An introduction to HTML and CSS for designers

Joanna Krenz-Kurowska — Fri, 17 May 2013 08:06:02 +0000

As a graphic designer, you’re probably aware of the ever-evolving relationship between design and technology. This is especially true for those focusing on web design.

In this industry, we need to have a basic understanding of how our carefully crafted mockups become live web pages. When we understand the basics of this process (and it’s limitations), we are able to accurately communicate with developers and get pixel-perfect websites.

This doesn’t mean you need to know how to code a website from top to bottom (although it would be great!), this just means you need to understand the essentials. In this post, we’re going to start with the very basics of HTML, learn how to slice a web design in Photoshop, and format our HTML with CSS.

What exactly is HTML?

Burrito photo by Stephan Mosel

Almost everything you see while browsing the Internet is a Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML) document. Hypertext is text that references and links to other text on your screen, making it possible for you to access content with a simple click. Markup language is a set of tags that are enclosing in brackets < >. These HTML tags usually come in pairs:

: also known as an opening tag
: also known as a closing tag, and includes a forward slash /

When you enclose content between these 2 tags, the whole thing is called an element:

This is a paragraph

Viewers will not see the tags when this language is translated to the web — they will only see the content enclosed between them.

HTML 5, the current version of HTML, contains around 100 tags with attributes that change their function or look. You only need to know 30 to 40 of these tags to start understanding and creating HTML. Take a look at them, and notice how they are grouped by function. Let’s get visual and see this in action.

Slicing images in Photoshop

Before coding, we need to decide which sections of the website should incorporate images and which can be coded. Let’s use Photoshop’s Slice tool (hidden under the Crop tool submenu) and section off areas like the burrito photo, and Joan’s tacos.

Now, we need to Export our slices — Go to File > Save for Web (Alt+Shift+Ctrl+S). When a particular slice is selected, you can set its Export options on the right side of the window (JPG, PNG, etc.). If you double-click on a specific slice, you will see the Slice Options window pop up — this allows you to name specific slice files.

By default, all images are placed in: subdirectory/images/. If you want to export only the slices you’ve created, then select All User Slices in the Save window.

The images we exported will be embedded into our HTML document using the tag.

Creating a basic HTML document

We have our slices, let’s create a basic HTML document.

Line 1: Declares that the HTML 5 dialect is the document language.

Line 2: element represents the root of an HTML document. This is an obligatory container that marks the borders of our document.

Line 3: section contains invisible page elements like the meta information, title, etc.

Line 4: This is the declaration of document encoding — utf-8 is a secure choice — you can learn more about HTML character encodings here.

Line 5: Sample page This is the page title which is visible in the browser title bar.

Line 6: closes the tag from Line 3.

Line 7: This body element will contain all the visible content of the page.

Line 8: closes the tag from Line 2. This element marks the end of the document.

There are other possible ways to code the same design. We will use HTML 5 semantic tags (header, nav, article, footer) to create a basic document structure:

This is the layout translated to HTML:

A few things to note :

Line 9: This is an src attribute which contains a path to the image file.

Line 11 and 12: elements are the essence of the Internet as they are used to create hyperlinks. They’re paired with the HREF attribute, and should link a target URL.

Lines 18 to 20: These are a few text formatting tags:

stands for a first level header;
stands for a paragraph;
stands for a line break.

Format with Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)

When you open just the HTML file in a web browser, you’ll see it’s not formatted like our design from earlier. This is because the HTML code is not enough — we need to format it with Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). CSS is a stylesheet language that’s used to format HTML elements.

But why, exactly, do we need to pair HTML with CCS? Some time ago, formatting was achieved by adding attributes to HTML tags. However, this led to an unreadable and unmaintainable code. The solution was to separate document content (HTML) from document formatting (CSS).

Let’s breakdown a simple CSS rule: .

Selector: This is the HTML element you want to style. For example:

Declaration: A CSS rule can have 1 or more declarations. Each declaration consists of a property and value, and is separated by a semicolon. You place declarations between curly brackets { }.

Property: This is the style characteristic you want to change. For example: background color, font size, etc.

Value: Each property has a value associated with it. For example: #ffcc11 (for background color), 16px (for font size), etc.

