Firefox Extensions add more extensive features to the browser; some add simple toolbars while others can add a wide range of new features.

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Here are the designer/developers’ answers to our question:  Which is your favorite Firefox Extension (s) to use when developing a website?

@andysowards

This one is easy. My favorite Firefox tool is Firebug. Hands down. I could not, and will not, live without it. Sample of work I provided is my site, AndySowards.com, which I used firebug on pretty much the whole way through, it definitely helped me build the look and feel of the sites css/javascript/jQuery fairly quickly and without any pain .

The reason that it is so invaluable is because it allows you to fully understand the html/css/javascript that is on a page, very quickly and easily. It has made my css building/manipulation process at least 75% faster if not more. I can just build out the css and have the page styled exactly how I want it in firefox, then just copy and paste the css into the appropriate place. Its that easy! Of course IE, Safari, and Chrome, may need some tweaks. But FireBug allows even the more difficult tasks to be accomplished within minutes! Finding css issues is so easy now. Thank you firebug. You rock.  Check out his website: http://www.AndySowards.com

@obox

I rely heavily on “TidyHTML” and the Firefox Web Developer toolkit to dev sites.

Without those two items I feel lost, Web Developer is perfect for tracking ID’s etc when styling widgets in WordPress themes. It also helps with spotting div sizes and picking out style values.

TidyHTML is perfect for getting your site w3c compatible. I only use TidyHTML when splicing up designs and converting them to CSS + HTML.

So yeah, without those two tools I would be lost.

Since I use them for every site we develop I will just attach a screenshot of one of our themes because of the way I used the Web Developer toolkit to style the sidebar.

Details of screenshot: Press Theme http://wwwdemo.obox-design.com/press/

@adammccombs

My favorite tool called the 960 Gridder. 960 Gridder is a jquery based tool that overlays any webpage with a 960px grid. It’s great for testing size and spacing to make sure your layouts are pixel perfect. 960 Gridder is cross-browser compliant and works well in Internet Explorer 6/7/8, Firefox 2/3 and Chrome. Safari 4 Beta and Opera 9 is also working as expected and it should work in Safari 2.x-3.x also.  960 Gridder is built upon the very famous JavaScript framework jQuery.

960 Gridder will automatically identify if jQuery is present at the website and if it is not, it will include it. However, 960 Gridder isn’t affiliated with the jQuery authors at all.More information about 960 Gridder can be found at: http://gridder.andreehansson.se/.  Check out more of his work http://www.mccombs.me/

@iBlend

My favorite Firefox tool by far is FireBug (http://getfirebug.com).  Firebug integrates with Firefox to put a wealth of web development tools at your fingertips while you browse. You can edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page.

Firebug’s CSS tabs tell you everything you need to know about the styles in your web pages, and if you don’t like what it’s telling you, you can make changes and see them take effect instantly.

Firebug is always just a keystroke away, but it never gets in your way. You can open Firebug in a separate window, or as a bar at the bottom of your browser. Firebug also gives you fine-grained control over which websites you want to enable it for.

I use this tool to tweek styles and html on my local.  Once it looks right, I will edit the real files and upload them to the server.  I recently used this Firefox tool for the release of my new website (http://thewebblend.com). TheWebBlend is a community for designers, developers and tech junkies that keeps you current with a summary of the latest in web related news and trends.  Check out his site: http://thewebblend.com

@printedproof

The most helpful Firefox tool for me is FireBug. FireBug is an add-on that allows me edit, debug, and find CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live on any of my projects as well as any other live pages on the web.

I grew up designing for web using Dreamweaver and GoLive, so in other words “drag-and-drop”. I have no formal coding education. The past three years I have spent programing dynamic websites with Joomla! and WordPress.  For beginners like myself it is extremely helpful to have the ability to see the code of websites that have elements and designs that you may want to mimic or develop in your own ways. By finding the code behind these sites you can easily find what you are looking for and make it your own. This is big for developers who use pre-designed templates. Many times you can find other webmasters using the same template that they have customized. Access to the HTML/CSS/Javascript behind the scenes will help learning how it was done.

FireBug is great tool even for established designers and developers to debug and clean up messy code. FireBug allows me to easily find where an element resides within the HTML or CSS of a website. I can then go back to my files and make any necessary adjustments or changes easily.  Firebug also lets you make changes on the fly and see them immediately in your browser. You can measure and illustrate the margins, borders, padding, and sizes of elements to easily alight and locate. Use Firebug to break down load times to improve speed. It even includes a powerful JavaScript debugger so you can pause execution at any time.  Firebug pops up at the bottom of your window and is unobtrusive. In no time you can build upon your skills as a developer or simply streamline the process.

@lastwebdesigner

The first one colorzilla :http://www.colorzilla.com/firefox/ A really good tool for colors, with come really nice features. I use it for choose and test the color palette on my websites, and for check colors on other web sites,when I’m getting inspiration, or simply when I see a good web site and I want to know the color that is using.

