You can take a look at the Logo Design Portfolio. Currently, there are 70 – 400+ custom logo designs you can choose from. You can also start a logo design contest within minutes for as little as $200.00. Three simple steps and your design contest goes live. You will see amazing logo designs within hours. There are hundreds of creative logo designers in over 100 countries waiting to create your logo design.

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Source: http://www.logomyway.com/

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Mark your calendars and buy your tickets, because Bike to Blazers is going to be awesome this year. On April 14th, the bike and basketball worlds will collide, resulting in a fun community event that will (hopefully) become an annual Portland tradition.

Why bikes and Blazers? Why not? Both are a major force for good in our city and by tying them together, great things can happen. The Blazers want to be the “greenest” team in the NBA and a big part of their effort is to encourage more biking to games. From an advocacy perspective, putting bikes front and center at the Rose Garden, and tying biking more closely to the Blazers organization, is a great way to reach a lot of folks who don’t usually hear about how fun and useful bikes can be.

Here we go Bla-zers!

At the event, we’ll kick things off with a rally at Pioneer Courthouse Square. Then, we’ll retrace Bill Walton’s bike commute to practice (for the uninitiated, Walton led the Blazers to a championship in 1977 and he was known for his love of bicycling). Once we get to the Rose Garden, we’ll join a mini bike expo at the commons area near the arena’s main entrance. As fans enter the game, they’ll get a healthy dose of biking: free maps and other goodies, custom bikes to gawk at, and more. We’ll make signs (gotta be ready for our big moment on the jumbotron!) and hang out before filing into the game where 100 lucky people will sit together and cheer on the Blazers from the official Bike Section. Whew!

We’re planning a bunch more stuff for this event, but those are the basics. This is a family-friendly event and the great folks at the Bicycle Transportation Alliance are on board to help make sure the little ones on bikes have a great time too.

This is their last home game of the regular season and it’s against the Golden State Warriors.

If you’d like to join us in the Bike Section, visit our Bike to Blazers event page for ticket buying information (or, cut to the chase and visit this Blazers link and enter promo code “bikeblazers”). Stay tuned for more details (did I mention one lucky person will win a Bill Walton autographed helmet!?).

Bike to Blazers
April 14th
Pioneer Courthouse at 5:30, ride at 6:00, game at 7:30
Tickets: $22
Full details at BiketoBlazers.com

Portland realtor Daniel Fleischer turned the big 4-0 last May, “So, instead of buying a red Camaro,” he told me recently, “I thought I’d take a bike ride.” But not just any ride. Fleischer set out to conquer the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route. And conquer it he did.

Over the course of 48 days, he rode 2,934 miles from Mexico to Canada with an estimated 200,000 feet in elevation gain. Tonight, Fleischer will share a video and slideshow presentation of his journey that will let you “live the trail through images and sounds.”

Fleischer is no stranger to epic trips: In 1994 he through-hiked the Pacific Crest Trail; in 1996 he hiked around Asia; in 1998 he biked coast-to-coast; and in 2000 he hiked the entire Continental Divide Trail.

After that, Fleischer took a break: “I had two children and put my adventuring on pause for a few years.”

So, why start up again? What motivates him to ride 70-plus miles a day for 41 days over rocky, hilly terrain on his mountain bike? I asked Fleischer this and a few other questions via email:

“This trip, like the others, was a great way for me to re-establish priorities in my life. It allows me to breathe in a way that I am unable to in my daily urban life. When on the trail, moments seem like days, days like months, and months like lifetimes. Most long distance adventurers would agree that you have to experience it to truly appreciate it.”

Not a bad place to camp for the night.

What was the most unexpected part of the trip?

“I don’t think I went with a ton of expectations, so I wasn’t too surprised. I guess I expected it to be more difficult than it was (I trained really hard and hit the dirt rolling). Also, as lovely as much of the area is, I feel like i am absolutely blessed to live and bike in Portland every day. There is no place like it in the U.S. for cyclists.”

What was the most difficult part of the ride?

“The hardest part undoubtedly was the mud. Last June was the wettest in 30 years for the Rockies. I got rained on every day in Colorado. The rain itself isn’t the issue. It’s what happens to the dirt roads and trails. Many of them become un-passable by bike, so I ended up hauling my 75 pound, mud-laden bike up and down muddy mountains on foot. I threw my back out really badly on one such episode and had to take four days off to heal. The mud also wreaked havoc on my drive train.”

