Most of the model mobile designs look similar. You may find it difficult if you would like to look for a special one. In this case, you may prefer to design your own one for your web. Here will show you how to come up with.

(View This Tutorial)

Go to Source

Facebook has become a notable part of our social life. The community’s population amounts to over 600M profiles. Facebook has become extremely popular among businesses and brands providing a marketplace for their products and services and one of the most important means of promotion. Custom fan pages let the project stand out from the crowd.

(View This Tutorial)

Go to Source

Depositphotos is the best source for premium royalty-free stock photos, illustrations and vector art. If you are a designer, advertiser, photo editor, content manager or blogger, they have millions of high-quality photographs and vector images available at affordable prices to fill all your image needs.

(View This Tutorial)

Go to Source

In this tutorial, you will learn how to create shiny text using some simple and interesting Photoshop techniques.

(View This Tutorial)

Go to Source

If you find your image background which is too plain, there are some easy ways to beautify it. Here this tutorial will show you to turn an universe into your image background. It can also apply to other objects you like.

(View This Tutorial)

Go to Source

Today in our weekly heading we’ll let you know of some interesting articles and resources. The advice, tools, examples and offers listed in this selection are intended to simplify and facilitate the web-designers’ and web-developers’ creative process and of course to cut down the time spent for routine. These will definitely be of curiosity to you.

(View This Tutorial)

Go to Source

In this tutorial, new WeGraphics contributor, Jonathan Wong walks you through how to create a Spectrum Poster design using Adobe Photoshop. So pull up a chair and join in as Jonathan takes us on a trip through his creative process.

(View This Tutorial)

Go to Source

To beautify a photo, one of the most direct way is to apply some nice colorful lighting to shine the image. There are different ways to mix the colors and these colors are also adjustable to suit for different image.

(View This Tutorial)

Go to Source

In this tutorial, you will learn how to create create a magical fantasy picture effect in Photoshop.

(View This Tutorial)

Go to Source

Even you are using a great camera, you may also need to adjust your photos especially for advertisement or poster. The quality is required to be even higher. Therefore, this tutorial is fantastic for your reference.

(View This Tutorial)

Go to Source

A roundup of the best design inspiration posted on Dribbble this week

Sign-up

Trippin’

Quick Contact Form

Radio Player

Voting UI

Basetrack app

Calendar

Retro Camera Icon

Platform Counters Final

Dial

For the win

Icons

UI Podcast Player

Dashing Dish Redesign Final

Artificial Horizon

If you like this post you may also want to look at:

This week in Dribbble #4

This week in Dribbble #3

Why not follow me on twitter: @atikusdesign
or to ensure you are updated with every D-Lists posts follow: @d_lists

Go to Source

A showcase of web designs featuring huge full screen photos as a background

Hearts’ Cry

Kochland

Partrick Properties

37 East

Handi Hikes

Bliss

Odaya

Dan Hughes

Story Matters

Ana Claudia Fitness

afgn

Clyde Quay Wharf

JR Group

If you like this post you may also want to look at:

Websites With Full Screen Photos #2

Websites With Full Screen Photos

Why not follow me on twitter: @atikusdesign
or to ensure you are updated with every D-Lists posts follow: @d_lists

Go to Source

Adobe Flash is one of the most important application to create cartoon animation especially for the web in SWF format. The Flash cartoon animation can be used in websites, banners, DVD, and video content.

In today’s premium resources post, I would like to provide two stock Flash cartoon animation sequences that can be used in your projects, banners and Flash animation.

The first stock Flash is for a woman setting in front of a computer and typing on the keyboard. The second animation is for a funny walking dog. You can use these stock Flash animation in SWF format or you can export it as video formats such as QuickTime and AVI.

The Flash files are easy to use and modify to be able to implement in your Flash project or website animated content.

You can click on the images below to preview each animation in a new webpage:

Typist Flash Cartoon Animation

Click to preview

Walking Dog Flash animation

Click to preview

The Flash animation files are in FLA format with 500 X 300px dimensions and 25 fps. The files are available in both CS4 and CS5 Flash versions.

If you are already a Premium Member then just sign in and you can download the Flash FLA source files for the above Flash cartoon animation.

Not a member? Sign up today or read more about our Premium Member area.

Related posts:

1. FlippingBook Discount for Premium Members-Limited Time Offer
2. Create 3D depth in Flash cartoon animation
3. 15 Hand Drawn Social Media Icons Vector Pack
4. New Flash Floral stock animation
5. Creating and Controlling Flash Animation with XML
6. Useful Flash Cartoon Tutorials
7. Applying Old Movie Filter for Flash CS4 Animation
8. How To Use The Color Picker In Flash Tutorial
9. Character Animation with Bones in Flash CS4
10. MGM Rare Cartoon Animation Drawings

Go to Source

Visualizing data is one of the most efficient means of delivering rough numbers and statistics in a creative and interesting way.

Infographics is concerned with providing visual illustration for information and studies in the form of charts and elements. These charts help deliver the information to the audience fast and more easily compared to other methods of delivering ideas.

While infographics does not follow a specific design form or rules, such as charts, it needs to be usable and easy to understand. This challenge requires the infographics designer to understand the data flow and links between different pieces of information. In this showcase, you will find some useful and creative examples of infographics with different styles and creative approaches. I hope you will like these examples and find them useful, and do not forget to check the following infographics related posts:

• Creative Infographics to Visualize Information
• Introduction to Infographic Design
• Amazing Examples of Infographics to Visualize Your ideas

How Long Will It Last?

Consumer Saving Behaviour

Adaptation Infographic

Design Process

Digital Nostalgia

A set of information graphics which examine the technological changes in our lifetimes and the influences they have had on our lives.

Burning Fuel

The average car vs. the average human fuel consumption

Caffeine and Calories Infographic

Information Design

Infographic shows how a product is made.

Our Present Economy

Google market shares around the globe

Gravity Wells Infographic

Infographic: Mega Shark

Michael Anderson’s resume is an infographic

Seeking Refuge Infographic

Timelines Infographic

Time travel in popular films and TV

Transparency Infographic

Transparency: The Largest Bankruptcies in History

The Volunteers Infographic

What the Tweet Infographic

Twitter Users Profile Infographic

Related posts:

1. Creative Infographics to Visualize Information
2. Amazing Examples of Infographics to Visualize You Ideas
3. Introduction to Infographic Design
4. 27 Creative Examples of Still Life Photography
5. 25 Eye-Catching and Creative Print Ads Examples
6. 25 Creative Examples of Illustration Artwork
7. Organizing the Creative Process Workflow
8. Creative Examples of Negative Space Logo Designs
9. 30 Creative Examples of Typography
10. Creative Examples of Outdoor Ads

Go to Source

Concept art is a form of digital art that mainly uses Photoshop and other similar applications to create fantasy-like scenes. Concept art is generally used in movies, games and the cinema industry.

Concept art is very challenging, because it relies greatly on the artists’ imagination and their ability to visualize fantasy scenes that look similar to Sci-Fi movies and 3D games. Along with a great imagination, the artist needs to have very good illustration and Photoshop skills to be able to use the brushes and other tools for creating a final professional look for the scenes.

In today’s showcase, I would like to share with you some amazing concept art examples from very talented artists in different styles. I hope you will enjoy them, and let us know whether you really think this is a separate form of art, or could be part of other digital art fields like photo manipulation. Do not forget to check these digital art showcases:

• Inspirational Digital Art Collection
• Featuring the Amazing Digital Art of Andrée Wallin
• 45+ Breathtaking Surreal Digital Artwork Inspirations
• Talent Showcase: The Digital Art of Kevin Roodhorst

.:MotorStorm 2 Concept Art:. 9 by sundragon83

Markus Heitz by Jesse van Dijk

Concept Art by Sabin Boykinov

.:MotorStorm 2 Concept Art:. by sundragon83

Embrace by Hao Wu

hangar concept art by eWKn

Jeil Concept Illustration by kerembeyit

.:MotorStorm 2 Concept Art:. 8 by sundragon83

Couger UTP by Henry Pashkov

Concept Art by Tony Holmsten

Star Fantasy by ZEZ zhaoenzhe

Albesila concept 1by artozi

Female Necromancer Concept by bpsola

Concept Art by Jonathan Bach

Concept Art by Pat Presley

Concept Art by Stacey Diana Clark

Conccept Art by Raj Rihal

Shahalesti Concept by bpsola

Thor -Bull Frost Giant Concept by michaelkutsche

Tijon Concept Illustration by kerembeyit

Related posts:

1. 30+ Amazing Imaginary Scenes Concept Art
2. Amazing Concept Art and Environments Design of Frank Hong
3. Amazing Examples of Photo Manipulation Art
4. 25 Creative Examples of Illustration Artwork
5. Brilliant Examples of Photo Manipulation and Illustration Artworks of Lim Si Ping
6. The Extraordinary Illustrations of Justin Maller
7. 30+ Concept Car Designs for The Tomorrow
8. Cartoon Tutorials for Creating Spaceships Concept
9. Featuring the Amazing Digital Art of Andrée Wallin
10. BMW Gina – New Auto Design Concept

Go to Source

Although there are many updates in the design and style of web icons and graphics, hand-drawn icons still attract users as well as bloggers to use them in their sites and blogs. Hand-drawn icons and graphic elements suit casual designs and styles.

Here, I would like to present to you some new social media vector icons to use in your website or blog. Today’s icon pack includes 15 hand-drawn social media icons for sites like Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, RSS, Digg, StumbleUpon and more.

When you download this icon pack, you will get the icons both in a PNG and an AI Illustrator file, which gives you the freedom to edit, resize, and modify the icons according to your personal preferences. Below is a preview of the icon pack:

While this pack requires you to be a Graphic Mania Premium Subscriber, non-subscribers can also download 4 free icons by clicking the link below:

Download icons pack preview (4 icons)

If you are already a Premium Member then just sign in and you can download the hand-drawn social media icons vector pack.

Not a member? Sign up today or read more about our Premium Member area.

