Visual design tips you can apply immediately
When designing there are things that you can rely upon regardless of the situation. These are things which add that extra polish and eye for detail to a design.
Overcoming design roadblocks
When starting out on a new project or generally being new to design, getting your ideas to be what you visualise can be difficult. Whether you’re experienced or new it doesn’t matter, at some stage you’ll have creative block. In this post I’ll share some tips of what has…
Illustrator quick tip: export a colour palette quickly
In Illustrator it seems to be more difficult than it needs to be to export a colour palette to hex values. Using swatches gives you access to everything except hex. It’s tedious to go through the usual object, click fill, copy and paste routine. Here’s a…
Making patterns in Illustrator
Patterns and textures were popular before flat design came along. However, as we seek the need for creativity, fun and uniqueness in our designs things like patterns reemerge. This post shares what I’ve learnt and how to make your own. There are some free ones for…
How to use kerning & tracking
When using kerning or tracking on your type it can help with legibility or correct the way type looks for a specific situation. It’s important to understand the differences and when to use them.
A year in writing — 2016
2016 is the second year I’ve written a post every week. This post is a summary of what’s happened over the year and a look back at some of the goals I had at the end of the previous year and a look at how…
Illustrator quick tip: non destructive shape editing
Making anything in Illustrator involves using the shape tools more often than not. You combine shapes, using the various methods with pathfinder. You may have two shapes and want to combine them, but still want to refine the overall shape. This post shows you…
Let’s make a better icon system with SVG
Icon fonts are heralded for their convenience, which generally can’t be matched by SVG. However, they come with a huge performance downside, which SVG doesn’t have. I want to use this post as an opportunity for you to drop icon fonts and start using SVG.…
Monthly design roundup #2
The second in a monthly series where I roundup some of the best things in design I found over the course of the previous month. It aims to be a source of website, illustration and branding inspiration, as well as some articles that are…
Christmas gift guide — 2016
As it’s the festive time of year, I thought I would add to the lists of gifts that people are writing. December and Christmas in general is one of my favourite times of year. Not just for the gift giving, but it’s a time to relax and enjoy…
Go2Golf logo case study
I’ve been working on a recent branding project for a company called Go 2 Golf. It will be a website that will help people find golf courses across the UK. The first step for them was to have a logo made, this is the process…
Multiple level horizontal scrolling navigation
When I posted the original post about a horizontal scrolling menu, submenus were something I was aware of being difficult with this particular solution. Due to the CSS required it doesn’t allow for traditional methods. In this post I explore a solution.
