Are you sick of your type looking plain and boring? Many OpenType fonts have alternate characters built into them that can transform your type into a beautiful piece of art. By using these alternate characters you can add things like flourishes and flair to your type with ease. Some type faces have alternate characters that can help out with legibility at smaller sizes. Even some handwritten fonts have alternate characters to change the style of a characters to make it seem more handwritten. In this article we will take a deep dive into using alternate characters.

Photoshop enables endless options for image creation, an invaluable tool for designers and digital artists. A great way to create a stylish natural look in website and print design, and in digital painting, is to use natural brushes. There are loads of natural brushes available from fellow designers on Deviant Art and across the Internet; many are free to download and use as long as the designer is credited and linked to. This post brings together 24 of the best natural brushes divided thematically, perfect resources for introducing the flourish of natural elements to your digital design work.

You have definitely seen Demen1’s designs scattered across design blogs, t-shirts and posters. There is no missing his unique design style and highly detailed typography. I recently had the opportunity to sit down with my long time friend Steve Goodin to interview him on life, design, and what sets him apart.

Removing a background from an image is a common task that every designer needs to do on an almost regular basis. There are so many ways that you can extract a subject from its background to end up with a transparent background. With all the different ways, there is really is no exact method that you should take every time. Depending on the background or complexity is how you should determine which method you should take.

Generative art as defined by Philip Galanter is, “Any art practice where the artist creates a process, such as a set of natural language rules, a computer program, a machine, or other mechanism, which is then set to motion with some degree of autonomy contributing to or resulting in a complete work of art.”

I became a huge fan of generative art after I went to a presentation by Joshua Davis at Adobe Max. His presentation was on his new experimental work, titled “space”. It was a real treat to see how Joshua pushes himself and his work to the next level. He is by far a master in this area. You can watch the presentation here.

How many times have you said, “I wish Photoshop had…” or “Photoshop should be able to…”? I say those phrases almost every time I use Photoshop. I have been using Photoshop since its early days and as each new version comes out, they include some very neat and stunning features, but usually lack features that I hoped for.

With Photoshop CS5 coming out soon (most likely in April 2010), I created a list of the top 10 most requested features that I believe would make Photoshop a more powerful and time saving tool. I have listed each of the requested features that I hope to be included in the next version. In some cases, I have even included workarounds; like utilizing 3rd party software or taking some extra steps to get to the desired outcome.