There are a ton of CSS properties that can be set for each HTML element, but it’s not necessary to write them all yourself. You can rely on your browser’s default settings, or use a base stylesheet that resets your browser to reasonable values. It actually requires quite a bit of knowledge and experience to write selectors on your own.

Let’s take a look at some of the CSS rules necessary to format our simple design.

CSS Positioning Properties: There are 4 different methods (static, fixed, relative and absolute) that allow us to position specific elements in our design. After you set one of these methods, you can position elements using the top, right, bottom and left properties — these will work differently depending on which of the 4 methods you use. In this case, we’d like to position the plate_image using an absolute positioning.

CSS Box Model: This model is a box that wraps around all HTML elements — it includes margins, borders, padding and the content. Margins are an invisible area around the border, and padding is between the border and content.

Resources

The best way to learn all of this is to experience it yourself! You can download a ZIP file of the HTML, CSS and assets files described in this post. When you download the ZIP, open the style2.css file and begin editing the content. You can download Sublime Text, and test it for free.

If you’re REALLY interested in learning more about coding, then check out this cool site: Codecademy.

Do you know HTML and CSS?

13 Vine videos to ignite your creativity

Kaitlyn — Thu, 16 May 2013 17:34:48 +0000

Meant to essentially be a Twitter for videos, Vine is a fairly new app that allows users to create and upload 6-second clips. Just another way to get a short glimpse into someone’s life or artwork. Tons of creatives have been getting on the Vine boat, creating a vibrant social network of short-feature directors.

The best thing about a really good Vine video is that it’s creators think out of the box, making creative work that can inspire any artist or designer. Below are 13 videos that inspire us in 13 different ways:

(Note: click the icon on the top left of each video to hear sound)

Connect the dots

Pinot, Creativity is about connecting the dots.

Imagine the future

yelldesign, New “Real Fruit” app

Use what you’ve got

abagg, WHATEVER

Build something new

Mark Weaver, Untitled Lego Vine

Change your perspective

Yves Das, Tape Drivers

Change it again

Matt Swinsky, Lazer as Chun Li

Tell a story

Chris Donlon, Poor Sisyphus

Re-imagine the past

Man Bartlett, Untitled

Play with your food

Jethro Ames, How to Play with your food, Oregon Trail edition

Experiment

General Electric, What happens when you combine milk, food coloring, and dish soap?

Get inspired by a cause

Khoa, The Polar Bear needs love National Geographic!

Let yourself be a little weird

Adam Goldberg, youandiwillalwaysbe

Keep creating art

Ian Padgham, “Thomas Hardy” by @origiful

Love other Vine videos? Link to them below!

9 humorous (mis)adventures in branding

Maya Lekach — Wed, 15 May 2013 17:13:56 +0000

Branding is all about creating recognition for a company’s product in the marketplace. It can show what they have to offer, grant them a position in the public eye, and create company swag.

Sometimes, however, a company’s branding can leave us thinking, “Who thought of that?!” Here are 9 of the more (ahem) interesting branding choices from the past couple of years.

1. Baby Carrots

It looks like having only 35 calories per serving, and showing off the attractive orange color was just not doing it for these little healthy morsels anymore. So a Bunch of Carrot Farmers banded together and hired Crispin Porter + Bogusky to rebrand carrots as junk food, literally using Eat ‘Em Like Junk Food as their slogan. You can see the similarities between these packages and their less healthy counterparts, even with a Chester the Cat (Cheetos) cousin on the middle package. This bold marketing idea seems to have had a good deal of success thus far. Carrot farmers don’t need to spend advertising dollars telling people vegetables are healthy. Leave that spin up to Doritos.

2. Sasketchewan Pork

We are a little confused if pork is the one you love or if it’s your significant other. And what is getting porked exactly? Luckily these Canadians picked up on it and changed their brand to “Put Pork on Your Fork”. It seems difficult to do anything not ridiculous sounding that involves the word pork. We do wish they could have done better with their re-design than the generic ribbon and offset shading. But at least the tagline rhymes.

3. PETA’s Sea Kittens

You didn’t know there were kittens in the sea either? Imagine that. Instead of using actual fish (which is boring apparently), PETA is hopping on the popular kitty meme trend and their high levels of cuddle-ability to garner distaste for eating the ocean’s cutest inhabitants.

