1. Pattern.

Patterns been about since the universe began, if that sounds crazy to you, think of an atom structure – it follows a pattern, or a DNA, there’s millions of examples. It’s all in front of you, all around you, all you need to do is open your eyes a little bit wider and start seeing what our extremely awesome nature got to show you. Pattern is pretty much anything with observed regularities. Look around you and try to find patterns that are far from obvious – you will be hugely surprised. Now all you need to do is apply the rule of pattern to your designs.

So here are few examples of how you could use pattern in your layouts. The scheme below shows an example of pattern use in a very simplistic form – to get your imaginations started.

Schematic of pattern use in layout and design.

Pattern use in the background and also in the pricing table.

Old school “pixel” pattern use on Thinkstock.

A very subtle use of pattern in the background on Graphic River.

2. Consistency

Remaining consistent throughout your design is very important. If there’s no consistency, there’s no visual and sub-conscious link, there’s no connection for human brain to easily store the information you’re presenting. By being consistent, you’re making sure that the eye flows easily through your design and that brain of anyone who sees your design has that “constant” to catch on to, which makes it easier to remember. Best example – good branding, think big brands: their constant for you is their logo, you see it and your brain instantly makes the connection with the image, service the company offers and all the experiences connected to it. It works like labels in different sections of a library – makes it easier to find things.
Examples of consistency in design:

Schematic of consistency use in layout design.

Schematic of consistency in shapes and color.

Example of great use of consistency in brochure design.

Another great example of consistency in brochure design.

3. Color Accents

If you’re stuck with too many colors in your design and it just looks too cluttered, try narrowing down the palette and choosing an accent color. You’ve probably seen many websites, brochures, business card designs that use this technique, but we don’t always pay attention to tiny detail when browsing about, so here’s a few examples of accent color use:

Schematic of color accent use in layout.

Great color accent use on buttons by BuySellAds.com

(Click for full view) Great use of color accent in poster layout.

Accent color makes particular parts of your layout stand out more than other parts, which has great use in marketing. If your client is trying to highlight particular messages in your layout in order to market their product or service better, that’s a perfect place to use accent color. Accent color can also be used as a guiding line for the eye to flow through your design. Here’s a few simple examples of basic images that use accent, all you need to do is implement same ideas throughout your designs.

4. Visual Connections

Every design needs visual framework, no matter if it’s obvious or not. Visual framework, in a nutshell, it’s a glue that holds pieces of information and imagery together. It can be in a form of grid layout, blended subtle background, little icons in the same style and size, repeating colors or shapes, as long as it glues pieces of your layout “puzzle” together, it creates visual connection. When I was at school, we use to have a classroom game, the rules were simple, you draw a train coach and pass piece of paper to the person next to you and they draw a coach in their own style, and so on. You end up with perfect example of visual connection. Even thou every coach is different, they are connected into one train, and they all represent one object when “glued” together. Here’s a few examples of how visual connections can be established in a layout:

Schematic examples of creating visual connetion.

Beautiful use of color, shapes and inforgraphics to create visual connetion.

Facebook uses tiny icons to create visual connection.

Tabs establish great visual connections between content and navigation. A true web 2.0 wonder.

5. Usual vs. Unusual

Sometimes it’s not very obvious that the project requires a little more than usual layout approach. A lot of designers dread the idea of going into a new direction, away from their “safe place”. But the only way you can keep evolving as a Graphic or Web designer, is if you take risks and experiment. Sometimes the most accidental and craziest idea can become great success. The best advice when considering Usual vs. Unusual is to consider client’s opinion on the approach first and if you get a solid “yes”- experiment, experiment, experiment. On the other hand, going for “usual” look can save you time, nerves and amount of critique you will get once the project is completed. Here’s a few examples of unusual approach to layout:

Schematic represenation of creating unusual out of usual using same shape.

Example of great unusual approach to corporate brochure design.

Example of great, old school approach to brochure design.

Do you have any tips or tricks or your own rules that help you get through layout tasks? Let us know in the comment section! We would love to hear your opinion.
Please consider tweeting the life out of this post to help other people find this article!

Click here or on the preview to download.

Description:

3508×2480 at 300 dpi

Features:

- Every single adjustable layer used in creation of the background included.
- Organized in groups for easy navigation
- 1 Click color scheme change
- Show or hide different layers for your own unique style
- 5 different color styles or develop your own!
- Clean and stardust versions!
- Use as a website background, wallpaper, posters, brochures, magazine spreads, literally – anything!

In your folder:

- Layered Photoshop file with all layers included, all objects on the background is a layer at full 300dpi.
- Help and description file.

