SpyreStudios - Design and Development Magazine

We all have our techniques for obtaining a great combination of readability and design. Many designers like to fine-tune the font stacks and sometimes add a nice shadow to bring text to life.

Others like to take typography to a different level and use anti-aliasing tools and such to get a sharp clean result. Whichever method you decide upon, there are some great CSS techniques to enhance web typography without running the whole nine miles.

We’ve featured Photoshop brushes sets a couple of times before on SpyreStudios and this time we’ve collected over 600 ink, paint, watercolor and splatter brushes from various sources.

Most of the sets featured in this post are of high-enough quality that they can be used for both web and print projects. I hope you enjoy the collection.

Following trends is a part of many creators in all creative mediums: design, fashion, music, film, whatever. It’s only natural: you see what people want, then you give it to them. What’s the problem, you might ask?

Well, that system, while fine for short-term gains and immediate profits, is fundamentally broken. In fact, there are 5 reasons why you shouldn’t create ‘flavor-of-the-week’ designs.

By choosing to instead hone in on and dominate your own style – even while following trends – you’ll set yourself up for long-term benefits.

Let’s face it: it’s hard working on multiple things at once. Focusing on just one thing is much easier than trying to juggle multiple projects and clients. Yet the reality for most designers and firms is you’re working on many projects and with many clients, often simultaneously. Luckily, there’s ways to juggle multiple projects and clients without going crazy.

While some are pulling their hair due to feeling overwhelmed, others are handling multiple projects and clients with aplomb.

There’s probably hundreds of community and networking sites out there but only a few focus on the design and creative community. We went ahead and selected 15 of the best sites for designers and creative types.

Obviously there are some sites we might not be aware of, so make sure you leave a comment if your favorite design community/networking site wasn’t included in this post.

I love Photoshop. I guess we all do. But I believe Fireworks is better suited for web-design work and I usually prefer it over Photoshop. After all Fireworks was created with web-designers in mind and it allows us to quickly prototype and design for the web, so let’s see what it can do.

I’ve created this simple yet modern navigation bar in Fireworks, and I’ll walk you through the steps necessary to create something like that. In the event there are some windows and panels you don’t see opened on your computer, simply go to the ‘Windows‘ menu and open them.