TOUCHEY


INSTANT SHIFT


ANTS MAGAZINE


NOUPE


PRODUCTIVE DREAMS


I LOVE COLORS


VIGET INSPIRE


BITTBOX


SIX REVISIONS


GOMEDIAZINE


THE DESIGN CUBICLE

Well to my pleasure, over the past couple of weeks I have submitted Eric’s Empire to some of the top web gallery sites on the web and many of them has added my site to their galleries. As a result I am getting hundreds of new visitors per day and emails from some great designers around the globe. Not only that but other sites and blogs that I never even submitted to are linking to me as well.

As a designer I highly recommend submitting your site to as many galleries you can find. Because it gets your name and work out there and it brings a perfect opportunity to meet and network with other designers around the world.

I decided to make a list of the sites that are giving Eric’s Empire some love and linking back to them in this post. I’ll update the list if more come in.

CSS Mania – Probably the #1 visited CSS gallery site on the web

WeLoveWP – A Wordpress Gallery Site

DesignArtWall – Wall of Gorgeous Design Inspiration.

Sixrevisions – An awesome design blog.

Open Source Hunter – A blog with great and useful opensource resources, tools, tutorials, interviews, inspirations, contests, and lots more.

Divvoted – A Website Gallery where you can vote for you favorite sites on twitter.

CSS Creme- The Best Web Flavours

Css Design – A CSS gallery in France

MostInspired – A Website Gallery and blog

CSS Star -  A CSS gallery

CSS Showdown – A CSS design gallery

CSS Orgy – A CSS gallery with a great name.

CSS Glance – A CSS gallery and website showcase.

Designer Source – Web Design Showcase.

Inspiration Up – A CSS and Flash Gallery

Daily Slurp – A website gallery from the maker of DesignMeltdown

Css Showcase – A CSS gallery in the UK

Css Loggia – A CSS gallery

Wooki.es – A CSS and Web Gallery

CSS Brigit – A CSS and Web Gallery

digCSS – Web Design and CSS Showcase

CSS Count – A CSS inspiration Web Gallery

CSS Folder – A japaneese Web 2.0 Gallery

CSS Based -  A CSS based Web Design Gallery

Nice Stylesheet – A gallery showcasing fresh CSS inspiration

Selected Web Design – Directory and Gallery of inspiring websites

When designing Eric’s Empire I used several tips from Designing the Moment to make my site more usable and consistent. In chapter 2 “Showing Your Personality”, Robert explained how using characters that serve as metaphors and visual hooks can help unify your design and make it more consistent. I paid close attention to that when designing Eric’s Empire. As you can tell I used the grunge style star all throughout my site. I’m using it as a fav icon, imagery in page headers and as rollovers in my main navigation. Not only does it add personality to my site but it also gives it a sense of consistency.

In chapter 22 “Designing the Obvious Blog”, Robert gives three ways to create a better blog. He talks about the benefits of using “trackbacks” and offering a RSS link. While most blogging and tech nerds know what those are, the common blogger may not, so when designing you should always remember to include the word “subscribe” when linking to your RSS feed, rather than just throwing a random RSS button on your page.

The book also goes into other important usability topics such as making forms more usable, which is a big one for me, and designing navigation. Overall I thought it was an excellent book and it will defiantly be sitting on my desk for a while as a reference whenever I am working.

I decided to help out all of the designers out there with a list of my favorite sources for Photoshop brushes.

50 Insanely Weird but Awesome Photoshop Brushes – This set is from PSD Tuts, it’s an odd but very creative collection that could come in handy for that perfect project.

1100+ Free Brushes – Here is a huge collection of photoshop brushes. I’m almost certain you’ll be able to find what you need here.

100 Awesome High Resolution Brushes – This is a fantastic collection of high res brushes with a great variety in terms of subject matter.

The Brush King – The Brush King has a large collection of brushes that are all categorized.

PSD Tuts Freebies – The freebies section of PSD Tuts has all kinds of free brush sets that will certainly be useful in a project.

My Delicious Links – Want more? I’ve favorited about 8 different sites for Photshop Brushes in my Delicious account, a couple of these are listed above.

Right now you are either laughing or thinking “what the hell does that mean?” Well if you ever watch Lost then you know exactly what I am talking about and you are ordering the shirt as you read this post. However, if you’ve never seen Lost then you should seriously think about renting the DVD’s because it is only the best dramatic series on TV right now!

Even if you hate Lost and have no idea what Desmond is My Constant means (I would explain it to you but it might take a while) you should still check out BustedTees For The Funniest T-Shirts Around. because I am confident you’ll find something there to make you smile.

The last 2 years have been frustrating for ETSU as they have been knocked out of the tournament by conference rival Belmont. They were looking for redemption and they surely got it. ETSU won their last 5 games by an average margin of over 20 points and led by as many as 30 points last night in the championship as they knocked out Jacksonville in convincing fashion.

Now the question is what kind of seed will East Tennessee State receive in the NCAA tournament. I believe they will probably get a 14 or 15th seed. If you remember last year, conference rival Belmont recieved a 15th seed and took Duke to the final seconds only to lose 71-70.  This will be ETSU’s 8th trip to the big dance in the history of the school. In 2004 they recieved a 13th seed and played Cincinnati in the first round of play. ETSU led a good portion of the game but ended up losing my 3 points thanks to a last second 3 pointer by Cincinnati.

I am hoping ETSU gets to play in nearby Greensboro for the first round. If so I will be there as a proud Alum cheering them on!

This is the redesign for NBC17.com completed in the Summer of 2008. It features a clean useable layout that is easy to navigate and to read stories. Not long after the launch of the new design the traffic NBC17 slowly began to grow and by the start of 2009 the traffic increased by more than 50%. On this project I was responsible for creating the final design and template development in Expression Engine. www.NBC17.com

This a magazine ad I created completely in Photoshop for Washburn Guitars. This was not actually created for Washburn but just a personal study showing my print design abilities.

I created this ad for my job at NBC 17. This ad was for a publication in Raleigh advertising the Holidays and WakeForest.MyNC.com

This is a flyer I created at NBC17 advertising Music.MyNC.com