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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 18,070 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.

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Smooth Gradients in Photoshop

Posted on 10/24/2012 at 10:16 am | Viewed 14,872 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.

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Best Way To Get Transparent PNGs Without Any Hacks

Posted on 10/21/2012 at 10:27 am | Viewed 14,100 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).

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12 Essential Photoshop Keyboard Shortcuts

Posted on 12/21/2009 at 05:05 pm | Viewed 12,566 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.

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Fixing the Default HP OfficeJet Scanner Settings (which suck)

Posted on 05/28/2009 at 11:11 pm | Viewed 13,245 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.

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Best Tiny Font for Web Graphics

Posted on 04/28/2009 at 05:03 pm | Viewed 14,445 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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