Love gives people the kick they need to create amazing artworks. Here you can download a “Vector Art Heart” set with hearts in red, green and yellow – perfect for a wedding invitation or a Valentine card.

Love is in the Air

It’s about summer, sweetness and bees…. bzzzz…..

Free Bees – Vector Characters

For many, social media sites could be just a virtual place to express your voice or have some fun. For the enterprising ones, social media sites could mean serious business.

You probably do not have to move your mouth to talk to the right people but the good news is, they will still "hear" you. You would be amazed at the powerful connections that social media sites have. All it takes is a click and you could probably be publishing a very valuable piece of information for your prospective clients or bosses.

Here we have analyzed 5 popular social media sites based on the following criteria: Communication, Brand exposure and Traffic to your sites. You could find out which social media site best suits your purpose and which social media sites could bring your message to the right people better. A snapshot of our take on the 5 social media sites is shown through star ratings that would give you a gist of our recommendations and a quick estimation of their effectiveness.

1. FaceBook

Facebook is a fastest-growing popular online platform that enables customization of user interface, which also includes installing applications to personalize the experience further. Users are connected to their friends very quickly as they could receive notifications when someone in their network has made changes or updates to his/her current profile or status.

Communication: 4/5 stars
With the help of notifications, the convenient and simple platform allows the ease and swiftness of communication. Besides, accessing FaceBook with mobiles has become an increasing phenomenon. Users can share opinions, join groups, hold events and participate in contests conveniently.

Brand exposure: 4/5 stars
Definitely great brand exposure. Users are able to get to know about you as long as their friends are “connected” to you. Users are able to view the necessary information they need to get to know you. Advertising platform on FaceBook could also increase your brand awareness significantly within your target audience.

Traffic to your sites: 3/5 stars
Moderate traffic to your sites with the aid of “share” and “like” buttons. Will attract only people who are interested in your profile.

How can you benefit?

If you are intending to create a professional online portfolio for networking purposes and attract future employers, FaceBook could be a useful channel, but do keep in mind of the content that you are publishing. You future employers might not want to see you being "tagged" in an album "A racy party at John’s".

If you are searching for a convenient way to find friends, family or acquaintances and get connected to them easily, FaceBook is a appropriate platform.

If you are organizing public events or gatherings, FaceBook is a great way to send out invitations. Invited people are also able to invite their friends for the event, depending on the privacy level that you select.

If you are seeking for advertising to reach out to your target audience, FaceBook could spread the word for you as the advertisements would appear to those who have indicated the related interest in their profile.

Who should use it?

Freelancers, entrepreneurs, organizers, advertisers and anyone who wants to connect with people.

2. LinkedIn

LinkedIn’s tagline “Relationships Matter” is very appropriate to show us what this social network does. Believing that people relationships is a valuable asset, LinkedIn serves to help individuals and companies to build and maintain them. This gives professionals an advantage to be more successful and productive in their careers by leveraging on as well as contributing their to own professional and trusted network.

Communication: 3/5 stars
Not spontaneous communication with others, but you could build an identity for yourself by answering enquiries related to your industry to demonstrate your expertise. A feature called Answers, is similar to a forum where users can post questions and contribute their related opinions or solutions.

Brand exposure: 5/5 stars
Certainly favorable for branding your identity for both individuals and companies. Users could get themselves connected to a people in the same interest of work and industry to build a network. Make the profile a complete one in order to leverage on this platform effectively.

Traffic to your site: 1/5 stars
Significant traffic might not be evident. Only potential clients and customers are more likely to visit your site.

How you can benefit from it?

If you are a fresh graduate, who is all ready to step into the working society, LinkedIn is a great starting place to prepare your resume and introduce your strengths and abilities to attract employers or recruiters to land in the profession you desire.

Also advantageous for job recruiters to seek for passive yet qualified job candidates to match them to the right job or profession.

If you are thinking of extending the web of your career network, LinkedIn is an excellent tool to facilitate you. Use the LinkedIn search to search for contacts in your email address lists who are already on LinkedIn. You would also be able to search alumni networks as indicated by your profile information to increase the chances of getting “connected” with the related people.

If you want to further develop and maintain professional relationships, LinkedIn definitely does more than what exchanging business cards can do. Provide necessary and extensive information in your profile and get yourself actively involved in the LinkedIn Answers or update your status to publicize your current project or work. Increase possiblities to get sale leads.

If you are looking for solutions for your current or interested industry, LinkedIn is a great place to search for serious and professional answers. Be sure to phrase your question in a direct and succinct manner as it would be more sound more authentic and people are more willing to share.

Who should use it?

Professionals in all industries. Also useful for job recruiters and headhunters.

