Complete redesign of the web hosting service review website Best Web Hosting Ratings. The new site was built on wordpress and boasts a fully responsive layout, retina-ready graphics, custom post types, shotcodes, dedicated admin panel, custom widgets, custom sidebars and a custom icon set.

Tools Used: Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Jquery, WordPress.

Live Demo at: http://www.bestwebhostingratings.com/

Simple and clean logo for a up and coming pizza place in the United Arab Emirates. I was asked to create something that represent a modern take on arab culture while keeping the logo authentic and usable across all media.

Welcome to another free wordpress theme! Feel free to download and use it on your website. The theme is fully responsive and heavily customizable with 3 different colour schemes and options to add/remove sections to make it more personalized.

The theme features custom made slider, site message box, post format icons, custom menus, jquery masonry powered grid, 3 colour schemes, about site area, about author widget and more.

Live preview : http://ablethemes.com/aj/

Download Theme

License: GNU General Public License, freedom to use, study, share (copy), and modify the theme.

A poster that emphasizes on simplicity. No download or print available.

A responsive wordpress theme for the masses. Feel free to download and use it on your website. The theme is heavily customizable with 3 different colour schemes and options to add/remove sections to make it more personalized.

Live Demo at: http://ablethemes.com/aj/

Free Download

Portfolio/Blog Website for Washington DC photographer Chanel Jibal. Site was built on WordPress and latest jquery and CSS techniques were used to to give it a modern and contemporary look.

Live Demo at: http://chaneljibal.com/

Simple and clean porfolio website Masaar Information Technology. A design agency that specializes pretty much everything that involves design. Live demo is at: http://www.masaar.com

*Logo was done by my boss Salim Alaleeli

Hello and welcome to another freebie on The Graphics Book. As the name suggest, this time it’s a free web design toolkit (Vector) to get you started with web designing. I’ve included the vector files so that they can be scaled to any size imaginable, this might come in very handy when you’re designing a responsive website and have to deal with retina displays. The graphics are free to download and commercial use is allowed as well. So feel free to download and start using them right away. Please do not hotlink the file, if you’re listing it on your website, provide a link to this page instead. Thank you.

Download Vector Web Design Toolkit.

Hello again, welcome to another freebie on The Graphics Book. I’m giving away a free set of vector bees. One bee to rule them all. It’s free and even commercial use is allowed. .AI file is in the download file, contains 8 vector bees with different facial expression. Hope you enjoy it, please DO NOT hotlink the download file, I’ll really appreciate if you link to this page instead.

Download Free Vector Bee

Hello everyone, another week, another post! Follow these simple step by step tutorial to create a confused Bee character in Adobe Illustrator. We’re going to be using basic shapes and filters throughout the tutorial, so don’t worry about what kind of expertise you may need to follow the tuorial. I made it as simple as I could. Enjoy.

Open up adobe illustrator and draw an oval using the Ellipse tool (O) on the artboard. Give it a linear gradient fill with a dark-ish yellow to brighter yellow colour combo plus 1px black stroke.

Make a copy of the oval you just created and place it on the side.

For the next step, draw a rectangle using the Rectangle Tool (M) and fill it up with a three point linear black and dark grey gradient as shown in the image above.

Use the Filter>Warp>Bulge filter as shown above the give the rectangle you just created a little bulgy look. Use 3% Horizontal Bend to keep it nice and subtle. Keep the rectangle selected, choose Object>Expand from the menu to make it ready for the next step.

Make a copy of the rectangle as shown in the image above, go to Filter>Warp>Arc Lower filter and give it a 2% horizontal bend.

Make a copy of the first rectangle and put it above, now you have 3 rectangles with the 2nd rectangle at the bottom. Select all three of them and press CMD+G (CTRL+G on Windows) to put them in a group. Now, select the group and move them to on top of the oval you created earlier, as shown in the image.

Now, select the group of rectangles and press CMD+SHIFT+[ (CTRL+SHIFT+[ on Windows) to send them behind the yellow oval. This is very important so make sure you don’t miss it. Once you’ve done that, select the oval and the group of rectangles both and click on the CROP icon in the Pathfinder pane. If you don’t see the Pathfinder pane, don’t worry, go to Windows and click on Pathfinder to bring it up. Now we have the Bee stripes sized up to fit inside the yellow oval we’ve been keeping on the side, which is going to be the body for the bee.

For the next step, make a copy of the oval, remove the stroke, fill it up with a yellow to brighter yellow gradient (must be brighter than first oval) and then put it on top of the first oval. Make some changes to the size of the oval using just the Selection Tool (V) to resemble the proportion shown in the image above. Now put the bee stripes on top of the ovals and move on to the next step.

Draw an oval using the Ellipse Tool (O), fill it up with black. Now draw two more ovals, a bit smaller than the black oval, fill them up with the same gradient fills you used on the ovals for the body for the bee, brighter one on top.

