Design Tutorials (Topic)

Want to be on the same creative level as Leonardo Da Vinci, Salvador Dali and the designers of the Parthenon? They all have one simple concept in common. The Ancient Greeks were one of the first to discover a way to harness the beautiful asymmetry found in plants, animals, insects and other natural structures. They expressed this mathematical phenomenon with the Greek letter phi, but today, we call it the golden ratio—also known as the divine proportion, the golden mean, and the golden … [Read more...]

The coolest thing about embossing and debossing is that it's completely exclusive to printed paper. You'll never see a truly "embossed" imprint on a web image—but that makes it difficult when you want to show off your embossed print design on a computer screen. In the following tutorial, we'll show you how to use a simple Photoshop technique to create embossed and debossed effects that look so much like the real thing, nobody will be able to tell the difference. We'll be applying the … [Read more...]

Ever hear the phrase "the camera adds ten pounds?" Any number of things can go wrong during a photo shoot and make the subject look heavier than they actually are. Maybe the lighting was off, the angle was bad, or the subject's posture was unflattering. But there's a simple way to fix those mistakes and bring out your subject's natural beauty. There's nothing we hate more than when designers reinforce unrealistic body expectations by using Photoshop to slim down models until they look nothing … [Read more...]

The best thing about Photoshop is that it allows you to do things in a few minutes that would normally take hours or days to complete. Case in point: instead of spending half a lifetime painting a picture, you can use Adobe Photoshop to make a photograph look like a hand-painted masterpiece in minutes. Converting a photo into a painting takes more than just using Photoshop's default tools. You need a variety of filters, brushes and design techniques to actually make it look realistic. … [Read more...]

If you were one of those students who loved art classes but hated math, it was probably a shock to the system when you found out just how much math you'd end up using as a professional designer. In fact, math skills are absolutely essential for print design—at the very least, you need to know how to measure out your bleed area and understand the physical size of your canvas. But if you're willing to understand more than just the mathematical basics, you can use those numbers and measurements to … [Read more...]

When you create printed marketing materials, your designs are little like Alice from Alice in Wonderland. Alice is constantly shrinking or growing as she explores different parts of Wonderland. Likewise, you'll often need your design elements to shrink or grow, depending on what the situation calls for. That's why learning how to create scalable vector illustrations in Adobe Illustrator is absolutely essential. Adobe Illustrator can be a tricky program to learn, but if you've used some of the … [Read more...]

Remember how scary it was when you were a little kid and you had to start reading books in school that didn't have any pictures in them? Truth be told, that little kid still exists inside all of us; it's one of the reasons why print media designs often rely on photos and illustrations rather than walls of bland text. But text doesn't have to be boring-after all, text is just another form of visual imagery, one that can become a beautiful work of art with the use of unique fonts or interesting … [Read more...]

Today, we're sharing a behind-the-scenes look at the creation of one of our favorite folder design templates. This Cruise Ship Adventure Presentation Folder Template uses a simple clipping mask to make the image of the ship appear to be split into several rounded square tile shapes. The end result looks like something that would take a long time to make from scratch, but you can create it using Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop in just a few simple steps with this handy tutorial. Creating the … [Read more...]