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Inspirational and Creative Web Links From PSD Vault Facebook Fan Page – Vol.2

James Qu — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 13:17:48 +0000

Hi there, welcome to the 2nd volume of the “Inspirational and Creative Web Links From PSD Vault Facebook Fan Page” series! In this post, I hand-picked 15 Inspirational and Creative Web Links From PSD Vault Facebook Fan Page, out of hundreds of links I collected in the past few months.

Meanwhile, If you wish to get more, simply join the PSD Vault Facebook Fan Page. Fresh Photoshop and design links are added everyday.

For your convenience, I have put those links into 3 categories: Photoshop tutorials, Design inspirations and other Photoshop resources.

Here goes the list, hope you enjoy them and find them useful!

Photoshop Tutorials

Creating Retro Folded Typography Using Photoshop

Create Blood and Milk Typography Poster in Photoshop

100% Non-destructive manipulation: Create a glamour scene in Photoshop

How to Break an Egg in Photoshop

Making a Book of Magical Playground Scene

Design Inspirations

40 Creative Advertisements With Unexpected Ideas

33 Amazing Examples of Monochromatic Photography

40 most breathtaking landscape wallpapers to adorn your desktop

Triangle Poster Design Inspiration: 35 Mind-Blowing Examples

25 Beautiful 3D Abstract Artwork

50 Informative and Well-Designed Infographics

Other Photoshop Resources

The Top 30 Text Effect Tutorials for Awesome Results

40 Handy Photoshop Custom Shape Sets: Save Time

35 Basic Tutorials to Get You Started with Photoshop

15 Awesome and Creative Fonts to Download

That’s it for this post! Hope you enjoy this collection and find those links useful. If you wish to get more, simply join the PSD Vault Facebook Fan Page. Fresh Photoshop and design links are added everyday.

Cheers and have a great day!

Inspirational and Creative Web Links From PSD Vault Facebook Fan Page – Vol.1

James Qu — Wed, 12 May 2010 12:44:42 +0000

Hi there, welcome to the 1st volume of the “Inspirational and Creative Web Links From PSD Vault Facebook Fan Page” series! In this post, I hand-picked 15 Inspirational and Creative Web Links From PSD Vault Facebook Fan Page, out of hundreds of links I collected in the past few months.

Due to time limitation I can only select 15 best, and most popular links from the fanpage. So if you wish to get more, simply join the PSD Vault Facebook Fan Page now. Fresh Photoshop and design links are added every day.

For your convenience, I have put those links into three categories: Photoshop tutorials, Design inspirations and other Photoshop resources.

Here goes the list, hope you enjoy them and find them useful.

Photoshop Tutorials

Create a Realistic Landscape from Scratch with a Graphic Tablet

Combine 3D Shapes and Vectors for a Dynamic Composition

Sci-fi Environment Concept

Create a Dark Steampunk Digital Painting

How To Create A Grungy And “Sticky” Icon With Photoshop

Design Inspirations

Spectacular Photos of Crepuscular Rays

90 Creative Advertisements You Will Listen To

High Speed Photography : Frozen in Time

Examples of Amazing Animal PhotoManipulation

50 Beautiful Print Advertisements for Inspiration

Other Photoshop Resources

100+ Photography Enhancing Photoshop Actions

45 breathtakingly realistic CG Portraits of women + Tutorials

40 Best Photoshop Tutorials for Creating Fantasy Scenes

40 Outstanding Photo Manipulation Tutorials

30+ Free High Quality Gadget PSD Files

That’s it for this post! Hope you enjoy this collection and find those links useful. Cheers and have a great day!

22 (Really) Unbelievable Human Photo Manipulation Artworks

James Qu — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 13:19:35 +0000

In this post, I will showcase you 20 (Perhaps) the Most Unbelievable Human Photo Manipulation Artworks to boost your inspiration. Those works are mixed with surreal, or even bizarre concepts, and the techniques used in those artworks are simply top-class – that’s why I call them unbelievable.

I personally think you will lots of creativity in those works and hopefully they can give you tons of inspiration for your next design.

Please remember, if you like those works, click on them and drop a comment or two to support those great artist, they deserve it :)

Here goes the list, enjoy!

That’s it for this post! Hope you enjoy those artworks and find them inspirational!

