No matter what you think of his politics, U.S. presidential cantidate Barack Obama has a pretty incredible marketing and design machine behind him. One strong example of this is his “O” logo. Simple, attractive, symbolic, it’s undeniably an effective logo.

Another aspect of the Obama campaign that is attractive to a lot of American’s is the grass-roots, everybody can be involved attitude that they’ve been trying quite successfully to convey. In honor of that attitude, and just in time for the Democratic Convention, I thought I would show some really helpful Illustrator techniques by making the Obama logo. In this tutorial, we’ll be going over the Pathfinder, Envelope Warps, Opacity Masks, and Gradient Meshes. And we’ll use a drop shadow!

What’s that? You don’t think we can do it? I have three words for you my friend.

Yes. We. Can.

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Today is your luck day, friend. It’s free octopus day at ClickPopMedia! So step up and download yourself an octopus.

Download the Vector Octopus (.ai and .eps)

Howdy pardners. I’m glad you stopped by the ol’ ClickPop Ranch. Sit down, rest your feet a spell, and enjoy this water buffalo skull vector. I realize that this probably isn’t the way a water buffalo rancher would write. It’s more like a regular buffalo rancher, but hey, it gets the job done.

Download the Water Buffalo Skull Vector (.ai and .eps)

GodBless:VQ

Last week I posted some desktop wallpaper of a new vector swatch I was working on. Well, the pattern is finally finished, and I’m pretty happy with it. The design is based on a beautiful Indonesian batik fabric I saw and couldn’t get out of my mind. It’s exotic, a little trippy, and a lot of fun to play around with.

I set up three different color schemes: a regal orange and blue, an electric yellow and blue, and a psychedelic green and pink. I also made a bunch of Photoshop patterns from this swatch, if anyone wants those, let me know and I’ll post them.

Batik (from wikipedia.com, emphasis mine)

a wax-resist dyeing technique used on textile. Batik is found in several countries of West Africa, such as Nigeria, Ghana, Cameroon and Mali, and in Asia, such as India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Iran, the Philippines, Malaysia and Thailand. However, it is in Indonesia that it is considered a national art form.

Download the Batik Vector Swatch (.ai and Illustrator swatches)

Update: First, the Batik vectors have been updated to fix a few issues with the patterns and include two more color schemes. We’ve also released some Photoshop patterns of these swatches.

If you come up with some cool color schemes, we’d be excited to see them.

GodBless:VQ

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We’re working on revamping certain parts of the site right now… Actually, we always seem to be revamping some part of the site at all times. Sometimes the revamps are minor, boring little usability things, and sometimes they’re more interesting. We don’t generally announce every time we upgrade something, but this time we couldn’t help ourselves.

You see, this revamp involves penguins. You read that right, glorious penguins.

Along with being a neato blog that gives away free vectors, textures, pixel paterns, and flash things, and offers tutorials on illustrator, web programming, flash, photoshop, etc, we’re also a new media marketing and web development company. We do all sorts of projects, for all sorts of people. Sometimes it’s web design, other times we do web app development, and sometimes we set up viral marketing campaigns and social advertising internet campaigns for some really cool companies.

We don’t advertise ourselves much on our blog, and that will probably stay the same, but we are soon going to be changing our “About” tab to a “Services” page that would really help show off our ClickPopSkills. And like I said, there will be penguins.

So have some fun with the cute little penguin chick, fun-loving rockhopper penguin, regal king penguin, and awe-inspiring emperor penguin.

Download the Penguins vector pack (.ai and .eps)

GodBless:VQ

I coach a YMCA swim team during the winter, so that’s why you’re getting this particular vector. This little platypus’ all ready for the Olympics this summer. Have fun.

Download the Platypus (.ai and .eps)

GodBless:VQ