Splashup

Website: www.splashup.com

There are two versions of Splashup that you can download. The first is Splasup Light, which lets you go in and quickly edit photos or pictures with basic features. The second is the regular Slashup, which gives you the full program and gives you access to more advanced editing techniques. You will have to sign up for a free Splashup account to access the software

FlauntR

Website: www.flauntr.com

FlauntR is a little more complex than Splashup and allows you to choose from five different editing options: StylR, EditR, PicasR, ProfilR, and TextR. Each category gives you different photo-editing options, ranging from things like adding speech bubbles to creating profile pictures for social media like Facebook and Twitter. Like Splashup, you will need to register for a free account before you can access it.

Pixlr

Website: www.pixlr.com

Pixlr sets itself apart from other free online editing software because you not only have online use of it, but you can also download a version to your desktop computer, and pick up an app for the software in your cellphone’s app store. This makes it easy to edit your photos no matter where you are. Like FlauntR you have several different editing categories to choose from that give you access to different features: Pixlr Editor, Pixlr Express, and Pixlr-o-matic.

Picnik

Website: www.picnik.com

Picnik has made a name for itself because it’s extremely easy to use and straight-forward. There are several different editing options that let you change the tones of photos, add in speech bubbles, and put in a seasonal theme. There is a premium version you can upgrade to for an annual fee of $25, but the free version gives you so many different editing features that it’s unlikely you’ll need the premium options for everyday blogging.

FotoFlexer

Website: www.fotoflexer.com

Like Picnik, FotoFlexer has mastered simple navigation and user-friendly options, making it an easy piece of editing software to pick up even if you’ve had no editing experience. This software is perfect for the beginner, and will have you expertly editing photos in no time.

Not only is photo-editing a great way to add some spice to ordinary, everyday blog posts, but it’s also a lot of fun to go through and play with all the different features to take photos from ordinary to extraordinary. And with so many different free options available online, you’ll never have to spend a dime.

About the author: Melanie Slaugh is enthusiastic about the growing prospects and opportunities of various industries and writing articles on various consumer goods and services as a freelance writer. She writes extensively for internet service providers.

A great idea to share some HTML5 and CSS3 techniques day by day, using an advent calendar that reveals a bit of these new technologies every day. Make sure you use a modern browser to see these examples.

My favorites so far:

• December 16th, 2011: Amazing Canvas Pixels
• December 2nd, 2011: Icons with character
• December 11th, 2011: Behind the mask
• December 12th, 2011: Shady text effects
• December 13th, 2011: Patterns, patterns, patterns

Enjoy and let us know how you’re using these brushes!

Transportation Brushes (9 brushes)

Source | Download

Cars and Trucks (26 brushes)

Source | Download

Harley Davidson Brushes (20 brushes)

Source | Download

Motorcycles (24 brushes)

Source | Download

Cars Brushes (9 brushes)

Source | Download

Military Vehicles (9 brushes)

Source | Download

Transport (7 brushes)

Source | Download

Transport Car Brushes (15 brushes)

Source | Download

Porsche Brushes (4 brushes)

Source | Download

Exige/Mini-Cooper Brushes (2 brushes)

Source | Download

Cars Brushes (20 brushes)

Source | Download

Cars Brushes (6 brushes)

Source | Download

Car Brush Set (8 brushes)

Source | Download

Car Set (5 brushes)

Source | Download

Hot Rods (4 brushes)

Source | Download

Streets and Roads (7 brushes)

Source | Download

Tara Hornor has a degree in English and has found her niche writing about marketing, advertising, branding, graphic design, and desktop publishing. She writes for PrintPlace.com, an online printing company that offers postcards, posters, brochure printing, postcard printing, and more printed marketing media. In addition to her writing career, Tara also enjoys spending time with her husband and two children.

I’m glad to release my first WordPress plugin. It is a quite simple one that creates a widget listing the most active authors of your blog. The image above is the configuration box of the plugin, under is an example output of the plugin.

How to install this plugin?

Pretty much like every other WordPress plugin. Download the plugin, extract the zip file and upload the whole folder to the plugins folder.