Related posts:

1. How to Create a Hand-Drawn RSS Icon in Illustrator
2. Freebies: GoMedia Vector Pack 9
3. 30 Creative Social Bookmarks Icon Sets
4. Free Google Plus Icons to Download
5. FlippingBook Discount for Premium Members-Limited Time Offer
6. Free Twitter Icons
7. Free Amazing Twitter Icons
8. Twitter, the Social Bird Icon sets
9. Weby Icon Set – 100 Free Icons from Iconspedia
10. How to Create Abstract Lines in Illustrator (Part 2)

Go to Source

It is the time again for a new showcase of outdoor advertising ideas. Looking out for new designs and advertising campaigns is always the designer’s best resource to learn about fresh design ideas and find inspiration.

This is the main reason why I would like to share new advertising ideas with you every couple of weeks.

Today I would like to share with you some creative ideas from different agencies and places. I hope you will enjoy them and share your opinion with us about the best creative ideas in this collection. Do not forget to check these other advertising ideas:

• 20 Fresh and New Advertising Ideas
• Creative Examples of Outdoor Ads
• 25 Eye-Catching and Creative Print Ads Examples
• Most Amazing Business Card Design Ideas

Perspektiv Bredband: Up to 1000Mbit

Anta Sportswear: Li Xiaoxu

Denver Water: Big hair

Disabled Parking Awareness: This parking spot is not yours

Hot Wheels: Child shaped structures on highway

Activia by Ale Burset

Bulding The New Energy 4 by John Fulton

Gotextile Campaign I by Heiko Simayer

Hand And Spider by Adam Taylor

James Archer Speed Crash Survivor by Adam Taylor

Land Rover by Ale Burset

Love Story by Mauro Risch

Ocean Lifeguards by Chip Henderson

Plug by Mauro Risch

Perth Zoo: Tiger Bus

Sumo by Marcus Hausser

Pet Recycling: Grass

Pro Plus: Stay Alert

SunSmart Cancer Council Western Australia: Cut Out

Zerwijmy Lancuchy: Tear the dog off the chain

Related posts:

1. 35 Fresh and Creative Advertising Ideas
2. Creative Food Based Advertising Ideas
3. Amazing, Fresh and Creative Advertising Ideas
4. 20 Fresh and New Advertising Ideas
5. Amazing Creative Advertising Ideas
6. Why Creative Advertising Ideas are Important in Product Promotion?
7. 40 Mind Blowing Creative Advertising Ideas
8. Creative Examples of Outdoor Ads
9. 60+ Mind Blowing Cars Advertising Ideas
10. Amazing Creative Advertising Collection

Go to Source

PB iPhone Game Sneak Peek from Carlos B on Vimeo.

Here’s a sneak peek of my upcoming iPhone game. The game will be in the Apple App Store hopefully very soon. The game is a breakout clone, but I’m trying to include new features to make it somehow a little different and unique. It’s my first game so will see how it turns out. Any feedback will be appreciated.

Follow me on Twitter/FaceBook to stay updated.
Follow on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/PixelelementCom
Follow on FaceBook at: http://www.facebook.com/pages/PixelElement/261577454405

Go to Source

Advertise here with BSA

This is a guest post from Antonina of OpenBuildings - a community-driven and openly editable encyclopaedia of buildings from around the world. It’s a database of historic, contemporary and conceptual architecture that exists as a website and application for iPhone, and since last week - Android, which enable users to find, learn about and share nearby buildings of architectural merit.

Rising sustainability concerns over the last decade have brought about a fascinating new tendency in landscape concepts for development and renewal of urban and even industrial areas. Nature is coming back to cities and that’s a wonderful opportunity for us to get back to it too. Experience the mesmerizing beauty of these nature bites inserted into urban context and let’s hope this is the future of landscape architecture!

James Corner Field Operations & Diller Scofidio + Renfro: The High Line

Mayfield Organic Lavender Farm

Albert Kahn & William McDonough + Partners: Ford River Rouge Complex

Burckhardt+Partner AG & Raderschall: MFO Park

West 8: Garden of 10 000 Bridges

coLAB studio: Bird and Butterfly Garden

Balmori Associates: Bilbao Jardín

Turenscape: Shanghai Houtan Park

Urbanarbolismo: Vertical Garden

Groundlab + Plasma Studio: Flowing Gardens 

This is a post from Inspired Magazine. If you like it, you may want to subscribe to our RSS full feed to be updated on every article we’re publishing. Also, it’s highly recommended to follow us on Twitter!

10 Nature Inspired Urban Renewal Designs

Go to Source

Advertise here with BSA

As the next evolution of the Internet, the social Web is such a massively diverse and dynamic atmosphere that simply refuses to rest. What began as a casual conduit for the masses to connect with one another, logically progressed into a largely adapted standard even on the business segment.

But while these businesses have standardized their own specific processes, implementations and social media strategies, it’s also crucial to adapt to the freshest trends and technologies. These not only provide your company with countless ways to jumpstart your online traction, and invigorate your existing marketing plan’s progress.

Here are four technologies (and some not-so new ones) that you can utilize that can definitely help boost your business’ social media reach.

HTML5

For those not in the know, HTML5 is the next iteration of the Internet’s code base. But while it’s yet to be formally established as the Web standard, it’s already in wide use among popular Web sites given its new features that are significantly beneficial for search engine optimization (SEO) and social media marketing. Among the new updates are specific tags and attributes for multimedia and graphical elements that can help you better deliver your content to your site visitors without needing to install additional browser extensions or plug-ins for playback.

Moreover, HTML5 also offers an optimized set of features that enable search engines like Google and Bing to easily index your Web site or blog. This, of course, ramps up your brand’s visibility and increases its discoverability online, helping you engage with your targeted demographic and reach out to untapped segments.

Mobile Tech

Mobility has become an important part of most businesses, and it will prove to be among the most valuable tools in your social media arsenal. You can leverage on a variety of wireless connectivity options, your phone’s set of features, and many available apps to accomplish multiple tasks even when offsite. This can run from simple content creation, stat tracking, site maintenance, and account management, among many others—all can help make your regular workload a cinch to complete.

For the front-end, you’ll need a mobile site specially optimized for smartphones to increase your presence on the mobile Web (check out Mobify, WPtouch). You can also take advantage of mobile phones’ capabilities and integrate them into your social media marketing campaigns. Features like geolocation, augmented reality, mobile apps, text messaging, voice capabilities, and the built-in camera are among the most common features being utilized by social media marketers today.

Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is one of today’s most progressive technologies that continue to drive businesses forward. It offers companies with ways to expand their businesses, offer value-added products and services, and enhance their accessibility. This will also effectively trim down your IT costs, significantly reducing the expenses usually relegated to purchasing and maintaining of natively hosted hardware, and the acquisition of software licenses.

And it can be a great route for your company to take that will expand both the delivery of your services, better the campaign management and tracking, and can invigorate how you can engage with your potential customers.

From the back-end, you have cloud-hosted word processors with multi-user collaborative capabilities, online storage, and a handful of apps that can help you track your progress and manage every aspect of your campaign. And on the front-end, you can integrate the use of various apps for engaging with your followers. You can even create your own specifically developed to up your branding efforts, and make sure you get to specifically reach your goals.

Social Media Sites

Just because Facebook and Twitter are the most popular sites out there, it doesn’t mean they’re the only ones your brand should be on. While the aforementioned social networking giants can get you a lot of attention from your demographic, they can only do so much as far as capabilities are concerned. And as creative and as innovative as your marketing ideas are, this can limit your campaign’s progress and stem your brand’s growth online.

To get the most out of the Web, updating your social media arsenal can be the best thing you’ll do for your business. Out there you’ll find other channels for carrying your marketing strategies, some better than others, but it’s important to keep in mind exactly what it is you intend to achieve. For this, you may consider including sites like YouTube, Tumblr, Yelp or even Formspring — that is if their features and user base truly address your needs.

header image via Totally How To

This is a post from Inspired Magazine. If you like it, you may want to subscribe to our RSS full feed to be updated on every article we’re publishing. Also, it’s highly recommended to follow us on Twitter!

Boosting Your Social Media Reach by Updating Your Tech

Go to Source

Advertise here with BSA

One of the first contacts we all have with a data visualization, in the early stages of our academic life, is the Periodic Table of Elements. I know, we do graphs and charts way before that, but, really, is there a more universal, and recognizable, visualization in the world?

And not to mention that it goes way back, more than 200 years of history, which makes it one of the first modern data visualizations, as well. If want to fully understand the history, and evolution of the Periodic Table of Elements, a good place to start is the Wikipedia article.

But what we’ll be showcasing here are some…how should we call it…deviations of the original one.

Because, as you will see, the term “Periodic Table” has gone far beyond the original scientific use…

Periodic Table of World Internet Facts | Via

The Periodic Table Of The Social Web | Via

The Periodic Table Of SEO Ranking Factors | Via

Periodic Table Guide to Google’s APIs | Via

You have it for businesses, organizations, sports and several other occupations…

Arsenal’s Periodic table | Via

Everton F.C. Periodic Table | Via

Periodic Table of Professional Cycling | Via

The Periodic Table of Business Cards | Via

Periodic Table of Storytelling | Via

Periodic Table of Artists | Via

Periodic Table of Typefaces | Via

The Periodic Table of Nickelodeon | Via

Also, covering serious issues…

Periodic Table of Elements, in Pictures | Via

Periodioc Table of Food | Via

Periodic Table of Dessert | Via

Periodic Table of Disasters | Via

Periodic Table of Terrorist Organizations | Via

…and not so serious…

Periodic Table of Smellements | Via

Periodic Table of Beer | Via

The periodic table of awesoments | Via

Periodic Table of Vulgarity | Via

Periodic Table of Irrational Nonsense | Via

Periodic Table of Swearing | Via

And you even have it for places:

Periodic Table of Hong Kong | Via

Let’s not forget entertainment!

