More and more we are seeing a trend in web design to include both a logo and a character or mascot. Sometimes, this mascot is used to help guide visitors through the website. Other times, the little guy, gal, or animal remains solely on the home page. No matter how often the mascot is incorporated into the site, it is always clear that this character is more than just a logo. The mascot is there to help get you excited about or endear you to the company, just as a mascot for a sports team does.

In this collection, we found 30 sites with mascots – and couldn’t help but notice the monkey theme. As you check out these pages, ask yourself whether or not the mascot distracts from the brand or builds upon it. In some cases, the character is a useful, personalizing agent that helps you connect with the brand better. In other cases, the mascot seems to be some 3rd entity injecting itself into the design.

Which of the mascots below work to build and which distract? Do you think mascots help improve brand recognition or not? Does it all depend on the brand in the end?

Inspire Monkey

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Cheeky Monkey Media

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Photoshop Lady

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Mail Chip

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N. Design Studio

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Silverback

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Adaptic

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Mix Turtle

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PSDgator

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Bee Finance

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Elune Art

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Designzillas

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Ellis Lab

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Nybble Tech

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KroliKov

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FoxTie

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Pizza By The Slice

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SR28

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Robot Media

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Kars4Kids

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Gecko Tracker

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Think Orange

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Wishlistr

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DateJS

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Firebug

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Fork: the Open Source CMS

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Justin Bird

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DharmaFrog

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Jason Reed Web Design

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In this collection, we focused on finding websites that were built around a water theme. These examples span the simple to complex references to water themes from splashing rivers to calm bodies of water. As you check these samples out, see how each affect you. Do they create a calming or exciting response? Which are your favorites?

Belu

Bustin’ Down the Door

Thomas Projeta

Esintitasarim

Graphic Marks

Enigma

Fiji Water

Sandals

Wild Ocean

Mauna Lani

Hellenic Holidays

Ocean Portal

The Ocean

WildWater Kingdom

Soul Surfer

Water on the Web

Water Bottle

Dasani

Aquafina

Appalachian Springs

Live H2O

Black Water

iTunes Movie Trailers

Museum of Science

Florida Aquarium

National Aquarium

Oklahoma Aquarium

Seattle Aquarium

Aquarium

Clearwater Marine Aquarium

In this post we present a collection of excellent Adobe Illustrator tutorials for beginners and advanced designers.

Have fun and Good Luck!

1. Create a Magic Book Using Adobe Illustrator

In this tutorial will find out how to create a magic book. The first half of this tutorial is dedicated to creating an open book, and in the remaining steps you’ll  learn how to create the background and add the magic effects.

2. Gradient Mesh Flower

In this tutorial you will see how to use Gradient Mesh for creation of this wonderful flower.

3. Create Bloody Halloween Ornament Using Adobe Illustrator

In this 20 steps tutorial you will find out how to create a bloody Halloween ornament yourselves. The ornament is a bit psychedelic however it worth doing it.

4. Realistic Vintage Vector Tutorial

In this tutorial you will discover how to make a great realistic typewriter with the help of Adobe Illustrator, so fasten your seat belts and let’s go.

5. Create Trees in Illustrator

In this tutorial you will see how to create a tree from a photograph. During the steps of this tutorial you will see the following tools in use: the freehand drawing tools, the shape tools and the Layers palette.

6. Create A Semi Realistic Bulb

In this tutorial, you will  see how to create a light bulb illustration. It’s a good tutorial for those struggling with drawing freehand.

7. Create psychedelic Halloween pumpkin face using Adobe Illustrator

During this 20 steps Illustrator tutorial you will create a cool spooky 5-eyed pumpkin.

8. Create a Jelly Fish In Adobe Illustrator

In this tutorial,  you will learn how to create a stylized jellyfish using blends and brushes.

9. Create a Sparkly Female Portrait

This step-by-step tutorial will show you how to create a sparkly female portrait by playing with transparency and overlapping vector shapes.

10. Create a Painterly Landscape With the Blob Brush Tool

In this tutorial you will create a painterly landscape with an intuitive and versatile Blob Brush Tool.

11. Create a Smoking Wooden Pipe

In this tutorial you will find out how to draw a stylish smoking tobacco pipe. You will also see how to create wood texture illustrator effect on the pipe.

12. Tracing a Vector Face From a Reference Photo

In this tutorial you will see the the process of tracing the basic shapes and contours of a photograph, as opposed to using predominately vector lines with strokes. This will result in a desirable, realistic yet stylized image.

13. Create a Lava Island Scenario in Illustrator

This tutorial is inspired by the Tiki and Mario culture. You will see how to draw these Mario characters.

14. Create an Elegant Patterned Vector Owl

In this tutorial you will draw an elegant patterned vector owl.

15. Zombie Illustration

In this step by step tutorial you will create a hand-drawn zombie illustration.

16. Create an awesome vector skate deck

In this Adobe Illustrator tutorial you will create your own vibrant and stunning vector artwork using geometric lines, shapes and a perfect color scheme. The result is an awesome deck design ready for wall hanging, or hooking up with trucks and wheels for a session on the street!

