Firstly happy new year folks!! Cant believe its already 2012, and its been about 8 months since my last blog! 8 months! Time has just flown by and SOOOO much work has been done!
Whilst on the topic of work, I have switched jobs and am now working in London as a Senior Designer (as of end of July). So wit woo to me!

Anyway, back to the “other” kind of work! So…where to begin!?hmmm…

Over the summer months of 2011 I managed to design and develop:

• a hair and makeup beauty artists website (in HTML5) – PreetiG,

• design the home pages for Eventility and Inapub,

• design the Lego and Apple landing pages for Play.com (the Lego store being recognised by Web User ),

• design the Play.com 2011 summer store “Loving Summer” campaign,

• volunteer to create an 82 page booklet for a nationwide UK  based charity organisation,

• AND not to forget the small job of designing the business card and flyer for Jalpa’s Jewels.

So yea, it’s been a busy year!

Let’s hope this year is just as successful as the last and i get the chance to work on many more exciting projects!

Hope you guys have had a good 2011!!… Feel free to let me know how it went!

It became noticeable to me that there are a number of trends that have passed over the years within the creative web design community.

A trend that always caught my eye was and is the use of personal photography.  As I browsed I realised I was inspired by these particular websites, hence I thought I would write an article that could potentially not only raise these individuals profile, in some cases more than already, but also could provide a good source of inspiration as well.

Let’s head over to Onextrapixel to check out the article.

Please feel free to leave me comments on this site, my personal blog, or on the Onextrapixel site at the end of the article!

In this tutorial I plan to take you through how to create an A5 promotional single sided Flyer. Right from initial layout sketches through to Photoshop designs and then finally completing the Flyer in InDesign.

The tutorial will be based on something I recently created and completed for a charity sports tournament.  The final flyer will look like the below:

The concept of creating this flyer came through a very rough requirements brief, which I summarised and then began to think of design concepts.

The first thing I did was to roughly sketch and label how I envisaged the final flyer to look.  Sometimes it’s easier to grab a pen and paper and draw it out, so that’s what I did.  I roughly knew what elements I wanted to incorporate, and I had also had an idea of what font and colours I wanted to use, so I jotted these down with my initial sketch.

Once I knew what I wanted to achieve, I started with the actual design. This is where the real work begins!

Creating the Photoshop document

I am very comfortable with Photoshop, so I decided to create the graphical elements, the design, in Photoshop.

It’s important to remember designing for Print is very different to designing for the web.  Therefore, it’s essential to get the document set up correct.

Here is the set up I used:

• A5 size: width = 15.8cm, height = 22cm
• Resolution: 300 pixels/inch
• Colour: CMYK mode

Ok, so document is created.  Lets not forget to create the Bleed.  The bleed is the area outside of the print area, so if any element on your document layout makes contact with the document border you will have to use bleed.  The trick is to place the element so that it goes over border where the document will be cropped after printing.

Photoshop does not have any bleed settings available when creating a new document so it is a good idea to create the bleed settings yourself.  General European bleed sizes are measured in Millimetres (mm) and are usually between 3-5mm.

For the purpose of this flyer I created 5mm bleed on each side. (double click on the rulers to change the unit to “mm” if it isn’t already.

Below are the bleed guides I used:

• Horizontal: 5mm
• Vertical: 5mm
• Horizontal: 215mm
• Vertical: 153mm

Creating the Photoshop design

Right so the document is set up correctly, now its time to get creative and actually design the flyer. I based mine on the rough sketch I had initial drawn up, plus added a few elements to make it look great.  I found some really cool sports vectors (here) which I added as well.

Once you have finalised the design save it as a JPG, obviously save the PSD file as well.

Creating the InDesign document

Ok, so the Photoshop design has been finalised and you have created the JPG.  Now for the InDesign aspect.  Open InDesign and create a new document at A5 size.

Using the “File -> Place image” element, import the JPG you created.

Arrange the JPG to fit within the boundaries of the A5 InDesign document, and save the document as an InDesign file.

Export the document as a PDF and ensure the PDF contains crop marks and bleeds.

That’s pretty much it. The flyer is done….

Just for extra precautions, and best measure, I tested the PDF out to make sure my design looked just as good once printed out.  For this I printed the PDF out on an A4 sized paper and cut along the crop marks.

Once I was happy, I sent the PDF to the client and then finally this was sent to the printers and the flyer was officially completed!

Whilst working on a personal project for a friend who is also an up and coming musician, I decided to write another article about my findings.Having collected a fair few musician portfolios and websites I had a good list of websites with a varied style yet all containing some elements of similarity.

They were also a great source of inspiration so thought other designers may find it useful to read.

Let’s head over to Onextrapixel to check out the article.

Please feel free to leave me comments on this site, my personal blog, or on the Onextrapixel site at the end of the article!

