Exciting business card design

f1-steering-wheel-business-card-thumbnail

This is an illustration I did for a business card which I designed and created in Illustrator and Photoshop for a motorsports development fund. Rather than the standard old 86.6 mm by 53.98 mm rectangular thing they asked for a graphic representation of a Formula One steering wheel. It’s great when clients come up with [...]

Turn your client’s photos into beautiful images

A-client's-portrait-as-a-beautiful-photoshop-image-example-1

The problem Err, sorry, the challenge. How many times does this happen? You have an otherwise beautiful design and your client insists on including pictures of people who’s images weren’t taken by one of the world’s best photographers. This is a reoccurring hitch; we have to include pictures of the CEO, the MD, the whoever, [...]

Designing for the digital grapevine

digital grapevine social web 2

Web 2.0 in design and marketing This is an image I made to try to explain the digital grapevine: A network of users that interact to answer questions, solve problems and have fun or the trend in the use of the internet and web design that enhances creativity, information sharing and collaboration among users that [...]

American flag inside country map outline

American flag inside country map outline

A while ago I did an article explaining how to create a country’s flag inside its map outline and I used as an example the Australian map and flag. I’ve since had a lot of interest from Australians who wanted to use the image so I thought I’d do one for Americans as I get [...]

How to put one image inside another image

forest inside a woman's face

There is an ad campaign in London at the moment for Portuguese tourism. You can see 48-,24- and 16-sheet adverts in the tube with giant portraits of famous Portuguese celebrities (Cristiano Ronaldo, José Mourinho) with a landscape showing through the image. Something similar to this effect that can be achieved with only a few clicks [...]

Changing an image to match your design’s colours

woman on beach different colors

You have a great photo. You have a great design. One problem: the photo doesn’t “go” with the design. The solution is to change the image in Photoshop to more accurately match the colour scheme of the design or, more commonly, to match the client’s or brand’s colours. In the above example the final image [...]

How to design psychedelic pop art

Jimi Hendrix psychedelic pop art

I made this image of one of my favourite guitarists, Jimi Hendrix. He is associated with flamboyant clothing and psychedelic colourful artwork on his album covers and guitars so I tried to make this image as vibrant as possible. To do this I followed the basic techniques of pop art that I’ve used before. Only [...]

Using Photoshop channels to create cool montages

davos-connected

A client of mine was illustrating an article about the World Economic Forum whose annual meeting is usually held in scenic Davos in Switzerland. My client was keen to stress the importance of interconnectivity within both the forum and the wider business community and gave me an image of connected wires of light to marry [...]

How to design a 3d box or cube in Photoshop

sun-cube

I created this image to represent the idea of “Energy in a Box”. The secret of making a box in Photoshop is to use guides and enabling the Snap to Guides feature to make sure everything looks as it should do. I started with selecting a 2d side (or sides) for the box. I chose [...]

Design stylized images with Photoshop and Illustrator

stylized-model-face-(1)

The image above has been stylised in Photoshop and Illustrator. To trace a photo in Adobe Illustrator, go File > Place and select the photo you want to trace. I find it useful to then lock this picture layer in the Layers palette and click on the New Layer icon to make sure your trace [...]

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