Rule #2: Spend at least 30-60 minutes per day, each day.

Rule #3: Break the seal of hesitation!

That’s it. Sounds easy, right? :-)

Adobe like to invent various “codenames” for their apps, when a new major development cycle starts. For example, Fireworks CS5 was “Starman”, Dreamweaver CS5 — “Bowie”, Illustrator CS5 — “Ajanta”, etc. (I mention specific names because I don’t think they are such a big secret, and because the CS5 apps were released officially more than 2 months ago, at the beginning of May).

But there’s something that maybe not a lot of people know — initially on the splash screen of Ps CS5 White Rabbit there was… a white rabbit! Later, of course, this splash screen was replaced with the “official” one for the CS5 series (in the case of Ps CS5, it reminds me a bit of a blue fish, turned to the right).

(I do not use Photoshop (or very rarely), but it happened that I tried it a couple of times.)

If you’d like to see this hidden “unofficial” splash screen, hold Ctrl (Cmd) while clicking on the About Photoshop item from the Help menu.

As far as I’ve found, the screen was drawn by Daniel Presedo (from the Ps QE team), and I think it is even better than the later “official” version… :)

1) I don’t think you can create and perfection 365 designs/illustrations in one year, and without spending too much time for this task (actually, I like most of the things I have published up to now, but…)…

Still, the limiation “one design every day” makes things pretty hard. Some of the ideas need more time, but if you spend only 20 -30 minutes every day, the time is not enough. Maybe it would be good for me to spend more time, a few days or even a week, for some of my ideas…

2) For this reason, I may later decice to separate the RSS feed for the category Daily Design from my main RSS feed. Anyone that would like to continue following my progress, can simply subscribe to the Daily Design RSS.

Well, that’s it… Let’s see if later, something new will appear in the Daily Design… :)

UPDATE: Curious to see other “contestants”? In the comments for this blog post, there’s a long list of URLs! :-)

1. Prospective client: $400 for a logo?! Why are you so expensive? My nephew has Photoshop—I can just get him to do it.
2. Me: Does your nephew have Microsoft Word?
3. Prospective client: Yes.
4. Me: Then have him write you a novel while he’s at it.

Well said! :-)

(via #)

It has all started like this…

The Rabbit and the Sewing Machine

First, my wonderful wife Ani found a blog with a nice header and mentioned that it is probably very difficult to make such a drawing or vector composition.

That was a reason strong enough for me to fire up Fireworks and start re-drawing this header image right away. It was a challenge! :-)

3 or 4 hours later, my imitation #1 was ready:

(click for larger size)

Compare it with the original that I was trying to reproduce:

(click for larger size)

You can see that the two images are almost identical, with the exception of a few details — for example, I’ve drawn a rabbit with long ears instead of a doll with no face expression (I like the rabbit more, actually). Also, you can notice that some other small details are not re-created in exactly the same manner, but this is intentional — I wanted to make a very similar image in Fireworks, not a 100% exact copy.

Everything you see is just vectors and a few effects added here and there.

I do not know how was the original created (I tried to contact the author of the blog, but did not receive a reply to my e-mail) — maybe it’s Illustrator or Photoshop — but I think I have demonstrated that Fireworks is powerful enough to make quite complicated vector imitations. That’s the reason why I love Fireworks so much — it is powerful enough to do 90% of my graphic design work, and yet, very easy and intuitive to use! :-)

The City of Darkness

Next, I switched to Flash, and tried to recreate a nice drawing, made by Ani on paper, a few days ago.

Here’s my first try with a tablet (this is imitation #2):

(click for larger size)

I used a Wacom tablet and Adobe Flash; when the drawing was ready, I exported the image and then used Fireworks again, for the final version you see.

It took me maybe 2 hours to make the drawing — I think the results are OK for a first try with a tablet and Flash:)

Here’s the original image that I was trying to re-draw:

(click for larger size)

Again, there are some differences between the two images, but they are minor…

The solar eclipse & the statue of Mahatma Ghandi

The same day, I also had the idea to re-create a real photograph, taken during the last solar eclipse (on it, you could see the sun against the statue of Mahatma Ghandi, on a very dark sky).

Unfortunately, the day was too short for this purpose, but after two days, I went back to this idea of mine, and so my third imitation was born.

Here’s imitation #3 — what you see is Adobe Fireworks again, only vectors and a couple of live effects:

(click for larger size)

And here’s the original, so that you can make the comparison:

(click for larger size)

This was quite a quick job, maybe less than an hour. I was not trying to make a 100% perfect copy, but rather check if I can quickly make a vector re-drawing of this photo. The results look quite OK to me;-)

Adobe Fireworks

I love using Fireworks.

“Good Artists Copy, Great Artists Steal.”
Good artists copy, great artists use Fireworks.
—Pablo Picasso
—Michel

Am I a great artist? Sure no! :-)

But it’s fun for me to try to imitate some other people’s work, especially using Fireworks, my favourite graphic design editor of all time! :-)

And what still continues to amaze me is how good Fireworks can be, both with vectors and bitmap editing… and how underrated it continues to be, for Adobe and for many design professionals… (I hope this will change some day!)

…Meanwhile, I’ll continue to copy imitate in Fireworks, just like I did last Sunday, when the mood comes. It’s just too much fun! :)))

Unfortunately, the icons were in JPG format, which restricted their possible uses (they were also released in MacOS icon type, but this format cannot be used in the Web, obviously).

