We have another fantastic book giveaway for you this week. Packt have given us two copies of the paperback book Google Plus First Look, written by Ralph Roberts, to giveaway to two lucky readers. All you have to do for a chance of winning one of these books is leave a comment below telling us why you would like this book.

Please Note: This competition is only open to readers from the US and Europe.

About the Book: Google Plus First Look: A tip-packed, comprehensive look at Google+

Google Plus First Look shows you how to join Plus and the kind of initial setup that guarantees a successful and fun-filled experience. The second chapter shows you Circles, Google’s innovative bit of genius that has taken social networking to a new level of control over our own interactions.

We’ll see (and I do mean see) how Hangouts (video conferencing) works, and master Streams (where posts go). Sharing photos and video is the easiest you’ve ever seen, and you will see it in Chapter 5. Nor do you have to leave Plus at home, in Chapter 6 we take our social networking with us on our smartphones. Photos and videos upload automatically, ready for sharing. Finally, we learn how to promote things the right way, the polite way on Plus. This book serves as an indispensible reference to all that and more.

You can also download a sample PDF chapter by clicking here.

How to win these books

This competition will run for the next 7 days (ending on the 17th of February 2012) and all you have to do for a chance to win is leave a comment below telling us why you would like this book.

Winners will be selected completely at random and will be informed within a few days of the competition ending via email.
Please note that we will need your home address for postage.

Good luck to everyone :)

In this post, we’ll be sharing with you a collection of useful tutorials that will help you to to use Adobe Illustrator in a variety of new ways. Whether you are a pro or a budding novice, you are bound to find something that will help you.

Below we present a collection of some of the latest, most useful and highly creative tutorials for Adobe Illustrator.

Realistic, Vector Bubbles

In this tutorial you’ll learn how to create colorful, realistic bubbles. It’s pretty in depth though, so set aside a couple hours for this one.

Creating a Realistic Curtain

With this tutorial you’ll use the Mesh Tool to create an interesting damask patterned curtain.

Burning, Vector Match Using Gradient Meshes

You will learn how to create realistic vector fire, using the Gradient Mesh Tool and Screen Blending mode with this tut.

Neat Ribbon in Illustrator

In this tutorial you’ll learn how to create a vector illustration of a beautiful red ribbon. All you will need is the Pen Tool, 3D effect Extrude & Bevel and a good taste in color selection. This could be good practice for less skilled Pen Tool users.

Detailed Vector Chalkboard Icon

This classic school blackboard illustration is composed using vector shape building techniques, pixel perfect highlighting, as well as using brushes and textures to add detail.

Magnifying Glass Tutorial

Create a Cute Snail

In this tutorial you’ll learn how to draw a snail using various tools including the Pen Tool, Selection Tool, Direct Selection Tool, Ellipse Tool, and Gradient Tool, with some shapes created with the help of the Pathfinder panel.

Business Icon from Scratch

In this tutorial you’ll create an interesting business icon that consists of two arrows and a globe. The techniques discussed are applicable to the creation of a variety of other illustrations as well.

Colorful, Glass Text Effect

In the following tutorial you will learn how to create a colorful, glass text effect, using patterns, transform effects, multiple gradient fills, and more to construct this beautiful lettering.

Create a Jellyfish with Brushes

You’re shown how to create a stylized jellyfish using blends and brushes with this tutorial.

Create a St. Patrick’s Day Postcard

Here you’ll create a design fit for any number of St. Patrick’s Day uses. You’ll learn useful information on how to create a pile of golden coins and a Pilgrim hat.

How to Illustrate A Yacht

In this tutorial, you’ll use Meshes, Bristle brushes, Art brushes, and other tools and techniques to create a racing yacht in Illustrator. The skills you’ll learn here can easily be used to create various other objects as well.

Create a Vector Radiator Artwork

In this tutorial you’ll use 3D-rendering, blends, and other tools and professional vector techniques to create an oil filled vector radiator. The skills learned here can easily be used to create various stock art objects or graphics for your next design project.

Psychedelic Design in Photoshop and Illustrator

In this tutorial you’ll create a psychedelic design one step at a time using both Illustrator and Photoshop.

