Posts Tagged ‘Design’
| 24 Feb 2009 |
I finally sold the adult video sharing design! |
I made this design a year ago for a customer who ended up not paying because he apparently ran out of money. Anyway ever since i tried to sell it, but was unsuccessful. A week ago a potential customer popped up so i messaged him and voila he loved it and bought it instantly!
I sold the design at the initial price i asked one year ago – $195
As you can see the design is really sleek and ordered, along with ad optimization for maximum CTR. As you can see pink(slutty pink) and black are the dominant colors, excellent for an adult video sharing website. The psd itself is huge due to the lots and lots of layers and filters used: it has 55mb, and its cache is almost 7GB(meaning that you can’t open it if you don’t have 7GB free disk space).
Phew. I finally got rid of it. This is what happens if a customer doesn’t pay! You get stuck with the design for a very long time.
| 2 Nov 2008 |
Did you notice the new logo? |
Initially I planned to make a new logo for ThaSlayer.com v2.0, but being accepted as a partner at Mashable’s Open Web Awards the creation of a new logo was a mandatory thing for me. I couldn’t have had my old “crappy” logo there.
So i’ve put myself together and after about 8-10 sessions of concepts and designing and revising the logo versions i finally settled with the one that i liked the most(hopefully i made a good choice), check below to see the difference:
The main font is one of my favorite fonts – Century Gothic and the “web design” text is using the VAG rounded font. The main word “thaslayer” and the signal type lines have a bit of bewel and emboss along with a mild gradient magic added to them. The bottom line is that there are some fonts which are really worth buying.
Getting back to Mashable’s Open Web Awards: check out how sexy my new logo looks on the Partner showcase page with a small addition, which is the URL to my blog.
I don’t judge people, but quite some of those bloggers who joined the partnership could have supplied a more “pleasant” logo considering that they will be part of a major event.
I’ve made this logo with the hope to evolve a bit thaslayer.com and make it more pleasant for you. Hopefully you’ll enjoy it!
| 30 Oct 2008 |
Hiring a Designer – Get your Money’s Worth of Design |
Those great ideas keep rolling around in your head but you can’t make sense out of them; you know exactly how you want your site to look and feel but you don’t know how to put those thoughts into action – that’s when you know you need to hire a web design company to do the honors. But to make sure you get what you want without being taken for a ride, you need to keep your finger on the pulse of things and be a hands-on customer. Here’s how you can prevent your web design company from pulling the wool over your eyes:
• What’s good for the goose is good for the gander:
Ask around before you commit to hiring a designer. If you can’t find anyone you know to give the design firm you’re contemplating a good reference, it’s best to go with another that does come with glowing testimonials from people you trust. Believe me, when you’re shelling out good money, you need to know for sure that the end result will be satisfactory.
• The devil is in the details:
Don’t give your designer too much of a free hand in the way your site turns out, not because you don’t trust them to do a good job, but because you need to have an idea of how you expect your site to look. Provide your designer a detailed list of your expectations and desires, and have them work along those guidelines. Some ideas may be workable, others may not, so it’s likely you’ll trash a few initial designs and come up with a host of new ones along the way, finally reaching a mutually satisfactory compromise.
• There’s no such thing as a free lunch:
Your website designer is in it for the profit, and so are you. So there’s no need to feel queasy about doing the money talk. Discuss the costs upfront, especially those that cover the number of revisions, the extra tasks that may come up from time to time, and the number of days the project is expected to take for completion.
• A watched pot does boil here:
If you expect to be taken seriously, you need to play an important role as the design unfolds and not be a mere spectator who strolls in at the end of the game. Stay on top of things and see how your website is coming along. If there are any changes, make sure you point them out before too much work has been done and time wasted. This will save you both in terms of time and money.
• Know your onions:
If you’re totally ignorant about web design and its aspects, it’s going to be an uphill climb translating your ideas into reality. You don’t have to be an expert (if you are, then you save yourself a pile of money), but it helps to know the rudimentary details of what goes into making a good web page. Only then can you provide insightful feedback and help your designer do things the way you want them to be done, using methods that are possible.
By-line:
This article is contributed by Sarah Scrafford, who regularly writes on the topic of web design degrees. She invites your questions, comments and freelancing job inquiries at her email address: sarah.scrafford25@gmail.com.
| 24 Apr 2008 |
Add rain effect to your pictures using Photoshop |
This is a very very very old tutorial that i wrote back in 2006(when i owned the TwistedGFX forum). I found it on my old computer, so i decided to post it(i modified a few things to lower the difficulty level).
As i said in a previous post i started my designer career as a GFX artist, i got 50-100 outwar points for an animated profile picture back then(my outwar name was SoulC4tch3r), so i wrote a tutorial of how to make animated rain.
