Preview

Download for Free

Usually, this theme costs $25.This week on Tutorial9 you can get this theme, a free subscription to our new Tutorial9 Newsletter, and hundreds of other freebies for free.

Download for Free in the Ultimate Resource Pack

Download Now

Download Now: The Ultimate Resource Package for Web Designers

What’s Inside

400 Icons: Including exclusives and early releases. Also includes every icon set ever offered from Tutorial9!

4 Premium WordPress Themes: 4 Premium WordPress Themes, including 3 themes that you can’t find free ANYWHERE else like the Home Office and Business Themes available at NattyWP for $25.

3 Tumblr Themes: Three incredible Premium Tumblr and Posterous Themes from the kind folks at Obox Design! A Value of $50!

Many More Freebies:This thing is filled to the brim with juicy freebies! It’s only available for one week, so download today!

Free Subscription to Tutorial9 Essentials: As a part of this special offer, we’re inviting everyone to subscribe to our brand new Tutorial9 Essentials Newsletter: our new publication with periodic exclusive freebies and Tutorial9 updates. Subscribers will have special access to files that can’t be downloaded on Tutorial9.net!

Limited Time Offer

This package is only available for free download between November 9th-16th. After that, the whole thing disappears.

You’re free to use all the items in this package both commercially and for personal projects without attribution just like any other free download on Tutorial9.net. None of the files may be redistributed.

To download, you must subscribe to the new Tutorial9 Newsletter “Tutorial9 Essentials”. From there, the download will be emailed to your address, along with tons of free goodies and updates in the future. It is not required that you stay subscribed if you’d prefer to not recieve future updates!

Enjoy, and thanks so much for your continued support!

Hundreds of Freebies. 1 Download. 1 Week Only.

Starting Monday, Tutorial9 is going to be giving away hundreds of freebies: Premium WordPress Themes, Icon Packs, Tumblr & Posterous Themes, and much more. We’re not just giving it to a few people. Nope… This is a package EVERYONE can download.

We’re calling it “The Ultimate Resource Package for Web Designers”. It’s quite a mouthful, but we’re packing a ton of cool stuff into this exclusive download. Take a look at some of what you’ll be able to pick up for free starting Monday, November 9th:

• 3 Premium Tumblr & Posterous Themes from Obox Design ($50 Value)
• Home Office and Business WordPress Themes from NattyWP ($50 Value)
• The “Simple Please” Premium WordPress Theme from Tutorial9
• 21 Icon Packs from Tutorial9, including several unreleased sets
• A whole lot more!

What’s the Catch?

This download will only be available to subscribers of Tutorial9 Essentials for ONE WEEK. After November 16th, you’re out of luck, and this offer disappears forever.

Hundreds of Freebies. One Download. One Week Only.

Can you Remind Me?

We’ll one-up reminding you: You can get a Free Subscription to Tutorial9 Essentials today, and we’ll send you the download first thing Monday Morning. Subscribers not only get access to the “Ultimate Resource Package for Web Designers”, but also tons of bonus freebies in our periodic newsletter that can’t be found anywhere else.

Free is Good. We’re Pros.

Get Your Free Subscription to T9 Essentials Now

Inspirational Text Art

All About hand

Created in Illustrator, this demonstrates how text can be used to make the ordinary seem dynamic and unique.

Mos Def Lyric Portrait

A beautiful mix of style and various typefaces give this Lyrical portrait a multi-cultural vibe that really make it ‘pop’.

Type Industry

An exploration of the combination of type and engineering, with a lovely use of angles to anchor the image on the letter T.

It’s Graphic Design

It’s Graphic Design, not Art – so says this text art. It’s a short essay/manifesto about the relationship between graphic design and art.

Jimi In Type

It’s not as detailed as other type portraits but it’s worth seeing just for the attention to the hair, it’s managed to capture some of the Jimi Hendrix style.

Here’s Looking At You

An illustration for Computer Arts Magazine #111, for an article about typography, with all of the elements hand placed in Illustrator.

