> http://www.topdesignnews.com/

Well, I had created Top design news to help everyone specially me, to find latest design news from all over the blogs, websites and forums for free. Top design news still in beta version hope to have a good time to develop it as a full structured one.

Before i created top design news i think to make a good website that updated instantly that helps me to find all design, creative and web development updates from all over the world which i can from 1 place find everything and open it in a regularly basis “at morning for example”.

Then i decide to  develop it as a  global website that can help more people to find everything from 1 place without searching or going to blogs.

The idea was simple but it works. and here’s sort of benfiets you can find in top design news beta version:

• Latest blogs and creative designed updates
• Updated hourly
• Choose from a list of categories
• Menu updated with the latest category post “sort by post count”
• categories like: Print/Poster, Inspiration, design, tips, Outdoor, Web Design, Tutorials, Articles, Premium, Ambient/Outdoor/Direct, Illustration, Resources, daily inspiration, News, Videos, Development, WordPress, Italian Adv, TV/Film, Freebies, Typography, Sessions, tutorial, basix, tools, Web Roundups, webdesign, Workflow, php, iPhone, jquery, css3, photography, architecture, Photoshop, Coding, Theory, javascript, css, Autodesk 3Ds Max, Effects, Hardware, Inspired Release, showcase, free, HTML & CSS, ActionScript, tricks, logo, blog
• you can follow top design news in twitter and check the latest news titles
• a Facebook fan page also updated instantly as a small line in your most recent updates
• RSS feed

Top Design News Created in 7.2010, So i hope i have more time to develop a full final version as soon as i can.. with more ideas and services.

Introduction to HTML 5 from Brad Neuberg on Vimeo

if you are also interested in HTML 5 and what’s coming down the pipeline but haven’t had time to read any articles, Brad Neuberg has put together an educational Introduction to HTML 5 video that goes over many of the major aspects of this new standard.* Web vector graphics with the Canvas tag and Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG)
* The Geolocation API
* HTML 5 Video
* The HTML 5 Database and Application Cache
* Web workers

In the video we also crack open the HTML 5 YouTube Video prototype to show you some of the new HTML 5 tags, such as nav, article, etc. It’s chock full of demos and sample source code.

HTML 5 Demos and Examples

HTML 5 experimentation and demos I’ve hacked together. Click on the browser support icon or the technology tag to filter the demos (the filter is an OR filter).

http://html5demos.com/

HTML 5 and web standards

Every new Apple mobile device and every new Mac — along with the latest version of Apple’s Safari web browser — supports web standards including HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript. These web standards are open, reliable, highly secure, and efficient. They allow web designers and developers to create advanced graphics, typography, animations, and transitions. Standards aren’t add-ons to the web. They are the web. And you can start using them today.

http://www.apple.com/html5/

Dive Into HTML 5

Dive Into HTML 5 seeks to elaborate on a hand-picked Selection of features from the HTML5 specification and other fine Standards. I shall publish Drafts periodically, as time permits. Please send feedback. The final manuscript will be published on paper by O’Reilly, under the Google Press imprint. Pre-order the printed Work and be the first in your Community to receive it. The Work shall remain online under the CC-BY-3.0 License.

http://diveintohtml5.org/

23 Essential HTML 5 Resources

1. Yes, You Can Use HTML 5 Today! – A great beginning overview of HTML 5
2. Wikipedia: HTML 5 – A basic overview from Wikipedia
3. HTML 5 Cheat Sheet – A great quick guide to HTML 5 as a printable PDF
4. HTML 5 Demos – A great set of demos. Just view the source to see how they work.
5. HTML 5 Drag and Drop + Microformats = a whole world of possibilities – An example of how to use Drag-n-Drop in HTML 5
6. HTML 5 Gallery – See what’s possible with HTML 5
7. HTML 5 Forms Demo – A powerful demo of how forms work in HTML 5
8. HTML 5 Doctor – A great general resource on HTML 5
9. Headers in HTM 5 – A good article from HTML 5 Doctor on the Header element
10. Video elements – A useful article from HTML 5 Doctor on the Video element
11. Designing a blog with html5 – A tutorial on how to build a blog in HTML 5
12. How to get HTML5 working in IE and Firefox 2 – Another great article from HTML 5 Doctor
13. HTML 5 – Draft Standard – The whole spec, in all it’s scary technical detail
14. Semantics in HTML 5 – An opinion piece from A List Apart
15. Thinking About HTML 5 canvas Accessibility – Some quick thoughts on accessibility problems with the Canvas element
16. HTML 5: nav ambiguity resolved – A post by Zeldman on the HTML 5 Nav element
17. A Selection of Supported Features in HTML5 – A great list from Molly about which HTML 5 features are supported by which browsers
18. The WHATWG Blog – The Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group – the folks working on the HTML 5 spec
19. HTML 5 canvas – A great in-depth tutorial on how the HTML 5 Canvas element works
20. Native Drag and Drop – A demo of how the Drag-n-Drop functionality works.
21. Bespin – A Mozilla Labs experiment on how to build an extensible Web code editor using HTML 5 technology.
22. When can I use… – Compatibility tables for features in HTML5, CSS3, SVG and other upcoming web technologies
23. Comparison of layout engines (HTML 5) – A good resource from Wikipedia

Banner templates are a free open source FLA files. Within only 60 seconds you can create your own free Flash banner directly using one of the size templates. Flash banners are a modern interactive digital advertising media, with a lot of advantages in comparison to conventional graphic banners like GIF, JPG or videos.