Oh, and you can also make your own sea kitten at PETA.org. Check out the ones above that we at 99designs made for inspiration! No one would ever want to eat these guys. Or at least that’s the thought behind this humorous rebrand.

4. (Not so) Fabuloso

All this talk about humorous branding has made me thirsty. I’ll just grab a Fabuloso… wait, wait. This doesn’t taste right. Ah dear, in a classic example of poor package design, this cleaning product looks a heck-of-a-lot like those crazy colored sodas that Pepsi, Coke, etc… are churning out these days. Fabuloso eventually widened their bottles, decreasing similarity to artificially flavored bevos. Although the bottle now resembles some juice brands, I don’t think anyone could mix up these bright colored liquids as any sort of natural beverage.

5. Sonae

One might think that the largest corporation in Portugal would have a professional, sleek and straightforward logo. Not so with Sonae, the single largest private employer in Portugal, whose reach extends from grocery stores to book shops to real estate, etc. Instead, however, their new logo redesign looks like this. Interesting enough, this looks a lot more like a flier for a rave in the 90s than it does a massive European conglomerate.

Apparently the logo was an exercise in trying to make the company more “cool”. But it doesn’t quite help that their company name sounds like a rave itself. If they’re not careful, people will start showing up at their corporate headquarters in a plethora of neon colors and phat pants. Imagine that! One plus, is it does feature a custom typeface, so there’s that…

6. Prince (or The Artist Formerly Known as Prince)

Prince has been famous for over 30 years, penning some of our favorite ditties such as When Doves Cry. But the doves might have indeed cried when Prince decided to replace his name with this symbol.

Choosing to change your name to an unpronounceable image is not always the best marketing effort. And to top it all off, the media wrongly titled Prince as The Artist Formerly Known as Prince. The symbol was actually meant to represent the name Love Symbol No. 2. Although as it turns out, it actually was a pretty good marketing effort, as it got Prince out of a sticky little bind with his recording label, and when that was over, he officially changed his name back to Prince. The man is now more popular than ever, even headlining the Superbowl halftime in 2007 and featured in recent fashion article in Vice.

7. McFit

This German gym has an oddly familiar name — maybe playing off the popularity of McDonalds? Its unclear, however, if their new logo brings about even more comparison to the “Do you want fries with that” mega-corporation. However, despite its awkward similarity to makers of the Big Mac, we actually think this redesign is a step up. Their previous logo, with their name on a blue band, was what some might call cheezy. This one is slick, and simply looks better (their logo, in fact, translates to “Simply look good”).

What do you think… are they trying to make this comparison with McDonald’s? A question for the ages.

8. Office of Government Commerce

When the British Office of Government Commerce (OGC) came out with their new logo, they thought they were showing a simple logo featuring the letters of their acronym. But all of a sudden they were getting a ton of press. Check out the logo turned on its side…

Yikes! Although the logo was being mistreated and seen in an, ahem, dirtier light than this governmental office might have desired, it turned out to be not so bad a marketing idea. The OGC got immensely increased popularity, and some tittering employees, who were now sporting messenger bags with this sweet lil guy on it.

When asked about the questionable nature of the new logo, a OGC spokesman said, “The effect was generic to the particular combination of the letters OGC — and it’s not inappropriate to an organization that’s looking to have a firm grip on Government spend.”. Well said.

9. AGIP Motor Oil

One thing we think about when thinking of motor oil is… Hello Kitty? Apparently Malaysia is quite obsessed with this cuddly creature. While we’re not sure what cars and Motor Oil have to do with plush toys and vinyl purses, we must commend AGIP for making their motor oil more friendly than that fire-breathing dog (lion, dragon?). This should make for the purrrfect Valentine’s gift for your sweetie, or a nice 6th birthday present….

______________

That about wraps up our humorous brands, for now. Hope you had a laugh and learned a little lesson about how important it is to thoroughly consider each and every implication of your logo before setting it out into the world or getting it monogrammed onto things. The internet can be a cruel, cruel place.

Have you seen any humorous brands or rebrand recently?

