In this tutorial, we’ll show you how to make a cool, or should we say geeky, glasses icon. You should be versed in Adobe Illustrator’s tools to complete this tutorial. You’ll learn how to take creative license and create an illustration that uses a photo reference, but differs a bit in the final design.

Step 1

Start by taking a photo of some glasses. Make sure to take it at a high enough resolution so it won’t be pixelated when viewed at larger sizes while you’re working.

The end result is much more cartoonish and geeky. If your glasses are not exactly as you would like the illustration to appear you will need to improvise while you are making the illustration. After all, the photograph is just a reference anyway. We will be deviating from the actual photo in the final icon.

Step 2

Place the photo on its own layer and lock the layer. Using the Pen Tool (P) and draw around the edge of the glasses frames. Give the stroke a thick weight. We will convert the stroke to a shape in a later step. This will save us the hassle of drawing two different rectangles to make the frame of the glasses.

Step 3

Trace the arm of the glasses next. Give this stroke a Round Cap by clicking on the option highlighted below.

Step 4

When you are finished tracing both arms and frames expand your strokes by going to Object > Expand…

Step 5

Using the Direct Selection Tool (A) move the points around to make the arm of the glasses thicker toward the front, where they connect to the lens area.

Step 6

You can also delete points if they are hindering you while you move other points around.

Step 7

Since I am going for a dorky look I decided to make the middle part of the glasses much bigger. This area is completely made up in terms of how it looks. Don’t be afraid to deviate from the photo. You have to know when to follow the rules and when to break them. Right now is the perfect opportunity to break them.

Step 8

This is what your icon should look like right now.

Step 9

Zoom in and make sure your lines are all smooth. This step goes a long way in the end result. Spend a little time now to save a lot of headache later.

Step 10

Give the glasses depth by duplicating each section of the glasses. Hold down Option while you click and drag the shape to duplicate each shape.

Step 11

Using the Pen Tool draw in the left side of the glasses that connect the frame to the arm.

Step 12

Now draw the right side. Notice again that the illustration is a little different from the photograph. Since the arms of the glasses are much larger, the shape connecting the frames and arms will need to be bigger too. Also keep in mind the the final result we are achieving is that of an icon. Most icons have simple shapes so don’t get too concerned with following every detail of the photograph. It is very much a balancing act that you will learn over time and experimentation.

Step 13

Give the connecting shape depth by duplicating it as well.

Step 14

Draw the top and side to finish off the connection.

Step 15

Observe how the basic shape of the icon differs from the photo.

Step 16

Make the lens of the glasses by duplicating the frame, drawing a shape behind it and using the Pathfinder to Divide the shapes. Once you divide the shapes go to Object > Ungroup to select just the lens area. Delete the unused portions that are leftover.

Step 17

Position the lenses over the frames.

Step 18

Select both lenses and give them a gradient. Play around with colors and the angle of the gradient until you find something that you like. In the Transparency Palette adjust the opacity of the lens to about 50%.

To fine tune the colors you can select Edit > Edit Colors > Adjust Color Balance… and alter them more (as indicated in the bottom screenshot).

Step 19

Next we will create a piece of white tape that will wrap around the middle of the frames. For arbitrary shapes I find it easiest to use the Pencil Tool (N) to draw the shape. The Pencil Tool lets you draw as if you were actually using a pencil, in one continuous stroke. Since the piece of tape should have a more natural look this works perfectly. Tip: When drawing with the Pencil Tool, you can close the shape anytime by pressing Option then releasing the mouse button.

Step 20

Give the piece of tape a detailed gradient. Notice that the bottom of the tape has a highlight that suggests light is bouncing from off of the surface that the glasses are sitting on.

Step 21

Give the tape a dark Inner Glow by going to Effect > Stylize > Inner Glow.

Step 22

Last, give the tape a slight drop shadow by going to Effect > Stylize > Drop Shadow.

Step 23

Small details go a long way. Add a dark inner glow to the lenses by going to Effect > Stylize > Inner Glow… I decided to use a dark blueish green for the inner glow so it will blend better with the color of the lenses.