Type Art Portrait

This is one of the softest, most creative type art pieces i’ve seen. The tones created by the varying colours and typefaces are beautiful.

Tuatara In Type

This is a Tuatara reptile which is native to New Zealand. It was created in Illustrator and the words used are those that describe the creature.

Love Graphic Design

A different take on the usual text art portraits, it focuses on the background with a confetti like effect.

One Planet

Created in honor of LIVE EARTH 7.7.07. It represents the fact that although we all come from different countries, we are all the same.

Deadly Sin Typography

This is the deadly sin of Wrath with the entire image being solely illustrated by the word Wrath.

Steven Paul Jobs

Perhaps one of the most well known pieces of text art is this portrait of the enigmatic Steve Jobs – founder of Apple.

Times New Roman

An impressive piece which uses the word Typography to construct the female form. It’s a beautiful composition.

M Typographied

The letter M created with the theme “mystery” in mind, this is the second variation of this work which has been given the 3D effect.

Typograthree

In total there were 1612 words used all of them read the number Three. Each was individually set and not copied and pasted.

Self Portrait

This has a delicate ethereal quality which is due to the fantastic use of light, gradients and colour.

What You Write

One of the pieces here that delivers the biggest impact, combining photography and typography with a message behind it.

Martin Luther King

This is part 2 in a series, it uses Bickham Script Pro letters, numbers and characters which are scaled, not distorted along with about 8-9 shades of gray.

Typographic Tree

The history of Typography formed into the shape of a tree as if conveying the very roots of Typography and it’s growth throughout the years.

China Doll

Created in honor of Hispanic day on DeviantART, this is a wonderful portrait drawn directly from a wonderful portrait photograph.

Typographic Portrait

A creative use of the form of letters to suggest lines, the contrast of the huge letters with the stark white background is very effective.

Homeless

A simple yet powerful message is conveyed where the park bench is constructed with a paragraph explaining the plight of those who face life without a home.

Convocation

A piece for a school organisation where the words used for the question mark are a mix of communication professors, equipment, technicians, subjects and laboratories.

Eye Believe

A highly original portrait made entirely out of text to give a newspaper scrapbook effect.

Beer Directions

A poster with directions from Central New Jersey to Philadelphia. It’s themed around the visiting bars along the way and conveys the idea of a drunken night by making it jumbled confusing.

It’s The Joker

An amazing piece of text art which absolutely captures the very essence in which Heath Ledger portrayed the Joker.

Brasilia

Text art in the shape of Brazil, where the bold choice of typeface and colour give this an immediately strong impact.

Am I Your Type?

A self portrait created with the font Trajan Pro, it’s one of my personal favorites due to the incredible details and raw emotion.

With Great Humility..

This portrait of Barack Obama contains the entirety of his 2008 Democratic Presidential Nomination Acceptance Speech… in his face!

Typomin M

The word “typomin” is a combination of the words typography and vitamin. The image is composed solely of the letters “M”, “O” and “C”.

Love Her Once More

The wonderful effect that the face has exploded with typography is mesmerising to look at.

Given that content is king, how do make sure that you are delivering the content that will secure your site’s location on the list of go-to blogs that the masses cannot get enough of? Some might say that this is not something that can be taught. You cannot guide someone into creating good, quality content that is worthy of a return visit. But I would disagree with that assessment. I do believe that you cannot necessarily give someone the gift of outstanding wordplay, charging their writing with the same passion as someone who has dedicated themselves to crafting and honing their writing abilities, but they are hardly the same thing.

You see, while the writer’s ability can prove to enhance the blog post overall, it is not writing ability that sets the defines for good content. You can be a fantastic blogger, while still having only mediocre writing skills. On a blog, it is not about writing structure as much as it is about writing substance. So how do you get the good stuff? What are the elements that effect the punch of your posts? Well in this writer’s humble opinion, if you want your content to reign supreme, you need to focus on the points below.

