Whether you’re a kid or an adult, toys are awesome. They are even cooler (to some) if they are made by hand. Here are 9 creative custom wooden toys that you may not see at your local toy store. diego morales
Alongkorn Sanguansook
smallstuffstudio
Emmanuel Gilloz
Lena Voinova
Teodoru Badiu
Incubus project
a href="http://www.behance.net/
If you’re a book lover, you may have noticed that the vast majority of book-related websites out there leave a bit to be desired when it comes to design and information architecture. In fact, some author and publisher websites make me feel like my eyes might bleed!
But there are some gems out there, and we’ve collected some of the best. If you know of any other fantastic book-related websites, whether they’re for authors, individual books, publishing companies, or blogs, let us know in the (...)
Do designers dream in Pantone with visions of rainbows in their heads? Color is a vital part of any graphic designer’s life – after all, they’re the ones paid to come up with pleasing color combinations that will sell a product. That’s why you often see a bold use of color for logos (think Pepsi’s use of primary-color red and blue) as well as websites (such as Graphic Design Blog’s paint-spattered header). While color definitely garners attention, there are times that black and white or a sepia (...)
Today we’re excited to present Rapid Prototyping with SketchFlow, a tutorial by respected user experience professional Shane Morris.
Shane starts off by touching on the history of prototyping tools, and the complex challenges that they once posed for designers who found themselves having to curtail creativity to cater to what the tools themselves were capable of.
Fast forward a few years and the recent rise in demand for, and increased capability of prototyping tools has resulted in a new (...)
My favorite way to create torn paper edges in Photoshop is to use a nice set of Photoshop brushes. The right set of Photoshop brushes can produce a realistic-looking effect in a short amount of time. I’ve released Torn Paper Brushes on this site before; and love them, but often find that set to have too many peaks and valleys. That is why today, I am releasing a set of 10 Torn Paper Photoshop Brushes with a flatter edge. The flat edge will allow you to add just a hint of torn edges to your (...)
The Logo Design series is up and running! We're thinking ahead and we want to find new ways to sort these listings. Today, it's all about animals. I gotta say that this is probably the listing with most matches ever...
There are so many that we had to break it and we had do it in 2 parts. I don't know why designer love so much to place animals in their designs... this is the biggest trend EVER. As usual, we'll search for logos in these galleries: Logopond, Logo Faves, Logo Moose, Logo (...)
Hey everyone! Things are full speed ahead in getting ready to head out to Photoshop World March 24-26 at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando! I’m pretty excited to be amongst some wonderful instructors to teach the latest and greatest in Photoshop and the web. One of the things that i’m -really- psyched for is the pre-con that I am doing with Matt Kloskowski “HDR Crash Course”. There are still 3 seats left, so I figured it was a good time to let you guys know a little bit about (...)
The role and purpose of icons is user interaction is very important these days. Icons can enhance the user experience and user friendly icons are really appreciative but they should be unique and easy to understand. There are so many icon websites available on the web but what we are presenting here is only high quality and web2.0 free icon packs collected from various websites ,designers galleries and blogs.
In this icons series we have divided the icon packs in to three main (...)
Weebly, a very easy-to-use, popular & web-based website-builder service has just opened its theme gallery to all designers.
And, to celebrate this, they launched a design contest with $13,000 in prizes which the entries will be judged by well-known designers: Michael Cronan (acknowledged with the naming and identities of Tivo and Verio and naming the Amazon Kindle) Scott Thomas (former design director of Obama for America) Jason Putorti (former lead designer of Mint.com) Andrew (...)
MySpace today launched MySpace Games that creates a more social gaming environment with new tools and functionality for users and developers.
MySpace Games offers improved application engagement and analytics tools for developers on the MySpace Platform.
MySpace provides a platform that supports independent game developers, while giving support for premium games from major development houses resulting in more gaming choices for users and developers a like.
MySpace Platform developers are (...)
View thinkingforaliving.org at Design Shack
As I have mentioned in our last interview, here at Admix Web we are doing an interview series, where we will conduct informal weekly interviews of fellow designers and developers. It is our contention that these interviews will not only give us great insight into the people behind the designs, but they will also [...]
The iPhone is the most popular product of the past two years. By now everyone knows what the iPhone is, and most of you have one or have come in close contact with one. The iPhone has changed the mobile industry and slated itself as a trend setter. The phone itself isn’t the biggest selling feature – it’s the apps. Allowing consumers to purchase apps really sets apart the iPhone from anything else. The App store has exploded with amazing clever little tools. Developers are pushing the (...)
