BittBox » Design

Free iPhone App Giveaway: PrintProof – Comment to Win

Jay Hilgert — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 02:00:01 +0000

Hey all you freebie lovers, here’s an opportunity to win an iPhone app. The first BittBox iPhone app contest, but it’s design related so I thought BittBoxers would like it! PrintProof is a simple checklist app geared towards junior designers as a helpful tool to remind you what to check before preparing a document for print. Or as you prepare a document for print, rather. I wish I had this app at my first job, but the iPhone didn’t exist back then… I have 3 copies to give away, YAY! Be sure to read the rules, and good luck :)

Contest Rules:

All you have to do to enter is leave a comment. (tweeting is appreciated)
Only comment once.
3 winners will be randomly chosen from the comments.
You must leave an email address in order to win.
Comments will remain open for 3 days.

Inspiration: Neil Duerden Updates Site With Over 50 New Pieces

Jay Hilgert — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 20:13:42 +0000

Neil Duerden, one of my favorite Illustrator/Designers gave me the heads up this afternoon about an update to his portfolio. Among the updates are over 50 new pieces to enjoy. If you’ve never had the pleasure of enjoying Neil’s work, you’ve got quite a bit to look at over at his site, NeilDuerden.co.uk. The newer stuff is in the 2009 folder, enjoy!

Free Stuff: Political Poster Contest at Lost and Taken

Jay Hilgert — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 18:55:20 +0000

I’d like to let all of my readers know about a new contest with $1000 in prizes up for grabs. Caleb from LostAndTaken has launched his first contest, and yours truly will be the judging the project. There are prizes for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place, and the theme is none other than the 2008 election. Submit your political poster designs to enter. Head on over to check out the details and the prizes. This should be a fun contest, good luck!

Best of BittBox Part 1: High Resolution Photoshop Brushes

Jay Hilgert — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 20:34:47 +0000

I’ve been making high quality freebies here at BittBox for a little over a year and a half (19 Months). There are 94 posts in my Freebies section, and I thought I’d make a list for people to see all of my stuff in one place. I know how people love lists, so I’m making some of my own. These aren’t all of my freebies, just the cream of the crop. We’ll Kick the series off with my High Resolution Photoshop Brushes. Happy Downloading, here we go :D

Free High-Resolution Photoshop Brushes:

Watercolor Photoshop Brushes »

I am happy to announce BittBox’s first set of Photoshop Brushes (Free). I’m constantly going back and forth between Illustrator and Photoshop in my projects, and I’m starting to pretty much make everything from scratch. I often have trouble finding brushes…

Watercolor Photoshop Brushes – Set II »

In this set of brushes, I went a little more crazy with the strokes. These brushes are more complex than the previous set and were painted on a higher quality paper, so the end result is in fact, much better.…

Leaves Photoshop Brushes »

I actually took leaves from my own back yard and scanned them to make this Hi-Res Photoshop Brush set. There are 10 brushes in the set, and most of them are 2500px in size…

Splatter Photoshop Brushes »

This is my second set of brushes, but my first set made in CS3. My first set (Hi-Res Watercolor Brushes) was pretty popular, so I thought I would keep making more. The smallest brush in this set is 2457px. Hope you like them.…

Floral Photoshop Brushes »

I took a trip to the store, got a bouquet of flowers with a nice variety (I can’t grow flowers to save my life), whipped out my Nikon D-80, and went to town + a few hours of Photoshop tweaking…

Grungy Texture Photoshop Brushes »

In this set you’ll find grungy textures, as well as some rocky cracks. There are 12 brushes in the set, and they are all 2500px. Available for CS3, CS1, and in PNG format for everyone else…

Messy Spraypaint Photoshop Brushes »

These aren’t traditional spraypaint brushes, so “Messy Spraypaint” is as close as I could get to an accurate name. Most of them are 2500px, and I also included PNGs for anyone not using Photoshop…

Grungy Wings Photoshop Brushes »

Believe it or not, but I made these with a sketch pad, a can of spray paint, and a kitchen sponge. It was actually quite fun. I was inspired by a t-shirt I bought recently and decided to churn out a new brush set…

Grungy Watercolor Photoshop Brushes »

These are, as always, super large brushes. There are 10 in the set, and I also included a zip file with PNGs for non-Photoshop users. I’ll be releasing the actual textures themselves in…

BittBox V4 Launched!

Jay Hilgert — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 08:51:18 +0000

I’ve needed to re-design the Box for a while now and I finally buckled down and got it done. It’s not perfect by any means, but I think it’s a huge improvement from V3. I still have some work to do, but I was happy enough with the theme to go live. I’ve had a few problems with the comment form, which I plan on fixing, as well as a new “About page” and a few other additions that you might notice in the near future. More after the jump.

