texture

BookBook from Twelve South

The BookBook from Twelve South offers cushioned leathery protection in a stealthy disguise. With sizes for 13, 15 and 17-inch MacBook Pros, the BookBook comes in Vibrant Red and Classic Black. Details include zipper tabs that look like bookmarks and the texture of the edge pieces show embossed ridges that simulate  book pages.

I’ve had a couple of days to wander around with the BookBook and I love it. As I said in the video, I was able to mark my table at Starbucks and not only did no one take the table, no one took my MacBook Pro.1 The protection offered is comparable to a higher end padded sleeve but I’d say it’s definitely superior to a Neoprene sleeve.

One suggestion I’d make is that you remove the MacBook Pro from the BookBook if you’re doing and processor-intensive work for an extended period of time—cases like this will decrease the airflow to the cooling vents and that is something you’d want to avoid.

Prices range from $79.99 US to $99.99 US depending on the size. iPad cases are coming soon.

I love creative cases like this and products that take tired, predictable product types and do something clever with them. Have you seen anything you think qualifies as Mac/iPhone/iPod/iPad awesomeness? Post a comment and let me know about it—I’ll give you credit on camera for the tip.

No Flash? No problem—click here!»

  1. I would NOT recommend leaving your MacBook Pro unattended no matter how clever the case []

Build a Porsche out of orange peals… in Photoshop, obviously

gold orange porsche medium2 20080910 194530 Build a Porsche out of orange peals... in Photoshop, obviouslyI’ve been meaning to post a link to this tutorial for a while now and while everyone is still talking about the new iPods and the array of cases, docks, speakers and FM transmitters that have been or will be adjusted to fit them, it seems like a nice diversion.

Orange Porsche. Fruit Skin is a tutorial from Alfoart that will ultimately teach you how to apply any texture to any object in a realistic way. For a donation via PayPal, you can download the Photoshop file for yourself and deconstruct how it was created as you follow the freely available tutorial step by step.

Amazing work.

[ Via Photoshop Lady ]

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Create a cool 3-D texture using Illustrator

3dillustrator 20080614 141600 Create a cool 3 D texture using IllustratorLayers Magazine’s has posted an excellent video tutorial where Corey Barker shows you how to Creating 3D Shapes in Illustrator. One caveat to the tutorial: although the heavy lifting is done in Adobe Illustrator (USD$599), it finishes up in Adobe Photoshop (USD$649) making this “fun to try” tutorial a bit financially inaccessible to the graphically curious. For professionals, though, or for anyone else who has already purchased these two apps, this tutorial is built out of some very useful techniques that you can use to develop your own effects.

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