17. How to Illustrate a LeBron James Cartoon Character

This tutorial shows how to create an illustration of a LeBron James.

18. Perfect Vector Portraiture

In this tutorial by Simeon Elson you will see how to create a vector portrait.

19. Rolling Stone Inspired Tongue

In this tutorial you will create a graphic design icon – the bright red Rolling Stones tongue and lips logo.  It’s not a direct copy of the original but an inspired tongue graphic, starting with a quick pencil sketch and finishing with a vector based graphic in Adobe Illustrator.

20. Create an Grisly Zombie Illustration

In this tutorial you will create a zombie illustration with a pen tablet from a photo. Have fun utilizing the Blob Brush and Eraser tool in recreating this tutorial or apply these techniques to other ghoulish illustrations!

21. Create an awesome music Poster

In this tutorial you will draw an awesome music poster.

22. Create Realistic Bubble Effect

In this tutorial we will find out how to create realistic colorful bubbles. This tut covers numerous techniques.

23. Design a Skate deck With a Cool Skull Pattern

In this tutorial you will use Symbol Sprayer tool can for creating awesome pattern graphics and then combine them into an intricate pattern design to customize a skateboard deck.

24. Comic Book Style Graphic Design

In this tutorial you will learn how to create awesome illustrations and turn them into flyers or posters.

25. Stinking style Zombie Flesh Eater

In this tutorial, you will see how to create a cartoon zombie in Adobe Illustrator. Starting by creating a fresh corpse, you will then ‘yuck’ it up using a number of techniques.

26. Design With Flair

In this tutorial you will see how to apply flair technique. You will start from scratch with a basic photo and create a fully realized design.

27. How to Create Transparent Battery icon

In this tutorial,  you will create a detailed battery icon similar to the one used in the iPhone.

28. Making an abstract art Work

This tutorial shows you the principles of using the Live Paint Bucket tool, and what can be achieved with this great innovation in color management, which saves time, and may be used in countless sorts of project from character design to abstract Illustration.

29. Test Your Creativity

In this simple Adobe Illustrator tutorial you will create some sort of abstract mask.

30. Add Motion To Illustration Using lines

In this tutorial by Eric Van Den Boom you will see how to use lines and patterns to add a sense of motion to your illustration or photograph.

31. Create an Awesome Retro Beetle Type

In this tutorial you will create a vector image of an original Volkswagen Beetle using one of Illustrators most-used tools; the Pen Tool, as well as adding some finishing touches using a graphics tablet (an affordable Wacom Bamboo tablet in my case) to give the vector a nice hand-drawn style.

32. Create a Valentines Day Illustration For Your Sweetie

In this tutorial you will discover how to create a cheerful character and lovely, colorful bubbles. Use this knowledge to create a darling Valentine’s Day card for your sweetie.

33. Create a Realistic Candy Bar In Illustration

In this tutorial, you will see step by step how to create a realistic candy bar using Illustrator.

34. Create Movement In Illustration

In this tutorial you will learn how to create stylistic lines that can be used to simulate movement.

35. Creating a Toaster popping Illustration

In this tutorial, you will learn how to apply such rare effect as the Chrome effect, which is used to create a metallic look.  You will also use Texturizer tool to create a toast texture.

36. Create an Angry Octopus

This tutorial shows how to create an angry vector octopus character using brushes in Adobe Illustrator. It’s a simple 12 steps tutorial. Have fun!

37. From Start To Finish

In this tutorial,  you will find out how to create an illustration art piece so that you can witness what goes behind a digital illustrator’s work, as well as gain some new insights for your own projects’ workflow. We’ll go through conceptualization and idea gathering, creating illustrations in Illustrator, and then finishing the piece in Photoshop.

38. Create a luxurious Gold Watch

In this tutorial you will see how to create a very realistic and stunning gold watch using simple tools and techniques like the Pathfinder, Blend, Clipping Mask, etc.

39. Make a colorful, Environment Slice

In this tutorial you will create an earth slice that looks like a piece of cake.

40. Create a Cubist Style Logo Design

In this tutorial you will see how to create a cubist style logo design made up of lots of detailed vector facets.

41. Create a Realistic Guitar

In this tutorial you will draw a realistic guitar from scratch using the free vector program.  This tut requires a basic knowledge of vector tools, such as: the Pen tool, Edit Path Nodes tools, and you should be familiar with the Fill and Stroke toolbox.

42. Create a Video Projector

In this Adobe Illustrator tutorial you will learn how to make an old film projector, such as the early 20th century. Get ready because it’s time to start, open your Illustrator and let’s go.

43. Create a trippy Psychedelic Poster

In this tutorial you will see how to make a funny psychedelic poster in Adobe Illustrator.

44. Create a Clean Retro Badge

In this tutorial you will draw a clean retro-looking badge/burst in Adobe Illustrator. These are great for adding to a website, advertisement, etc to help the text stand out.

