Back from my first visit to Portland, Oregon I got really inspired by the city, especially the rugged Pacific Northwest landscape, the grey colors of the sky, the Willamette River running right through town and the people that make the city unique.

With the announcement of iOS7, Apple revealed a completely new UI for their mobile OS. With the super flat design and thin fonts, Apple said that the design would be adaptable to apps by making some of the basic UI elements transparent, therefore, some of the colors of your apps content would bleed through and define how iOS7 basic components would influence the overall appearance.

The book suggestion of this week is very important read for any designer out there. The book is titled The Art of Explanation: Making your Ideas, Products, and Services Easier to Understand.

A few weeks ago I posted artwork I created for a poster inspired by the Man of Steel movie. I used Pixelmator for that project and got quite a few comments and requests about how to achieve the same effect in Photoshop. As Photoshop doesn't have the awesome Vintage filters that Pixelmator now has, I tried emulating the effect using brushes which I will share with you today.

I shared some posters awhile back on Abduzeedo and got a few emails asking how I created the application mockups for the posters so I decided to post about the process.

This post is part of our daily series of posts showing the most inspiring images selected by some of the Abduzeedo's writers and users.

Next month one of the most anticipated movies of the year will open in the theaters, I am talking about Man of Steel, the new Superman movie. It's amazing how much promotion this movie is getting lately, every day there's a new picture, poster or some news about it. With all of that, of course I also get really inspired to create some artwork about it.

Personal projects are the best way for a designer to learn because it's much easier to try different things. It's just about making decisions and building them. With Abduzeedo we try to keep it as personal as possible, at least when it comes to changes. We redesign it at least once a year, not only the overall site design but the brand identity.

We've featured quite a few posts and images with the effect most call double exposure. This technique consists of 2 images superimposed. There are some really nice examples with very intricate overlaying, usually with faces of people mixed with photos of nature. I've been thinking about giving it a whirl in Photoshop for a long time and I've finally gotten around to it.

Daft Punk is releasing their new album next month, titled Random Access Memories. While biking around in San Francisco I started seeing some posters and billboards on walls advertising the new album and was inspired by the amazing artwork. Of course, I've always wanted to do something for Daft Punk so this post's timing seems just about right.

One of the most important things when learning design, or pretty much anything, is to pay attention to how other designers tackle problems. That was my personal inspiration that led me to start sharing tutorials and case studies. They are not designed to help come up with ideas, but to help with the execution, one of the biggest problems most people have.

After over 4 years I decided to start working on a new personal site. The last time I made updates was back in 2009 and since then I haven't been paying too much attention to it, however I feel it's time for me to try some different things with it in terms of web design, responsive, mobile first and other such trends. The first thing I needed of course was a logo.