This is how you rock a magazine cover design

Alex Bigman — Tue, 14 May 2013 18:54:56 +0000

The magazine cover is a designer’s dream. There are enough constraints to give you structure — a set space of 8 by 11 inches or so; a few unifying traits that carry across issues — but beyond that it’s up to you to arrange text and touch up photos, working with some of the best photographers and illustrators in the game. Your only mission: reveal the magazine’s content in a way that makes it jump off the shelf.

The world of print media may be shrinking but the magazine cover continues to offer a wealth of helpful takeaways for designers of all sorts — web designers and packaging designers in particular. Here are 8 magazine cover design techniques that all designers should know.

Placing the text: dark on light, light on dark

The basis of most magazine covers is going to be either a photograph or an illustration. Either way, appealing images tend to have a good amount of contrast between light and dark regions. Obviously, for text to be readable, it must be light and set against a dark background or vice versa.

So, much of magazine cover design is finding a suitable spot for text — look at how New York Times Style magazine below places the phrase “talking dirty” in the one region of George Clooney’s shirt that is most blackened, or how the text over Keira Knightley on Interview magazine follows the line of her dark coat.

Conveniently, modern designers have access to editing software like Photoshop, so digitally lightening or darkening areas of a photograph is always a possibility. That crashing wave in the foreground of the Morberg magazine page is a great bed for dark text spelling out the magazine’s contents but it may not be a “natural” part of the image. The designer could have lightened it up or even planted it there altogether! If done well, we’d never know.

Coloring the text: match and complement

Black and white are always solid choices for subtitles or other smaller text, but a magazine cover’s bigger, bolder text elements are a great place to inject some serious color.

As any skilled designer knows, selecting color is never random. In magazine cover design, common approaches are to either match or complement certain vivid areas of the photograph or illustration beneath. The below issue of Home Miami, for instance, samples the vibrant red tone from the patio chairs, just as the issue of Seventeen magazine samples the pink color of Avril Lavigne’s lipstick. Dwell, on the other hand, picks an orange that is not present in the photo, but which nicely complements the image’s dominant blue and feel tones.

Text in the 3rd dimension: behind and in front of the image

The magazine cover may literally be flat but that doesn’t mean all of the design elements have to share a single plane. Indeed, one common approach is to place a photograph or illustration so it partly obscures some text while appearing behind other text, effectively setting up 3 layered planes.

Vanity Fair employs this approach in its cover with Tina Fey, and Rolling Stone really goes all out with its cover featuring Taylor Swift — she almost entirely blocks the title text! Notice how in the cover of New York magazine, the illustration of the earphone begins to wrap around the letter “k.”

Placing emphasis: backgrounds, bolds, italics, etc.

One of the main functions of the magazine cover is to sell the issue’s inside stories. This often means a lot of short teaser lines floating about the cover page. The more of these there are, the more methods a designer must come up with to draw the reader’s eye to each — especially in popular magazines, which typically go for a loud approach.

On the most obvious level, bold and italic fonts are your best friend. From there, you can get fancy with colored or shaped backgrounds — check out the pink and yellow strips on Wired‘s cover, and the highlighting and blue serrated ribbon on Popular Mechanics. Cosmopolitan, as you can see, takes an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach.

Multiplying textures: when photography and drawing meet

Harkening back to the humble doodle, a combination of photographic and illustrated/designed elements is often a great way to make a cover stand out. Check out the clever ways in which Fiasco magazine and Nature magazine blend the worlds of illustration and photography, and how Esquire Malaysia surrounds Daniel Craig with hand-written text in place of typical typographic fonts

Art pad: illustration/digital design all the way

Although less common than the photo-centric approach, it’s possible to pull off an engaging illustrated or typographic-only cover. Good color and a unique style are, of course, key here.

Spicing up the boring stuff: price, barcode, date

These 3 elements, although perhaps not of much interest to most designers, do need to be placed nonetheless. Most magazines take a pretty hands off approach, leaving them in a conventional spot in the bottom left corner. Some magazines, however, have found unique places to put them, making them striking design elements in themselves.

For example, see how The New Yorker includes the price and date above the title line, in the classic New Yorker font, or how Little White Lies always includes the barcode front and center in the centered circular window. This particular issue of Slanted is laid out to look like a printing error, with the result being that the barcode, here in purple, sits dead center.