Cheers and have a great day :)

Creativity Fine-Tuning: Best of PSD Vault Flickr Group – Vol. 17

James Qu — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 09:52:41 +0000

Welcome to the 17th volume of “Creativity Fine-Tuning: Best of PSD Vault Flickr Group”, which is a showcase I run regularly here on psdvault.com featuring some fantastic, highly-creative design works in the PSD Vault Flickr Group.

Hope you enjoy those works as much as I did and find them inspirational! Meanwhile, if you have some cool designs and would like to share them here, you can simply join the PSD Vault Flickr group.

If you like those works, then show those awesome designers some support! Click on the image to visit the author’s flickr page and drop them a comment :)

Here goes the list, enjoy!

Oh by the way, just to like to let you know there are now over 10,000 amazing artworks in PSD Vault Flickr Group :) and For those who sumbitted their work or accepted my invitation, THANK YOU SO MUCH!

That’s it for the 17th volume of Creativity Fine-Tuning: Best of PSD Vault Flickr Group! Hope you enjoy those works as much as I did and find them inspirational. I would love to hear your thoughts of those works, just drop a comment below :)

Till next time, have a nice day!

25 Absolutely Magical Fantasy Traditional Art Drawings

James Qu — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 06:58:59 +0000

Fantasy, surreal sytle drawings has always been a favourite topic for me. If you have been following PSD Vault for a while, you will notice a lot of my tutorials here are based on Fantasy Styles :)

Thanks to the wonderful invention of scanner, we will be able to see those works on computer, instead of paper or canvas.

In this post, I will showcase 25 Beautiful, Absolutely Magical Traditional Art Fantasy Drawings as a source of your inspiration. Some of them are done in watercolor and some of them are pencil drawing. Nonetheless they look amazing! Hope you enjoy them!

If you like those works, please visit the source page and give those artists some applause! Simply click on images to access their source.

Here goes the list, enjoy!

That’s it for this post! Hope you enjoy those works as much as I did!

Till next time, have a great day!

25 Beautiful and Creative Artworks Featuring Year 2010

James Qu — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 04:39:18 +0000

We’re are almost into the year of 2010! In this post, I will showcase my collection of 25 Absolutely Beautiful Artworks Featuring Year 2010, hopefully they will inspire you and give a boost to your new year spirit!

I would also like to take the opportunity to wish everyone a very Happy New Year, and thank you for all your support in 2009. I will continue working on PSD Vault and bring out more tutorials and features for everyone. After all, we all love Photoshop :)

Here goes the list, enjoy! (You can click on the image to view larger version on Flickr or DeviantArt)

That’s it for this post! I hope you enjoy these artworks and have a wonderful new year!

Creativity Fine-Tuning: Best of PSD Vault Flickr Group – Vol. 16

James Qu — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 09:51:17 +0000

Welcome to the 16th volume of “Creativity Fine-Tuning: Best of PSD Vault Flickr Group”, which is a showcase I run regularly here on psdvault.com featuring some fantastic, highly-creative design works in the PSD Vault Flickr Group.

Hope you enjoy those works as much as I did and find them inspirational! Meanwhile, if you have some cool designs and would like to share them here, you can simply join the PSD Vault Flickr group.

If you like those works, then show those awesome designers some support! Click on the image to visit the author’s flickr page and drop them a comment :)

Here goes the list, enjoy!

That’s it for the 16th volume of Creativity Fine-Tuning: Best of PSD Vault Flickr Group! Hope you enjoy those works as much as I did and find them inspirational. I would love to hear your thoughts of those works, just drop a comment below :)

Till next time, have a nice day!

Community Discussion: How to Deal With Creativity Dry-Up?

James Qu — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 12:52:20 +0000

I guess this is the ultimate issue every designer (no matter whether you’re a freelancer or not) will have to face eventually – to deal with the time when your creative awesomeness, once your greatest asset, disappears into the thin air without a trace.

You may sit in front of your computer and try your best to regain your power, but you find no matter what you do, you just can’t see that light at the end of the tunnel. And if your project/assignment deadline is something like, umm, tomorrow… well, that’s it mate. End of story.

