Contest Rules: It’s simple- All you have to do is go to the Creative Beacon website and post a comment at the bottom of the giveaway announcement page to win. Post a comment about what you think is the most important aspect of branding or identity. Post your comments by Friday, September 24, 2010, and

There are so many arguments about what makes a successful designer/artist. Some argue that any artistic ability is based on talent, and that the technical side is only for execution of your talent. Some argue that you can be taught anything, and with enough practice, you can excel at anything. Another argument is that talent

When creating your own navigation system for your web site, Spry is a remarkable tool that organizes and breaks down the entire structure simply and easily. The Spry system makes it so easy to go back and change the structure and layout of different navigation elements with a system of menus and submenus, so that

For those of you that love good plugins, Knoll light factory is a very cool time saving addition to After Effects. The new edition works with CS5, and has a few new features as well. if you own an older version, you can upgrade for a reasonable price of $99, but if you are a

I got this question yesterday, and thought that it would be a good topic for the day. If you want to fit text to a certain shape, you have a couple of options. The first option is to do what is called an envelope distort. First, you make your shape, and then take the type

This is a neat trick that will give you some really interesting and extremely colorful results. To start off, create a new document. It can be any dimension that you want, and click ok. Mine is set at 1024 x 768. Then, create a new layer and grab the gradient tool. Go up to the

First, I am starting out with a black background, so that it will be easier to see what we are doing. Create a new layer, and take the elliptical marquee tool and create a series of landscape ovals. Between 5-7 will be fine, depending if you want to use the entire ROYGBIV spectrum. On the

One of my absolute favorite new tools in Illustrator is the new width tool. If you want to make a free-flowing shape, The width tool can really make the creation of organic and rounded shapes much easier. Before, if you wanted to shape the size of a stroke, you went to the stroke panel or

The HDR look has become really popular lately, and it was only a matter of time before Adobe worked the look into Photoshop. This new feature, called HDR Toning, is found under Image>Adjustments>HDR Toning. This brings up a dialog box where you can control the different settings to make your image look just how you

When creating type in Photoshop, and you are looking for just the right display face, it helps to use the key commands to get things just how you want them. If you double click your text icon next to the layer, it will highlight your text. Then, simply go up to the top menu bar

I was playing around with some of the new stuff inside of Photoshop CS5 and came across one of the new tools that they have included called the mixer brush. This is a great new tool that allows you to take a photo and use different settings to create a painting from it. As I

I have a lot of friends that hear about my job and think “I would love to do what you do!” I love the enthusiasm, but I don’t think a lot of people really know what is involved in graphic/web design, illustration, or photography. They are all separate fields with separate skill sets that are

LE BLOG DE BANGO This site shows some amazing photo manipulations with people as animals. This is some very cool stuff. YANKO DESIGN This site shows some interesting craftsmanship from vinyl records. It reminds me of the sculptures made from Coke cans. THOMAS BROOME This work is very interesting. 3 dimensional rendering is done with

I get questions from people all the time that are starting out in the freelancing field. Some of these things are common sense to veterans, but the freelancing world can be incredibly scary, and even seem overwhelming to those that are just starting out. 1. Why aren’t I bringing in any business? This is simple,

The other day, I was talking to some friends and colleagues and overheard someone in the background talking about Photoshop. They claimed that they were an incredible graphic designer, because they are incredible with Photoshop. After overhearing this, I asked for a link to their portfolio site, and was shocked to find out that they

This tutorial is simple, but can have a drastic affect on skin and the quality of a portrait. No matter what anyone says, even the most beautiful people in the world have a blemish or two on their skin. The first thing that you want to do is go through and use the spot healing

I have had this question from multiple readers of Creative Beacon. There are 3 PNG formats: PNG8, PNG24, and PNG32. PNG8 refers to a colormapped image. PNG8 means that it can have up to a total of 256 colors. This is similar to a gif file. PNG 24 refers to true color or RGB images.

X-RITE With this site, you take a color test to see if you are as good with color as you think you are. This site goes off the notion that a large number of people have color deficiencies. RECAVE This is a cool blog about all types of interesting artworks, including illustrations, paintings, concept art,