Consistency is key

While all of the above techniques give a designer plenty of room to get creative, it is ultimately important to remember that every regular publication needs some degree of consistency from issue-to-issue, in order to keep its branding intact. This does not mean a template (although some publications seem to adhere to one), but it does mean that the overall layout and feel remain more or less constant. Check out these screen grabs of Cosmopolitan, Dwell, and Time magazine covers to see what we mean.

Resources

Are there any magazines whose covers you particularly like?

Winner and runners-up of our “Business Card Fit for the King” contest

99designs — Tue, 14 May 2013 18:52:26 +0000

With the launch of our Dutch language site, and the inauguration of King Willem-Alexander (the Netherlands’ first King in over a century!), we thought it’d be a great opportunity to have our community design a business card fit for the King.

We received almost 1,000 designs and were ecstatic to see so many great business cards bring Dutch elements to life — this made picking the winner not an easy feat. The Netherlands, an extremely flat country of 16 million residents next to the North Sea, had a wonderful time in the spotlight, so thanks to everyone who participated! And, of course, a big old “dank jullie wel” to the Dutchies out there.

Check out the winning design, and runners-up, below.

Winning design

Design by aldorinaldo

We love the simplicity of this design! The font is sleek, yet powerful and elements like the crown and the full stop take this design to the next level. We’re convinced the King wouldn’t mind handing out these “Hallo’s” (Dutch for Hello) during the coming years of royal interactions.

Runners-up

Design by Nabeel

Nabeel incorporated a variety of Dutch elements in a modern way (ranging from tulips to windmills, and to our favorite: the cow!), without making the business card look like a touristy souvenir.

Design by ZBrk

Willem-Alexander is often referred to as the “King of business”, helping the Dutch grow their international connections and trade. This design combines these 2 sides in a clever and fun way.

Design by Kimberlypostma

Kimberly designed a business card inspired by the famous balcony scenes, giving us an intimate look behind the royal curtains.

Design by LocLe

We are a big fan of the typography LocLe used in his design; it’s clean, yet lively and topped off with an impressive crown.

Design by Ted.

This business card contains several layers: the crown is created from common Dutch elements (tulips, mills, clogs), elements that are meaningful to Willem-Alexander (ice skates, the ‘W’, the crown) and some less obvious Dutch elements (fish, water, fisherman’s boat). It comes in red, white, blue and orange.

Design by benling

benling created a timeline of Willem-Alexander’s personal interests, using elements from water management, renewable energy and his favorite hobby ice skating — all leading up to the crown. As benling stated, “It is all about the King’s life; which will never be the same again.”

Design by hilOX

Even though there aren’t many people still playing in tulip fields wearing clogs and traditional clothing, hilOX managed to give his design a modern feel. We love this illustration!

Design by LuiG

LuiG illustrated a map pointing out Noordeinde, the King’s “working palace”, in a Mondriaan style. When the Queen announced her abdication she said: “Responsibility for our country must now lie in the hands of a new generation.” This business card shaped like an iPhone definitely took that notion to heart.

Design by IoanaLuca

IoanaLuca found a clever way of making an iconic tulip referring to both the Dutch flag and crown. The front of the card gives a hat-tip to Piet Mondriaan and the coat of arms, with “Je maintiendrai.”

Design by Koesnoel80

The King himself made an appearance on this business card! We like the hand drawn elements incorporated into this design.

Design by wawaqu

It’s a well-known fact that Dutch people love cheese, and we assume the King is one of them. On this business card, it transforms into the shape of windmill sails, bike wheels, tulips and crowns.

Design by d0ppelgangerz

The inlets around the crown paired with the color patterns of this design make for a subtle business card, something that’s especially hard to achieve when using an abundance of orange.

Design by Murtinelli

As far as Murtinelli is concerned, the traditional deck of cards needs to open up a spot for this “King of tulips.”

Design by N24

This awesome design by N24 was one of the last designs we received in this contest. Does anyone recognize the style from Van Gogh’s starry night in this proud lion’s mane?

Design by Pex Web

Another design with a nod to the Netherlands’ rich art history: Mondriaan turned out to be a designer-favorite.

Which business card do you like the best?