This brings us back to this question: How to Deal With Creativity Dry Up? What Would You Do if Lacking of Inspiration? What’s YOUR best way of regaining creativity?

So people, participate this discussion and send me your way(s) of dealing with lacking of Inspiration and regaining creativity via contact me or, alternatively, send me a message via my twitter. (Please remember to put your name, your website (if any) so I can link back to you!)

I will also start collecting answers from interviews and post them here in this post.

There will be a permanent button link on the sidebar for assess to this post.

Although everyone is different, I do hope this post can give you an idea or two when your creativity runs dry.

The answers start here …

Answers 1

I keep a bookmark folder of examples for web design, typography, print media, etc. all organized so I can quickly go back to them.

From ajdigitalfocus via twitter – http://www.linkedin.com/in/ajdigitalfocus

Answers 2

I would go in a cafe or a library to read some books and the topic isn’t important. I would go outside for a walk in the park.

From Michael Jedrzejczyk via twitter - http://www.emdesigns.de/

Creativity Fine-Tuning: Best of PSD Vault Flickr Group – Vol. 15

James Qu — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 12:33:52 +0000

Welcome to the 15th volume of “Creativity Fine-Tuning: Best of PSD Vault Flickr Group”, which is a showcase I run regularly here on psdvault.com featuring some fantastic, highly-creative design works in the PSD Vault Flickr Group.

Hope you enjoy those works as much as I did and find them inspirational! Meanwhile, if you have some cool designs and would like to share them here, you can simply join the PSD Vault Flickr group.

If you like those works, then show those awesome designers some support! Click on the image to visit the author’s flickr page and drop them a comment :)

Here goes the list, enjoy!

That’s it for the 15th volume of Creativity Fine-Tuning: Best of PSD Vault Flickr Group! Hope you enjoy those works as much as I did and find them inspirational. I would love to hear your thoughts of those works, just drop a comment below :)

Till next time, have a nice day!

Interview with Awesome Graphic Designer and Photoshopper Mhark De Guzman

James Qu — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 05:02:52 +0000

Welcome to another interview here on PSD Vault! This time we have Mhark De Guzman, an awesome graphic designer I came arcoss while browsing on Flickr. I was really amazed about the design of the works and the creativity behind them, not to mention the awesome effects in those works.

Hence I sought to have a chat with him about a series of questions I have in mind and sent him a Flickr mail – and thought I would share his answers to my questions with the reader of PSD Vault.

Hope you enjoy this interview and if you like to check out more of Mhark’s work, visist him on his Flickr page at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/32188606@N03/!

Thanks for taking the time to be interviewed on PSD Vault. Could you please introduce yourself to our readers ?

Hi there :D…im Mhark De Guzman a.k.a Aboynamedmhark, 23 y/o and im a Graphic designer from Philippines.

Is graphic design something that you’ve always been interested in? Can you give us a bit of idea of how did you get into this field?

My mentor(Shufflepath) encourage me to go into this kind of art, I liked photo manipulation very much..for me its very simple and easy…you just need right stocks for your piece and thats it.. just play on photoshop and explore everything…put something that comes from your mind and … enjoy it :D

Your works seem to be a mixture of C4D and Photoshop, what’s your experience with these two software?

c4ds are not mine, some of c4d renders i used are from Deviantart. I’m a pure Photoshop user, mixtures of c4ds and light FX + nice stock are pretty cool for me..eye catching also :D..

Inspiration is something designers constantly seek, what would you do to find inspiration for your design work if it happens to dry out?

Browsing net, looking for eyecatching creation designed by the other great artist, plus music too :D…if im not into mood to make a design..i dont force myself :D.

Do you follow any design blogs? Any favourite artist?

I’m not into blog…more on forums…GFX forums…my fave artist is also my mentor…Shufflepath…also a Filipino Designer…he put me into this GFX world…i admire his artwork much…and he is the one who always helped me with all my questions about graphics…specially in FX..I also Admire PoisonVectors for his unique pieces…mixtures of C4Ds and light FX..always caught my attention…and gave me inspirations also :D

Are you a freelancer? If yes, what’s your experience in terms of attracting clients?

Nope, I worked as Graphic designer at the advertising company.

You have quite an extensive gallery here on flickr. Out of those work, what’s your most favourite one? Could you give us a bit of idea of the design process of it?