3. MySpace

A large and diverse audience uses MySpace. Hence, it’s hard to tell who these people are. Available in 15 different languages, MySpace allows customization of profile and integration of features such and blogs, groups, bulletins, widgets. It seems to be widely used by the entertainment industry such as musicians, bands and comedians. Subsequently, it allows the rise of independent bands by providing a platform that bypasses the big players in the industry.

Communication: 2.5/5 stars
Similar to Facebook, users are able to send messages, add friends and comment on the profile page or find people from your email address. However, the pitfall of commenting on pages comes from a lot of necessary spamming.

Brand exposure: 3/5 stars
Branding could be done through customization of profile or adding videos (your own or others) to show your personality and interests. Blogging would help to build your brand awareness. Therefore, come up with witty yet insightful posts to reveal the true side of you. My SpaceAds also helps to run an effective online marketing campaign.

Traffic to your site: 1/5 stars
It could be difficult to get traffic to your site unless your name is very much sought after. This also means that you have to work on the branding of your name and identity. Focus on a target audience. Remember to moderate your comments page to avoid spamming and include genuine comments from the fans of your music.

How you can benefit from it?

For musicians, you could create your portfolio or repertoire of your own original music, not forgetting uploading of pictures, videos and playlists. Users could conveniently play your songs via the music player. Creating your video channels also helps to sustain your presence. For developers, you could create applications that can promote your web site.

For music producers who are on a search for new talents, you could learn more about uprising independent works and their popularity online.

My SpaceAds helps to run an effective online marketing campaign. You could design your own advertisement, choose who is able to view it based on profile characteristics such as listed gender and locations, and pay based on the number of clicks the advertisement receives.

Who should use it?

Independent bands. Cast aside the thought of sending in your music CDs and tapes to the recording companies for a moment, how about creating an online name or music identity? MySpace is a great place for you to get started and allow your music to be known to the rest of the world.

4. Twitter

Twitter is a popular microblogging system that enables users to send messages of 140 or less. It first started as a means to communicate within friends, family and coworkers and has evolved into a powerful social medium as a great and extremely fast way to disseminate information. Talk about the grape-vine. Twitter indeed illustrates the meaning. Even the 44th U.S president Barack Obama tweets.

Communication: 5/5 stars
Twitter allows spontaneous interaction in real time. Twitter clients on mobiles are getting popular and enables quick and easy communication. You would be able to track what people are saying about you or your related business competitors.

Brand exposure: 4/5 stars
Twitter allows engagement with people in a viral way. Loyal and satisfied customers or clients would “retweet” messages that they would love to recommend. Through constant and vital tweeting, your brand awareness would be enhanced. A short, sweet yet sufficient message would serve as a great marketing gimmick.

Traffic to your site: 3/5 stars
There is a fair amount of potential to garner traffic to your site, but it depends on how you promote or sell your website on Twitter. Under or over promotion can both turn your followers off.

How you can benefit from it?

Twitter is a practical and useful way of disseminating information of your organization online. Offer useful information such that target audience and your targeted customers or clients would be “following” you. To attract attention, use catchy and intelligent copywriting when tweeting. You could also follow related people who are in your area of business and interest and you can be assured of landing in the right network.

Who should use it?

News organizations, marketers and advertisers.

5. Digg

Playfully named as Digg, it is indeed a platform to dig for good stuff and release breaking news. Discovering and sharing websites is basically what Digg is about. Users “digg” for web content and submit links to Digg. These contents include from anything from technology to sports. Subsequently, Digg becomes a system that allows the internet audience to drive the type of quality of information on the web. The main repercussion is that there’s no editorial monitoring, so we must be careful when it comes to collecting data and information.

Communication: 3/5 stars
Communication might not be the the primary means in Digg. Users seldom use it as a form of communication. Readers could comment on the Digg page though.

Brand exposure: 4/5 stars
You would certainly able to leverage on the Digg website to create and sustain brand exposure. To create excellent brand exposure, be sure that your titles of your articles do not sound too much like advertisements but provide sufficient information to get readers interested and hungry.

Traffic to your site: 5/5 stars
Definitely drives traffic to your site as interested and hunger-driven Digg readers would click on the title that links to your site.

How you can benefit from it?

Digg creates the trend or the talking topic online as the Digg users discuss or vote for the topic that best interests them. For business entrepreneurs, you could search for popular and interesting topics that dominate over a period and decide for a niche market to enter. For advertisers and marketing, you could watch out for trends and headlines or content that cause users to get excited and vote for it.

Digg also serves as a valuable tool to keep track of news of business competitors. Any press releases about decisions made by business competitors and would eventually involve the consumers would likely to be “digged/dugged”. Hence, it is useful as a tool for PR monitoring.

Who should use it?

Online publishers, bloggers, marketers and PR personnel.

