Graphic Design

I know that you love Adobe products and I’m sure that you love even more the things that you are able to create using the Adobe products. That’s why, I’ve collected some easy to understand and very useful Adobe Illustrator video tutorials created by top Illustrator designers from all around the web. Most people consider that Photoshop is everything and they don’t actually need another product for their design projects. I strongly recommend you to take a look at this great Adobe Illustrator tutorials and you will understand why I say that you also need to use AI for more professional and artistic creations.

1. The Illustrator CS3 Interface

Learn about the User Interface and where you can find the tools you need.

2. Everything about Masking in Illustrator

One very important thing in Adobe Illustrator: – The Masking properties.

3. How to use the pen tool in Illustrator CS2

Use the pen tool to make things more interesting

4. CS 4 Video Training

A complete CS4 Video for Beginners

5. A Comprehensive Guide to the Pathfinder Panel

Learn how to use the Pathfinder in Illustrator.

6. Opacity Mask Tutorial

Hiding a part of your illustration can make more important another part of it.

7. Create an Ipod

We all love Apple products and this tutorial help you to customize the famous ipod in no time.

8. Metal Lightning Tutorial

Metal inspires professionals and this tutorial is 100% pro and free.

9. Make a 3D Logo in Illustrator

3D Logos are much more interesting than simple plain ones…so check this great tutorial to see how you can create one.

10. Adding Texture in Illustrator

Any type of texture for any type of Illustration.

11. Creating an Eye-Ball

Eyes are very important for any human character, and that’s why this is a very important tutorial.

12. Create a raw logo design

Professional Logo design for your company.

13. Create a neon glow in CS 3

This is a pro glowing effect.

14. Live Color

Choose most interesting and inspiring colors for your creations.

15. Drawing a gell progressbar

A progressbar is very important for Flash animations and applications.

16. Draw Gear

Drawing a gear is just the title, but this tutorial will help you to create many types of illustrations.

17. Create a Helix in Ai

A helix can be useful in many ways and that’s why you should take a look at this tutorial.

18. How to design a professional logo using Adobe Illustrator

Create a custom logo for your company.

19. Draw a Valentine’s Day e-card

I know that it isn’t february yet, but you definitely should know how to draw a valentine.

20. Shiny Text

Shiny text was always interesting and with this tutorial you will be able to create it too.

21. About Transformation Tools

Restizing, croping and wrapping can improve your works and make them more attractive.

22. Tribal Sun

Famous and cool sign created in illustrator.

23. The Gradient Tool

24. Blob Brush: Shape Objects

A cool new feature for Illustrator.

25. Artboards in CS4

Artboards feature for CS4.

26. Blending Gradients

“Play” with gradients to create interesting designs.

27. Create a fusion between Adobe Illustrate and Photoshop

Use Photoshop and Illustrator components to build better and powerful designs.

28. Create a metal like button

A very nice looking metal button.

29. Cool Award Badge

Vey useful illustration for any type of activity which includes competition or quality review.

30. Wood Effect with gradients

Bring the nature into your creations.

31. Background Effects Illustrator Way

Even if you are a beginner with this tutorial you will be able to create pro background effects.

32. Create Ribbons

Cool and instant ribbons.

33. Spacing Boxes in Illustrator

This will make your job a whole lot easier.

34. 3D Effects Graph

Create a cool stats graph in 3D.

35. Wraping in Illustrator

Modelate your images and illustrations in no time.

36. Using The Paint Brush Tool

The most essential drawing tool available in Illustrator and Photoshop.

37. Draw Fluffy Clouds

Funny and flower-power clouds.

38. How to draw Batman’s logo

One of the coolest Cartoon hero sign can now be easily reproduced in Illustrator

39. Intricate Patterns

Create cool backgrounds for your design projects.

40. Using Live Paint

Bring life into your Illustrator creations.

41. Line Draw for Cartoons

Make your cartoon creations more interesting for everyone.

David Airey is a very talented graphic designer and logo designer and he recently published a book Logo Design Love that is “a guide to creating iconic brand identities.” I’ve followed David through his blog for a few years now and I’ve always had a great deal of respect for his work. I recently had a chance to take a look at his book (I haven’t had the chance to read the whole thing yet, but what I have read is very good), and I thought it would be interesting to interview David about his work and the process of writing the book.

Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your background?

I was born in 1979, in Bangor, Northern Ireland (a few miles outside the capital city, Belfast). I began studying graphic design in 1995, and finished my formal design education in 2003, with a number of qualifications behind me, and an internship in Pittsburgh, USA.

After extensive travel and a stint teaching English as a second language I landed a job in advertising sales for The Scotsman, Scotland’s national newspaper. Design jobs weren’t readily available, and I considered the ad sales a temporary role until I found design-related employment. Working at The Scotsman put me in contact with an old friend who told me about a print management opening at a nearby cancer charity. I applied, and got the job. My responsibilities were for the organization’s gamut of print design, print buying, and web management.

Around May 2006 I chose to become self-employed, taking on my former employer as my first client. I worked with them for a couple of years on a part-time basis (two or three days per week), sending monthly invoices for the work completed. The rest of my time was spent building a web presence and attracting new clients.