The Periodic Table of Mad Men | Via

Periodic Table of Sci-Fi Film and Television | Via

Periodic Table of Science Fiction | Via

Periodic Table Of Super-Powers | Via

Periodic Table of The Empire Strikes Back | Via

Periodic Table of Videos [Interactive] | Via

Periodic Table of Controllers | Via

Periodic Table of Final Fantasy Characters | Via

And, last, but not least…

The Periodic Table of Periodic Tables | Via

I’m pretty sure that you’ll find some other “periodic table extravaganzas” out there. If so, feel free to share them!

This is a post from Inspired Magazine. If you like it, you may want to subscribe to our RSS full feed to be updated on every article we’re publishing. Also, it’s highly recommended to follow us on Twitter!

33 Curious Uses of Periodic Tables – Great Visualizations or Mendeleev’s Worst Nightmare?

Go to Source

Advertise here with BSA

One of the first contacts we all have with a data visualization, in the early stages of our academic life, is the Periodic Table of Elements. I know, we do graphs and charts way before that, but, really, is there a more universal, and recognizable, visualization in the world?

And not to mention that it goes way back, more than 200 years of history, which makes it one of the first modern data visualizations, as well. If want to fully understand the history, and evolution of the Periodic Table of Elements, a good place to start is the Wikipedia article.

But what we’ll be showcasing here are some…how should we call it…deviations of the original one.

Because, as you will see, the term “Periodic Table” has gone far beyond the original scientific use…

Periodic Table of World Internet Facts | Via

The Periodic Table Of The Social Web | Via

The Periodic Table Of SEO Ranking Factors | Via

Periodic Table Guide to Google’s APIs | Via

You have it for businesses, organizations, sports and several other occupations…

Arsenal’s Periodic table | Via

Everton F.C. Periodic Table | Via

Periodic Table of Professional Cycling | Via

The Periodic Table of Business Cards | Via

Periodic Table of Storytelling | Via

Periodic Table of Artists | Via

Periodic Table of Typefaces | Via

The Periodic Table of Nickelodeon | Via

Also, covering serious issues…

Periodic Table of Elements, in Pictures | Via

Periodioc Table of Food | Via

Periodic Table of Dessert | Via

Periodic Table of Disasters | Via

Periodic Table of Terrorist Organizations | Via

…and not so serious…

Periodic Table of Smellements | Via

Periodic Table of Beer | Via

The periodic table of awesoments | Via

Periodic Table of Vulgarity | Via

Periodic Table of Irrational Nonsense | Via

Periodic Table of Swearing | Via

And you even have it for places:

Periodic Table of Hong Kong | Via

Let’s not forget entertainment!

The Periodic Table of Mad Men | Via

Periodic Table of Sci-Fi Film and Television | Via

Periodic Table of Science Fiction | Via

Periodic Table Of Super-Powers | Via

Periodic Table of The Empire Strikes Back | Via

Periodic Table of Videos [Interactive] | Via

Periodic Table of Controllers | Via

Periodic Table of Final Fantasy Characters | Via

And, last, but not least…

The Periodic Table of Periodic Tables | Via

I’m pretty sure that you’ll find some other “periodic table extravaganzas” out there. If so, feel free to share them!

This is a post from Inspired Magazine. If you like it, you may want to subscribe to our RSS full feed to be updated on every article we’re publishing. Also, it’s highly recommended to follow us on Twitter!

33 Curious Uses of Periodic Tables – Great Visualizations or Mendeleev’s Worst Nightmare?

Go to Source

Advertise here with BSA

"Ohhhh God!! I love web design."

Welcome to another edition of the iNoobs series – where we teach you how to become a web developer (and how to grow lots of body hair and shoot omega beams from your eyes – because ya’ll know that’s the only thing that can defeat Superman).

Comic book geeky-ness aside I was asked the other day to help a friend get into web design…

“Holy f$%k,” I cursed at my grandmother… “I can combine two loves, kill two birds if you will. I can help my friend (aka my grams) and write a great post for the iNoobs series…”

(Is he already calling this a “great post”, sometimes I like his cocky writing style… sometimes it’s just too much. And is his “friend” his grandma?)

Yes… and… the parenthesis means YOU’RE thinking it…

On to the design juice…

Top 12 Web Design Guidelines (For Print Designers)

I know a lot of you out there are fantastic designers.

You can mouse through photoshop, clickety-clicking like there’s no tomorrow.

You can draw vectors in Illustrator like a boss (sometimes spelled BAWSE for effect).

You can layout stuff out in InDesign that would give any typophile a Times New Roman Orgasm. (Is that a font joke…?)

“I’m not sure, just stay with me.”

But you want to know more about web design.

Well, if you’re like my friend – as well as a few designers I’ve coached while working at an ad/marketing agency – you’d like to create some sweet designs for the web, but have some questions like, “Where do I begin?“

Unfortunately, I’ve tried simply telling designers to “open your eyes” but that never seems to work – but let’s start there anyway. Before we get to our bulleted list goodness:

OPEN YOUR EYES (BTW I’m saying this in a sultry Penelope Cruz voice)

As you move throughout the web pay attention to how everything is layed out. Pay attention to everything that has been taken into account (or haphazardly mashed together by the devs). Look at the margins, the size of the site, its behavior as you scroll, the consistency of titles, and boxes, and advertisement space and… EVERYTHING.

Then I would start by replicating the design of one of your favorite sites. That’s how I started. Just go find a beautiful site and… do it again, in photoshop or your application of choice (oh shit, I used the word application – when I used to use “program” apple is taking over).

Go recreate and enhance it. Add stuff and play with things. You’re a designer you probably have a good eye for design (and hopefully beautiful eyes in general) and will be able to move through your changes tossing the chaff and keeping your delicious wheat.

But, if you must have a complete break down here are my… Top 12 Web Design Guidelines (for Print Designers)

1) Photoshop

Preferably work/design in Photoshop (or export final design to a photoshop friendly format).

We coders like this because of layers. Layers rock for design, and for cutting up HTML/CSS.

While working within Photoshop or other software make sure colors are set to RGB and the resolution of the document you’re working on is 72DPI (but these are both defaults). It’s important to make sure to keep your design file organized (if using photoshop, keep your layers organized) using groups, and naming. Part of the next steps of cutting up a design into HTML & CSS require that we get to very specific portions of the design and organization helps reduce that time.

2) Design Resolution/Image Size

When considering the size of the website almost 100% of the time we go with a fixed width (set number of pixels) and centered design. If you’ll be following this same recommended path you’ll need to then set a maximum size for the design (boundaries for which all of the content falls under.  For smaller screens 760px is recommended, however with larger and larger screens more readily available the de-facto is currently 960px as it allows lots of design freedom, as well as space for advertising and multiple columns worth of content.

Additional Resources – http://960.gs/

3) Background

It’s important to illustrate in the design how the background will be handled so that it can be coded properly. There’s a number of different options here:

• Static Background (simple color or image)
• Tiled Background (vertically or horizontally)
• Static Background (an image that stays in place despite scrolling)

Additional Resources – http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/03/31/backgrounds-in-web-design-examples-and-best-practices-2/

4) Navigation

The main site navigation should (in my opinion) almost always be positioned at the top – and only in extreme situations to the side of the site. If you must put it on the side – position it to the left. The site navigation should be one of the most prominent elements on the page and should be consistent across the whole site.

5) Fonts

It’s important to understand that photoshop by default will anti alias text (make it look rounded and pretty onscreen – this is the “strong, sharp, etc.” setting) and has a host of EXTRA fonts unavailable to most users.

Most modern web browsers however don’t make font’s look pretty they stay jagged and that most users won’t have specialized fonts (see additional resource for most common web friendly fonts). Unlike colors, which you can display as many as you’d like (“web friendly colors” are no longer important to adhere to) fonts are a different story. Although fonts can be specially imported to create a unique design that is consistent for all users, it is usually done so at the cost of speed – it takes time for the user to download the tools required to have this done. I’ve played around with the flash versions and javascript version of embedded fonts and although both can work exceptionally well – they can seriously slow down the speed of your website!

Additionally, when converting the design into HTML, we’ll need to make sure we have the same fonts (in the cases where fonts are to be implemented exactly) should you want to use a custom font.

• Web safe fonts (render the quickest/easiest) – http://www.fonttester.com/help/list_of_web_safe_fonts.html
• Google Font Library – all fonts can be quickly and easily implemented (and SEO friendly) but will slow down end user computer http://www.google.com/webfonts#ChoosePlace:select

6) Headers/Titles

Much like the fonts consideration it’s important to consider headers. Any titles on the site (big areas of text usually signaling a page title) are considered “headers” being consistent here (using a similar font and style) will help in the conversion process.

7) Content

Although the fancy images and colors are important the single MOST important thing is your content (text!) – it’s probably the most space any single element will need to take up, and will take the most time of your user (reading) so consider the type/font, the contrast between the content and the background it sits on, as well as secondary elements (for example a blog/news section will typically have a comment section, a box listing the author, date, etc.).

Details

Often the best designs are very simple but with consistency and very specific tiny details. For example just adding a slight border and drop shadow to a box can make a world of difference. Great web design is all about those kinds of tiny details, both on the home page as well as throughout the site.

9) Colors/Links

Because of screen discrepancies and considerations for eye site problems it’s recommended to contrast your colors as much as possible, particularly links. Although this is ultimately an esthetic decision, contrast can really help ease the use of a website.

10) Graphics

If additional graphics are to be provided it’s important to consider file size, we try to compress all graphics as much as possible when posting to the web. For example JPG’s are typically compressed to 60% (good balance of size/quality), but Gif’s are used in places where not a lot of colors are important, and PNGs are used when transparency in an image is necessary. Because the design is to be provided as a PSD this is a moot issue unless other graphics/images are to be sent or uploaded to the site later on.

11) Goals

For each page being designed it’s helpful to sit down and come up with 3 goals (with a major goal on top) for a single page and then design so that you feel those goals are met easily and simply conveyed to a new visitor.

