbitt will serve as a guest judge to reward one contestant’s cutting-edge design with the Prop Master’s Choice award.  The contestant’s design will then be created into a non-working mock-up that could wind up in Bobbitt’s next blockbuster film.  The Prop Master’s Choice winner will also receive $3,000 plus Autodesk SketchBook Pro software.

“We’re very excited about this competition because it gives consumers and design enthusiasts all a chance to exercise their creative imaginations and have their ideas be heard,” said Ehtisham Rabbani, vice president of marketing and innovation for LG Mobile Phones.  “You don’t have to work for LG to make an impact on the future of mobile phones.”

Autodesk will supply participants with a free 15-day trial of HYPERLINK SketchBook Pro, a paint and drawing application for use on the Mac or PC.  It offers an intuitive, streamlined user interface so even new users can be productive within minutes. The 15-day trial will give all competitors access to industry-leading professional design software and levels the playing field for professional and amateur designers alike to create the phone of their dreams.

“We’re thrilled to partner with LG and Autodesk on this innovative design challenge. The challenge represents the real power of crowdsourcing – by allowing anyone to have the opportunity to design the next generation mobile phone for a global leader,” said Ross Kimbarovsky, co-founder of crowdSPRING.  With a pool of over 55,000 designers and writers in more than 170 countries, crowdSPRING is one of the world’s largest creative communities and is an open platform where anyone can post projects or submit entries. Both seasoned and aspiring designers can submit their entries until April 26^th at http://www.crowdspring.com/LG

Competition Details:

Eligibility: Any U.S. resident (citizen or green card holder) that is 18 years (or age of majority in state of residence) and older

Start and End Dates: The competition begins on March 15, 2010, at 12 a.m. PST and ends on April 26, 2010, at 9:00 a.m. PST

Winners will be announced on May 14, 2010 at http://www.crowdspring.com/LG/winners

Prizes:

First Place:

$20,000 Cash Award + 1 Wacom Intuos4 medium tablet (ARV of $349) + Autodesk industrial design software (ARV of $500)

Second Place:

$10,000 Cash Award + Autodesk SketchBook Pro software (ARV of $100)

Third Place:

$5,000 Cash Award + Autodesk SketchBook Pro software (ARV of $100)

Prop Master’s Choice:

$3,000 Cash Award + Autodesk SketchBook Pro software (ARV of $100) + 1 non-working concept mock-up creation (ARV of $4,000)

37 Honorable Mentions:

$1,000 Cash Award

Official rules can be found at http://www.crowdspring.com/LG NO PURCHASE NECESSARY.  A PURCHASE WILL NOT INCREASE YOUR CHANCES OF WINNING. VOID WHERE PROHIBITED.

Sponsored by

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Fuel Brand Network 2010 cc (creative commons license)

LG presents: Design the Future Competition

Use SlideDeck For:

• Product Tours
• Service Descriptions
• Explaining Complex Processes
• How-To Tutorials
• Feature Rich Slide Shows
• Landing Pages

SlideDeck is currently available as a customizable JavaScript Library. It takes only minutes to add to your website and is available as a plugin for jQuery 1.3+. See the usage documentation for more information.

Demo

SlideDeck has setup a sleek demo site for Basecamp. It shows you exactly how you could utilize their product. This could be super effective for employee training, new app training etc. The possibilities are indeed endless.

It’s very easy to identify and navigate through a SlideDeck presentation because of the tabs on the left and the windows that switch on the right. It’s an effortless tutorial, that puts the user in control of the speed they view it and whether they can come back to it or not.

More About SlideDeck

SlideDeck was created by a user experience design company, digital-telepathy. Digital-Telepathy stumbled into the concept when trying to simplify their own message and process. D-T uses SlideDeck to share ideas, processes and products in a clear and simple way.

Social

Twitter: Follow them

Facebook: Become a fan

The Giveaway:

How to Enter

• Follow @slidedeck on twitter
• Comment with what you would use it for.