45. How to Illustrate a Tomato Using Adobe Illustrator

In this tutorial you  will use Meshes, Gradients and Blends for drawing a tomato. The skills you will learn here can easily be transferred to creating various objects. So let’s get started!

46. How To Make White Holiday Scene

In this tutorial you will create an entire winter landscape and fill it using numerous techniques, like blended blizzards, sprayed snowflakes, and more. The techniques you will use to create this illustration are fairly basic.

47. How to Create a Beautiful Windmill

Windmills have been around for centuries and although their construction evolved through time the idea remains the same. Let this tutorial be a tribute to those old fashioned windmills that are hardly met these days.

48. Create a Grumpy Troll Character

In this step by step tutorial  you will create a grumpy Internet troll character.  You will start the process with a basic pencil sketch then build up a complete vector character design with linework, color fills and basic shading to create a funny cartoon mascot.

49. Create a Picture Gallery In Gallery

In this tutorial you will see how to use 3D rendering, Blends, Opacity masks for creating this three-dimensional stage with vanishing points.

50. Create a Disco Ball

In this tutorial you will find out the right way for drawing a realistic disco ball.

Below is the process you need to follow to use Adobe Photoshop to design your own post-it note picture.

The first thing to do is to measure your workspace, whether it’s a wall, ceiling or window and work out how many post-it notes it would take to fill the space by simply dividing the total space by the size of an individual note.

Once this is done, you need to turn on the grid function (select View, Show and check Grid, or pres Control apostrophe) and create a canvas size that matches the dimensions of post-it notes that you need for the collage to the squares in the grid.

The next step is to either sketch out your overall design, or import an image for the design into Photoshop and expand it to fill the canvas size you’ve selected. With Snap To Grid on (select View, Show, Snap To and Grid) use the Eyedropper Tool to select the main colour in the background of each square, then use the Rectangular Marque Tool to select the grid square and use Paint Brush Tool to fill it in. Repeat this process until every square on your canvas is covered.

You’ll notice the 8-bit change in the design pretty quickly and get a feel for any manual changes you might need to make to keep it looking good.

Now that you have your design in place, it’s simply a case of matching the post-it notes on your work surface to the squares on the Photoshop canvas. Before you know it, you’ve finished your first ever post-it note art.

Logically, each person has their personal way of working, and you must always make it a point to listen to yourself as far as finding out how to continue the flow of your creative juices. Here are a few opinions and suggestions that might help you on your way.

Try something new

Sometimes you might feel as if you have been constantly working on similar projects. If you feel bored and think it’s getting monotonous, try adding up something new to your project. There are many new applications and tools being developed and they can be put to use while working on your new project. By trying the new applications, you not only build up new skills but also dare yourself to become skilled at something new, which make the project look different from the rest.

Create your space

You also need a space to work where you feel comfortable, protected and stimulated to do your best work. It may include having your own desk space and also making your own office at home that will be arranged according to your tastes. Plan and build an environment that is beneficial for your creative ideas.

It is also significant to set deadlines and targets for the work, but make sure to keep them realistic. One of the most frequent reasons why projects fail or is when one ends up biting more than he can chew. Keep your goals feasible.

Find your flow

Each one of us have various working patterns. Some might feel that working early mornings are more beneficial while the others might prefer working late in the night to find peace and to bring in more creativity. Give yourself the tome to understand what you like doing and what time suits you the best.

Do your homework

Gather as much information as you can before you start working on any project. Learn and understand as much as you can, and then work on your project by inculcating the ideas. Make sure not to copy anything that is already being done. Think and check before you submit your work.

Escape the office

A nine-to-five working schedule might demoralize you and makes you feel bored and blunt. So maybe you can opt for things that will keep you energized even while you are stuck in those fixed working hours. Take a stroll or just go out to feel reignited. Just come back when you think you are refreshed and can work with a free mind!

Ignore your peers

This might sound notorious, but if you are somebody who is for all time matching yourself to the others around you, then try keeping them out of the project and your work place. Focus on your work, your priority and your thoughts. It is however not suggested that you completely overlook the work of others  but if you can give yourself the ample space to think without being hampered by the success of the other Logo designers in the back of your mind you will find it easier to focus on your own development.

Meet your peers

The reverse to the above mentioned point is to make use of your colleague logo designers and take inspiration from what they can offer. It can be useful to talk to fellow designers who have gone through similar highs and lows of life in the imaginative industries. Keep in mind their coping up techniques, use new work opportunity and get occupied in your design scene.

Keep your tools at hand

Always carry your sketchbook, smart phone or even scrapbook with yourself to collect and keep a note of the random thoughts and musings as they happen in your mind. Often these golden nuggets can thrive into some of your best work. So make sure you have something to keep note of the innovative ideas that cross your mind through the day!

These are the few ways how you can keep your interest into Logo designing intact. Whether it’s a gallery, a play or a gig, take each chance to widen your horizons by attending various cultural events. Inspiration hits a high when you are developing new ideas, so improve your imagination-bank with loads of stimulating activities.