Step 1:
Grab any picture, and resize/crop it to fit your needs. I resized and cropped this robot wallpaper to look good as a 250x250px outwar profile picture.
Step 2:
open up the image in photoshop, when done press: CTRL+SHIFT+N to create a new layer, after this press SHIFT+F5 to fill the layer with black color( belnding mode: normal ; opacity 100%)
Step 3:
Here comes the little harder part 
. Go to Filter menu->Noise->Add noise; there set amount between 80->87%; distribution-> gaussian; enable Monochromatic mode.
Step 4:
After you are done go to Filter->Blur->Motion blur; there you can adjust the rain’s lenght. The bigger the value the bigger the rain strokes will be. Remember to set the angle in values between +/-28 and +/-50(depending on the desired alignment of the rain)
Step 5:
Now go to layers box and set overlay mode to your rain effect layer. To adjust it a little you can use Soft Light.
Step 6:
at step 6 repeat all the steps from step 2 to step 5, the only thing you need to change is the angle at motion blur, for example if you selected -31 as i did select -33 now.
Step 7:
now press CTRL+SHIFT+M to transfer the image in Imageready so you can do the animation part also. You can do it in photoshop also by opening the animation box)
Step 8:
Open up the animation box : Window -> Animation
a small box should appear. Now click on the button that is circled once and duplicate the frame
Step 9:
Now that you have 2 frames associate one frame with 1 layer and other with 2nd layer(see bellow)
Step 10:
If you made it to this step congratulations! You should now have a picture with rain on it. Make sure to save the file in a .gif format with no dither.
Result:
Of course you can vary the effects and add extras to them like lightning, brightness modification, clearing th rain from the character’s body. Don’t be scared! Photoshop is your friend!
| 11 Apr 2008 |
Custom vBulletin design for an Adult Forum |
Yes, the forum is Adult topic oriented, but my job didn’t have anything to do with xxx pictures, or stuff like that. I just did the design itself, how the buyer will customize it and what items he will add to it it’s his problem.
Here are the client’s specifications:
The forum I need a design for is an adult forum. The domain is NSFWForum. The design I have in my head is a black theme with a logo that has a red circle through “SFW”…I’m absolutley open to ideas of course! I just want it to look good.
Let me know if you’d be willing to do this.
My suggestion:
yeah, of course i can do it, i don’t really care about the niche of the sites that i design, it’s still designing after all
hmm, adult forum how does this sound: black background, pink and grey web 2.0 colors
Said and done. The job was completed within a 72 hour time frame(he told me last week that he will have funds to pay me on wednesday), so i took my time and chilled i did each part of the design on different days.
Check out the designs:
Ben(the customer) just loved it
Hey,
The design looks awesome! Payment of $250 sent, as promised.
Please email the file(s) to [email address]
Thanks again,
Ben
Its a great feeling to see a customer happy, and especially getting the payment, because you know that you have to rely on that money(i have to revamp my father’s apartment so i can rent it, and everything costs money nowadays).
Customer Name: Ben
Timeframe: 72 hours
Job overview: Design a vBulletin design for an adult forum
Price: $250
| 2 Apr 2008 |
Blog Updates |
You might not have noticed, but i’m working in most of my spare time on implementing all the external pages related to my blog into wordpress(portfolio/downloads/etc)
Good bye old portfolio, welcome new one!
My old portfolio was located at http://thaslayer.com/view/ and it was using MiniGallery v2. The script was a bit buggy, but it was great, simple and to the point. Development of MiniGallery is suspended for more than a year now -> no new versions/features/updates/bug fixes. For my old portfolio i used a pre-made theme downloaded from the homepage of the script.
I moved my portfolio to its new location http://www.thaslayer.com/portfolio/ and as you can see it’s implemented in wordpress(it’s a page actually). The new portfolio has the same design as the blog(duh, it’s a page created in wordpress) and navigation is much simpler now.
A quote from John Maeda beautifies the main portfolio page: “Designers solve problems for clients. Artists solve problems for humanity. The latter is the greatest problem.”
On the designs category page when you click a snippet from a design the lightbox javascript will start working nad it will display the image in a box in the center of the screen.
Not all designs made it to the new portfolio. I dropped quite many older designs that i found not really professional, or inappropriate to have the privilege to be present in the new portfolio(its better to have fewer professional designs than many NOT professional designs).
About Page
My about page is also completed. There you will find a bit older picture of me, and a little something about me(like that i live in Transylvania). You can notice that in the picture i’m wearing my Apache Mirrored shirt from Jinx(free advertising!, lol). I really like that shirt, it became one of my favorites from the day i got it.
