Archive for the ‘Web Design’ Category

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    Emerging Print and Web Designers

    March 12th, 2010 - by Jeff Wagner

    Recently I attended an AIGA meeting (The Professional Association for Design) that was focused on tools for “Emerging Designers” to help them with their portfolios and web presence. The meeting was held at Mono, a very well known and renown agency in Minneapolis, MN.

    The AIGA provided three very creative and very informative speakers
    Carl Schultze, Evan Stremke, and Aaron Shekey. Each speaker talked about a few tools that they use on a regular basis that helps promote some of their work.


    Carl Schultze

    Carl Schultze, an extremely talented print and web designer, shared with everyone a tool he uses for his own personal online portfolio called Cargo Collective. Cargo Collective is a very simple web publishing (CMS) platform that allows designers to upload their work to the web and use a variety of different templates to display their creativity. Cargo allows for some customization as well if you’re handy in HTML and CSS. I thought it was a great tool for those you aren’t too comfortable creating their own personal portfolio and to upload a new project takes literally seconds (I timed Carl and he did it in 52.8 seconds).


    Evan Stremke

    Evan Stremke, our second speaker, is a huge fan of Cargo as well and uses it regularly. He also talked about a very slick print publishing tool called Issuu. Issuu will take your print designs (pdf’s) and publish them in a very nice interactive flip magazine online. You can then embed the code for your publications on to your website or your Cargo Collective account. Evan also mentioned that he was a fan of Tumblr, a very easy to use service for blogging.


    Aaron Shekey

    Aaron Shekey, the final speaker, a young and very creative web designer talked about his love with WordPress. Yet another CMS (Content Management System) that is very popular as a blogging tool but is very exandable and can be used as a complete website management tool. WordPress has such a following of developers that create so many different templates and plugins that you can use. It’s really, I feel, the best option as a free CMS. Aaron also shared a very cool plugin called Flutter. Flutter is a feature rich WordPress CMS plugin that focuses on easy templating for the developer and simplifies content management for the admin by creating custom write panels that can be fully customized (radio buttons, file uploads, image uploads, checkboxes, etc).

    After the presenters were done AIGA provided pizza and refreshments for everyone and gave us time to mingle with the speakers, Mono staff and other designers that were attending. If you’re a member of the AIGA you really should be taking advantage of these meetings. Even if you aren’t a member, like me, you’re more than welcome to join at a very small fee (this one was $15). I had a great time and I look forward to attending future AIGA meetings.

    For more information on upcoming events sponsored by the AIGA checkout their website at: http://minnesota.aiga.org/events

    Tags: , , , , ,
    Posted in Events, Print Design, Web Design | No Comments »

    3D Web Design Experience

    February 21st, 2010 - by Jeff Wagner

    Avatar

    I finally got around to taking in the
    3D Avatar digital experience over the weekend and the movie did not disappoint. I, like everyone else, was completely blown away from the CGI (Computer-Generated Imagery) creativity that was put into this movie. When James Cameron creates a movie he does it really big and he is sure to be rewarded for his efforts when awards are to be handed out. The 3D designs were outstanding and really gets the crowd more involved in the movie when animals seem to be running/flying out of the screen right at you.

    As I was walking out of the movie theater I
    started thinking of 3D website designs, off the
    top of my head I could only come up with a couple that really stuck out. Why weren’t there more that came to mind? One of the reasons probably is that I rarely build fully Flash websites because of my obsession with usability, accessibility and simplicity. You lose most of this when building in Flash but you do gain amazing 3D possibilities. So, I went out and did a little looking around and found some sites that have great 3D web experiences and 3D Photoshop tutorials that I wanted to share with you.

    3D Websites

    3D Photoshop & Illustrator Tutorials
    Here is a great collection of 3D tutorials (by Smashing Magazine) that is sure to add some great 3D depth and creativity to your web designs. I use a lot of these types of elements in my designs to help the user more willingly engage and interactive with my websites.

    If you know of any other 3D websites out there that are worth mentioning please share them in a comment below.

    Tags: , ,
    Posted in Flash, Web Design | 2 Comments »

    Better web designs with these Photoshop Tutorials

    November 22nd, 2009 - by Jeff Wagner

    Most of my web design work is done in Photoshop and I’m always looking for new and creative ways to make my designs stand out. Over time you learn very handy photo manipulation techniques that really allow you to make different aspects of your work pop.

    I’ve posted a collection of links to great Photoshop tutorials that I think designers would find very beneficial. These tutorials will help push you to be even more creative with your designs.


    Photoshop Tutorials

    Photoshop Tutorials

    Enjoy.

     

    Tags: , ,
    Posted in Print Design, Web Design, Web Tutorials | No Comments »

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