In this quick tip I show you how to quickly create badges in illustrator using the distort and transform effect.

Leave a comment and let me know what you think! And don’t forget to subscribe via iTunes.

Its time for question of the week #8! I’m going to post a short little audio clip asking you a question. Feel free to chime in and let me know what you think! I’d love to get a discussion going on in the comments!

I asked my twitter friends a simple question a few weeks ago: Who inspires you? At the time I was working on a project and wasnt feeling that creative. Thanks to everyone who submitted answers for this post! I hope you enjoy the work of these 17.5 inspiring designers!

Also follow me on twitter (@nikibrown) to stay tuned and participate in future posts like this!

Daan is inspired by Collis Ta’eed

To me, Collis is a godlike creature. He makes these awesome designs, and he also knows a good lot about the business side of freelancing, and I love reading hist posts at the Netsetter, which are very good use for a starter like me.

Another thing why I love him is that he has created the whole of the Envato network. It is a collection of sites I happen to use on a daily basis.

And although he is such a successful man, he remains normal to the crowd

Bre is inspired by William Dodson

I haven’t met William in person but I have been in correspondence with him over the last few months, meeting through Twitter. He inspires me because he is running his own web design/development business. Not only that, he has so much passion about his work that he takes time to encourage others like myself. He answers my questions about anything web! Not only is he passionate - but his work is BEAUTIFUL and clean! Between his passion and skill, his advice is very valuable to me!

Michel is inspired by Stefan Sagmeister

Saw him talk at a Design Conference in Rio de Janeiro and just felt like the stuff he does is out of this world. He has great ideas, writes really well and he is a brave person. He once made an Ad for Adobe where he photoshopped everything and them told he would need time to reproduce that as a real photo, they said he didn’t needed, it was perfect the way it was. He said no way, photoshop is crap. Gotta love the guy.

P.s. - the file is the best version I found of the Adobe ad made entirely of coffee cups.

Mariusz is inspired by Frank Miller

Film Noir style, that Frank Miller’s comics are held in, is based on old detective/gangster movies where good and bad was more than obvious. It is using few colors and strong light and shadow to show everything. It’s dark, spooky and shady, just like the ‘30 gangster movies. Great inspiration when it comes to illustration and design.

Brad is inspired by Scott McCloud

I think every industry needs one person who questions everything. Scott McCloud is a comic book illustrator and writer. In the early 90s he turned the comic/graphic novel field on its head with his book “Understanding Comics” where he analyzed the medium in a way it had never been done before. Web geeks are probably familiar with his recent work with Google, he created the comic that introduced the world to Chrome.

His TED talk is fantastic. Even though he’s not a web designer his ideas and enthusiasm for exploring the ways people communicate in different mediums can be applied in any creative field.

Elisa is inspired by Mika Nakashima

She’s a japanese pop singer. I like her unique sense of fashion, and the way she presents herself. She’s always changing and leading the trend. A lot of her photographs in the magazines really inspire me in many different ways. After all, we all love pretty girls, right?

Ben is inspired by Meta Lab Design

Theres really too many companies and designers out there to mention! Metalab stand out to me because of the way they run their business, with the courage to be different and unique! I love all the subtle details they put into their work, with simply, lightweight typography. Just stunning!

Nikki is inspired by Nick La and Dave Shea

I had been doing web design work for awhile before I came across N.Design Studio and its creator Nick La. At the time, I had only just begun attempting to code validated designs that were eye-catching (before that, I was still new to the whole collaboration of beauty and CSS). His designs, so full of colors and his beautiful vector illustrations, became a large inspiration for me. Shortly after, I came across CSS Zen Garden and I was hooked. Dave Shea had made CSS and web design an art form and I knew that that was the type of work I wanted to do. While I doubt I’ll ever come close to the masters, my own style has become a combination of art and validation and I (and my clients) are very thankful to the inspiration from these web design giants.

Sam is inspired by Dustin Curtis

I tend to be inspired most by people around the same age as me; Dustin is an 87 kid too and not only is he a recent entry to the design circus (starting in 07) he’s really doing some interesting and forward-thinking things in regards to art-direction on the web. It’s half inspiration half jealousy, really.

Travis is inspired by Akira Kurosawa

Ok ok…Akira Kurosawa is probably not the first person you would think of when it comes to design inspiration, in fact he’s not even a designer (he’s a movie director)..but you said “you name it”, and I name Kurosawa as my inspiration.

It was said that whenever you see a stormy scene in a Kurosawa film, you can bet that Kurosawa brought his own wind and rain. As a director Kurosawa wasn’t afraid to experiment with his art and his actors, and for that reason his films stand out as cinematic masterpieces.

Kurosawa also took painstaking efforts to refine and improve his visual art. I like to think that I display a similar spirit when it comes to improving my art as well…and when that fails, I fake it.

Preston is inspired by Chris Spooner

Well, I’m sure you’ll be getting this a lot. Chris is just so well known and respected throughout the design community. The real reason he inspires me is because of his status among other designers. There are few real designers out there who have never read Chris’s blog or dont follow Chris on twitter. The true success of a person, in my mind, is measured by how his peers feel about him. Chris is admired and respected for his great skill both in web and graphic design the world over.

Antonea is inspired by Chuck Anderson

Of course many designer’s like Massimo Vignelli and Sagmeister inspire me, but I also like to find inspiration in the modern day designer. Chuck Anderson of No Pattern (http://www.nopattern.com) has amazing work. His work is very abstract and surreal. I love the fact that he uses popular trends and colors in all of his pieces. I find a simple and organic beauty in all of his abstract work.

