'Net Features : graphic design

Where to Find Photoshop Brushes

Linc Wonham — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 18:30:00 GMT

Photoshop brushes can be powerful Web design tools, both enhancing a graphic artist’s work and enabling design projects to be completed faster. The more brushes a designer has in his or her collection, the more flexibility they will have with their designs.

Fortunately, several websites have emerged over the past few years to provide designers with a multitude of options when it comes to brushes. Below are just some of the top sites that provide attractive, easy-to-use and free downloadable Photoshop brushes.

Brusheezy
Founded in 2006 by a designer who grew frustrated by the lack of options for easily searchable brushes for download, Brusheezy is a community site to share and explore thousands of resources created by artists around the world. The site gets more than 1.2 million visitors a month and boasts one of the best selections and internal search tools of any brush site on the Web.

Brush King
Another collection of high-quality Photoshop brushes from artists all over the globe, Brush King was founded in 2008 by a French Web designer. The current inventory includes more than 7,000 brushes, all easily findable by category and available for free download to use in your next Web design project.

DeviantART
The oldest and largest online community for graphic artists, DevintART was founded in 2000 to provide designers with a plethora of resources, tools and inspiration for their work. With 35 million monthly visitors and more than 13 million registered members, the site is one of the Web’s most popular sources of free downloadable Photoshop brushes.

Free Brushes
A resource for free Photoshop, GIMP and Paintshop Pro brushes, the site allows you to browse more than 600 brush sets either by software or by style. Each set is tagged with an icon to help identify the different graphic softwares.

MyPhotoshopBrushes
The selection of free downloadable resources includes Photoshop brushes, patterns, custom shapes, styles, gradients and tutorials from all over the world. Designers can search by brush categories such as Textures, Abstract and Splatter, and sort by ratings, number of downloads or date.

These are but a scant few of the sites where designers can find free downloadable Photoshop brushes. If you have some other favorite resources to add to the conversation, please do so in the comments section below.

Visual Attention Service from 3M Quite Remarkable

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 12 May 2010 13:29:00 GMT

This might be the coolest, most remarkable thing you’ll come across today. A new Web-based visual attention service launched by 3M enables graphic designers and marketers to test and analyze the impact of creative and increase the likelihood that viewers will pay attention.

The 3M Visual Attention Service analyzes all of the visual elements within an image (color, shape, contrast and text) to predict if a design’s visual hierarchy is strong enough to attract a viewer’s attention.

“Creative designs have historically been evaluated subjectively, but stakeholders are increasingly looking for scientific affirmation that designs will draw attention to key messages. This is a crucial step in compelling viewers to take the right action,” said Bill Smyth, business manager, 3M Digital Out of Home Department. “Art truly meets science with our latest innovation. We’ve leveraged the company’s 30 years of vision science experience to create an easy-to-use tool that delivers the objective assurance executives need while maintaining the designer’s creative freedom.”

The potential uses are immense – from print and display ads to packaging concepts, all manner of creative media can be evaluated in different scenes or contexts. Users simply upload images to the portal and the tool will analyze and return the results. This will be particularly useful for advertising agencies and design firms looking to gain an edge on the performance of the creative they produce.

“When designing Out-of-Home advertising, it’s crucial to get a key message across in just a matter of seconds,” said Mendi LeBlanc, Creative Director, Lamar Advertising Company. “The Visual Attention Service by 3M allows us to check our design instincts against something scientific. Clients respect that we can provide this proven validation, especially when it is provided by a company they can trust like 3M.”

The service has been in a market test since November ’09, but 3M’s service is now globally available and costs as little as $5 for each image upload through the Microsoft Windows Azure platform.

Learn Graphic Design; Yes, You Can

Pete Prestipino — Thu, 07 May 2009 18:00:00 GMT

Entertainment media institution Full Sail University announced a new Graphic Design Bachelor of Science online degree program will launch in June, 2009.

The new online degree program incorporates courses that teach students industry-standard disciplines including Digital Art & Theory, Color Theory, and Digital Storytelling. Students will use these disciplines along with industry-standard concepts such as corporate branding, typography, and page layout to produce their own high-end design projects.

In addition to design, students learn complementary skills, including customer relations, copyright law, and intellectual property, to prepare students to enter the industry with the ability to meet client demands, produce creative results, and work with the demanding deadlines of the design industry.

"Full Sail's online platform, with current technology, provides students with an immersive and innovative educational system," said Luis Garcia, vice president of Full Sail Online. "It is remarkable that students can obtain the Full Sail experience from all over the world."