My greatest manipulation ever …”Curse of Nature”..took me 3 days to finished that piece..also won in Large Art of the Month themed “Supernatural” in a Filipino forum..inspired in “trapped and submerge” artwork of my mentor.

My first plan for that piece is to make just a fairy..but word “curse” comes to my mind, then i decided to make a manipulation which involving the fairy + curse effect + nature concept. Thanks to the owner of the stocks i used in that art.

That concludes this post! Hope you enjoy those works as much as I did and this interview. If you like to check out more of Mhark’s work, visist him on his Flickr page at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/32188606@N03/!

If you would like to be featured here on PSD Vault, simply contact me :)

Creativity Fine-Tuning: Best of PSD Vault Flickr Group – Vol. 14

James Qu — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 14:49:47 +0000

Welcome to the 14th volume of “Creativity Fine-Tuning: Best of PSD Vault Flickr Group”, which is a showcase I run fortnightly here on psdvault.com featuring some fantastic, highly-creative design works in the PSD Vault Flickr Group.

Hope you enjoy those works as much as I did and find them inspirational! Meanwhile, if you have some cool designs and would like to share them here, you can simply join the PSD Vault Flickr group.

Here goes the list, enjoy! (You can click on the image to view the author’s flickr page)

That’s it for the 14th volume of Creativity Fine-Tuning: Best of PSD Vault Flickr Group! Hope you enjoy those works as much as I did and find them inspirational. I would love to hear your thoughts of those works, just drop a comment below :)

Till next time, have a nice day!

5 (Really) Awesome Wallpaper + Designer Interviews from Wallpaperart.org

James Qu — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 15:12:28 +0000

I collect wallpaper for my computer all the time as a hobby, and I do use them as a source for inspiration. Recently I discoverd a great new site called Wallpaperart.org, where they collect a set of high quality wallpaper from designers around the world – and the great thing about this site is they not only collect wallpaper, but also to interview the author/designers who made them. What a great combination! You get to download the wallpaper, plus reading into the info those great designers share!

In this post, I will showcase you 5 (Really) Amazing Collection of Wallpaper + Designer Interviews from Wallpaperart.org. Hope you enjoy them and find them inspirational. For more, hop onto their website and take a look yourself :)

Here is what’s on their “About” page, thought the message was quite unique:

WallpaperArt is not just another random wallpaper library. Our goal is to select the most exclusive, the most special, the most incredible wallpapers you can possibly find online and at the same time bring the artist and the user closer together.

Our aim is to inform our readers about the latest Wallpaper trends and information about the artists behind the beautiful artwork. By providing interviews with the designers and a look behind the scene we try to bring the wallpaper scene to a new level.

- Source: Wallpaperart.org

Ok enough talk, here goes the list, enjoy!

Luuk Vermeyden

Luuk Vermeyden, a young respected artist from the Netherlands also known as Jaxe, has made us an exclusive wallpaper. His beautiful retouching skills and creative mind truly worked their magic on this amazing composition. Get the know this wonderful artist and grab this gorgeous eye-candy for your desktop.

Igor Scekic

Igor Šćekić, who doesn’t know him? Well if you don’t, this should be a truly interesting interview. For those who’re not sure, he’s also known as Virus69 on deviantArt and art groups like slashTHREE and evokeONE. Igor has made a truly amazing wallpaper to be featured on WallpaperArt. So now you’ve two good reasons to click that “read more” button and find out more about this amazing artist and his exclusive wallpaper.

Rogier de Boeve

What it even makes better is that we returned with a new interview with Belgian artist Rogier de Boevé! He’ s been so kind to make us a truly wicked wallpaper and took the time to give his opinion about online community activity and what has been his inspiration for his wonderful work. Get to know this great artists and grab his lovely artwork to put on your desktop.

Skam

Maksimilijan Gečević is a Croatian artist also know as Skam. He’s a member of Slashthree Art group and is a truly master in photo manipulation. In the following interview he will explain you how he got in to it and how he learned it! He also made this wonderful wallpaper for you, free to download in this post ! Enjoy !

Saad Moosajee

This week we had a chance to finish an interview with 15 year-old self-taught illustrator, Saad Moosaje . Let’s have a chat about how a young artist like him combines school with client work. Sit back and enjoy the interview..

