Clean Blue Navigation Box

This tutorial is going to go over how to use some tools and effects to make a navigation box for a web layout which you can apply the same techniques to make content boxes etc.

Step 1

First of all we want to create a new document (File > New) and make it something like 540 by 440 pixels in size. Fill the background with a radial gradient from a lightish grey (I’ve used #343435) at the top left to a darker grey (and #222222) in the bottom right.

Step 2

Create a new layer (Layer > New > Layer). Select the rounded rectangle tool and make a selection of 300 by 300 pixels with a radius of 10 pixels.

Step 3

Fill the selection with another radial gradient from #007ccb at the top left to #004877 at the bottom right of the selection. Deselect (Ctrl + D).

Step 4

Now we are going to be adding a drop shadow to our navigation box by going Layer > Layer Style > Drop Shadow and applying the below settings.

Now your box should be looking like this.

Step 5

And we are going to be adding a gradient overlay to the box as well now. So go Layer > Layer Style > Gradient Overlay and apply these settings – click on the image on the right of “Gradient:” to get the top window.

Your navigation box should be looking pretty good now

Step 6

Add a title for the navigation box.

The font details I’ve used are…

Step 7

Now we are going to be adding some dividers etc to go between the text links that we will be adding. Using the rectangular marquee tool make a fixed sized selection of 260 by 1 pixel below the box title. Fill with #ffffff (white).

Step 8

Set the blend mode of that divider to Overlay and decrease the opacity of the layer to 20%.

Step 9

Duplicate the divider (Ctrl + J) and then move it down 30 pixels (Ctrl + Shift + Down Arrow three times). The Ctrl + Arrow moves the layer in the direction of the arrow by one pixel, and adding the shift key moves it 10 pixels. Repeat this process until you have enough dividers for your links.

Step 10

Now we are going to be adding the text links.

Pay close attention to the line height setting – this will set the line height (of course) to 30 pixels which is the distance between our dividers

Step 11

And we need a hover effect because otherwise it’d be boring when we hover our mouse over it (this is only when you have coded it! Please don’t ask why it doesnt work while in Photoshop or how to code it – this is a design blog

).
On a new layer make a selection of 260 by 30 pixels over one of the text links – so it sits nicely between the dividers.