Everything included in the attached file. JPG, PSD, FLA, SWF. Every file have its own size (width and height) as a standard sizes.

Sizes included: Leaderboard (728 x 90 pixel), Full Banner (468 x 60 pixel), Half Banner (234 x 60 pixel), Rectangle (180 x 150 pixel), Square Button (125 x 125 pixel), Micro Bar (88 x 31 pixel), Skyscraper (120 x 600 pixel), Wide Skyscraper (160 x 600 pixel), Large Rectangle (336 x 280 pixel), Medium Rectangle (300 x 250 pixel).

3d logo design – Video Tutorial – Part 1

3d logo design – Video Tutorial – Part 2

3d logo design – final result

I walks through the fundamental decisions, such as what information to include, what size and orientation the logo should have, and whether to use in corporate identity, TV production, Web publishing. I demonstrate how to set up a template and work with type alignment and color. Also discusses animation techniques and preparing the file for printing, TV production, Web Publishing. How to integrate and fill the gap between 6 software is my goal in this tutorial. I’ll use Adobe Photoshop, Autodesk Maya, Adobe Illustrator, and Adobe after Effects, Adobe Flash and Adobe Dreamweaver.

Topics covered:

Quick Sketching
Logo Exploration
Logo Modeling
Producing Logo to several illustrators formats
Animation approach
Animation Composition
Web Animation and production

3d logo design – Logo Design behind the Scenes – Part 1

01: Intro Goals.
02: 1st stage Sketching ideas.
03: Modeling, Texturing, Lighting, Rendering and Detail Design.
04: Put the logo into Layout.
05: Illustration stage.
06: 2nd stage animation.

3d logo design – Logo Design behind the Scenes – Part 2

07: animation composition and finalize exporting HD.
08: 3rd stage Web Production.
09: Final Design, animation inside HTML page.

Details:

01: Intro Goals

In the first stage we have a look to our goals before we start working to know who exactly we should do. We will prepare our logo to be ready for printing, TV production and Web Publishing. As a designing apprentice I have always asked myself what is the best method for designing something or that particular logo. It is evident that you can apply different methods for doing the same logo, but the quality of the output might vary according to the method you use.

02: 1st stage Sketching ideas

Then the process of swirling out your ideas begins. It doesn’t matter if the sketch looks like monotone; you are just throwing ideas down onto a white blank page at the moment. I used tablet here. Just try to find ideas and concepts using balance. What I mean with balance is our logo should be physically balanced inside our design. Just imagine if you create that logo in real life with clay or wood and try to put it on a flat surface it should be stable balanced. Once I had placed some ideas down on paper you can scan them in and dive into your image editor of choice if you would like. I’m using Adobe Photoshop for this one. The method I use to create logo could be wildly different from someone else so go with whatever method feels comfortable. The end result will be a series of scaled resources that the OS will use in different views.

03: Modeling, Texturing, Lighting, Rendering and Detail Design

Then the process of swirling out your ideas begins. It doesn’t matter if the sketch looks like monotone; you are just throwing ideas down onto a white blank page at the moment. I used tablet here. Just try to find ideas and concepts using balance. What I mean with balance is our logo should be physically balanced inside our design. Just imagine if you create that logo in real life with clay or wood and try to put it on a flat surface it should be stable balanced. Once I had placed some ideas down on paper you can scan them in and dive into your image editor of choice if you would like. I’m using Adobe Photoshop for this one. The method I use to create logo could be wildly different from someone else so go with whatever method feels comfortable. The end result will be a series of scaled resources that the OS will use in different views.
Modeling

For a non-organic bending object such as the subject of this tutorial it is wise to use polygonal modeling unless you care about the quality. Polygon modeling has always fascinated me especially with the accuracy it provides for making industrial models and its flexibility. The good thing about Autodesk Maya is that it provides both a strong NURBS system and a multi-optional NURBS to polygon conversion dialog, where by we can convert our detailed NURBS model to a polygonal object with the desired number of faces.

The aim of this tutorial is to provide a practical guide for the novice Polygon modeler, whereby he/she can practice the basic methods through designing a somewhat complex object. Of course, this tutorial does not cover all Polygon commands but rather most of them.

Now observe and contemplate the above sketching image for a moment; try to visualize it from front, the front view: that’s the key point in making the logo.

First we will begin with a set of primitives for different logo parts. I make a sphere (polygon sphere) then 4 twisted cubes. To make twisted cubes in Maya it’s just easy. Make a cube then go to deformers panel and use the twisting toll. After made a 1 twisted cube, duplicate it 3 times with 90 degrees. Then put them together to fitting in the sphere.