Create a Steel, Vector Power Button Set

How to Create an Open Book with Illustrator’s 3D Extrude & Bevel Tool

In this tutorial, you’ll explore how to create an open book using Illustrator’s 3D Extrude & Bevel Tools. You’ll create open pages with graphics and add a wavy background. The book can then be customized by applying your own graphics to the pages.

Create Super Mario’s Head

Create a Web Site Mascot

In this tutorial, you’ll get an overview of how to develop a character from the initial concept to the final site mascot, then go on to create several character poses for different parts of the site.

How to Create a Vector Stamp Set in Illustrator

With this tutorial you’ll learn how to create a vintage, vector stamp set. They’ll go over building the stamp shape by shape, constructing the stamp border vector shape, highlighting the edges, creating the branding, and giving the vector postage stamp a vintage texture, and final illustrator stamp effect.

Create a Vector Snake

In this tutorial we learn how to create a vector snake using the Mesh Tormentor, a free Gradient Mesh plugin. The plugin makes working with the gradient mesh simple and enjoyable.

Create Vector Denim Texture Using

In this tutorial you’ll learn how to create a realistic vector denim texture.

Basics of the Mesh tool in Illustrator

Here we learn a bit more about Illustrator’s Mesh tool. You’ll learn how to create a Super Mario-style mushroom in order to better understand how to use this tool on an example image.

Create a 50s Ad Poster

In this tutorial you learn to make a retro looking poster that gives the impression of having been crafted in the 50’s.

Cubist Style Logo Design

In this logo design walk-through, you’ll learn how to make a cubist style logo design made up of lots of detailed vector facets.

Create a Zee Vintage Label

Create a Simple Vector Ninja Character

Follow this step by step tutorial to create a simple vector ninja character. The design is made up of basic shapes and uses Illustrator’s core tools, making this tutorial perfect for beginners.

Easy Clock Icon

This tutorial covers a really simple exercise to create a slick clock icon. If you’re new to using Illustrator, this tutorial will be especially well suited for you.

Design a Print Ready Die-Cut Business Card

Need a new set of business cards? Follow this step by step tutorial to create a cool business card design using Adobe Illustrator.

Create Dexter with Illustrator

How to Illustrate a Lighthouse

Create a Cute Hairy Vector Monster Character

You’ll create the character using basic shapes to give a cute and friendly appearance, then bringing the character to life with gradient colors and a detailed fur effect.

Create a Gruesome Zombie Illustration

You’ll use a photograph as a basic reference then use a Wacom tablet along with Illustrator’s vector brush tools to draw up various gruesome elements on your zombie character.

Create an Advertising Billboard

In this vector tutorial you will learn how to create an advertising billboard using 3D modeling and a few simple techniques, like shape building using the Pathfinder palette, defining the vanishing point by using the guides, filling an object with gradients and using the Blend Tool.

Daily Flip Calendar

Candy Cane Text Effect

In this tutorial, using both Illustrator and Photoshop, you will learn how to create a candy cane text effect. This tutorial shows you how to use various vector-drawing tools in Illustrator to create a custom pattern brush and how to refine your vector work by finishing it off in Photoshop.

Sonic The Hedgehog Opening

In this detailed tutorial you will learn how to create the Sonic The Hedgehog opening logo in Illustrator

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Parody

Create a Wireframe Face with the Envelope Distort Tool

It’s as simple as it sounds. In this detailed tutorial you’ll learn how to create a wireframe face in Illustrator using the envelope distort tool.

Make a Worm in Illustrator

Create a Vector Gift Box

In this tutorial you’ll create an attractive gift box, using mostly the usual tools, like the Rectangle Tool, Ellipse Tool, Extrude & Bevel 3D effect and some nice colors to create an eye catching illustration.

Retro Version of The Itchy and Scratchy Show

Complete Guide to Drawing Evil Vector Skulls

This tutorial demonstrates how to draw evil skulls easily, as well as teaching us a bit of anatomy. It goes step by step, showing us how to draw an evil looking skull, the right way!

Create a Sale Tag Icon

This tutorial even shows you how to simulate the look of folded corners on the paper by using simple color gradients. The creation process is surprisingly simple.

