Archive for the ‘Design’ Category

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My question on Bittbox.com

Thursday, February 26th, 2009

I wish I could say I’m an expert Adobe Illustrator user, but unfortunately, I’m not, but I’m learning. One of the way’s I’m learning is by asking questions to people who are experts (or what they call “Ninja’s”, “Guru’s” and “Rockstars” nowadays).

Jay Hilgert from Bittbox.com is one of those guys, expert in the field.
He had an “Ask Bittbox” question round on Illustrator and Photoshop on Twitter, so I sent in my question, and it got posted on Bittbox.com

2) deluzione asks:

How do I convert and illy doc from 72dpi to 300?

Answer:

Good question. This is one of those settings that you would think you should be able to find under “Document Setup,” since it’s a setting you choose every time you create a “new” document. However, our friends at Adobe thought it should be in a different place. You’ll find the “Document Raster Effects Settings” under the “Effects” menu.

illustrator_raster_settings_1

Just change your setting to 300dpi, and click OK.

illustrator_raster_settings_2

Read the the rest of the questions on Bittbox.com

Thanks again, Jay!

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Posted in Design | No Comments »

Amateur to Professional, Improving Client Images With Photoshop

Monday, February 9th, 2009

I made a video tutorial, or a quick tip rather, for The Web Squeeze. This is the result:

One of the most difficult issues is figuring out how to use less than perfect photos sent from clients for their website. This tutorial explains how to improve an image in Photoshop using the lasso tool a little feathering as well as hue and saturation. Within minutes you will go from having an amateur photo to one that is very professional.

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Posted in Design, Tutorials | No Comments »

Tutorial: Ai – Create a square with 2 rounded edges

Friday, December 12th, 2008

Another tutorial. This time with audio!

This video will show you how to make a square with 2 rounded egdes corners in Illustrator. (Somebody had to rain on my parade, and tell me it’s not “rounded egdes”, but “rounded corners”. Oh well, I think you know what I meant :) )

Notes: Topic I’m talking about in the video on The Web Squeeze.


Square with 2 rounded edges – Illustrator – Tutorial from Mark Poppen on Vimeo.

(If I pronounce things weird, or if a sentence is backwards, that’s because english is not my first language :) )

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Posted in Design, Tutorials | 10 Comments »

Where did my slippers go?

Tuesday, October 28th, 2008
My wooden shoes.

My "wooden" shoes.

… oh, here they are :)

Niki asked designers to submit our shoes to make a blog-post out of it. As I kinda had a feeling where this was going to (colorful designer shoes), I thought I’d submit something different.

When I moved to Canada with my wife, my aunt gave us a little present at the airport, just before boarding the plane. Fluffy slippers in the shape of wooden shoes. Mine has an image of my provincial flag, and my wife got a pair with an image of a Dutch windmill.

Anywho, I made it in another list :)

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Posted in Design, Uh.. Category? | 2 Comments »

Death to IE6 #2

Wednesday, October 22nd, 2008
IE6 must die.

IE6 must die.

In this post I already told you how much I hate IE6, and I’m not the only one, so I decided to stop squirming around it, and simply stop designing around it, unless a client pays extra.

This might be useful for some of you out there who also want to avoid the agony of IE6. I recently started using this code, and so far it works pretty good.

In the <head> of your HTML:

<!–[if IE 6]>
<style type=”text/css”>
#ie6 {
display: block;
}
</style>

In the <body>, before anything else:

<div id=”ie6″>It seems you’re using an old browser. In order to view this site correctly, we advise you to <a href=”http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/ie/default.mspx”>upgrade your browser</a>, or try the free <a href=”http://www.mozilla.com/firefox”>Mozilla Firefox</a>.
</div> <!– end #ie6 –>

And finally in your .CSS file:

#ie6 {
font: normal 12px Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
color: #333333;
background: #FFFF66;
display: none;
}

This way a yellow bar telling people to upgrade their browser shows up when somebody is using IE6. In any other browser it will be hidden.

You can use/edit/redistribute this piece if you like. Any comments are also welcome.

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Posted in Design, HTML, Internet | 16 Comments »

RotateCanvas.com

Thursday, October 9th, 2008

I was working on a little project for a while called RotateCanvas. When I bought the domain I wanted to use it as a design blog. That worked out for a while, but I found out that writing tutorials were very time-consuming, so I kind of lost interest for a while. I had a spark of insanity (awesome DVD by the way), and I started jotting down some ideas for a new purpose for the domain.

I came up with a digital design galery, so not just for websites built with CSS. You can also add logo’s you’ve created for example. I also wanted to add comments in to help give the designer some pointers of where the design could be better, or just an “I love this design” works too.
Also I wanted a little competition in it. Not to win prizes, but just for kicks, so I added a rating/top10 to it.

Anyway, after a lot of tweaks (and I’m not done yet), RotateCanvas.com went live, and so far, a bunch of great designers added their designs already.

If you have a design online somewhere, please DO send it in, and I’ll put it up.

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Posted in Design, Internet | 1 Comment »

Photoshopped cat

Saturday, September 27th, 2008

I love (at least) 2 things: Photoshop and cats. This picture is a bit of both worlds! It says: “It’s only a cat that will appear on millions of bags of cat food, it doesn’t have to look perfect”… Can you figure out what’s wrong with this picture? (The answer is after the jump)

(more…)

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Posted in Design | 3 Comments »

Business cards

Wednesday, September 17th, 2008

Brian Yerkes has an awesome post about business cards for web designers, so I guess I’ll post mine up here too.
The logo is drawn in Illustrator, the rest of the design is done in Photoshop. It actually matches the website, which is of course crucial for branding.

Here it is:

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Posted in Design | 3 Comments »

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