With summer approaching, I know many of you have epic journeys planned. Check out Fleischer’s presentation tonight to stoke your fire, or get inspired to take that trip you’ve been dreaming about. Read Fleischer’s blog for updates from the trail.

The Great Divide Mountain Bike Route Slide/Video Show
Monday, March 15th
The Mountain Shop (Corner of NE 7th and Broadway in Portland)
7pm
Free snacks to those who ride a bike or take public transportation.

New still images taken from surveillance video nearly one month ago show 22-year old Tyler Brady — who has been missing since February 27th — riding his bike in Northeast Portland. As reported two weeks ago, Brady was last seen riding his bicycle in Southeast Portland.

Today, the Portland Police detectives have released five images taken from surveillance video. View them below (along with descriptions provided by the PPB):

Depicts Brady and his missing bicycle outside the NE MLK/Ainsworth Safeway store on February 17th, 2010, at approximately 10:00AM. Note, Brady’s yellow knit cap, which he is believed to have been wearing when last seen, and the white, bull-horn handlebars which distinguish his black, fixed-gear Schwinn road bike.

Depicts Brady riding his bicycle, also unaccounted for, away from the NE MLK/Ainsworth Safeway store, February 17th, 2010, just after 10:00AM. Detectives believe Brady stopped at the store enroute to work, and then worked a full day at his job in the Delta Park area.

Depicts Brady leaving the Lloyd Center Safeway store, February 17th, 2010, at approximately 7:30PM. Detectives have confirmed Brady stopped at the Safeway store after leaving work that evening, before later returning home.

Depicts Brady entering the Couture Ultra Lounge, located at NW 4th/Couch, February 17th, 2010, at approx 11:00PM. Detectives have confirmed Brady stopped by the lounge with a friend, an employee of Couture, where they visited briefly with another employee.

Depicts Brady leaving the Couture Ultra Lounge, a short time later. This is the last known video of Brady before he disappeared without explanation.

A description of Brady:

Brady is described as a white male, 22 years old, 5′10″, weighing 150 pounds. He has brown hair and blue eyes, a scruffy beard and mustache, and has tattoos on the back of his neck and on one of his arms, and a pierced nose. Detectives have determined Brady was last wearing a dark-colored hoodie with a large white design on the back, dark-colored pants and a yellow knit cap.

Anyone who knows of Brady’s whereabouts is asked to immediately call 9-1-1. Anyone with additional information about Brady is asked to contact Detective Mike Weinstein, 503-823-0446.

- In Los Angeles, zoning policies encourage building apartment complexes right next to freeways. But it turns out that this is terrible for residents’ health, particularly causing lung problems for the thousands of children who live a block from a freeway.

- The end of 2010 is slated to see a mass market rollout of electric cars in the Pacific Northwest.

- A low-budget row of jersey barriers carves out space for bikes on a major road—and marks the debut of separated bike lanes in Vancouver, BC.

- In the UK, an elderly, blind woman has to take a 14 mile bus trip to get to the store across the street from her house.

- Reed Bates, a Texas man who was arrested and jailed for riding his bicycle in the center of the road rather than on the shoulder, has been tried and convicted. He’s appealing the case.

- In Idaho, new legislation could require that all bicycles have brakes—stirring up the age-old debate of whether stopping your fixed-gear bike with your legs counts as braking.

- Email dealt quite a blow to the bicycle messenger industry…could carbon credits be bringing it back? Maybe in Paris.

- In Cleveland, advocates have been rallying to get pedestrian and bicycle access added to a new bridge project—and may just get their way.

- The city of San Luis Potosi could become to Mexico what Portland is to the US. The city core is being pedestrianized, and it’s a bike manufacturing hub.

- Sydney, Australia has been dubbed “The City That Hates Bikes.” Some thoughts (and data) here about why that might be.

- LEED certification could soon apply not just to buildings but to entire neighborhoods.

- From San Francisco to Portland…to Louisville! The Car-Free Happy Hour trend is sweeping the nation.

- Finally, listen to what one person thinks are the ten best songs about bicycles and judge for yourself.

“This is the end of favoring motorized transportation at the expense of non-motorized.”
— US DOT Sec. Ray LaHood

US Department of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has announced a new set of pro-bicycling and walking policy recommendations meant to inform transportation planning at the state and community level.