Create a Macbook Pro Illustration

Create an Angry Birds Parody

Create a Cocktail Glass in Adobe Illustrator

In this very detailed tutorial, you will learn how to create a cocktail glass filled with a colorful drink and fancy decorations. Creating glass objects can be challenging since there are so few colors you’re allow to use. This tutorial shows us how!

You might also like…

A Round-Up of 50 Fresh Photoshop Tutorials and Techniques »
30 Artistic and Creative Photoshop Poster Tutorials »
40 Amazing Photoshop Brush Directories and Collections »
50 Imaginative Fantasy Art Tutorials for Photoshop »
25 Cool Digital Photography Tutorials, Techniques and Effects »
25 Photoshop Tutorials for Creating that Perfect Web Page Design »
25+ Free Vector World Maps (.ai, .eps and .svg formats) »
Complete Collection of Blank T-Shirt Mockup Templates »
Illustrator Template Toolbox for Web, Mobile and App Developers »

With the galloping development of modern technologies the screen size margin of your readership can be anything in-between a 30″ desktop monitor and the iPhone’s 3.5″ screen. Responsive design techniques kills two birds with a single stone by helping improve user experience by displaying a screen sized optimized version of your website.

You can help your WordPress website become more mobile-friendly, and here is a list of the most useful WordPress plugins that would help you in that. You’ll find simple tools for re-sizing images, making videos responsive, creating a mobile version of your website and many more. The point is that you should try some of these on your WordPress-based website and test them to find the best solution. If you don’t experiment you might lose the potential of a mobile readership.

WP Fluid Images

WP Fluid Images removes the fixed width and height attributes from images, loads a jQuery script that examines the .post, or .page divs for image tags. After that it calculates the image’s width as a percentage of the .post or .page div, removes the width and height attributes, and adds a style attribute with a width value set to the calculated percentage. Pretty simple and efficient, as you see.
Fluid Images →

FitVids for WordPress

This is just another awesome WordPress jQuery plugin which makes all videos on your page responsive. It is perfect for video blogs and projects that often post a video-based content.
FitVids for WordPress →

WP Orbit Slider

WP Orbit is a responsive jQuery plugin that works by using custom post type and taxonomies. WP Orbit inserts a slider via shortcode’s pasting into your content or echoing the shortcode into your theme template. The best thing about it is the slider will be responsive to all kinds of devices.
WP Orbit Slider →

Responsive TwentyTen

This plugin makes your TwentyTen (default WP theme) themed site have a responsive and fluid layout, using CSS and media queries to enable the fluidity and responsiveness.
Responsive TwentyTen →

Respond.js for WP

Respond.js is a fast and lightweight (3kb minified / 1kb gzipped) polyfill for min/max-width CSS3 Media Queries (for IE 6-8, and more). It’s been written in such a way that it will probably patch support for other non-supporting browsers as well.
Respond.js for WP →

Ultimate Coming Soon Page

The feature-rich HTML5 & CSS3 Ultimate Coming Soon Page plugin allows you quick and easily set up a responsive coming soon page for your website.
Ultimate Coming Soon Page →

Juiz Smart Mobile Admin

The Juiz Smart Mobile Admin plugin, built to be used with the default administration theme, offers you smartphone support for your dashboard by using CSS3 Media Queries.
Juiz Smart Mobile Admin →

WordPress Mobile Pack

The WordPress Mobile Pack contains a full set of tools that will help you to make your WordPress site and blog mobile-friendly. Here are the most important features of this plugin – mobile switcher, base mobile theme, device adaptation, mobile admin panel, barcode widget. Basically this plugin makes your website 95% mobile friendly and you can even manage your content with the help of your own mobile device which is really efficient and helpful feature these days.
WordPress Mobile Pack →

Style My Gallery

This plugin will allow a gallery of images pulled from the media library to be displayed using either the popular FlexSlider or ImageFlow plugins.
Style My Gallery →

Mobify

First of all you should know that this plugin is recommended only for high-volume sites (1 million+ pageviews per day). It has support for tablet devices including iPad and Android-powered devices. This plugin detects mobile devices and sends them to the mobile URL of your website. You must register for a free Mobify account at http://mobify.me in order to create and manage your mobile site.
Mobify →

