Max Stanworth, Author at Design Shard

Design blogs with Flickr Groups everyone come share your work

I have just started my own flickr group here on design shard to showcase work and peoples inspirations.

Join Design Shards Flickr group: Join Here

The 9 most recent flickr entries will be shown in the footer of this blog and from time to time there shall be showcases of excellent work from the group as i know a few other design blogs also do this including My Ink Blog and Fuel Your Creativity.

I also just want to highlight a few of the design blogs in the community that have a flickr group that you may want to join, if ive missed some please let me know and i will add them to the list.

Design Shard | Go To Flickr Group

About: This group is to showcase any images that you have created or found around the web, the 9 most recent submissions will be shown on Design Shard Design Blog in the footer area of the site ( Yes thats me ).

Arbenting | Go To Flickr Group

About: A place for the readers at Arbenting to showcase their creations. I’d love to see anything you’ve done with the Arbenting Freebies but feel free to submit anything.

High Resolution Textures | Go To Flickr Group

About: This group is about sharing high resolution textures of any kind. Wood, metal, rust, plants, fabric or anything else that can be considered a texture. Feel free to post your pictures and let the group discuss them.

Colorburned | Go To Flickr Group

About: This is the Colorburned Flickr Community. Feel free to add the designs that you created using Colorburned textures, vector resources and tutorials.

Fudgegraphics | Go To Flickr Group

About: This group is meant for all the designs created with fudgegraphics freebies such as photoshop brushes, textures or vectors. Feel free to post other designs as well. It’s always nice to have see creative artworks in one single group.

My Ink Blog | Go To Flickr Group

About: This group was created for the readers of My Ink Blog. So they can show off their work, or the results of stepping through one of the tutorials.

Fuel Your Creativity | Go To Flickr Group

About: What fuel’s your creativity? Design, Photography, Art…post what inspires you to create your next masterpiece. Anything is welcome, just keep it clean. Your work or the work that inspires you may be featured on my blog from time to time. Cheers!

Online-Photoshop Tutorials | Go To Flickr Group

About: An archive of pictures for the website www.online-photoshoptutorials.com including uploads from it’s users.

Loon Design | Go To Flickr Group

About: “It is all about design”

Gomedia | Go To Flickr Group

About: Post your art or designs created using stuff from Go Media’s Arsenal. Periodically, designs we like will be highlighted on our blog at www.gomediazine.com – so make sure it’s something you are proud of!

Inspiredology | Go To Flickr Group

About: Inspiredology is about the blog inspiredology.com. The blog showcases inspirational designs in different fields of inspiration. This group is created to have a compilation of images that might not be listed on inspiredology.

Bittbox | Go To Flickr Group

About: Anyone and everyone who would like to share their designs and what they have learned or used from BittBox Freebies/Tutorials. Heck, just show us what you got, doesn’t matter where you got it!

Booooooom | Go To Flickr Group

About: All you loyal readers of Booooooom.com out there can now upload your own photos here and they will be displayed on the site

Outlaw | Go To Flickr Group

About: A place for freelance designers, photographers, graphic artists, web designers, illustrators, and any other creative freelancer can share thier work.

Vector Tuts | Go To Flickr Group

About: Like vector graphics? Join the Vectortuts Community! Vectortuts is a vector Tutorial site with thousands of daily readers and a really cool group of active community members.

PSD Tuts | Go To Flickr Group

About: Like Photoshop? Join the PSDTUTS Community! PSDTUTS is a Photoshop Tutorial site with thousands of daily readers and a really cool group of active community members.

Abduzeedo | Go To Flickr Group

35 Free Hi-Res Fire, Flame and Firework Textures

Free Hi-Res fire and flame texture pack (1600 x 1064), i took the opportunity to take these on bonfire night ( Guy Fawkes Night ) when there are plenty of open flames, the pack contains 35 Textures in total

10 Random textures included in the pack

( See all 35 textures here )

Rapidshare Download (11.4mb Zip File)

http://rapidshare.com/files/162518776/Design_Shard_-_Fire_Texture_Pack.zip

Mediafire Download

http://www.mediafire.com/?9btjg1xzmwd

Additional info:

Camera: Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ 18
DPI: 72
Resolution: 1600 x 1064
Original Resolution: 3264 x 2448
Contains: Flames, Fire, Motion Streaks, Fireworks

Usage Terms

( There are None )

Please do not host these textures on you own servers for download, please link to this page or files if you want others to know about them.
You are free to use these textures for what ever purpose you intend, commercial and personal, show me the work if you want id be interested to see what you make.

Some look pretty cool, use them for desktop wallpapers, use parts of them, use them as overlay textures use them for whatever your brain can muster.

Where people have used them

Used them in your work ? leave a comment with the link to it ill add it to the post

By Sprite – Transporter 3 DVD cover

By Denzoo- Burn Baby Burn Poster

Highlight WordPress Category when on a Single Post: Tutorial

While making the redesign for this blog I wanted to highlight the category in the navigation when browsing the specified category as well as keeping it highlighted when on the a single post added to that category ( you’ll notice that the navigation is highlighted if your on this page ).

I searched high and low and eventually found a simple plug-in, by adding a small piece of code to the plug-in I could achieve this, follow the steps below and you should beable to get your categories highlighted too when on a single post.

What we want to Achieve:

Add a Home page link to the navigation and highlight current page.