A 99er’s winning design process (infographic included)

Rebecca Creger — Mon, 13 May 2013 20:38:18 +0000

Have you ever wondered what a winning designer and client were saying to each other during a contest? Look no further! We’ve made an infographic of designer DSKY‘s winning design process in the After Eleven logo contest.

While DSKY is a very skilled designer, he is also great at communicating with the client. He explains his design concepts and responds well to feedback with well executed designs. Good communication between designer and client is key, and in this case, it helped DSKY win the contest. Here’s how it happened:

What is the most important stage of the design process?

99designs Indonesia: Join the national Meetup on June 7

Illona — Sat, 11 May 2013 18:38:47 +0000

99designs is hosting a national Meetup in Indonesia on Friday, June 7, 2013 at the Hyatt Regency Yogyakarta.

Registration is $20.00 USD (approximately Rp. 200.000), which includes meals and refreshments, as well as a full day of workshops, creative projects and a keynote speaker (TBA). Below are the workshop topics presented at the Meetup:

Ricky Asamanis: Developing a concept and design
Designers will learn how to choose the right contest for them, how to study the brief, develop a concept through brainstorming, and how to work with feedback and revisions.

Onlydee: Client-designer relationship
Designers will learn the best practices to how to interact and establish positive relationships with a client. This includes points to consider before signing a contract, preparation before starting a project, and what to do after a project is finished.

Minor Eight: Marketing yourself as a designer
Designers will learn how to market themselves as freelance designers. This includes websites and platforms available, choosing designs for a portfolio, and how to get clients.

Cloud940: Illustration and presenting your work
Designers will learn the basics of how to create illustration with Adobe Photoshop, and its applications in poster, illustration, book covers, websites, and general photography

Dewaaaa: Web design basics
Designers interested in web design will learn the basics of how to design the UI and UX of a website. This includes basic dimensions, files types required, wire-framing, proper use of stock photos, and image quality.

GCS Collective: Typography
Designers will learn the theory of creating custom typefaces, including the anatomy of type, choosing the right type for clients and projects, and how to create original fonts.

Register now and don’t miss out on 99designs prizes and giveaways!

Monthly design news: Instagram’s revamp, Adobe CC

Kaitlyn — Fri, 10 May 2013 18:06:27 +0000

It’s that time again — to buff up on news of the design world at large. Big things are happening!

Instagram spiffs up their logo

via Brand New

Instagram recently debuted their new and original script created by Denver-based designer Mackey Saturday. See the company’s original design and while you’re at it, check out 99designs’ own Instagram account.

CMYK Lightbulb

via Design Taxi

This CMYK lightbulb by Dennis Parren makes fascinating art of the most daily item — your shadow. The artist combined red, green and blue LSDs to create the effect. The bulb is on sale now, and goes for a pricey €95.

Adobe moves to the Creative Cloud

via TechCrunch

You may have seen this earlier this week in our Facebook post, but in case you’ve been living under a rock, this week Adobe announced they’ll be discontinuing the Creative Suite (CS) line and continuing to develop their products solely through the subscription-based Creative Cloud (CC) service.

Google Web Fonts becomes Google Fonts

via Google Fonts

We wrote about Google Web Fonts a little while ago but now they’ve got updated news. They’ve created a deal with Monotype and their program Skyfonts to allow users to download all of the fonts to desktop — that’s more than 600 fonts. Check them out here.

NYC X Design

via FastCo Design

From May 10th to May 21st, New York is holding its inaugural festival dedicated to all kinds of design. Explore it in person if you’re lucky, or online to be part of the experience from afar.

Don’t forget Mother’s Day

via Pattern Daily

Mother’s Day is this weekend! So don’t forget to celebrate your mama with a beautiful card — there are tons of beautifully designed ones floating around the internet. Or better yet, make her one of your own! This one is by illustrator Courtney Blair and is for sale on Etsy.

Know any design events coming up in May? Share below!

Top 9 at 99 results: April 2013

Allison Stuart — Thu, 09 May 2013 17:20:36 +0000

The winner of April’s Top 9 at 99 proved the impossible — designer Gideon6k3 fit a HUGE elephant into a small square box! This is not magic, it’s just good design.