He announced them on his blog this morning, after the “dust settled” on his enthusiastic speech at the National Bike Summit Thursday night. Why didn’t he announce them in front of 700-plus bike advocates? “The crowd’s enthusiasm was so contagious, the idea of introducing a major policy revision in that setting quickly evaporated.”

Here’s how Sec. LaHood introduces these policy revisions:

Today, I want to announce a sea change. People across America who value bicycling should have a voice when it comes to transportation planning. This is the end of favoring motorized transportation at the expense of non-motorized.

We are integrating the needs of bicyclists in federally-funded road projects. We are discouraging transportation investments that negatively affect cyclists and pedestrians. And we are encouraging investments that go beyond the minimum requirements and provide facilities for bicyclists and pedestrians of all ages and abilities.

Sec. LaHood (L) and Rep. Blumenauer
at the National Bike Summit.
(Photo © J. Maus)

rAnd here are Sec. LaHood’s “key recommendations for state DOTs and communities”:

* Treat walking and bicycling as equals with other transportation modes.
* Ensure convenient access for people of all ages and abilities.
* Go beyond minimum design standards.
* Collect data on walking and biking trips.
* Set a mode share target for walking and bicycling.
* Protect sidewalks and shared-use paths the same way roadways are protected (for example, snow removal)
* Improve nonmotorized facilities during maintenance projects.

The official document behind Sec. LaHood’s recommendations has just been posted online and is titled, United States Department of Transportation Policy Statement on Bicycle and Pedestrian Accommodation Regulations and Recommendations. The purpose of the memo is to officially amend the United States Code and the Code of Federal Regulations.

The summary of the revised policy statement, which hasn’t been updated in almost a decade, states:

“The new policy statement indicates the Department’s strong commitment to accommodating bicyclists and pedestrians as an integral part of the transportation system by: Ensuring that the accommodation of walking and biking is addressed throughout the planning process.”

About the new policy languange, Sec. LaHood says, “This is a start, but it’s an important start,” and he adds that, “These initial steps forward will help us move forward even further.”

Read the full policy statement on the Federal Highway Administration’s website.

The video, “If I ride,” was shot in and around Portland (if you’re a local, you’ll notice many familiar faces). Austin Ramsland, co-owner of Sweetpea Bicycles, former North employee and current board member of the Bicycle Transportation Alliance helped recruit talent for the film. It was conceived and produced by Jim Carey, Dana Bruington, Mark Ray, and Steve Rauner.

One of the wonders of working with Illustrator is how a great looking design can be created from just playing around with the basic shapes. This particular design is created mostly through manipulating and joining vector paths to form the colourful flowing tubes. Fancy giving it a go yourself? Let’s get started!

A typical snowboard design would be in the region of 64×12 inches. Unless you’re on a super powerful computer setup, you might see your machine buckling under the pressure of designing at this size, so we can scale the design down by half and use the dimensions 32×6inches.

Set up a basic colour scheme for your design. Here I’m using a dark blue, a pale yellow and a baby pink combination. Draw a rectangle to cover the whole artboard area to create a background for the design.

Draw a rounded rectangle onto the artboard and maximise the corner radius by pressing the right cursor key. Add a thick 100pt stroke with one of your colour swatches.

Use the Direct Selection Tool to select and delete the points that make up the left hand corner. Drag the points at the end of the straight edges inwards to shorten the shape. Hold Shift to keep these straight.

Copy (CMD+C) and paste (CMD+V) a duplicate of the shape and rotate it by 180 degrees. Shorten the top edge right down so that it lines up roughly with the original curve.

Turn on Smart Guides (CMD+U), then use the handy green indicators to accurately line up the two shapes. Aim to continue the centre path line directly between the two shapes.

Zoom right in and select both the end points of each shape with the Direct Selection Tool. Press CMD+J to join them together into one continuous path.

Paste another instance of the shape, then Reflect it along the vertical axis (Object > Transform > Reflect).

Use the Smart Guides to align this shape with the end of the continuous path and join them together.

Paste in a couple more shapes and join everything together until you have a flowing path covering the whole design.

Paste another instance of the curve, but change the colour of the stroke and position it elsewhere on the design to fill up any large gaps in the design.

Draw some straight lines with the same stroke weight and colour that cross the design vertically.

Drag guides onto the artboard to indicate the outline of the original shapes, then use the Scissors tool (C) to cut the path where it intersects.