The second is another classical ad-don used by a lot of web designers, the “Web Developer Toolbar“. I use a lot of the CSS options, making tests on the CSS and exploring other CSS websites around the world. It’s a really good tool. I use the re-sizer too for tests in different resolutions. Well, it’s a really good an useful tool. Also, I think FireBug is a must for any designer. The third ad-don is another great tool. It’s the “HTML Validator” for Firefox. This is a great add-on as I don’t need to go to the “W3″ page every time to validate my HTML code. I can just validate the source code while I’m working on it locally. It’s a great tool as I just have to take a look at the bottom-right corner on my Firefow browser window and see if the code is validated or see where it finds some errors. Very useful. I like it a lot. The fourth ad-don is a great one for SEO and to improve your position in the search engines. “Firefox SEO Tool”

I use this to get information about websites, competitions, keywords and checking my websites, it’s a good tool, if you use this in its fullest way it can help you to find how to improve your position on Google and other search engines. And another important factor, it gives me information about social bookmark links and you can disable this add-on with just one simple click.

The last one is a must for any designer/developer. FireBug, a plug-in that I don’t think needs an explanation. Everyone in the world knows what it is and how useful it is if you are developing a website. There are, in particular, two functions that I use a lot. It’s the console for Testing/Debugging my Javascript/jQuery/Ajax and inspector to “inspect” the HTML elements of the website.

@giographix

Flash Switcher

This extension allows you to easily switch from one flash player plugin version to another, or also to remove or save the currently installed plugin (maybe for testing the express install).Once installed you will find the “flash switcher” icon in the Firefox statusbar at bottom right (and also in the Tools Firefox menu). Click on it and a list of available options will appear.

The extensionhas been tested on the followings Operating System: Window XP, Ubutntu linux, Mac OSX Tiger and Leopard. Flash Switcher has been as essential to our Flash development as FireBug has to our HTML debugging. Before finding the now indispensable add-on, we had to keep a stockpile of player plugin installers and browsers in order to properly debug a Flash movie.

With a complicated full-Flash microsite such as the one we created for WayHuge.com, we used Flash Switcher to test Flash player detection and to switch to a debugger version of the player to do a live debugging in the SWF. Having the ability within the browser to easily test Flash pages with different player versions has made Flash Switcher a stable in our Flash development toolbox and helped us get WayHuge.com to a successful launch!

@svgrob

Firebug integrates with Firefox to put a wealth of web development tools at your fingertips while you browse.  Firebug makes it simple to find HTML elements buried deep in the page. Once you’ve found what you’re looking for, Firebug gives you a wealth of information, and lets you edit the HTML live.

Firebug is probably the ultimate web development plugin that Firefox has.  Anyone who codes for the web needs this plugin.  Firebug enables you to change CSS and debug JavaScript on the fly, live and yes in real time.

This is such a powerful way to work, as it saves time by enabling you to find out why your site is broken, without the laborious save and reload.

If you do not have firebug and you use HTML/CSS or Javascript, get it, it will change your developing life.  Here is a little introduction for you: Nettuts: 10 Reasons Why You Should Use Firebug

@ruhanirabin

I wrote an article about your topic on my site its the 10 Web Developers Firefox Extension, check it out here.  For this article I chose  a  must have tool for the SEO beginners and experts alike. Beginner web masters and seos will find SeoQuake useful for estimating effectiveness and competitive ability of their SEO efforts.

In the hands of professional SeoQuake will become a powerful and indispensable tool for analyzing optimization and promotion level of internet web-projects. SeoQuake can be distinguished from similar projects by a wide range of parameters available for analysis, simplicity of use and also a tool for creation of custom parameters.

SeoBar

SeoBar can be described as an additional toolbar, which shows the values of selected parameters for the page currently opened in the parameters shown by SeoBar is fully customizable by user window. Set of Inclusion of parameters in SERPs parameters for search results under each search result shown on SERP. Set ofparameters shown is fully customizable by user. Loading of parameters can be handled in two different ways – simultaneously with the loading of the SERP or after SERP loading, by user demand. Ranking of the results by selected parameter in ascending/descending order and storing results in file are available features.   After submission of the query into the search engine user is presented with SERP with search results. SeoQuake shows values of the parameters for search results under each search result shown on SERP. Set of parameters shown is fully customizable by user. Loading of parameters can be handled in two different ways – simultaneously with the loading of the SERP or after SERP loading, by user demand. Ranking of the results by selected parameter in ascending/descending order and storing results in file are available features.