Once uploaded, go to Plugins > Installed Plugins, and activate it. Then you can go to Appearance > Widgets and drag-and-drop the widget in the widget zone you want it to appear. Customize your options and you’re good to go.

Download

Version 1.0: Download

Features to come

I plan to improve the plugin by adding some new features, here are the ones I can think of now:

• Make the authors’s feed display an option
• Give more option for the type of listing (alphabetical,…)
• Make the number of articles’ display an option, let the users to change the word “articles”
• Give more options for the display of the author’s name

If you’d like to see more features in the coming versions, please let me know in the comments or send me an email through the contact form.

Now that the hype around Google+ went down a little, I thought it was interesting to do a post listing some good resources that are popular and useful if you want to use Google’s social network seriously. But first, take a minute to add me to your circles on Google+.

Guides, Tutorials and tips

1. Getting started with Google+

Social media expert Chris Brogan wrote this article to teach you how to get started using Google+. He also recorded some very useful screencasts for that video. Read the article.

2. Google+, the complete guide

Exhaustive article by Mashable that walks you through every Google+ functionality you need to know about. Get started with hangouts, circles, photos, sharing,… Read the article.

3. Infographic: Facebook vs Google+

You don’t have to make a choice between the two popular social networks, you can obviously be active on both. However, it is good to have an understanding of both of these networks to make the most out of it. This infography makes a great job explaining the differences in details.

4. 30 Google+ Tips to Enhance Your Google Plus Experience

Some good tips relating to become a Google+ power user. Learn how to get better at formatting, edit photos, mute posts,… Read the article.

5. Google+ cheat sheet

A comprehensive Google Plus cheat sheet to remind you how to do things on Google’s social network. It comes in many languages too. View the cheat sheet.

Google Plus tools

6. Adding the Google +1 button to your website

Social media buttons are often added to the web pages to encourage readers to interact with the content and share it. For installing the Google +1 button, check out Google’s page about it.

7. PlusYa

Google profile URL shortener with analytics. Visit website

8. Hangout Party

Find and join some Google hangouts. Visit website.

9. PlusMe

Make yourself a Google+ profile picture, or create a picture to announce that you’ve moved to Google+ on Facebook or Twitter. Visit website.

10. PSD Google+ icons

A set of elegant Google Plus icons in PSD format. Visit page.

Twitter is one of the most valuable channels online. Using it to connect with potential clients or simply building a strong network is crucial. Yet, moving forward on Twitter can also be very time consuming. Finding tools which help us to focus more on the work we are doing is key.

So here are 10 new and innovative tools to harvest more of Twitter’s power

1. Tweriod – Start tweeting when others listen

Although there exist a few different apps measuring your best times to Tweet, Tweriod comes out as the best. It analyses your past tweets and the ones of your followers and then gives you a detailed graph for when it is best to tweet. The results show you the exact hours of each individual weekday so you can go away immediately and start tweeting at these times. This helps particularly in connection with a publishing App as you can set up these best tweeting times on a schedule.

Best bit: What I love is that you will be sent a DM straight to your inbox once the report is ready, as gathering all this data takes a little while.

Give it a go here: Tweriod

2. Twylah – Fanpages for your Twitter account

Twylah is a fantastic solution to keep your Tweets fresh for a longer period of time. It gathers your sent tweets and organizes them into a personalized page displaying richer content then just links. By referring others to your Twylah page you can give users a better overview of what your tweeting is about. I found that this is a lot more effective than just glancing at other people’s stream as these most recent tweets might not reflect the complete picture.

Best bit: Twylah offers a functionality that is called “Power Tweets”, which result in increased engagement then normal tweets do as related content is gathered around it.

Give it a go here: Twylah

3. Strawberryj.am – Only read the most important news

This is an App I have come to love. It pulls in all your followers tweets and shows you only the most relevant ones. It does so by determining which ones were the most mentioned and talked about and orders them in a list for you. This means, instead of scanning your Twitter stream for hours, you can just log into Strawberryj.am and get the most discussed news at one glance.