Why have you chosen to specialize in logo design rather than some other aspect of graphic design?

Identity design projects are relatively short in time frame (i.e. one or two months, sometimes longer). This means I’m working with a widely varied client base in order to stay busy, and as such, I learn an incredible amount about how different industries operate.

I don’t think I’d be anywhere near as motivated if I was always working with the same design limitations (i.e., as an in-house designer with strict brand guidelines).

How influential has your blog been to your own personal branding and the development of your career?

Without my blog, you’d not be reading these answers. I doubt you’d want to interview me, and I doubt you’d know about my work. The Internet can open so many doors, and it’s up to each one of us to tread our own path. Seth Godin published a relevant post, Seven years gone.

What would you say are some of the most important characteristics for a successful logo or identity?

An effective logo should be distinctive, memorable, original, and relevant to the industry within which the identified company operates. It’s the tip of the branding iceberg, and should be consistent with the entire visual identity system.

What are some of the most common mistakes that you see being made in logo design?

I see a lack of imagination. The most obvious solution can sometimes be the most effective, but obvious does not equate to dull.

For instance, look at Landor’s 2009 identity design for the City of Melbourne. The solution is based upon the first letter of the city’s name, the ‘M’, and is probably the most obvious idea possible. But Landor took it, pushed boundaries, and created a stunning visual system to match any I’ve seen elsewhere.

Can you explain to us the typical process that you would take with a client for a logo design?

The first step is choosing the client, and I’m sure many of your readers will agree that not all potential clients are a good fit.

Over the years I’ve been able to pre-determine a healthy working relationship by asking the right questions before a project begins, and I outline these questions in my new book, Logo Design Love: A Guide to Creating Iconic Brand Identities. In fact, the whole book is based upon the design process I carry out, and you can download a free chapter here.

You’ll find a less-detailed, online overview of my identity design process here.

How long was the process to write the Logo Design Love book and to get it published?

Almost one year to the day. I first chatted with my publisher, Peachpit, in December 2008, and it was December 2009 when I finally held a tangible copy of the book.

How did you go about finding a publisher for the book?

Peachpit found me through my design blogs, which is another reason why I place so much emphasis on the importance of a strong online presence. I wasn’t planning to write a book last year, but when asked, I thought, “Why not?”

Publishing a book on a specific topic certainly goes a long way towards demonstrating your expertise to potential clients. Was this a factor in deciding to write the book?

It was. Another factor was how I find myself being asked more and more questions about the process of design, so I think there’s a gap in the market for a book such as mine.

After your experience with the book, is it something that you would consider doing again in the future?

My publisher asked me to think of another project for 2010, but I’m not sure I want to tackle one just yet. I’ll consider it in future, though. We’ll see how it goes.

If you’re interested in logo design, I recommend that you check out David’s book Logo Design Love.

Free Vectors — Social Networking Icons (10 Colors/2 Styles)

Included are 21 social networking icons, in 2 different styles, with 10 color variations total. So in short, it’s a lot of icons! One of the styles is more glossy/gradient-y, and one of the styles is flat. Also, the download includes both CS & CS3 files.

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Streaks of Light: 40 High Resolution Photoshop Brushes

Today, I am releasing one of my favorite sets of brushes to date; a set of 40 high resolution Photoshop brushes for creating streaks of light. It seems like each set of light effect brushes I make get better and better. This set is really amazing and I hope that you enjoy them!

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Free Texture Tuesday: Bokeh

A set of 5 bright and colorful high resolution bokeh textures.

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Abstract 3D Renders Pack – 33 Free Images

This abstract render pack comes filled with 33 images of 3D abstract renders. All the images are in PNG format with transparent backgrounds. For the adventurers out there, we have also included two of the 3ds Max files that this pack was created with!

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108 Mono Icons: Huge Set of Minimal Icons

There are 108 simple icons included in this set. The icons are avaliable in 32×32 px .png (transparent background) format.

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330 Free Letter Pressed Icons

A collection of over a 100 letter pressed icons, in various letter pressed styles exclusive to Creative Nerds readers. The icons include three PSD files which are full of icons which you can drag and drop into your designs.

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5 Free Tape Brushes

Tape is often used to hold things together or fix broken items. That being said, I don’t think these brushes will fix a bad design, but they will surely add a nice touch to hand drawn styles and anything else you find them useful for. Each brush measures around 2500 pixels.

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HTML5 Visual Cheat Sheet (Reloaded)

This cheat sheet is essentially a simple visual grid that contains a list of all HTML tags and of their related attributes supported by HTML 5. The simple visual style I used to design this sheet allows you to find at a glance everything you are looking for.

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Design Cartons Free Icon Set For Designers

Here are 5 high quality icons of boxes/cartons that you can use to announce the launch of a new application or on your portfolio websites. There is plenty of space to add your own flavor to the graphics like your name, important dates, blog names, app names etc.

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Tipz — Free WordPress Theme

A free WordPress theme from Alex at Crazy Leaf Design featuring widget ready areas, 3 columns, 2 sidebars (right and left), featured post section with featured image custom field, integrated logo changer (text or image).