@maddisondesigns

My favourite Firefox Addon and the one that I use the most, would be the “Web Developer” toolbar (http://chrispederick.com/work/web-developer). I use it every time I develop a website. I love the “Display Element Information” (Ctrl+Shift+F) option. It’s great for seeing the layout of your Divs and for seeing what Classes/Id’s are assigned to them. Another great feature is the ability to easily disable/enable JavaScript. This is great for testing, especially with the increased usage of JavaScript frameworks like JQuery and MooTools. The Web Developer toolbar has heaps of really useful options and is an invaluable tool when developing websites. Visit his site: http://maddisondesigns.com

@pixeljedi

Primarily, i’m a lover of colorzilla and fireftp.  fireftp has been used on most of what I’ve done.  start at ccconline.cc and branch out to all of our corresponding sites.

FireFTP is a free, secure, cross-platform FTP client for Mozilla Firefox which provides easy and intuitive access to FTP servers. With ColorZilla you can get a color reading from any point in your browser, quickly adjust this color and paste it into another program. You can Zoom the page you are viewing and measure distances between any two points on the page. The built-in palette browser allows choosing colors from pre-defined color sets and saving the most used colors in custom palettes. DOM spying features allow getting various information about DOM elements quickly and easily.

Regarding these two tools, colorzilla and fireftp . . . the simple answer is ease of use. FTP within the browser makes sense: upload alongside the program to download. It enables fast-switching for viewing and testing of files. Colorzilla’s just a beast to make sure that I can snag a color that catches my eye and hold on to it for future use.

The benefit of subscribing to design magazines and design resource blogs are tremendous. You not only open your world to fantastic tutorials, freebies, inspiring portfolios, but you also get a glimpse on the insights of designers. What works for them, the tried and tested.  What is also great is that they have special sections that tackles the news, design trends, artist tools.

They are also laid out in a manner that is easy to read and ease of navigating  through the articles is what makes them a very ideal source of information.

We have handpicked 10 web design magazine| resource blogs with awesome style for your reference and inspiration.  We recommend you visit and check them all out.  We guarantee that you will have an astonishing range of learning tools that will keep you up to date and in the loop of what is happening in the design community.

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Smashing Magazine

Founded in September 2006, Smashing Magazine delivers useful and innovative information to Web designers and developers. Our aim is to inform our readers about the latest trends and techniques in Web development. We try to convince you not with the quantity but with the quality of the information we present. We hope that makes us different. Smashing Magazine is, and always has been, independent.

Perhaps the most remarkable yet overlooked aspect of the design community is its friendly, enthusiastic spirit. Every day, literally thousands of talented, hard-working folks out there gain new insight from their work, come up with brilliant ideas and then share their experience with fellows designers.

WebDesigner Magazine

The WebDesigner Magazine is part of Imagine publishing.  Imagine Publishing is one of the UK’s fastest-growing consumer specialist magazine publishers, with over 20 print magazines and 20 websites published worldwide within the entertainment, computing, digital photography and video games market sectors.

And all this since 2005!

Web Designer is the premier magazine for aspiring online creatives and industry professionals. The monthly title offers cutting-edge practical projects spanning XHTML, CSS, Flash and WordPress as well as hosting features and interviews with the web community’s most influential people. Each issue also has a dedicated Industry section covering news and views from the trade, website showcases featuring the finest design talent and a free CD of valuable resources. The official blog site at webdesignermag.co.uk offers additional editorial, exclusive interviews, reader support plus a series of entertaining podcasts from the magazine team.

Web Designer: Defining the Internet through beautiful design…

Six Revisions

Six Revisions is a weblog that provides practical, useful information for the modern, standards-compliant web designer and web developer. It seeks to present exceptional, noteworthy tips, tutorials, and resources that the modern web professional will appreciate. You’ll find a variety of content from tools that can speed up your work flow processes to showcases of beautiful designs for inspiration and tutorials on JavaScript frameworks like jQuery and MooTools.

The creator and primary author of Six Revisions is Jacob Gube, a web developer and designer who works with PHP, .NET, Flash/ActionScript, XHTML, JavaScript/jQuery/MooTools, and MySQL. His work environment includes: Windows XP, Adobe Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, Notepad++, Firebug, Web Developer tool, and on occasion puTTY. His passion is anything involved in the creation of beautiful, standards-compliant, accessible websites and applications.

Fuel Your Creativity

Most people find that true creativity isn’t a constant presence in their lives, no matter how much you fool yourself into thinking that. We’d like to introduce you to Fuel Your Creativity. This gem is the place to turn to when you’re having one of your “I’m-going-to-implode-if-I-don’t-get-an-idea-soon” moments. Don’t lie. You know you have them.

Check us out when you need some inspiration. We have some pretty cool articles and even cooler links to various sites that will keep you informed on how other creatives like yourself get things done. There are even interviews with said creatives that give you a glimpse into their world. There are some cool worlds out there.

