Graphic Rush

Great hosting packages for your site

2009-04-10T18:01:00.000-07:00

I recently started my own finance site and it was my first site that I wanted to host independently. Being a newbie, I did not know much about hosting and domain name registration so I tried to search on the internet and ask my friends. Finally, after searching for days, I settled for a hosting company by my friends. During my struggle, one thing that I realized was that hosting is very important and expensive as well.

Just few days after, I came across a web hosting UK company called Velnet Web. The site looks promising and offers hosting packages at cheap prices. One of their special offers is the Velnet Starter for €2.40. The package includes 50 MB webhosting space, 10 email accounts, spam filter, cpanel access, 12GB data transfer per year and much more.

Furthermore, Velnet Web will install Joomla or WordPress for you for free when you buy any hosting package. This is a great deal and if you are thinking of starting a website then you should consider buying Velnet Web’s hosting package.

How to make a website successful!

2009-04-10T17:21:00.000-07:00

It is always easy to make a decision but it is difficult to go with it. For example, many people decide to start a website but hardly have any success with it. The reason behind is that these people are only capable of coming up with good content but nothing else and good content is not all it takes to make a website successful.

For a website to be successful it needs to have a proper domain name and the owner needs to do some search engine optimization to improve the visibility of the site at search engines. A true successful site is one with good content and good amount of organic traffic. If you do not know anything about search engine optimization then you can either hire someone to do the work for you or you can visit webmaster forum blogs and web hosting blogs and learn yourself.

I have learned a lot from SEO blogs and forums and have applied my knowledge to my sites to drive traffic from search engines.

Start your own e-commerce site!

2009-04-10T17:20:00.000-07:00

Recently I have been thinking about starting an e-commerce site that would allow me to work from home. While I was looking on the Internet for a company that would make it easier for me to set up my own e-commerce site, I came across Boss Cart.

Boss Cart does not just provide one service but several that will make setting up an e-commerce site easy for you. Its main service is that it offers you e-commerce shopping cart. As we all know, shopping carts are extremely important if you want an e-commerce site to be successful. They make it easier for your customers to purchase products.

Moreover, Boss Cart also provides other services that you require to completely set up an e-commerce site such as domain name registration, website hosting etc. Once your website is up, you will also want to use Boss Cart’s SEO service to increase your website’s popularity at search engines which will bring you customers.

Overall, if you are thinking about starting your own e-commerce site then you should consider Boss Cart. All of its services can be obtained at reasonable price.

Learn and Share at Webmaster Serve

2009-02-13T16:06:00.000-08:00

Are you a webmaster who is interested in having useful conversations with other webmasters from around the world over the internet? If so you got to check out webmaster forum at Webmaster Serve.

It is a very interesting forum with topics covering many webmaster activities such as Search Engine Marketing, Web hosting and domain names and many more. The Webmaster Marketplace allows you to do a lot of trading with others and you can exchange and sell links, buy and sell websites and templates etc. The Webmaster SEO Forum has nice discussions about SEO and one can learn a lot about Search Engine Optimization here. Moreover, the UK SEO Forum has information about SEO and Search Engine Marketing specialized for U.K. There are tons of webmasters here at this forum sharing their knowledge and experience with others. A lot of other resources are also available at this forum.

As a webmaster, this is a great place for you to share your knowledge with others and learn from them at the same time.

Should you take graphic design classes and get a graphic design degree?

2009-01-28T20:39:00.000-08:00

Receiving formal education and having a real degree has its own values. You know it and I know it. The world we live in demands formal proof of the education that we have obtained. Taking online graphic design courses will be very useful personally but will not necessarily help you obtain a decent job in an offline company. With such online graphic design degrees you can get online jobs, do some freelance work, get paid from here and there but not a fixed good income job.

So how important is it to go to graphic design colleges and obtain a degree? In my opinion, it is very important. Learning the art of designing in a formal environment is very useful and is appreciated and recognized by every employer. Sure you can take some online courses to help learn little things to gain some knowledge about small tidbits but going to a graphic design school is a must if you are looking for a rewarding career in graphic designing.

I have not gone to any graphic design schools or taken any online graphic design classes because I am busy with my other college stuff currently. But later on I do plan to take graphic design classes.

This was just something little that I wanted to share with you guys.

Beautiful Set of Web 2.0 Origami Icons

2009-01-18T20:09:00.000-08:00

While surfing some design sites, I came across a great icon set which I am sure you will LOVE. This set is one of the best sets I have seen recently. The creator of this set (Paddy) has done a great job. He used his creativity to create web 2.0 origami icons. The set includes icons for Twitter, Firefox, Stumble Upon, GMail, RSS, Digg, Skype, Delicious etc.

You can download the set from here.

