Sunny Circles | Weebly Contest Theme Design

Realized deadline for contest submissions is not until 11:59 tonight, instead of last night. So I cramked out a few more themes in between apointments today. I really like this one. Makes me hungry. Colors good for a restaurant. I was thinking about the Natural Hair Salon. Used my custom brushes I made in Inkscape. Thinking about my nicknames "Peaches" & "Palemino"

pastel perfect squares | Weebly Contest Template

Last minute entry. Literally, designed in an hour and submitted 4 minutes before midnight deadline. Used a 70% opacity custom square brush for background. Scattered brush with various hues for final accent. Looks good with various pastel color overlays, but I only enter lilac. Something feminine and whimsical.

Clearly Green | Weebly Contest Template

Inkscape design reproduced in Photoshop

Inkscape Version

Reproduced in Photoshop with same layers used in Inkscape. Had to redo leaf decoration on a transparent background. Open it in PS and copy it to its layer in the PS design. Before I changed the gradient stops, they were identical.

Weebly design contest with $13,000 in prizes!

Decided to go for the Weebly design contest with $13,000 in prizes! It will give me something to focus on as I test out Photoshop. I haven't touched Photoshop in forever, so although its crammed woth state of the art features its way complicated for this newb. I have this template idea I designed in Inkscape (vector) that I will reproduce in Photoshop.

designables simple one page site design

 

I chose a simple one page layout for my initial website. I duplicate the gradient border used on the logo foe containers to feature content. I wanted a simple design that won't clash with the projects displayed in the "featured" box. I haven't much content to spread over a few pages. Until I build up a portfolio I will simply feature some projects on the page and provide a space for contact with a simple form at the bottom instead of a separate page. Later I can add navigation bar and pages for portfolio, services, etc.

cut-out & shadow for stencil text effect

I  was very pleased with the prism effect on the circular geometric Digitica font. It is reminiscent of my SHAPE concept. It suggests a grid and a color wheel the basic tools for designer. Digitica even sounds like digidesign one the unavailable domain names I thought of. Now I needed to give the 2 dimensional prototype some dimension. In keeping with the tools of creativity, I thought I use a cut-out technique I'd seen on screencasters.heathenx.org to create look of a stencil. I followed the same steps pretty much except my black cutout gives the look of a prism light casting a shadow behind a grid.

Now the simplicity of the san serif 'Raleway' font looks quite appropriate to addition for the slogan that wont compete or conflict with the dominant Digitica text. So far so good.

designables logo inspired by Digitica font and color wheel

As much as I am attracted to the thin san serif "Raleway" font I just found at The League of Moveable Type its just to light for an eye catching logo. I have to realize although I am empressed by its sophiticated svelte prportions and cool 'w' my potential customers won't be impressed. They will see plain. So I decided to do a search for free fat san serif fonts. Joila! I find Digitica! Perfect for a geometric theme. I was thinking using graph motif as part of a geometrical theme that suggest designing. This font suggest both gragh as well as geometrical shapes. Its also way fat enough to xall kinds of text effects. Actualy th entymolgy of this made up word the fonts more like workiking with shapes -- reminecent  the business graphics of geometric shapes for my old busines SHAPE. In fact, I was inspired to use primary colors again on either a white or black background.  I got some criticism for I kept the "design" distingueshed, but my argued that the eintire word is unrecognizeable and too lng without the "design" being highlighted. In addition, using the entire word designables in Digitica font is too hard to read and too long. My first thought was to make each letter a different primary color. But as I looked at the color wheel of the Inscape I thought about creating a prism effect with the gradient tool. This is what I came up with. It could easily be swithed to white background with "ables" in black. Okay, I am really satisfied so far.