SpeckyBoy Design Mag

Speckyboy Design Magazine launched in October 2007, as my personal web design homepage. I was just taking (what felt like) a giant leap into freelance design and consultancy, and needed a home base for my potential clients to get in touch with me… Somewhere over the following months this site changed direction, when I realized I was getting more and more visitors.
It started with an article called Top 25 Free Icon Resources for Web Designers, and it did very well on delicious, and the visitors increased. By then I had caught the blogging bug.

From that initial article I have tried to cover every aspect of web design and development offering FREE and HIGH QUALITY RESOURCES as well as attempting to inspire through our showcases. I am not a graphic designer (I still use Adobe Fireworks), but do love it and certainly appreciate it, the same goes for typography and photography.

InDesign Magazine

InDesign Magazine is a bimonthly periodical devoted entirely to Adobe InDesign and to the thriving community of InDesign professionals. With editorial direction by page-layout guru and author David Blatner and CreativePro.com editor in chief Terri Stone, InDesign Magazine brings you the in-depth features, reviews, and tutorials you need to master Adobe InDesign.

InDesign Magazine is published in the PDF format only. You’ll love the electronic format–click on a URL and Acrobat opens the page in your Web browser. Cut and paste complex scripts. You can even watch movies in the PDF! You can also print out single pages or an entire issue if you prefer paper to monitor.

InDesign Magazine is an independent publication, not an Adobe product. InDesign is a registered trademark of Adobe Systems Incorporated.  The magazine features the hottest designers works.  One will get a peek at what designer’s are up to and what InDesign is capable of.

Web Designer Depot

Webdesigner Depot is an exciting new platform designed to explore different web and graphic design techniques, great examples and best practices.

We love design and are passionate about it in all its shapes and forms. Our vision is to make WDD a great showcase for this passion and feed a worldwide audience of savvy designers eager to learn more and share their knowledge with the design community.

The blog is a joint effort and collaboration between leading designers around the world which contribute a wealth of expertise on all fields of design, such as coding, typography, Photoshop tutorials and more.

If you’d like to become a contributor to this website by either writing a post or tutorial or by providing some freebies to our users, do not hesitate to email .

Noupe

NOUPE passionately delivers stylish and dynamic news for designers and web-developers on all subjects of design, ranging from; CSS, Ajax, Javascript, web design, graphics, typography, advertising & much more. Our goal is to help you communicate effectively on the web with an engaging website or functional interface.

Whether you have an interesting tutorial or example that you would like to share on Noupe or just found an interesting website design , this is the place to get the word out.

• All i ask is your subject should be Related to Web 2.o, WebDesign, Freelance, Ajax, Graphics or Blogging for it to be valid for submission
• If your submission is approved be sure that you will get the credit by posting either your site’s link and/or name with in the article.
• Well, that’s it, just fill out the form from their site and hit submit!

You can contact Noupe  via e-mail info[at]noupe[dot]com

Abduzeedo

This blog was created and developed by Fabio Sasso, a Brazilian designer living in Porto Alegre (south of Brazil).

My first contact with the Internet happened in 1995 and 1996 I started playing with it as a designer. I have a degree in graphic design and I’ve been working professionally since 1998, here in Brazil, at least in my town, I could say that it was the very beginning of the Internet.

The idea behind this blog is primarily to be a channel for me to write down some ideas, experiments, news, and a lot of thing that I see online and probably will forget in a couple of months. Basically it is an archive of my adventures online as a designer on the daily basis. Another thing that I want to do with this blog is to improve my English skills, as a Brazilian and non-native speaker of English, it’s a good way to practice it. By the way, you might find some English mistakes, maybe a lot sometimes, but I will try my best to make it as legible as possible.

“The blog’s name means abducted in Portuguese. I changed its spelling to add ZEE (my design company) instead of abduzido”

.Net Mag

.net is the world’s best-selling magazine for web designers and developers, featuring tutorials from leading agencies, interviews with the web’s biggest names, and agenda-setting features on the hottest issues affecting the Internet today. If you’re serious about web design, then .net is the magazine for you!

At Future, we base everything we do around clusters of like-minded individuals who are passionate about their interests. At this time of overwhelming choice, people want trusted editorial services more than ever before. And this is what Future does best. From computer games to films, from cycling to music-making, we provide magazines, websites and events that inform, entertain and unite these communities. We share the same passions as our consumers. These insights and our expertise are helping us to build and exploit our market-leading positions across different platforms in all of the core sectors in which we operate.

If want to learn how to create successful web designs then join 642-072 online web designing course and get expert 642-145 study guide and 642-971 design tutorials learn professional web design.

Color and size of type elements are much more prevalent than in text typography. Most display typography exploits type at larger sizes, where the details of letter design are magnified. Color is used for its emotional effect in conveying the tone and nature of subject matter.