Highlight the current category

Highlight the current category even when on single post

Step 1: Download The Plug-in

Download the plug-in: Here (zip) From: Screenshine

Step 2: Uploading and Editing the Plug-in

1. Upload the plug-in to your WordPress plug-ins folder.

2. Go to your WordPress admin panel “Plugins” and “Activate” the plug-in

3. Look at your “Currently Active plugins” and click “Edit” for the “Show Active Category plugin”

4. Scroll down past the copyright information until you find this line of code

[php]
if( is_single()) {
[/php]

change that line of code to look like this

[php]
if( is_single() || is_category() ) {
[/php]

Click “Update file” to save the changes

Step 3: CSS for Highlighting Current Category

Go to your theme CSS file normally called “style.css” and add this line of code below.

[css]
.active_category{background-color:#66FF00;}
[/css]

NOTE: you can style this how you want it will style the current category and the category when on a single post using the plug-in.

Step 4: CSS for Highlighting Current Page

To highlight your “pages” all you have to do is add this line of code to your CSS file, This css class is actually built in to WordPress

[css]
.current_page_item{background-color:#66FF00;}
[/css]

NOTE: you can style this how you want it will style the current page

Step 5: Add a Home Page Link

You can have a home page link in your navigation take a look at what i have, This hard codes a “Home” link in to your navigation and adds the class “current_page_item” when on your index page, this is styled with css as in Step 4

[php]
<div id="nav">
<ul>
<li <?php if (is_home()){echo ‘class="current_page_item"’;}?>><a href="<?php bloginfo(‘url’); ?>/">Home</a></li>
</ul>
</div>
[/php]

All Code For The Navigation

So this is a summary of what we’ve done, if you’ve uploaded the plug-in, activated it and edited the code, you can test the code below, copy and paste

Put this in your style.css

[css]
.active_category{background-color:#66FF00;}
.current_page_item{background-color:#66FF00;}
[/css]

Put this in your header.php

[php]
<div id="nav">
<ul>
<li <?php if (is_home()){echo ‘class="current_page_item"’;}?>><a href="<?php bloginfo(‘url’); ?>/">Home</a></li>
<p><?php wp_list_pages(‘title_li=’); ?><?php wp_list_cats(‘sort_column=name’); ?>
</ul>
</div>
[/php]

All this code adds the home page link, all your pages and then all your categories to your navigation, if you’ve added the CSS styles to you Style sheet these things should be highlighted when on the current page, category and single category post.

Questions

So hopefully you’ll find this useful, let me know if you get it working or get stuck in the comments below ill try my best to help you but obviously i cant help you with the plug-in as I did not make it.

Design Shards October 2008 Calendar On Smashing Magazine

While making my re-design for my site I was also working on an entry for smashing magazines October calendars, luckily it made the cut and was featured on the list this month.

October Can Be Beautiful Too

If you want a specific resolution feel free to leave a comment stating what you want and id be glad to upload it for you, or you could resize the bigger resolution.

Bigger Preview
with calendar: 1280×960, 1600×1200, 1680×1050, 1920×1200
without calendar: 1280×960, 1600×1200, 1680×1050, 1920×1200

I have a big interest in illustration so i picked up my £35 graphics tablet and got to work on creating a face, I am very pleased with how it turned out and could stare at her eyes all day.

The wooden background is a texture that i included in my texture pack that I released a few months ago, also I added extra overlays to the illustration with other textures that I included in the pack to make it more rustic and give it a feel of nature and autumn.

I created the calendar from a piece of cardboard and downloaded a leaf stock image pack from deviant art, added it all together and that was the result feel free to download the calendar, if you have no use for it maybe you could get some inspiration from it, either way hope you like it.

You’ll notice the wide open space on the left of the calendar, I realise some people don’t have Icons on there desktop but I do so I am sorry if this annoys you or if your using vista that the calendar gets covered up by your widget.

Media Slap Free Photoshop Brushes Download

Media Slap sent me an email to giveaway some of there finest brushes, I ve compiled some pictures of the brushes that are included in the download. Don’t know if they’re exclusive to us, but feel free to download them.

Download The Brushes

Free From Media Slap: Download (12mb)
Visit Media Slap : Media Slap

About The Brushes

The first is 19 brushes from 18 sets on media slap and the 2nd is 20 border brushes from the entire ‘Bangin Borders’ set.

The pictures don’t do these brushes justice as they are at HI-RES 2500px / 2500px this means you can use them, for bigger projects that you have or scale them down to fit better.

I personally like the grungy style border brushes that are included in this pack.

Samples of the brushes

These Brushes are infact HI-RES 2500px / 2500px

About Media Slap

Departika is pleased to announce the launch of Mediaslap, a new online resource that sells Photoshop brushes created by the Mediaslap team and hand-selected artists from around the world. The new website provides Photoshop brushes of the highest standard to designers, scrap bookers, photographers, design agencies, and do-it-yourselfers.

The initial version of the site includes a limited selection of products and a variety of licensing options available for download. Mediaslap is accepting product submissions from artists and is providing accepted contributors a 60% share in the revenue.

Based on user and contributor feedback, Mediaslap will expand quickly in the coming months to include additional products and tools that provide added value for the contributing artists and designers. Mediaslap aims to become the best resource possible for selling, finding, and licensing Photoshop brushes. For more information on partnerships and artist opportunities with Mediaslap, visit Media Slap