Graphic & Web Design Archives

Sometimes I wish all job requests could be like this one. Then again, I'm the last person to complain as I get to do what I love on most days. What I want to say is that some projects just give me such a joy to work on. These favorites of mine usually have an illustration part. One of them was this infographic about women and cycling for Grinta!, a Belgian magazine all about cycling. Today I'll explain the steps I took during the design process, and also share some details on how I created some of the graphs…

A while ago I was contacted by Wolf, a Belgian indie brand of T-shirts for kids, asking me if I would be interested in designing a T-shirt for their collection. Their designs are of such high quality and I totally love the vibrant colors. Of course I was honored they asked me and I knew it would be totally fun to do.

Better late than never! Ages ago I posted this about the best print or web related tip, where I requested my readers to post theirs in the comments. A lot of people did the effort and shared their knowledge by giving a ton of great tips. I made a promise back then I would write an article about it, but somehow it never came to that. Today I want to share some of those, but first… my sincere apologies for the delay. This wouldn't have been possible without my readers, you guys and gals are awesome!

In my previous Illustrator tutorial, I explained the Knockout Group feature. Today I'll explain the Isolate Blending option which is also located in the Transparency panel.

It seems that even after all those years I work with Illustrator, I keep on bumping into a few features that I didn't know existed, or maybe better put I did notice them, but I never did the effort of finding out their true purpose. One of them is the Knockout Group feature which is kind of hidden in the Transparency panel option. High time to find out more…

With the Olympics lurking behind the corner, I thought it would be fun idea to write a tutorial on how to create interlocking rings in Illustrator. I've created a desktop wallpaper based on these interlocking rings too, but that something I'll post & explain next week.

Creating patterns in previous versions of Illustrator has always given me a bit of headache. Depending on the pattern that I wanted to create, I often chose another route to achieve the result I wanted. A lot of times there was this annoying issue of a tiny pixel gap around the pattern swatch. This alone was already a reason for me not to create a pattern if I didn't have to. However the biggest issue for most people is the complexity involved in the creation of a seamless pattern…

On May 22th (2012), I spoke at MultiMania in Kortrijk, Belgium. My talk was all about the experimentation phase during the design of a project. This presentation was mostly based on my talk at An Event Apart Boston (U.S.) last year. I decided to talk about this subject because people often wonder how I end up using that particular composition, pattern, or that particular set of colors etc. There is never a straight answer to these questions, because it's always different for each project or design. A lot of variable factors are at play during the design phase, but one thing is certain, it all connects to experimenting, trying out stuff… To me design is a lot about experimenting, to try to push boundaries, and following your instinct. Today I'll give you a brief overview of what I talked about, with the focus on sharing the resources I shared in my presentation.

Time to talk about color inspiration today. Each image in my Inspiration Stream contains a color that is handpicked. No ingenious automation process in action here, as I want to have full control over this. I even try to choose my colors so I end up with an interesting palette at the top of each page. Even though, each time I add a new image to the gallery, the colors move one position per page as the images move one position as well. Still, I try to watch that the neighboring colors are in harmony.

To announce the new year in our yearly email newsletter I created this 2012 header that you can also view on dribbble or download as a wallpaper. Some people asked me if I could write a tutorial on how I created this effect. Not a bad idea, as this is perfect tutorial material. It's rather simple to create really. The hard part is actually finding the right colors. This will take some experimentation, and maybe you might need to do a bit of browsing around to spark an idea. Just in case you need a little push, there is always plenty of inspiration to be found here ;)