Conclusion

It is definitely not an exaggeration to say that social media websites are evolving to be (or are already) an integration into our lives. Especially for the younger generation, they are growing up in a world that seems smaller because communication has become much easier as compared to their grandfathers’ time. Interaction with a complete stranger from another side of the world doesn’t seem that strange after all.

The key is to remain competitive is to bring the resources to your advantage. Identify your needs to attain effective communication and then choose the right channels to broadcast your message.

With more advanced technology, better accessibility and better user experience are made possible. We can definitely expect a proliferation of social media websites and applications. People are interdependent and vital networking with others is definitely an asset.

Top Social Media Sites & How You Can Benefit From Them

If diamonds are womens’ best friends, cars and supercars are certainly men’s. These mean machines are attractive in many ways; the styles (interior and exterior), the speed and even engine sound make them hard to resist. Just because not all of us can own one of our dream cars, that doesn’t stop us from taking the best shot out of them.

Car photography is no easy task. Different techniques are used depending on whether they are prowling on the streets or stay put right before your lens. For amateur photographers, it takes great patience and a lot of practice before you can truly bring out the action and elegance in car photography. Panning shots is one of the most challenging things I’ve encountered while doing car photography. Choosing the background is important; the correct background can either gives your car a clear contrast or it can create significant dramatic effect. You don’t want to have a photo of your car blending into the complex city background or a sports car that looks stationary.

In today’s post, I’ve collected a total of 40 great looking shots of cars and I hope you’ll be inspired. Lastly I’d like to borrow this proverb from Curt Scott:

"A picture may indeed be worth 1,000 words, but one good photograph of your car is worth 10,000 crappy snapshots."

That’s what I thought about car photography. Full list after jump.

Mini Cooper
Created by folks at BMW, Mini cooper is the most successful since the original Mini. Mini cooper is available in 4 different variants, respectively Hardtop, Convertible, Clubman and Countryman.

Jaguar XK120
XK120 is an old vintage sports car first introduced by Jaguar in 1948 after it’s predecessor Jaguar SS100. The number 120 attached to the model name represent the top speed (120 mph) and XK120 was the fastest car ever made at it’s time.

Nissan 35OZ
2 seater Nissan sport car better know as the Nissan Fairlady Z.

Nissan GT-R (R35)
With a top speed of 193 mph or 311 km/h and capable of reaching 97 hm/h in 3.2 second, this notorious machine is certainly born to race.

Hummer H3T
Produced by General Motors (GM). Standing at 1.5meters tall, it is a midsize pickup truck based on the H3 model and is used as a media diversion from the Hummer H3.

Audi A6
The Audi A6 is 4 door executive car produced by the German automaker AUDI AG. It is available in both saloon, and Avant (Audi’s term for an estate) body styles.

Holden Coupe 60
The stunning Coupe 60 concept car is based on the underpinnings of the VE Commodore, a creation of Holden to celebrate their 60th anniversary of car manufacturing.

Iso Grifo 7
Created by the Italians in 1969, the Iso Grifo is a 2 door coupe with amazing horsepower of 400bhp at 52 rpm. It runs at a top speed of 186mph. A true Italian beauty, American muscle.

Bugatti Veyron EB 16.4
This Bugatti Veyron is a mid-engined full-sized grand touring car, one of the fastest and most expensive production road cars ever, with a top speed of 408.5 km/h (253.8 mph).

Isuzu DMAX
Much like a tri-athlete who can run, swim and bike, this car will enable you to drive through tough roads, load a variety of cargo and tow heavy leisure equipments like speedboat and horse carriers.

Chevrolet Camaro
Chevy’s 5th generation of Camaro shouldn’t much of a stranger to you. Remember Bumble-bee of Transformers? Camaro was also named the World Car Design of the Year at the World Car of the Year Awards.

Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG
This super sports car embodies a blend of consummate automotive fascination and high tech. It also delivers a compelling mix of purist styling, consistent lightweight design and superior driving dynamics and at the same time – the Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG fully lives up to all the expectations of hallmark Mercedes everyday practicality and optimum safety. A truely must-have car, if money is your luxury.

Smart Roadster Coupe Brabus
A hybrid of of individuality, small body size, attractive look and affordable price, the Smart Roadster is a must-have in the list of any sports car fans.

Ford V8 Pickup
Old is gold. This red 1936 Ford V8 Pickup is truely a classic of it’s days.

Audi RS4
The Audi RS4 quattro is the top tier and highest performing version of some specific generations of the Audi A4 range of automobiles. It is a sports-focused compact executive car, produced by Audi’s high-performance private subsidiary quattro GmbH, in limited numbers, for German car manufacturer AUDI AG, part of the larger Volkswagen Group. (wiki)

Lamborghini Murcielago LP640
Introduced by it’s manufacturer Lamborghini in 2006, this is a one of it’s own supercar. Comes in a standard coupe or convertible roadster.