Then test – have a friend come over (perhaps your grandma) and see what the design communicates to them. Remember everyone is different and will have an opinion so although use cases and surveys like this are helpful – stick to your own gut. And seriously, old people make perfect test cases – they are rarely extremely computer savvy and typically get angry quickly so you’ll be able to tell if your design is not “up to snuff” (that’s an old person saying right?) by the fact that there’s now a keyboard lodged in your monitor.

JK – I love old people. 

12) Consistency

Be consistent in the overall design, particularly the navigation, title, and page elements. Although typically a homepage will look much different than internal pages consistency is important in communicate the flow of the website.

This is a post from Inspired Magazine. If you like it, you may want to subscribe to our RSS full feed to be updated on every article we’re publishing. Also, it’s highly recommended to follow us on Twitter!

iNoobs: Top 12 Web Design Guidelines (For Print Designers)

Go to Source

Advertise here with BSA

"Ohhhh God!! I love web design."

Welcome to another edition of the iNoobs series – where we teach you how to become a web developer (and how to grow lots of body hair and shoot omega beams from your eyes – because ya’ll know that’s the only thing that can defeat Superman).

Comic book geeky-ness aside I was asked the other day to help a friend get into web design…

“Holy f$%k,” I cursed at my grandmother… “I can combine two loves, kill two birds if you will. I can help my friend (aka my grams) and write a great post for the iNoobs series…”

(Is he already calling this a “great post”, sometimes I like his cocky writing style… sometimes it’s just too much. And is his “friend” his grandma?)

Yes… and… the parenthesis means YOU’RE thinking it…

On to the design juice…

Top 12 Web Design Guidelines (For Print Designers)

I know a lot of you out there are fantastic designers.

You can mouse through photoshop, clickety-clicking like there’s no tomorrow.

You can draw vectors in Illustrator like a boss (sometimes spelled BAWSE for effect).

You can layout stuff out in InDesign that would give any typophile a Times New Roman Orgasm. (Is that a font joke…?)

“I’m not sure, just stay with me.”

But you want to know more about web design.

Well, if you’re like my friend – as well as a few designers I’ve coached while working at an ad/marketing agency – you’d like to create some sweet designs for the web, but have some questions like, “Where do I begin?“

Unfortunately, I’ve tried simply telling designers to “open your eyes” but that never seems to work – but let’s start there anyway. Before we get to our bulleted list goodness:

OPEN YOUR EYES (BTW I’m saying this in a sultry Penelope Cruz voice)

As you move throughout the web pay attention to how everything is layed out. Pay attention to everything that has been taken into account (or haphazardly mashed together by the devs). Look at the margins, the size of the site, its behavior as you scroll, the consistency of titles, and boxes, and advertisement space and… EVERYTHING.

Then I would start by replicating the design of one of your favorite sites. That’s how I started. Just go find a beautiful site and… do it again, in photoshop or your application of choice (oh shit, I used the word application – when I used to use “program” apple is taking over).

Go recreate and enhance it. Add stuff and play with things. You’re a designer you probably have a good eye for design (and hopefully beautiful eyes in general) and will be able to move through your changes tossing the chaff and keeping your delicious wheat.

But, if you must have a complete break down here are my… Top 12 Web Design Guidelines (for Print Designers)

1) Photoshop

Preferably work/design in Photoshop (or export final design to a photoshop friendly format).

We coders like this because of layers. Layers rock for design, and for cutting up HTML/CSS.

While working within Photoshop or other software make sure colors are set to RGB and the resolution of the document you’re working on is 72DPI (but these are both defaults). It’s important to make sure to keep your design file organized (if using photoshop, keep your layers organized) using groups, and naming. Part of the next steps of cutting up a design into HTML & CSS require that we get to very specific portions of the design and organization helps reduce that time.

2) Design Resolution/Image Size

When considering the size of the website almost 100% of the time we go with a fixed width (set number of pixels) and centered design. If you’ll be following this same recommended path you’ll need to then set a maximum size for the design (boundaries for which all of the content falls under.  For smaller screens 760px is recommended, however with larger and larger screens more readily available the de-facto is currently 960px as it allows lots of design freedom, as well as space for advertising and multiple columns worth of content.

Additional Resources – http://960.gs/

3) Background

It’s important to illustrate in the design how the background will be handled so that it can be coded properly. There’s a number of different options here:

• Static Background (simple color or image)
• Tiled Background (vertically or horizontally)
• Static Background (an image that stays in place despite scrolling)

Additional Resources – http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/03/31/backgrounds-in-web-design-examples-and-best-practices-2/

4) Navigation

The main site navigation should (in my opinion) almost always be positioned at the top – and only in extreme situations to the side of the site. If you must put it on the side – position it to the left. The site navigation should be one of the most prominent elements on the page and should be consistent across the whole site.

5) Fonts

It’s important to understand that photoshop by default will anti alias text (make it look rounded and pretty onscreen – this is the “strong, sharp, etc.” setting) and has a host of EXTRA fonts unavailable to most users.

Most modern web browsers however don’t make font’s look pretty they stay jagged and that most users won’t have specialized fonts (see additional resource for most common web friendly fonts). Unlike colors, which you can display as many as you’d like (“web friendly colors” are no longer important to adhere to) fonts are a different story. Although fonts can be specially imported to create a unique design that is consistent for all users, it is usually done so at the cost of speed – it takes time for the user to download the tools required to have this done. I’ve played around with the flash versions and javascript version of embedded fonts and although both can work exceptionally well – they can seriously slow down the speed of your website!

Additionally, when converting the design into HTML, we’ll need to make sure we have the same fonts (in the cases where fonts are to be implemented exactly) should you want to use a custom font.

• Web safe fonts (render the quickest/easiest) – http://www.fonttester.com/help/list_of_web_safe_fonts.html
• Google Font Library – all fonts can be quickly and easily implemented (and SEO friendly) but will slow down end user computer http://www.google.com/webfonts#ChoosePlace:select

6) Headers/Titles

Much like the fonts consideration it’s important to consider headers. Any titles on the site (big areas of text usually signaling a page title) are considered “headers” being consistent here (using a similar font and style) will help in the conversion process.

7) Content

Although the fancy images and colors are important the single MOST important thing is your content (text!) – it’s probably the most space any single element will need to take up, and will take the most time of your user (reading) so consider the type/font, the contrast between the content and the background it sits on, as well as secondary elements (for example a blog/news section will typically have a comment section, a box listing the author, date, etc.).

Details

Often the best designs are very simple but with consistency and very specific tiny details. For example just adding a slight border and drop shadow to a box can make a world of difference. Great web design is all about those kinds of tiny details, both on the home page as well as throughout the site.

9) Colors/Links

Because of screen discrepancies and considerations for eye site problems it’s recommended to contrast your colors as much as possible, particularly links. Although this is ultimately an esthetic decision, contrast can really help ease the use of a website.

10) Graphics

If additional graphics are to be provided it’s important to consider file size, we try to compress all graphics as much as possible when posting to the web. For example JPG’s are typically compressed to 60% (good balance of size/quality), but Gif’s are used in places where not a lot of colors are important, and PNGs are used when transparency in an image is necessary. Because the design is to be provided as a PSD this is a moot issue unless other graphics/images are to be sent or uploaded to the site later on.

11) Goals

For each page being designed it’s helpful to sit down and come up with 3 goals (with a major goal on top) for a single page and then design so that you feel those goals are met easily and simply conveyed to a new visitor.

Then test – have a friend come over (perhaps your grandma) and see what the design communicates to them. Remember everyone is different and will have an opinion so although use cases and surveys like this are helpful – stick to your own gut. And seriously, old people make perfect test cases – they are rarely extremely computer savvy and typically get angry quickly so you’ll be able to tell if your design is not “up to snuff” (that’s an old person saying right?) by the fact that there’s now a keyboard lodged in your monitor.

JK – I love old people. 

12) Consistency

Be consistent in the overall design, particularly the navigation, title, and page elements. Although typically a homepage will look much different than internal pages consistency is important in communicate the flow of the website.

This is a post from Inspired Magazine. If you like it, you may want to subscribe to our RSS full feed to be updated on every article we’re publishing. Also, it’s highly recommended to follow us on Twitter!

iNoobs: Top 12 Web Design Guidelines (For Print Designers)

Go to Source

Advertise here with BSA

This is a guest post by Konstantin Kovshenin — a WordPress core contributor, developer and consultant. Editor in chief of Theme.fm — tutorials, tips and tricks on WordPress themes and plugins, setup, security and performance, as well as WordPress consulting. Follow Konstantin on Twitter and don’t hesitate to poke him should you need any help.

WordPress themes (both free and paid) nowadays come bundled with a lot of different kind of options — color schemes, custom post types, portfolio pages, contact forms, custom shortcodes and much more. These are the kind of things developers usually offer to their users, but what do they get in return? Well if it’s a paid theme they obviously get some money and if it’s a free one, donations are more common. But there’s one thing you always get in return as a WordPress theme (or plugin) author, and that’s awareness.

Whether it’s yours, or your brand’s, awareness is what gets people to know you in the community, therefore building trust. Trust brings you more visitors to your website or blog, more chances of getting hired for a project and of course a little bit of fame and respect.

Today’s topic is a Dashboard Feed Reader, which is quite a simple widget hanging in your admin dashboard screen, showing the latest stories from your blog. Such widgets often drive more traffic to your website and gets people to read (at least) your headlines directly from their WordPress admin panel. A dashboard reader is a great way to announce new versions of your themes or plugins, as well as promote your new products.

People often think that dashboard readers are distracting or annoying, but the good thing about WordPress is that the Dashboard is actually configurable. In only a couple of clicks, any user can enable or disable any of their dashboard widgets, leaving on screen only the stuff that’s important to them. It’s done via the Screen Options button at the top right of the Dashboard page. So dashboard readers are way more loyal and user friendly than hard-coded links or banners on the front end of your theme or plugin.

Understanding Dashboard Widgets

Dashboard widgets in WordPress are actually meta boxes. They’re used in other places too, like the Edit Post or Page screen. They can be dragged around, shown or hidden from the Screen Options menu, collapsed and expanded by hitting the tiny arrow on the right side of the box titles. But hey, you should probably know that already!