That’s exactly my idea represented. I have a point in this logo which I can say the sphere represent the red word and the 4 twisted cubes represent how mush it’s secured.

The next step is to create mental ray subdivision from approximation editor panel. I like to make the N subdivision as a 2.000 points for sure that’s give me a good smoothed mesh and also at any time I can go back and make any changes in low poly mode.
Texturing

The texturing stage is the most important part. Everyone who’s worked before with 3D texturing knows that every texture have an advantage and disadvantage. We can see that the Lambert shading absorb lights. Also we knows about the phonge shade it’s reflect lights with angels and have a different characterizes instead of blinn shade. So I render the logo 3 times 1 with blinn shade, 2 with mia_material and phong shades. By this way we mention that we have the logo in 3 different characteristic so we can use this 3 together in later steps.
Lighting and Rendering

Let’s talk about lights. I use in this scene 9 lights. Our goal in lights is how to use a minimal number of area and point lights to recreate all direct and indirect light sources for a logo. They are 8 area lights and 1 point light. The 8 area lights have a very small intensity. Also I used the white light color. In This technique we use Global Illumination and Final Gather.

Final step in lighting and rendering is to render the logo in 3 different images every image with a different shade.

04: Put the logo into Layout

lets go to Adobe Photoshop and open the 3 images we exported from Maya. Actually I like to export images as a .TIF images. Taking the 3 images and put it together in Adobe Photoshop blind them together. I used overlay blinding mode. Then finish by company name and the caption.

Also I simulate a deep shadow behind the logo. Its give me a nice look.

In this stage if u would like to represent that logo to the client u have or to your boss. That’s will fair enough.

05: Illustration stage

For the first time I present this tutorial someone ask me… hay the logo u created now is fine but do u think is it ready for print in big scale like billboards?..

Actually it’s a very good question because for sure we need the logo to be ready in everything from print to TV production to web production as we agreed in statge1. So I’ll start now to give u my approach for how to export our logo as a vector (scalable) shape. We will go back to Maya and use logo model and exporting into a different illustrator types. I used here Maya vector render and I use some options like curve tolerance and detail level to end up with different logo versions. 1 with dark colors, bright colors, and wire frame, etc… everything is vector we can export it as an AI file and import it to adobe illustrator. Easily u will find that our logo is now ready to use it in printing elements safely if we need to print it in higher printing elements or huge billboard.

We finished now the stage 1 which is creating a 3d logo ready for print production.

06: 2nd stage animation

Okay… Let’s animate. We will go back to Maya and starts animate our logo. I start by prepare my timeline with 72 frame. This will give me 3 seconds (24X3=72). Animate the sphere shrink in then shrink out until its stop. Then about the 4 twisted cubes I animate it in 360 digress reversed. So it’s give me a very nice effect. So what we have now is shrink sphere and 4 rotated cubes. I think it’s Looks good for me now. For sure I’ll go to the timeline and play the frames fast, slow, reversed, etc… Check if anything looks weird or out of scene.

So we have now 72 frames let’s render it in .PNG sequence of images. And have a look for the animation when it’s finish render.

07: animation composition and finalize exporting HD

So we end now with 72 PNG sequences of images. If u thinks about composition for sure we will think about Adobe after Effects. You can import the 72 images directly to Adobe after Effects but in this tutorial I convert this sequence to 1 MOV file using quick time. So I open quick time then open the sequence of image and save as a MOV file.

So let’s import the MOV file to Adobe after Effects and start composition. First effect I have used is the auto level effect. It’s just makes the logo looks fine and has a deep look. Also I just check some other effects like rippling and bouncing and I end up with the 3D rippling animation. I make a radial gradient for the background to give me nice look when the logo animate. So I’m happy for what I end up with now

Let’s render our MOV file from Adobe after Effects and finally the logo now composite fine and ready for TV production.

08: 3rd stage Web Production

After we have our composite MOV file let we think about web animation. Actually Adobe Flash is the solution. First I prepare my stage in Adobe Flash 640X480 as we rendered our files and also prepare my timeline and frame rate 24 FPS. Now we are ready to import our animation file. But the MOV file has a huge size and we shouldn’t use it for web. That does will take a lot of time in loading. So I think about converting this file to FLV file using Adobe Flash CS3 Video Encoder. Start encoding and we have now a small FLV file. So import the FLV file and check it in Adobe Flash. After everything is looks fine and small size the only one problem is the frames looping. So I add one Action Script behavior to stop the animation when it’s finished (played for 1 time). So our file now ready for publishing from Adobe Flash we will end up with HTML file contained the flash SWF file.
09: Final Design, animation inside HTML page.

The last step in our entire tutorial is to open the HTML into Adobe Dreamweaver and center the flash object (SWF file) and we can easily type welcome to red secure website and it’s now ready for Web Production.

So that’s the end of the tutorial. I hope u like it… See u