Know Your Stuff

First and foremost, be knowledgeable. No one wants to read a lengthy post of innacurate information that ultimately proves to be unuseful. Before you decide to take a topic head-on on your blog, do your homework. I know, I know. Nobody likes homework, but it really is essential if you want your blog to be taken seriously and for people to continue to seek out your perspective on the different topics that you decide to tackle.

Not only does this help grow your base of knowledge on the subject of the blog post, but by making sure that you know what you are talking about you can have a meaningful dialog with your readers in the comment section of the blog. Otherwise, your comment time will be spent either apologizing for corrrections that have had to be made after readers left you constructive and not-so constructive feedback about where you dropped the ball in the post, or you will be avoiding comments that challenge you. Mainly because you do not have a firm enough grasp of the topic to dicuss it openly with them.

It is an old writer’s rule to write what you know, and the same rule applies for blogging. Know your stuff, and your content will be helpful. Make your content helpful, and your blog will be respected.

Know Your Audience

The next way to make sure that your content resonates with readers, is to be relevant. If you are talking to the design community, then make sure that you are discussing design or design related things in your posts. Talking about major political events or trends, or the latest Twilight film is not generally what your readers are looking for from your site, so keep on track with what it is they want. Now discussing the role that design played in the last election, or the finer points of design areas related to the latest Twilight film, like set design or costume design, could pass as acceptable topics to broach on your blog. Though you might be pushing it a bit with Twilight.

Another audience-conscious action to take, is to make sure that you are talking to your audience and not at them. In online interactions with only one side being presented at a time, it is easy for your tone to be misinterpreted and come off in an unintended way. By being aware of this, you can safeguard against any unpleasant tones that could be taken from the way you said something. Read through your posts a second time out loud to hear the way it reads, and if possible, have someone else give it a read as well to check it out.

Also take care to present your content in a user-friendly manner to make sure that you are further taking your reader into consideration. Know your audience, and you will be able to connect with them through your content, ensuring they will come back.

Know What Needs to Be Said

This next content director actually goes along with knowing your stuff, and that is be original. When you are doing your research, check out how often this topic has been discussed around the blogosphere, and find a new way to approach it. Do not rehash the same subjects over and over again unless you have a meaningful addition to the conversation or a unique perspective from which to examine the topic. Keeping your posts fresh and original will truly help your content shine out among others.

Also, find the important and not so important topics that are not being discussed anywhere else around the blogosphere, and open those lines of discussion in these areas. Readers will appreciate new dialogs being had and the opporunity to take part in them. Exchanging new ideas and delving into virtually untapped wells of information. With unique content pushing your site, you will steer more readers in your direction to be sure. Though do be careful when broaching a new topic that is not being discussed anywhere else, there may be a good reason for its ommission.

Originality does help make your blog stand out, with so many ports to go calling on for online information. Knowing what needs to be said is a vital part of crafting quality content, that your readers will respond to.

Know How to Say It.

This next element to shaping up your content is also pretty important, being clear and concise in your posting. You can take all the care in the world with carving out quality content, but if you are unclear or hard to follow, then you will lose your readers as they continuously lose your point. Outlining your posts before hand, is a great way to keep your points from becoming muddled or simply lost in the conversational circles that we can often talk ourselves into when trying to tie down our ideas.

Writing style can work against you in this case, especially if you are prone to large expositions of prose that tend to waft to and fro in different directions during your discussion. Outlining can further help to make sure that you fully delve into each topic you have raised within your post, not leaving any loose ends that have failed to be tied by the wrap up. Otherwise, while an interesting premise, the post overall, will not live up to the full post potential. It will kind of be the Alias of blog posts. Great idea, with a lot of ball-droppage on the follow through.

With so many other blogs out there, all vying for a piece of the online readership you need your content to be able to be understood and followed, or people will turn away. Knowing how to say it, is as important as what you are saying. Because, lets face it, if they cannot follow what you are saying, it doesn’t matter what you say, it won’t be effective.

