Kumail.H.T`s Blog » Design

5 iPhone Apps for Designers

louise — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 18:59:20 +0000

Designers are increasingly expected to be up-to-date on new technology and graphics programs. In addition to aiding your work by providing more efficient and creative ways to design, technology can also be helpful in organizing and managing your business operations if you manage multiple clients or work as a freelance artist. The iPhone is a great tool for designers that want help in each of these areas, and there are several iPhone apps that are incredibly useful for designers. Here are five to get you started:

1. Palettes

This app allows you to create and save multiple color palettes for different projects. You can select colors from lists, images, web sites, or by entering CSS combinations. ColorExpert is another similar app that allows you to capture colors from the real world when you see them, and then save those inspirations for work later. These types of programs are incredibly helpful for planning projects and helping you remember colors when inspiration strikes. Get Palettes free or buy ColorExpert.

2. Units

For the artistically-minded, math may not always come easy. Especially for those designers working with international clients, converting units and calculating measurements can be a potential source of miscommunication if not properly addressed. But when it really matters, the Units app is a simple calculator that can save you from headaches and embarrassment. It also works with typographic points for more complicated jobs. Also check out a simple but helpful app called Ruler, which shows a picture of a ruler on your iPhone to measure things to scale. You can save your measurements and return to them later, which is great for those who struggle with organization. Buy Units or buy Ruler.

3. What the Font

This app really uses the iPhone as it is meant to be used. If you work frequently with text, you can start to develop your favorites. But this app helps you discover new designs and put a name to an image. You simply take a picture of a set of text, and the iPhone searches the Internet library to give you the name of the font family. So simple, and so useful. Get it free.

4. AIR Sharing

When you need to work and meet with clients in different locations, it can be difficult to save large files and show samples without bringing along your entire studio. The AIR Sharing app lets your use your iPhone as a wireless drive and drag files between the phone and your computer. You can view documents in common formats and view images of most files on your phone with the finder-like file browser. Clients will be impressed that you can pull up files and organize your documents from anywhere. Buy it here.

5. Credit Card Terminal

This app is purely for business purposes, but it could make the difference in securing a client and getting paid on time. Featured on many commercials, this app lets your enter credit card information and charge you clients right from your phone. It requires a monthly fee to use, which may discourage some designers with a smaller client base. But if you want to be able to accept plastic and do it quickly and securely, look no further than your iPhone. Buy it here.

Louise Baker writes about getting an online degree for Zen College Life. She most recently ranked the best nursing schools across the usa.

Creative ways to destroy your website

kumailht — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 10:41:34 +0000

Use those “professional” stock images

You know the ones with “business professionals” shaking hands! or the lady with the headset? don’t forget the globe for your homepage! This will really make your site POP!
This will make you and your 2 business partners who work from the coffee shop look like a real corporate company.

My advice:

Stay clear of stock websites until absolutely needed. Hire your own photographer instead, its not as expensive as you think.

Stop trying to be someone you are not! Read this article by Seth Godin to get some perspective on how small companies are actually better off than larger corporations. You should be embracing who you are instead of trying to act like someone you are not.

Don’t you DARE touch the “corporate identity”!

Even if your logo has been created by your CEO’s grandson in Wordart, don’t you dare touch the logo. If you change your logo, your customers will forget you forever! EVER!
The logo should never change!! never!! you are not a good designer if you edit your logo!!

My advice:

Logos that live forever are actually very good logos that don’t need to be changed. If you have a logo that your designer is dying to edit, you can be confident that your logo stinks more than your feet. Get a new identity!

Add everything above the fold!

No one scrolls on the internet! scrolling is so web 1.0! Nowadays everything should fit above the fold!

My advice:

Its a Myth. Here is proof

Use sliders & accordions on every page to make your website more “interactive”

Jquery is what all the cool kids on the block are smoking! Add a slider on every page! Better yet, your logo can drop into your website as if it fell from the sky!

My advice:

A slider is not the only way to display information fast. Get creative and try something new.

Get free or unreliable hosting

Why pay for hosting when you can get unlimited hosting for free?

My advice:

Make sure you don’t fall for the “unlimited” bullshit. If you have the slightest technical knowledge, you will instantly figure out that it is impossible to use more than a couple hundred MB of space even if you are hosting huge websites. The performance of your website depends on a lot of other factors which these free & cheap hosts do not offer.

Add all sorts of widgets to your website

You know the Facebook, twitter, Google friend connect, meebo & other widgets really help your users engage with you.

My advice:

If one or two of these widgets are used and well executed then it might actually help but most of the time these widgets are simply annoying. Dont use them!