File structure:

- Color Variations Group: turn these visible / invisible by clicking on the eye icon to choose different colors (one at a time).
- Cleaner Background On/Off Group – turn this visible/invisible by clicking on the eye icon to switch between clean version and stardust version.

Click here to download.

Use for print or web, find out how “pro’s” do it and start your own retro universe.
Create your own retro-inspired artwork by placing objects in between already existing layers. Easily adjust shapes and move them around. Add text, create a poster, place as a website background or reshape the whole thing your way!

3508×2480 at 300 dpi

Have fun!

Features:

- Every single adjustable layer included.
- Organized in groups for easy navigation
- 1 Click color scheme change
- Show or hide different layers for your own unique style
- 7 different color styles or develop your own!
- Use as a website background, wallpaper, posters, brochures, magazine spreads, literally – anything!

In your folder:

- Layered Photoshop file with all layers included, all objects on the background is a layer at full 300dpi.
- Preview of all color variations in high res jpeg.
- Help and description file.

File structure:

- Color Variations Group: turn these visible / invisible by clicking on the eye icon to choose different colors (one at a time).
- Darkened Corners Layer – turn this visible/invisible by clicking on the eye icon to switch darkened corners on/off.

What we will be creating:

Download all files needed for tutorial + texture.

	Step 1. Working the background. Open up your texture file. Create a new layer on top of it, grab Gradient Tool, choose Radial Gradient and create a gradient similar to the one on the image. Set Blending Mode of this layer to Linear Burn. You Should now have something similar to the image. This gives the background a deeper sort of look.
	Step 2. Add text. Pick Horizontal Type Tool (Simple text tool) and type in your text. Give it a size of about  61px. Deselect the text once done and hit Ctrl+T to fine-tune the size of it.  The font i used is called Poor Richard (Regular).
	Step 3. Throw in a Gold Gradient. Double click on the text layer and it will bring up layer styles menu.  Tick/Click Gradient Overlay,  click on the actual gradient to adjust it (use screenshot for reference- menu 2). Once done hit Ok and tick/click  “Drop  Shadow” , use same settings as on my screenshot (menu 2).  For the lazy ones out there the gradients i used are included in the zip file that you will need for this tutorial. Just load those gradients in your photoshop (CS2 and higher) and enjoy being lazy.
	Step 4. Add Outlines/ Stroke to create more of a 3D effect. Select the txt layer: Hold down CTRL and click on the thumbnail of the layer in your layers pallete. This will select everything that is on that layer. (Very useful shortcut), now without deselecting, create a new layer on top of it and call it Outlines.  Now go to Edit – Stroke and add a 2px stroke on the outside. Follow the print screen.
	Step 5. More Gradients. Double click on the Outlines layer to bring up Layer Styles menu. Click Gradient Overlay, and add another gradient similar to mine on the screenshot. Now a very important bit here is to fine-tune the tweakers on the gradient so that it looks more realistic. Have a look at the screenshot again and try creating a similar effect and positioning of the tweakers.
	Step 6. Master Selection Shortcuts. Here comes a bit of a tricky part of you are not familiar with shortcuts. But i think you will find this technique very useful in the future so let’s learn it.  Hold down Ctrl and click on the main text layer thumbnail, this will select your text without any outlines that we did (because they are on separate layer, remember?) Now keep holding Ctrl, and add Shift and hold it again and click on the Outlines layer thumbnail, guess what that does, it adds another selection to already existing one, well no need to hold those keys down anymore : ).  Now click Rectangular Marquee Tool (box selection tool), (the text should be still selected) and while holding down Alt (notice a little minus appearing next to your mouse pointer) draw a rectangular selection on the bottom half of the text similar to the one on my screenshot. Basically, what it does, it get rids of the unneeded selections, so it’s a reverse effect of selection tool. Next time you want a reverse selection, just hold down Alt.
	Step 7. Why we did all that. Now we have our neat selection, create a new layer, pick a soft big brush and choose white color. Now hold down Shift, position your bush half way through the edge of the selection (see print screen) and drag it to the other end of the text. This creates half gradient like thing over the text which will act as a highlight. Holding down Shift makes sure that you draw a perfect straight line so you don’t have to worry about shaky hands.  Now deselect the whole thing (Ctrl+D) and set this layer Blending Mode to Overlay, it makes sure that we don’t have a white unnatural high light, as overlay blends it in with colors we already have on the piece.
	Step 8. Create some background light. Now pick my favourite big soft round brush and find a dark brown color. Create a new layer behind our text and set Opacity to about 54% and Blending mode to Color Dodge.  Paint 3 big dots on our piece. This creates nice light/reflection like looking things behind our text.  Have a look at my print screen, I’ve selected the dots for you so they are more visible. Now create another layer, pick a light orange color like i did, give layer 36% Opacity and set Blending Mode to Overlay. Create 3 different sized dots on the screen similar to mine, it will give it a nice light behind.  And you will see how it will come in play later. I’ve selected the dots on the screenshot so u can see where i used them.
	Step 9. Lights on! Now we’ll create some magic. Pick soft brush, white color. Create a new layer on top of our text,  now paint two dots over the text with your brush, give layer Opacity of 49% and Blending Mode: Overlay.  See what happened? We’ve added a bit of light. (See the print screen with dots of light selected for your convenience) More, more light please! Create a new layer, set it to Overlay blending mode again, change brush size to 20px. Click on few places on the text to create really striking highlights. See screenshot to get an idea of how i did it. Keep in mind that all the highlights have to be kept in same places in order to create that graduate light effect. If you just randomly click all over the place – magic won’t happen. Nice, but we need more natural look. So let’s break the pattern a little. Create another layer on top, set it to Overlay again and with 3 different sized brushes create something similar to what i did on the screenshot. Draw a line and couple of dots. It will make everything a bit more vibrant.
	Step 10. Rays of light secret! We will now create rays of light over the highlights that we created. Create a new layer, set blending mode to Overlay again, pick bigger soft brush, white color. Pick Polygonal Lasso Tool, create a selection similar to the one on my screenshot. Draw a line along the selection edge, erase edges if needed to soften it up. Here’s your first ray of light. Now duplicate the layer, hit Ctrl +T and resize it to a smaller one, put it over another high light. Do the same a few times to achieve effect similar to mine.