Finally after months of working on the Play.com Christmas concept designs, I say concept as the designs were continuously being “tweaked” up until the last few days, everything went live without any glitches.

Throughout the course of the project it almost became design team banter that Christmas had been transformed to Krishmas as my role played a big part in the design aspect.

Having gone live at 7am on Monday 25th Oct, it was much to my relief that every person involved in the project was able to deliver what was expected and nothing went “kapoot” when the button was pressed. I think everyone involved needed a big pat on the back!

As for going forward, Krishmas is now business as usual so lets hope the rest of Krishmas keeps its original winter wonderland look and feel and doesn’t get “tweaked” too far from the original.

www.play.com

Hey!… So it’s been a while since I have added anything new to the Blog – apologies for that…Just been very busy with so many new projects on my plate!

A brief mention about the new things I have been working on include a website for a new up and coming musician Kam Singh, an iPhone design, another article, and also the one project that is obviously taking up a lot of my time is the design for Christmas 2010 at Play.com.

Must say it’s a very exciting time!

The not sure which one gives me the biggest buzz but I feel like I’m bouncing off the walls sometimes!

Currently, progress on the iPhone design is slow but it’s definitely good work in progress, Kam Singhs site is exciting as so many forms off media need to be included it’s interesting to design and I just can’t wait to build it in WordPress too!

Christmas designs for Play.com…well you may think it’s a little early for Christmas, but like all big projects so much needs to be considered and reviewed by numerous people it’s bound to take a long time, but gladly the designs have now been signed off, and I’m happy to say there have not been too many changes from the initial original design I created. – Would give you a sneak peak, but think I’ll leave this for later!

So far so good, lets hope there are more fun things round the corner!

Being female myself, I often find that the web design industry is quite male dominated. I know there are female web desigenrs out there,but they seem to be less prominent.

With this is mind, I set out to write another article for Onextrapixel. Rather than an artilce per say, it was more of a group interview showcasing some of the well known and not so well known female designers.

55 female designers took part and they were all asked the same questions, referencing their current position, how they got there and any challenges they faced.

Lets head over to Onextrapixel to check out the article.

Please feel free to leave me comments on this site, my personal blog, or on the Onextrapixel site at the end of the article!

As Wikipedia explains, a Superhero can be defined as a type of stock character possessing “extraordinary or superhuman powers” and dedicated to protecting the public.

I am not entirely sure how Superheroes connect in terms of the web industry but I have noticed a silent increase in the number of websites I have come across where the theme of the website is based on superheroes or caped charterers at least.

With this in mind I have listed 10 sites which caught my attention whilst generally browsing.

Marvel

Superman Returns

Incredible Hulk

Watchmen

Snopp Media

Hogtronix

Kenny Meyers

SuperLogistik

Siminki

UpThemes

Feel free to share your thoughts and add sites you have found in the comment box below.

To me, Twitter was just another social networking site that seemed pointless and a waste of time as I wasn’t interested in being on there and “following people”. Why would I want to be a part of something I didn’t see the benefit of? Who would I follow? And who would follow me?

So many questions, and so much negativity towards something which I now can’t seem to get the most out of, especially as a Web Designer..

Let me explain the basics of Twitter, where it came from, and what it is all about, before explaining some awesome reasons as to why I believe all web designers should be on there.

What is Twitter?

As explained by Wikipedia: “Twitter is a social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read other user messages called tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the authors profile page.”

How did Twitter come about?

Twitter was first introduced to the world in 2006 by a podcasting company called Odea. Initially it was used internally to describe to small groups of people what was going on, and what they were dong via an SMS service, hence the question “What’s happening?”.

As mentioned previously, Twitter won me over once I got used to the concept and the benefits it has for me as a web designer. I know a fair few web designers are already using Twitter, but for those who are not using it, hopefully the following 10 reasons will get you involved…

1. Networking with fellow designers

Are you inspired by a particular designer? Like their style of designing, or just like to see what the designer you look up to is working on?…Most likely they will be on Twitter. Popular designers, and even the not so popular ones, tend to share their work in progress, their latest articles, blogs, and even sneak peeks into their current projects.

They may not follow you, but by following them you can gain a good opportunity to strike a conversation with them, or comment of something they have mentioned.This will help you get your name out there without putting too much pressure on yourself.

Image credit: ricki888c

2. Search for projects or jobs

Twitter is a great way to advertise yourself as a web designer. Lots of people often tweet if they are looking for designers, graphic artists, etc, so if you are after work this could be just what you are looking for!

3. Endless supply of resources

I tend to find this is one of the greatest benefits for me. Being able to view a continuous stream of all the web design related articles, posts, tutorial, and more is great. Following designers means things they post will show up on your homepage and this gives you access to all the information you could be after.

