How to Improve Picture Quality in Photoshop

face

Every designer knows that sometimes your clients will give you awful photos to work with. But when this happens there are many things you can do to improve the picture quality in Photoshop. Images can be improved by increasing contrast, increasing saturation, cropping and by employing a host of other Photoshop tricks. Increasing contrast Increasing [...]

Essentials of great blog post design

blog-birds-telephone-lines-thumb

Blogs are, in my opinion, the easiest and best way to get stuff on the web. With a blog you can publish constantly updated information about yourself, your company or your interests to the world. And what makes it even better is that this information is chronologically ordered and categorized for search engines almost automatically. [...]

Creating icons and illustrations using custom brushes in Illustrator

simple bike icon thumbnail

If you ever need to create a simple but effective illustration or icon and are bored of the effect you are getting with just an outline, it may be an idea to use custom brushes in Illustrator to give your lines a bit of character. Here is a simple trace of a motorbike that was [...]

Adding images to a WordPress post

adding-images-to-a-wordpress-post

When writing a WordPress post it is extremely important to make it as visually appealing as possible. Visitors are much more likely to spend a bit of time on the page if it has a nice image and the text is laid out in a pleasing way. Images are important in terms of SEO. If [...]

Create a photo gallery on your WordPress blog with NextGEN Gallery

rihanna-pop-art-square

I wanted to add a photo gallery to this website quickly the other day and to do this I used the NextGEN Gallery plugin. It seemed to be generally well-received by the WordPress community and I wasn’t disappointed. I literally had my gallery up and running in five minutes! The plugin was created by Alex [...]

Changing the shape of a leaf in Photoshop

a seedling in earth in a pair of hands with leaves in the shape of the continent of Africa

I did this montage to illustrate marketing material that was highlighting Africa as a young and emerging economy. I had a photo of an ordinary seedling growing out of earth in someone’s hands. I created another layer of this picture (Cmd/Ctrl-J) and cloned out the seedling using the Rubber Stamp Tool (S). I then went [...]

Web design using JavaScript

Sarah Youren Planning Solicitors website

I’ve talked many times about the limitations of Flash. It’s issues with accessibility and SEO are two of the main ones. So if you want something to look a bit “flashy” on your website, always see if you can do it with JavaScript first. Simple and interactive image slideshow fader with JavaScript I got this [...]

How to design a color page magazine advertisement

Color-page-advertisement-sample

H’mm, well, I’m not going to explain everything about print advertising in one little blog post. However, having just supplied a page ad for a magazine I thought I’d explain a bit about the process I went through from the initial ideas to supplying the final artwork. Supplying initial ideas Some designers will tell you [...]

How to market yourself #7: How to write and design a WordPress page or post

wordpress icon on a blue blackground

Constantly updated quality content is the mainstay of any website or blog. I have already described how to set up a WordPress.org blog and what to write about when you have one. Here’s the “how to” for those new-ish to WordPress… There are three things to remember when you are writing: Make your text scannable! [...]

How to market yourself #5: How to optimize your WordPress site for search engines

web page with cursor

This is the fifth in the series where I explain how an individual or small or medium sized organization can get themselves noticed in the big bad world. Other installments explained how to set up a web site from scratch, how to install WordPress and what to write on your site. Before we commence a [...]

Download the free e-books "How to Market Yourself Online" & "Starting An Online Business"

How to get clients online and advice on starting up online!

  • Creating websites
  • Setting up WordPress
  • Writing blog posts
  • Getting links
  • Driving traffic to your site
  • Using social media
  • Getting clients
  • Getting found on Google
download icon
download button