And here we go. A very shiny gold text indeed.

I hope you enjoyed my tutorial and i will be very happy if you guys send me links to your creations following my tutorial.  Leave me a comment and spread the word on social bookmarks to let others know about this.

All the best,
Elena

Check out her website at: www.shallwebellydance.com.

What we will be creating:

Download all the files for this tutorial(120 meg, we will be working on high res image).

Here’s our starting point. If you do not wish to download and work with High Resolution image just save this one and work from it:

	Step 1. Even background. The background is uneven and the light has a weird color to it. Let’s fix this. Pick Eyedropper Tool and Select the pink color of the background. Create a new layer, change the blending mode to Color. Paint over the top bit where the light was yellow. Now it has a nice even color to it.
	Step 2. Get rid of the weird line on the top. That line on the top of the image shouldn’t be there, besides, the model is out of the center of the image, so let’s fix that by cropping the image. Select Crop tool and crop it the same way i did, with same amount of space chopped off on both left and top side of the image, so that we preserve the dimensions of the original.
	Step 3. Details matter. Ah, we need to flatten the two layers that we have so it’s easier to work further. Click the top layer and hit Ctrl+E, that merges selected layer with one underneath it. The right side of the image doesn’t look right, it has a vertical shadow, so we should fix that. Create a new layer, set blending mode to Overlay, pick a big soft brush and paint over with same pink color. It brightened up that weird looking shadow. Merge the layers again (Ctrl+E).
	Step 4. Colors. I am not happy with her skin color, it looks too reddish and unnatural, here’s a quick fix: Hit Ctrl+J to duplicate the main layer. Keep the background layer in, so that u can see the progress at the end. I tried working with Image-Adjustments- Hue/Saturation but it didn’t seem to work as some details were still left reddish. So i’m gona do it my way. Create a new layer and set blending mode to Color. Select black color and paint over the reddish bits on the model as shown on my image. Set the layer opacity to 25%. Merge the layers again (Ctrl+E). The model is now a tiny bit less red. Now let’s go to Image-Adjustments- Hue/Saturation and Set the Saturation to -12 as shown on the image. This will make her skin color more real.
	Step 5. Brighten it up. Now go to Image- Adjustments – Brightness/Contrast and set brightness to +6 and same for contrast. This will brighten up the image and improve the look in general. A bit more vibrant.
	Step 6. Details. Let’s work on details now. Zoom into the face. Pick Brun tool and set it to Range: Shadows and Exposure to 41%. Now pain following the make up line around eyes as shown on the image, this will make make up look a bit more fresh. Apply to both eyes. Now pick Dodge tool, set Range to Shadows and Exposure to 34%. Pain in the white area of the eye to make it brighter. You can do the same for teeth to make them look whiter as well. Now pick the Dodge tool again, increase the size of your brush ( use { and } on your keyboard, those two are shortcuts for bigger/smaller brush size) and follow the lines of the face and cheekbones, this makes face look thinner.
	Step 7. Patch Tool. Now select the Patch tool, draw around the wrinkles on the left cheek as i’ve shown on the image, and then drag it to a clean skin area to replace the texture. Do the same for remaining lines till you achieve result similar to mine. Be aware thou, it has to look natural. This tool can also be handy when getting rid of “dark circles” underneath eyes or shiny bits on the face.
	Step 8. Liquify – Face. Now here comes the Cosmopolitan moment of my tutorial hehe. Click Filter – Liquify. (Use my settings for the tool on the right hand side of the print screen) Now zoom into the face and pick Forward Wrap tool, adjust the brush size using same shortcuts, now click on the side of the face and move it in slightly. Do that for both sides. Hit enter or Ok.
	Step 9. Liquify – Body. Go back to liquefy tool. Now let’s work on the body. Pick Bloat tool on the left, i find that for waiste line this one works the best, adjust the brush size to similar to mine and just click and hold just outside her waist and see the magic happen. Apply to both sides. This technique is very handy for fine tuning bodies and getting rid of things like muffin tops, etc. You could fix her hair a little using the same tool and in general, this is one of very very useful tools in photoshop to learn.
	Step 10. Final Touch Ups. Pick the dodge tool and click on shadowy areas of the image to bring in more contrast. I’ve also painted over her skirt to make it a bit more dark and hide the grain of the photo. Final thing to do is to add sharpness. This is how i would do it for this image. Duplicate the layer (Ctrl+J), go to Filters- Other- High Pass. Set it to about 3.4 or so and after that set the Blending mode of that layer to Overlay. Adjust opacity level of the layer to about 80%.