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The ultimate list of really amazing design related lists

kumailht — Sat, 02 May 2009 04:10:36 +0000

It is very common to see Top 10 this list, Top 10 that list, They all are very informative and heavy on content and give you the strongest urge to bookmark. These lists when combined form the epic bookmark so what are you waiting for, Ctrl + D to bookmark.

Next, I am planning on making a list of lists that list amazing lists confused? so am I. Well, I wont waste any more of your time, start surfing and bookmarking as this should take some time.

Typography

Free Fonts

Paid Fonts

30 Fonts That ALL Designers Must Know & Should Own

Other Resources

Icons

Free Icons

Resources

Textures

Free textures

Resources

Inspiration

Other Resources

WordPress

Tips & hacks

Plugins

Themes

Other Resources

Want to customize your own theme without learning php, here is what you always wanted

Content Management Systems

Other Resources

Design Education

10 Blender 3D tutorials worth a look

kumailht — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 16:56:31 +0000

Blender is the free open source 3D content creation suite, available for all major operating systems under the GNU General Public License.

I have always wanted to learn a 3d program to extend my capabilities and a little 3D in our designs can take your designs to another level. There is no harm in learning something new so I will list a few good tutorials that I will use to learn my way through blender. If you have any resources that you would like to share, please leave a comment.

Extensive Guides

Blender 3D Design Course

The Blender 3D Design course is intended to offer students an introduction to the world of computer generated 3-D modeling and animation. As an introductory course, it provides a basic understanding of the skills and techniques employed by 3-D designers in a wide range of applications.

Noob to Pro

This book can be seen as a series of tutorials arranged to help new users achieve expertise in Blender. The tutorials will increase in difficulty but enable intermediate users to quickly advance into whatever tutorial most suits their knowledge and continue along the sequence. We’ve made concerted efforts to accommodate everyone.

Tutorials

I would recommend going through one of the guides above to understand the basics before you move on.

Modeling 3D Logo form a 2D Image

this tutorial will help you transform your 2d logo into a 3d work of art.

Making of Grapes

An excellent tutorial describing how to create grapes. I am definitely doing this one.

Making of Jaguar MK2

This is a short overview of the process of making a detailed model of a car.

Water texture tutorial

Walks through creating a water texture in Blender based on observation.

Landscapes Tutorial

Quickly model complex outdoor landscapes within Blender.

Head Modeling in 3D – Must Read

To follow this detailed tutorial you should have at least a basic knowledge of working in 3D environment.

Toon Shading

This tutorial presents the techniques that I use to achieve a toon style render directly in Blender without any post production in another program. In this tutorial we will modify a basic Blender scene of a simple flower pot to look toon shaded by changing the lighting and materials.

Making A Chess Board In Blender

This tutorial teaches you how to Make A Chess Board in blender.

35 Awesome Gimp brushes

kumailht — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 07:48:45 +0000

I hardly see any posts showing off Gimp Brushes, for those of you who have no idea what Gimp is; Gimp is an image manipulation program similar to photoshop. It is open source and free to download.

Here are a few brushes which will speed up your work and make life easier. Most brushes have been converted from photoshop so dont worry if they say photoshop in the image. Please read the terms before using it.
To install, unzip files into the brushes folder in your GIMP program files (usually C:\Program Files\GIMP-2.0\share\gimp\2.0\brushes in Windows or /home/username/GIMP-2.0/share/gimp/2.0/brushes in Linux) and then restart GIMP.

Read more on how to install plugins, scripts, brushes and gradients in GIMP here

A set of brushes made up of various types of clouds. Set it to a lower opacity and use one of the wispier clouds and you’ve got yourself some great brushes for mist, as well!

A set of various water shapes. It includes bubbles, drops, tears, ripples, rain, foam, splashes, ocean/sea foam textures, waterfalls, and waves.

Trees brush pack

Bubbles are difficult to pull off sometimes…

Wings brushes

Grunge is back

Splatter

Bloody

Grass blades

I love the quote

Inner Universe

Odysee

Here comes the shiny stuff

WOW, nasa just entered the design business.

Winter Breeze

A set of brushes made up of various shapes of Aurora Borealis, also known as the “Northern Lights.”

It includes beams like those from spotlights, sunlight like you would see coming through branches, lighthouse light beams, sunburst type effects (full circles as well as half and three quarters of the burst), and even some particles to add to your beams of light to make it look like floating dust.

Radon Brushes

10 huge rendered fractals created great for wallpapers and large artworks

abstract clouds

Grunge brushes

Here is a very nice set of lightning brushes

A set of brushes made up of various flying birds. Seagulls, geese, crows, swallows, and all kinds of miscellaneous birds are included.

