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The Client:

IT-IS International are a small research and development company working in the life science industry, they develop software and instrumentation for the analysis of DNA (PCR- Polymerase Chain Reaction). Sounds complicated, right?!

Andy was a fantastic example of an awesome client, giving complete creative freedom and providing excellent feedback throughout the project. It’s lines like this in an email every designer dreams of –

I hope that this project might be something you could really get your teeth into (free reign on the design).

The key requirements for the site were to showcase the company with creativity and innovation while being updateable by the team. The structure was pretty simple with a collection of static pages, a news archive and a client only area.

The Solution:

I’m a big fan of the Wordpress application, and use it for pretty much every website I take on, whether it’s a blog or not. Wordpress has some amazing versatility, and can easily take on the role of CMS, eCommerce and more!

The IT-IS International site could easily be ported into Wordpress. The static pages could be listed as Wordpress pages, the News section could make use of Wordpress’ blogging functionality, and the Client Area could be tackled with a mix of the default Wordpress user hierarchy and a handy plugin or two.

The Design:

The design was put together using the IT-IS International Ltd corporate colour scheme of blue, grey and white. I took inspiration from the typical website design styles of web apps that use subtle details, and white space to create a fresh concept.

Being a topic focusing more on the Wordpress section of the project, I’ll not go into too much detail on the design and coding stages, but here’s a screencast I recorded of the process of cutting and coding up the concept into a working XHTML/CSS page.

Building the Wordpress Theme:

Once my coded concepts are complete, I’ll then move onto the Wordpress theme creation. I have a handy template saved on my machine that’s based on the Default theme, but with the majority of the HTML removed, leaving the collection of PHP snippets ready for insertion in the relevant areas of the theme.

Active Navigation States

A little customisation was required in the navigation bar to allow the active link state to show on each item. The home link was inserted manually, followed by Wordpress’ default list_pages tag. The News area needed to be active whenever the user was viewing a category, an archive or a single post so conditional tags were used to tailor the appearance of the active link class. A similar tweak was also needed for the Client Area section; This area uses sub pages, so the menu also needed to be active when a child of page ID 12 was active.

Date Stamps

The little blue date stamps were easily built using a mix of CSS and the_time PHP tag. The whole date is contained within the paragraph tag with a class of date; within this is a span that contains the month of each post. There’s an extensive range of options available for the PHP date function, so it was a case of simply choosing which letter represented the type of date I required. I needed a good old number (d), followed by the shortened display of the month (M).

Custom Pages

To apply custom styling to individual page, I used custom page templates to specify a unique title graphic, and to determine whether the page had one or two columns. Custom page templates also came in handy for inserting the map on the contact page, allowing the embed code to be slotted straight into the code, safely keeping it away from the Wordpress editor.

This page template could then be attached to the specific page in the Wordpress admin area.

Client Area

To create a hidden client only area on the site I employed a mix of plugins to work alongside the default Wordpress user system. The relevant pages were created, then a handy plugin called Member Access allowed permissions to be set on a per-page basis. This covered the main chunk of functionality that was required, but the user still needed to be able to login…

This is where the second plugin comes in. Sidebar Login creates a username/password login form that can be placed anywhere in the template with a little template tag. Once the user logs in, a collection of links are displayed in place of the login form, allowing the user to access their profile in the Wordpress dashboard, or to log back out.

A mix of new CSS styling and some tweaks to the HTML in the plugin file soon tailored the appearance of the form to match the rest of the site.
To completely finish off the login screen for both front end users and the IT-IS admin, the awesome BM Custom Login allows super easy customisation of the default Wordpress login screen, giving a branded appearance that ties in with the rest of the site.

Overall, it was a pleasure working with Andy and the IT-IS International team. I hope this little insight into the customised areas of the Wordpress site provides a couple of handy tips to anyone taking on a Wordpress based project of their own!

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Hold Spacebar to move a selection

Drag a selection with the Marquee tool, but before releasing the mouse button, press and hold the Spacebar to relocate the selection.

