Design Chair Blog » Articles

The Best Design Tutorials Of May 2011

timothyblake — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Another exciting month in terms of great new high quality tutorials. This post is an overview of tutorials which have been added to the website in the past month which consider to be the best.

Create a Vibrant Abstract Vector Design Illustrator

Follow this step by step Illustrator tutorial to create a vibrant abstract design. We’ll put Illustrator’s Gradient Mesh tool to use to create a colourful shape, then build up layers of objects to create an abstract design with lots of vibrancy, bright colours and transparency effects.

How to Create a Location Map Icon in Photoshop

In this tutorial you will be using Adobe Photoshop to create a modern map with dropped pin icon.

Lighting and Decoration Techniques for Manipulation in Photoshop

In this tutorial, I will show you the methods I use frequently in Quick and Effective Lighting and Decoration Tips for Photo Manipulation in Photoshop. This is a beginner level tutorial with lots of tips and tricks about effective photo manipulation.

Create a Burning, Vector Match Using Gradient Meshes

In this tutorial you will learn how to create realistic vector fire, using the Gradient Mesh Tool and Screen Blending mode. Believe me, there’s nothing overly complicated.

How To Create An Espresso Machine Icon Inside Adobe Illustrator

In this Illustrator tutorial IT will guide you through the process of creating an espresso maker icon using simple illustration techniques

Quick Tip: How to Create a Gummy Text Effect

In the following tutorial you will learn to create a gummy text effect. Perfect for illustrative designs, you will create a cute and fun lettering effect using the Offset Path function and various other coloring techniques.

How to create illustrator full spectrum spirograph

I should point out that this is just one way of how you can create these kind of compositions. I’m sure there are other techniques as well. This shape is inspired by Andy’s creation and recreated for education purposes only.

Insight Into The Supporters Behind Our Design Blog – April

timothyblake — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 09:59:48 +0000

I thought it would be a good idea to take out some time to thank our sponsors for helping support Design Chair throughout April, their support is immensely appreciated.

Over at Design Chair we currently charge only $10 per ad which last 30 days. $10 for an ad is not a large sum it’s just so we can still be capable of pumping out the best and freshest design tutorials and resources, without worry of finding money to support our over head costs such as paying for hosting etc. We are always welcoming new sponsors who may be interested within advertising their website, services or even sponsors who just want to help support the site.

Here’s an insight into the company’s which are currently supporting design chair.

Heart Internet

With many features other web hosts charge for free at Heart Internet, our unlimited hosting and powerful dedicated server hosting are the logical choice for webmasters of all sizes. Our market leading reseller account has been designed with web designers and developers in mind, offering a completely white label and customizable reseller hosting environment.
Heart Internet customers have a real impact on our business and products with over 1,000 customer ideas and suggestions implemented to date. Using the feedback form within their control panel hundreds of suggestions are sent every week and we read every single one of them.

Vector Pack

Vectorpack.net, a small design studio providing high-quality stock vectors and design elements. Our young and passionate designers are very glad to present you their hard work that stands behind these very detailed and professional looking vectors. Our intention is to always maintain a very high quality standard so as to make our vector art the best solution for all your design needs.

Wait

Wait.co.uk is a brand new, content writing service based in the UK. We offer content writing services for UK web site owners, developers and site designers who simply haven’t got the time to write their own content. This then gives web site owners and designers more time to dedicate their efforts to making money from their projects.

Would you like to become one of sponsors? Here’s how.

Check out Buy Sell Ads Page and you check out our current ad zones which we have available to purchase, and can have your ad live on Design Chair within a few minutes.

Do You Enjoy Awesome Design Tutorials ? Join Us On Facebook

timothyblake — Sat, 19 Mar 2011 00:00:52 +0000

Communicating and sharing high quality design resources with our readers over at Design Chair is high in our list of priorities. We thought it would only be right to create a second home for Design Chair readers where we can share even more design tutorials, articles and great freebies.

Join us on facebook and become part of Design Chair facebook community. So why not press little gray button below. :

The Best Design Tutorials From March 2010

timothyblake — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 00:00:49 +0000

This is monthly collection of design tutorials which will featured as our favourite design tutorials through march, which is great collection of Photoshop and illustrator tutorials.

Create a Stunning Retro Futuristic Typography Effect

In this tutorial, you will learn some really cool techniques to help you achieve a few aspects of Retro Futurism. You will be learning a lot of concepts, tips and tricks in Illustrator. You’ll also learn how to add the futuristic look using Photoshop. This is a very detailed tutorial so, i request you to maintain your composure throughout

How To Build a Vector Clock Graphic in Illustrator

If you’re looking to develop your Illustrator skills, here’s a tutorial for you! Follow this walkthrough to see the how adding layer after layer of vector shapes, along with a range of gradients and a spot of texture can quickly create a great looking icon-style clock graphic.

Create a Powerful Mental Wave Explosion Effect

In this tutorial, It will show you how to create a crazy explosion, like a mix of Magneto’s ability with Peter Petrelli’s power. You will use images and filters to produce this wave explosion effect. Even though it may look like a difficult tutorial, it’s really not that hard.