The Details

• There will be 4 competition winners
• Contest will end this Friday at 11:59p EST.
• Winners will be announced on or before Monday

Winners

1. Zack C.
2. Juarez Filho
3. Jesse Anderson
4. Rob Simpson

Sponsored by

Advertise on Fuel Brand Network.
Fuel Brand Network 2010 cc (creative commons license)

4 SlideDeck Pro Licenses up for grabs, comment to win. **Updated with winners**

Gavin Elliott is the creative mind behind DIBI conference. What exactly is this magical DIBI conference? We will get to that in a minute along with a promo code for the conference and a wicked competition to win a free ticket. But, first we are going behind the scenes with Gavin Elliott- you can also follow him on twitter.

The Skinny on Gavin

Gavin has some notable facts to bring him into the role that he is in today. He worked as a civil servant, a soldier in the Royal Corps of Engineers & ran his own business.

He now works at Codeworks as the Marketing & Creative Executive where he primarily works on looking after the Thinking Digital Conference and other projects within Codeworks.

What is your typical daily routine?

Typical doesn’t happen for me that often. Every day is usually different. I’ll generally get up at approximately 6.30am get things sorted and make myself a coffee (Starbucks ground coffee FTW) for the trip into the office. I’ll arrive around 7:40am and look over Twitter, I still don’t use an RSS feed and Twitter seems to work well for me. I like to get my emails sorted as soon as I sit down, so the music goes on and before 9am and I can usually have all of my replies done. I’ll check my diary to see if I have any meetings but my work pretty much is around the creative and ‘social’ side of Thinking Digital, DIBI then working with the other teams within Codeworks. I get up to alsorts whether it’s designing or writing. I’m pretty much busy all day. Head back home approximately 5pm before getting in to other projects or more writing. I love what I do so I probably seem like a workaholic.

What are the three things you could not live without?

1. My macbook and macbook pro (we’ll count those as one)

2. Basecamp (For managing my daily life and all the project I’m involved with).

3. My notebook where I draw or make notes. (I carry this pretty much everywhere these days.)

Do you find time to devote to all of your creative endeavors?

I do, I often think of ideas on the fly and quickly have to tell someone. I’ve set up various blogs over the years but am starting to tailor these back. I write quite often about design on my personal blog and have just had an article published in .net (Practical Web Design in the US). I enjoy writing and joining the Project 52 I’ll be publishing a specific post every week. Working out the time between design and writing can be somewhat cumbersome. I’ll be working on a small personal project over the next few months which the design community can use which I’m definitely looking forward to getting started on.

What do you think we will see in the design community in 2010?

I’m hoping there will be a lot more collaboration between designers. I think we’re now finally starting to see the community coming together and learning from each other. In past years there have been a select few who’ve been fortunate to build strong bonds with others but now with all of the social apps we’re seeing more communication with the community as a whole. I would say that the financial climate doesn’t seem to have hit the design/development community so bad over the past year or so however a lot of companies and freelancers have upped their game to hone their skills and decide what is exactly for them and then price themselves accordingly for being a professional in that particular field. 2010 could bring some very specialised designers in to the public spotlight. On top of that we’ll definitely see a surge in mobile design.

What drove DIBI conference to become a reality instead of just a dream in someones head?

We have a lot of web conferences in the UK including the likes of dConstruct, FOWA, FOWD, UX London and Build. Generally though, the conferences never reach further than Leeds/Manchester. Build took place in Northern Ireland last year so when you look at it, conferences have never been taken further North to the likes of Newcastle upon Tyne/Gateshead where DIBI will be taking place. We have a vibrant web community in the North East of England and it is an ideal place for people to travel to. With an international airport, train and ferry links it is an ideal location.

DIBI has a unique cast of characters speaking. Most of which are very prevalent in the web design community, how is it important to make sure you get people to present who are on top of their game?

We thought long and hard about what we wanted to achieve with the conference. It’s highly prevalent that you must reach out to speakers which are either doing something new or leading various areas of the industry to new places. It’s all well and good saying that you want to set a conference up but when looking at the finer details you want to create longevity and a good sense of hype and communication with the people who will be attending. Codeworks have a long standing commitment with the digital agencies in the North East of England and regularly hold ‘Think and a Drink’ evening events on a monthly basis.

