Monday Link List, volume 17

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Copyright/Legal & Inspiration vs Imitation

Can you own a Style?
Understand your rights. This article is from a British publication, but the points are valid.
Imitation. Idea Theft. Portfolios. A provocative read.
Inspiration vs Imitation.

Focus/Motivation

Be the Best, at whatever it is you are passionate about.
Work with Intention: focusing your Interests, Skills & Opportunities.
Managing Failure. In Design, failure is inevitable. What are you doing to learn from it?
Avoiding friction & learning to pace yourself.
Creative Mornings Talk: The Top 10 Things I wish I Knew When I Graduated College.
Things you won’t learn in school.
8 tips for the designer in their first studio job.

Inspiration

Don’t discount those who have come before you.
Ad teachings, a blog that spotlights great communication solutions. (FYI, that’s what good design is for).

Business Practices: Billing.

How to get paid.
A guide to online payment options.
Fuck you. Pay me. A designers message to difficult clients.
Getting Paid, How Much and When? Contracts & Invoices.
Make a Contract. Get a Layer. A little money up front will save you big bucks and headaches later.

Business Practices: Freelance

Freelance Tips from a Hiring Manager.
How to keep the money coming.
Thinking long-term – what’s your retirement plan?

Business Practices: Managing your Business (Got MBA?)

A series of articles on starting out as a freelance designer.

Expanding your Business.

Work Habits

Managing Information Overload.
Avoiding Burnout.

Work Space

Co-working/shared spaces (find a place, or share yours for extra income) and Networking spaces:
HUB Ottawa. 
The Code Factory. 
Desktime.

Networking

Who you Know, What you’ve Done and How you Hustle.
Overcome your shyness. Networking and self-promotion are not for wall flowers. But it’s doesn’t need to be a terrifying experience.
5 Steps to Building your Network.

Monday Link List, volume 16

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Back to Basics

Graphic Design Principles: Balance, Proximity, Alignment, Repletion, Contrast.

Why Grids? It is a tool for generating form, arranging images, and organizing, information, and  The main idea behind grid-based designs is a solid visual and structural balance.

Anotomy of Grids.

Sketching and Grids speed up design.

Using (and Breaking) Grids.

Quick Tool Tips

The Bristle Brush (and Draw Inside).

Op Art with Envelope Distort.

Using Envelope Distort with the Polar Mesh Tool.

The Blob Brush.

Warp Tools.

Using the Pencil & Smooth Tools.

Complex Symbols using Pathfinder.

Putting Type onto a badge (typing around a circle).

Creating a star burst using Stroke.

10 Tips to give your work polish.

Getting some Perspective – using the Perspective Grid

Defining a Perspective Grid.

Drawing in Perspective.

Mapping flat artwork to a Perspective Grid.

Using Perspective Grid to quickly create a product box.

More Perspective – 3D tools and other ways to create art in perspective

Create a 3D rocket.

Add embossed letters to a cube.

Creating Isometric Illustrations.

Create a Geometric Pattern.

3d Chrome Text.

Making & Using Symbols

Quick tip – make & use Symbols.

Working efficiently with Symbols.

Symbols Indepth.

Monday Link List, volume 15

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Resources:

Visit The League of Moveable Type for a selection of quality, FREE, fonts.

Tutorials:

Creating 3D Objects with Extrude & Bevel and with Revolve.

Vintage 3D Stars.

Product mock-up with Extrude & Bevel: Baked Beans.

Quickly make a ring or wrist band.

And even more applications of the 3D Revolve Effect.

Creating 3D Text.

3D Pixel Type.

Making Icons.

Using Illustrator’s Perspective Drawing Tool.

Tips & Tricks

Using Symbols.

Just for Fun:

Illustration Time-lapse Video of a t-shirt design.

Monday Link List, volume 14

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Tips & Tricks:

Controlling Type.

Managing Artboards.

Working with Color Guide.