Step 24

Next we will accentuate the frames of the glasses. Select the sections one at a time and give them complex gradients. Pay attention to where light will hit each area of the frame. Try to get your gradient to be lighter in those areas. In the image below, I’ve indicated the area of the arm of the glasses that should be the lightest.

Also, give each section of the area you are highlighting an inner glow by going to Effect > Stylize > Inner Glow… This inner glow should be delicate as to not impeded too much with the gradients you apply.

Step 25

Select another section of the frame and give that a complex gradient. Again, the area that should have the most highlight is indicated below. Note that there can be multiple areas that have highlights.

Step 26

Give the shape that connects the frame and arm of the glasses a subtle gradient as well.

Step 27

The entire face of the glasses has a very simple gradient that almost goes unnoticed. When it comes to the face of the glasses, since it’s all flat my use of the gradient is arbitrary. Just make sure it’s subtle.

Step 28

Add some well-placed highlights that help define any visually uninteresting areas or areas that obviously would be reflecting light.

Step 29

A slight highlight on the edge of the lenses is a must. Instead of tediously drawing a highlight along the edge of the lens use the Pathfinder to your advantage. Duplicate the lens and click on Subtract from shape area, as highlighted in the bottom screenshot.

Step 30

To add another level of dimension to the lenses, draw an arc shape and blur it by going to Effect > Blur > Gaussian Blur… Adjust the opacity of the shape if you need to.

Step 31

The shadow will add a nice finishing touch to the glasses. The shadow is comprised of the two shapes that make up the arms and another horizontal line below. Select the shape and go to Effect > Blur > Gaussian Blur.

Step 32

You will notice that the tip of the arms of the glasses are curved slightly upwards. Reposition the points using the Direct Selection Tool to give the indication that the tip of the glasses do not sit flush with the table.

Step 33

Select the shadow. In the Transparency Palette set the mode to Multiply, so the shadow will blend better when you place a background behind it.

Step 34

Using the Rectangle Tool (M) draw a rectangle and give it a faint gradient.

Step 35

Round the corners of the rectangle by going to Effect > Stylize > Round Corners.

Step 36

Give the rectangle an inner glow by going to Effect > Stylize > Inner Glow.

Final Image

Here is the final vector glasses icon! As you will notice, the final result is a little different from the photograph. That’s the beauty of illustrating something, you can make it exactly as you want it.

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One thing which our inbox is always flooded with is, Newsletters which is thrown out as junk without realizing they could be a perfect medium for advertising our business. To make readers subscribe could be quite tough. Not only HTML and CSS but consent of email clients, support of graphics also plays a major role here. These newsletters can be transformed into professionally crafted email template which could take your business to greater heights provided it is handled by a professional designer.

In today’s business world there are a lot of places where the communication is done solely through emails so an email template means uniqueness, perfection and shows your organisation’s ethics. So we present you some of the templates which are quite unique and appealing for the designer in you. The best comes with a price sometimes, but this exhibition of 55+ premium & free email templates is sure to impress you.

This showcase devided in following two parts:

• Premium/Paid HTML Email Newsletter Templates
• Free HTML Email Newsletter Templates

Makes searching for a free yet high quality email newsletter templates hard and tedious, so we attempted to collect and showcase you some of really good ones. All you need to do is find a suitable template, tweak the designs and styles, pump in your contents which help you to promote your services.

You may be interested in the following related articles as well.

• 99 High-Quality Free (X)HTML/CSS Templates
• 120 Best Free Blogger Templates Around
• 70+ Ultimate Round-Up of Free PSD Website Templates
• 80+ Fresh High-Quality Free WordPress Themes
• 60+ Latest High-Quality Free WordPress Themes

Please feel free to join us and you are always welcome to share your thoughts even if you have more reference links that our readers may like.

Don’t forget to subscribe to our RSS-feed and follow us on Twitter — for recent updates.

