This weekend I took 30 minutes of my time to watch Kung Fury. What a masterpiece! It's a true homage to the 80s actions movies full of the cliche styles that made that era the most creative and visually rich in my opinion. After watching the movie I had to go back and dust off my Photoshop skills to create something inspired by that. The movie is full of references and of course the computer glowing grid effect which happened to inspire this tutorial.
The last tutorial I wrote was back in January; it's been quite a long time and boy I missed it. I have been trying to organize myself to start playing more with not only Photoshop and Illustrator but also Sketch and other tools so I can share some new things with you. It's always a challenge due to my day to day job, but it makes me feel so good when I finish something that went from my head to the final design in a concise period. Quite refreshing.
Last weekend I started the process to design the Abduzeedo mobile app and web for Android. The goal is to apply Google's Material Design style to the new app, but in order to do that we have to rethink quite a few things. The first thing we did last week was to get used to the spec, get files, assets and resources ready to start exploring.
This weekend I started working on an Android mobile version of the site using the Material Design spec. The style-guide is super complete and covers a lot of basic visual design needs like grid system, typography and color palettes. Besides that Google was awesome to provide sticker sheets in Photoshop, Illustrator and Sketch. So for the next couple of weeks I will be exploring some new designs for Abduzeedo and will be sharing with you here.
Since we started the blog in 2006 I have been creating an artwork to celebrate the new year. It's a way to start the year motivated and challenged. This year, 2015 we will celebrate 9 years on the road, so nothing better than put together the ninth installment of our series. This time I am using just Adobe Illustrator to create a simple and abstract 2015 poster. I will probably try to do that in HTML/CSS just for fun in the next couple of weeks. So I hope you enjoy and Happy New Year! Let's make it great!
This weekend I went to the movies to watch Interstellar in IMAX 70mm. This movie was for me the most anticipated one this year and I left the theater in awe. The movie is visually stunning and as expected from Nolan, a mind-bending experience in terms of storytelling. Still blown away, I decided to create an image in Photoshop inspired by my experience watching this incredible film.
I've recently written about Google's newly launched visual design language called Material Design. The goal of this new design is to create a visual language that synthesizes classic principles of good design with the innovation and possibility of technology and science. The idea is to create a UI that has the best of both worlds, digital and physical. Some of the imagery they presented in the spec share some common characteristics, like depth, paper style effects and vibrant colors.
A couple of weeks ago I posted an image with a polygonal background that I discovered on the Pattern Library website and got some requests to recreate so herein lies my attempt. So in this tutorial I will show you how to create a vector polygonal pattern using Illustrator and the Pattern make a feature. The process is quite simple but there are some details that are very important to make sure your pattern is tileable. Step 1 Open Illustrator and create a new document. With the Rectangle Tool create a square like the image below.
Last week I posted a couple articles on typography, more precisely ligatures, and despite the fact I have never been a huge fan of this style it is extremely popular. With that in mind I decided to practice and learn more about it. For this first image, I've created a simple composition in Illustrator using a popular quote. The process is quite simple, I just played with text sizes and tried to connect the ligatures albeit in different rows. So for this post I will walk you through my process very briefly though I must admit it took me quite some time to achieve a work that satisfied.
For this week's tutorial, I will extend the Chrome Effect in Photoshop tutorial and add a super cool light effect simulation featuring a fan hole in a computer. We will use some images and Photoshop's layer styles for the whole tutorial. The process is quite straightforward but it is a little time consuming, roughly one hour to create your own image. Step 1 Open Photoshop and create a new document, as usual, I am using 2880x1800 pixels for the dimensions so I can use it as a desktop wallpaper. Using the Paint Bucket Tool, fill the background with #201E1E for the color.
A couple of weeks back we featured an image for the wallpaper of the week that was the Abduzeedo symbol with a chrome effect. Quite a few people asked me how it was composed so this weekend I decided to write a simple tutorial on how to achieve a cool chrome effect using Photoshop. I am using the Photoshop CC but you can create a similar effect with pretty much any new version of Photoshop.
It's been quite some time since I've experimented with new ideas. Today, I decided to go through my personal library of inspiration, likes on Pinterest, etc and found some really good images from various artists, in particular the work of Sarah Mick. I am also still in love with the game Monument Valley, so this post also has much inspiration drawn from that visual language. Let's get to it. In this tutorial I will show you how to create a super simple wallpaper using Photoshop and Illustrator. The process is very straightforward but the result is quite good in my opinion.
The 2014 FIFA World Cup is about to begin in Brazil this week and I couldn't be more excited. Brazil hasn't hosted what is considered the biggest sporting event in the world since 1950. To celebrate the return of Brazil as host country, I decided to create a little artwork inspired by this momentous event on the horizon. Instead of using the organic forms seen in the official logo I went with an old school, modernist and geometric style. So in this little post I will walk you through the creative process behind this poster.
Last Friday I bought the game Monument Valley and got hooked an an instant. The art direction is fantastic, full of beautifully designed puzzles playing with impossible forms, you feel it could be a game designed by M.C Escher. A few hours playing and I was inspired to create an artwork for Abduzeedo, just to have some fun.
We have seen quite a few illustrations with the low poly style, it looks like a very difficult technique but Breno Bitencourt put together a very complete Photoshop tutorial showing the process, including a video. I will really give it a try and now you have the chance to try to, check it out. Here I'll show you step-by-step how to create a stylish low-poly portrait in Illustrator and Photoshop. The secret to creating works in this style is working from the best reference photos – and first off Breno reveals how to capture these (using himself as a model).
A couple of weeks ago I decided to practice my Illustrator skills to create a simple skyline of San Francisco for a print material I am working on. I loved the style that Ryan Putnam explored on some of his illustrations of city skylines so I decided to give it a try. I have to say, I didn't have that much fun doing illustrations since I was in high school I think.
Following our new series of positive thinking wallpapers today we will show you how to create a simple and soothing image using Photoshop. The author we feature today is Confucius and the quote is "Everything has beauty, but not everyone can sees it". We will also use a stock photo from Unsplash. So in this little case study/tutorial we will show you how to play to some basic masking, photography and typography to create a beautiful wallpaper. The process won't take more than 45 minutes but I am sure you will have a lot of fun.
I always change the wallpaper of my computer, not so much on my mobile devices, I don't know why. The only thing I know is that I look at my wallpaper quite a lot because of the second monitor. In order to get some inspiration, I decided to start a series of wallpapers with positive thinking quotes. The first one is from Mark Twain and the theme is inspired by an ad from the 80s, my favorite decade for sure. In terms of tools, for this one, I will use Illustrator and Photoshop but my goal is to use Sketch and other apps as well.
The Voyager artwork was created as a Ten Dollar Fonts showcase for a brilliant font designed by Maarten Van’t Wout. I used Cinema 4D and Photoshop to create the atmospheric photo manipulation. The technique is to use different blend modes and adjustment layers as combo to create dynamic lighting for each elements in the composition. I will be showing you these simple techniques to create the artwork. The tutorial includes a part of Cinema 4D but I’ve also included the already rendered pictures for people without C4D to follow.
I have been taking a lot of pictures since I decided to do a photo a day project this year. I got a good camera and started taking pictures of pretty much everything that inspired me. I was in Bloomington, Indiana and I was really amazed by the pattern of the bathroom floor. I took a photo and decided to recreate it as a pattern in Illustrator. So in this little tutorial, I will show you how to create vector patterns in Illustrator. The process is quite simple but you will be able to create really amazing patterns for future projects.