Meta boxes are registered with the add_meta_box function but the ones on the Dashboard screen have a function of their own called wp_add_dashboard_widget which should be used during the wp_dashboard_setup WordPress action. So with that in mind, let’s go ahead and write some code.

Creating a New Dashboard Widget

In this tutorial I’ll be creating a dashboard feed reader for Theme.fm. The reader can then be bundled in a theme or plugin and the implementation doesn’t differ at all. So in your plugin file or the functions.php file of your theme, type in the following snippet.

It’s quite simple to understand what it does. I’ve got two functions, one for the dashboard setup and another one for the actual content. The content function is used as a callback during the setup of the widget, while the setup function is used in an action as I mentioned earlier. You can furthermore nest this into an admin_init action, since the dashboard is not available elsewhere, but that won’t have any noticeable impact on your site’s performance.

If you browse to your Dashboard at this stage, you’ll see a new widget called Latest from Theme.fm with the contents that we wrote in the second function. Guess what? You’re done! With the widget, that is… That’s all there is to it adding new dashboard widgets, you can move it around, expand or collapse it, and even turn it off and back on from the Screen Options panel.

Now, before you start shipping this piece of code with all your new themes and plugins, let’s fill it in with some actual content. You can go ahead with “lorem ipsum” but I suggest getting the content from your RSS feed, so that’s what we’ll do next.

Gathering Content From Your RSS Feed

WordPress itself comes bundled with SimplePie and FeedCache to work with the internal stuff, which means that we can use the exact same functions for our own functions. SimplePie is quite easy to work with as you’ll see in a second. WordPress allows a neat function called fetch_feed which could be used out of the box, provides feed parsing and caching and all that for free, without any extra coding. Go ahead and try it out in that content area where you were about to stick “lorem ipsum”

This will print all the feed contents (if there was no error retrieving them) in a nicely structured object. Get familiar with the structure, see what content is available and what’s not. There are neat SimplePie functions that we can use against that object to retrieve the data in the format we want, like dates for instance.

To spare you the hassle, here’s what my content function looks like after implementing the feed contents:

So double check the $feed variable in case it returned an error. Set the maximum number of items to yield to 5 and then, with a simple foreach loop, walk through all the items and print them out in a nice looking way — with permalinks, dates and descriptions.

That’s about it, that’s how easy it is to use SimplePie inside WordPress and again, caching is given to you for free, without even having to activate it or whatsoever, so if you refresh the dashboard screen you won’t notice any lags at all! Here’s what your new dashboard screen should look like, now with the new feed reader:

Congratulations, you’ve just built yourself a feed reader, which you can bundle in your themes and plugins, free and paid ones. You just got your users to read your blog directly from their admin panels, unless the deactivate you of course

Conclusion

So in this tutorial you’ve seen how to create your very own dashboard feed reader, getting more readers to your blog and awareness to you or your brand. In only a few lines of code, we’ve registered a new dashboard widget, then used SimplePie to fetch an RSS feed and display the content, with built-in caching.

A word of caution is that if you’re planning to bundle the reader in numerous themes and plugins, think about what will happen if somebody activates one of your theme, together with three of your plugins? You don’t want your users to end up with four dashboard readers, right? There are numerous techniques to avoid this, my favorite one is constants. I basically wrapped up the whole widget code into a class which I initialize during admin_init. I then wrapped the code into a simple if statement, like this:

Including the same constant in every theme and plugin you ship, you’ll make sure that only one instance of the feed reader is created. You might also want to use the class_exists PHP function if you’re planning to use the same class names for your reader in all the themes and plugins.

Well, that’s about it! Hope you enjoyed this tutorial and make sure you use it with caution, plus test before shipping. Thank you so much for reading and hope to see you again soon!

This is a post from Inspired Magazine. If you like it, you may want to subscribe to our RSS full feed to be updated on every article we’re publishing. Also, it’s highly recommended to follow us on Twitter!

How to: Create a Dashboard Feed Reader for Your WordPress Theme or Plugin

Go to Source

Advertise here with BSA

This is a guest post by Konstantin Kovshenin — a WordPress core contributor, developer and consultant. Editor in chief of Theme.fm — tutorials, tips and tricks on WordPress themes and plugins, setup, security and performance, as well as WordPress consulting. Follow Konstantin on Twitter and don’t hesitate to poke him should you need any help.

WordPress themes (both free and paid) nowadays come bundled with a lot of different kind of options — color schemes, custom post types, portfolio pages, contact forms, custom shortcodes and much more. These are the kind of things developers usually offer to their users, but what do they get in return? Well if it’s a paid theme they obviously get some money and if it’s a free one, donations are more common. But there’s one thing you always get in return as a WordPress theme (or plugin) author, and that’s awareness.

Whether it’s yours, or your brand’s, awareness is what gets people to know you in the community, therefore building trust. Trust brings you more visitors to your website or blog, more chances of getting hired for a project and of course a little bit of fame and respect.

Today’s topic is a Dashboard Feed Reader, which is quite a simple widget hanging in your admin dashboard screen, showing the latest stories from your blog. Such widgets often drive more traffic to your website and gets people to read (at least) your headlines directly from their WordPress admin panel. A dashboard reader is a great way to announce new versions of your themes or plugins, as well as promote your new products.

People often think that dashboard readers are distracting or annoying, but the good thing about WordPress is that the Dashboard is actually configurable. In only a couple of clicks, any user can enable or disable any of their dashboard widgets, leaving on screen only the stuff that’s important to them. It’s done via the Screen Options button at the top right of the Dashboard page. So dashboard readers are way more loyal and user friendly than hard-coded links or banners on the front end of your theme or plugin.

Understanding Dashboard Widgets

Dashboard widgets in WordPress are actually meta boxes. They’re used in other places too, like the Edit Post or Page screen. They can be dragged around, shown or hidden from the Screen Options menu, collapsed and expanded by hitting the tiny arrow on the right side of the box titles. But hey, you should probably know that already!

Meta boxes are registered with the add_meta_box function but the ones on the Dashboard screen have a function of their own called wp_add_dashboard_widget which should be used during the wp_dashboard_setup WordPress action. So with that in mind, let’s go ahead and write some code.

Creating a New Dashboard Widget

In this tutorial I’ll be creating a dashboard feed reader for Theme.fm. The reader can then be bundled in a theme or plugin and the implementation doesn’t differ at all. So in your plugin file or the functions.php file of your theme, type in the following snippet.

It’s quite simple to understand what it does. I’ve got two functions, one for the dashboard setup and another one for the actual content. The content function is used as a callback during the setup of the widget, while the setup function is used in an action as I mentioned earlier. You can furthermore nest this into an admin_init action, since the dashboard is not available elsewhere, but that won’t have any noticeable impact on your site’s performance.

If you browse to your Dashboard at this stage, you’ll see a new widget called Latest from Theme.fm with the contents that we wrote in the second function. Guess what? You’re done! With the widget, that is… That’s all there is to it adding new dashboard widgets, you can move it around, expand or collapse it, and even turn it off and back on from the Screen Options panel.

Now, before you start shipping this piece of code with all your new themes and plugins, let’s fill it in with some actual content. You can go ahead with “lorem ipsum” but I suggest getting the content from your RSS feed, so that’s what we’ll do next.

Gathering Content From Your RSS Feed

WordPress itself comes bundled with SimplePie and FeedCache to work with the internal stuff, which means that we can use the exact same functions for our own functions. SimplePie is quite easy to work with as you’ll see in a second. WordPress allows a neat function called fetch_feed which could be used out of the box, provides feed parsing and caching and all that for free, without any extra coding. Go ahead and try it out in that content area where you were about to stick “lorem ipsum”

This will print all the feed contents (if there was no error retrieving them) in a nicely structured object. Get familiar with the structure, see what content is available and what’s not. There are neat SimplePie functions that we can use against that object to retrieve the data in the format we want, like dates for instance.

To spare you the hassle, here’s what my content function looks like after implementing the feed contents:

So double check the $feed variable in case it returned an error. Set the maximum number of items to yield to 5 and then, with a simple foreach loop, walk through all the items and print them out in a nice looking way — with permalinks, dates and descriptions.

That’s about it, that’s how easy it is to use SimplePie inside WordPress and again, caching is given to you for free, without even having to activate it or whatsoever, so if you refresh the dashboard screen you won’t notice any lags at all! Here’s what your new dashboard screen should look like, now with the new feed reader:

Congratulations, you’ve just built yourself a feed reader, which you can bundle in your themes and plugins, free and paid ones. You just got your users to read your blog directly from their admin panels, unless the deactivate you of course

Conclusion

So in this tutorial you’ve seen how to create your very own dashboard feed reader, getting more readers to your blog and awareness to you or your brand. In only a few lines of code, we’ve registered a new dashboard widget, then used SimplePie to fetch an RSS feed and display the content, with built-in caching.

A word of caution is that if you’re planning to bundle the reader in numerous themes and plugins, think about what will happen if somebody activates one of your theme, together with three of your plugins? You don’t want your users to end up with four dashboard readers, right? There are numerous techniques to avoid this, my favorite one is constants. I basically wrapped up the whole widget code into a class which I initialize during admin_init. I then wrapped the code into a simple if statement, like this:

Including the same constant in every theme and plugin you ship, you’ll make sure that only one instance of the feed reader is created. You might also want to use the class_exists PHP function if you’re planning to use the same class names for your reader in all the themes and plugins.

Well, that’s about it! Hope you enjoyed this tutorial and make sure you use it with caution, plus test before shipping. Thank you so much for reading and hope to see you again soon!

This is a post from Inspired Magazine. If you like it, you may want to subscribe to our RSS full feed to be updated on every article we’re publishing. Also, it’s highly recommended to follow us on Twitter!

How to: Create a Dashboard Feed Reader for Your WordPress Theme or Plugin

Go to Source

Advertise here with BSA

This is a guest post from Antonina of OpenBuildings – a community-driven and openly editable encyclopaedia of buildings from around the world. It’s a database of historic, contemporary and conceptual architecture that exists as a website and application for iPhone (and any moment now – Android) which enable users to find, learn about and share nearby buildings of architectural merit.