If you have ever clicked on an affiliate ad, then you are probably familiar with the classic “sales pitch” landing page. I have always wondered why, in an industry that is so interested in subtly and a/b testing, why so many of these landing pages look so ugly! Changing your “buy” button from red to green might increase conversions, but what happens when you make a sales pitch page that actually look professional? Our next theme, Convertible, will be a landing page theme that is both functional and beautiful. It will come packed with loads of custom modules and customization options. Aside from the visual appeal, we are also hard at working creating an awesome visual/drag-and-drop content builder for structuring your page. This new content builder is the part of the theme that I am most excited about, and I will be giving everyone a preview of that in the near future!

When playing team games, people has this very odd tendency to pretend as animals. Whatever their reasons, sports teams love to call themselves wolves, eagles, bears, sharks, lions, tigers and many others. Well, one can correctly guess that sports teams do so because they want to exude qualities of being strong like bulls, deadly like tigers, and wise like wolves. Also, this strategy is intended to bring passion, energy and excitement to an otherwise dull game competitions. Indeed, a team with a name of “Pittsburg Penguins,” is more appealing than a name “Pittsburgh professional ice hockey team,” which is a general term that describes the sports team.

With animal inspired team names, comes animal inspired team logos. So, in this article we are sharing with you some creative examples of sports logo designs that make use of animals. Here you can find sports logo designs of different animals ranging from ferocious predators to small harmless creatures which are creatively designed to stand as representations of sports teams. Also, just in case you have not taken a close look on some popular sports teams that make use of animals in their logos , I have included them here so that you can have an opportunity to look them without going any further. These include some of the teams in NBA (National Basketball Association), MLB (Major League Baseball) and others which are all worthy of mention because of their awesome creativity.

We hope that this article can help you in you job as graphic designer. If it does, please help us spread this article by clicking our social media buttons. Also, we admit that there is a possibility that we missed the logo of your favorite sports team which is worthy to be included here. So, if you have anything to add or anything to say, please don’t hesitate to write a comment below. We hope you enjoy!

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Animals Sports Logo Designs

1. Peachtree Corners Wildcats

2. Pelican Rugby – Sports Logo Designs

3. Aqua Hawks

4. Penguins – Sports Logo Designs

5. Rossford Wildboars

6. Nashville Predators

7. Jarbull – Sports Logo Designs

8. Downer Groves Dragons

9. Erie Bay Hawks

10. Dodgeball Underdogs – Sports Logo Designs

11. Athens Nighthawks

12. Denver Stallions

13. Fiji Tigers

14. Tampa Bay Wildcats

15. Cape Town White Sharks – Sports Logo Designs

16. Pacific Rim Elementary Wave Riders

17. Bakersfield Condors

18. Carolina Panthers

19. Jacksonville Jaguars – Sports Logo Designs

20. Phoenix Coyotes

21. St. Louis Cardinals

22. Baltimore Orioles

23. Toronto Blue Jays – Sports Logo Designs

24. New Haven Ravens

25. Philadelphia Eagles

26. Columbia Lions

27. Charlotte Stone Crabs

28. Florida Marlins – Sports Logo Designs

29. Buffaloes of Lawton University

30. Seattle Seahawks

31. Atlanta Hawks

32. Tuscaloosa University Bulls

33. St. Louis Rams

34. Miami Dolphins

35. San Jose Sharks

36. Tampa Bay Rays

37. Charlotte Bobcats

38. Milwaukee Bucks

39. Memphis Grizzlies – Sports Logo Designs

40. Minnesota Timberwolves

41. Chicago Bulls

42. New Orleans Hornets

43. Toronto Raptors – Sports Logo Designs

44. Denver Broncos

45. Ada Bulldogs

46. Copenhagen Wolves

The immediate benefits are also abundant. Emerging techniques you learn today can be applied to a client project tomorrow for added value, or to set your work apart from the mainstream.

There was never a point at which successful designers have learned enough. The secret to being cutting edge is to stay sharp. Aside from your local library or book store, and in lieu of returning to college full-time, the internet offers you an infinite number of outlets and resources for learning.

