1stwebdesigner - Love In Design

40 Promotional Sites Where To Submit Your Design Related Links

Dainis Graveris — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 22:37:14 +0000

Since I use social bookmarking/voting sites to promote my articles a lot, I thought I might share these sites with You too - I know if You submit every article in each of these sites regularly, You’ll get many new and regular readers in short time period. I, for example, got 4,000-5,000 unique readers everyday using this method. Of course, there is also much more small and useful tips, but I think I’ll do that kind of article a little bit later.

And I know, there are few another similar articles, but at least for me, I want my own list, showing the more and less useful sites for me in diminishing order. Not all of sites are just for design related articles, but I couldn’t not to include those sites too, since they create so much traffic for me. Also if You use this technique, You get very strong backlinks which are good for SEO and Your site at first place, of course.

I marked social bookmarking/voting sites with registration required with “*” mark.

1. Stumbleupon *

If You get at least 15-20 Your article stumblers in short time period, You can get amazing amounts of traffic, so this is my number one pick. If You use FireFox, install StumbleUpon add-on to easily send Your links to friends.

2. DesignFloat *

3. DesignBump *

4. Vectortuts

5. Graphic-Design-Links *

Maybe for some people digg works much better, but my result are pretty average since i don’t have many regular readers for now.

You can add user link news there, but in order to do that, You must register there.

16. TheCreativityWall

17. CSSDrive

18. FuelYourCreativity

You can add user link news there, but in order to do that, You must register there.

These are sites that works simply great for me, I submit almost every article in all of these sites. I didn’t add any images, because I know if anybody will use this article as reference, big pictures will only disturb You.

Also if You are interested where to submit Your tutorials, I got huge article just for that section - 30 Useful Sites Where To Submit Your Tutorials. Enjoy!

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Academy Student Photoshop Works: Poster, Journal and Logotype

Dainis Graveris — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 19:17:07 +0000

Since I wrote an article and got really good feedback for creating new articles about my academy works, I talked with my course comrades and asked them to send their works to me, so I can show You these. I am talking about lection called as Photoshop where we got 3 exercises to create a new logotype, journal (both sides) and poster. So again thanks to my course comrades and here we got some great list with interesting works, different tastes, trends - just let me show You pictures, which can say more than words can do. Many works are created in Latvian language, so I think it’s useful for You just to check out composition, illustrations and something like that.

Session is finally over!

In this lesson (Photoshop) we had 3 exercises:

a)Poster creation

Need to be textual information on poster as real life example. Variations - can be brochure type home page or opening event poster.

b) New journal cover creation. Format, font and color selection need to be consistent to issue.

c) Logotype creation - must be created from name and surname initials and + sign, also can be a real work for company. Also should be created color variations or brand book.

That’s short explanation about our works, I think level is pretty high here, though we are in second course and this is more or less as inspirational article.

1. Marcuss Zilgalvis

a) Poster

b) 2 logotypes

2. Antija Jansevska

a)Poster

b) Journal ( both sides)

c) Logotype

3. Idea(ots)

a) Poster

b) Journal (both sides)

c) Logotype + business card examples

4. Arnolds Soms

Technique: 95% hand drawn stuff and 5% - Photoshop work

5. Diana Boksa

a) Poster

be) Journal (both sides)

6. Dasha Brolisha

a) Poster

b) Journal (both sides)

7. Julians Katkovskis

a) Journal (both sides)

b) Logotype

8. Kristiana Riekstina

a) Poster

b) Journal (both sides)

9. Oskars Pauga

a) Poster

b) Journal (both sides)

10. Ilva Sarkane

a) Poster

11. Karlis Zarins

a) 2 Posters

12. Agnese Ausekle

a) Poster

b) Journal (both sides)

13. Niklavs Trankalis

a) Poster

b) Journal

14. Dainis Graveris

And there is something also from my works as last.

a) 3 posters from me, th first one is created together with Marcuss Zilgalvis.

This one is created for real project in Latvia.