WP Mobile Detector

WordPress Mobile Detector automatically detects the type of the device that the user is browsing the website with. After that the plugin loads a special mobile theme of your blog if you are viewing the website via mobile phone/tablet/smart phone. This plugin also includes an installer that will configure everything automatically.
WP Mobile Detector →

Wapple Architect

Wapple Architect delivers tons of unique and useful mobile features that make your website mobile-friendly in a matter of minutes. This plugin has the following options: dynamic resizing of images, special mobile SEO, preserving your URL structure, mobile advertising integration, a special stats tool for Mobile Page impressions, fully compatible with WordPress MU, advanced pagination etc.
Wapple Architect →

BuddyPress Mobile

BuddyPress Mobile is a special version of the well-known plugin which is optimized for the most popular mobile devices (iPhone, Android, iPod, some BlackBerry devices). This plugin will detect mobile devices and use a special BuddyPress Mobile theme. Also it has a custom front page for the mobile site and a custom mobile menu.
BuddyPress Mobile →

You might also like…

15 Free WordPress Themes with a Responsive Layout →
25 jQuery Plugins to help with Responsive Layouts →
15 Responsive CSS Frameworks Worth Considering →
10 HTML5-Ready Blank, Bare-Bones and Naked Themes for WordPress →

This is our weekly column were we share our favorite design related articles, resources and cool tidbits from the past week. Enjoy :)
If you would like to receive our daily updates and keep up to date with the latest and greatest articles and resources from the design community, you can follow us on Twitter, on Facebookor by subscribing to our RSS feed.

ZeroBundle – A bundle of freebies for designers

Terminology, Syntax, & Introduction – A Beginners Guide to HTML & CSS

Learn HTML & CSS – A book that teaches you in a nicer way

Git For Designers (Part 1)

CSS3 & jQuery Folder Tabs

CSS Image Reflection With Webkit

Star Ratings With Very Little CSS

Build Awesome Apps with CSS3 Animations

Minimal Single Page Portfolio With HTML5/CSS3

Photoshop Brushes by Blakravell

Twitter Bootstrap Assets for Adobe Fireworks

Infographic Vector Kit

Hand Drawn UI Kit

White iPhone 4S Mockup (326ppi)

Bispo – Desktop Free Font

Architekt – Free WordPress Theme

Danko – Free Charity WordPress Theme

This Week on CodeVisually

We recently launched CodeVisually, our site that focuses solely on resources and tools for web developers and offers a simple solution to painlessly find the resource needed and fast.

Here are our favorite webdev resources from the past week:

Previous Weekly Design News…

Design News Roundup Archives →

The newest version of Xcode comes packaged with a few noticeable interface changes. For beginners and intermediate users it can be difficult figuring out even the most basic functionality. And although Apple’s online documentation is well-written, it’s certainly not friendly for the average user.

So in this guide I’d like to put together some basic steps for building any iOS app. I’ll be focusing exclusively on iPhone & iPod Touch devices since iPad opens up a whole new chapter of research. You aren’t required to understand Objective-C or MVC programming to get started with this Xcode guide. But any dedicated iOS app developer will study at least some basic syntax guidelines.

I should point out that Xcode can only be installed on a Mac laptop or desktop running OS X. Unfortunately Windows and Linux users are unable to install the software, and the app source code will not compile properly. Otherwise you can download Xcode for free on Apple’s website or from the Mac App Store.

Creating a New Project

When first running Xcode you’ll be given a startup window with the text “Welcome to Xcode”. From here you can open recent projects or even create a new one. The first link Create a new Xcode project is what we want.

Click this and we’re presented with an options view. Each new project has a couple of setup screens to go through starting with the template. An “Empty Application” is the quickest way to start customizing from a bare-bones template. But for this tutorial let’s choose “Tabbed Application” so we have something to play with.

On the next menu we need to give the application a name. Standards dictate you should not use any spaces and follow the guidelines of capitalizing each letter of a new word. I’ll use the product name newSpeckyApp and additionally change the company identifier to com.speckyboy.