With so many blogs, e-books and forums offering knowledge on hundreds of design-related topics, determining quality and choosing sources can quickly become overwhelming and time consuming. Below are 9 of the best resources I have uncovered and used to keep my own skills fresh, chosen for their high content quality, element of interest, value and relevancy.

1. Sessions College for Professional Design

Sessions College offers a collection of high quality certificate and degree programs aimed at professionals who wish to learn something new or refresh their credentials. Each course is designed to provide new and creative ways to use modern techniques in design, coding and multimedia. Fees are reasonable, and the school offers an easy payment schedule and assistance for securing private loans for those who need them.

2. Lynda.com

The video courses offered through Lynda.com cover a wide range of subjects, from Development to Photography. Courses are carefully tailored to help professionals learn new topics in a short amount of time, and are a perfect way to evolve your work by expanding your knowledge to include complimentary skills such as Photography or Animation. Lynda.com is a pricier option at $25 per month, but may make up for the money you will lose by letting your talents wane.

3. O’Reilly

O’Reilly is an academic standard when it comes to instructional text, and their library sports titles covering every technical subject imaginable. They also sponsor the School of Technology, which offers extensive online courses and certificate programs, covering modern programming languages. Unlike formal online university programs, the School of Technology courses earn you credits at a fraction of the cost and are accessible anytime.

Training courses are excellent for learning specific topics quickly, but the cost adds up. If money is tight, the best solution is to buy a book. Several titles are available for free download from the O’Reilly library, found by entering “free” into the search bar.

4. jQuery

The power of jQuery is quickly becoming a staple in web design, and understanding its basic function and implementation is important, even if you are not a developer. The jQuery website is more than just a repository. Its tutorial seciton is an excellent solution for learning specific techniques and plugin usage. Each tutorial is written by key contributors to the jQuery project, many of which are also authors, teachers or industry pioneers.

5. W3C Schools

Building from standards set by the Worldwide Web Consortium, W3CSchools always has a complete overview on updates in web coding before they are fully supported by browsers. Keeping on top of content as it is published to this site guarantees you will have a strong understanding of the discipline and techniques required to implement it in your designs far before the rest of the web catches up. W3C Schools even offers certification for the benefit of skeptical employers.

6. Free University Courses

You can pay for premium education, or you can get it free. If you are like most designers, free is always a better option. Academic Earth is a compendium of top university resources, seminars and lectures on a variety of topics, including business, art and writing. Berkeley and MIT also offer a huge selection of open courses, video lectures and materials to help you supplement your technical skills.

7. Conferences

They aren’t the most cost-effective or quick ways to learn a new skill, but the contact-building capabilities of conferences and seminars far outweigh the perceived inconvenience of leaving your computer and many of them offer convincing whitepapers aimed at convincing your employer to fit the bill.

Thousands of experts from around the globe gather to exchange expertise and ideas in areas you may not think to pursue as a designer, such as copyright law, business ethics, user experience and agile development.

Smashing Magazine hosts a thorough list of conferences on their blog here and cover everywhere from New York to New Zealand. Conference websites often host videos of past talks, allowing you to gain key insights without having to attend. To keep on top of internet topics outside of design, check out upcoming technical conferences at O’Reilly.

8. Challenge Yourself

Learning a new trick in CSS or mastering HTML5 is not the only way to keep your skills sharp. Your creativity muscle needs new ways to flex itself that go beyond web standards. Use sites like the 100-Day Drawing Challenge and Show & Tell’s 30 Day Challenge to keep your artistic aptitude high and strive for unique and interesting perspectives through physical sketching. If Photography or Digital Art is more your thing, consider JPG Magazine, DP Challenge or Dominance War to help keep that spark lit, and keep an eye on Duuel, a new website aimed at challenging pairs of designers to innovate in specific areas of design.

