At some point you may have heard your programmer friends talking about a tool called Subversion. What is it? why do you need it and how can it impact your work as a designer?
SVN FOR DSGN
Subversion was started in 2000 as an effort to write a free version control system which operated much like the paid solutions of the time. It is used to maintain current and historical versions of files such as source code, web pages, and documentation. It’s goal is to be a mostly-compatible successor to the widely used Concurrent Versions System (CVS).
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JonGos in Design | 2 Comments »
I love Photoshop but a good designer will learn new programs just for the sake of remaining relevant in this ever changing field. That said, here are five up-coming programs that are challenging the Photoshop throne.
JonGos in Photoshop | No Comments »
Adobe has dominated the design software market for close to two decades now. Their kingpin is Photoshop which, in the past decade, has grown to include support for 3D modeling, video and web design. So what can we expect from the next generation of Photoshop?
Well, no one is sure yet but the new features in some of the products in Adobe’s may provide some insight as to what the future holds.
Adobe has just announced that the newest versions of several Creative Suite titles, namely, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, and Soundbooth, can now be downloaded for a test run. There’s a catch. If you’re not currently using the CS3 versions of Dreamweaver and Fireworks, the trial period for these programs will end within 48 hours. Otherwise you can request serial numbers to use them during Adobe’s prerelease period.
Adobe has just announced that the newest versions of several Creative Suite titles, namely, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, and Soundbooth, can now be downloaded for a test run.
There’s a catch. If you’re not currently using the CS3 versions of Dreamweaver and Fireworks, the trial period for these programs will end within 48 hours. Otherwise you can request serial numbers to use them during Adobe’s prerelease period.
JonGos in Design, Photoshop | No Comments »
If you offer web design or graphic design services at some point you’re going to need a price chart or service list so that potential clients can see what you’re all about. In this multi-part tutorial I’ll show you how to make one in Photoshop and then mark it up for XHTML. Then I’ll let you download the files to double check your work. You should download some grunge brushes and textures before hand, I used textures from Bittbox.com and these brushes from photoshopbrushes.com.
In “Designing and Coding a Wordpress Theme From Scratch” I gave an overview, start-to-finish, on how to turn a Photoshop design into a fully functioning Wordpress theme. There are many methods for getting from Photoshop to XHTML, however. Here are some of the ones I used in that tutorial and a few new ones that you may not be aware of.
Since I began blogging about design for profit I’ve learned a few things about myself and about blogging. There’s more to it than just stating your mind, when you’re doing it for money essentially you’re working for the public and your job is to be as accurate, as helpful and consistent as possible.
A common misconception is that you don’t need many tools if you’re using Photoshop or other computer based design applications. While you may not need as many as non-computer based designers, I think a case can be made for keeping an arsenal of art supplies around. Maybe it’s the former SCAD student in me talking but here is a breakdown of the non-software products I use in my workflow.
Image heavy websites have one problem: load time. So if you’re designing a Wordpress theme that relies heavily on images like one made in Photoshop, you want to do everything you can to increase speed. a) You want the images to display as shortly after the text does as possible and b) you want to do everything to help users on slower connections.
One way to do this is with javascript, the other way is with CSS.
JonGos in Design, JavaScript, Photoshop, WordPress | No Comments »
We’ve just started our first Wordpress theme! In Part 1 and Part 2 we reviewed some techniques that will allow our design to be marked up to XHTML. In this lesson you’ll learn exactly how to do this and why it isn’t exactly as easy as it seems.
Photoshop to XHTML in 24 Hours
So we’ve all seen those ads for websites that say they can “Photoshop to XHTML/CSS in X Ammount of time” right? No? well here’s 39 of them. What exactly are these service doing that you can’t as the theme designer? Nothing. If you feel so inclined, save yourself the fee (usually around $100 or so dollars) and do it yourself!
JonGos in Design, General, PHP, Photoshop, WordPress | No Comments »
Designing your first Wordpress theme may seem incredibly ambitious at first but it’s really not that hard. It may help your understanding of Wordpress if you find a theme you like and disect or remix it. This is how I learned to code and one of my first attempt was a variation of Derek Punsalan’s theme The Unstandard.In Part 1 I talked a bit about the tools you’ll need and how to get prepared. Now that you’ve done that we’re going to get started.
Layout and Structure
This post by 37 Signals is an incredibly detailed account of how to organize information and using sketches to design for the web. I highly recommend taking a break to read it. As mentioned in the post sketching out the general layout of your site will help you. For my design I started with this sketch:
JonGos in Design, PHP, Photoshop, WordPress | 4 Comments »