I hope everyone likes the new design. I put a ton of work into it and I’m pretty happy with the outcome. The main thing I think everyone will like is the big Google ad is no longer at the top of any of the single post pages, woohoo! I don’t sell anything here on BittBox, but I’m going to bite-the-bullet and get rid of that big ad (my best performing Google ad), not only because my readers don’t like it, but I don’t either.

What’s new in BBv4? – Here’s a quick overview:

No Google ad at the top of posts.
Cleaner, (hopefully) easier to use design.
Gravatars now display in Comments
Better search feature. (wordpress default search kinda blows, now using Google)
Tag Cloud Browsing (*note, I haven’t tagged everything yet)
Twitter updates :) In the Sidebar
Added Most Popular content in the sidebar.
Footer Navigation
No Google ad at the top of posts. ha ;)

I’m also working on an ‘FAQ’ and ‘About’ page for everyone. I’m hoping the FAQ will save me a few emails, and I think it’s time I came out of my shell and went un-anonymous. I’m just glad that I got the new theme up and running. Please feel free to let me know if there are any issues with the new theme by using my contact form. Otherwise, feel free to leave your feedback in the comments!

25 MORE Reasons You Might Be A Hardcore Graphic/Web Designer

Jay Hilgert — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 22:43:19 +0000

It’s been over a year since the first edition of this post, and since it was by far the most popular BittBox post ever (and also the most ripped off), I thought it was due time for another. So I thought I’d lighten things up a bit and, back by popular demand….25 MORE reasons You Might Be A Hardcore Graphic/Web Designer. These are in no particular order but I gave them numbers so you all could reference them in the comments if you like. OK, here we go..

You’ve had a client that thought they knew more about design than you.

Your clients pay you for your professional expertise and skill, yet you’ve run into one of ‘those’ clients, that refuses to take the advice from the very person he/she is paying for advice (you).
You’ve had a client that insisted on using the font “Papyrus,” and you had to hold in your barf as you prepped it [the design] for printing.
You’ve requested a vector logo from a client, and instead, they email you a 72 dpi image they grabbed from a website.
You’ve used typography as a texture.
You don’t have a favorite font because you love “Typography.” Not Fonts. Choosing a favorite font would be like choosing a favorite child, it’s just wrong.
You collect as many free stuffs from the interwebs as you can on your hard drive, hoping that one day, that cool project will come along that you can actually use some cool shit on.
You’d rather have a free font than a free gallon of gas.
It’s hard to talk about frustrations at your job with a group of friends because they have no idea what “Vector” or “DPI” is, just to name a couple.
You’ve had a client ask you to “Make the logo bigger.”
You’ve had a client that insists on “filling up the space.”
You’ve learned to over-price web design projects because most clients are more picky about their websites than a high school girl picking out a prom dress.
You feel like you’re “On Call” half of the time because clients procrastinate so much.
You know keyboard shortcuts that require 4 fingers.
You’ve lost hours of work because an application crashed, and you had to start over from scratch because you were in the “zone” and forgot to save. Basically, you were having so much fun being creative that saving was the last thing on your mind at the time.
You’ve “Live-Traced” something.
You spend more hours per week looking at CSS showcase sites than you do at the gym.
The only thing that would make you happier than the demise of IE6 is world peace.
You’ve done everything but give up a body part to talk a client out of a “Flash Intro.” Yeah. I said it. Flash Intro. Sad, so so sad. (goes along with #2)
You have enough fonts on your hard drive to last you for: 1 font per day for about a decade, give or take a year or two.
You know, explicitly, what a “Flourish” is.
You worry about negative space as much as the content area.
You get phone calls from friends and family members on a regular, sometimes annoyingly-frequent basis, wanting your services for free or extremely cheap. (and the “portfolio” line makes you want to throw something across the room)
You’ve had a client that wants a website they can “update” on their own, but doesn’t know shit about websites.
You’re never more than 99% happy with your final product because you believe that EVERYTHING can be improved upon. (especially with those tight-deadline projects)

Design Resources Search Engine

Jay Hilgert — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 20:38:25 +0000

I stumbled onto a ‘Design Resources Search Engine‘ the other day somehow, and wanted to tell everyone about it. It’s basically a Custom Google Search Engine that only searches the best design blogs and sites out there, but it is quite handy if you like to find freebies, as I know a lot of you all do. Jump on over and give it a try. you might just find what you’re looking for. Also, if you look at the complete list of sites and you know of a good site to add to the list, you can suggest a site. Just click on the blog link at the bottom of the page and use the contact form in the footer.

Business Card Inspiration Roundup: Eye Candy for the Creative Mind

Jay Hilgert — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 18:56:36 +0000

After some digging around, I’ve compiled a list of some of the best Flickr Groups, Photosets, and blog posts from around the web for your business card inspirational enjoyment. A little eye candy for the creative mind, if you will. Alright, here we go.