My Favorite Sites for Web Design Tutorials
May 29, 2008 – 4:31 am
For those of us who are interested in always learning new tricks and improve our design skills, we’re fortunate to have a number of very valuable websites and blogs that regularly publish high quality, informative tutorials. In this post I’d like to take a look at some of my favorite places for tutorials, and I encourage you to share your favorites in the comments.
PSDTUTS
While there are plenty of blogs and websites for Photoshop tutorials, PSDTUTS is the king. In recent months their team of writers have been publishing a new tutorial almost every day. You’ll find very high quality work here in a variety of different areas. I frequently work through their tutorials and always learn a lot from the process.
From the Archives: Create a Dark Themed Web Design from Scratch, Creating a Stunning Digital Smoke Effect.
Veerle’s Blog
Veerle Pieters is one of the best graphic designers you’ll find anywhere, and she posts some outstanding tutorials for Photoshop and Illustrator.
From the Archives: Creating Geometric Patterns in Illustrator, Creating a Coat of Arms in Illustrator.
CSS Tricks
Chris Coyier’s blog CSS Tricks is one of my favorites for CSS-related tutorials. In addition to publishing the typical blog post tutorial, Chris regularly publishes screencasts that will give you a nice change of pace.
From the Archives: Using Weather Data to Change Your Website’s Appearance through PHP and CSS, “Checkmark” Your Visited Links with Pure CSS.
CSS Globe
CSS Globe is a leading community site for web designers that publishes links to relevant posts from other blogs (submitted by users), but Alen also posts his own original tutorials on CSS Globe. Alen’s tutorials are always insightful and well-explained.
From the Archives: Creating and Styling Resizable Buttons, Create Resizing Thumbnails Using Overflow Property.
Web Designer Wall
Nick La of N. Design Studio and Best Web Gallery also runs the very popular blog Web Designer Wall where he publishes some very helpful tutorials and a variety of aspects of web and graphic design. Web Designer Wall is not updated as frequently as most of the others on this list, but it has a large following because of the quality of Nick’s work.
From the Archives: How to Design Mini Icons, Chroma Wallpapers.
NETTUTS
The new sister site to PSDTUTS is well on its way to being a leader in design/development tutorials. NETTUTS already has some great content on the site, and if it’s anything like PSDTUTS, Collis and his writers will continue to ramp things up over the next few months.
From the Archives: Building a Sleek Portfolio Site from Scratch, Creating a PayPal Payment Form.
Vectips
Vectips specializes in providing Illustrator tutorials. While there are plenty of sites that focus on Photoshop, there are fewer that target Illustrator users. If you’re looking to learn more about Illustrator, Vectips is a great choice.
From the Archives: Create a Wood Grain Texture, Creating Halftone Effects.
David Airey
While graphic designer David Airey’s blog is not the typical tutorial blog, he frequently publishes his entire process of designing a logo for a client. In these posts David reveals all the steps that he goes through during the process of creating a logo, and he explains his thought process for each step. These posts really serve as tutorials for anyone looking to learn more about logo design.
From the Archives: Logo Design and Card for Jigsaw Internet, Logo Design for Tudor Bourn.
Tutorial Blog
With over 8,000 subscribers, Tutorial Blog is one of the most widely-read blogs on this list. They provide frequently posted tutorials on just about all aspects of design, from CSS and HTML, to graphics, to JavaScript, to Flash, and then some.
From the Archives: How to Make a Unique Website for Your Twitter Updates, Make Repeating Seamless Tile Backgrounds with Photoshop.
Abduzeedo
Abduzeedo is the home of Fabio Sasso, one of the writers of PSDTUTS. Abduzeedo publishes more than just Photoshop tutorials, but this is a must-read for those looking to learn more about Photoshop and graphic design in general.
From the Archives: Sparkling Hot Girl in Photoshop, Amazing Photoshop Light Effect in 10 Steps.
Just Creative Design
Jacob Cass is a graphic design student, and his blog Just Creative Design is growing very quickly. The tutorials that Jacob writes are not quite the same as the tutorials from many of the other sites. He frequently publishes a step-by-step process that he has worked through as part of his education. Personally, I enjoy seeing the projects, it’s almost like going to graphic design school for free.
From the Archives: How to Design a Logo, How I Designed 3 CD Jackets Just by Listening to Music.
WebsiteTips
WebsiteTips.com is one that I have just recently come across, and they have a good amount of helpful tutorials in their archives. Some cover graphic design and Photoshop, and others cover aspects of coding.
From the Archives: Creating Pixel-Sharp Diagonal 45-Degree Scanline Patterns with Photoshop, Selecting with Photoshop Channels.
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