What are you trying to make your audience aware of? Is it more of a conference where you talk about current trends and happenings or something that will educate them as a whole?

Definitely education. Whilst we’re expecting lots of attendees who are on top of their game, there is always the opportunity for people to learn more. Making sure that the topics are correct for the audience is paramount, attendees expect something different which is what we’re hoping to achieve with DIBI.

Will the success of DIBI determine the if the conference will be around next year or do you already have ideas of doing another?

Codeworks have had major success with other conferences such as Thinking Digital and GameHorizon and we’ll be looking to achieve the same with DIBI. Definitely look out for DIBI being around again next year.

How does DIBI set itself apart from other conferences? It seems the age of the speakers at DIBI is less than others. What else?

DIBI is one of the first two-track web conferences that we know of. The tickets are limited to 350 and we’re hoping for an equal amount of designers and developers attending. They will then form the DIBI 350, a unique set of professionals taking part in the first North East of England Web Conference. It’s unusual to bring both designers and developers together at the same time, we hope that whilst they’re in the same place as each other, relationships can be made and collaborations can happen. With regards to the speakers, we looked around to see who was available so that we could provide a good amount of variation from other conferences. The DIBI Conference itself will be running from 9am till approx 5pm then we’ll be moving on to a Think and a Drink/After Party in Newcastle upon Tyne.

THE GIVEAWAY

Here’s where you get a chance to win a free ticket to DIBI! Now, all you need to do is put the most creative reason why you want to go to DIBI (and a valid email in the comment box) and we will handle the rest. Do you want to go to learn? Network? See long lost friends? Tell us and you have a chance to get a free ticket!

Need More DIBI?

Site: dibiconference.com

Twitter: twitter.com/dibiconf

Discount for being a reader: Promo Code: “DIBI_hohoho”

*Winner Update**

This is quite possibly the hardest choice I have ever had to make on who wins based on a comment. There were so many good ones to pick from that I couldn’t make up my mind. So, I went to a proven system to help me pick. “The hat method”. I printed everyones name out, put it in a hat and stirred them all around. The winner came out to be Paddy Donnelly.

Thank you all for entering and I hope you all get to go to the DIBI Conference!

Thank you all for participating

Sponsored by

Advertise on Fuel Brand Network.
Fuel Brand Network 2010 cc (creative commons license)

**Updated w/ winner** The Creative Mind Behind the DIBI Conference

This tutorial represents the second installment of a tutorial over at our friends PSDTUTSPLUS! In part one, we learned how to create this shiny chain from scratch in Photoshop. In this tutorial we’ll take that shiny new chain and weather, distress, and age it using layer styles, textures, and lighting effects to create our final result.

As a bonus, one lucky person will win a free Premium Membership to PSDTUTSPLUS by commenting on this tutorial!

And the Winner is

Rick – Congrats!

Now, back to the show…

So let’s get started!

Step 1

Download this zip file. Contained within this file are the four files:

• chain.psd – a half-sized and flattened version of the PSDTUTS final product.
• rustpattern.png – a tile able pattern
• rust.,jpg – a rust texture image from ZENTEXTURES
• chain-final.psd – end result from this tutorial.

Open “chain.psd” and “rust.jpg” and leave “rustpattern.png” for later in the tutorial.

Step 2

First we want to desatureate rust.jpg by pressing Cmd/Ctrl+U and moving the Saturation slider all the way to the left.

Step 3

Drag rust.jpg into “chain.psd”, move it to the top most layer and name it, “top”.

Step 4

Change the “top” layer’s “Blend Mode” to “Overlay”

Step 5

Create 3 new layers and name them, “fx base”, ” fx top” and “fx bottom”
and move each one to just above it’s link counterpart as seen below.

Step 6

Select the “fx base” layer and Cmd/Ctrl-click on “base link” to get a selection.

Step 7

Change your foreground color to “333333″, fill the selection by pressing Opt/Alt+Del/Backspace and change this layer’s Blend Mode to “Multiply”.

Step 8

Repeat this process with “fx top” and “fx bottom”. For layer “fx top”, Cmd/Ctrl-click on “top link”, fill with gray and change the Blend Mode to “Multiply”. Now do the same for “fx bottom”.

