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Hey guys, here’s another Delectables post and this time, I’m going to show you how I made my round RewardStyle affiliate ads that you can see between the second and third posts. When I decided to have ads for my stuff, I chose a gray circle because I felt it was a glimpse of softness between the hard black borders I’m using in-between posts. My first ad was composed of many-colored hearts inside circles. My second ad — my Lynda affiliate ads — also worked rather nicely with my circles, especially after I punked Lynda’s hair a little bit.
Then, I decided to add Reward Style affiliate ads and all of a sudden, the circles didn’t work right because I had to shrink many of the product photos to almost nothing. So, my solution was to keep the images large by allowing the product photos to emerge from the circle. I call them “Pop-Outs”! There’s probably a professional graphic design term for this technique, but I certainly don’t know what it is and Pop-Outs does the job for now. I hope you enjoy this tut!
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I installed these calligraphy brushes last week. I’ve only used them to draw arrows, really (like the ones here and here). Though I’m obviously not a calligrapher, I enjoy using these brushes anyway. I love how the angled nibs create natural-looking lines of varying width and taper. Very nice. If you like these brushes and you have Adobe Photoshop, you will find them in the presets folder.
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Hayes Street, SF
It’s been a while since I’ve been into the City, but last week I took Bart and got off at Civic Center and headed over to Makeshift Society to meet Julia Engel. We had a great meeting and on my way home, I strolled through the very interesting Hayes Valley neighborhood. I was impressed by the density of cool restaurants in those few blocks and I stopped at a coffee shop to chill with a hot au lait and a Chocolate Rose Dynamo Donut. What a fulfilling day!
More Instagram photos here.
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textures from subtlepatterns.com
I’ve mentioned Subtle Patterns in a Links Loved post before, but since I’ve been visiting the site a lot more lately, I feel that it deserves a post of its very own. The patterns are all on the quiet end of the spectrum, surely, but that’s what’s really nice about them. That, and they’re free. You can download the pattern images individually. You can even download all the Photoshop .pat files all in one zip file at Github. I like to think of these patterns as virtual stationery — they make great backgrounds that don’t overwhelm. They can also serve as small patches of texture that can add interest to a graphic image. You can find a variety of textures at Subtle Patterns including fabric and woodgrain. You’ll even find a subtle Lauren Harrison floral pattern over there.
∴ credits ∴
asos-inspired drop shadows (ps tutorial)
blending modes (ps tutorial)
museo 700 from myfonts
futura medium (osx default font)
asos-inspired drop shadows (ps tutorial)
blending modes (ps tutorial)
museo 700 from myfonts
futura medium (osx default font)
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Last week I finished a blog revamp for Gal Meets Glam. I realize I’ve said that I don’t do blog design and instead refer all potential design work to my Blog Design Directory. But when Julia asked me to migrate her blog from Blogger to WordPress, and do a redesign in the process, I hesitated. And then I said yes. What swayed me was that Julia had a clear vision for her blog — Gal Meets Glam was already in good shape and all I had to do was to streamline the columns to a proper grid while keeping a decidedly feminine look.
In the before and after screenshots below you can see some of the most prominent changes I made. One of them was the banner. The original banner used a block font for Glam and a script font for Gal Meets. I thought it would be best to flip the font types, so I used a script font for Glam to give the sense of a black marker “autograph” on an 8×11 glamour head shot photo.
I chose the color scheme from Julia’s pin boards and selected pinks, yellows, and blues to create the resulting palette. You’ll see touches of these colors in the little polka dots at the top of each post, in the link colors, and in some of the sidebar blocks. You might be wondering where the yellow lives — you’ll only see it when your mouse hovers over the sidebar social links.
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