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Free Vector Icons: Panda Social Network Icons

A free package containing 12 sweet panda animals, 128×128 pixels each, that have social network marks on their stomach. You’ll get 12 .png files and 1 vector (.ai) file in case you need to rescale them (in Adobe Illustrator format).

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Free Sketching & Wireframing Kit

Sketching & Wireframing kit is a free set of elements for sketching and wireframing. It consist of form elements, icons, indicators, feedback messages, tooltips, navigation elements, image placeholders, embedded videos, sliders and common ad banners.

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18 Stained Brown Paper Textures

A large set of high resolution stained brown paper textures.

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11 Free Scaffolding Grunge Vectors & How-To

This set of 11 Free Scaffolding Grunge Vectors was specifically created with large print designs in mind, but they can be used in web projects too. It’s a common technique to slightly destroy large type in ads and other print campaigns.

The gradient mesh is one of the most powerful tools in your Illustrator toolbox, but it’s also one of the trickiest to get the hang of. This year I’m determined to master this amazing tool, so I’ve searched the web far and wide to pull together the best free training materials. This collection of tutorials covers everything from basic gradient mesh tool to some full on photorealistic vector designs. If, like me you have a mission to get to grips with gradient mesh, look no further than this collection of resources.

Gradient mesh capabilities

You only have to glance at amazing artwork such as this motorcycle rendering by Yukio Miyamoto to realise how powerful the gradient mesh tool can be. It allows the most minute control over colour gradients, enabling you to recreate highlights and shadows that help produce photorealistic images.

I like to think of the gradient mesh like the great Nunchaku, it’s a weapon of awesome capabilities that when used to its full potential by masters like Bruce Lee or Michelangelo the turtle looks insanely awesome. However it takes years of practice to become a true ninja. The same goes with the gradient mesh, when in the hands of a veteran, it can be used to create some unbelieveable photorealistic artwork, but it takes time, dedication and mental power to become a true master. Wrap a scarf around your head Karate Kid style and let’s get down to some serious training with these tutorials!

Gradient mesh tutorials

Tips for Working with the Gradient Mesh Tool In Illustrator

How to Make a Vector Military Cap Icon

Illustrator Tutorial: Gradient Mesh Flower

Create a Yummy Ice Cream Icon with Mesh Objects and Blends

Create realistic illustrations using Illustrator’s Gradient Mesh

Vectors Imitate Life with Gradient Mesh

Gradient Mesh Tutorial

Illustrate a Pair of Sweet Gradient Mesh Cherries

Gradient Mesh Bell Pepper Tutorial

Master the gradient mesh tool

Make a Shiny Gum Ball Machine with Mesh Gradients

Gradient Mesh Editing Tutorial

How to Create an Energy Saving Bulb in Illustrator

Mastering Mesh

Make an Aurora Borealis Design in Illustrator

Illustrator Tutorial: Realistic Curtain

Video Tutorials

Sometimes it’s handy to get that extra level of help from a video screencast. These tutorials help you understand the actual workflow and see the techniques in action.

The Adobe Illustrator Gradient Mesh Tool

Intro to the Gradient Mesh Tool

Create an iPod Nano Using Gradient Mesh

Gradient mesh, freshly brewed coffee

Reshaping Mesh to fit into complex shapes (pt1)

Adding color to each mesh node (pt2)

In most areas of business, and particularly in the field of design, a well designed business card can be as important as your online identity.  There is no question that a business card very often will create a bond between you and your customers that is long lasting.  Leaving behind just the right card will keep you on their radar and get the attention of your target.

Until recently most people did not look at business cards as interactive elements that can be made of different materials, textures and shapes, going far beyond what most people consider as standard practice.  Today, lets take a look at 50 extremely creative and original business cards and design tutorials that really help push the boundaries and show the extent some people go to set themselves apart in this competitive marketplace.

Chef Burger

Plastic Business Cards – Lined Paper

Interrobang Design

NetPlus ID

Rumble

Couples Therapist Card

Orderin.Ca

Accentuate

The Photography of Nathan Jones

Reflections Dental Care

Joanne Foltran

Blue Bird Design

Nation Builder Pop Up

Edible Business Card – Head Hunter

Chris Colhoun

Sandrine Abraham – Du Bout Des Yeux

Corvus Design Studio

Stretchable Personal Trainer Card

Impact Ideas

DreamTen

Chuck Tingley

Richard E. Smith Circles

Artams

Taste Chocolate

Retro Sports Inspired Business Cards

Blooming Designer

Egil Paulson Easel Card

X3 Studios

Mineral Spring Water

Dallas Laser Printing

Matilda Jane

Becka Viau

Digitopolis

Mattson Creative

Jared Andrew Schorr

Emerson Taymor Pop Up

Mark Ramadan

Genie Alisa

Mix Tape Generation

e Aqua

Wedding Television

Colorburned

Ben Webster

Max Steiner – Everyday Hero

The Alembic

Tutorials

Making a Print-Ready Business Card Using Only Photoshop

Design a Print Ready Business Card for Designers

Making a grungy business card

Design an Abstract Business Card

Creating a new Web 2.0 Business Card