Feel Your Words

The last tip for taking your content to the next level that I want to bring up is being passionate about what you are discussing. If you are not interested in the words you are writing, or the topic you are covering, it will be harder for your work to generate that interest or passion in others. And believe me, the reverse of that also tends to be true. If you are driven by a subject, then you more than likely will be able to impart that enthusiasm to others through your words. If they do not resonate with you, then chances are, they will fall flat with the readers as well.

Another benefit to only blogging from a place of passion, is that you continue to enjoy the work, and will be less likely to experience burn-out. While you will want to make sure that you keep your schedule flexible enough to help prevent tiring of your blogging, keeping that work in an area that is consistently challenging and inspiring you, can also work heavily in your favor. Which in turn will work in the favor of your content and your blog.

Another way to ensure that your content will connect with others, is by making sure that it connects with you. Feel your words, and they will be able to reach out to others and draw them in. Your passion will be able to transfer through your posts.

That’s a Wrap!

This concludes the list of tips to make sure that you are blogging effectively and connecting with your readers. Your blog is only ever as good as the content driving it, so make sure you take the time this make-or-break blog element demands and deserves, and the readers will respond.

Photoshop Tutorials

How to Make a Creative Blog Layout

An excellent tutorial on PSDTuts that shows you how to create a blog layout in Photoshop. Very easy to follow and the end result looks great!

Design a Vintage Radio Icon in Photoshop

Jurgis did a great job with this tutorial. It’s really easy to follow and the techniques you learn will help you make other great looking icons.

Build a Slick Rich User Interface in Photoshop

User interface tutorials are my favorite. It continues to amaze me what a couple of pixels can do to a design. Chris Spooner wrote an excellent tutorial with a great looking end result.

Design a Realistic 3D Baseball Cap in Photoshop

Adobe Photoshop, the pen tool, brushes, some nifty tricks and this tutorial. Add all that up and what do you have? An awesome looking 3D baseball cap.

Create a Shiny Earth with Photoshop 3D Layers

Photoshop’s 3D capabilities can accomplish a lot. This is a great tutorial from PSDTuts that teaches you how to use them to create a Earth icon.

Create a Cool Wet Ink Typography Effect in Photoshop

In this tutorial, Chris Spooner, shows you some simple techniques that make for a great wet ink text effect.

20 Handy Photoshop Tips For a Faster Workflow

Most of us use Photoshop everyday. This article gives you tips and tricks on how to do common tasks quicker and easier; making your workflow that much more productive.

Create a Magnifying Glass Icon in Photoshop CS4

Andrea Austoni always makes some great looking icons and this is no exception. This easy to follow tutorial will help you make a very nice looking magnifiying glass icon.

How to Enhance Photos With a Pen Tablet

Enhancing photos is an art. This tutorial shows you how to take an ordinary photo and transform it into a photographic masterpiece.

Killer 3D Poster Design with 3DS Max & Photoshop

This is a hybrid tutorial by the Go Mediazine. The great thing of this tutorial; all of the source files are provided for you to follow along.

Illustrator Tutorials

How to Create a Textured Grungy 3D Type Design

In this step-by-step tutorial, Chris Spooner shows you how to make custom letters then apply effects to give it a 3D grungy feel.

Create a Happy Sun Character

Rype from Vectips created this Sun Character tutorial with Blog Action Day in mind. The techniques he teaches you can easily be used for other projects as well.

Tracing a Vector Face From a Reference Photo

I’ve always wanted to learn how to do this. Great tutorial. Very easy to follow. In fact, it’s aimed at beginners.

The Hidden Power of the Average Command: Creating Swirly Type

This tutorial uses relatively simple tricks to make swirly effects and then apply it to text.

Design a vintage film poster

This tutorial shows you how to make a cool looking vintage poster. The tutorial comes in a downloadable PDF so you can keep it for future reference.

