Inkscape prerelease available plus contest winner

One month ago I posted about Inkscape About Screen Contest, chance to get some extra exposure for designers. Contest is now over and the winner is announced. Here is how new about page will look like in Inkscape version 0.47

By the way, prerelease of new Inkscape version is available as Mac build and binary builds for Ubuntu. Windows users can use nightly builds for now.


I haven't done much vector work recently, except my Twitter background, which you can download from here, but I have bought some new paper, pens and erasers and I'm ready to learn some drawing. It's kinda backwards learning path, but right know I have enough free time to do it.

Germany vector map

This is high-quality Germany vector map with region borders. Regions names and borders are on different layers. I have used live paint to color the map and drop shadow effect. Borders are done manually, point by point. Since map is vector, all sizes are available.

Next similar thing will be France vector map.

Using Inkscape select tool tutorial

Inkscape is free software mainly used for vector graphics manipulation. With Inkscape you can create high-quality brochures, visit cards, infographics, web graphics and export your art in any of well known file formats like SVG, PDF, EPS and others.


Using select tool in Inkscape

Select and transform objects tool is top one in tools panel. You can choose it with your mouse or you can use keyboard shortrcut F1.

Click object you want to select and black arrows appear with bounding box around the selected object. Click and drag any of the arrows to scale your object. If you hold shift keyboard key while dragging your object is scaling in two symetrical directions.

You can use select tool to make another kind of change to your object. Click one more time on your already selected object and arrows change. In this mode you can rotate and shear your object.

If you want to select multiple object and transform them at once, hold shift keyboard key and select other objects. When done, to keep your objects grouped choose Object > Group from main menu or ctrl+g keyboard shortcut. Make desired transformations and when finished choose Object > Ungroup from main menu or shift+ctrl+g keyboard shortcut to ungroup your objects.

Twitter Online Marketing Spam

Twitter is a little bit like life itself - no one can actually tell you how to use it, you have to taste it for yourself! But, like with everything else there are always 'self-proclaimed gurus' waiting for you to teach you a lesson (and sell you something at same time).

image by Stig Nygaard

Different people have different goals with their twitter accounts and accordingly their profiles are developed in various ways. Some follow their own niche related people, some follow everyone, some follow only their relatives etc. Now, because twitter is great medium it's only natural that online marketing experts are taking over and use twitter as a tool. I don't say it's a bad thing, I don't mind it, but sometimes it can be annoying, just as @Cvetka wrote:

@pereca yeah,it is :) usually i dont unfollow any1 who follows me,but sum ppls are jus annoying :D

However there is always TweetDeck, desktop twitter application which you can use to filter people you follow, break them into groups and see multiple streams, each one in it's column. In this way you don't miss anything and you don't get annoyed.

How do you deal with people you follow? Do you follow back everyone or not?

World Environment Day 2009

Today is World Environment Day. But it should be every day, because we need it. I don't think awareness about environment issues is very high. Let's face it: we live in the world of bad politics, money obsessed organizations and luxury-centric fantasies. This will change, off course, one way or another.

I have already plant a tree today to help raise awareness. You can do it too, right now by simply following @unepandyou on Twitter, official page of the United Nations Environment Programme. Help them reach 10,000 followers! They'll plant one tree for every follower. Great!

You can also start with visiting their website to check events around the world or download some cool posters like this one below.

We are THE change.

Billboard Vector Image Improvements

I have been working today on my street billboard vector illustration a little bit. Some improvements are made. It's funny how just tiny tweaks can make so much difference in final appeal.

I have added grain effects on both columns and main panel, but with different attributes. If you look closer you can see stains on main panel. They are hard to see, cause transparency is big but overall appeal does quite change. Billboard now looks much realistic, I think.

selfnote: create stains library.

This vector gaining experience seems as painfully slow process, but actually it's not, I just don't update too often. In meantime, many tutorials and articles are behind me and I have spent quite many hours with vector software in front of me. It's just such kind of workflow, learn first create later.

Have a great day.