Best bit: What I like most is that you can also get personalized updates of your Strawberryj.am straight to your inbox.

Give it a go here: StrawberryJ.am

4. Ifttt – Optimise Your Tweeting

This nifty new App allows you to create social triggers in order to connect the syndication of your various accounts more easily. So for example if you save a new bookmark to delicious, then a tweet will be posted. Or if you are mentioned on Twitter you want an email to be sent. You can optimize it fully to your needs.

Best bit: Different to other syndication Apps such as dlvr.it or Twitterfeed you can be a lot more creative by linking natively completely unrelated apps.

Give it a go here: Ifttt

5. KeepStream – Collect your most valuable Tweets

Another recent discovery of mine is an App called KeepStream. It allows you to make collections of tweets and organize them in more readable format. You can try collecting a few of these tweets and then embed them as a blogpost on your site. One example I found very handy is to use KeepStream to collect tweets from an event or a Twitterchat to share it with people who couldn’t attend.

Best bit: The fact that you can follow others and see their tweet collections makes for a richer experience of past tweets.

Give it a go here: KeepStream

6. ManageFlitter – Unfollow others with ease

This is by far the most intuitive Tool I came across in order to help me clean up my Twitter account. It shows you who of the people you are following isn’t following back, who is cluttering your timeline and who is no longer active. Just give it a few clicks and unfollow those not adding enough value to your stream.

Best bit: What like most is that you don’t have to fiddle with creating an account. Simple sign in with Twitter, unfollow unwanted followers and off you go.

Give it a go here: ManageFlitter

7. TwitSprout – Onepage analytics dashboard

Finding out about the most important metrics for your Twitter account can often be confusing. Twitsprout however does a brilliant job on giving you only the most important metrics such as increase in followers, listings and mentions over time. You can also brand them with your own logo, so it turns into a beautiful infographic you can share elsewhere.

Best bit: The App allows you to export the data as a PDF report, that I found particularly useful to use for offline presentations.

Give it a go here: TwitSprout

8. Commun.it – Build out your Twitter Tribe

This is another very innovative idea for an App. Commun.it shows you all your followers and orders them by most engaged, supporters and influencers. This means you can focus on these interactions and build out your network beyond these connections. I found this particularly useful to know whom I should engage with more in order to get noticed.

Best bit: What I like best is that the App suggests you potential leads showing mentions of your brand or blog outside your network.

Give it a go here: Commun.it

9. Proxlet – Unclutter your stream

One of my all time favourites is a very helpful App called Proxlet. It allows you to filter out certain Twitter users, hashtags or keywords from your stream. So you can get rid of unwanted paper.li or Foursquare tweets, that don’t add value to your timeline. It is also very helpful to filter out hashtags if there is an event happening you aren’t interested in following.

Best bit: In addition to Twitter.com Proxlet also works on major Twitter clients such as Twitter for Iphone, Tweetdeck and Twitdroyd.

Give it a go here: Proxlet

10. Buffer – Never Flood Your Followers Again

(Full disclosure: I work on Buffer) Buffer gives you a complete new way to send out Tweets. Whenever you find an interesting article, give it one click on the Buffer icon with one of the browser extensions (Chrome, Safari or Firefox). This will “Buffer” your tweet and post it for you well spaced out over the day. So you can add lots of tweets whilst reading the news, but never flood your followers.
Best bit: Buffer also allows you to add tweets to multiple Twitter accounts and even works on Twitter.com to Buffer some RTs.

Give it a go here: Buffer

These are my favourite new Twitter Apps at the moment. I hope some of them are useful for you too. Do you think any of the above can help you be more efficient too?

Learning graphic design is a lifelong process, so graphic design students don’t worry: you’ll have plenty of time becoming an expert in your field. This said, I know that when you are getting started you are really eager to learn more quicker, that’s why I’m suggesting a selection of design books that are in my opinion worth reading for graphic design students, but also for others.