Display larger font previews

Go to Photoshop’s preferences and head down to the Type section. Change the Font Preview Size option to Extra Large to display legible preview on the font drop down menu.

Change values with the cursor keys

Rather than typing in an exact figure, simply nudge the numeric value up and down sequentially with the cursor keys.

Quickly zoom back to 100%

Double click the Zoom icon’s magnifying glass to jump back to 100%.

Toggle visibility of multiply layers

Click the ‘eye’ icon next to a layer to toggle the visibility on or off, then drag the selection down the palette to repeat the command on multiple layers.

Hide or show all other layers

Press the ALT key while clicking the ‘eye’ icon next to a layer to toggle the visibility of all other layers.

Load the selection of a layer

Press CMD while clicking the layer thumbnail to load a selection of the layer contents.

Quickly toggle between blending modes

Windows users can simply toggle using the cursor keys, Mac users however can use the Shift key along with the plus and minus keys while the direct selection tool is active. Using this command while another tool is selected will change the blending mode option for that specific tool.

Toggle palette visibility

Increase the size of your work area by toggling off the palettes using the Tab key. Hover over the edges of the screen to bring back palettes, which will then disappear again when the mouse is moved away.

Fit to full screen

Another handy tip for Mac users. Cycle through various full screen modes by pressing the F key.

Switch to precision cursor mode

Press Caps Lock to turn on the precision cursor, useful for creating accurate selections. This also toggles off the brush outline, which can be handy for some occasions.

Increase and decrease brush size

With the Brush tool selected, press the [ and ] keys to increase or decrease the brush size.

Rotate a Photoshop brush

Head into the Brush setting, under Brush Tip Shape adjust the circular icon to rotate the angle of the brush.

Quickly adjust layer opacity

Select a preset opacity value by pressing the numeric keys from 1-10. Number one equals 10%, five equals 50% and so on.

Auto select layers or groups

Select and adjust the selection settings to automatically select a layer, or a group. Or turn the option off to avoid accidental layer selection.

Automatically load files into layers

Go to File > Scripts > Load files into stack to open up a bunch of images and automatically place them onto individual layers.

Easily create new guides

Click and drag a guide from the document rulers, or go to View > New Guide to drop a guide at a specific placement.

Change layer palette thumbnail sizes

Click the small options arrow in the corner of the Layers Palette, then change the Layers Panel Options to alter the thumbnail size.

Copy multiple layers

Draw a selection, then use the shortcut Shift+CMD+C to Copy Merged. This takes every layer into the clipping, rather than just the current layer selection.

Move items with super nudge

The cursor keys will nudge an object by 1px by default. Hold Shift while nudging to increase this to 10px. Especially handy when designing web layouts for consistent spacing.

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I was recently out at the clothes store and came across a cool t-shirt by Diesel. The design featured some nice typography that had been treated to some image manipulation to give an awesome effect of wet ink, as if the design has come into contact with drops of water that distorted the print.

I remember originally seeing a similar design by Craig Ward, with his amazing ‘Ink and water don’t mix’ design. I’m not sure whether Craig was also behind the t-shirt art, but I fancied giving the effect a go myself, so I booted up Photoshop and started experimenting. Follow this walkthrough to see the simple steps of creating a similar design, using ready-made brushes to distort some typography of our own.

Start work in Photoshop by creating a new canvas. I’ve chosen to create a landscape poster. Set out a phrase using a classy and sophisticated font, such as Bodoni.

Split the words into their own layers and move them into position to form a balanced layout, align elements of the words with the letters above and below to give structure.

We could get our hands dirty and splash some ink onto some paper and scan in the results, but instead we can take the easy route and use ready-made resources from generous designers and artists. Scour the web for collections of ink splatter brushes for Photoshop. Here’s the selection I personally picked out:

• Gradient Splats
• Coffee Stains (1)
• Coffee Stains (2)
• Coffee Stains (3)
• Sumi Ink Brushes

Download and arrange the ABR files into a file. In Photoshop click the tiny arrow in the Brushes palette and select Preset Manager then load all the ink brushes.