Opel Vectra C
Also known as the Chevrolet Vectra, Holden Vectra or Vauxhall Vectra. It is available in 4-door saloon, 5-door hatchback and 5-door estate.

BMW E64 6 Series
Introduced in Autumn 2003 in Frankfurt Motor Show by German car manufacturer BMW. It comes as either a coupe or cabriolet (convertible) and in several engine variants ranging from a 3 litre straight-6 to 5 litre V10 in the M6 model. (wiki)

Spyker C8 Aileron
Equipt with an Audi 4.2 litre V8 engine and running at top speed of 300 km/h (186 mph), the dutch production Spyker C8 is one beautiful machine not to be missed on the street. It cost around $200,000 if you must know.

Dodge Caliber
The Dodge Caliber is a compact car produced by the Dodge division of Chrysler. It replaced the Neon, and went on sale in the spring of 2006 as a 2007 model year vehicle. (wiki)

Porsche Carrera GT
Porsche’s Carrera GT was a final production version of the concept car first seen at the 2001 Paris Auto Salon andthen released on 2004. It was Porsche’s first limited production supercar since 959 production stopped in 1988. On a side note, there are only about 1500 Porsche Carrera GT on the streets everywhere in the world.

TVR Tuscan Speed 6
Manufactured by TVR in 1999, the Tuscan Speed 6 sports car is equipt with an inline six engine and fiberglass body over tubular steel chassis.

Ferrari f430
The Ferrari F430 was a sports car produced by the Italian automaker Ferrari from 2004 to 2009, as a successor to the 360. It debuted at the 2004 Paris Motor Show. (wiki)

Audi TT Coupe
Two-door sports car introduced in 2006, Audi TT’s name is named after the Tourist Trophy motor-sports event held on the Isle of Man, in which a predecessor of the Audi brand competed. The price of a brand new Audi TT Coupe starts at $36,000.

BMW 335i Sedan
Rear-wheel drive, 300 horsepower, 3.0 liter 6-cylinder engine. This 3-series of BMW cost around $41,000 and it’s a great choice for executives.

Saab 9-3
Saab 9-3 is great car often overlooked as we are flooded with choices of vareity of nice cars. The fact of the matter is, Saab have some edge over many entry-level luxury out there. It is economical, spacious and safe.

Ferrari Enzo
Introduced and build in the year 2004, Ferrari enzo is build using the Formula One engine. It is named after it’s company’s founder Enzo Ferrari. This 2-seater supercar is really the state of the art production and there’s only 400 of this masterpiece worldwide.

40 Beautiful Examples of Car Photography

The Gradient Mesh can be one of the hardest tools to control. Even professional Illustrators can be heard crying out in frustration at its seemingly random actions. You can overcome these feelings of frustration by learning some techniques that will make your job easy and fun. This quick tip will teach you two handy mesh taming techniques that will save you time and help you overcome the "Gradient Mesh blues".

Tip 1: How to make a shape with gradient mesh

Some shapes, no matter how hard you try, won’t let you apply a gradient mesh. The following steps should be used if you want to apply a gradient mesh to a compound path.

Step 1

Let us build a Gradient Mesh for the Compound Path shown in the picture below. Gradient Mesh can’t be applied to Compound Paths using the regular techniques, we will have to build one.

Step 2

Start creating the Gradient Mesh, we will do this by transforming a Rectangle. Lock the sub-layer containing the original shape, this will be used as a template. Draw a Rectangle (as shown below) and change its opacity to 50%.

Step 3

Select the rectangle and go to Object > Create Gradient Mesh, set the values as shown. The mesh should be as simple as possible, the number of columns must equal the number of bends, so the circumference has 4.

Step 4

Let’s transform the rectangle. We will be using the following tools: the Lasso Tool (Q); Direct Selection Tool (A); Rotate Tool (R). Select the Lasso Tool (Q). Select anchor points, as shown in the figure below.

Step 5

Take the Direct Selection Tool (A) and move the selected segments to the first "bend" of the guide shape.

Step 6

Take the Rotate Tool (R) and place the axis of rotation on point "A" and rotate the segment 90 degrees while holding down the Shift key.

Step 7

Using this technique, repeat the same step for the remainder of the segments.

Step 8

Adjusting the handles of the anchor points will improve the contour of your shape. Hold the Shift key while moving the handles to keep them straight.

Step 9

Remove the template, change the opacity to 100% and, if needed, add new points to the mesh using the Mesh Tool (U).

Step 10

Using the technique you’ve just learnt, you can create quite complex objects. The image below shows an example of such objects.