We have put together a collection of various package design with typography as the main element for your inspiration. picture source

Brooklyn Fare’s Packaging

A colloquial brand calls for the creation of a personable typeface.  Because the brand is based on copy meant to engage the customer, the proprietary typeface we created, Fare Serif, needed to echo that same playful tone. It is friendly and accessible and meant to be used BIG. Was  applied it to everything, and we mean everything, in the store. The design team created a branding strategy that would give the store a unique voice, garnering attention and setting it apart from its competitors. The voice came through in a literal manner with text as the focus of the brand rather than imagery. We used our most excellent copy writing skills to achieve the right tone; one with the edgy humor that New Yorkers welcome.  An amazing array of package yet one look and it just mold the product line into one brand identity.

The Manual Company

Hand done typography give a lot of character to the package design for The Manual Co. a leather goods store.  The boxes you see above are designs by Peter Gregson studio, a creative design company from Novi Sad, Serbia. Here one can see the beauty of typography when used in package design.  Their work has won the studio many awards and earned them great respect in the industry.  Hand made fonts is one style that will never go out of style.  It truly brings out the personalized feel to the product.  The play of colors is also amazing with the black background as the canvass for each of the boxes and the words are truly emphasized.

Boxed Water is Better

Part sustainable water company, part art project, part philanthropic project, and completely curious.  Boxed Water is Better is a boxed water company.

Started with the simple idea of creating a new bottled water brand that is kinder to the environment and gives back a bit – we found that it shouldn’t be bottled at all, but instead, boxed. So we looked to the past for inspiration in the century old beverage container and decided to keep things simple, sustainable, and beautiful.  About 85% of the Boxed Water container is made from a renewable resource, trees, that when harvested in a responsible, managed, and ethical way serve as an amazing renewable resource that benefits the environment even as it’s renewed. We ship our boxes flat to our filler which is significantly more efficient compared to shipping empty plastic or glass bottles to be filled.

Superfused

The ability of designers to look at the world around them and decipher its meaning and relationship in order to communicate and narrate it is the essence of our practice.  Often the creative process is defined by challenges and limitations, and sometimes by observations and explorations. This self-initiated piece was created after experiencing a hard disk breakdown, where months of work were lost forever. Inspired by what was left, the tiny fuses on the circuit boards connected by fine electrical wiring, it worked as constructive healing and informed a positive outcome out of something that would otherwise have had a negative effect on the working morale.

This design project was a test of how to use even failure in your favour as a creative. Superfused became a symbol for the creative state of being pumped up with creative energy and not letting negative occurrences hold you back, something like a superpower for designers.

Milk

Packaging design by Alvaro Rubio.    “Bon vivant” means a person who enjoys the good things in life, especially good food and drink.

The design is very minimalistic and pure but also fun and frisky with the use of bold colors to highlight the product category.  Very challenging work for a designer, considering milk is pure and the design should then be able to embrace that essence.  The bottle used here is unique as well.  The over all look of a product must be considered in all cases of design and here the designer has managed to create an impact.

Milk Package

A selection of excellent packages to discover later on bottles of milk. Most are designed with cross-stitch, very creative in the studio Hattomonkey.

Hattomonkey is a Russian design studio. It was founded in 2008 in Novosibirsk. The specialization of Hattomonkey is graphic design. They create logos, corporate ID, brand ID, packages design. Their aim is to help companies and their goods to take customers attention. Their activity is based on researches and analysis. That is why they always create competitive designed products.  i feel that they have been successful with their aim with the products design.  They played on color as well as on the font.  Very creative and truly eye catching.

Compra en Positivo

This beautiful typographic inspired bottle was designed by Moruba. The bottles are for the institutional campaign to promote trade.  Their client Gobierno dela Rloeja.

Moruba is a creative studio that enjoys resolving graphic communications problems.  The designer’s task is straight forward communicate a campaign and execute to make sure that the target of the message easily captures the meaning.  Simplicity is marked here with such elegance.  An institutional campaign is a communication strategy that is commonly used to communicate an answer to an issue that the company is being viewed on. Or when a company in question shows goodwill for a cause that they strongly support.

Xococava

Xococava (pronounced shoco-cava), an extension of its big brother restaurant, Cava, is whimsical hybrid of a stand-up tapas bar crossed with an ice-cream parlour.

Inspired by Spanish and Mexican cultures of chocolate and Italy‘s love affair with geleto, Xococava features artisanal ice-cream and hand-made chocolate. With such unusual creations as prune/Pedro Ximenez sherry ice-cream and choriso, dark chocolate truffles, the store caters to Toronto’s burgeoning “foodie” culture.   Concrete created an identity program that utilizes strong typographic forms. This extend to the chocolate “periodic table” that uses two-letter combination to identify the different flavours of chocolate.

The Chocolat Factory

The chocolate factory package was designed by ruiz+company of Spain. Here’s a great example of a well designed graphic identity that is simple and clean.