Just created for academy work at first.

b) Journal (both sides)

c) Logotype (final)

This is all I got for now, I hoped for more description about student works, but not everything turns out as imagined! Cheers! And thanks again!

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Sensational List Of 25 The Best Design Worldwide Forums

Dainis Graveris — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 16:24:32 +0000

Forums always are a great place to get answers to Your unclear questions about coding, designing, SEO, marketing, blogging much faster and clearer than just googling Your answer sometimes. Also it’s a great way to network with professionals in Your community or just people with the same interests. As a designer myself I felt in need with these kind of communities, maybe You’ll find these sites useful too. Participating in these forums not allows You to share Your knowledge with peers, but also allows to gain trust, for example, if You write a blog as I am - good user profile on popular forum linking to Your blog can be great marketing way.

1. Estetica Design Forum

There are several related forum categories like typography, photography, graphic design, print design, logo design & branding identity, general 3D and more.

Excellent graphic design forum with 15,580 threads, 157,326 posts and 6,975 members already.

2. All Graphic Design

Forum with design discussions, critiques and reviews, tutorials, challenges and more again - a huge graphic design community, You should be aware of.

99,822 total posts, 13,998 total topics and 6,894 total members

3. Your Design Forums

Maybe not very huge, but friendly design community with forums like graphic design, web design, photography, business and off-topic.

1,959 threads, 11,149 posts, 4,938 members, 1,873 active members.

4. Graphic Design Forum

Pretty large graphic design community with forum categories like graphic design, software, photography, community and each category is divided even deeper for example - software is divided in Adobe Products, Corel Products, Quark, 3D software and other software categories.

568,254 total posts, 39,463 threads and 23,636 total members

5. Graphic Design Forum.CO.UK

One more graphic design forum from England, community is pretty new, but people are very active there and You can get response fast for Your question and that’s the main reason for forums I think.

410 threads, 2,037 posts, 273 members, 86 active members.

6. Graphic-Forums.com

Graphic design related forum divided in sections like - general, showcase, learn, technical.

26,306 threads, 267,160 posts, 5,278 members

7. Steel Dolphin Forums

Categories: Art&Graphic Design showcases, help, jobs and freelance and the lounge.

6,356 threads, 47,489 posts, 20,439 members

8. Typophile

Typography related forum where You can get information and answers to Your type related questions, help, critique and more. A huge community. I cannot got precise data but there are more than 200, 000 posts over there - it can’t be bad!

9. Forums: Freelance.uk

This is forum for UK freelancers, however there are more sections related also to graphic design, web design, journalism, copyrighting, photography, pr&marketing and even CAD forum.

1,966 threads, 7,080 posts, 6,615 members, 2,946 active members.

10. Webmaster Forum (V7N)

Everything about marketing, blogging and web development.

102,149 threads, 988,877 posts, 55,174 members

11. SitePoint Forum

Very popular forum in design community covering aspects like graphic design, web design, hosting and managing site.

558,252 threads, 3,992,339 posts and 301,049 members.

12. Designer Talk

Large forum covering graphic design, web design, web development, SEO, advertising and more.

40,057 threads, 404,756 posts and 42,062 members.

13. Digital Point Forum

The biggest forum out there covering aspects like search engines, marketing, business, design&development, products and tools.

1,097,169 threads, 9,615,724 posts, 232,428 members, 60,423 active members.

14. WebDesignerForum.co.uk

Forum for every web designer covering all coding languages, SEO and even software like Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash etc.

There are 7,237 registered members, who made a total of 95,604 posts.

15. CSS Chat Forum

Chat about CSS aspects and if You have some question, You’ll get Your answer over there!

33,307, threads, 155,391 posts and 17,718 members.

16. CSS Beauty

There are almost 3,000 design, web standard, SEO and marketing related discussions out there.

17. DaniWeb

DaniWeb is a massive community of 463,376 software developers, web developers, Internet marketers, and tech gurus who are all enthusiastic about making contacts, networking, and learning from each other.

18. Kirupa

Community covering flash, visual studio, development art and design, careers and more.

