• Paint has an extremely simple user interface strictly following the desktop metaphor. Because of this, there is no way a user can go wrong with Paint. There is one window, one canvas and one toolbar/ribbon area to deal with. There is the pallet area too (prior Windows 7); but most users are OK with it.
• Paint starts fast: you don’t have to wait a few minutes to use Paint. It has such a small memory footprint and will start before you are done doing with double-click. Another benefit of the small memory footprint is that you don’t need a fancy computer to run Paint on.
• You can only use the most common file types with Paint. Here again, you do something, and save the file in your format of choice without being presented a handful of post-save options. The file is just saved and ready to be used in a few clicks.
• You will never rip apart the Paint UI by accident. Most modern software are designed with ‘total UI flexibility’ in mind so that there are 101 toolbars and menus to a density where people are scared to move the mouse pointer across the screen with the fear of moving one part of the UI and sticking it in another area rendering a total mess in the GUI. Paint doesn’t have this pervasive silliness.
• Paint is ubiquitous. Buy a new computer and Paint will be pre-installed with it; go to a friend’s PC and Paint could be found there; it’s installed by default on every PC since Windows 95. It’s totally available to you during the lifetime of your computer and will never expire asking you for a new serial number.

Certainly these aren’t the only reasons why someone would like Paint. For most people, the main reason to like Paint is its simplicity and availability. A normal user doesn’t fancy sophistication in software. They want their job done, in the easiest way and in the shortest time. Maybe there are the same reasons why Notepad is the most famous text editor for Windows.

Prologue

I use Paint.NET 3.36 on a Microsoft Windows XP Professional 64-bit workstation with 2GB of DDR2 RAM and ATI FireGL V3300 Dual-head display adapter. Installing a plug-in is a snap. Just copy the plug-in DLL to the relevant directory. For example, if the installation path of PDN is C:\Program Files\Paint.NET, then effects plug-ins should be copied to the Effects folder and file type plug-ins should be copied to the FileTypes folder.

1. Buttons

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2. Rounded Corners

Forum | Author: dan9298 | Download

3. Borders and Shapes

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4. Checkerboard

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5. Multi-Color Gradient

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6. Gradient Bars

Forum | Author: Pyrochild | Download

7. Water Reflection

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Conceptual logo design for Fresh Networks, a social media software company.

The wedding invitation card and the homecoming invitation card together.

The wedding invitation card flip opened. Inner sides of the card written in Sinhala script.

It took me about three months to complete the design. This is entirely done in Illustrator and has no raster elements to bleed. The base for the card was done in wood and painted to glue to the two sides of the card. The card flip opened to show the invitation text inside the fold.

Inspiration

I looked at many Sesatha designs before attempting to do one on my own. Most real designs were not eye-catching and the elements that made the Sesatha looked oddly put together. Then the design on the 2000 rupee note caught my attention and this was heavily inspired by that.

A poster done for a cultural event organized by the U.S. Embassy in Sri Lanka, Colombo. The requirements were to create a poster that reflects the artist, R&B and the atmosphere. A standard sized (17×22’) poster was done for the two venues; Colombo and Male. The poster shown here is the one that was done for Male.

Please note that this work is copyrighted.

Conceptual logo designed for Energy Futures Network.

nStation has a new theme from today onwards (July 16, 2008). This theme is a fresh design I came up with a couple of days back. It took me about a week to complete the design and another week to develop it to a WordPress Theme.

This theme is more modern looking than the previous two. There is adequate white space surrounding objects and consistency has been preserved across pages. I have also made every attempt to make it look good on all browsers. Different sections of the theme (header, main menu, content area, etc.) have different appeals to it so that they do not conflict with each other in appearance.

The most notable element on this design is the large desktop area on the top of the page. On my previous two themes I used an area similar to this to designate specialty. For example, for Halloween, I had jack-o-lanterns on this space. But the header blended with the rest of the design too well to the point where it was not noticeable. There was also a lot of work involved as a change in the header was in fact a change in the entire design. Now on this design, the header has been made an integral part of the design while without making it a part of the content.

With the introduction of this theme, I’m going to release the previous theme to the WordPress community. It will take some time though as it needs some modifications and patching before making it more public aware.

Note: This was done on off hours. Therefore a week’s work is about ten to fifteen hours.

Conceptual logo design for Gräning, Püschel & Kollegen law firm.

Ergonomics of the right-handed design: The practice of creating right hand oriented icons has come in to play from industrial design as almost all devices are right-hand oriented. If you haven’t noticed this before, the right-handed design is the same reason why your TV remote is well operated from your right hand compared to the left hand. The power button (or any other crucial controller) is conveniently placed where your thumb finger would rest when you are holding the remote. This is the same reason why controls are placed on the right-hand side of the elevator; and the list can go on and on.

To illustrate this, I’ve shown the left hand orientation in the Google Android UI icons here. See how the Android design is completely opposite to the common design in certain cases.

Primary and secondary objects are used in these icons to suggest the left hand orientation. For example the Alarm Clock, Browser, Calculator and Calendar icons are oriented towards the left hand side. The Dialer and Messaging icons clearly show the left hand orientation as the handset and the pencil is held left-handedly.

Certainly the current Android prototype is too early to sustain till the final release. Probably the entire set of UI icons will be changed in the final release. Maybe this is done purposely to be different from the rest of the world. The guys at Google are famous for doing things differently. I’m not complaining here — just enjoying the fact that someone has made a design that suite my style as I’m a left-hander!

Android screenshot courtesy androidcommunity.com.

A poster done for a cultural event organized by the U.S. Embassy Sri Lanka, Colombo. Two posters (17×22′ and 36×24′) were designed for different needs. The portrait version was designed mainly for noticeboards and other places and the landscape version was designed for places where more room is available. The poster shown here is the portrait version.

Please note that this work is copyrighted.