Until recently, the furthest architects would habitually take colour exploration would be seen in children-oriented buildings, while “serious” and “representative” edifices would stick to the proven elegance of black & white aesthetics and thoughtful use of natural materials. The reasons for the above-mentioned phenomenon could perhaps be attributed to the modernist legacy of subtly despising decoration. However, colour and light are inseparable and both possess an impressive potential to influence mood, behaviour and perception. La Defense Offices: a 23.000 m² ode to iridescence, whose colours and brilliance depend strongly on weather and light conditions was ‘designed with the office tenants in mind’ and sets a wonderful example of how architecture – armed with understanding and appreciation of colour – can create a refreshing and surprising environment for routine activities. Hopefully, today’s pick of colour-inspired buildings will be able to light up your day too!

Jean Nouvel: Hotel Puerta America in Madrid, Spain

MVRDV: Didden Village in Rotterdam, Netherlands

UN Studio: La Defense Offices in Almere, Netherlands

Rojkind Arquitectos: Nestlé Application Group Building in Querétaro, Mexico

Rudanko + Kankkunen: Sra Pou Vocational School in Sra Pou village, Cambodia

Asymptote Architecture: The Yas Hotel in Abu Dhabi, UAE

Neutelings Riedijk: Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision in Hilversum, The Netherlands

Luis Barragán: Cuadra San Cristóbal near Mexico City, Mexico 

D. Villanueva Arquitectos: Rioglass Solar Production Plant in Pola de Lena, Spain

Kengo Kuma & Associates: The Opposite House in Beijing, China

This is a post from Inspired Magazine. If you like it, you may want to subscribe to our RSS full feed to be updated on every article we’re publishing. Also, it’s highly recommended to follow us on Twitter!

10 Colour-Inspired Buildings to Light up Your Day

Go to Source

Advertise here with BSA

This is a guest post by Zach Katkin – entrepreneur, web developer, designer and writer – co-founder of Florida Web Design Company Atilus. Additionally Zach also owns a number of web properties including Promana.net, a resource for Small Business Software News including Basecamp Project Management.

So in the Inspired Noob series we’ve been talking a lot about DNS. With that said there was a trick I learned a few years ago (I think it was thanks to my hosting company support). This trick does a number of things:

• Saves countless hours on development
• Removes client intervention/help from the development process
• Allows you to secretly work on ANY website, view the results live and in real time, while the rest of the world is none-the-wiser

So what is this DNS panacea? What simple trick can solve all these problems?

Adjusting Your Local DNS File

For a quick refresher on how DNS works you can review our post on How Does DNS Work? But one thing I purposely left out was that – as a last resort – your computer’s OS stores a DNS file that it uses to resolve (match) domain names to IP addresses. Because it’s local and manually updated, changing or adjusting this file means you can FORCE your computer to look at ANOTHER IP ADDRESS for ANY DOMAIN.

Example in Action

Lets say you’re working on your client’s site at HorseMagnet.com – they want a completely new design AND they want you to host it. But, they’re hosted somewhere else currently. You don’t yet have the information (or the time/desire) to transfer their hosting over. You want to just setup their site on your server and type in HorseMagnet.com and begin working and finalize your design.

By modifying your local host file, this is possible – and easy. You’ll be forcing (in a total violent sexual way) your browser/computer to view your own hosting when typing in HorseMagnet.com.

How to Modify Your Local Host/DNS File

1. Open Up Notepad – If you’re on a fancy version of Windows – Vista/7  - you may need to run notepad as an administrator. You can do this by right clicking Notepad’s icon and selecting “run as administrator.”
2. Open up the host file in windows – C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts
3. Edit the file based on what changes you want to enforce. Start with the IP address of the area you’re forcing your browser/computer to look at (probably the IP Address of your server) then *tab* and the domain name you’ll be forcing. Now it’s important to remember that you’ll need to include BOTH www. and non-www versions as each is considered a different location.
4. Save the file
5. Now there’s two things you can do – either restart your computer – or if you don’t want to waste time…
6. Close your browser
7. Open up command prompt (CMD in “run”/”search” box)
8. type “ipconfig /flushdns” (without quotes)
9. Relaunch browser and visit your website
10. You’ll now see your server instead of the live site

This is a post from Inspired Magazine. If you like it, you may want to subscribe to our RSS full feed to be updated on every article we’re publishing. Also, it’s highly recommended to follow us on Twitter!

iNoobs: The DNS Trick EVERY Developer Must Know

Go to Source

Advertise here with BSA

Love toys? Love photography? Have you ever considered combining the two? Toy photography has been a major source of photo inspiration for years. The look of a doll or stuffed animal captured in a certain way can have a major emotional influence, and we have seen examples of that in the prevalence of abandoned or damaged toys used to set the tone for tragedy in various medias.

But what is great about toy photography is the versatility. You can create any feeling from a shot of a toy, and there are endless possibilities for creating scenes or just having fun. Flickr has a whole lot of groups that are dedicated to this purpose. Below are a collection of what I think are the ten best of the lot.

1. Toys

This is perhaps the largest toy-centric photo pool group on Flickr. It is dedicated to pictures about any kind of toy, from stuffed animals to retro wind-up numbers. There are more than 243,000 pictures already posted by the astonishing 18,000-plus members. But what makes it so great is the quality of most of the photos.

You would expect that a large number would result in a less concentrated level of quality. But there are very few bad pics there, and some that really some true ingenuity.

2. Toy Tuesday and Thursday

This is a really interesting photo challenge. It works by daring toy photographers to take a picture every Tuesday and Thursday for a year. In addition to this, there is a second challenge every two weeks where you take a photo starting with a different letter of the alphabet for that week.

The end result is an impressive set of 104 photos at the end of the year. This used to be a once a year challenge that has now been opened up to anyone year-long. Don’t worry if you are late joining…you can go from the date you start.

3. Excellent Photography Toy Awards

This is one of the biggest official award groups for toy photography. It works by either submitting your work or anything it invited by an existing member. It is then put into the photo pull and voted on.  Since they refuse to take anything but the very best you are looking at some very stiff competition. They are also a group that has been voted sweeper active, which means for every photo you submit or accept an invite for you have to vote on thre.

4. Toys Take Over

A basic but well-populated group where anyone who likes photographing any kind of toy can join. They have more than 36,000 pictures already, and it is a good place for beginners to show off their work and watch the progression of other photographers.

5. Toys On Black

I have always liked the look of simple shots on black backgrounds more than any other. Between the shadows it creates and the dramatic but subtle tone, it is a great way to enhance a picture before you even take it. Toys On Black agree, and they have an entire group dedicated to the principle.  They have a current three per day posting limit, though sometimes this is more or less, depending on how much activity they have had in recent weeks.

6. The Other Side

I personally love this group. Unlike other toy photo pools on Flickr, this one has a specific purpose related to the shots themselves, not the subject. While all photos should be of toys, the objective is for them not to look like toys. Or, at least, to have something in the shots that give them a sense of realism, movement or life. The members have done some incredible work, and you will see what I mean by that description if you check them out.

7. Toy Shooter Assignments

This is a directive specific group. When you join you will be able to see the current assignments that have been decided on through member voting. From there you can participate in photo opportunities that involve toys.

They might be to shoot something starting with a letter of the alphabet or from a specific time period. Maybe the toys will have come from a second hand shop or flea market, or be related to a film or television show. They have regular group directives to choose from.

8. Comic Book Toys

This group has been subject to a bit of confusion lately. It is not a group for comic book pictures or photos. It is for toys relating to comic books or characters from graphic novels. While a comic book can be present in the photo, it has to be toy specific.

Otherwise it will be deleted and you will receive a warning. However, if you are a comic book toy or action figure lover, then this is the place for you. Their open gallery has some amazing scene shots created with action figures, as well. My personal favorite so far is one of Doctor Who (Christopher Eccleston).

9. Secondhand Toys

I have found some amazing items there, including some fantastic art and toys at the thrift store. This group is for taking pictures of toy items that have come from secondhand shops from anywhere in the world. Flea markets, swap meets and other similar sources are also welcome. Considering some of the odd things you can find at thrift shops, this can be a fun little exercise. I know I have seen some horrifying – but fascinating – little treats there in my time.

10. Plastic Toy Soldiers

Another great little group, this one centers on those old plastic soldiers, the ones that come with a stiff base and poses. The pictures are scenes that have been created using this retro toys, and there are some really cool ones. If you were a kid who liked to play toy soldiers back in the day, this might be just the place you want to be.

This is a post from Inspired Magazine. If you like it, you may want to subscribe to our RSS full feed to be updated on every article we’re publishing. Also, it’s highly recommended to follow us on Twitter!

10 Best Flickr Groups Featuring Original Toy Photography

Go to Source

Advertise here with BSA

This is a guest post from Jay Melone, founder @ DigitalXBridge, which provides web and mobile design + development, SEO, eMail Marketing and hosting services out of the NYC area.

While web designers and developers are touted as being the tech-savvy and brilliantly creative types, they also have the unfortunate rap of being some of the most disorganized individuals on the planet. Luckily, most design shops come equipped with overly attentive, detail-oriented project managers. For those freelance designers working solo, or small web shops still operating in cowboy-code-slinging mode, this post is especially for you. Take some notes on the process employed below and begin pitching your services as Grade-A Professional. These process tips and tools will help you stay on top of your deliverables, submit dates to your clients you can reasonably hit, track changes requests along the way and, in the end, deliver a quality product. Do all of this well and expect your customers to become your word-of-mouth marketing evangelists, overnight.

Note: I’ll be speaking to traditional desktop browser web design and development (PHP).

Phase 1: Research & Analysis

If you’ve ever heard the expression “measure twice cut once”, this the measuring phase. During R&A you’re familiarizing yourself with the client, their project, their business and their industry. Before you can spend a minute on actual design and development, you should immerse yourself in the client’s vision. This is not only important in nailing the proposal/estimate, but helps ensure you build what the client asked for and avoid costly changes to scope and aesthetics at the 11th hour.

