Recently I have had an unhealthy obsession with spending my spare time creating patterns. This month I have released two Christmas themed design patterns on creative nerds and this is third pattern to be released this month. This is a great Photoshop pattern which includes includes one pattern but in 8 different great colours, for anyone with a pattern fetish this is a great a pattern worth the download.

Continue reading Christmas Seamless Photoshop And Illustrator Pattern Set 2

Typography has been practiced and used in our daily life. Range from handwriting in a pocket notebook to the big advertising billboard. It’s sometimes typed using Times New Roman in 12 points for newspaper.

Continue reading Learn the Basics: 25+ Sites And Resources To Learn Typography

HTML emails is a great marketing tool, and if built good, they work great. In 2009 HTML email ROI was $43.52 for every dollar spent on it. If you are a freelancer be aware that sooner or later your clients will start asking for you to build HTML emails

Continue reading Ultimate Guide to HTML Emails – Basics, Tips, Tutorials and Resources

I got the chance to try out a rather awesome filter plugin for photoshop recently called Filter Forge. The plugin allows you to texturize and apply distortion and effect filters to artwork. You can download even more free filters (over 7000) from the software site directly into your workflow to try out new looks. I really dig the “seamless tiling” feature in the application to easily create tile ready patterns, and to work with existing seamless patterns. You can edit and tweak preset patterns or create new ones on the fly easily. You can see one example of “Bones” using the “Carved Leather” filter from the plugin.

I found a lot of good filters under the creative directory to use. A lot of vintage and grunge type effects, as well as lighting, geometric and fine art style sets. The version I tried out is 1.0, but it looks like there’s a beta version of 2.0 available to try out on the site. The software is available in 3 editions to purchase (the more expensive versions have greater functionality), but all editions allow unlimited filter downloads from the site.

As a graphic artist and visual designer, I can see a huge usage of Filter Forge in all types of artwork. In fact, the vintage type filters would work great for some record covers… Below you’ll find some examples of “Bones” using some of the downloaded patterns through Filter Forge. Feel free to right click and save any of these for art or some awesome wallpapers.

Continue reading Experimenting with patterns and Filter Forge

A more subtle, smaller version of “Intertwined“

Link:
Intertwined Darkened