Tip 2: How to make a complex gradient mesh by joining two shapes

When you have a complex shape that requires multiple colors, it’s often better to make your gradient mesh in pieces. Using this technique will reduce the time it takes to get the perfect gradient mesh with the same result.

Step 1

When creating complex objects you have to create a few different gradient meshes. The following is the technique of overlapping of two gradient meshes. The figure below shows the two Mesh-objects that we will join. The left object will be the basic one, which will not be edited.

Step 2

Zoom in on the image so that it’s convenient to work with it. Turn on the Smart Guides mode (Command + U). With the help of the vertical and horizontal directional lines set the position grid point of the left figure. Using the Direct Selection Tool (A), Overlap an anchor point on the gradient mesh of the right figure with one point from the left figure.

Step 3

Use the Lasso Tool (Q) to select both of the overlapped points of the gradient mesh. With Direct Selection Tool (A) overlap the handles, so that they are the same length and there’s no angle between them. While overlapping the handles you will see the caption "Handle".

Step 4

Repeat this step for all of the overlapped anchor points.

Step 5

Select the mesh points on the left hand side of the right shape (the orange and yellow shape) and change them to match the color of the left gradient (in this case, green) using the Eyedropper Tool (I).

Conclusion

If you work with simple shapes before moving to the complex ones you will have a better chance at overcoming the challenges of using the gradient mesh… Remember, complex work usually consists of simple parts. Don’t get tired of experimenting, It’s the key to learning this challenging tool. Good luck!

Quick Tip: How to Tame the Gradient Mesh

We have a new set of vector illustrations available exclusively from Vectortuts+ as freebie for anyone to download. Crafted by Iaroslav Lazunov, you will find a great selection of vector illustrations in this set depicting vintage pistols. These designs are perfect for web layouts, book covers or editorials. Learn more at the jump!

New Exclusive Freebie – Vector Illustrations

There are twelve vector illustrations in this pack. The license allows these illustrations to be used in your commercial client projects as well, see the download file for details. Below is a group of unique vintage pistols, which can be colored any way you choose, as it’s all vector (in EPS and AI format)!

This new Vector Premium Pack is created by Iaroslav Lazunov . Iaroslav writes numerous tutorials for Vectortuts+. We’re excited to partner up with him on this Exclusive Freebie release!

Exclusive Freebie Pack – Vintage Pistols

Free vector art icon set with music and nightlife buttons for your graphic design, print project, web page, interactive, presentation or all other sorts of design needs.

Free Vector Music and Nightlife Icon Set

Call to action in web design is a term used for elements in a web page that solicit an action from the user (clicking, hovering, etc). Today we’re going to create an effective and awesome call to action button with some CSS and jQuery that grab the user’s attention and entice him to click .

Throughout this tutorial we’ll explain every line of used code with details and hope it will be useful for you. The following tutorial uses HTML, CSS and jQuery with difficulty level Beginner and an estimated completion time of 45 minutes.

Download Tutorial (.zip) or Demo

Part I – Create The Button Image

In this first part we will show you how to create the needed images with Photoshop in simple easy steps. Let’s start.

Create a new Photoshop document with a width of 580px and a height of 130px. Go to View > New Guide then, set the Orientation to Horizontal and the Position to 65px.

Create more guides; each for the top, bottom, left and right. Your image should have these following guides once you are done:

The guides appear to split your canvas into top and bottom halves. Select the Rounded Rectangular Tool, set the Radius to 5px and draw a rectangular shape on the top half of the canvas.

Change the Styles for Gradient Overlay and Stroke.

Select the Type Tool and type “Download” for as sample text into the box that you have created. Align the text to the center middle of the box and your output should look something like this:

We finished the creation of the first state of the download button. Let’s create a new group and move all layers into it. Duplicate the group and then position it under the first group. we’ve created.

Head over to the duplicated group and change the Gradient Overlay and Stroke style of the our second rectangular box (the hovered one) with the following setttings:

With the second group selected, use Move tool to move the entire rectangular box down to the second half of the canvas.

That’s it! We finished with the first part. Save your image as download.png and fire up your favorite code editor.

Download PSD

Part II – The HTML

Step 1 – Prepare the necessary Files

Create a folder, and give it a name. We’ll name it jQueryCallToaction for this tutorial. Inside jQueryCallToaction folder, create these following files/ folders:

1. Blank HTML file, index.html
2. Blank CSS file, style.css
3. Blank JavaScript file, script.js
4. Folder, named "images"
5. Place download.png inside images folder.