And voila. Much better now.

Short tip: You could master these techniques and in the future you would be able to do all this in a matter of 10-15 minutes. I’m just giving you ideas on how to use these techniques and what they do to the image, you could really expand it much further and apply it to art, photos , photo manipulations and many other things. Just experiment a lot with each technique and you will surely find that you could do many amazing things. Amen to Photoshop.

All the best,
Elena

Click here to visit his website.
Or visit his Behance Portfolio.

His outstanding vector skills scream top quality work, he is also well-different from all the major trends that are about in the design industry right now, but positively different.

Click here to visit his blog.

It’s an Abstract Retro Background for you to play around with and use as you want.
4 color variations and a massive resolution of 2275×1665.
Click on the preview to download the zip file.

Enjoy and leave us a comment or even a link as to how you used it.

Recently i decided to print that perfect one for myself. My main marketing tool was internet, so i never really considered having some. But recently, stumbling upon potential client’s in my everyday life, i realised that i need them. And they must have “The Wow Factor”.

Tip #1. State what u do obliviously obvious.

Why? Cos you want your prospective client to instantly recognize your business among all others in massive pile of business cards that they might have to go trough.

If you’re designing a business card for a company or yourself, you have to make sure that first thing the receiver sees is what you actually do, what service or product you are selling. An instant trigger like a well made logo or a bold statement normally does the trick.

Tip #2. Make it easy to find contact details.

Why? Cos that’s probably what clients are going to be looking for on your card.
Make your contact details easily readable, you might as well make your number (or e-mail) stand out a little bigger than the rest, if that is the way your clients would use most often. Keep in mind that you still have to keep it aesthetically sensible.

Tip #3. Looking professional.

Why? Cos no-one wants to deal with tacky looking people/businesses.
One important thing: NEVER use tacky templates with unrelated pictures, print website templates and all templates of this kind. Make sure the paper is think enough not to look cheap, the cheaper your business card looks, the more likely it’d get thrown away 5 minutes after you give it away. If you’re not sure of your own capabilities, hire a professional to design it for you, it will pay off. If you can’t afford to hire a professional, hire a student, the chances are he will still do a better job than a template would.

Tip #4. Give them a reason to contact you.

That’s where USP (unique selling points) come in handy. Do you have one? What makes you different? What is it that you have that would make them call you and not your competitor? Make sure you state it clearly on the business card, but keep in mind that you don’t want to look desperate, otherwise, you’ll have an opposite effect.

Tip #5. The WOW factor.

Look slick and professional might not be enough these days, so surprise your clients with something that has a “wow” factor, that could be anything, creative shape, idea, implementation. Doing some competitor research can help with this one too, as you get to see what your competitors didn’t do or were too afraid to do with their business cards. Stand out from the crowd, but make sure you stand out with “wow”, not with “weirdo” factor.

