Tutorials Posts

Adding texture to Illustrator vector art can be a little tricky, especially if you need a working file that you can change the colour of during the creative process. Here's a better, little-known way to add textures to your artwork that keeps you in creative control.

Buttons are a great way to grab a website viewer’s attention, and a way to hone your user interface design chops. They can be used to effectively drive traffic to desired subpages, drive more sign-ups, or any other collection of goals you’ve established for your website design. In this Photoshop tutorial, we’re going to go […]

This past weekend, we held WordCamp Edmonton. It was the first time it came through our wintry city, and it went off swimmingly! On top of organizing it, I also spoke on a couple of subjects near and dear to my heart. One of these presentations was titled Designing a Client-Focused WordPress Site. Click the […]

Drop caps, otherwise known as initials, have long been a staple of print designers. Marking the beginning of a new section of text, drop caps are a great way to add a little bit of visual interest to whatever piece you’re typesetting. Thanks to the wonders of CSS, we can make this happen in modern browsers […]

Adding 3D elements to your website design is the hot business these days. I can see why; it adds depth and visual interest to the design. These elements can be seen through use of perspective and lighting; using these two elements today, we’ll learn how to create a floating 3D box in Photoshop. This tutorial […]

Nowadays, the combo of Photoshop and CSS3 makes up a huge toolbox for web designers; it allows us to achieve website designs that weren’t possible back in the early days of the internet. We can add depth to our design; we can simulate paper or other textures; we can using lighting or 3D effects and […]

This post is based on an old version of WordPress. Here at Paper Leaf, we do a decent amount of WordPress blog design & implementation for our clients. While WordPress is super easy to learn, you can’t just build your clients a blog, send them the login information and then disappear off of the face […]

I was recently hired by two local Edmonton singer/songwriters – Daniel Moir and Stephanie Bosch – to design a tour kickoff poster for them. I enjoy their music, and had shot photos for Daniel before, so it was great to be able to work on one of my favorite items to design – the gig […]

We all know the importance of having a solid online portfolio. It’s relatively simple to show the work we’ve developed for the screen on our website – after all, that’s how it was meant to be seen. But what about printed material? As designers, we have two options for showing our printed material on our […]

Welcome to From A to Z, where I outline all the steps taken in a specific project. In this particular instance, I’ll outline the workflow from initial brainstorming through to delivery for a recording studio logo design. Recently a friend of mine, Randor, came to me for a logo redesign. He runs an Edmonton-based recording […]