Well the great news is my design is a finalist in the final run; now it’s up for a public vote and I need your help in making mine the winner! What’s in it for me you ask? well unfortunately I’m just a poor graphic designer… I can’t offer monetary compensation – but you will have the satisfaction of knowing that you are part of why I won! That should be enough to hold you over with excellent karma for at least half a year! What a deal!

But in all seriousness: I put a lot of time and love into that design (even found a way to help others learn from it) and would really love to have it published and printed (nationwide too!).

Please take a moment and vote for my design here:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/ICAW_2011_Poster_Poll

I really appreciate it!

I started by taking all the images I had taken, and used Photoshop to photo-merge them into a single panorama; the graf art is very wide.

[TIP] To Photo Merge many files into one, with all the files open inside Photoshop, click File -> Automate -> Photomerge and choose the type of layout, then click “Add open files” … The box will populate with the filenames of all open documents -> Click OK

I have the finished piece available in 300 dpi JPG image at 11,629 x 1,707 pixels, and the rest available in 3 separate sections in 2,500 pix wide, 300 dpi PNG files with transparent backgrounds.

Get Graffiti Wide JPG (375) 3MB
Get Graf 01 PNG (329) 4MB	Get Graf 02 PNG (319) 3MB	Get Graf 03 PNG (303) 3MB

Check out Media Militia for a great Graffiti Brushes/Texture resource.

These were created using resources and tutorials from MediaMilitia.com – They have amazing Freebies and great tutorials you just HAVE to check out.

These wallpapers all measure 320px wide by 480px tall

Download 20 free iphone wallpapers (403) (1 MB Zip)

[Article Edit 3/17/10]:
My apologies to those of you browsing to my site on your iPhone / iPod Touch – Since you cannot get these wallpapers in the ZIP file, I’ve included the loose JPG’s just for you!

[When using your iPhone] Click the link and then press and hold the small (looking) image and choose Save Image – it will be the right size after you save it.

Click thumbnail for screenshot example

Please enjoy!

Download:

• Leather Texture 01 (830)
• Leather Texture 02 (808)
• Leather Texture 03 (537)
• Leather Texture 04 (542)
• Leather Texture 05 (525)
• Leather Texture 06 (626)
• Leather Texture 07 (482)
• Leather Texture 08 (513)
• Leather Texture 09 (543)
• Leather Texture 10 (639)
• Leather Texture 11 (595)
• Leather Texture 12 (548)

This will really just cover how to add a pattern to the text, without much fuss or sweat; I did notice that the pattern I chose turned out to not work great in this instance, so be careful on the pattern you choose beforehand to make sure it will tile well (within text).

Okay, let’s get started: First off head over to a really kool site Patternwall.com to find a good tilable pattern.

Patternwall has a really neat system for picking a pattern, simply click on a swatch to see it tiled:

and click the download text to download the pattern you want; I chose to open this JPG file with Illustrator since that’s where we’re going to using it.

So this is your swatch opened in Illustrator – some swatches from Patternwall.com are bigger than others.

So at this point we want to convert this rasterized, 72 dpi image into a vector image with points/paths etc. We are going to use the Live Trace function to achieve this, but before you go hitting the “Live Trace” button on your toolbar there, we need to approach it from a better angle:
With the pattern image selected, click on Object -> Live Trace -> Tracing Options:

And you get a dialog box that pops up like so:

Choose “color” as the mode, and the default of 6 colors is fine; if you check the “preview” box you will see the output results on your screen – this is very handy when playing with something and not knowing the best results beforehand.

When you see the results you like, hit the “Trace” button in the box; the dialog box will disappear and you will be back on the main stage of Illy. Close to the upper-right of the toolbar has a button labeled “expand”. while the traced object is still selected, click on Expand.

Now open your Swatches palette by clicking on Window -> Swatches if it’s not already open.

Drag the expanded object from the stage into the Swatches pallet. This makes a swatch from the selected artwork.

Now start with a blank document – we’re going to type out some text.

Once you have your text, keep it selected and make sure the “fill” not the stroke is selected on the main toolbar. Then click on the pattern we created in the Swatches pallet.

The pattern is applied to the Fill of the text, but the first result isn’t ideal. We are going to transform the pattern inside the text to find a better fit.

Open the Transform dialog box by clicking on Window -> Transform.

For this step we want to make sure we transform only the pattern and not the object. In the upper-right corner of the Transform box there is an icon that looks like 3 lines and a downward-pointing triangle. Click this and choose from the dropdown menu “Transform Pattern Only”

You can play with the numbers until you get a result you like.

Adding a stroke to the outside of the text will help it stand out from any background you may be using.

I wasn’t too thrilled with the pattern at the very end so decided to try another pattern from Patternwall; here is the final result:

There is a lot you can do with this feature, and the text is completely editable so can be changed to read whatever you like. I hope you found this useful.

Check it out here: http://mediamilitia.com/smoke-pack-75-free-images/

Download all 8 textures after the jump. Enjoy!

Download Orkron Rock Texture Set (181)

I was really impressed by his (Caleb’s) bubble texture set I wanted to share.

Go on over to lostandtaken.com to get the textures yourself!

Head over to Bittbox.com to preview/download the textures.