We love everything, from the layout to the texture to the 3D shading of the ear. And we double appreciate the details in that nice blue eye. Perhaps the loveliest of all, is the personification of the “A” in the company’s name, App Elephant.

A HUGE congratulations to Gideon6k3 for being April’s Top 9 at 99!

And a big congratulations to all of April’s Top 9 at 99:

To celebrate your great work, you’ll each receive The Designer’s Ultimate Index by Jim Krause.

You also get an Official 99designs Community T-Shirt!

Thanks to everyone who voted and spread the love.

What do you like about Gideon6k3‘s elephant app design?

Create 99designs’ next iconic Community T-shirt!

Stephanie Thai — Wed, 08 May 2013 18:32:21 +0000

It’s been a fantastic year so far at 99designs — we had our 5 year anniversary, hosted our 200,000th design contest and have now paid out more than $50 million to designers all over the world!

To celebrate, we’re running a contest for another 99designs Community T-shirt to join the ranks of the iconic fist tee created by legendary 99designer _Trickster_. The fist tee has come to emblemize the spirit of the 99designs community — opportunity, success and integrity. We’re looking for a new design to capture our collective imagination.

Design by _Trickster_

Romania & Serbia Meetups (left); Italian designer Giulio Rossi (right)

To get your brainstorming session started, here are a few super rad T-shirt designs that do a great job at incorporating detail without being too busy or cluttered. They have a bold overall look that is easily recognizable from afar. Check them out:

Pirate T-shirt by Dima Je

Stay Free by Harry Diaz

Wandernaut by Keenan Cummings

Help Yourself to a Miracle by Nate Utesch

Golden State Shoe Repair by Ryan Clark

The Interview Process by Tiago Sá

Help Colorado by Ryan Putnam

Cup-a-Joe by This Paper Ship

Designer Blog

An introduction to HTML and CSS for designers

What exactly is HTML?

Slicing images in Photoshop

Creating a basic HTML document

stands for a first level header; stands for a paragraph; stands for a line break.

Format with Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)

Resources

Do you know HTML and CSS?

13 Vine videos to ignite your creativity

Connect the dots

Imagine the future

Use what you’ve got

Build something new

Change your perspective

Change it again

Tell a story

Re-imagine the past

Play with your food

Experiment

Get inspired by a cause

Let yourself be a little weird

Keep creating art

Love other Vine videos? Link to them below!

9 humorous (mis)adventures in branding

1. Baby Carrots

2. Sasketchewan Pork

3. PETA’s Sea Kittens

4. (Not so) Fabuloso

5. Sonae

6. Prince (or The Artist Formerly Known as Prince)

7. McFit

8. Office of Government Commerce

9. AGIP Motor Oil

Have you seen any humorous brands or rebrand recently?

This is how you rock a magazine cover design

Placing the text: dark on light, light on dark

Coloring the text: match and complement

Text in the 3rd dimension: behind and in front of the image

Placing emphasis: backgrounds, bolds, italics, etc.

Multiplying textures: when photography and drawing meet

Art pad: illustration/digital design all the way

Spicing up the boring stuff: price, barcode, date

Consistency is key

Resources

Are there any magazines whose covers you particularly like?

Winner and runners-up of our “Business Card Fit for the King” contest

Winning design

Design by aldorinaldo

Runners-up

Design by Nabeel

Design by ZBrk

Design by Kimberlypostma

Design by LocLe

Design by Ted.

Design by benling

Design by hilOX

Design by LuiG

Design by IoanaLuca

Design by Koesnoel80

Design by wawaqu

Design by d0ppelgangerz

Design by Murtinelli

Design by N24

Design by Pex Web

Which business card do you like the best?

A 99er’s winning design process (infographic included)

What is the most important stage of the design process?

99designs Indonesia: Join the national Meetup on June 7

Register now and don’t miss out on 99designs prizes and giveaways!

Monthly design news: Instagram’s revamp, Adobe CC

Instagram spiffs up their logo

CMYK Lightbulb

Adobe moves to the Creative Cloud

Google Web Fonts becomes Google Fonts

NYC X Design

Don’t forget Mother’s Day

Know any design events coming up in May? Share below!

Top 9 at 99 results: April 2013

A HUGE congratulations to Gideon6k3 for being April’s Top 9 at 99!

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