How to Create a Recycling, Paper Bag Icon

This tutorial is aimed at people wanting to get into icon design. Simple shapes and gradients are use to make a realistic paper bag icon.

How to Create an Icon in Illustrator

Wendell Fernandes guides you step by step in this well written tutorial with an excellent end result.

Web Tutorials

How to Properly Prepare a Guest Post in 5 Simple Steps

This is a great article from Blogussion on how to properly edit and prepare a guest post. This is sure to help all of us bloggers.

Guide to a Successful Blog Post

As bloggers, we’d like for our every article to succeed. What can you do to make that possible? This article will teach you how.

One Big Way to Avoid a Headline Fail

Headline. A small word with such a big importance. A headline has a lot of power to either attract readers or repel them. This is a great article that exposes a mistake and explains how you can avoid it.

Mastering CSS Coding: Getting Started

CSS is being used in almost every website on the web. If you’ve been wanting to learn it, this is the perfect tutorial for you. Fire up that text editor and get started!

Tips for Designing an Awesome Coming Soon Page

A well designed coming soon page can be the key to a successfully launched website. This great article on Line 25 gives you some tips on how to do it well.

The Ultimate Guide to Creating a Design and Converting it to HTML and CSS

We featured the design of this site in last months Creative Bookmarks. Now, see how that webite design, made in Photoshop, is sliced and coded into HTML.

Purely CSS – Faking Minimum Margins

When designing a website, you might have run into the problem that there is no min-margin attribute in CSS. The guys from Build Internet wrote this awesome tutorial to solve that problem.

Using Rounded Corners with CSS3

CSS3 is becoming the new standard when it comes to web design. With that, comes some great effects that you can now acheive. One of them is rounded corners. This simple tutorial shows you how to do it.

7 Key Principles That Make A Web Design Look Good

There’s a way to make a web design look good. In fact, Noupe says that there are seven. Take a look at this great article and be on your way to a great looking website.

Freebies, Inspiration & Resources

Free Vintage & Serpent Go Media Vectors

Go Media has a reputation of making some awesome looking vectors. This is no exception. Tutorial9 has the honor of having some exclusive sample vectors from their new Vector Pack 16.

Go Media’s New Color Radials Vector Pack

Go Media is offering a free sample of Radial Vector Pack on Fuel Your Creativity. This pack is part of their newest creation Vector Pack 16.

GoMedia Arsenal is Going Ape

Go Media’s name seems to be everywhere these days. VectorTuts is giving away a sample of Go Media’s Primate Vector Pack.

Super-Fun Monsters – Exclusive Vectortuts+ Pack

Another exclusive freebie vector pack from Designious for VectorTuts full of monsters and other semi-scary stuff; perfect for your next project.

Mixed Media Pack – 29 Free Textures

An awesome texture pack by Media Militia. It includes 29 grunge looking textures that are great for any project.

Watercolors Pack | Volume 2 – 30 Free Textures

Another great texture pack by Media Militia, only this time, it comes in watercolors. 30 excellent textures, free for your use.

Inspiration in Orange: The FYC Edition

One of the newest series from Fuel Your Creativity where they round-up some of the best works in a specific color scheme. Absolutely awe inspiring.

What’s In Your Design Toolbox? Part 1 Grace Smith

It’s always interesting to see what tools designers use to get their daily tasks done. Andrew Houle, from MyInkBlog, just started a new series where he ask designers to showcase their designer toolbox.

Get Featured in Creative Bookmarks

If you’d like to be featured in the next volume of Creative Bookmarks, simply send us you’re tutorial, resource, or article link before the end of the month. If we think it’s a top notch link, we’ll be sure to share it with all of our readers!

Email & Other Subscription Options

Here’s an unexpected Halloween Treat for the Tutorial9 Community! Tina from Artistic Frequency Studios decided to donate a HUGE set of 100 Spooky Pumpkin Vectors on Halloween Eve! It’s a bit last minute, but the pumpkins are perfect decorative pieces for this time of year!

Thanks Tina!