If you were one of the lucky people who grabbed yourself a new Apple iPad’s this weekend, then you may be a little disappointed with the selection of wallpapers available on the fantastic little device – fear not, help is at hand.

We have created a set of guides for all you budding and professional artists out there who wish to create your own. The download below offers a fully layered Photoshop (CS4 or earlier) file with guides added and an overlay to make sure you understand the process – let me explain.

The native screen size of an iPad is 768 x 1024px, or (and this is the funky bit) it’s 1024 x 768px – as we all know you can orientate the iPad either horizontally or vertically dependent on our preference of display – the iPad simply rotates the wallpaper image when you do this and as such we have to create an image that is 1024 x 1024px – to cover all the bases. There is also, because of this method, 4 corners of your image that will never be seen, regardless of it’s format.

Here is a reduced size of the download for you to get a clear idea on how things work.

The download includes the following formats for your convenience:

• Layered Photoshop
• TIFF
• JPEG

Please – NO HOTLINKING TO THIS FILE – I fully support linking to this article however.

We look forward to some designs from our small community, and we have lots more goodies in store for the iPad owners out there – stay tuned!

When you think of the word “Designer”, you typically think of what?  Web, print, art or maybe even fashion?  But do you ever think of bridges?  Think about it.  Someone had to design the plans to come up with the general structure of the bridge that would be  functional, safe and durable to withstand all seasons.  But the beauty of designing the bridge is not generally in it’s functionality, but the visually stunning personality that brings the bridge to life.

Building a bridge from blueprints to the exact object could be a lot like building a website.  You want it to make people go “OH WOW” when they see it.  It needs to age well – you can’t go building new bridges every other month and you certainly wouldn’t want to do that with your site.  But of course, most importantly – it needs to have user functionality – to provide the user with that of which they seek – in the sense of a bridge…it’s to get to the other side.

To regular people, like most of us using the bridges, they are simply just that – just a bridge, a thing that gets us from one place to another.  To bridge the gap.

To some creative communities they are seen as forms of art – let’s take a look at some appealing creations of Art now from our friends – Flickr.

Our recent interview with Sean McGrath proved hugely successful, and so, we have decided to start a complete new section here at Web Tips Magazine – Interviews. We have some awesome interviews lined up from various freelancers in the coming months so be sure to keep an eye on this section.

Let’s kick of our new interview by focusing on Jonathan Atkinson. Jonathan’s story begins in a small town in Lancashire, England.  He started off selling games out of a gas station and built that up to be one of the top 20 Playstation Centre’s in the country.  When that challenge was conquered, Jonathan decided to see if he could live the ‘All American Dream’ and move to Ohio, with his US born wife.

Coming to the USA in 2000, he was penniless.  While going through immigration, which is a another long story he tells us, he decided he wanted to go back to his roots of Art and Design, since it was after all, the Major he took at Nelson & Colne College.  So he found a little website called Elance and decided to join the masses and try out his luck.  It wasn’t long after his first couple of projects that he started a career on what would go on to be his “calling”.

Jonathan has graduated from logo design, basic HTML websites and 30 second flash files shown at movie cinemas, on to Apple Motion, email templates, and now Word Press themes.  Expanding his business from Theatre web sites, to complete websites, online application design, and GUI design.

“I like to say to people that I make things look pretty – logos, websites, user interfaces, print materials and I even create animated pre-movie advertisements for movie theaters, plus I design online applications for my day job and look after the servers and a family of websites.”

Jonathan also went on to tell us what inspires him:

“I don’t have any particular people that inspire me as such, I just love clean usable design, whether that is a can of soda or a print magazine all the way to architecture and movies – I tend to gain inspiration from as many places as I can and none traditional inspiration from something not affiliated with web design etc is always a great source.

Inspiration from unusual sources, as I said before blending one media with another in style and user interface is a great obsession of mine and seeing the HDR images, flickr focus and interviews on here is a great source for improving your skill sets.”

Personal goals for Jonathan for 2010 include more Word Press themes.  He’s keen to raise the bar on his Themeforest creations.  Jonathan tells us to watch his Themeforest account for new and upcoming projects he already has in mind.

Take a look at some of Jonathan’s fresh cool and eye-catching pieces:

Finally, an awards ceremony worth keeping up for.  Welcome Design Awards 2010!  The Annual Design Awards (ANNDAS) is hosting it’s first ever Design Awards 2010 – sponsored by some of the best known names on the internet such as Icon Finder, Envato, GSI Corp and Photoshop Roadmap – just to name a few is an award like no other.

The Annual Design Awards (ANNDAS) is going to be global recognition of the most visually stimulating “best of the best”.  The group is really thinking of everything with this Award.  With keeping the fee to a reasonable amount of just over $15 USD per single entry (or 10 GPB) and just over $93 USD for multiple entries (or 60 GPB) – this opens the doors for some excellent opportunities for anyone to enter.  Not only does each applicant get featured in the new Designers Directory, but also have a chance to feature in the yearly book that will be published to showcase the best designs and also have access to the website notice board where you can promote your own business – as one example.

Some of the key points judges will be looking for is Creativity and Effectiveness.  But also, if you are entered in the Website Categories – judges will also be looking for usability.

With several categories to enter and several awards to be given – it is a designer’s dream.  Categories include but not limited too Best Logo Design, Best Book Cover Design, Best Digital Art and Designer of the Year Award plus many more.  In addition to that, the ANNDAS will also be handing out awards to outstanding contributions, judges will award those most creative individuals with an “Excellence in Design Accolade” amongst other ‘special’ awards.  All finalist will feature in numerous promotions and media coverage and will also gain GLOBAL – yes – I said GLOBAL – respect within the industry as well as receiving promotional tools and an AWESOME trophy!

Entries must be submitted before 4/22/10 and winners will be announced 6/22/10.

Portions of the profits will go to benefit the Cancer Research UK.  So what are you waiting for?

For more details and contest entry please visit http://www.annualdesignawards.com/index.php and good luck to all!