Vector 2 - great free set of vector brushes

2008-06-19T19:05:00.000-07:00

Good news everyone! I have another new set of vector brushes ready for you. This set is specially for Photoshop. It contains 15 new brushes and some of them are even fading brushes. The brushes have been made in Photoshop CS2 and come in 2000x2000 & 1280x1024 sizes. The whole set is called Vector 2 and has been made by talented Physical Magic.

These brushes are great for creating some really nice good looking web graphics. So hurry up and start using them.

Vector Line Brushes 2 by ~PhysicalMagic on deviant ART

Zrnic - great new font

2008-06-14T16:38:00.001-07:00

Fonts are very vital when it comes to designing. A good designer always know what type of fonts to use and he or she most likely has lots of fonts downloaded before hand. Believe it or not, it is not always possible to design attractive logos with the standard fonts available with Photoshop CS3. You need to have some extra fonts to assist you. Here is a great font called Zrnic that I found on a website called dafont. The font is free to download!

Download

Tutorial: Making random bars in photoshop

2008-06-13T21:31:00.001-07:00

This is my first tutorial post on this blog so please bear with me. If something is not clear then let me know and I will try my best to help you understand. Once you go through the tutorials, you should end with something like this.

1. Create a new file of dimensions: 600 by 120. Of course, you can choose your own dimensions (the results will be slightly different but still similar). Since I like to designs banner, i will choose these dimensions. Also, remember that you can start with bigger dimensions, follow the tutorial and then once you get the final product then you can just crop the image. You can also start with the given dimensions and finish the tutorial. Once finished, you can change the image size manually the way you want it to be.

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2. Then, just go to FILTER > RENDER > CLOUDS. Make sure your background and foreground are set to normal (just press D). By doing this, you will get normal blurry image of black and gray color. It looks really messy and you might be wondering how the hell this ends up looking like the real product but don't worry this tutorial works!

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3. Then do this: Filter > Pixelate > Mezzotint. Set the type to "Long Strokes". Again, the image still looks messy but these are all important steps and should not be missed in any way. Do not experiment any thing unless I tell you. You have to be very careful when following tutorials. First do the exact same thing and then later on, you can start experimenting.

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4. Now the most important part: Filter > Blur > Motion Blur. Set angle to 90 degrees and distance to 999. Well, now you can see the image that we are going to get now. I bet you didn't know this nice little trick with motion blur. It turns out to be really useful.

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Looks awesome right? Well you can play around with a little more to get better pattern of lines. The pattern depends on how nice your "clouds" look in the step 2 mentioned above. AND now all you have to do is color them.

5. You can choose to color the bars with one single color or you can use the rainbow gradient and get a number of colors. It all depends on what site you will be using the banner on.
Color: Create a new layer and fill it with the rainbow gradient.Once you have done that, play around with the layer's blending mode. I prefer to go with "Color". There are several other modes that work and even look good. After doing that you will get the final product.

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Great new icon set

2008-06-12T21:17:00.000-07:00

I found a great icon set by a designer called MannMitDerTarnjacke. The set contains some really attractive icons of sites. The set can be downloaded for free! Here is a preview:

Download

Great Vector Brush set for designers

2008-06-12T10:09:00.001-07:00

If you are interested in designing logos then brushes can be really helpful. They not only save your time but also give you interesting ideas. Here is a set of some great brushes that I found on the Internet. The brush is from a designer called neotom130 and I think that the person has done a great job.

This is what the designer had to say about the brush set:

"This is a vector brush set, it has absoloutley everything you could imagine, planes, tanks, guns, people, random vector shape things and loads more. There are 55 brushes, for photoshop 7 and above (7,cs,cs2)."

Vector Brushes by ~neotom130 on deviant ART

Contact

2008-06-10T16:26:00.000-07:00

My email is graphicrush@gmail.com

If you would like me to design a logo/banner/avatar/business card for you then please send me an email with following details:

Company Name
Tagline
Preferred Colors
Any Images
Price

I love to have some feedback. If you think that there is something not correct with this blog or if you have a suggestion then send me an email.

Portfolio

2008-06-10T16:14:00.000-07:00

The image below contains some logos that I have previously designed for companies and private webmasters. I keep all of my logos simple, innovative and clean. Not all of the logos were accepted the companies. I am including the ones that I liked the most.

Launch

2008-06-10T16:13:00.000-07:00

As of today, Graphic Rush has been finally launched. This blog is all about graphics and designing. Here you will find great designing resources such as brushes, patterns, inspiring logos, tutorials etc to help you become a good designer.

I am a designer and I love to create logos/banners/avatars and other graphics. If you would like me to design for you then contact me.

I hope you will enjoy this blog and learn from it.