Step 2 – Link index.html with CSS & JS

Let’s link our CSS and JavaScript to index.html. Place them inside <head></head>. We begin with the CSS file:

<link href="style.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />

then the latest version of jQuery from Google’s AJAX Libraries repository:

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.4/jquery.min.js"></script>

and finally our JavaScript file :

<script type="text/javascript" src="script.js"></script>

Now our <head> should look something like this :

<head>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.4/jquery.min.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="script.js"></script>
<link href="style.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />
</head>

Let’s put codes for the our buttons inside <body> tag :

<p><a href="#" class="button1"></a></p> <!-- CSS only -->
<p class="button2"><a href="#"></a></p> <!-- CSS + jQuery -->

Explanation:
We’ve created paragraphs for two buttons, each wrapped with <p></p> with hyperlink <a></a> inside.
Line 1: class="button1" is placed inside <a>, while
Line 2: class="button1" is placed inside <p>

Step 3.1 – CSS only Button

We will create our first button, using CSS only. Open up style.css and paste the following codes inside.

.button1 /* Button with CSS only */
{
	background: url(images/download.png) 0 0;
	height:65px;
	width:580px;
	display:block;
}
.button1:hover /* mouseOver */
{
    background: url(images/download.png) 0 65px;
}

Explanation:
Our first button is a 100% HTML/CSS button. CSS property background loads the download.png image with exactly the image’s width 580px but only half the height 65px (130/2) so only one of the two buttons in download.png is displayed. Button’s position is determined and controlled by the last value of background property. Think of the last value of background property as where (in terms of height position in pixel) the image should start from.

Step 3.2 – CSS + jQuery Button

We’ll be using the same image download.png for our second button. The difference here is: our second button will be injected with jQuery effect to make the animation smoother. Let’s start with the CSS. Place the follow codes inside style.css.

.button2, .button2 a {
    background: url(images/download.png) 0 -65px;
    height:65px;
    width:580px;
    display:block;
}
.button2 a {
	background-position: 0 0;
}

Explanation:
Basically both .button2 {} and .button2 a {} shares the same style except for the last value in background property. .button2 {} displays the blue color button while.button2 a {} displays white color button.

CSS part is done. We’ll use jQuery to swap between both states to create a smooth transition effect. Open up script.js and put the following code inside.

$(document).ready(function(){
   $('.button2 a').hover(function(){
   $(this).stop().animate({'opacity' : '0'}, 500);
   }, function(){$(this).stop().animate({'opacity' : '1'}, 500);});
});

Explanation:
$(this) refer to .button2 a and when it is hovered, we are going to use the jQuery animation to set the opacity of this element to 0 so we can see the .button2 element (blue button). And when the mouse is out we are going to setback the opacity to 1 with 500 milliseconds for the animation speed.

That’s it !

Thanks for following this tutorial. I hope you liked it and managed to follow it step by step. If you’ve done everything correctly, you should have ended up with something like this. If you have any problem or you need some help feel free to write your question into the comments section.

Here are a re-cap of all required files for this tutorial:

• Download button (.PSD)
• Download tutorial
• Demo

Simple "Call To Action" Button With CSS & jQuery

One of the most debated issues about color is whether black is truly a color or not. To an artist (or a child) black is a color and white is not. But for a scientist, white is a color, black is not. The real meaning of the word black means the absence of colors. Try to mix all the colors in the rainbow, you’ll get black. Black has many associations. Black goes beyond a simple or mixed color; It can be seen as the color of solitude and misery, but it can also express a sense of creativity, power, elegance, strength, nobility, and beauty.

In digital arts, black is usually the preferred color because of its effectiveness in producing contrast. Black and yellow or red on black creates a powerful color combination. Almost all colors appears more luminous against a black background. Below I put together a collection of beautiful black wallpapers that truly illustrate the beauty of black-inspired design. Go ahead, try some black wallpapers on your desktop or laptop. Take your pick and enjoy!

Nature, Space and Planets.

Dark Beauty. Beautiful dark nature wallpaper with a clear contrast of white clouds. Wallpaper comes in pack. Available in the following sizes: 1024×768, 1152×864, 1280×960, 1600×1200, 1280×720, 1366×768, 1600×900, 1920×1080, 1280×800, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1200 and 2560×1600.

Starlit Night. Beautiful star night wallpaper full of small little details. Another one of my favorite. Comes in pack, available in the following size(s): 1024×768, 1280×960, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1600×1200 and 1600×1200.

Flying Tree. Silhoueete of a mysterious flying tree, enough said. Created by folks at Vladstudio. Wallpaper available in 1600×1200. Click here for more sizes.

Dark Starry Night. It’s just awesome, and it’s going to be my desktop wallpaper right now. Wallpaper available in the following size(s): 1280×1024.

Serene. Beautiful panoramic shot made into wallpaper by myINQI. Available only in 2560×1600.

Earth Implosion. Beautiful high quality dark wallpaper of mother earth burning in flames. Available in various sizes from 480×272 all the way to 2560×1600. Click here for more.