Megan is inspired by Ashley Wood

I’ve always loved the beautifully formed and energy packed impressionistic style of Ashley Wood. He’s able to construct an entire story from a few raw brush strokes and sketchy lines, pushing the edge of mixed media illustration. The vividness of his imagery has always inspired me to break down my own work to convey a bold message with the simplest of means. His bridge between traditional and digital techniques reminds me to never let go of my old skills when I learn a new one, but to create from the culmination of all of my experience.

Jared is inspired by Ross Lovegrove

His organic forms and great new approach in design for all of his products is just aesthetically brilliant. I love his work in furniture as it provides a very fluid and nature inspired design which also provides great functionality. His supernatural chair design is my favourite piece of his design work, and very comfy aswell when i had the chance to sit on one of them!

John is inspired by Shaun Inman

Because he builds entire web apps by himself, and gets all the details perfect. His user interface design is always clean and cutting edge, allowing you to take in all the information from the backend with ease.

Austin is inspired by Shane Mielke

It all comes down to future vision and detail. His work is awe-inspiring and incredible. Any designer coming into the industry needs to start by admiring the best - and someone with over a decade of excellence. Good Job Shane - You set a positive example for designers everywhere.

Bella is inspired by Heebok Lee

Heebok, with whom I had the privilege of being in Graduate School at CMU, is a master of Kinetic Typography. He is making his mark in Hollywood: he has the title sequences from Spiderman 3, Superman Returns, Iron Man, Speed Racer, The Incredible Hulk, Marvel Knights, to name just a few, under his belt. His perspective of the world is, of all things, other-worldly, and his sense of timing and the use of surprise as a design element is masterful. Whenever I need inspiration, or just need to be reminded that there is still beauty in the world, I just visit his website, sit back, and enjoy. To my endless dismay, he is also one of the world’s most beautiful souls. A piece that I love, takes William Butler Yeats’ love poem, “Tread Softly” and sets it to music, calligraphy, and kinetic typograpy. The image is a screenshot; beautiful as it is, it does the short film no justice.

John is inspired by Jason Chan

Since I was a toddler I was brought up with a pencil, crayon or something to express myself through a visual medium. Now that I have turned my passion into a career I find myself like many other designers, asking “where do I find inspiration?” in truth I disagree with the full, look at other designers and carbon copy their work and tweak it slightly - I mean what self respecting designer does that… I think the best places are the ones that are close to our hearts, climb a mountain, have a laugh with friends, go to the city and marvel at the buildings and scope of the design all around us. One of my favourites is to visit art galleries both online and off, and look at the vibrant colours used to catch your eye and dazzle you. The design industry still has a lot of scope to grow but we need to look back at the older styles of expression to find it. This is just my opinion – I’m sure I will enjoy reading the other designers views on inspiration.

Ryan is inspired by….ME?

Because she has a work ethic that is fucking unrelentless. She is always doing like 8 projects at once and they all end up rocking. *editors note…i only count as half a designer

Who are YOU inspired by?

Leave a comment and let me know who you are inspired by! Inspiration can come from anyone and anywhere.

LessOtten.com

Looks like the designers of this website were a little bit more than inspired by the (remarkable) Obama campaign website designed by Simple Scott.  There are so many similiarities i’m not even going to get into it! The Otten campaign denies they were even inspired by the Obama design (source: CNN) !!! Ha!   The Otten website was ‘designed’ by Insyt… Great job guys!

What do you guys think about this design? Leave a comment and let me know what you think!

I’m on vacation for the next few days so there won’t be any posts for a week or so. But… I thought I would show you what I was up to This is what nerds do on vacation!

Btw- if you are looking for color inspiration take a look at kites! Lots of bright and shiny color schemes!

In this quick tip I show you some keyboard shortcuts that compliment the rounded rectangle tool quite nicely!

Leave a comment and let me know what you think! And don’t forget to subscribe via iTunes.

Love this silly love song about the iPhone 3gs… Now I have to say that I didnt have the original or the 3g phone, so I didnt technically cheat on my previous phone Enjoy!

During Dan Cederholm’s talk at An Event Apart he brought up the topic of progressive enhancement. I’m pretty excited about all the things that CSS3 will allow us to do but I also have some reservations. Do we go crazy and start embracing all these new-fangled CSS things or do we look at our content and design and see if they add meaning and clarity to our message?

<Bling />

The excitement around border radius and text shadow are definitely understandable. It makes me think of the HTML days of yesteryear when I was just learning. I thought that <Blink> and <Marquee> were THE COOLEST THINGS IN THE WORLD!!! But let’s stop a second and think - The way I was using these tags were not thought out and they didn’t add to the message I was trying to convey. They were just BLING.

We need to back up our design decisions instead of always jumping on the “cool things” bandwagon.

I’m Guilty…

I worked on a website a few months ago in which I implemented rounded corners.  I have to admit that I really had no reasoning for using border radius on this navigation. Now that I take a look at it again it does not really fit with the design either. I think of sports or athletic training as something that’s straight forward and rounded corners are more of a softer touch. So

Some Progressive Enhancements To Consider…

…if they suit your design

Border Radius

View the CSS

RBGA Transparency

View the CSS

Text Shadow

Apple Style nav tutorial that uses text shadow

Conclusion

Just because you can does not mean you should…unless you have a reason for it.

What do you think?

Do you live by CSS3 and think its the greatest thing since sliced bread? Leave a comment! Are you an ie6 lover and don’t use anything not supported by the outdated browser? I want to hear from you! Chime in and let your voice be heard.

BTW- you can download the slides from Dan’s AEA09 talk here (PDF)

Curious as to what is going on at An Event Apart Boston? Check out A Feed Apart and follow along as everyone tweets about EVERYTHING. It’s like you’re almost there…seriously!

I was browsing through some portfolio websites last night and came upon this very interesting way to present a website. I’m not sure what kind of altered laptop this is…but I want one!