Author Archive

PINKY & Web Design Index by Content 3

. General

PINKY & Web Design Index by Content 3

Recently I bought two book at Kinokuniya Malaysia, one is “Web Design Index by Content 3” and “PINKY” January 08 issue. “Web Design 3” is a reference book about nice and inspiring web designs that grouped in different categories with 500 great web design examples, while “PINKY” is a trendy magazine about the latest fashions, accessories and make up. During last year around the same time, I bought the same book too, but is “Web Design 2” and “PINKY” January 07 edition. It becomes an annual buying for me already.

Maybe you will feel stupid to buy “Web Design Index by Content 3”, because many of them already are not so new and there is tonnes of web design galleries out there. But I still feeling good that the gallery to be presented in a printed version, because I can get web design inspiration when I was away from computer or without Internet connection. Plus the examples shown inside are pretty good too. It provided me design inspiration and it is a nice book to have.

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Free font: Relato Sans

. Resources, Typography

Free font: Relato Sans

Font Shop had released a featured freebies of quality font called “Relato Sans” previewed above. According to Font Shop:

Relato Sans™ (Emtype®)

Relato Sans is the best of a fresh new breed of humanist sans serifs. Witness Eduardo Manso’s technical and artistic skill for yourself with this complimentary sampling of the complete OpenType family.

The font looks really great. So head yourself to the Font Shop’s free font page and register yourself to download the font! Read on if you are looking for more quality fonts.

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Super lists for web designers

. Resources, Web Design

Super lists for web designers

With the booming of the Internet, we came to a stage where information obtaining is so much convenient nowadays. Like web designers, using the web as main source of information and resources is a very natural thing. But, the information available out there is so much until I think it is impossible to bookmark and remember all those great sites. However with the existence of super lists, it makes the designers’ life much easier!

I stumbled upon 4 sites that collecting sites that links to useful resources, articles, and tutorials across different kinds of fields, for example CSS, color schemes inspiration, free stock images, fonts, gallery showcase, Photoshop tutorials and many many more. These 4 sites are a must bookmark for all web designers. Read on to get to know what 4 sites they are.

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Destroy the Web 2.0 look

. Inspiration, Web 2.0, Web Design

Destroy the Web 2.0 look

Until now, I’m still embracing the beauty of web 2.0 design: The glossy effect, the badges etc.. But the presentation of “Destroy the Web 2.0 Look” by Elliot Jay Stock has changed my perception and makes me understand even more about what is the real Web 2.0. Elliot presented this topic in FoWD event in New York and for people like me who couldn’t attend the event, there is a slideshow which I embeded below and PDF document for download.

He emphasize that “Web 2.0” is not a design aesthetic, and to encourage people to break with overused of the current web design trends. In the presentation there said that the characteristics of Web 2.0 that coined by Mr. Tim O’Reilly does not touch anything about design at all! So, don’t blindly use the style but use it with rational, and come out with own concept and design. Don’t follow the cliche and pursue something new!

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Spice up your design with 56 Photoshop layer styles

. Resources, Web Design

56 Photoshop layer styles

I had been working with Photoshop for more than a year and through out this year, I designed works by using this great tool, really can’t live without it. In Photoshop, the layer blending had been the most frequently used in most designs. By applying layer styles, the design won’t be flat and it looks good. I used a variety of style combination to achieve the desired result. And here, I decided to save all the styles that I created for backup purposes, as well as share out here!

Please view all the 56 layer styles bigger at the picture below. Most of the styles involve black, gray, and orange color, because these are the colors I used the most. Included also the styles that I used for creating the gaming window tutorial too. So feel free to download and play around with it! Also check out the following 10 places to get awesome deals for graphics and other design tools.

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Tutorial: Creating sleek gaming feel window

. Tutorial

Tutorial: Creating sleek gaming feel window

I’m working in a game production company, so I always wanted to design things that has the gaming feel in it. The gaming window I created here is actually inspired by one current hot racing game, so I decided to learn from it and shares it here. Well, it underwent some rounds of tweaks, and finally it became the one shown above.

Because this tutorial is involving a lot of layer styling and a texture, so I made a set of layer styles and the texture available for download. Besides, the final result PSD file also included too at the end of the post. So what are you waiting for, read on to learn the trick!

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Nice Site: Urban Soldierz 2

. Inspiration, Web Design

Nice Site: Urban Soldierz 2

Last few days back I stumbled upon Urban Soldierz 2 website and was attracted by its rich textured urban environment design. Urban Soldierz is a graffiti artist collective that born in Spain, and their artistic works were displayed in both old school graffiti to new school graphic design. Now consists of 12 members, Urban Soldierz try to be an urban artists platform. Their works are magnificent, so do the Urban Soldierz homepage too.

The website was dominated by brownish, sepia color scheme giving a very old school feel, and it has a very strong urban feel in it. Layout was based on urban elements like concrete wall, metals, barbed wires, bricks, torn papers, street lights, grungy texture… very rich of raw street sense. If your monitor resolution is not big, you can move your mouse to move up and down, left or right to view the full design of it. Basically the full look of the website is shown below.

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Site Update: Wider content space

. General

I always think that my content width is a little narrow, so I decided to remove the original space that occupied by the date, and add the date together with the content to make full use of the space (original Illacrimo template). Another thing I changed is I shrink the original 1000px wide of webpage to 980px, to cater the 1024*768 user.

So, what do you think, better or worse? Personally i feel is better, but I need your input, kindly cast your vote below, thanks!

Asao TOKOLO – master of modern pattern designs

. Art & Design, Japan

Asao TOKOLO - master of modern pattern designs

When the first time I saw his designs, the uniqueness of pattern design immediately draws my attention. Introducing Asao Tokolo. TOKOLO was born in 1969, and studied in architecture design. Now, he work as a part time lecturer in Musashino Art University. His most significant work of design is TOKOLO Pattern Magnet, which is one of the winner entry of Japanesque Modern Collection in 2006.

Japanesque Modern Collection is a collection of Japan made stuffs that uniting the traditional crafts, techniques and culture with the modern technology advancements, which can fit well in modern living lifestyle and also bring international competitive advantages to Japanese industrial works. The stuffs here can be in any genre, including product design, contents, services, systems, environmental and others. I think it is a great honor if one’s design was selected, so big congratulations to Asao Tokolo!

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The yokai of Gegege no Kitaro

. Japan

Gegege no Kitaro!

I recently watched a Japanese movie “Gegege no Kitaro” starring Wentz Eiji and Inoue Mao. The movie was originated from a manga which drawn by cartoonist Shigeru Mizuki in 1959. Recently yokai or supernatural creatures had gaining its popularity in Japan, and many yokai themed animated films were produced like “Dororo” and this movie.

You can read more about this movie from lunapark6.com review. The movie was good, with eye-candy casts as well as the variety of cute, funny and evil looking spirited creatures. I know some of the creatures since small, like the umbrella yokai (Kasa Obake) and sandal yokai (Bakezouri) shown picture below, because I had seen it in Doraemon comic and Ikkyu cartoon since small.

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