Design tips: Photoshop brushes

When you don't have that creativity to create some artistic shapes, eye catchy images, there are lot of things you can do but maybe there are some people who just get stuck... (well, sometimes i'm one of them so don't feel bad)

I just want to tell you about this amazing web site

Brusheezy

it's got bunch of cool, amazing brushes for FREE.

If you use these with those little design tricks you should be able to create those colorful, artistic, eye catching images that you see all over TV (MTV, etc), Web in no time.

Web 2.0 Design Tips (by SitePoint.com)

i've just looked at web 2.0 design tips by sitepoint.com

Image discussing

everyone know about drop shadows by now but there are more to design and i think this is one of simple yet effective way of presenting.

You see diagonal lines there on the background and why do you think that this is there? what is it that the designer wanted to achieve? yes, she wanted that sun (or star or however you want to call it) to catch your eye.

generally when you want to make things pop you could..
create drastic color/contrast/hue difference between background and foreground.(like using opposite colors from color wheel)

for example..
1. draw borders
2. drop shaddow, glow and similar effects made available by photoshop, fireworks and other graphics software.
3. just pick colors..

well this one was combination of all of them actually but one that caught my eyes was that use of pattern to make the color look darker, which kept the color but now the back ground is more like a background than if you had just a solid or simple gradation.

she created more distinct separation by putting something without any pattern on something with pattern.

back in the days when you could only do black and white probably this technique was the only way but nowadays you just don't see this often. So i thought it's worth mentioning.
but you do want to think when to use, and when not to.. like if that was behind some texts, it will make texts hard to read.



The article itself

sitepoint.com has been publishing nice books and tutorials so check them out when you have time.