Pick out interesting ink shapes from the various brushes and paint odd splats and runs over the type on a new layer. Adjust the size of the brush by using the square bracket keys.

Tailor the shape of the ink splatter towards a similar area of a letter, so for instance if it’s a long ink mark, paint this over a suitably long, straight letter.

Give some letters some major distortion by adding plenty of ink marks, but keep the words legible when viewed at 100%.

Some brushes in the set are created with paint brushes. Since this design is meant to look like it’s naturally distorted by water drops, just pick out the drops, splats and subtle drips.

You can reuse brushes while avoiding any repeating shapes by rotating the brush in the brushes palette. Grab the circular crosshair to adjust the angle.

When the design is nearing completion, download some spraypaint brushes to make use of tiny drips to add some little touches to the design.

Download a grungy paper texture to add some visual interest to the background. Desaturate the image and drop the opacity right down to 15% to leave subtle background tones.

Take a look over the design at 100% and make any final tweaks. Adjust the opacity of any layers that are taking too much prominence, and use a small soft round brush to blend in specific areas of ink and text.

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To start, we’ll create the type by hand using Illustrator. Create a new document, then turn on the Grid, and adjust the snap settings to snap to the grid.

Draw a square onto the artboard. Notice how the points will automatically snap to each grid intersection. This will come in handy when creating our abstract geometric type style.

For this tutorial, we’ll base the design around the word ‘Create’, so manipulate this first shape into a letter C by chopping out a section using the Pathfinder tool. Use a temporary shape to overlap the appropriate area, then select both shapes and click the Subtract from Shape Area icon.

Continue onto the next letter, in this case an R. Use the Pen tool to create triangular shapes to sculpt the box into a vague R shape.

Once all the letters have been created, space them equally alongside each other. Basing each letter on the same rectangle gives a boxy, geometric and generally cool style.

Head over to SXC and download a background texture. This particular one is a paper texture from IB6364. Paste the texture into Photoshop.

Copy and paste the wording from Illustrator into Photoshop. Fill the letters with a colour sample of a nice grey-blue.

Duplicate the text layer, then press CMD+T to Transform. Hold Shift and Alt to scale down the letters proportionally. Dropping the opacity on the top layer can help visualise the transformation.

Fill the smaller text with a darker shade. This is the base of the three dimensional effect.

Zoom right in and use the Polygonal Lasso tool to connect the corners of each letter. Fill the selection to give the appearance of perspective.

Once all the connections have been made between the two text layers, the illusion of a third dimension is created.

Add a Drop Shadow to the top text layer. Use a large value for the size and keep the opacity fairly high.

Source a collection of spray paint Photoshop brushes, such as these, or these. On a new layer dab a few spots of black over the text, paying attention to the fine splatters overlapping each letter.

CMD-Click the first text layer, then CMD+Shift-Click the second text layer to load the outline as a selection. Then, add a Layer Mask to the splatters layer to hide any excess spray paint. Change the Blending Mode to Vivid Light at 50%.

Press CMD+A to select all, then CMD+Shift+C to copy all layers. Paste the selection on a new layer then add a 3.6px Gaussian Blur.

Add a layer mask to the layer and fill with black, then dab large spots of white with a soft round brush to bring back subtle touches of the blurred effect in select places. This little touch adds a cool lens blur kind of effect.

Create a new layer below the text layers, then use the spray paint brushes to draw in various splattered elements. Change this layer to Vivid Light.

Draw in more splatters on a new layer, but this time change the blending mode to Color Dodge and adjust the opacity to 55%.

Add a new layer to the top of the layers stack. Use a large soft brush to dab a bright purple and blue spots onto the design. Change the blending mode to Color Burn at 25% to add a subtle cast of colour and contrast to the design.

There we have the finished design, complete with 3D type, grungy splatters and detailed textures. The subtle colour casts and lens blurs really help add an extra finishing touch.

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