Designed by Ruiz+Company for Spanish chocolate company Chocolat Factory, the identity features a clean sans-serif (which looks like DIN) and a wonderful color palette. The package design highlighted here are award winning designs. And you can see why.   “The fact that the company’s founding partners are, respectively, an architect and an interior decorator, has probably exercised a decisive influence in this sensitive approach to design. As Michel Laline himself explains: “When we first launched the company, we realised that no one had used design in the sector as yet, so that formed the base of the business: chocolate and design.” And according to Titus Ruiz: “The concept of the brand was very clear from the start: design with content.” – excerpt from Lovely Package

CD Cover

“Music shares many common ideas and themes with the visual arts. For example, repetition, rhythm, harmony, tone, shape, space, scale, line, texture and colour are terms common to both the musical and visual language”- Jacob Cass – How to create a CD cover

Here is a classic example of a very cool typographic inspired CD cover.  Designed by Sabri Akin.  Deep Purple - Child in Time ‘Cover Exercise’  If you do check out his work, he is akin to the typographic style.  Good use of white space.

It is truly rare to see product such as CD covers using typography as the main design, you would usually see pictures and images.  But here the songs for the album is given more emphasis.

Tison Incence

Here is a packaging design a fictitious incense company. designed by Louise Beaudoin.   The color palette is vibrant and the font used is very much appropriate.  Simple and clean.

A young passionate designer, Louis Beaudoin has been working in the Montreal design scene for more than 2 years. On top of a BACC in graphic design obtain at UQAM, he completed a DEC in industrial design at Cégep du Vieux Montréal. In the last few years, he has been working as a graphic designer for the publishing house Québec Amérique and more recently as a freelancer for design agencies such as Upperkut, Thomas design et communication and Chez Valois.

Warm and Cosy

Warm and cosy was designed by Transfer Studio.

At a time of great creative work, your brain, spirit and body need a break. Especially if you are in the middle of winter and the dark and cold is getting to you. Joined by friends and colleagues we embraced the Swedish tradition of feasting on homemade saffron buns washed down with tenderly prepared mulled wine.

Invites for the festivities where drawn by this need to rethink the everyday routine. By using a common object as the framework for storytelling (a simple paper cup holder) and screen printing the information on to it, they formed a tactile feature that made guests feel both exclusive and co-authors prior to attending the event, and instantly conveyed the message of what to expect – a warm and cosy break on a cold December day.

Happy Planet Shots

Tired of typical Energy shots that currently dominate the market with their toxic taste and less-than-credible-ingredients, Happy Planet has brought their reputation and knowledge of healthy natural beverages to the emerging shots category.

Happy Planet Shots are formulated to address four specific occasions: Energy+, Immunity, Detox and Glow. By infusing specially-selected herbal wonders from around the world with key vitamins and minerals, and with a premium fruit juice base, each shot provides a total net effect that both tastes good and that works. With no added sugar, no preservatives and no artificial ingredients, each 75 ml is a shot of pure concentrated goodness.

Subplot Design’s strategic role involved an extensive audit of the current shots and functional beverage category as well as liaising with Vancouver’s InQuest Consumer Insights & Planning, who conducted in-depth positioning consumer focus groups. Subplot then worked with Happy Planet to create a solid brand positioning strategy, followed by bottle and packaging design.

Learn how to create inspirational designs with 117-101 online training that also includes self paced 70-686 video tutorials and JN0-531 study guide.

Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator  are still the best softwares to use when it comes to image manipulation.  But for the budget conscious and those just trying it out for the first time or working on personal projects.  Some might even feel intimidated buying the premium soft wares so we have put together 12 alternative digital tools.  The aim here is to empower our readers to try out different tools and use which one they would feel they can be comfortable with.

The GIMP

The “GNU Image Manipulation Program” (originally the General Image Manipulation Program) sired by Spencer Kimball & Peter Mattis.   In their own words, “GIMP is our answer to the current lack of free (or at least reasonably priced) image manipulation software for GNU/Linux and UNIX in general.”

It is a raster editor, which means that it performs operations directly on the pixels that make up the image, and not a vector editor.  Users wanting to edit photographs will certainly want a raster editor like GIMP. Graphic designers and illustrators may prefer a vector editor depending on their tastes.

Inkscape

An Open Source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, CorelDraw, or Xara X, using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format.  Yes! While Inkscape does not have all the features of the leading vector editors, the latest versions provide for a large portion of basic vector graphics editing capabilities.  People report successfully using Inkscape in a lot of very different projects (web graphics, technical diagrams, icons, creative art, logos, maps). For example, thousands of images on Wikipedia are created with Inkscape, as is the majority of the content on openclipart; many examples of Inkscape art can be seen here and here. We try to always keep the codebase usable for real users, as we believe that a tight iteration cycle between users and developers will give best results. You can start using Inkscape alongside your other tools now!

