Lots of great tidbits in this post from Dmitriy Bunin about building effective gradients. One of my favorites is using a radial gradient to add some depth to linear shapes.

There are also some great tips on finding inspiration for your gradients instead of just picking random colors.

As a web designer, many of the tips are using code and HEX colors to achieve the effects, but all of these tips apply to Illustrator and InDesign.

TIP #8 – One of my own personal gradient tips

One of the tips that isn’t here that I learned was to never use PMS colors in gradients. This can cause muddy colors in the blend. Always convert the PMS colors to their CMYK, RGB or HEX equivalents to create gradients between two or more PMS colors. You can see in the sample below that the transition between PMS colors gets gray and muddy, but the HEX equivalents create a much smoother and more colorful gradation.

Check out all seven tips here.

via Digital Synopsis