Skyline pack

Floral

Ouch!

Flames

Cracks

Footprints

We can never get enough Grunge

10 Coffee Stains Brush for Gimp (in color & black)

Dotty

Grunge again

A set of animal prints/textures as brushes.

15 Splashing brushes.

WoW , I though of listing 10 and I ended up with 35. Hope these are helpful.

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Top 10 websites that suck but shouldn’t

kumailht — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 13:04:10 +0000

I will not ridicule those who just made their graduation site on frontpage with comic-sans and a yellow background, Instead I will show you the 10 crappiest sites of corporations that should have the best designs possible !

The companies below are filthy rich and they can definitely afford to spend on their website design which they clearly did not. Please don’t come running after me with lawsuits , you should be thanking me for reviewing your site for free.

Adobe

Yea ! that’s right – Adobe – The company that monopolizes the design industry has the worst designed website.

I have seen what Photoshop, illustrator and dreamweaver is capable of – I think Adobe needs to learn how to use them.

The website takes ages to load, and my core2duo processor was bleeding. The site is cluttered and don’t get me started on the navigation.

A company like Adobe should be able to design the best website possible using the technologies they own.

Go Daddy

WARNING !!! THE IMAGE BELOW HAS PROVED DISTURBING TO THE EYE AND MAY CAUSE BLINDNESS DUE TO REALLY BAD DESIGN. View at your own RISK!!.

This website is a nightmare, seriously. I have two domains which i manage on godaddy and its a pain.

It is torturous to use this website, the navigation is confusing , its so cluttered i could find a dime in an ocean faster than my domains on this site. Its ridiculously slow because of all the unwanted crap they show.

Try buying a domain on this site and you will be convinced why I call it “The NIGHTMARE”.

YouTube

Have you ever noticed how Unintuitive and Ugly youtube is, probably not, because its owned by the big boss of the net. Mr Google.

Well, its time to change things if you want to keep that resignation away.

W3C

“Leading the web to its full potential” – Really , with that design.

if they want to lead us to our full potential, they should try and exploit theirs first. The website looks very unprofessional and the borders make the website look like a table.

Hotmail

Do i really have to explain this one, it pretty much speaks for its self. This is probably the most annoying service i have used because my stupid friends used it, well i dumped my friends and got new friends who used G-mail. Who advertises their own company on their own website using a banner that huge [top right].

UBUNTU

Don’t get me wrong but i love ubuntu linux and open source software, now that ubuntu is gaining popularity, it gains responsibility, and its website really sucks. The picture of the desktop and server itself are very ugly. People expect much more from a website which distributes an operating system, because it reflects upon the operating system it self.

The gradients have been used inappropriately, and the layout does not guide the eye ultimately confusing a new user. I feel the website designer have considered the users to be experienced Linux users when clearly they are aiming home users who don’t have any technical experience. I think they need to simplify their website and remove clutter

ACER

Acer has done a good job with the content on the website, but have one of the worst design possible. It just looks yuk. There is not much wrong with the navigation but the layout needs a lot of work.

Sun Microsystems

I think a company so closely related to technology should consider hiring a better web designer. Even a kid would stay away from using that rounded rectangle with a gradient under the navigation [they have used it the worst possible way], and the search box has the worst styling possible.

HP

This is the most confusing one i have seen, the site doesn’t guide the eye and the user has no idea how to use the site to find what he wants. The site is not consistent through out and the width and alignment changes when you browse the site. I would have to say that the colors used on this site are very refreshing but the site is just huge with really bad navigation. Even the URLs are crazy.

Craigslist

I am lost ….im back ..

Well, without further ado – i present the craigslist makeover by ‘the big noob’ .

i think craigslist needs to get this design

just a thought, do you think google needs a redesign?

Google

Current version

The version below is of when google started out

Now I am NOT saying that Google’s got the worst design, i just want to ask you if you think Google needs to work on its design. It has not changed much since it started out and i really love the simplicity but i feel there is more to simplicity than what google has achieved, it could use better and cleaner graphics. Their icons are not very consistent as some of them have a glossy look while others have the classic look.

Now most of you will disagree with the fact that Google could possibly use a redesign. I have valid reason to believe that Google can do better.

Take for example: If i were to tell you that Google when first started out [1997] needed a redesign, you would probably reply with the same reasons, that it is simple and doesn’t need to be any better.

Now the reason Google looks so much better today is because the company considered redesigning, if it wouldn’t have redesigned it would have probably looked the same.

THINK AGAIN!

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