An Beautiful Illustrator’s Project: From Start to Finish

This tutorial is more of a walkthrough where she share general tips and tricks of starting and finishing an illustration project rather than a tutorial in making a particular illustration—let me say now that it’s not that kind of tutorial. It’s also important to note that I’m using Adobe CS4, so some features that she discusses here may not be present to you if you have an older version.

How to Make a High-Impact Fashion Poster in Photoshop

In this tutorial, you are going to learn how to use shapes and other objects to create a unique fashion poster scene. Utilizing Adobe Photoshop shapes is an awesome means for improving your designs and they can easily be used without spending too much time on them. The results of using shapes can be completely different every time depending on various factors such as what shapes you use, how many you use, and how you apply them to your work.

Create a Digital Camera With Wooden Accents Using Photoshop

As designers, we occasionally need digital versions of electronic devices to use in our designs. All to often however, we find that the device we need doesn’t actually exist in the format that we need. In times like those, having experience building realistic-looking electronic devices in Photoshop can be a real life-saver. In this tutorial you will learn how to draw a digital camera using Photoshop.

How to Create Beautiful Realistic, Vector Bubbles

In this tutorial You will learn how to create realistic colorful bubbles. You will cover numerous techniques and build this illustrations step by step. Set aside a couple hours for this one!

Create The Face Of A Greedy Monkey In Illustrator

This tutorial will help you create a simple illustration of a monkey face. It uses the Ellipse Tool, the Pen Tool, the Rectangle Tool, the Crystallize Tool or the Gradient Tool. For the the shadow effects you’ll use some classic effects like the Inner Glow or the Gaussian Blur.

Creating A Fantastic Fantasy Night Sky In Photoshop

This tutorial it will show you how to create cartoon-style clouds using Photoshop and a bit of Illustrator.

An Underwater Content Box Design Using Photoshop

In this tutorial It will teach you how to create an underwater content box. You will make it appear as if the content box fell into the water using stock photos and different techniques.

How To Create A Very Attractive Vector Butterfly

In this tutorial IT will show you how to make a vector butterfly using the blending mode from transparency box and the gradient mesh. The techniques shown in this tutorial will help you make shades on objects and liquid transition of colors. Believe me it is very easy.

Introducing Design Blog Design Chair and New Redesign

timothyblake — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 00:00:53 +0000

Design Chair has been running for a through months now and its only right that we match good content with a good design, therefore we have decide to give Design Chair A make over by applying some tweaks here and there to our old design to make a more fresh appealing design for our users.

If this is your first time coming across Design Chair it’s the perfect website for designers offering daily Photoshop and illustrator tutorials also high quality design resources such as brushes and vectors.

Old Redesign

This is just a short refresh to remind you of what Design Chair use to look like before we undertook a redesign of the site.

The New Design Chair

This is what the new Design Chair currently looks like.

1. Logo

The logo on the first Design Chair was floating about 300px below the top corner, we decided to place the logo on the top left corner therefore so it’s the first image which the user will see once they visit Design Chair and try to make the logo instantly recognisable to user by applying a glow to it to make it stand out a bit more.

2. Changed 3d flags

We use to have 3d flags which where a range of different colours for each 3D flag dependent upon what category it was it would be a different colour. We now decide to keep all the colours for headers displaying categories the same colour and instead we use small icons to represent what specific category is i.e. if category is Photoshop a small Photoshop icon.

3. Background image

The background was a dark black before which after I felt didn’t quite work with the colour combination. We experimented with various types of different colours when looking for our new background and decide to go with this blue grey colour then applied some Photoshop filters to the background to make it look less generic and a bit more unique.

4. Post previews background image

Post previews background image was a bit poorly designed last time but the new preview image is a big improvement minimalistic simple look with a drop shadow under the preview image.

Looking for Design Chair sponsors

Our main focus on Design Chair isn’t to make huge amounts of money but we have a few advertising spots at cheap rates just in order to cover hosting costs which would be great to help support Design Chair to help it grow bigger and better. The advertisement spots can be brought directly from buy and sell ads.

Thanks To Our Sponsors And Readers For Their Support

timothyblake — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 19:02:13 +0000

A post dedicated to our sponsors and readers for their support with our blog Design Chair. Since we launched our blog section for Design Chair we keep getting great positive feedback from our readers so we would like to say thank you and watch this space for more great content.

Thanks to our sponsor Heart Internet

A special thank you to our Sponsor, Heart Internet’s which is a Reseller Professional account is every Internet professional’s dream. Specially tailored for web designers, Internet integrators, web hosting resellers and developers, their Reseller package includes unlimited web space, unlimited bandwidth and the ability to host unlimited domains at no extra charge!

How you can become a sponsor

To become one of our sponsors its pretty simple and can be done via our buy and sell ads page which gives you more detail on sponsors/advert spots available on Design Chair. The perks of becoming one of our sponsors are that you will be featured on two sites for the price of one.

How to check out our latest sponsors

To check our latest sponsors and the valuable services which they offer its really simple all you need do is click our sponsor spots in the sidebar of the site.