All my released FREE themes are now present on the FREE themes page
I taught that it would be a good idea to post all themes in one place to save the visitor time on searching a specific theme. Each of the themes contains link to the official release post, live demo, and of course download link. This page will constantly be updated with new theme releases(official release posts for new themes WILL BE also posted.
speaking of themes…
it’s been more than a month since i released my last theme(Loveblog), so soon a new Free theme will be released. I didn’t make up my mind yet on which theme to release(there are a few themes that weren’t bought by customers) or to create a new one. Either way the release of the new theme will be in about 2 weeks, because BETng4U is currently working on a custom CMS for a customer, which will be finished till next week when he will start coding the design for my new image hosting website
New database server
The old database server was on servage’s 1047th mysql server. A while back when i had a nasty fight with servage support team i asked them to create a few databases on their 16th mysql server (mysql16). The differences between mysql1047 and mysql16 are HUGE!. I moved the whole database to the new mysql server, but haven’t linked it up with wordpress yet. I will link them together and then you will be able to see the differences yourself(shorter loadtime, no timeouts,better browsing experience)
what the future holds:
Jim sent me a mail a few days back with a suggestion of which my opinion is that it’s a pretty good idea:
Hey Tom,
I stumbled across your blog, checked it out and noticed that you only post themes released by you(as i saw you release a theme every 1-2 months). It would be a good idea if you would present themes made by other designers also.
Yours truly,
Jim
I considered Jim’s proposition and at the end of each month i will present 5 FREE professional wordpress themes released for free that month which are really worth downloading and using.
My main sources of themes will be Weblogtoolscollection , digitalpoint, and why not?, my blog(there will be a page where you will eb able to submit your theme). Registration at both websites is free and takes less than 30 seconds.
The only thing i’m worried about is that will i find 5 themes that are worth commenting, downloading and using of course.
PS:Thanks to the new theme my blog traffic almost doubled. Having a custom pleasant theme really helps in gaining more traffic.
PS2: any suggestions are welcome on how to improve the blog. If our idea is creative and i really like it you may get a reward(cash or design )
| 22 Mar 2008 |
Designers learn how to smoothly sell your designs and avoid being scammed |
I keep seeing more and more designers that get scammed. They send the design and they never get the payment. There’s not much they can do except to say out loud the name of the guy who scammed them and leave a negative rating for the buyer.
If you got scammed i’m sorry to hear that. If not trust me you don’t want to get into a situation like that! Especially if we are talking about amounts above 50$.
Recently my friend Ben got scammed because he did the stupid mistake of sending the PSD file before getting paid. He never heard of the buyer since then.
To avoid being a situation like the one mentioned above and to smoothly sell your designs you need to follow some really simple steps and make them as rules and follow them(like in Transporter movie,really) :
1 – Never change the deal - For example if someone hires you to design him a directory and when your half way trough he tells you to design a forum instead either tell him to go find someone else or tell him how much extra it will cost
2 – Provide portfolio - When applying for a job(if the customer doesn’t contact you) make sure you provide a link to your portfolio and references. It can really affect a potential customer’s decision after seeing some of your previous work.
3 – Ask the customer as much details as possible - I usually ask about the niche of the site, the desired color combination, the structure of the theme and ad optimization. In this part of the chat make suggestions regarding the informations you asked and always sustain it!(for example: “it would look better if you would place a 468×60 ad in the right corner of the header because the CTR would be bigger and you would fill in a potential empty space”)
4 – ALWAYS watermark the preview you send the customer - Photoshop saves the previews in a high quality format which can be sliced up just like a PSD file and coded. Make sure the watermark’s opacity is 10-25% and appears in a way that the design is clearly visible but the watermark is visible also.
5 – Interact with the customer as often as you can - If it’s possible to chat with him using an IM client than ask him feedback every time you make a more important modification. If your talking via email than email him the watermarked design for revisions(it would suck to make the complete design and in the end not get paid because the customer doesn’t like it)
6 – Set the price before everything - You set the price before you start designing. That price doesn’t change no matter what. If the customer is satisfied with the theme he has to pay the set price. I heard that some designers ask more $ once the design is finished. If the customer really needs the design he will pay the extra fee, but trust me he will never hire you again.
7 – Respect the time frame - If you tell the customer the design will be finished within 48 hours including revisions than respect it! Providing the design at time may be vital to the customer, and if he sees that you passed it he will start getting grumpy and he will have an other reason not to choose you next time.
8 – Keep it original - DO NOT USE ELEMENTS FROM OTHER THEMES!(Except icons and text). Yesterday a guy told me that he downloaded all the template monster collection from a warez forum so he can get inspired from them. If you do this than the design won’t be unique.
9 – Check for Bugs - Check and recheck every bit of your theme for bugs. Even small bugs cna ruin a great design
10 – Most important one - NEVER and when i say never i mean NEVER send the design before receiving the payment! This is the easiest and most common way designers are scammed! Tell the customer to send the money to your paypal/moneybookers id and only after receiving the money send him the design.