Tip #6. Colors.

Make sure your business cards are done in appropriate colors, as they vary from industry to industry, it’s a good idea trying to project some particular feelings with colors. If you have a corporate palette that would come in handy too. Once again, don’t use insane colors to stand out, all it does is that it makes you seem desperate.

Tip #7 . Little humour and human touch never hurts.

Add some humour, make it interesting, engage a person into actually being interested in what you do. It could also be a good ice breaker and conversation starter.
Expert Opinion

Rytis, Graphic Designer
Most important is a unique idea, which doesn’t cover the main concept. The most important to stay in memories of the person with who you just been talking. Next thing that I always value is the price of the card itself, not the design, but a paper (strong or soft, texture, material) the quality of choice is very wide, and that selection can provide me with a lot of information (of course I am in the same market). Next – the ink. I like to touch the card, and feel the rounded edges of the ink. These small things can tell me how careful you are at the details and how much you are experienced in print design techniques.

Random Opinion

Thanasis, Civil Engineer
First of all keep it simple and professional. Colors should not be too vivid, because you must make the viewer focus on the information.

Futher Reading:

Color Psychology

The best 65 business cards of the year

More inspiration

Do you have something to say? Leave us a comment.

Every time i work on some picture i always find some peculiar ways to do some particular effect. Normally it comes around at random, when i’m struggling to achieve some particular look. Recently i challenged myself to create a dusty desert like scene and also needed shining dust for my latest project. We all love that tiny bit of magic sprinkles from sweet childhood memories of watching Disney cartoons. So here’s a tutorial on how to get dusty bits easy way and also i find this way much more versatile when it comes to editing, rather than using brushes.

What we will be creating:

Download all the files for this tutorial(includes final PSD source file).

	Step 1. The image. Find any image that has any rays of light in it, sky, anything that has this natural “gradient” like looking thing in it. I always duplicate the background layer and hide it. So you might as well do the same. Hit Ctrl+J and hide the layer. Note: Actually, almost any image will do for this sort of purpose. To be honest i tried it with almost any stock that has natural light like desert scenes, roads, anything really, and it always works. I end up with all kinds of “bits and dust” that i can possibly imagine, some looking like ripped off clothes, so experiment a lot!
	Step 2. Magic wand as a source of magic dust. Grab the magic wand tool. Set tolerance to something like 15-30, but you can always change that and experiment more to get different looks.
	Start selecting parts of the image and hitting delete button every time you select something. You should end up with something pretty much the same as on the image below.
	Zoom in and see the magic happen! Hehe. These are those magical bits that we’re going to use in the next image. Grab the Lasso Tool and select the line of dust as shown below. Hit Ctrl+C to copy it.
	Step 3. Ways to use the dust. Now let’s find some use for it. Find an image that you want to use it one and open it up.  Paste in our magic dust (Ctrl+V). Hit Ctrl+J to duplicate the layer and hide it again (so that you keep the source). Double click the copy layer and just have a look at the properties i gave to mine.
	Now let’s give it some life and position it right. Wrap tool is a great way to do that. Click Edit – Transform – Wrap and position/deform the dust the way you want it to flow. You might want to erase some unnecessary/overlapping bits.
	Double click the layer again and let’s play more with layer styles. I’ve added Outer glow that is set to overlay and Bevel and Emboss effect with blue color. Now duplicate the layer again (ctrl+J). Use the wrap tool and deform your dust again (Or just grab another piece of dust from your other image, paste it in and copy the layer style from previous one). Change the color of Outer glow in layer styles to yellow/greenish sort of color and Overlay opacity to 100%. See next image for settings.
	Lets sharpen up the dust and go Filter – Sharpen – Sharpen.  Do the same for both layers. Now activate the very first layer, transform it the way you want it, position it and then hit Image – Adjustments – Brightnes/Contrast. See the next image for settings. Set the layer to Overlay or Color Dodge and position how u like it. You can throw in Motion Blur or Gaussian blur, duplicate it to create multi-dimensional look, the possibilities are endless…
	Now i just added a lot of overlay layers and threw in soft dots with white/bright  yellow soft brush. See the PSD file to get the idea of what i did. It’s not really related to the subject, but it’s a nice technique to use in cope with dust.

Well, i hope this was useful to you guys in some way and if it was, leave me a comment, i really would like to know if it was.

Short tip: The most important thing when working on any sort of project is to allow yourself to experiment, freely, out of the box, without pushing yourself into over thinking it. That set’s your creativity free and leads to amazing results.

All the best,
Elena