Thoughts about branding, design, and marketing by a guy who's lucky enough to get paid to think about these things.
Web, Print, Trade Show and Identity
Create a Unified Brand Presence Across All Your Marketing Materials
Creating Custom Brushes in Illustrator The Fast and Easy Way
In this tutorial, I’ll take you from a hill of coffee beans to a pile of bloody eyeballs using custom brushes. Download the Companion Custom Eyeball Brush in Illustrator Editable PDF Format Need to make a lot of similar things quickly? Custom brushes are your solution. I’ll show you how to make your own custom […]
How to Draw Hot Rod Flames in Adobe Illustrator
Learn the Fast and Easy Way to Draw Classic Hot Rod Flames in Adobe Illustrator with this Ultimate Digital Hot Rod Flame Tutorial. Over the years I’ve needed hot rod style flames for various projects and every time I came to the same conclusion – I will never find the perfect stock clip art of […]
Easy and Awesome Text and Bevel Effects Tutorial for Illustrator CS6 and CS5
Simple Tips and Techniques to Make Cool Looking, Sexy, Professional Text Effects and Bevels in Adobe Illustrator CS6 that Pop and Wow. Learn why illustrator is better than Photoshop for text layout for packaging, posters, banners, and brochures and indispensable for logo design. It’s time to beat your addiction to Photoshop and make the switch […]
Food Photography Tutorial – Food Styling for Product Packaging
Over the years I’ve dabbled in professional photography. And by dabbled I mean that I never really made it a personal to goal to become a professional photographer but that didn’t stop me from actively working on improving my photography from a very young age. So since I wasn’t looking to do it professionally, most […]
Package Design Checklist – 15 Things You Should Put on a Food Package
Every product is different but this checklist covers most. Why a checklist? Because if your client is new to the game they will most likely forget or even be unaware of a few of these. But if you’re aware, you will save you both a lot of time from reworking a perfect design because you […]
How Much Does a Package Design Cost? – Why Your Package Design Should Cost a Heck of a Lot More Than $80
I didn’t make up that number. It was given to me after a potential client sought out my services. He had a line of cosmetics and was looking for some great packaging. After a quick fifteen minute discovery phone call where I got a handle on his brand, his market, his product, his differentiators and […]
Label Design Tutorial – How To Design a Product Package Label
A Behind The Scenes Look at a Typical Product Label Design Project Most of the time you only see the end result of a package design project. This is fine, but it would be really great to see the process from start to finish as this is where the magic really happens. The design is […]
Create a Dieline From a Flattened Box Scan – How To Save a Bad Dieline
How I Saved My Client From A Bad Box Dieline and Why I’ll Never Trust Anyone’s Dieline Again…Not Even My Own! Material for This Tutorial: Download the Layered Illustrator Edible PDF of this Box Dieline to see how it’s done. I embedded the scanned box image so the file is 26mb – so be patient. […]
Ultimate Digital Ink and Color Tutorial for Adobe Illustrator CS5
Learn My Secret to the Fastest, Simplest, Down and Dirty Comic Style Inking and Coloring Technique for Adobe Illustrator There are a lot of really good tutorials on the web for digital inking and coloring. The trouble is that most of them assume you have six to eight hours to finish a drawing that is […]
How to Make a Faux Finish Stone Wall Dungeon Backdrop
Make a Faux Finish Hanging Dungeon Wall Backdrop Using a Painters Drop Cloth, House Paint, Brushes, Paint Rollers, and Painters Masking Tape…In Just One Day! In January of 2010, a new client approached me with a nearly impossible task – to completely brand an entire company in time for a trade show in two months. […]