Also remember to provide support for your designs. This means that if the customer will require in the future some minor modifications do it without asking any compensation(money). This doesn’t apply at major modifications. If you respect the customer he will respect you.
I really hope this guide is useful to you and will help you decrease the chances (%) of getting scammed to a value below 10%.
| 21 Mar 2008 |
WordPress Theme design for World Of Scooters |
This is the second theme that i designed for Robbie. The first theme was for his trampolines blog, of which you can check out more details by Clicking HERE .
The design was made for his Scooter Blog. This is the second concept, the first one was dark(blue+black) and he told me that he wants something clean, pleasant to the eye and easy to navigate.
The job was completed within a 48 hour timeframe(along with revisions and coding.
Coding was done by BETng4U (damn its good to have him back) which went really smooth.
I used a combination of blue/orange/white. Robbie specified that he wants a white background so he got one!. To put a bit of life in the theme i used 2 stock images from iStockPhoto. The main purpose of the blue and orange is to adjust the contrast of the theme(if i would have used grey for example instead of blue the theme would have looked extremely monoton).
The header image is made out of 2 parts:
- The left part with the guy on scooter and the logo - i used myriad roman font for the logo, it’s one of my favorite fonts next to Century gothic and scriptina.
- The right part with the testimonial and the guy from the scooter showing thumbs up - a testimonial is really important at these type of sites/blogs. It can really motivate a potential customer to buy a product.
To see the live design visit www.worldofscooters.co.uk
Customer Name: Robbie
Timeframe: 48 hours
Job overview: Design and code a wordpress theme for a scooter blog
Price: Confidential
| 21 Mar 2008 |
I’m still here! |
I didn’t post for the last 2 days because:
- i had to finish 2 custom wordpress themes
- interact with new customer
- make the plan for the new features on my blog – this is the good thing about wordpress, it’s extremely flexible and i intend to turn my blog into a full-featured cms!
- start worrying about the yable project – every time when you start a new project your worried, because you don’t know for sure that will it work or not and does it worth to invest in it
- went to the store to pick out a suit(which hopefully i’m buying today)
…but now i’m back and i’l try to post every day as usual
The funny part is that the blog readers number raised with about 13% in the past 2 days , lol.
What is up to do now is to change all the lorem ipsum text to the permanent text, and create the pages.
uu…i almost forgot: check out my cool 404 Error page -> http://www.thaslayer.com/404.php
The theme is fully functional now and was tested in all browsers so hopefully issues won’t appear. If you encounter any problems please post a comment 
Thanks,
Tom
| 15 Mar 2008 |
What turns out when a designer and coder work together + other funny stuff |
Yesterday was a funny day. Starting from college where i had lots of fun with my colleagues to the work on the new theme(TS Evolution) for my blog. Both of us were in a good mood so we joked around(how can you work if there’s no fun?)
A little later…
And a little more later…
And here’s the other funny stuff i was talking about:
I didn’t check DP forums for 2 days because i was busy with projects and when i work i don’t really check new job openings. I got overwhelmed once because i usually message everyone who could be a potential client, those who are looking for website redesign. One time 4 people got back to me saying that they want to hire me. This means 4 website designs.
I remember that for a week this was my daily schedule:
Wake up in the morning -> go to college -> get back home and work -> go to sleep
Back then my girlfriend got upset on me a little but she understood that i’m getting money out of this, eventually i took her to eat pizza, lol.
Getting back to the point: i also check other designers threads so i can compare myself to them and see if i have to improve more to catch up or not.
When i read this thread i laughed my ass off:
Thread Title: Tired of [POOR] Quality Graphics from amatures? Look HERE!
A part from the content:
There are 100′s of people here claiming to give you web templates for $10-15. But most of these people have know idea what a quality template is! We design the best quality templates at the lowest price possible.
We at Ziltech Designs can provide you with great quality web templates and other graphics. [...] It usually costs $60 [...] This is a really low price for such quality templates.
We [...] are reliable ( Check iTrader) slayer: they have an itrader rating of 8
When i checked the samples i got shocked. I HIGHLY doubt that someone would pay $60 for a theme of that low quality.
Here’s what sucka replied to him:
Hmm you´re claiming too much I think ^^
Your are on the same level as the other “poor” designers here.
I´m sorry
I bet that this was a kick in the face for zilox. He tried to explain himself that he tries to give the best for that price but i don’t think someone bought it.
Here’s a tip for newbie designers: Don’t start making custom designs until you have a decent portfolio with web 2.0 designs that are smooth and professional. Till then auction your themes to build up your portfolio.
It doesn’t matter that it’s worth 40$ and you can sell it only for 20$. You get an iTrader rating + build up portfolio + references.