This identifier will not necessarily affect how your application runs. It only applies extra profile data so you can organize apps based on a company domain. Keep Device Family set to iPhone and make sure Storyboard and Automatic Reference Counting are checked. Hit next and select a directory to save the application source code.

Examining the Storyboard

Developers familiar with the older version of Xcode are expecting to work with .xib files. The old standard for iOS applications would create .xib files for each of the application views. The purpose of a Storyboard file is to consolidate all of these views together.

This not only makes editing your project a lot easier but it dramatically reduces the loading times within Xcode. The previous method of building views involved the Interface Builder software. However, this has been paired into Xcode so now you don’t even need it!

You’ll notice on this storyboard that we have 2 different views and a navigation item. The object on the far left is our tab bar controller which manages the navigation between only 2 pages(first view is loaded by default). You can edit the text on each page by double-clicking the elements. These are generic UITextView objects which control the display of text.

Running in iOS Simulator

Before we tinker in more detailed areas let’s see how the generic tab bar application runs. Xcode includes another piece of software called iOS Simulator which behaves as a native iPhone right on your computer.

To build and run your application just click the circle button in the top left corner, or alternatively CMD+R as a shortcut. This pops open the simulator and you’ll catch a glimpse of the app loading into view. The only core functionality is clicking between both view pages on the bottom tab navigation. It’s not much, but it’s certainly a great template to start with.

If you click on the iPhone home button the simulator will return to your springboard. From here you’ll notice that your application comes bundled with a plain white icon. By default this is the standard icon for all iOS projects – and it’s very boring. Let’s look into the process of customizing your app with a new icon.

Design for Apple Specifications

When we talk about graphics for the iPhone it’s important to go over Apple’s set of rules. Especially when in the realm of application icons there are strict size limits you should adhere with.

The largest icon size you’ll need is 512×512 pixels which is only featured in the iTunes App Store profile. It’s a good idea to keep this size in mind if you ever plan on publishing into the App Store. But for just a practice demo app we can get by without this larger template.

Check out the list below for a more complete writeup. We only need to include the 57x57px icon sized for standard iPhone & iPod Touch displays. But it’s wise to consider all of the potential options:

• • 512×512 – iTunes Artwork
• • 57×57 – Standard iPhone/iPod Touch
• • 114×114 – Retina iPhone 4/4S
• • 72×72 – iPad

There are other iOS sizes used for lesser-important sections. These include the Settings view and spotlight search, as well as custom document types. I’ve written up a full list of sizes in a previous iOS design article. But for now I’ll just create a 57×57 square icon design with the Speckyboy logo.

Attaching an App Icon

I should also point out that all application icons should be saved as square .png files. The rounded corners and gloss effect are added once the app is compiled and running on an iPhone(or simulator).

First save and download the icon file I linked above. You’ll want to drag this from Finder into your Xcode project window. A menu comes up asking if you want to copy the file over, just click Finish and the png should appear in your project navigator on the left side. I move all my icon files into the Supporting Files group to make it easier to manage and much more organized.

Before this icon will appear we need to edit the application’s .plist file. This should be located inside the Supporting Files group in the format %AppName%-Info.plist. So in my case the file is named newSpeckyApp-Info.plist. Look down through the Keys list until you find the row labeled “Icon files”.

This will contain an array of file names which point to each of your app icons. The naming conventions are also fairly standard coming right from Apple. Icon.png is used for the regular iPhone while Icon@2x.png is displayed on retina devices. Click to select this row and then click on the small arrow icon to the left. This expands the array open so we can see there are currently no values.

To change that click on the plus icon over to the right side. This adds a new array value with an empty String. Enter Icon.png for the value and save any changes. Now build and run the application to check out the effect! If the app launches too quickly just click the home button again to view the springboard of icons.

Helpful Resources

• • iOS Developer’s Roadmap
• • Apple Development Center for iOS
• • iPhone Dev SDK Forums
• • Programming Objective-C in XCode 4 – iPhone “Hello, World!” tutorial

Conclusion

This overview should get you comfortable with putting together a very basic iPhone application. We didn’t spend any time going into Objective-C since the programming can get intense for beginners. But I recommend skimming some light material on the topic to slowly break yourself into the language. Additionally if you have thoughts or questions on the article please share with us in the post discussion area below.