Steve Janssens | Graphic Design

SEO what?

Steve — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 15:50:40 +0000

A huge consideration of web development is making sure that your website can be found. SEO (search engine optimization) is a key way of making sure that sites like google can find your website easily.
Here is an awesome article from SOH TANAKA, an LA designer who knows his SEO principles and explains it with great simplicity. Read His Article

Smashing Photoshop tutorials!

Steve — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 17:27:30 +0000

I was reading todays articles on Smashing Magazine and found a great article with some awesome and easy Photoshop tuts. Click Here to read the article.

Reservoir Dogs Kinetic Type

Steve — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 14:47:19 +0000

Hey again everyone!

As promised, here is my kinetic typography project. This is a scene from the movie Reservoir Dogs and is my first crack at using Adobe After Effects. I like how it turned out but I’m going to try something completely different next time!

Cheers
Steve

Streetlight Manifesto Kinetic Type!

Steve — Sat, 05 Mar 2011 04:29:15 +0000

I was just looking at a few of these kinetic typography shorts when I came across this one for a Streetlight Manifesto Song. Streetlight rules and I’m loving the awesome attention to detail that that went into this piece. I’m just learning Adobe After Effects for school now so I’ll have my own Kinetic Typography piece up in a few days *hopefully*.

Anyway this video by by Sean Ryan Cooley (www.ardourdesigns.com) inspired me and gave me some fuel to keep pushing at my own work so I hope you enjoy it!

Making a subdomain

Steve — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 16:56:23 +0000

I recently got the question: How did you make your URL say BLOG.stevejanssens.com in stead of www.stevejanssens.com/blog? I’ll show you!

I’m using 1and1.com for my hosting but it should be a similar process with other hosting companies.

STEP 1:
Go to your domain management and start a new subdomain by selecting “New” > “Create Subdomain”.

STEP 2:
Type what you want your subdomain to be called in the “Subdomain . domain” field. In this case we will call it “blog”. Then select your domain in the “Domain” drop down menu.

STEP 3:
All thats left is to define what floder your new subdomain loads. We do this by going into the subdomain’s settings and editing the “Destination”. For mine the “Home Directory” is the /wordpress folder where all of my blog information is held.

That should be it! Enjoy your new subdomain!

Repose: Chillout Electronica

Steve — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 23:35:04 +0000

This is one of the groups I have started listening to recently as I work. It is a great blend of different styles of music. They also have a cool navigation system on their website. CHECK OUT REPOSE!

Making a WordPress theme from scratch

Steve — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 18:26:21 +0000

Hey everyone out there in the design world!

Since I went the way of building my own WordPress Theme in stead of modifying an existing one, I ran into a lot of issues. This was my second time ever using WordPress so there was a pretty big learning curve.

I can however now say that I have gained some useful knowledge of the PHP coding language to go along with my HTML/CSS know-how.

I couldn’t have done it on my own though. I had some much needed help from this great series of tutorials from AMP.

Use these videos to get started and good luck to you!

CSS + jQuery text fade navigation

Steve — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 18:08:57 +0000

So just in case anyone was looking at my blog and wondering how I achieved the fading black to white text in my navigation up at the top of this page, you are in luck! I’m going to give you the tutorial that helped me do it.

Now obviously you will need to do some tweaking to make this effect fit you application but it is really fairly simple if you have any idea how jQuery works.

Just head over to CSS Tricks for the details.

Steve

Glass effect tutorials

Steve — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 22:27:15 +0000

Hey everyone! I was working on a project recently where I needed a good representation of a contact lens. I tried taking some photos of a contact lens but it really just didn’t turn out how I wanted.

Luckily there was Luc! He had some great tutorials stashed and he sent them to me! They range from pure Illustrator files to Illustrator/Photoshop files to straight Photoshop. Take a look and see if this is something you might be interested in!

Hey.

I’ve got a couple for you, depending on what you think will work best.

I think this one would be the most useful:

http://www.digitalartsonline.co.uk/tutorials/index.cfm?featureid=1784

Followed by importing it into Photoshop and using some effects found here to make it look better:

http://psd.tutsplus.com/tutorials/photo-effects-tutorials/how-to-create-glass-transparency-in-a-cute-photo-manipulation/

This one is a close second though. If you use the picture you already have, you could outline it with the pen tool

and use the mesh tool to make it clearer, then drop it into Photoshop again:

http://www.gomediazine.com/tutorials/vectors-imitate-life-with-gradient-mesh/

This has some good effects explanations for Photoshop that you may be able to repurpose:

http://www.photoshopgurus.com/tutorials/t031.html

More effects to reuse:

http://www.pxleyes.com/tutorial/photoshop/2186/Create-a-Fantastic-Surreal-Representation-of-Time.html

And last but not least, this one may take a little tweaking to be what you’re looking for. But may also get the best look.

http://psd.tutsplus.com/tutorials/tutorials-effects/mental-wave-explosion-photoshop/

If you want to try these, instead of sticking with pictures, it will probably take a few hours to make it look right.

Some of the suggestions in class may be faster with comparable results.

Take it easy,

Luc

FOLLOW LUC ON TWITTER

Most useless machine ever!

Steve — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 03:30:08 +0000

This made me laugh so I thought I would throw it up on the Blog. I want one!