To my deligh, after a few commenters (including myself;-) asked for a PNG+alpha version, Veerle most happily shared it with us, too! :-)

You can download the icons from her website and/or from here (the distribution of the icons is absolutely free and unlimited, as well as their use):

Cool! :-)

If you are a Mac user (and Web designer), then you maybe use the Markup Validator S.A.C. — this app is a stand-alone version of the W3C Markup Validator. The new icons from Veerle could replace the default icon of this application in your MacOS X dock.

On the left you can see the current icon of the Markup Validator S.A.C. You may compare it with the variants that Veerle has made. Personally, I like her design of the icons much more! :-)

Plus, she is releasing the icon set for free to the community!

Unfortunately, the icon set is available for Mac users only. It’s a pity, because I think that these icons could be used in many more ways… Of course, you can use the JPG variants (which are high quality), but without the optional alpha transparency, which is available in the PNG format only…

If you want to use any of the icons on MacOS X, a link for download is available in the Veerle’s blog post:

http://veerle.duoh.com/blog/comments/a_new_icon_for_markup_validator_s.a.c/

(There you will also find instructions, how you can change the icon of Markup Validator S.A.C. in the dock of MacOS X.)

As to the JPG variants, you can copy them manually from Veerle’s blog, or download them as one ZIP file, which I made for my own convenience (as the icons are released for free):

Finally, what can I say? Another great design from Veerle! :-)

[UPDATE] Same icons, but in PNG+alpha file format. Cool! :)

Maybe This Is The Biggest Logo Of Firefox In This World

On this site there was nothing else, except one extremely big logo of the Firefox browser, in PNG format, 4500×4330 pixels in size! :-)

In a similar way, the domain name was very long and descriptive, too: http://www.maybethisisthebiggestlogooffirefoxintheworld.cn.

Unfortunately, now the URL gives an error (Bad Request [Invalid Hostname]), and I am not sure if there’s preserved somewhere online a copy of this logo, so I decided to publish mine, which I luckily saved locally on my computer at the time I first found the website.

[ Download Firefox Logo (4500px x 4330px, PNG 32 bit, alpha transparent ]

The logo is not in vector format (the original was made in Macromedia Fireworks by British designer John Hicks), but anyway, ~ 4000×4000 pixels is quite a big size, and I think that this variant can be printed without a problem even on a big balloon or a gigantic billboard… ;-)

It’s also interesting to note, how time’s flying — the logo of Firefox is 5 years old, already (the Firefox browser is a bit older), and I feel as if it was yesterday, when we were all downloading a copy of Firefox 0.8 Beta, and Firefox started slowly to replace the Mozilla Suite 1.xx… :-)

//Sidenote: Firefox is under GPL, and I guess, its logo is also covered by this free license;-)

UPDATE/DISCLAIMER (2009/Mar/01@23:30): This logo of Firefox is a registered trademark of the Mozilla Foundation, and is not used for any commercial purposes whatsoever. It is an exact copy of the Firefox logo, downloaded from this website.

I am still ill and keeping the bed all day, and I don’t have many distractions, so Ani got this funny idea — together to make an illustration, using only one font and the keyboard letters. :-)

Hope you like it… I’ll just try to have some sleep… :-)

PS Here are some more inspiring examples.

Fireworks How To: The Ultimate Aqua Button (tutorial) (by Brian Edgin)

You can easily re-create the above effect in Macromedia (Adobe) Fireworks, versions MX/MX 2004 and above.

I’ll quote Brian Edgin:

What I discovered was that Fireworks’ blend of vectors and bitmap-like live effects is far more suited to creating these kinds of graphics than any other application I’ve ever worked with. From CorelDraw and XaraX to Illustrator, Paint Shop Pro and Gimp to Photoshop, nothing has ever been able to match Fireworks’ ability to design with a minimum of necessary shapes and none even begin to approach Fireworks’ workflow and usability.

I developed the following Aqua button technique with only the best looking result as my guide. By taking full advantage of all that Fireworks has to offer, the technique and final result has a number of advantages over any other technique I’ve seen.

• It takes the fewest number of steps (for a technique that doesn’t leave out any design elements)
• It uses fewer objects to complete the design
• All the elements of the button remain fully editable
• The final button is made entirely out of vector objects

[ . . . ]

I cannot but agree with the author, because I’ve done this tutorial, and I remember that it was really easy to complete. At the same time, with Photoshop you needed much more steps, to achieve the same results (one more reason for me to prefer Fireworks in favor of any other graphic app;-).

Of course, at the time (2004), both Fireworks and Photoshop were much more different than today.

So, for the Photoshop fans, here’s a link to another tutorial, which will teach you, how to do all kinds of buttons for Web, incl. Aqua buttons (see pages from 1 to 3):

Build Beautiful Buttons in Photoshop, Part II (by Corrie Haffly)

These days I’d like to remember some of my (partially forgotten) skills in Fireworks and to experiment a little, but we’ll see, if I’ll have enough free time for this…

Finally, if you do graphic design, and you know some easy to complete and interesting tutorials, by using which you can achieve the same beautiful Aqua Effect (made with Fireworks), but using other graphic programs (GIMP, Illustrator, InkScape, etc.), I would very much appreciate if you leave here a link or two, in the comments below! :-)