Mastering Photoshop for Web Design is a new ebook by the folks at Smashing Magazine. As usual I designed the cover and here it is:

The design follows in the style of the first cover I designed, i.e. a stylized vector landscape with keywords from the book integrated in the perspective.

I had a blast creating this and as always it’s a pleasure to work with Vitaly & Co.

Check out these posts too:

1. Ebook Cover for Smashing Magazine
2. Ebook Cover for Smashing Magazine #2
3. Create Character Driven Book Cover Art Using Illustrator and Photoshop

Smashing Magazine commissioned six illustrations for a post about their regular writers.

Here’s the main one: a composite of all the writers with features from all of them (tattoos, birthmarks, scars, glasses etc.).

These three illustrated what the writers do first thing in the morning: oversleep, check email, Facebook & Twitter and drink coffee.

The last two represent the writers’ strongest quality (love for their job) and worst flaw (disorganization, respecting dealines). Check out James White’s Two Smashing Years poster in the first image! Great poster, I had lots of fun sketching it.

I’m really happy I got to do this. I’m still creating icons but illustrations allow me to explore different styles and subjects and are a testing ground for my personal works.

Check out these posts too:

1. Editorial Illustrations for Smashing Magazine #1
2. Ebook Cover for Smashing Magazine
3. Ebook Cover for Smashing Magazine #2

This week I’m taking time off from client work, going through my sketchbooks and turning weird ideas into weird illustrations.
Today is Friday and I’m publishing this little typographic experiment.

Putting eyebrows on the word ‘FROWN’ is my way of blowing off steam when my computer acts up, which happens more and more frequently.
I’m putting this on my wall so every time I get a fit of anger I’ll just frown with the picture instead of doing much worse.
Not coincidentally ‘putting the eyebrows on’ was how Frank Zappa used to call playing with attitude.

Here’s a detailed view. Note the painstaking (actually fun) hair painting.

So go ahead, frown all you want, but always keep the sunshine on your face.

Check out these posts too:

1. My Icon Wants To Kill Your Mama

Yep, it’s been two years. Everything is ok. I still love (some) meat, I just don’t feel like eating it, and I don’t miss it. Amazing what will power can accomplish.
The most interesting aspect of being a vegetarian is exactly that: getting rid of habits, testing your limits, discovering new ways of living.
There are some moral and environmental reasons behind my dietary choice, but mostly it’s about knowing myself better.
Buon appetito!

No related posts.

My cardiologist suggested I buy a smaller, harder pillow to help with my headaches.
Screw that! Here’s what I want:

Surreal and fun: that’s how I like my dreams.
Night night!

No related posts.

My collaboration with Smashing Magazine continues with three editorial illustrations for their Publishing Policy page.

The first one is for advertising:

The second one is for editing:

The third one is for giveaways:

See them on the website.

I scanned handdrawn sketches, traced them and colored them in Illustrator then refined the shading in Photoshop with a little help from my friends (the Brush, Dodge and Burn tools).
As usual this was lots of fun. More to come!

Check out these posts too:

1. Ebook Cover for Smashing Magazine #2
2. Ebook Cover for Smashing Magazine
3. Smashing Magazine Writers Illustrated

Lately I’ve been working for Smashing Magazine on a number of illustration-oriented projects. I’m loving this opportunity as it gives me exposure and the chance to expand into full-blown illustration.
One of the projects I’m involved with is the ongoing series “Smashing Ebooks”.
After designing the cover for ebook #1 I was asked to design an illustration for ebook #2, entitled “Successful Freelancing for Web Designers”. Here’s my design:

Designing covers for books with such broad contents is difficult as there’s no single idea to go for. After thinking it over I decided to concentrate on the concept of the freelancer as a professional who juggles many responsibilities and duties. Here’s the sketch I sent to Vitaly for approval:

They liked the concept but I feared it wouldn’t blend with the other covers. This was going to be a painted, organic illustration whereas the series features geometric landscapes with flat shading. So I decided to simplify the illustration while retaining the overall idea and proceeded to change my sketch into a geometric, stylized illustration.

I’m pretty happy with the result, considering I had pictured a totally different outcome.
I learned a valuable lesson here and feel more confident of my flexibility as an illustrator.
I also experimented with a shading style that’s completely vector and hence resolution-indipendent. This allowed me to play around with the shapes, their proportions and relative placement quite a bit—a highly flexible workflow made possible by the combination of Photoshop’s layer styles applied to shape layers.