272,060 threads, 2,065,550 posts and 133,068 members.

19. WTricks

This is the place to discuss about web design and development, read good tutorials and get free downloads.

4,590 threads, 33,302 posts and 1,445 members.

20. OZZU Webmaster Forum

At Ozzu you will find all types of information and resources that a professional webmaster, designer, programmer, developer, or web artist can use in their daily activities. Once you join you will be able to participate in competitions which help improve your skills, create new topics if you need help or have something interesting to tell others, respond to other threads, and interact with other members of our community! Friendly community!

60,932 threads, 451,706 posts and 35,874 members.

21. Webmaster Talk

Get in coding, graphic design, SEO, web administration and marketing talk right now!

143,040 threads, 769,187 posts and 71,328 members.

22. Australian InFront

Australian forum totally related to everything related to design.

36,007 threads, 313,451 posts and 18,986 members.

23. KillerSites

Graphic and design related community covering web design, programming, graphic design and digital photography.

10,683 threads, 59,895 posts and 9,013 members.

24. StyleGala

Discuss there about coding, CSS, web standards, graphic design, resources and everything related.

There are about 24, 000 discussions going on there, You’ll find Your place there!

25. Cre8siteForums

They say about themselves - A Community for Inspiration, Networking, Creative Web Sites and Vibrant Online Business.

17,058 registered members have made a total of 267,631 posts over there.

And as always, feel free to add some more forum addresses! Hope this list will be useful!

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Night Before Christmas : Photoshop Tutorial And WallPaper

Dainis Graveris — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 22:03:03 +0000

As I saw everybody enjoyed previous Christmas related tutorial, I decided to keep it that way and now I am offering You the next Photoshop task. Tutorial creation took me about 4 hours, so You could do this in 30min or an hour. I wish You good luck and please provide us with Your outcomes! We will use many different and useful techniques here so read everything carefully and ask if You don’t understand something.

And now I wish You good luck - and keep Your Christmas spirit going!

We will create something like this, click on the image to see full preview:

Step 1: Document Creation And Sky

Create a new document, I wanted this image to use later as wallpaper, so I used 1920×1200 resolution, 72 dpi.

Fill background with radial gradient (press G to activate gradient menu) with colors #1773e3 and #0b3972:

Step 2: Star Creation

Although we will create night effect, we need again to create some stars.

Now create new layer ( CTRL+SHIFT+N), right above the background, fill it with black ( choose black and ALT+DELETE to fill).

Go to Filter–>Add Noise and add settings like on picture below (amount 20-30):

To get lesser amount of white noise, go to Image–>Adjustments–>Brightness/Contrast:

Change Blending style to Color Dodge:

Step 3 : Ground creation

Press CTRL+SHIFT+N to create new layer ( look at screenshot at my layers palette so it’s the same like mine).

Then select rectangular marque tool (press M) and do selection like this:

Let’s use linear gradient to create 3D look with colors #000b17 and #0b3972:

Ok, now we have background:

Step 4: Adding Detailed Star

Create a new layer and grab soft brush (B), change foreground color to white ( press D to reset colors and X to switch foreground/background).

Draw big stars in various sizes on the sky and use right/left brackets [ ], to change brush size :

Step 4: Adding Moon

What is Christmas night without moon? Let’s create one!

Create a new layer, select from custom shape tool - “Crescent moon”, if You don’t have shapes like me, do this bonus step:

Add moon in sky, where You want, also add white outer glow to the moon.

Step 5: Hills And Downs

In the fifth step we will add some hills and downs, but I won’t repeat this step, techniques is the same as in my previous tutorial - Beautiful Christmas Vision Tutorial And Wallpaper, start from the step 2 there.

Also look at my layer order:

Step 6: Adding Trees

Now let’s create some trees to make look our scene more interesting.

Add some guidelines to create more precise results, create new layer, then grab pen tool and try to do something like this:

(You can get guidelines, by pressing CTRL+R to get rulers. Just click and pull from rulers to get them).