Step 9

Let’s go back to layer, “top” and turn the “Blend Mode” back to normal.

What we’re going to do next is create a new “Channel” to use as a “bump map” for our Lighting Effects. We’ll get to that in a moment but first, open your “Channels” by going to Window > Channels.

Step 10

Right-click any of the Red, Green or Blue Channels. and select, “Duplicate Channel…”. Name this new channel, “bump” and click back on the “RGB” channel.

Step 11

Turn the “top” layer’s Blend Mode back to “Overlay”

Step 12

Select the “fx base” layer and go to Filter > Render > Lighting Effects

Step 13

Change the “texture Channel to “bump” and rotate your lighting to match the image below. (It doesn’t have to be perfect, just make sure the light source is coming from the top left) Click, “Ok”.

Step 14

Select “fx top” and hit Cmd/Ctrl+F (repeat last filter) and do the same for “fx bottom”.

Step 15

Next we’re going to create a texture pattern to give our chain some real depth. Open the third and final file of the previously downloaded zip file, “rustpattern.png”

Step 16

Press Cmd/Ctrl+A to select all and go to Edit > Define Pattern… and press “Ok”.

Step 17

We’ll go back to our “chain.psd” and select the “fx base” layer. Apply a “Bevel and Emboss” by Double-clicking on the “fx” icon at the bottom of your layers palette, or going to Layer > Layer Style > Bevel and Emboss…

Step 18

Change the settings in the Bevel and Emboss dialog box to match the image below.

Step 19

Select the “Texture” box and change the Scale to “30″, “Depth” to “9″, and in the “Pattern:” drop-down select the pattern we created in step 16. Leave the Layers Style dialog box open and move on to the next step.

Step 20

In the Layer Style dialog box click on “Color Overlay” and chance the “Blend Mode” to “Linear Dodge (Add)” and change the color to “864719″.

Step 21

The final Layer Style will be “Inner Glow” change these settings to match the image below with a color of “573f29″ Now we can click “OK” and close Layer Styles

Step 22

Apply this Layer Style to “fx top” and fx bottom” by right-clicking on “fx base” and selecting “Copy Layer Style”

Step 23

Now paste this layer style on the other 2 layers by right-clicking and choosing “Paste layer Style”

Step 24

Create a new layer above “fx base” layer as seen below and name it “shadows”. Press Cmd/Ctrl+Click on the “fx base” shape layer to get a selection.

Step 25

Press Shift+M until we have our “Elliptical Marquee Tool”. We want to subtract a portion of this selection. Press and hold Opt/Alt. We can see that the minus sign is visible which tells us we’re going to subtract from this selection. Now simply drag your marquee on both sides of our original selection to subtract it from either side until you end up with a selection looking like the image below.

Step 26

Press Shift+F6 or go to Select > Modify > Feather and feather our selection by 15 pixels.

Step 27

To fill our feathered selection with black press “D” to get our foreground and background to their default state. Then press Opt/Alt+Delete/Backspace to fill with background, and deselect by pressing Cmd/Ctrl+D.

Step 28

With the “shadows” layer selected, Cmd/Ctrl-click on the “fx base” layer to make a selection. Then go to Layer > Layer Mask > Reveal All to create a mask layer.

Step 29

Fill the mask by pressing Cmd/Ctrl+Del/Backspace to fill with background, Cmd/Ctrl+I to invert, and then Cmd/Ctrl+D to deselect.

Step 30

Change the Blend Mode to “Overlay”.

Conclusion

Click here to see the final result!

If you liked this tutorial, head over to PSDTUTSPLUS and check out part one where you will create the shiny chain elements that we started off with in this tutorial. An extensive tutorial employing several different styles and techniques that you’ll be able to use in other designs you create!

Contest Info:

• One lucky person will win a Premium 6-Month Membership to PSDTUTSPLUS!
• Just post a comment about this tutorial below
• Contest ends on Monday December 7th (5pm EST).

Sources

The “rust.jpg” image comes from ZENTEXTURES and “rustpattern.png” was created from this texture as well.