Planet New York. Part of the planet series of wallpapers created by Vladstudio. Wallpaper available in the following size(s): 1600×1200.

Tornado. A perfect disaster for your desktop. Wallpaper available in the following size(s): 1920×1080

Forest. Dark creepy forest. Wallpaper available in the following size(s): 1024×768, 1280×960, 1280×800 and 1280×1024.

A million tales. Wallpapers (comes in pack) created and named after deviation created by Baro. Wallpapers comes in a single zip pack. Avaialble sizes are: 1024×768, 1152×864, 1280×720, 1280×768, 1280×960, 1280×1024, 1360×768, 1440×900, 1600×900, 1600×1024 and 1600×1200.

Space object. It looks like a moon, but certainly too close to tell. Wallpaper available in the following size(s): 1280×1024.

Simple and Subtle.

Black Matter. Wallpaper pack for the Black Matter desktop setup. Consists patterns of wood, paper, fleur and concrete. Wallpaper available in the following size(s): 1280×960.

Black pattern. Subtle black color square pattern. Suitable as wallpaper or background design. Wallpaper available in the following size(s): 1680×1050.

Dark wood. Another attempt at dark wood desktop background. Comes in a compressed pack, wallpaper available in the following size(s): 1024×768, 1280×1024, 1600×1200 and 1900×1200.

Creepy and Gothic.

Black Horse. High quality wallpaper of beautiful black horse doing a ground touching. Wallpaper available in the following size(s): 1280×1024, 1024×768, 1280×960, 1600×1200, 1680×1050, and more.

Creepy horseman and a dramatic weather. A familiar scene of many horror and thriller movies. Wallpaper available in the following size(s): 1024×768, 1280×960, 1400×1050, 1280×800, 1440×900, 1680×1050 and 1280×1024.

The Horseman. One of the four horsemen of the apocalypse. Only half dark, but truely awesome! Wallpaper only available at the size(s) of: 1360×768.

Another creepy horseman wallpaper. Wallpaper available in the following size(s): 1024×768, 1280×960 and 1280×800.

Dark Knight. Wallpaper available in the following size(s): 1024×768.

Comic and Games.

Total War. A wallpaper tribute to the game Empire Total War. Wallpaper available in the following size(s): 1024×768, 1280×960, 1280×1024, 1600×1200, 1280×800, 1440×900 and 1680×1050.

Punisher. Cool dark punisher wallpaper, something the fans will not want to miss. Mobile version f the wallpaper is available too. Desktop wallpaper available in the following size(s): 1024×768, 1280×960, 1400×1050, 1600×1200, 1280×800, 1440×900 and 1280×1024.

Ironman. Ironman wallpaper with a great depth of field. Wallpaper available in the following size(s): 1680×1050, 1440×900 and 1280×800 .

Batman The Dark Knight. The dark wallpaper collection is not complete without some wallpapers of the dark knight. Notice the Badman shadow casted on the logo? Comes in a wallpaper pack, sizes include: 2560×1600, 1920×1200, 1680×1050, 1440×900 and1280×800.

More batman logo wallpapers: #1

Dark knight. Yet another great Batman wallpaper re-created by skywasher for the 1200×800 resolution.

Typography.

Peace. As quotted on the wallpaper: When you make peace with yourself, you make peace with the world. Wallpaper available in the following size(s): 1024×768, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1600×1200, 1680×1050 and 1920×1200.

A little motivation. "Do your work. Don’t be stupid" Wallpaper available in various sizes, including: 1024×768, 1280×800, 1280×960 and 1920×1200.

Misc.

Black Angel. Desgined by Seventhstreet Studio. And yes, the flat thing on the angel’s head is a piece of hair. Wallpaper available in the following size(s): 600×375, 800×500, 1024×640, 1600×1000, 1280×800, 1900×1188 and 1920×1200.

Explosion. Beautiful spectrum pattern with dark surroundings. A wallpaper inspired by the iTunes commercial for the new coldplay album. Available in the following size(s): 1600×1200, 1400×1050, 1280×960, 1152×864, 1024×768 and 800×600.

Black HD. Shared by moode4u, another beautiful high quality dark themed wallpaper. Wallpaper available in the following size(s): 1920×1200.

Night. A cute Danbo wallpaper shared by Saad Baig. Click here for more Danbo wallpapers. Wallpaper available in the following size(s): 1280×810

Noir-esque Dog. Very nice shot and composition. Something for the dog lovers. Wallpaper available in various sizes, click here for more.