• Before any exchange of information takes place, be upfront and ask the lead/client if they’d like you to sign an NDA. This will show you’re considering their IP (intellectual property) in their best interest and help avoid any awkward feelings some clients may have about asking you to sign one in the first place.
• Project intro questionnaire — At DigitalXBridge we have a tailor-made questionnaire we ask all of our new leads/clients to fill out. It’s a 1-pager, so it’s short enough not to overwhelm the client with homework on day one, but insightful enough to provide the answers to 90% of the introductory Q&A that takes place at the outset of a new engagement.
• Follow-up discussion — Once the client submits the questionnaire, give them a call and go through each answer provided to make sure you’re both on the same page. It’s also a good idea to take notes for both you and the client during this discussion. Later, the client can review the notes again in writing. Measure twice.
• Proposal (aka Estimate or Quote) — Now that you and the client are speaking the same language, it’s time to take those line items and start applying effort and costs to each. We use FreshBooks for all of our accounting, including estimate-writing. The more detailed a proposal, the less questions you’ll have to field and the more the client will understand how you arrived at the numbers you did. If you send them a 1-liner with one big number at the bottom, expect your phone to ring with a confused and frustrated client, at best. At worst they walk away without giving you the chance to explain yourself. Ride the transparency train as often as you can.
• Review the Proposal with your client and discuss next steps — If the project is approved, now is when you should gather up 3rd party credentials such as registrars, hosting accounts, payment gateways, SSL certs, etc. If you use any project management software (we use Basecamp), this is also a good time to officially kick off the project whereby all previously gathered notes are dumped in the project workspace and some early to-dos and milestones established.
• Site Plan — The final step of the R&A phase, and only once the project is approved, is the site plan. The site plan can come in a variety of forms (from hand-written sketches to outputs from the plethora of online tools), but the premise is that you’re asking your client to convey to you the basis structure of the site; i.e. the top-level navigation and transitions from page to page. 9 out of 10 clients will struggle to pull this all together so it’s important to use your skills as a designer to coach them through this so you have enough to get started on Phase 2: Design.

Phase 2: Design

While you were busy measuring repeatedly during phase 1 you had the opportunity to gather up all of your client comments, project specs and meeting notes. Now during phase 2 it’s time to turn all of that scribbling into eye-popping visuals.

• Client Content — Before any designer can really dig in, they need some direction on content (copy, images, colors, product/customer data) from the client. Keep the requests light as you just need a nudge.. you’re still the designer and they’re still the client. This input should simply feed the Creative Concept step below, of which the client can focus on their most important page (e.g. Home Page) and supply all relavent content. Then they can move on to the rest of the site as the designer completes the Creative Concept. This job is almost always heavily underestimated by the client and once they realize they need to supply things like Policies and Terms, they hit a wall. Make sure you prep them for this assignment and give them adequate time and support. If you have copy writers available, make sure you make them available.
• Creative Concept — This is your first design draft (images only; e.g. PSDs, no HTML just yet) of whichever page the client cited as most central to the theme and vision of the entire business and website, to which they provided content for in the previous step. The designer set of tools we use most for all web-related design work is Adobe Creative Suite.
• Creative Walkthrough — Considering this is the client’s first encounter with not only your creative work but in seeing their idea come to life, you’ll want to discuss your first draft of the creative over the phone (in-person is even better). Explain the theme, where you drew your inspiration for colors, layout, fonts, etc and then hear them out on any tweaks they’d like made for the next version. Once you nail the general aesthetic of the site based on the initial page creative, you can get started on the remaining (“inner”) pages. To make the process of submitting designs and gathering client changes/feedback more efficient, you could take advantage of tools like ConceptShare (which recently launched an entire new v3 product). We’ve found it to streamline all of the countless emails and phone calls with a simple, visual interface.
• Design sign-off — Before you move onto Phase 3: Implementation, you want to have creative sign-off from your client. Going back and changing design after coding begins can be costly to the budget so don’t underestimate the importance of this step.

Phase 3: Implementation & QA

Implementation is a fancy word for coding. Hand those beautiful PSDs off to your engineers to develop.. the site is ready to come to life. And because we encourage working iteratively, QA comes along for the ride during this heavy development period. That said, testing, as a whole, is a post in itself (to be covered later), so we’ll keep the view at 30k feet for now.

• Client-side Coding — Start with HTML and CSS, then move onto any JavaScript, AJAX, Flash, etc, wherever applicable. If you have separate people handling design and development, communication between the two needs to be fluid so as to maintain the visual concepts born during phase 2. In fact it’s best if the designer can hand the page off to developer once client approval is received so that everything regarding that page is top-of-mind.
• Client-side QA – Again, each of these points can be expanded upon but the general testing routines you want to validate here include: (1) typography/formatting, (2) accessibility, (3) and browser/OS compatibility.
• User Guide – Well-written documentation not only conveys how things were built, but how to use the site and any administrative functionality (e.g. an admin panel or CMS). It also serves as a training manual and cut down on subsequent support calls post-launch. Finally, this document will serve as a guideline during client testing (UAT) within phase 4.
• Site Demo – As pages get layered with client-side coding, it’s a good idea to share links with clients. The images produced during phase 2 are pretty to look at, but often you won’t begin to receive true client feedback until they can point and click.
• Server-side Coding – Time to hook the client up to the server with PHP coding.
• Hosting Account Setup – Whether or not you’ll be hosting the site, now’s the time to make sure the hosting account is established, email accounts exits, DNS entries are accurate, SSL certs are in place and implemented wherever necessary on-site and any other IT administrative steps have been carried out.
• Functional QA: Includes testing (1) features/forms/fields, (2) cookie settings, (3) performance, (4) server-side communication and (5) security/penetration checks. Once all of the internal (i.e. completed in-house by you/your team) QA has been completed you can prepare to officially hand the site over to the client for testing and approval in Phase 4.

Phase 4: UAT & Training

While you’ve been keen at keeping the client informed of your progress along the way and asking for regular feedback, it’s been light in terms of formal client testing to this point. Now it’s time to really hand the reigns to your paying customer and iterate through a cycle (or two, or three) of UAT – User Acceptance Testing.

• Training – One of the biggest mistakes we used to make when we started building client sites was to build something, turn it over to the client and say “good luck, let us know if you find anything wrong.” No good. For one, most of your clients will not understand technology like you do – some may need to understand the basics of website protocol; others may even be a bit more advanced but still need a primer on how to, say, upload catalog merchandise via FTP. Hold their hand. Send them the User Guide crafted during phase 3 and then take them step-by-step through each page and process. We like to use GoTo Meeting for client demos, where we’ll often run a scenario and then give keyboard and mouse control to the client and ask them to give it a shot. It works well and pays huge dividends to do it in a simulated training environment now and while you’re moderating vs. later in production when the boss is standing over their shoulder and you’re not around to lean on.
• UAT – Now that your client is a pro with what’s under the hood of their site, UAT begins. But before they begin, coach them on best practices for reporting issues; e.g. trace their steps, break out expected vs. actual outcomes and provide screenshots whenever possible (with annotations on the screenshot.. even better!). If you use a PM tool you’ll probably want to capture all discussions and issues/changes found during this process there so that as you apply fixes, the entire process is tracked and documented. The more you guide them on the testing approach that works best for you and your team, the more streamlined the entire process will remain. Even though the client is testing on their end, the responsibility to deliver a high-quality product remains on your shoulders. Make sure you own this process, just as you have the previous steps.
• Sign-Off – As UAT comes to a wrap, you want to somehow have your client both acknowledge that they’re approving of the work produced as well as give you permission to publish it to the world. Some shops use very formal documentation, others use email or even IM. Whatever works for you, both semantically and legally; but I’m sure most would recommend having it in writing. Whatever your approach, once you have their blessing it’s time for Phase 5: Go-Live.

Phase 5: Go-Live

You’ve made it. Blood, sweat and tears have been shed by you and your client (hopefully not too many tears) and now it’s time for publishing to the live, production hosting account.

• Planning – Before you actually release the site into the wild, sit down with your client and explain the release process. We typically put client sites live during off-peak (local) hours. So say we’re launching a site in NY, we would typically plan to begin this process at 3am EST so as to give ourselves plenty of time to run the release procedures, or worst case, take the site offline and notify the client of problems/delays.
• Private URL Launch – Upload the site to their production environment with a private URL (e.g. just an IP or http://test.domainname.com) and then..
• Smoke Testing – Immediately upon launch you want to make sure everything is stable. Run through all pages and perform a basic level of functional QA to ensure the site is still standing. If the site is transactional (e.g. eCommerce) place a couple test orders and validate the workflow on the back-end and database, as well verify email notifications. If we’re good to go..
• Go-Live – Flip over to the public domain and notify your client that their site is officially live.
• Check-In – Don’t forget to keep an eye on things over the coming days and weeks. You want to make extra sure that if there are problems, you’re the first to find them. There’s nothing worse than a client calling to tell you the site is down.. it will erase all those hours of hard work as well as the trust you’ve built with your client.

Summary

Designing and building websites includes lots of moving parts however the most important element throughout is communication. Whether things are going smoothly or falling apart, keep your client in the loop and work through things together. The process above is not a one-size-fits-all, but, at its core, contains a good guide to keep you and your web projects on track.

This is a post from Inspired Magazine. If you like it, you may want to subscribe to our RSS full feed to be updated on every article we’re publishing. Also, it’s highly recommended to follow us on Twitter!

HOW TO: Organize Web Development Projects Like a Pro

Go to Source

Advertise here with BSA

This is a guest post from Tony Shin – with a double major in Economics and Management from the University of Washington, this Seattle native regularly contributes his work to several other publications. He has moved into social media and creative design in hopes to help lead and innovate the future of information with others. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook!

I enjoyed seeing a lot of great infographics this week, a majority of which focused on one theme: Social. Coincidence or not, as I sat there looking at each graphic, a few thoughts continuously popped in my head. “Has social media taken over my life? This can’t be right. Wait, why do I care so much? Without Facebook, Google+ and Twitter, how bored would I be?”

