Dave Brenner Studio

Build amazing mosaics in Photoshop

admin — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 19:47:38 +0000

I’m always looking for a good Photoshop tutorial that will save me time achieving a unique look. This tutorial shows how to create a cool look using Illustrator’s Symbols and Global Colors. Try the tutorial.

Snapshot of life in Wordle

admin — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 12:53:02 +0000

Wordle is a cool online application for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide via a website or Del.icio.us account. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes.

I wish they were more dynamic, but for the visual appeal I’ll take the bitmap image. Here is my Del.icio.us Woordle pic.

Twitter explained in plain english

admin — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 13:58:10 +0000

I hear from my friends all the day, “Why would I want to Twitter?, Whats the point?”. Well my friends, here is a simple explanation from the folks at Common Craft of why I find Twitter so useful. Enjoy.

Plant a tree….or a billion

digg — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 13:22:55 +0000

The Nature Conservancy created this simple Plant a Billion Trees campaign, that uses inspirational design and nice attention to details. This flash based site has great calls to action and a interesting flash intro. Not to mention being for a great cause, worth checking out.

How To Brand Twitter

admin — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 01:34:32 +0000

I’ve been playing around with branding many of my social media sites, but I have to say Twitter has been one of the easiest to dress up. So here is the simple low down on how to brand your own Twitter account.

Create a header graphic that is at least 1800 pixels wide to support monitor stretching.
Place your logo off to the left side of the header, this will keep it clear of the Twitter logo and content.
Go to your Twitter setting, select the new graphic as the background image (don’t tile), match you background color to the bottom of your header graphic
Choose text and link color that match your palette
Finally add a slick avatar for the finishing touch

The magority of my design work is done in Adobe Illustrator. I’ll build the design, outline the crop area with a box, , then I do a “save for the web” export.

Here are a few Twitter accounts I’ve branded

Detroit Red Wings

Detroit Pistons

University of Michigan Bighouse

Enjoy Ann Arbor

Twinspired

Welcome to Dave Brenner Studio!

admin — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 01:26:22 +0000

I’ve been working in the graphic design industry since I was thirteen, silkscreening t-shirts and cutting rubylyth. Over the years I’ve been fortunate enough to make this great art my lively-hood. This site will be a voice for my thoughts and inspiration. Please feel free to share you comments and ask any questions. Thanks for your support!

Dave