9. Community

Your instinct may tell you to stay away from others of your kind for survival, but this is counterproductive and counter-intuitive where the spirit of web design is considered. Sites like Forrst, DesignersCouch and Dribbble give you the opportunity to experiment in an open arena, ask questions or share your expertise. Your peers and colleagues offer the best resource for learning new techniques, discovering new tools and gaining valuable feedback, so don’t be afraid to use it.

Written exclusively for Webdesigner Depot by Vail Joy. She is a freelance designer and tech blogger with a deep interest in all things web-related. She also enjoys writing for WIX, the free website builder.

WordPress! is an award-winning CMS, which enables you to build Blogs, Web sites and powerful online applications. Many aspects, including its ease-of-use and extensibility, have made WordPress the most popular blog software available. Best of all, WordPress is an open source solution that is freely available to everyone.

InstantShift is proud to announce yet another amazing giveaway. This is our way of saying thanks to our readers for being part of the iShift community and helping us make it to where we are right now. This time we’re pleased to announce our latest giveaway where you all have a chance to win 5 standard theme licenses from Themefuse (each worth $49). Continue reading to learn how you can win one.

If you are using WordPress you could say you are lucky because the winners of today’s giveaway will be given access to download any original wp theme of their choice from Themefuse free of charge.

I’m happy to announce the launch of our latest WordPress theme at Theme Trust. It’s called Infinity, and it’s a responsive portfolio theme with a minimal style design and layout. With this theme your work will be front and center and look great across multiple devices and screen resolutions. Infinity comes with a number of useful features like project filtering and a TouchSwipe slideshow. Keep reading to see more features and to try out the demo.

At Theme Trust when you buy one theme, you get another free. Just add any two themes to your shopping cart and then enter the code “1free“.

Theme Features

Here’s a run down of the key features included in Infinity:

• Responsive Layout
• Twitter like Infinite Scrolling for Posts
• Smooth Portfolio Filtering Animations
• 3 Built-in Background Textures
• Google Web Font Integration
• TouchSwipe Slideshow Shortcode
• Custom Options Panel
• Custom Post Type for Easy Portfolio Management
• Widget Ready Sidebars
• Archive Page Template
• WordPress 3.0 Custom Menus
• Set Your Own Colors
• Post Thumbnails
• Built-in Lightbox
• Upload a Custom Logo
• Upload a Favicon
• Threaded Comments
• Twitter Integration
• Flickr Integration
• Button Shortcodes
• Column Shortcodes

eList is a unique theme that opens up some cool possibilities. At its core, it is a “directory” theme, meaning simply that it can be used to store a database of user-generated listings. The purpose of your site, and the type of content being submitted by your users, is entirely up to you. eList could  easily be used as a local job board, where business pay to list their available positions in a relevant category, or where residents pay to place their resumes. Perhaps it is a local real estate listings directory, where agents pay to list their properties for locals to see. It could also, very simply, be an online directory of business or websites that you curate and charge (or don’t charge) for inclusion.

eList creates a front-end submission form that your visitors can use to submit their own listings. This form can be customized from within wp-admin to include whatever fields you like. You can then choose to charge your visitors to submit their listings, or allow them to post for free.

Live DemoFeatures Info

eList Features

 1. Unlimited ColorSchemes – eList includes our CSS control panel, allowing you to adjust the background and font color of your theme. This allows for unlimited possibilities when comes to color combinations, and also includes various background textures.

2. Classic Directory Structure – eList includes the classic directory structure, where your homepage is based off categories rather than recent listings. Each category is displayed, along with a description, post count and thumbnail image.

3. eCommerce Integration – eList allows you to place your listings behind a pay-wall. You can charge  a fixed rate for each listing, as well as an additional fee to have the listing “featured” on the homepage and relevant categories. All payments are handled via PayPal, and the theme uses IPN to automatically verify listings once they have been paid for. If a listing is not paid for, then it will remain a draft in the system and will not be published.

4. Custom Drag-and-Drop Form Builder – The eList listings submission form can be completely customized to fit the purpose of your website. We have created a custom form builder that you can use to easily customize your submission form, adding any additional fields that you require.

