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Graphic Design Tagged Blog Posts

Lessons Learned: Going to Mobile Website Development

Posted on 07/08/2013 at 12:39 pm | Viewed 17,490 times | 0 comments

I've recently taken the plunge and learned about CSS Media Queries and Responsive Web Design.  We launched a new ordering site and made the whole website, including the checkout process, mobile-friendly.  It's really opened up my eyes to the possibilities of mobile web design.  I started out wondering why responsive web design was all the rage, now I prefer to order and checkout using the new Site Avenger mobile shopping templates.  It's pretty easy to retrofit with an existing Site Avenger website and all new E-Commerce websites have the option of being mobile-friendly from the start.

Smooth Gradients in Photoshop

Posted on 10/24/2012 at 10:16 am | Viewed 14,402 times | 0 comments

Every now and then, when I look really close at a design in Photoshop, I see that one of my color gradient layers looks really bad.  I didn't know what this was called, until I searched around for how to get smooth gradients in Photoshop. 

Best Way To Get Transparent PNGs Without Any Hacks

Posted on 10/21/2012 at 10:27 am | Viewed 13,564 times | 0 comments

I avoided PNG images for quite a while, mainly because I could accomplish almost every task with transparent GIFs (if not, I could change the design ever so slightly).  Fast forward a few years and web designs are far too complex and textured to only use transparent GIFs, plus it's so much cooler to say "ping" than "gif".  Another reason I avoided using transparent PNGs was due to the ability to make IE (Internet Explorer) crash (suprise!).  Finally, I avoided using PNG images on my website because their filesize was ridiculous (what I could do in 10kb using a Gif, would take 71kb as a PNG).

12 Essential Photoshop Keyboard Shortcuts

Posted on 12/21/2009 at 05:05 pm | Viewed 12,131 times | 0 comments

I remember about 7 years ago watching my friend use Adobe Illustrator.  He was a communications design major and used his keyboard more than his mouse.  I was blown away when I realized how much time you could save by learning keyboard shortcuts for Adobe's products.  This is my list of the best Adobe Photoshop keyboard shortcuts for web designers.

Fixing the Default HP OfficeJet Scanner Settings (which suck)

Posted on 05/28/2009 at 11:11 pm | Viewed 12,822 times | 0 comments

The default settings for my OfficeJet L7500 All-In-One Scanner suck!  I thought the scanner was junk.  Every photo I scanned, espcially glossy finished photos, were coming out looking like they were from a 1960s era camera: over-exposed and super high contrast.  Not good!  I thought I had good Photoshop skills, but even they were no match for the over-exposed mess that HP was sending into Photoshop.

Best Tiny Font for Web Graphics

Posted on 04/28/2009 at 05:03 pm | Viewed 14,039 times | 0 comments

I finally found the perfect font for making really small, yet readable text in web graphics.  I've played around with plenty of fonts and usually arrive at a reasonable result.  In the past I would use Eurostyle with enough spacing to make it legible.  Now, I have a new go-to font for small typeface.  Introducing Silkscreen.

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