In fact this interview freaks me out a bit … I wondered what was I doing when I was 15, studying Chemistry in High School perhaps…

Ok that’s it for this post, hope you enjoy those wallpaper and interviews from wallpaperart.org and find them inspirational!

Creativity Fine-Tuning: Best of PSD Vault Flickr Group – Vol. 13

James Qu — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 13:53:14 +0000

Welcome to the 13th volume of “Creativity Fine-Tuning: Best of PSD Vault Flickr Group”, which is a showcase I run fortnightly here on psdvault.com featuring some fantastic, highly-creative design works in the PSD Vault Flickr Group.

Hope you enjoy those works as much as I did and find them inspirational! Meanwhile, if you have some cool designs and would like to share them here, you can simply join the PSD Vault Flickr group.

Here goes the list, enjoy!

You can click on the image to view the work on Flickr and then access author’s flickr homepage.

That’s it for the 13th volume of Creativity Fine-Tuning: Best of PSD Vault Flickr Group! Hope you enjoy those works as much as I did and find them inspirational. I would love to hear your thoughts of those works, just drop a comment below :)

Till next time, have a nice day!

20 Ultra-Creative, High Quality Free Wallpaper for Your Beloved iPhone

James Qu — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 07:44:00 +0000

I just bought an iPhone and I have to admit I’m now totally in love with it. (This doesn’t mean I’m an apple fan yet, just purely speaking of iPhone). As a result, I decided to find some nice iPhone Wallpaper for it, and bumped into this site iphone-room.com. They have some really nice ones and I decided to showcase some of best of ones from them.

In this post, I will showcase 20 Ultra-Stylish, High Quality iphone Wallpaper, absolutely free to download from iphone-room.com. You will be amazed how much creativity you can put in to a 320 x 480px iPhone screen, just the same as for the big computer screens.

Here goes the list, enjoy!

That’s it for this post! Hope you enjoy this wallpaper for iPhone :)

Till next time, have a great day!

Creativity Fine-Tuning: Best of PSD Vault Flickr Group – Vol. 12

James Qu — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 14:20:30 +0000

Welcome to the 12th volume of “Creativity Fine-Tuning: Best of PSD Vault Flickr Group”, which is a showcase I run fortnightly here on psdvault.com featuring some fantastic, highly-creative design works in the PSD Vault Flickr Group.

Hope you enjoy those works as much as I did and find them inspirational! Meanwhile, if you have some cool designs and would like to share them here, you can simply join the PSD Vault Flickr group.

Here goes the list, enjoy!

You can click on the image to view the work on Flickr and then access author’s flickr homepage.

That’s it for the 12th volume of Creativity Fine-Tuning: Best of PSD Vault Flickr Group! Hope you enjoy those works as much as I did and find them inspirational. I would love to hear your thoughts of those works, just drop a comment below :)

Till next time, have a nice day!

30 Amazing HD Wallpaper to Spice Up Your Desktop

James Qu — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 08:24:05 +0000

Wallpaper is probably the most important component of every person’s computer (Although they don’t actually have any function, nor contribute to the system performance). I personally found that I get tons of inspiration and motivation from my collection of wallpaper. Anyway, they’re the first thing to see what I turn my computer on!

In this post, I will share 30 amazing high definition wallpaper from wallpapers-room.com to spice up your desktop. Each wallpaper is linked back to its download page and from there you can select different sizes to suit your screen. Hope you enjoy them!

By the way, check out wallpapers-room.com if you like, they have some really awesome wallpapers, all free to download :)

That’s it for this post! Hope you enjoy those wallpaper :)

Till next time, have a great day!

30 Stunning, Absolutely Magical Photo Manipulations Focusing on Human Eye

James Qu — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 06:09:40 +0000

Always beautiful to look at, unqiuely presented on every person on this planet, Human Eye is an element being used over and over again by designers for a varieity of works. Lately, I have seen a lot of photo manipulations done fucusing on a single Human Eye, and frankly, I really enjoy those works and am amazed by the imagination and inspiration that those works provide.

Therefore I decide to collect 30 Stunning, Absolutely Magical Photo Manipulations Focusing on Human Eye from deviantArt.com and share them with you guys, hopefully you enjoy those works as much as I did!