It’s refreshing to see another perspective of the virtual lives we’ve created for ourselves. Personally, I’m a lost cause. I’m in way too deep. So save yourself while you still can! Okay, just kidding. Just take the few minutes out of your day to really think about where we’ve come so far. Yes, it is exciting. Yes, it has made communication much easier. The question isn’t what has it done, but what will it do?

1. The State of the Internet

Every so often, when the update data is accessible, someone makes a state of the Internet infographic, highlighting some major points about the evolution of the Internet and what it has in store. After seeing this interactive piece by Online Schools, I realized they just upped the ante on any one who desires to create a ‘State of the Internet’ infographic. With that said, I’d imagine it’ll be some time before we see anything like this. Press play to be blown away.

Created by: Online Schools

2. Do You Need a Social Media Detox?

This one brought me the fresh perspective I was talking about earlier. I found this infographic on Visual.ly that Column Five Media put together, which illustrates the symptoms of one who needs that detox. I don’t want to believe it, but maybe I need one. I’m quite positive I have 8 of the 10 symptoms.

3. Where Twitter’s Town Hall Left Us Hangin

I have nothing against Obama. I’m sure he’s a great guy. Ask Zuck and Jobs, they had dinner with the guy! But seriously, you’re going to chew him out because he didn’t answer your tweet? I’m sure along with the 500 million tweets he probably gets a day, he checks each and every last one of them. Ha. Right. Imagine his phone constantly alerting him of new tweets. Umm, no.

Regardless, InboxQ designed this infographic, highlighting all the data and stats about President Obama’s tweets, which really shows the kind of effort and dedication out there to record all that. Oh, the eagle/twitter bird comparison was cute, too…

This is a post from Inspired Magazine. If you like it, you may want to subscribe to our RSS full feed to be updated on every article we’re publishing. Also, it’s highly recommended to follow us on Twitter!

Infographics of The Week #4

Go to Source

Lime Textures

You can view the textures below, and can download the full sized textures at the bottom of this page.

Go to Source

Eleven2 Hosting Giveaway

Eleven2 is a widely respected hosting company, who offer a range of quality hosting solutions. They’ve been in business for a number of years, and I personally know a lot of fellow bloggers who continue to use them. If you’re not familiar with their service I recommend that you check out their competitive hosting plans.

30% Off Hosting Coupon (For Everyone!):

Eleven2 have been kind enough to offer us a hosting coupon for all PSD.FanExtra readers. Simply enter the coupon ‘fanextra’ when ordering any of their hosting packages for a whopping 30% off. This discount applies to any of the billing term, and expires in one months time. It only applies to shared and reseller plans, not cloud plans.

Go to Source

Blogs.FanExtra Beta Launch!

We’re extremely happy to announce that Blogs.FanExtra (the second, and newest addition to our FanExtra network) has just launched in beta stage. The site will provide extremely in depth, high quality articles discussing all aspects of blogging.

Right now the site is live, but hasn’t officially launched. We’re ironing out final bugs, and just wanted to ask you guys what types of content you were interested in seeing. We really value your input, and all suggestions will be taken seriously. Do you have a particular aspect of blogging that interests you? or perhaps you have a specific problem/issue that you can’t figure out. Whatever it is, drop us a comment and we’ll try to come up with some appropriate content for you.

Check out the site and leave us some feedback today

Connect With Blogs.FanExtra

You can also connect with us on most social networking profiles:

Blogs.FanExtra Facebook Page

Follow Blogs.FanExtra on Twitter

Subscribe to the Blogs.FanExra feed

Go to Source

Week 61: One Grape

This week I will be redesigning: One Grape.

In the space of 5 minutes I can identify some of the key strengths and weaknesses of this design, and sketch out a mockup.

STRENGTHS:

• The header is unique, and visually pretty impressive.
• There is reasonably good visual hierarchy, with clear post titles and sub-headings.
• There is a good amount of white space and padding, making the content fairly easy to digest.
• The site uses relevant imagery, which helps engage the reader.

WEAKNESSES:

• The menu isn’t very obvious, and goes unnoticed.
• The blog post images are too large, and not even indented, meaning that text content is pushed right down the page.
• Whilst the main blog posts are engaging, the site needs to draw readers deeper into it, by highlighting key content more.
• The site just feels like an ‘out of the box’ WordPress theme, and therefore doesn’t feel all that unique or interesting. It needs livening up!

My Redesign

As always, I was limited by the 30 minute time-frame, but I tried to improve upon several of One Grape’s features, adding a few design flourishes and a clearer layout that promoted content over wasted space:

MY AIMS FOR THE REDESIGN:

• I made the menu more prominent and bolder, making the site easier to navigate.
• I departed from the ‘standard free theme’ look, and gave the site a more unique look.
• I highlighted key content such as the wine reviews in order to draw readers further into the site.
• I reduced the size of post images and indented them, allowing for many more posts/content per page.

Before/After:

Here is a quick comparison between the original design and my 30 minute redesign. Sure, my design could be more polished, but I believe that a lot of the basic elements have been improved upon, creating a more pleasant browsing experience.

How and Why To Enter 30 Minute Redesigns

You can have the chance to have your website redesigned in next weeks post. All you need to do is leave a comment to this post with your website address and why you think it needs a redesign.

Go to Source

Premium Texture Set: Sunless

You can view the textures below, and can download the full sized textures at the bottom of this page.

This premium texture set is huge, containing 5 super-high res textures!

DOWNLOAD PREMIUM TEXTURE SET.

License: Creative Commons Attribution

Go to Source

Advertise here with BSA

A great carbon chrome social media icon set at decent size of 128 pixels by 128 pixels to be used within commercial web design projects.  The icon was constructed in Photoshop use and seamless pattern and effects to create a unique icon set.

License Details

The vector set can be used within commercial and non-commercial design projects. The vector set CAN NOT be redistributed on any other website without permission from the Creative Nerds team.

Preview

Advertise here with BSA

Go to Source

Advertise here with BSA

This is a great inspirational showcase of street paintings. Street paintings are created in the streets hence the name. What i really about street paintings is the 3D perspective of the of the paintings and the realism, they are truly remarkable paintings so spend some time check each one out.

1. 3D Street Painting – Escape of the Mummy

2. Escalators

3. metanamorph

4. 3D Shark

5. shopping mall in Gdansk

6. Indian Fantasy

7. Chess with the Dalai Lama

8. SEOUL

9. Smart Car

11. Jaguar Temple

12. Abu Dhabi

13. chalkfestival

14. ASIAN PAINTS

15. Milagro

16. Champions planet

17. Grants

18. mural art

19. Starmild

20. Orange

Advertise here with BSA

Go to Source

A showcase of the very best web designs from the last week

Carnivale Du Vin

UW Design Show

Hugo & Marie

Hard Graft

Sunborn

Web Typography For The Lonely

Iconmonstr

Maersk

Yoggrt

Moody International

Jenier

Growcase

Niketo

The Lit Pub

Pucket

If you like this post you may also want to look at:

Weekly Web Design Inspiration #106

Weekly Web Design Inspiration #105

Why not follow me on twitter: @atikusdesign
or to ensure you are updated with every D-Lists posts follow: @d_lists

Go to Source

A roundup of the best design inspiration posted on Dribbble this week

Task tracking counter

Video component update

100% Happiness

Facebook app version

Construction

Brazilian flip-flop

Making choices…

Search

Battery stats

Dashboard beta 2

Virgin uploading

Bunker app

Meal invite for iPhone app

Super Action Bros Completed

Ohlando Type Treatments

If you like this post you may also want to look at:

This week in Dribbble #3

This week in Dribbble #2

Why not follow me on twitter: @atikusdesign
or to ensure you are updated with every D-Lists posts follow: @d_lists

Go to Source

A showcase of some beautiful web designs that heavily use illustrations

Get Satisfaction

Resolution Interactive Media

Theo Thermometer

Forgotten Colours

Go Live

Head 2 Heart

Angry Nerds

Imaginamos

App Galaxy

Oobafit

Rays Lab

If you like this post you may also want to look at:A Showcase Of Illustrative Websites #5

A Showcase Of Illustrative Websites #4

Why not follow me on twitter: @atikusdesign
or to ensure you are updated with every D-Lists posts follow: @d_lists

Go to Source

A showcase of the very best web designs from the last week

Renault

Type Media

Kout

Mario Kart

The Battle Of The Bit

Us Two

Oobafit

The Music Bed

Syropia

Starting Bloc

Design/Array

Badgeville

Foodily

Souljade

If you like this post you may also want to look at:

Weekly Web Design Inspiration #105

Weekly Web Design Inspiration #104

Why not follow me on twitter: @atikusdesign
or to ensure you are updated with every D-Lists posts follow: @d_lists

Go to Source

30 Minute Redesigns

I hope many of you saw last week’s 30 minute redesign. If you missed it then please check out the redesign I did of Little Miss Scarlet

30 Minute Redesign: Little Miss Scarlet

The idea is that I redesign a website in just 30 minutes, trying to improve upon it’s design aspects. I then publish a case-study of my improvements for learning purposes and email the webmaster the final .psd design. 30 Minute Redesigns take place every Saturday.

• To be eligible for the upcoming week’s redesign you must leave a comment to the previous week’s redesign post with your web address and why you would like a redesign.
• Please note that site’s must have content in English, otherwise it’s simply too difficult for me to work with.

Vote For This Week’s Redesign

After receiving lots of great comments to last week’s redesign post, I’m happy to present the candidates for this Saturday’s redesign.

Please look over the websites below, and then use the poll at the bottom of this post to choose which site you’d like to see redesigned:

1: Coleman Therapy Center

2: Total Theme

3: Xomi International Corporation

4: Cameroon College of Arts, Science and Technology

5: One Grape

Vote Now!

Please cast your vote using the poll below:

Which Website Should Get Redesigned?

Be sure to check back on Saturday for the winning case-study!

Go to Source