Delete out the small path that’s left between two cuts to show the original shape underneath, giving a weaved appearance. Draw a couple more lines and alternate the weaving.

Paste in more instances of the curved line and position them vertically on the design.

Add more guides to indicate where the lines of the pink path crosses the overlapping orange lines.

Use the Scissors tool to chop out more sections of the paths to weave the lines in and out of the original path.

Once you have a bunch of paths flowing horizontally and vertically with lines weaving in and out, take a step back to check the design for gaps.

Elsewhere on the document, draw an empty square with no fill or stroke. Inside this add a small circle. Align them both with the align palette to ensure they’re accurately centred, then drag them into the Swatches palette to create a new pattern fill.

Copy (CMD+F) and paste in front (CMD+F) the background rectangle, then add the circular pattern as the fill colour.

Tone down the effect by changing the blending mode to Color Burn. This will switch the light blue circle to a darker tone of the background colour.

Select the paths of the flowing curves and go to Object > Expand. Select the Stroke option to convert the paths to solid shapes.

Draw a long, thin rectangle and rotate it by 45 degrees. Drag a duplicate off to the right while holding the ALT and Shift keys.

With both items selected, go to Object > Blend > Make, then head back to Object > Blend > Blend Options and alter the settings to Specified Steps at around 55.

With the new blend still selected, go to Object > Expand and select the Object option. This will convert the editable blend into a range of solid shapes.

Right click and select Ungroup.

Then, head to Object > Compound Path > Make. A compound path groups all the items together so they can be used as a single tool with the Pathfinder in the following steps.

Copy and paste in front (CMD+F) a duplicate of the main pink curves. Press CMD+Shift+] to bring it to the top. Select the diagonal lines once again and copy them to the clipboard (CMD+C), we’ll need them again later!

With both the diagonal lines and the pink curves selected, hit the Intersect option from the Pathfinder palette to crop the lines down to the outline of the curved path.

Fill the new diagonal lines with a black to transparent gradient, which you can find handily sitting in the swatches palette as a default swatch.

Change the blending mode of the gradient to Screen to give a bright overlay effect. Then adjust the stacking order by pressing CMD+[ repeatedly until the pattern sits underneath the yellow paths.

Select all the objects with the yellow fill and create a compound path.

Paste the diagonal lines that we previously copied back onto the artboard. Flip this one round by going to Object > Transform > Reflect. Duplicate the series of yellow paths and select them along with the diagonal lines. Use the Intersect option in the Pathfinder palette to chop down the lines to the confines of the paths.

Add the same black gradient fill to the new pattern.

Then change the blending mode to Screen to match the effect of the pink lines.

The gradient lines help add a little depth to the otherwise flat design, but we can take this a step further with some subtle shading. Carefully select the original paths (not the diagonal overlays). Press CMD+2 to lock the diagonal lines if you have trouble selecting the correct objects. Go to Effect > Stylize > Drop Shadow and alter the settings to 30% opacity, 0 offset on both axis and a 0.2inch blur. Sit back and wait for everything to process.

Draw a rectangle across the artboard, then select it along with the whole design and go to Object > Clipping Mask > Make to hide all the overlapping edges.

The vector design is just about complete and ready to export. Go to File > Export and select the Jpeg option.

Download the open the awesome Snowboard template from Nunosk8. Paste in your custom snowboard design and scale it to size within the document.

With the design in place, CMD+click the thumbnail of the board outline to load the selection, then create a layer mask on the design layer to clip the design to size.

And that’s our sweet snowboard design mockup complete! Check out the larger preview for a detailed view. If you’re an Access All Areas member, download the vector source file to get a closer look at how the design is put together and to compare the settings with your own.

Download the source file

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1. grace 2. Jonathan 3. Kim Steinhaug

For the ones who did not win in the contest. Traffic Light Feedback is very kind to offer us 50% off the subscription for the lifetime of your account. Simply input the Coupon Code: G39WEBAPPE via this link in order to claim your discount.

WebAppers will continue giving away some really nice web development tools and resources to our readers. Please feel free to suggest what you would like for the next Giveaway under this post. Thank you.

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You can also look at the tutorial: Pure CSS Social Media Icons, which creates social media icons using CSS and semantic HTML. It uses progressive enhancement to turn an unordered list of text links into a set of icons without the use of images or JavaScript.

Source: Pure CSS Speech Bubbles
Source: Pure CSS Social Media Icons

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