I hope you like the design as much as I do and I urge you to check out the ebook.

Check out these posts too:

1. Ebook Cover for Smashing Magazine
2. Mastering Photoshop for Web Design Ebook Cover
3. Editorial Illustrations for Smashing Magazine #1

During my pixel art phase I noticed that most artworks out there were either videogame sprites and mockups in 2D/fake 3D or unnamed objects and locations rendered in the popular isometric style (see eBoy).
Since my background is in architecture, interior and product design (having studied at Politecnico di Milano and Bauhaus universities) I decided to approach isometric pixel art with my own spin, recreating designer’s chairs and objects. Here’s what came out of that experiment:

If you’re a product designer you instantly recognized these wonderful objects. They are all landmarks in the history of product design, created by the masters: Michael Thonet, Verner Panton, Arne Jacobsen, Frank O. Gehry, Joe Colombo, Charles Mackintosh, Bruno Munari, Achille Castiglioni, Alvar Aalto, Vico Magistretti, Le Corbusier, Richard Sapper, Philippe Starck…

I have a book recommendation for all those interested in product design:
1000 Chairs (Taschen 25)

It’s a great photographic compendium with essential liner notes and designer biographies and it makes for a great coffee table book.

I hope you liked this digression into pixel art. Back to icon design and illustration now!

Check out these posts too:

1. Pixel Character
2. Mastering Photoshop for Web Design Ebook Cover
3. “I SHIT DESIGN” T-Shirt available!

Back in 2005 I was still living in Milan, enjoying the wonderful working conditions of a communication agency (yeah right…). I was still discovering the online design community and pixel art was all the rage in those days. Sites like eBoy and Pixeljoint were my everyday fodder and I would spend countless hours drawing miniature illustrations, pixel by pixel.
Pixel art is a lot of fun but ultimately it proved to be too time-consuming with respect to its limited applications so I stopped doing it to concentrate on 3D graphics. I made my living off 3D art for several years after that.

One of the funniest and weirdest things I drew was this:

Here’s a 4x close up. Take a looksie, handdrawn antialiasing!

This still cracks me up after four years.
You don’t believe Michael Bolton actually rocked these hairstyles? You should think twice.

Check out these posts too:

1. Pixel Character
2. Pixel Design Museum

CalorieQuick is an Android app that helps you manage your eating and your exercise. Developer John Van Roekel contacted me to create the logo (launcher icon) and several smaller interface icons to represent food groups and individual items.

The logo (launcher icon)

The logo of the app depicts an apple sitting on a colorful kitchen scale. Here it is in all sizes from 512 to 36 pixels.

The logo was first created as vectors in Illustrator then refined in Photoshop with the addition of subtle shadows on the scale and color variations and reflections on the apple.

Take a look below at the sketches I submitted to John. The idea of a kitchen scale came right at the beginning but it looked rather drab being empty and made of colorless chrome. John suggested the apple early on as a symbol of health. I later made the scale blue-green, complementary color of the apple’s red and a favorite shade of mine. I also tried another concept, a tape measure wrapped around an apple, but we settled on the initial idea for it was clearer.

Interface icons

John also asked me to create 7 icons for the app’s interface: breakfast food, breakfast meal, lunch food, lunch meal, dinner food, dinner meal and excercise.
The meal icons identify the day’s three main meals whereas the food icons accompany single food items and identify when they were consumed.
With the help of John’s suggestions I created detailed icons at the small size of 32×32 pixels.

As you can see the meal icons depict the food items on a plate together with some side dish.

I’m pleased with the result and surely had fun creating the artwork. Unfortunately John ultimately decided to simplify the interface and eliminate the icons, using instead colors to identify the meals.
You can find more information on the CalorieQuick website where John gives you a video tour of the app (still in development).

I’m happy to repeat that good clients are invaluable during the design process. Not only are they personally invested in the outcome, they also look at the designer’s work with fresh eyes and can easily spot occasional inconsistencies and lack of clarity in the solutions we propose. So thank you John for this great opportunity!
Read what John had to say about our collaboration.

Check out these posts too:

1. Android Icons for Free411.com
2. Designing Android Icons
3. Designing iPhone Icons