More

To quence the thirst for dark wallpaper seekers, here are more:

• Dark wallpapers – pozadia.
• 33 pages (and counting) of dark background and wallpapers – Alphacoders
• Dark series wallpaper packs – city17

Stunning Black Wallpapers For Your Desktop

As a designer, I feel it’s always a good idea to take on new and challenging projects when the opportunities present themselves. The way you solve problems and adapt to different situations is a big part of what defines you as a designer. For example, when I was approached by Ace Hotel in NYC to do a series of murals that would cover multiple walls of some of their hotel rooms, I jumped at the chance… even though at the time I had no earthly idea how I was going to do it. I figured out a way though and now I use some of the techniques I developed for this project in other design projects, especially when I need to create hand made or illustrated typography.

Sketches

I always start with pencil and paper. Whether it’s making sketches or making notes, starting with some paper and a pencil is a great way to start every project. I came up with the idea to use song lyrics about New York for a couple of the pieces.

There was a typeface in an old type specimen book from the 60’s that caught my eye, so used it as a road map. When drawing a lot of type by hand, I find it helpful to lay out the composition in illustrator and sketch from there. When drawing 3D type specifically, you may not want to worry too much about making it exactly perfect. I like to draw in the moment and let the forms come out as they will. The forms are always more interesting that way in my opinion.

I trace over my sketch to make the lines clean, then scan the tracing and adjust the levels in Photoshop to make sure the contrast is good so that I can get a nice clean live trace in Illustrator.

Live Trace and Live Paint

I open the adjusted scan in Illustrator and do a Live Trace so that I can color it easily. When you do the Live Trace, Illustrator will turn your scan into a black and white vector image.

After expanding the trace to turn it into a vector graphic, I usually take the Magic Wand Tool and select the white areas and delete them. Then I use the Live Paint Tool to quickly fill in the spaces of my line art. I don’t use any black when I am doing the Live Paint because I usually take the black outline out when I am done with the Magic Wand Tool. It’s the fastest way to get it all at once.

If you want to color your type this way, make sure all your lines connect at the corners. If you have gaps in the enclosed spaces, you won’t be able to fill with color and you’ll have to go in and close those gaps in Illustrator, which can take some time. I always make sure my lines connect when I do the drawing.

Tip: Another option is to use Select > Same > Stroke Color in Illustrator, which adds more flexibility with selections. There are other selections options there you can work with as well.

After I finish coloring the type, I take the Magic Wand Tool again and select the black outline and either delete it or move it over to the side. Sometimes I keep it there. It just depends on the effect you want.

For these Ace paintings, I only used two or three colors for each painting, since I knew I would be painting in a sort of “paint by number” way, and didn’t want to make it too complicated with shading, etc. I approached it almost like a silk screen project, thinking of it in terms of flat minimal color.

Preparing the Canvas

The main challenge was finding the space to create the enormous paintings. I live in NYC and my apartment is the size of a shoe box so there was no way I was working on them there. I used the small photo studio in the back of the advertising agency office space where I work, and that worked out pretty well. The only down side was I had to cram all the work into a couple of weekends. But that was my only option. Like I said, part of the fun sometimes is figuring that logistical stuff out. And even though it took a long time, it was really really fun.

I used large sheets of very course canvas that were sewn together to create two 6′x8′ canvases and one 8′x8′ canvas. They were free hanging canvases, not stretched onto frames. The coarseness of the canvas and the lack of a stretcher made painting extremely time consuming but it made the paintings much richer. Someone in the hotel room standing very close to the canvas will be able to tell that the paintings were a labor of love. That was what I and the folks at Ace were after.

I used a standard projector hooked up to my laptop to project the colored artwork onto the canvas and I traced the shapes with a pencil.

I numbered each area just like a paint by number painting so that I wouldn’t get confused as to which area needed what color.

I painted the canvases with a wash of color. I didn’t want to gesso the canvases because I wanted the coarse texture to really come through and I needed to see my pencil outlines. I wanted my pencil outline to be under the painting so that it would be faint and not show through the finished painting. I put about two or three tablespoons of acrylic paint in a large cup and slowly mixed with water until the cup was about 3/4 full of paint water. I took a large flat brush and covered the canvases in the wash.

Painting

After the wash dried, I could still see the pencil outlines so I mixed a large amount of acrylic paint and painted in the shapes one color at a time. I printed out a small version of the colored vector art as reference.

I had to be very careful with the edges and make sure the paint filled in all of the gaps of the course canvas. It was extremely time consuming. I made this video in the middle of painting the last painting. You can get an idea of what the painting process was like from this video.

Each painting took about 15 hours to complete, but it was worth it in the end.

Additional Work

The folks at Ace were really happy and I learned some good techniques because of it. I still use the technique of creating 3D type by drawing it by hand and then taking it into Illustrator to color it. The only difference is that it usually ends up as digital illustrations, and I’ll just take the colored art back into Photoshop in separate pieces and put some texture on it to make it look a little more finished. Here are a few examples.

So go make some cool type and have fun!

Ace Hotel Wall Murals