Here goes the list, enjoy! (You can click on the image to access those works on deviantart.com)

That’s it for this post! Hope you enjoy those works (you’ve probably seen enough of eyes already :) ) and have a great day!

Amazing Wallpaper Crafted by Digital Artist Moustafa Hassan

James Qu — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 08:12:36 +0000

In this post, I present you two really cool (in my opinion at least) widescreen wallpaper free for download. They’re crafted by Moustafa Hassan, a digital artist based in Alexandria, VA, United States. If you wish, you can check out his portfolio on Behance, Flickr, or follow him on Twitter.

Personally I think creating Wallpaper is a really great thing to do if you just start as a graphic designer. The reason is that it gives you a lot of freedom and you can simply let your creativity run wild. And because of this freedom, it gives you a lot of opportunities to explore different desgin techniques, especially if you’re using Photoshop. You may think: what if I try a different setting, would the result be totally different?

Ok that’s enough talk, here is a preview of the two wallpaper done by Moustafa, hope you enjoy them!

Please click here to download this two wallpaper, sized 1920 * 1200px.

and by the way, if you have any wallpaper you think it’s cool, simply contact me and I will get back to you asap. Don’t forget to include a link to your Portfolio so I can take a look the work beforehand.

Cheers and have a great day!

Creativity Fine-Tuning: Best of PSD Vault Flickr Group – Vol. 11

James Qu — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 13:44:37 +0000

Welcome to the 11st volume of “Creativity Fine-Tuning: Best of PSD Vault Flickr Group”, which is a showcase I run fortnightly here on psdvault.com featuring some fantastic, highly-creative design works in the PSD Vault Flickr Group.

Hope you enjoy those works as much as I did and find them inspirational! Meanwhile, if you have some cool designs and would like to share them here, you can simply join the PSD Vault Flickr group.

You can simply click on the images to view them on Flickr and access the author’s photostream from there.

Here goes the list, enjoy!

That’s it for the 11st volume of Creativity Fine-Tuning: Best of PSD Vault Flickr Group! Hope you enjoy those works as much as I did and find them inspirational. I would love to hear your thoughts of those works, just drop a comment below :)

Till next time, have a nice day!

Interview with Aspiring Graphic and Web Designer Elena Savitskaya

James Qu — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 07:00:49 +0000

Hello and Welcome to the new Interview section I set up here on PSD Vault! In the section, I will publish a series of interviews I had with some turly amazing web and graphic designers around the world, and share their experiences and stories with the readers here. It’s also my wish to help promote those fine designers at international level, based on the decent amount of traffic PSD Vault generates on a daily basis.

In this first interview, we have Elena Savitskaya – an Amazing and Aspiring Graphic and Web Designer from London, UK. I came across her work from flickr and was immediately impressed by the skill and talent displayed in those works, not to mention that her work has been featured on Advanced Photoshop Magazine!

Here goes Elena’s story, hope you enjoy this interview and if you wish, check out Elena’s website for more!

Firstly, thank you so much for taking the time to do this interview. Would you mind giving a little personal background information about yourself and your websites for our readers?

Well, first of all thank you James for asking me to do an interview for one of my favourite blogs. My personal background is a bit mad to be honest. I was born in south of Russia, in a place that none of you probably ever heard of, a small city called Orenburg. I’m actually really proud of myself, being born in a small place people don’t get much choices and motivation to make it big carrier-wise.

But i was odd one out i guess. As my favourite painter Salvador Dali said: “At the age of six I wanted to be a cook. At seven I wanted to be Napoleon. And my ambition has been growing steadily ever since.” I grew up in a family of two big business people and i guess that’s where ambition comes from. At some point i was told “you are going to England to study and we’re afraid you don’t have a choice to say “no”. So i ended up in UK, i am still in London and i’m hugely grateful for all the experience that I’m gaining here.

Jumping back a little, first time I’ve produced some sort of artwork happened ages ago when i was 5. Me and my family went for some sort of safari in woods in south Russia and i’ve seen an awesome butterfly, once we got back home my grandmother equipped me with paint and brushes and i did my first little “masterpiece” of that butterfly. I think my granny still has that picture somewhere. But on a serious side, i come from Marketing and Business Management background; all of my studies were based around those two subjects. Currently i’m continuing my Business Management studies in London , writing for my design/marketing Designwithathought.com and freelancing. You can also visit my portfolio at www.elenasavitskaya.com.