Further Reading

Check out this other great tutorial over at Fuel Your Interface, “How To Use Textures (Better Than You Used To)”

Sponsored by

Advertise on Fuel Brand Network.
Fuel Brand Network 2010 cc (creative commons license)

From New to Old: Part Two of the Off the Chain Tutorial *Winner Update

Lot’s of things are in store for ‘FUEL’ and ‘Creativity’ in the coming new year and we look forward to celebrating by giving back even more in the future!

Have a happy and safe one! -Adelle

(To enter for your chance to win, simply leave a comment below. We will pick 20 winners at random and announce here next Tuesday. Please leave a valid email address.)

And the Wave Winners Are:

Kate
DeAnne
wh1teasn0w
Mixolidia
Dani
Seantpl
Andrew
Aaron Busse
Emily
Barbara Holland
Freddy Gonzalez
Adam Powers
Nick
Kelsey
Liga
Anders P
Michael Persson
fede
Rob Mitchell
Simple

You should all be receiving invites through the e-mail addys you provided. Thanks for participating everyone!

Sponsored by

Advertise on Fuel Brand Network.
Fuel Brand Network 2010 cc (creative commons license)

Happy Thanksgiving and a big Wave for you!**Updated with winners!

The Grand Prize Winner will receive $500 and the People’s Choice Award Winner will receive $100. In addition, the Grand Prize Winner’s design will be featured on limited edition of @ your library tote bags!

The design must incorporate “atyourlibrary.org” somewhere so that it’s easily readable, but other than that it can be as creative as you want! Keep in mind that libraries are about more than just books—many offer career centers, classes, movies, music and much more.

Additional information can be found here.

Deadline is October 16th for submissions

Sponsored by

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Fuel Brand Network 2010 cc (creative commons license)

Support your library & ‘Design a tote bag’ Contest

Billings is the time tracking, billing, and invoicing software that changes the game completely for all of the folks struggling to conquer their accounting matters. This extremely easy to use, award winning software takes care of so many of your billing needs that you will never look at doing your financials the same way again. With invoicing and account statements all readily awaiting your minor input and template selection, the once time consuming process of preparing this paperwork has been revised in a revolutionary and time saving manner.

Billings also keeps track of your client’s payments, and allows for billing single or multiple projects to your client at a time. Billings will manage the account information for each client, not only notifying you when a client’s payment becomes past due, but by also allowing you to set up a recurring billing cycle for your client which will automatically alert you when their payment initially comes due. When Billings tallies and tabulates your payments, it also tracks your taxes as well.

Project management, an important area of the freelancing lifestyle, has gotten a few more helping hands to improve your performance in this realm through Billings. With built-in time tracking software that easily allows you to start and stop the timer throughout your system, and even tabs out the total cost of the time spent on the project when an hourly amount is provided, this software manages your projects with grace and style.

With a handsome interface and so much flexibility of control, it is easy to see why Billings has become such a popular staple among the freelance community. It even has a bevy of built-in reporting functions to give the user a quick financial overview of all the managed data that it has tracked.

With its built-in integration to work with other programs such as Daylite, Merlin, and more, Billings establishes itself as the innovative billing and invoicing software leader that it has proven to be. From its initial launch to the latest version, Billings has become a popular Mac application whose stability and flexibility continue to set this software powerhouse apart from other programs in its playing field.

The Giveaway

After having the opportunity to try out this application, we are very excited to be able to offer two of our readers the chance to take this software home with them. The fine folks over at Marketcircle have graciously given us copies of Billings 3 to giveaway to two lucky readers so that they can see for themselves what all of the fuss is about!

To win, simply leave us a comment in the section below, and make sure it is attached to a valid e-mail address. And in a week from today, we will announce the names of the winners. It is that easy. So be sure to get entered before time runs out on this fantastic opportunity for freelancers!

The Winners Announced

Congratulations to our two winners of the Billings 3 giveaway:

• William Barrera
• Teo

Sponsored by

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Billings Review and Giveaway **Winners Announced

To help celebrate with our good friends at HTMLRockstars (formally known as CSSRockstars) we are giving away (4) copies of Snow Leopard.

