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 [...]

A gritty, grainy, reportage look and feel to photos

gritty-grainy-effect

The above picture of a couple has been treated in Photoshop to give it a gritty, grainy, reportage look. This has also been described as the “Dave Hill effect” after a Californian commercial photographer (not the guitarist from Slade) although, of course, this won’t be his exact method. It immediately looks like a serious photo [...]

How to design sound waves in Illustrator

sound-waves

This is a nice little trick using Illustrator’s Blend option. To create perfect sine-waves – or something very close – first of all, draw a line. Then go Filter > Distort > Zig Zag… and choose the number and height of waves you want (remembering to click the smooth radio button, otherwise you’ll get a [...]

Creating a country’s flag inside its map outline

australia-map-flag

Quite often I’m looking for a simple iconic device to represent a country without having to just reproduce the flag alone. So, as you can see above, why not put the flag inside the country’s shape. Also, it’s free! It’s relatively easy to find a country’s flag and shape on the internet and tracing the [...]

How to create paper, receipts or newspaper with torn edges

receipt

I was asked by a client to present their final figures in a pitch they were doing in the form of a receipt. I thought it was quite a nice little Photoshop trick and a nice idea. Here’s how. Draw the outline of the receipt, or piece of paper, with the Pen Tool (P), and [...]

How to design shiny interface buttons in Illustrator

go-icon-button

These little buttons take a few seconds to make in Illustrator and give a nice polished, “web 2.0″ feel to a website or interactive environment. Firstly, when creating this shiny effect in Illustrator remember to make the document RGB. Go File > Document Color Mode > RGB. It won’t work otherwise. Many thanks to Simon [...]

How to design a cool web 2.0 button in Illustrator and Photoshop

button-ai

An earlier tutorial on how to make a shiny button in Illustrator using the Opacity Mask feature can be improved upon greatly by adding a sexy brushed steel surrounding ring to your amber jelly button! As previously explained, the shiny “web 2.0″ button look can be made by placing a circle with a linear black-to-white [...]

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