Now CTRL+Click on path, and fill it with any color pressing ALT+DELETE ( foreground color):

If You don’t see Your path palette - go Windows–>Path.

Now on the tree layer, add blending options–>gradient overlay with colors - #1b2d02 and #477407:

Duplicate layer 2 times (press CTRL+ Upper Arrow) and upper layer transform perspective a little bit:

Ok, now holding SHIFT select all three layers and group them pressing CTRL+G. You can also smudge trees to add texture, but I won’t do that this time.

With all three layers still selected, resize trees to much smaller size - CTRL+T and holding shift resize.

We will use these trees in background, so we need many trees. Just press on the group with CTRL+Upper Arrow to create more duplicates and position trees like in the picture below:

Add as much trees as You think is necessary.

Step 7: Horizontal Shadow

Let’s add shadow on trees - create a new layer, select rectangular tool with black color:

Go Filter–>Gaussian blur and blur it 100px radius. Change blending mode to overlay and reduce opacity to 64%.

Step 8: Adding Global Colors and Shadows

Create a new layer on the top of all layers and add some colorful radial gradient, change blending mode to overlay.

Adding Shadows:

Let’s add some more shadows - use Elliptical marque tool and feather 100px. Create a selection and then press CTRL+SHIFT+I to invert selection and fill it with black ( ALT+DELETE). Change blending mode opacity to 75%.

Okay, we are already finished, I added just a few more effects:

1. I added those swirly lines at the moon, with pen tool –> stroke path.. –> simulate pressure.

2. Also I added two trees on the front side in the same way as I added background trees, I just didn’t want to go through whole process again.

Hope You enjoyed this tutorial as much as I did!

Download *.psd file

Download wallpaper in 1920×1200 resolution

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The Third Month And Time To Talk!

Dainis Graveris — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 00:04:30 +0000

Hey everybody!

It’s been a while I haven’t done any short post to check in with You guys and one more reason - it’s already the third month of my blogging carrier.

At starters I wanted to apologize for my laziness ( not really actually), but session in my academy starts in 8. December, but I don’t want to get bad marks in the field I love. If You don’t know I am learning as graphic designer, already the second course is at half. And I will be very proactive after session, I got professional praxis after that, but I am doing different jobs all time, so actually I am getting free time. And yes, I am planning that time spend to learn and digg deeper in 3dsMax, Photoshop CS4, Illustrator, Indesign, Logo and business card creation - and that means also many tutorials, inspirational articles from me!

But to get to the point - there is a question to You - there are actually people interested in design school atmosphere, workflow? With this question I mean, there would be people interested to read an article showing my works, lessons and actual overview? For now I am just wondering and writing articles about themes, I find interest in, but how about You? What do You think, where I must go, about what I should write - more tutorials, more inspiration, more technical articles?

And I know everybody loves Photoshop, but there would be an interest to see any AutoCad, 3DsMax and similar program reviews, my experience, great resource sites? I really hope to hear something from You, my loyal reader!

Now it’s time to show You my growth..in three months. I wrote and article after the first month - there was 132 RSS readers and ~45,000 pageviews and now it’s

1362 RSS readers and more than ~100, 000 uniques per month! Maybe it’s not bad accomplishment, but however I feel I can be much better, I just don’t want to see this blog to be just as one of the hundred small websites and stay to this number.

So let’s keep moving on - I also added Google Adsense and BuySell Ads to get something back for my job, so I hope You won’t get very distracted and disappointed about that.

And currently design is pretty crappy, but I’ll work on it after at least two weeks. I am also planning to add Contribute and Advertise section, so if You are interested in writing something on my blog, You are the most welcome also getting nice feedback in traffic and spreading Your word over the design blogosphere. So that’s it for now - I just felt very bad, I haven’t been so active as I was, so that’s my story.

Yesterday was also the first Advent - You got my greetings and now just think good thoughts and wait for Your Santa Claus to get You new Apple laptop

Cant wait to read Your opinion at the comment form - also objective criticism would be the most appreciated!

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