HTMLRockstars provides PSD to HTML service in just 3 days, for only $149. They take your existing design and transform it into valid, high quality, hand-coded markup. They also offer templating/skinning of the hottest CMS, Shopping Carts, and Blogging platforms such as WordPress. With semantic markup, microformat inclusion, documented HTML / HTML, and a money back guarantee, HTMLRockstars offers one of the most feature complete packages available. You can also follow them on Twitter.

Enter for your chance to win Snow Leopard! You will have 2 chances to win 1 of 4 copies courtesy of HTMLRockstars.

Here’s how:

• All you have to do is leave a comment below.
• Then head over to Fuel Your Coding to enter for a second chance. *please note: directions differ on Fuel Your Coding.
• Contest will end on both sites, Sunday at 12 Midnight EST.

Winners Announced:

1. David (martiandesign.com)
2. Jamie (resonatedesign.com)

If you didn’t win here, don’t forget to check out Fuel Your Coding to see if you won!

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Winners Announced: HTMLRockstars Launch + 4 will WIN a copy of Snow Leopard!

During the visit we were looking at my dad’s record collection, which has become more of a museum showcase than a music library since both time and my parents have moved on towards the CD and digital era. With our hippie hats on our collective heads we began wondering about what could be done with these vikings of vinyl when they would rock, but no longer roll. Surely there had to be a creative way to institute a little of the three ‘R’s’ of the tree hugger’s environmental code to this scenario. Reduce was taken care of since the ’rents were not really buying any new LP’s, but what about Re-use or Recycle? Could there be a way to do that? That’s when it hit us. We knew if anyone had figured out a way to do it, and do it with style, it was the design world!

So that is where we turned, and by the rock-gods, we were not disappointed! It was decided then that we would showcase some of these original re-imaginings of old records from some truly green creative minds! To add to that, we contacted one of the online retailers that carry a line of these Recycled Vinyl products and they have agreed to give away one of each of their vinyl designs to one of the readers of FYC! So a big thanks to the folks over at Spinning Hat for hooking up one lucky commenter with their set of Recycled Vinyl which we will feature and talk about more at the bottom of the post. So without further ado, lets get the wheels spinning on this rockin’ Recycled Vinyl Showcase and giveaway.

Let the Records Show

The following products range from wallets to tables, from jewelry to canvases, and more all created using old record albums to transform their creations into functional green designs. Enjoy.

The Spinning Hat Vinyl Collection

The following items are part of the eclectic, original designs from Spinning Hat’s online catalog. This range of inspired recycled vinyl items below are included in the giveaway.

The Giveaway Details

In order to receive the free set of Recycled Vinyl products from the Spinning Hat catalog that we just showed you, all you need to do is simply comment below and state one environmentally conscious act you have done recently or plan to do soon. After one week, we will randomly select the winner from the pool of responders and one lucky reader will walk away with the fabulous set of graciously donated Spinning Hat items that get the happy hippie seal of green approval!

Spinning Hat, an online vendor of creative designer products, helped make this post possible. We want to thank the entire team over there, and especially Jon for connecting and coordinating the giveaway with us. Remember to get your comment in to win this set of their creative green-minded gear.

Spinning Hat is a gift design company. We invent fun product concepts, and transform these creative ideas into exciting new consumer products.

Winner

Congratulations to Lauren for winning the recycled vinyl collection from Spinning Hat. You should be receiving an email from them soon.

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UPDATED: Winner Announced: Recycled Vinyl Showcase with a Spinning Hat Giveaway

DBH is turning 2! To celebrate and to thank you all for 2 amazing years, we are excited to announce our 2nd annual DBH 10K Contest! That’s right – 10K – as in TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS to one winning artist!

Submission are now being accepted through July 26, 2009 (Midnight PDT). Artists may enter multiple submissions. Late submissions will not be accepted, no exceptions.

Prizes

Grand Prize: $10,000 USD
First Runner-Up: $1,000 USD
Second Runner-Up: $1,000 USD
Third Runner-Up: $1,000 USD
Fourth Runner-Up: $1,000 USD

Guidelines:

• The design(s) must be an original work created and owned by the entrant.
• Designs can use both the front and back of the T-shirt and may contain oversized and mixed-media elements.
• Designs may contain up to 14 colors, including halftones and gradients.
• If your design is selected you will be required to submit the winning design in high-resolution (at least 300 dpi at actual size).

