Graphic Design Blog, Graphic Design Tips and Graphic Design Jobs

12 Water Inspired Web Designs

Looking to redesign your portfolio site or a new client site? Well consider a “Waterworld” type theme! I’ve always been a fan of the deep blue sea and this type of imagery can bring up a lot of great and positive emotions in a viewer. So whether your website is directly related to water or not you can still harness the power of mother nature to design a cool water inspired website. Check out the cool water themed websites below for some inspiration if you plan on tackling this theme for your next project and feel free to link to any other cool water heavy website designs you know of.

7 Perfect WordPress Portfolio Themes

If you don’t have a portfolio site yet or are looking to create an easy to update, fast loading and slick looking portfolio than you should be using WordPress. Traditionally WordPress is a blogging content management system, but recently it has been used to be the back end for many cool types of sites such as portfolio sites for photographers and designers.

5 Business Card Photography Tips

1. Picking the Perfect Background

When photographing your business cards, spending some time picking out a great background can go a long way compared to just shooting them on your scratched up work desk. Look for something that compliments your business cards color, texture and style. Just make sure that the background does not overpower the actual design. A busy background will distract the viewer from the beauty of your work. Try using a neutral color, a contrasting color that makes your design pop or keep the focus sharp on the design and blur out the background a bit.

5 Ways to Become a Famous Graphic Designer

Not everyone wants to be “Famous”, but being a more well-known designer DOES have its benefits. Not only will your work get more exposure, but you will make more money! Becoming a famous designer does not happen over night, but there are things you can do to quicken the process and if you are lucky you should be able to gain a lot of recognition if the things you do turn out well. So I wanted to do a 3 part series just going over some cool things designers could do if they want to not only become more apart of the design community, but also gain a little recognition and help others at the same time.

15 Grandiose Green Website Designs

Many websites are going green and by this I mean green in their color, imagery and overall style. Many of the sites deal directly with the environment or nature in some way, but others simply enjoy the emotion green color and imagery inspire in a viewer. People often find green colors and imagery relaxing and refreshing and if wielded properly can add a lot to a website design. So I thought I would showcase some cool websites that thrive off of the color green or nature related imagery and themes. Enjoy and feel free to link to any cool “green” sites you know of.

18 Fresh Font Designs

There are more type designers than ever and the amount of fonts to choose from nowadays is mind boggling! So I decided it would be a good idea to put together a small sampling of some of the coolest font designs I have seen recently from the great designers of the Behance community. Stay tuned for more font related inspiration posts and let us know which font below is your favorite!

8 Steps to Get Into Graphic Arts

Getting into the world of graphic arts can be an exciting venture where you not only get to express your creative talent, but also earn a great living doing what you love to do. It is a very flexible career choice with many paths to go down and combinations to master. For example you could start off being a graphic designer working for a company, then learn web design in addition to graphic design and start your own design business from the comfort of your home or you could just earn extra money on the side being a freelance graphic artist if you already have another job you want to keep.

17 Photo Manipulations With People

If you have used Photoshop you probably have dabbled in photo manipulation, which really is what Photoshop is meant for. Over the past year there have been more and more photo manipulations coming out every day, especially like the ones below. The basic elements most of these designs have is a single figure in the center as the focal point and then design elements wrapped around the person as if they were one and the same. This is probably the most popular photo manipulation trend right now. What do you guys think of this photo manipulation style?

15 Powerful Pieces of Graphic Artwork

I am always browsing graphic artwork galleries for exciting new artwork to inspire me, so I thought I would link to some of my favorite new graphic artwork from several design inspiration websites. The designs below vary in style and media greatly, some are photo manipulations, a few are more typography focused, several have 3d elements, but they are all great pieces of graphic art and I hope you enjoy them as much as I do. Any suggestions for future inspiration posts?

10 Benefits of Being a Graphic Artist

1. Express Your Creativity

Probably the most important benefit of being a graphic artist is the ability to express your creativity, while still earning a great living. Many artists are moving towards graphic design because it’s easier to make a living as a graphic designer than it is in areas such as fine art.

25 Dynamically Generating Shapes Vol 2.

Today’s free Photoshop brush set is full of cool shapes to use in your design projects. The shapes are a great way to create cool backgrounds and add some life to your Photoshop designs. Simply download the brush files below, upload them to Photoshop and you are ready to go!

Photoshop Tutorials 90+ Places to Submit

Tutorial submissions are the article submissions of the design industry. Every niche including graphic design has special ways you can market yourself online. One of the ways designers can gain exposure and new business online is via Photoshop tutorials. Not only can you submit your tutorials to get traffic, but some blogs and sites will even pay you to do Photoshop tutorials, which is a great way to make extra money.

UPrinting.com Blog Sponsorship Program

UPrinting.com has recently launched a pretty cool new promotion for bloggers called the Blog Sponsor Program. The program is basically geared towards helping blog owners promote their new blogs and business ventures and its also a great way to attract new visitors to your blog. Giveaways are big in the design community especially brushes, free vector art, textures and so on and now you can get free printing, which is extremely useful and valuable.

Warm Forest Giveaway Winner

Designers can now have a complete, professional Flash site up quickly without knowing any ActionScript. Warm Forest offers super-customizable Flash Templates made specifically for designers. Easily customize all aspects of the site - from adding your own logo to changing all the colors - without even owning Flash. All sites are designed with a strong focus on typography, grids and usability. The ActionScript source code is included so designers with an interest in Flash can learn how a professional, best practices following Flash site is put together.

3 Do or Die Graphic Design Business Tips

There are a lot of things that can turn an exciting new design project into a nightmare for a graphic design business. Many graphic design businesses have experienced these issues below, including myself. The best way to avoid stress and problems with clients is to educate yourself about what can go wrong ahead of time and take steps to protect your yourself.