4. Promote yourself

Being able to publish your own latest posts, articles, or projects is the greatest feeling. Knowing that other designers are able to see what you have “done” and potentially being able to share that is a good way to promote yourself. Also being able to see what other designers are releasing and sharing leads me to the next point…

5. Industry news

Following popular web design blogs/magazines will keep you in the loop of the latest industry news. Keeping up with the latest trends is always important especially in such a dynamic industry where things change so quickly!

6. Use #hashtags

Although this is something I haven’t really got into using, I know I really should! Using hashtags will classify your tweets so that they can be found a lot quicker and easier. Therefore aiding connection between you and other designers.

7. Customise your Twitter page

Using either the preset backgrounds or by creating your own Twitter background you can give yourself a unique look, this can do wonders for branding yourself as a designer. You can even use your Twitter background to share details to your other social media profiles, again, aiding to promote yourself!

8. Build relationships

Creating online “relationships” with other designers helps to you network in different circles. Building a strong relationship with fellow designers gives you that opportunity to become more recognised and can even open doors to new ventures.

9. Sparks creativity

Instead of searching through search engines or stock photography sites, by following other designers you may find they will tweet about post, or articles which are inspiring. Maybe it will be a collection or a showcase, but being able to view these without searching for hours can randomly help boost your creativity.

10. Sharing is caring

Generally designers love to hear feedback on their designs, especially if it is good feedback! Negative feedback is also good, however it does depend on how well the individual receives it! Being able to share your opinion and also ask for feedback is a great way to introduce yourself to the community but also express your thoughts on the designs out there.

So, after reading the article how do you feel about joining Twitter? Convinced it may be more than just a way to keep in touch with people with 140 characters? I hope so. Feel free to share some of your thoughts on the article and on Twitter in the comment box below.

Happy Tweeting!

A Favicon (short for favourites icon) is a customised icon which is associated with a particular website. It is also known as a website icon, shortcut icon, URL icon, or bookmark icon. It is typically displayed in the address bar of the browser.

In the beginning Internet Explorer would automatically be able to display this little icon in their favourites (bookmarks) list, as long as the little icon could be found at the root directory of the webserver. Over the years, this became a little bit more adaptable and by including a link on the section of the HTML page of a page the icon would also be displayed.

Most modern browsers now support the .ICO image file as this is the typical format to use, however, many other browsers now also support .PNG and animated GIF formats.

The dimensions of a favicon are 16 pixels by 16 pixels, so as you can imagine it’s pretty tiny!

To create a Favicon for your website follow these steps: (it’s really easy!)

Download and Install the Photoshop Plug-in

• You will need the Windows ICO file format Photoshop Plug-in the save the image you will create as an “.ICO” file. You can download the plug-in from the Telegraphics website, at the following link:
• Telegraphics – Free Windows ICO Photoshop Plugin

• To install the plug-in, follow the next steps:
• Unzip the folder
• Copy and paste, or alternatively move the plug-in (ICOFormat.8bi – on Windows) to the “File Formats” folder within the Photoshop “Plug-Ins” folder.
• If Photoshop is currently open, you will need to restart it.

Creating the .ICO file

• Open Photoshop, and create a new document. As we will be resizing the image to 16×16 pixels, it is important to not make the icon too detailed. For the Krishna Solanki Blog, I used the “hearts”, which is part of the main logo.
• Once you are happy with the final image, and it has been sized to 16×16 pixels, save it to your hard drive as “favicon.ico”.
• In Photoshop: File -> Save -> then from the Dropdown File Format dropdown select “ICO (Windows Icon) (*.ICO)”. This format will only be visible once you have downloaded and installed the plug-in.

Upload the .ICO file

• Now, to see the logo in the URL bar of your website, you need to upload the favicon.ico file to the root folder of your webserver. The file should be placed in the same directory as your homepage (index or default page). It is important to be aware not to place the favicon.ico in any sub folders, including an images folder. Once it is placed at the root folder, most browsers will be able to find the .ico file and load it automatically.
• In some cases the browsers will look for a direct link within the <head> section of the HTML. If you like, you can also include this bit of code to aid those browsers:

<link rel="Shortcut Icon" href="/favicon.ico">

If you want to use a GIF or PNG, you can use this code:

<link rel="icon" href="/favicon.png" type="image/png">

OR

<link rel="icon" href="/favicon.gif" type="image/gif">

• If your favicon does not show up straight away, try refreshing the page and clearing your cache. It’s as simple as that!

10 Examples of colourful favicons

http://www.dapper.net

http://www.ziki.com/en

http://feedstitch.com

http://www.orgoo.com

http://www.google.co.uk

http://www.faces.com

http://turbomilk.com

http://www.tanyamerone.com

http://www.trendwatching.com

http://www.illustrationclass.com