1. Making and breaking the grid

Some graphic designers are crazy about using grids in their designs, others depise it because they feel it makes all layouts look the same (or at least they think so). Even if you are one of those grid-haters, you should know what is a grid and how to use it. You can learn just that in this book.

2. The Elements of Graphic Design

A good book for beginners, learn some basics of graphic design as well as parts of the history. In this book you’ll learn some key concepts of space, unity, page architecture, and typography. Get it on Amazon.

3. Designing Brand Identity

Branding is much more than just logo design, it even goes beyond graphic design. This book is a real guide to become better at understanding what branding is and creating powerful brands. Get it on Amazon.

4. Paul Rand: a designer’s art

Learn directly from one of the iconic graphic designers of the twentisest century: Paul Rand. Here he describes his work with the same precision, economy and passion that he displays in his graphic designs, seeking to help us to understand the nature of his relationships with his clients, his audience and his art. Get it from Amazon

5. Type: A Visual History of Typefaces and Graphic Styles

Typography is one of the important basics of graphic design, and this book is one of the must-have if you plan to do a design career. It covers some typography history with works of masters of typography. Get it from Amazon.

6. Thinking with type

Another great book about typography. It is a more practical approach to using typography in your designs, with many examples and theories about typography. Get it on Amazon.

7. Stationery design now

An excellent book to get tons of inspiration. In it wou will see good examples of how stationery design should be done. Get it on Amazon

8. Package Design Workbook: The Art and Science of Successful Packaging

If you are interested by the multi-dimensional side of graphic design, then packaging is what you need to learn. Get started with this great book. Get it on Amazon

9. How to be a graphic designer without losing your soul

Perhaps one of the most important design books for graphic design students, it teaches you everything you need to know about making a design career, and you won’t learn that in school. Get it on Amazon.

10. The Art of Color

Probably the best book ever written about color. Learn about the physics of color, how to mix it, color effects, color impression, and so much more… Get it from Amazon

What design books should we add to this list?

There are so many good design books that even if we wanted to make an exhaustive list it would be impossible. However, we would be happy if you told us in the comments what major books we missed in this list and we’ll add them to the post.

Recommended design books by our readers

Vonnie Maddox recommends a mostly two excellent books: Grid Systems by Joseph Müller-Brockmann and The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst. If you want more, take a look at her Wish list.

Michael Dunbar recommends Brand Identity Essentials (100 Principles for Designing Logos and Building Brands) by Kevin Budelmann, Yang Kim and Curt Wozniak.

Fabiana recommends the Pantone Guide to Communicating With Color.

Ephraim Schum recommends 3 business oriented books: Talent Is Not Enough: Business Secrets For Designers by Shel Perkins, AIGA Professional Practices in Graphic Design by Shel Perkins and The Business Side of Creativity by Cameron Foote.

Irene Scala recommends Designing With Type: the Essential Guide to Typography.

Chrome has been groing more and more popular, especially to web workers, because it is a great, fast browser with now plenty of Chrome extensions for web design. The light interface and quick javascript execution are not the only interesting features for web designers, Chrome is really an amazing working tool if you customize it enough.

We already listed the best Firefox extensions for designers, but since many designers have switched to Chrome it will be nice to have an overview of chrome extensions for web design. Of course you shouldn’t install all these extensions or your browser could become sluggish, but all the following extensions are worth a look.

1. Web developer

The web developer Chrome extension was already one of the most popular toolbar in Firefox, which is probably the reason why it was adapted for Chrome. This toolbar gives you a set of great tools to analyze web pages, test your designs or edit CSS on the fly.

Get this extension

2. MeasureIt

One of my personal favorite extensions, it allows you to measure any element on the web page and grab the dimensions on the fly. Consider it as your browser’s ruler.

Get this extension

3. Csscan

This one is useless if you already have the Web developer toolbar installed. If not, it will be a great tool to understand how web pages are built and analyze the CSS elements on the page.

Get this extension

4. Firebug lite

Another extremly popular extension that was ported from Firefox. It integrates to the Chrome toolbar, let’s you inspect the DOM or edit CSS, among other things.