Is graphic design something that you’ve always been interested in? Can you give us a bit of idea of how did you get into this field?

At one point in life when i was a teenager i had to find a job and pretty urgently, being a teenager applying for a marketing job would be pretty much pointless. Being a waitress wasn’t a choice either, as i knew I’m capable of much more than that.

So i started looking at options to work from home, designing little things in Photoshop and Illustrator was a small hobby of mine, but then the light bulb moment came and i realised that i could turn this into a job. From there i started doing some free projects for friends to build up my portfolio, reading (a lot of reading) blogs about design and books, loads of them. In fact all the background knowledge i was looking for to become a decent designer came from books. You can find a lot of tutorials online, but to get serious with it, you have to read books.

Bit by bit, I’ve build up my portfolio, skills and experience. And at some point Advanced Photoshop magazine contacted me saying that they found my work on deviantart.com and asked me to do a 5 page tutorial which then turned into a cover artwork as well. I was so incredibly proud of myself. From being nobody to getting featured in a magazine that i was learning off was a massive personal achievement.

Are you a freelancer? If yes, what’s your best methods in terms of finding/attracting clients?

Yes, i am a freelancer. And this is a hard question :). To be honest the strategy turned out like this: I started by just advertising on local websites like gumtree.com etc, and once i had a small client base i turned mainly to entertainment industry as it’s the best one for my type of work and most fun to work with to be honest. And as a lot of people know each other in that industry, being reliable and thoughtful with your clients gave my clients a reason to spread the word about me.

It grew from there. Right now my main tool for finding clients is probably online exposure, websites such as deviantart.com, behance.net, redbubble.com and my portfolio and blog of course. The more you expose your work, the more attention/clients you are going to get. Pitching works sometimes too, if you are an expert in one particular niche, doing some e-mail pitching can work, just be prepared that clients can be very cheeky and if you’re the one contacting them they will drive a hard bargain.

Inspiration is something designers constantly seek, what would you do to find inspiration for your design work if it happens to dry out?

CHOCOLATE! Just joking :), but it actually works sometimes too. Design books, new knowledge, are always a massive source of motivation and inspiration for me. My family, my boyfriend – best man on the planet and a massive support. I visit a lot of galleries and exhibitions too, i get a lot of inspiration from Salvador Dali paintings, and classic art, Da Vinci, Raphael , those guys really knew what they were doing, imagine, no TV’s, no internet, no distractions from what you’re doing. Those were the proper geeks, guys! So much to learn from them, if you just dig a tiny bit deeper, rather than just looking at the picture.

Sometimes when you’re out of inspiration simply switching on a random radio station works too. And a very important thing to do in order not to run out of inspiration – give yourself a break every now and then, don’t work 24/7, you will start to hate it then.

Do you follow any design blog? If yes, what’s your favourite ones?

Hell yeah! A lot of them, this psdvault included. My RSS reader is seriously overcrowded. Among favourites: Smashing Magazine, Abduzeedo, PSDTuts, Tutorial9, Freelance Folder.

And lastly, thank you once again for the interview. Before we go, could you give the readers a bit of intro of your current project and future plans?

My biggest current project is my blog, I’m in the process of writing up a lot of content for it. Tutorials, articles, book reviews and some very interesting things that no one was writing about yet, i will also concentrate a lot how design and marketing should work together, which is the main point in my blog.

I am also currently working on a few exciting projects with my clients which will surely end up in my portfolio, I’m also opened for artwork commissions, it’s very interesting to do. And the top secret project of mine involves video, but I’m not going to give it away just yet. I hope you will hear about it once it’s out :). Thank you once again for a great opportunity and keep up your amazing work on this blog, i will surely stay tuned.

That concludes this interview with Elena Savitskaya, a London based Aspiring web and graphic designer. For more info and get in touch with her, please log on to http://elenasavitskaya.com/.

And lastly, if you would like to be featured here on PSD Vault, simply contact me and send me some sample of your work, and I will be in touch with you.

Cheers and have a great day!