5. Front-end Listing Submissions - eList has its own front-end login and submission page, allowing your visitors to publish new listings without ever having to log in to the WordPress Dashboard. This creates a seamless experience for your customers.

6. Featured Listings – You have the option of allowing your visitors to pay additional fees to be “Featured.” When a users pays to be featured, their listing is rotated on the homepage and category Featured Slider for a limited amount of time. You can change how long listings stay “Featured” from within ePanel.

I hope that everyone enjoys the new theme! It was a challenging one to create, but I think it turned out quite well.

This Photoshop tutorial explains how to create a nice simple stuffed text effect, using Photoshop layers, styles and filters.

Final Image Preview

Resources

• BubbleGum font
• Plain Fabric Texture 06

Step 1

Create a new document, 1024x768px, set foreground color to #6e3f68 and background color to #261e25. Then create a radial gradient from the center of the document to one of the corners.

Step 2

Create the text using the color #9572a2, the font used is BubbleGum, and the size is 250 px.

Double click the text layer to apply the following styles:

- Drop Shadow: Just change the Size to 27.

- Inner Shadow: Change the color to #6f389d, the Distance to 0, and the Size to 29.

- Bevel and Emboss: Change the Size to 40, the Gloss Contour to Gaussian and check the Anti-aliased box, the Highlight Mode to Overlay, and the Shadow Mode color to #7d7d7d. (You might need to adjust the Size value if you are using a different font family of size.)

- Texture: Choose the Woven Pattern (this Pattern is located on Patterns group), and set the Depth to 20.

- Gradient Overlay: Change the Blend Mode to Soft Light, and click the Gradient box to modify the colors.

The Gradient is created using two colors, #6e6e6e and #464646.

This is what you should get after applying the styles above:

Step 3

The text is starting to get the “stuffed” look, but it still needs more defining and textutring. So create a new layer on top of all layers and call it “texture”.

Press the Ctrl key, and click the text layer’s thumbnail (icon) to create a selection.

Set the Foreground color to #a77d31 and the Background color to #724c21, fill the selection with the Foreground color, and press Ctrl + D (Select -> Deselect) to get rid of the selection.

We’re going to apply a couple of filters, so change the values as shown in the images below for each filter. Start by going to Filter > Sketch > Reticulation:

Next, go to Filter > Artistic > Watercolor:

Finally, go to Filter > Artistic > Underpainting:

Once you’re done, go to Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation, change the Saturation value to -100 and the Lightness to +10.

Change the “texture” layer’s Blend Mode to Soft Light.

Step 4

It’s time to add some stitches. Open your Brush panel (Window > Brush or F5). Choose a hard round brush, change its size to 10 px, the Roundness to something around 21%, and the Spacing to 675%.

Under Shape Dynamics make sure to choose Direction from the Angle Jitter drop down menu, this will make the stitches follow the direction of the text path.

Create a new layer on top of all layers, call it “stitches”, and set the Foreground color to #9b79a8.

Right click on the text layer and choose Create Work Path. Then select the “stitches” layer again so that it is the active layer.

Pick the Direct Selection Tool, right click the path you’ve just created, and choose Stroke Path.

The text should be stroked with the stitches brush.

Double click the “stitches” layer to add the two following layer styles:

- Drop Shadow: Just change the Distance to 0.

- Bevel and Emboss: Change the Shadow Mode color #60371d.

This will add more depth and dimension to the stitches.

Step 5

Finally, we are going to add a simple Background. Open the Plain Fabric Texture 06 (full size) and place it right on top of the Gradient Background. Resize the image so that it fits in your document, then go to Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation, change the Saturation to -100 and the Lightness to +50.

Change the image layer’s Blend Mode to Soft Light.

Final Image

Blank theater sign, download PSD template and put your title. Shiny theater marquee, frame with lights and blank space in the middle.

Resolution: 1280x960px
Full size JPG preview: Theater sign template
File Format: PSD
Color theme: red, yellow
Author: PSD Graphics
Similar item: Box of popcorn

Download Photoshop PSD source:
File Size: 1.56 MB