Line Form

Lineform is the ideal Mac app for vector art, diagrams and illustrations. Useful features combined with a simple interface to create a wonderfully intuitive artistic process. Lineform has all of the most popular tools, including everything from freeform gradients to compositing effects, enabling you to create the designs you want without getting in your way with superfluous “features” you don’t need. Lineform is the clear modern Mac alternative to Illustrator, FreeHand, and other more costly or bloated vector drawing apps. Giving it a spin to try out its features and interface is sure to showcase its powers.

Blue Fish

Bluefish is a powerful editor targeted towards programmers and webdesigners, with many options to write websites, scripts and programming code. Bluefish supports many programming and markup languages, and it focuses on editing dynamic and interactive websites. See features for an extensive overview, take a look at the screenshots, or download it right away. Bluefish is an open source development project, released under the GNU GPL licence.  The latest stable version is Bluefish 1.0.7. This is the preferred version. It requires gtk version 2.0 or newer (gtk 2.4 or newer is recommended), libpcre 3.0 or higher and (optional) libaspell 0.50 or higher for spell checking and (also optional, but recommended) gnome-vfs for remote files. More information is available in our manual.

Creative Docs.NET

Creative Docs .NET is a vector-based graphic design tool with support for rich text, ideal to quickly write short documents, manuals, posters, illustrations, schemas, plans, flow charts, and much more.  The interface is tailored for high productivity: it does never get in your way. Creative Docs .NET tools are simple, yet powerful. All styles and attributes can be modified interactively with a minimum number of mouse clicks. A color gradient, for instance, can be modified directly by dragging its handles in the document window.

Note: This software is being actively developed.

Pixlr

While it’s not the most full-featured image editor you’ll ever use, Pixlr makes it fairly easy to do some sophisticated (and unsophisticated) things with images online. The Flash-based web app has an impressive set of tools, from a text engine that can use nearly any font available on your computer to layers and filters for masking and effects, respectively. Incredibly, there’s even a multilevel undo! You can import images from your machine or via URL, or paint something up yourself, and either way save it to your desktop. It’s fun to play around with, though quickly frustrating if you’re used to more powerful tools.

Sumo Paint 1.1

If you’re looking for an alternative to Photoshop or would just like to be able to create and edit images from any computer with a flash enabled browser, then Sumo Paint is your answer. While Sumo Paint May not be a Photoshop killer, it is a great alternative for those who either can’t or won’t pay the price for Adobe’s Photoshop.  Check out the video of Sumo Paint in action after the jump.

Sumo Paint is a free online image editor that operates within any flash enabled browser. Surprisingly fast loading and stable, Sumo Paint is packed with many great features and tools that will be very familiar to any Photoshop user. Some of these great features include: layers with blending modes and layer effects, filters, shape tool, brush tool, eraser tool, magic wand, clone stamp, blur tool and many more. There are also a few unique tools like the symmetry and curve tools. The user interface looks a lot like Photoshop and is very straight forward and clean.

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Artweaver

Artweaver is a Windows Freeware program to simulate natural brush tools. It is therefore suitable to leave your creativity free run. Artweaver offers you a clear program window, which can be used without training immediately.

Artweaver is available in English and German language. Through support for language files, the Artweaver program window can be translated easily into other languages.

Artweaver supports only 24-bit color depth. Other color depths (e.g. 256-colors) are automatically converted to 24-bit. I.e. pictures with another color depth than 24-bit are converted to 24-bit when opening/importing. For what can I use Artweaver? Artweaver is meant for users, who want to bring their creativity on digital paper. Artweaver can be used for different work, e.g.:

• Digital art, for creating realistic works.
• Photo improvements, for converting photos into realistic paintings and changing or improving parts of them.

Aviary

Aviary is a suite of free web-based multi-media applications currently in development from Worth1000, using the Adobe Flex platform. The individual tool names are bird-themed, hence the suite name. The scope of proposed tools has drawn comparisons to the Zoho Office Suite. Aviary exited their invitation-only beta in October, 2008 and announced subscription plans for private collaboration under their blue plan. They have 2 plans: a free plan and a Pro plan. Only Aviary Pro members can test current alpha releases ahead of time. Pro Members also have the ability to remove the Aviary Watermark, create groups, and view Premium Tutorials as well as unlimited storage. Aviary released Raven, their web-based vector editor on February 9, 2009.  ^(source)

Choco Flop

ChocoFlop is a graphics manipulation Mac-based solution.

ChocoFlop is based entirely on Core Image.

ChocoFlop allows you to edit your photos or design stuff using Apple’s CoreImage technology. It takes advantage of the power of your graphics card (GPU). Thanks to this it is able to show real-time previews of filters and keep modifications live for as long as you want.

This means that you can add for example a blur filter on your text and keep everything dynamic. You can change the strength of your blur filter at any time or edit your text, the blur will apply on the updated text. That’s called non-destructive image edition and it really saves you a lot of time.