Put the ovals on top of each other, resize the brighter one on top using the Selection Tool (V) to make it look like the image above. Now we have the body and the head. Let’s move on to the eyes.

Create five ovals using the Ellipse tool (O), two with black fill and the rest with white. Now, arrange them the same way I have in the image above. Press SHIFT+OPTION while drawing the ovals to keep them in a perfect circular proportion. Select all of them and press CMD+G to group them.

Select the group, press O+Enter on the keyboard, or go to Objects>Transform>Reflect to bring up the Reflect pane, check the Vertical radio button and then click on the Copy button. Now we have two sets of ovals mirroring each other. These are going to be the eyes.

Now select both sets of the ovals and place them on top of the head, as shown in the image. Next up is the mouth.

Now move on to a unused part of the artboard, draw a rectangle using the Rectangle Tool (O) on the toolbar, a small one, then go to Filter>Warp>Arc and put in the same setting parameters I have used in the image above. 13% Bend, 21% Horizontal Distortion. Hit OK and then choose Expand Appearance from the Object Menu. Once you’ve done that, rotate it slightly counter-clock wise using the Rotate Tool (R) and place it under the eyes. Now we have a face for our bee.

Note: you can also rotate it by going to Object>Transform>Rotate and put a value in the Angle field, make sure the Preview checkbox is checked so you can see how the parameters are affecting the result.

It’s time to create the antennas. Draw a rectangle, select the top right hand corner anchor using the Direct Selection Tool (A) and pull it halfway down, it should snap to place exactly halfway down (if not, go to View and click on Snap to Point). Use the same method on the lower right hand corner anchor but this time pull it upward to make it a triangle.

Note: While using the Direct Selection Tool, if pulling (Dragging) the anchor down pulls the whole thing down, click on the anchor again. Anchors are the dot like boxes around an object. Another simple way of creating a triangle from a rectangle is to simply create a rectangle and then going to Filter>Warp>Wave and giving it -100% horizontal distortion.

Now select the triangle using the Selection Tool (V), go to Filter/Wrap/Arc and give it a 20% Horizontal bend. Press OK, then Expand it by selecting Expand from the Object Menu.

Note: If it’s still selected with the Direct Selection Tool, deselect it by clicking anywhere in the surrounding area and then select again using the Selection Tool)

Draw a small circle using the Ellipse Tool (O) and place it at the tip of the bent triangle. Now we have the antenna.

Rotate the antenna counter-clock wise using they Rotate tool, make a mirrored copy of it by going to Obejct>Transform>Reflect. Same way you created the eyes. Now select both of them, press CMD+G (CTRL+G on Windows) to group them and then CMD+SHIFT+[ (CTRL+SHIFT+[ on Windows) to send them behind the head.

Draw a rectangle using the Rectangle Tool (M) and turn it into a triangle by following the same method you use to create the bee antennas. Make a copy of the triangle, make it a wee bit smaller, rotate it clock-wise a little and then make a mirrored copy of it by going to Object>Transform>Reflect and then clicking the Copy button. Arrange them the same way I have in the image above, select all of them and press CMD+G (CTRL+G on Windows). Let’s call this the crown.

Now let’s move on to a clean area on the artboard and create the stinger. Draw a rectangle as shown in the image, pull down/up the corner anchors on the right hand side to the middle to create a rectangle. Go to Filter>Warp and choose the Wave filter from list. Give it a 62% horizontal bend and-9% horizontal distortion. Choose Object>Expand Appearance from the menu. Once you’ve done that, use the Rotate Tool (R) to rotate it 90 degrees clock-wise, you can also do it by going to Object>Transform>Rotate and put 90 degrees in the Angle field, make sure the Preview checkbox is checked so you can see how the parameters are affecting the result.

Now that we have the crown and the stinger, place them accordingly and then press CMD+SHIFT+[  (CTRL+SHIFT+[ on Windows) to send them to back so that the body and head stays on top of them.

We’ve got almost everything so far, now we just need to give our bee a pair of wings. Draw 3 ovals using the Ellipse Tool (O), one black, one grey, one with a very bright shade of grey. Now place them on top of each other as shown in the image, move them around to achieve something similar to mine.

Make copies of the black and grey ovals (exclude the bright grey one), make them smaller, rotate clock-wise a bit and press CMD+SHIFT+[ (CTRL+SHIFT+[ on Windows) to send them back. Now place them the same way I have in the image and select all of them and press CMD+G to group them.

Select the group of ovals, go to Object>Transform>Reflect, choose Vertical Axis and press the copy button. Now we have two sets of wings. Place them behind the bee body by selecting both groups and pressing CMD+SHIFT+[ (CTRL+SHIFT+[ on Windows). Move them around until you’re satisfied with the result and Voila! We have a confused looking Bee, and it didn’t take anything more than some basic shapes and default filters.

I hope you enjoyed this. If you have any question regarding the tutorial, leave a comment below and I’ll be happy to reply. Please subscribe to my RSS Feeds to get notified of the latest post every week.