The VectorTuts+ Guide to Illustrator Tools.   Especially these guides: The Paint Brush Tool and Brush Panel and the Introduction to Illustrator’s Color Tools.

Tutorials:

Creating Light by Controlling Transparency.

Using Brushes to Create Complex Shades.

Creating a Curtain. Includes using the Width Tool, Art Brushes and Gradient Meshes.

Creating Woodcut Effects.

Monday Link List, volume 13

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Tutorials:

Check out Veerle Pieters’ site, great inspiration and some awesome tutorials .

Creating Gradients:

Illustrator’s own overview of the Gradient Tool & Panel.

Create and Edit Gradients.

Understanding Blend:

A comprehensive Guide to the Blend Tool.

Blend Options in Illustrator.

Blend Tool Quick Tips.

Blending Gradients and Creating Gradients with Blends.

Repalcing the Spine in a Blend.

Mastering the Gradient Mesh:

20 Master Class Gradient Mesh Tutorials.

Create a Burning Match with Gradient Mesh.

Sunglass Illustration with Gradient Mesh.

Working with Colour

Papercut look, staring with greyscale shapes.

Using Illustrator’s Colour Guide.

Live Trace & Live Paint

Live Trace:

Using Live Trace on a Sketch.

Live Paint:

Painting with Live Paint

Tips & Tricks

5 Cool Tips & Tricks.

6 Little Known Features.

Working with Strokes.

Getting Comfortable with Keyboard Shortcuts.

Monday Link List, volume 12

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It’s the first link list of the 2012, and the 12th one ever, must be sort of numerological convergence.

Well, for the new year we are going to change gears and look at Illustrator tutorials. For those of you following along at home, the main focus of these posts reflects the courses I am currently teaching, and this term it’s Illustrator.

So we’ll start with some introductory resources and some skill builders.

Getting Started with Illustrator

Creating your own default document.

10 things you should know.

25 techniques to make you a more efficient designer.

Getting a handle on the pen tool.

Tutorials

Create seamless geometric patters (straight from Adobe’s help tool). There’s nothing wrong looking in the help files, that’s why they’re there.

Another pattern tutorial, for a looser look.

Tips & Tricks

Using the Transform Panel as a calculator (also works in any numerical input field).

Feeling confident? Check out these Ask a CS Pro tutorials.

And lastly, a Keyboard Shortcuts cheat sheet.

Monday Link List, volume 11

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Tutorials

Fun with layer styles.

Sharpening techniques.

Fixing a blown out sky.

Using the Patch tool (destructive editing, I know!)

Tips & Tricks

Working with Smart Text.

Design Resources

Considerations & Methods for picking your colour palette.

Inspiration

The amazing geometric patterns of Andy Gilmore.

Monday Link List, volume 10

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Tutorials

Build an isometric cityscape pattern using Illustrator & Photoshop.

Creating an animation with Photoshop.

You should all listen to Colin Smith– this guys knows everything about Adobe’s Creative Suite.

A great round-up of Icon Design Tutorials.

How to create a Film Strip border from scratch.

Tips & Tricks

Mastering exposure problems in Camera Raw.

The best way to convert to Black & White.

Using Black & White adjustments to control an images tonality.

Capture swatches from any image.

Inspiration

Lynda.com is offering some documentaries about creative process, agency insights and other inspirational topics for free.

Resources

Advent calendars for the web-inclined.

Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam is offering selections of its’ collection for free, online.

Monday Link List, volume 9

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Tips & Tricks

Exporting design elements from Photoshop for web or applications.

Photo Effect Actions

Retro Look and Instagram Style.

100 Actions and How to Make Your Own.

Smashing Magazine’s Ultimate Photoshop Actions Collection.

70 of the best Photoshop Actions.

And yes, there is some repetition in those lists of actions, but still lots of inspiration.

Something for the holidays

A typographic advent calendar from the good folks at Fontdeck.