Sk1

sK1 is an open source vector graphics editor similar to CorelDRAW, Adobe Illustrator, or Freehand. First of all sK1 is oriented for “prepress ready” PostScript & PDF output.

sK1 editor is a fork of Sketch 0.6.15. It was a result of day-by-day patching of Sketch in an attempt to migrate our printing firm to free software. Sketch development seemed to be stalled already, so when the Sketch/Skencil maintainers decided to switch to Gtk+ widgetset, we were forced to fork. We migrated to Ttk (former Tile widgetset), added CMYK support, color management, and Cairo-based engine.

The “sK1″ name derives from “Sketch/Skencil” and second large K character means that application layout is similar with KDE applications althouh sK1 has no dependencies on KDE libraries. Number 1 means our goal – stable application compartible with Corel Draw and Adobe Illustrator and useful for regular usage in prepress.

DrawIt

DrawIt is a vector editing application with support for bitmap-like image filters. Vector editing as well as the filters are completely non-destructive which means that a vector layer can still be edited even after a stack of filters has been applied.

Every vector, image, or text object is a layer. Layers can be grouped and because a group is also a layer, a group can in turn contain other groups. Groups can be resized and filters can be applied to its contents. This in turn creates a truly powerfull tool that can be applied and used into almost endless possibilities.

Subscribe for EX0-103 training to learn web designing basics. Download our PK0-003 design guides and 650-575 tutorials to get latest information on digital art and photo manipulation.

The technique here may also be called Anamorphosis.  Oblique anamorphosis is closely related to an artistic technique called trompe l’oeil (French for “deceiving the eye”, pronounced “tromp loy”). Both use perspective constructions to create a “trick” image, but the difference lies in the nature of the trick.

For an anamorphosis, the viewer is presented with something that does not make sense when viewed conventionally, and so he or she must seek out the unconventional viewpoint from which the trick is resolved. For trompe l’oeil, the viewer, standing in one particular (and usually conventional) place, is tricked into seeing an invented image as if it were reality.

We have hand picked some cool Street Chalk Art for your inspiration. (photo source)

Chalk Art by Kurt Wenner

The Muses was created by Kurt Wenner an international master artist who interpret  Renaissance Classicism with a thorough single voice.  His works transcends the typical canvass and frames.  He also creates architectural art and of course he is famous for his Street Chalk Art.

Chalk Art  – Julien Beever

Julian Beever is an English artist who’s famous for his art on the pavements of England, France, Germany, USA, Australia and Belgium. Beever gives to his drawing an anamorphous look. His images are drawn completely deformed which give a 3D image when viewed at the right angle. See for yourself it’s amazing!

Chalk It Up by Lee Jones

Since graduating in 1982, Lee Jones worked for several years as a free lance artist, production artist, and managed a printing company, before opening her own design studio, LJ Designs, in 1990.  Then in 1994 she was introduced to street painting and immediately fell in love with this centuries old art form. She has been street painting throughout Central Florida and in festivals all across the country ever since.

Ice Age – Edgar Müller

Edgar needed 5 days to compile this huge chalk drawing. With five of his assistants, he painted all day long from sunrise to sunset, which resulted with this incredibly realistic and 250 square meter painting. You can also check out his Lava Street Chalk art here.  Edgar is from Germany.

Ford – Manford Stader

He began his painting, pavement art during his art studies at the famous Städel Artschool in Frankfurt, at the beginning of the 1980s and in 1985 he already became one of the few master street painters. Master Madonnaro.. a title which is awarded by the largest international street painting competition in Grazie di Curtatone in Italy. Pavement Painting Contest. Pavement drawings, sidewalk chalk art, done by artists coming from all over the world.

Joe Hill / Max Lowry

What is the most difficult aspect of street painting?

J: Getting intense tone on location. Chalk can look really washed out. If you ever see pavement art in real life it’s usually very pastel. Most 3D artists ramp up the contrast and colour on their photos if they use chalk: you can usually tell from the tone of people in the background of the pictures – they are normally really dark. It’s also why some 3D artists insist on people only using the photo they take for publicity etc… Although it’s sometimes not possible, I really like trying to achieve intense tone, so that passersby can enjoy the spectacle. Also, it doesn’t feel like you’re cheating!

M: Trying to get Joe to smile.

Ulla Taylor

Ulla Taylor has performed at festivals and events as a pavement artist since 1987, and tours festivals extensively as a solo artist.    Her work ranges from community art at festivals creating original images of celebration… to fine handcrafted promotions and enhancements for government departments, businesses and corporations.

Tracy Lee Stum

Tracy Lee Stum is a fine artist committed to creating spectacular modern masterpieces that transform, captivate and inspire. Best known for her 3D street paintings, also called anamorphic or pavement chalk art, she specializes in extraordinary visual solutions for applications in communications media, identity branding, product design and performance art based projects worldwide; her signature style defines work which adds unparalleled beauty, originality and imaginative design to any project or event.