The winner of last year’s contest was CollisionTheory with his design Black Hole Sun, and he used his prize money to start an apparel line. Read more in an interview with the artist here.

Sponsored by

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Attention T-Shirt Designers: DBH 10K Contest

Brush Pilot is an amazing new application from Jay Hilgert over at Bittbox, that allows for simple brush management on your Mac! How simple? Let’s just say, Rob can do it, so that should be a strong indicator right there. I was really amazed at the simplicity of the program, but much more so at it’s virtual weightlessness. With everything that this compact little firecracker can do, I really expected a heavier strain on my system resources, or at least a moment or two of the spinning color wheel of death to cycle through while the app was in full-on run mode, but that never happened. Ever! (You may be more impressed by that statement if you only knew how bogged down I keep my MacBook, and how often it runs a bit sluggish with the multi-tasking…or singular tasking that I demand of it.)

The Specs

The program, as I already mentioned, is amazingly light weight, so you do not have to worry about what you have running in the background, this app will not disturb or slow your system. (you might slow down your workflow, simply because you will be playing with this app and exploring its usefulness for hours rather than focusing, but that’s half the fun of any new app…or am I doing that wrong?) Part of Brush Pilot not being a resource hog, means that it allows for lightning speed maneuvering through the app while it is in use.

More than just a brush browser, the program has contextual menu commands throughout for each of its designated functions, and keyboard shortcuts for even more ease of use. Upon starting the program, it scours through your entire machine, searching for all brush files that stored there, you do not even have to send it searching by location. (Not that you do not have that option as well, for any external drives you may be networked to, as in my case, you can simply point the program in the right place for finding other brushes you can access.) Once it gets down hunting down your brushes, it displays them all in the Finder. From there things get even more exciting.

By clicking on the individual brush files, be they 8bit or 16bit, you get a preview of each set opened up in a window where you can easily scan through the different brushes that are included. The previewer also allows you to quickly and easily adjust the size of the previews using a slider bar beneath it, with five different size options to choose from. So don’t worry about missing out on the details of the brush because of a minuscule preview image, Brush Pilot’s got you covered!

From the finder, you also have the options that really complete the package, in my humble opinion. From a right click on the brush, you can reveal the brushes location on your hard drive (for any of those misplaced downloads that got you just couldn’t track down), you can delete the brush altogether from your system, or you can simply click to have the brush installed straight away into Photoshop. And earlier when I mentioned the lightning speed, you may have thought I was exaggerating, but the installation of the brushes happens instantly without delay or any s.c.w.o.d. hesitation at all! So it was not me being all poetical or ‘hype’rsensitive. Get it? Hype…nevermind. In fact, the only downside I discovered at all to this process, was the inability to select multiple brushes to be installed or deleted at once. To me, that many pros to one con, makes Brush Pilot an overall smashing success!

The Giveaway

We are so excited to have the opportunity to share this awesome Mac application with one lucky reader of the blog. Unfortunately, this is strictly for Mac users, so if you have a Mac and would like the chance to get a free copy of Brush Pilot, then simply comment below to make it happen. I know there will only be one winner of the contest, but rest assured, the app is modestly priced at only $15.00 so if you do not win, it is still not that far out of reach.

And as I said, you may not think you need a brush browser, but if you are Photoshop’ing graphic designer, this little ditty is that rare gem that you won’t understand how you ever did without it after you run it for the first time!

So leave a comment below, and the winner will be announced on July 20th! Check back to see if it’s you!

An Added Word of Thanks!

If you like this post and the other great content from Fuel Your Creativity then make sure you thank Elegant Themes for all of their support. Elegant Themes is a site created by Nick Roach, dedicated to creating premium WordPress themes for the online community. With so many beautifully crafted themes for all site-types and tastes! Nick’s unwavering support of the creative online community is as inspiring as the designs he creates! Thank you, Nick.

Winner Announced

Lisa T

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UPDATED: Brush Pilot Review and Giveaway – Winner Announced