[See post to watch Flash video]

Justin Maller for Computer Arts - Expressive lighting effects - this is a great, in depth tutorial from the ever brilliant CA. Justin takes you right through the process of preparing your start image and then harnessing the power of standard Photoshop filters and tricks to create some really classy bright light trails and effects. 2-3 hours recommended if you want to follow this step by step (components provided) but if you’re anything like me you’ll prefer to digest this more quickly and then go play with a design of your own.

Dan Philibin - Flare Effect - a nice simple walk through from Dan on creating flares around images. Creating flares can be good for drawing the users attention to key points of a site or image, especially with advertising.

Abduzeedo - Magic Lighting - this neat little tutorial shows how to generate great, bright flare lights and effects out of literally nothing. Probably the best, most easily recreated effects to apply to your own images and graphics.

It’s great to see a normal looking image lifted by some special effects, please comment with a link if you achieve any results you like in your own work by using any of these guides.

It used to be that to find good solid tuition for your language of choice it was time to revert to the bookstore, but not any more with a wealth of free, high-quality guides and forums online. I think these are some of the best I’ve seen in terms of clarifying some of the basic principles through to intermediate techniques, but if there are other sites you think I need to look at, or would like me to add to the list, then please let me know…

CSS Basics - does exactly as promissed, in a handy reference format for the beginner.

Complete CSS layout - a good walkthrough for getting into the idea of CSS Vs traditional tables and tabs.

Mouse-over Menu in CSS - learn how CSS makes one of the more complex / frustrating tasks in html a lot simpler and impressive looking. A well thought out tutorial and technique.

Another complex CSS menu made simple. Great technique, really easy to adapt to your own needs with a little thought..

Design and the style of the layout has ended up as an interesting mix of clean lines and pinstripes, mixed up with organic painted shapes and text details. The design is a little grungier (despite the ‘Web 2.0′ colour palette) than my usual style but it all generated out of a few key ideas so I hope there was something right at the start. I’ve particularly enjoyed learning mouseOvers and using scripts o change backgrounds and so on. The furthest I’d been in coding was playing around with WP theme layouts so this was a learning curve and definitely fun to do.

Code is art is a phrase I can respect after doing a project like this, especially as just keeping things in a logical order is hard enough for an HTML / css beginner. If I find the time I will go back through each pages source and sort it out properly as they are probably offensive to most web designers in their current state…

Thoughts, ideas and feedback on the site all welcome, as ever.

The inside of the property looks incredible - the minimalist lines obviously intended to frame the panoramic vistas, not detract. As a means of conveying the dwellers attention to the awe inspiring alpine landscape outside, the restricted palette of plain almost bland interior colours work very well. Similarly, simple specification of fixtures and the use of standard detailing look cool and uncluttered.

The designers have made a really strong choice in the detailing of the windows in the chalet. They are carefully proportioned to make anyone in the house aware that they are not inside the real art of the mountain, it is outwith the shell. Panoramic vistas of the mountains are framed and then interspersed with squared, delicately framed scenes that look as fake as they are real.

This is what AFGH have to say about their project…

The building was arranged on the periphery of the property so that the distance to the neighbouring houses was as large as posssible and so that the option of constructing another building could be left open. The concrete cellar anchors the building in the sloping terrain and houses the entrance area and the technical servicing, on top of which is the wooden volume of the building which appears something like a ship. This floor juts out to a great extent towards the east so that a covered, protected entrance is created.

The concrete chimney of the open fireplace rises like a mast out of the cellar, and together with a concrete wall forms the bracing backbone behind which the two single-flight staircases connect the 3 storeys. On the ground floor is a large living room spread over two different levels and with different ceiling heights. The deliberately low area containing the kitchen in fact creates a spatial feeling like that generated in the low parlours in mountain huts. The 5-meter long fixed-glazed panorama window, which frames the breathtaking view like a picture, nevertheless introduces a contemporary modernity. The polygonal plan form makes a differentiated spatial division possible and gives the open fireplace its particular status at the widest spot in the room.

This is lovely, real design that is (refreshingly) non self-obsessed. Put it on the wish list.

Prerequisites for owning any of these are a classy apartment and a visually-impressive colection of literature; especially as most of these depend on at least a couple of 400 x 400 hardbacks for their gravitas…
Shelves With a Bench - by Stanislav Katz.

Quad Bookcase - by Nauris Kalinauskas.

You can see the full article at freshome.