Get this extension

5. Chrome sniffer

Are you frequently wondering how a website was buit, which technologies were used? Then this must the best of all Chrome extensions for web design for you. Chrome sniffer detects web applications and javascript libraries used to build a website.

Get this extension

6. HTML5 snippet

For the web designers who like to play around with HTML5, this is one of the most recent Chrome extension for web design. This extension creates a platform to share resources and HTML5 snippets.

Get this extension

7. Speed tracer

If you build web applications, you must get this extension. Speed tracer helps you identify and fix the application’s performance issues. The results are show as graphs, so it makes it easy to visually identify the problems.

Get this extension

8. MultiSwitch

Use this extension to switch between development, test and productive hosts. Very practical to gain some time.

Get this extension

9. Lorem Ipsum generator

Create dummy text for your web design mockups, straight from the browser.

Get this extension

10. IE Tab

If you are using Chrome, you are probably not in a hurry to view your pages in Internet Explorer. For testing your sites, you can use IE Tab to render your pages in Chrome the way they would look in IE, so you don’t have to open Internet Explorer anymore.

Get this extension

Do you know other Chrome extensions for web design?

These are only a few of the many extensions that are interesting for web designers. Tell us in the comments which Chrome extensions for web design worth a mention are not in this post.

Android devices may not be as trendy as iPhones, but they are very popular too. Developers enjoy creating apps for Android too and the market gets tons of free applications to chose from. If you are a designer with a phone or a tablet with the Android OS, you may be interested by the following cool (and free) apps.

1. Sketchbook Mobile Express

Drawing and painting application that allows you to create quick sketches from your mobile device.

2. Fontest

A typography tool for developpers that lets you preview how fonts display on Android devices.

3. Adobe Photoshop Express

Of course this version of Photoshop is not exhaustive, but it can be a practical tool for editing your images.

4. AndFTP

Very complete FTP client for Android devices, supports FTP, SFTP, SCP and FTPS. Lets you manage several FTP servers.

5. Thinking space

One task that you can easily work on from pretty much anywhere is looking for ideas. Mind mapping helps you to organize those ideas, Thinking space is perfect if you get an Android device.

6. Magic Color picker

Color selection tool suitable for designers, artists and programmers for selecting colors using different color models. Supports 7 different modes and RGB, HSV, HSL and YUV color models.

7. SilverEdit

Web files editor for Android with syntax highlighting, a simple FTP client and more functionalities.

8. Typography Junkies

Stay up to date with the very latest in typography and font news on your Android Phone.

9. Color Dictionary

A reference of colors, provides RGB/HEX/CMYK/Lab values and detailed color analysis.

10. View web source

Check out the source of any web page, you will also be able to select text, search for text as well as copy and paste the HTML.

11. Evernote

Take notes of everything and in every format: photo, text, audio,…

12. Pocket color chart

A Pantone reference in your Android app.

13. Photo enhance

Enhance and correct your photos, crop it or adjust it with this great little app.

14. Astrid

For the productive designer, a great to-do list and task management application.

Before I started working with WordPress for nearly every website I build, building contact forms was something I despised. Now I don’t really worry anymore, there are tons of useful plugins that make this quite easy.

1. Contact form 7

My favorite contact form plugin for WordPress. It is easy to install, comes with many translations, let’s you customize your forms and create as many forms as you want.

2. cformsII

Created by DeliciousDays, this plugin gets too many features to be all mentionned here. It does much more than a simple contact form, it can replace your built-in comments or be used as tell-a-friend functionality. It supports AJAX submission for forms, let’s you attach files, clone forms and much more.

3. Tiny Contact form

If you want to keep it simple and just have a basic contact form, then Tiny Contact form is for you. The form is easily created and come with a widget to make sidebar integration easy.

4. MM Forms Community

A powerful and easy-to-use contact form plugin. Get spam protection from Akismet, CAPTCHA integration, field creator, HTML layout capabilities and much more.

5. Secure Form Mailer

A plugin based on DagonDesign’s secure PHP form mailer script. It comes with many languages and security options to fight spam.