While flipping through InStyle's latest issue, I was completely and utterly taken by Christina Hendricks & Geoffrey Arend celebrity wedding (Married October 2009). I mean, talk about the cat's meow of going vintage for your wedding. Absolutely gorgeous and done to perfection! The entire wedding party was dressed full vintage.
I simply loved the variety of style, design, and color. With that being said, it all still coordinates nicely. Notice how the female wedding party (above (...)
Big is good. Despite the common assumption that small companies are the best when it comes to customer and client service, many businesses look the other way when selecting a service provider or contractor. Rather than selecting based on individual attention and customer care, they look for other signals of approval – the ability to work with large clients, a proven track record, and the structure to support large assignments and long-term contracts.
Image Source
For a small boutique (...)
There are two ways you can go when designing a 404 page for your website – you could go the sensible route and make it usable and try to help the reader find exactly what they were looking for or, you could design a 404 page that not only defines the character of the web site or the designer, but also makes it a pleasure and surprise. Its amazing the effect a sprinkle of humor and some creativity can have on someone and it will certainly make your site that little bit more memorable.
Below, (...)
This post has been a long time coming. Whether on Twitter or in the blogosphere, the question often arises, and I have been asked numerous times for my opinion on the ExpressionEngine vs. WordPress debate, and why one would choose one content management system (CMS) over the other.
My usual answer is that they cannot be compared. While WordPress had made huge strides in usability, for anything other than a blog it is an apple.
ExpressionEngine, with the release of version 2.0, makes (...)
Rosenfeld Media, publisher of short, practical books on user experience design, is giving away its entire collection of books (retail value of $216) to a lucky Six Revisions fan via this Twitter-based giveaway.
Each book will be provided to the winner in both paperback and digital eBook versions. Topics range from how to design web forms to prototyping to performing remote user research.
You can view their entire book collection on their Products page.
How to Enter this Twitter (...)
Shaun Inman’s development blog for his upcoming resolution-switching masterpiece for the iPhone.
Any freelancer would know that the art of building a client base can be very tricky. It is a skill that takes a while to master. Over the years, I've learned a thing or two about building up your clientele on top of continuing to win new clients and securing repeat business. In fact, I’ve got it down to a science. Three key steps are all it takes.
Image from: caranxcaranx
If you are a freelancer who’s just starting out, and even if you’ve been freelancing for a while now but just can’t seem (...)
Ekaterin Zagustina, also known as Katja Faith, is an artist from Belgorod, Russia. In her artwork style she utilizes a combination of digital illustration and photography. On every painting she creates a beautiful surreal/fantasy world full of emotions. She definitely is one of my favorite artists.
img src="htt
Don't worry, two of them place the blame on someone other than you!
By Obaid ul Rehman
Traditional art has always been the source of inspiration for many artists and designers. With its conventional look and feel, it appeals your visitors and let them amaze on your creativity and artistic skills. In this post, we have piled up an inspiring list of some great Traditional art and paintings for you.
Once Again, we’ve got something special for our community. InstantShift again came up with cool freebies giveaway as promised. This is our way of saying thanks to our readers for being part of the instantShift community and helping us make it to where we are right now. We at InstantShift love to give away things regularly, all year long. This time I’m pleased to announce our latest giveaway where you all have a chance to win 5 free sets of 1,000 Standard Business Cards each from NextDayFlyers (...)
When you start a website, no matter if you have chosen a top business hosting package or a cheap website hosting package, you will find various website analysis tools in your web hosting admin panel. Website analysis tools, such as Awstats, are typically included in both business hosting and cheap website hosting packages and these tools are indeed good. However, if you want options when it comes to website analytics tools, here are some suggestions. JAWStats
If you like Awstats, you (...)
With this tutorial we will create a hi-tech style button that can be used in splash pages, applications or Powerpoint presentations. We will use Illustrator to create complex vectors and Photoshop to develop realistic effects.
Step 1
Using Illustrator we create a rectangle with the size shown. With the Rectangle tool we click on the work area and a window will appear that will allow us to determinate the exact sizes for the object. I recommend to set Illustrator preferences using pixels (...)
To find a career to which you are adapted by nature, and then to work hard at it, is about as near to a formula for success and happiness as the world provides.
One of the fortunate aspects of this formula is that, granted the right career has been found, the hard work takes care of itself. Then hard work is not hard work at all.
– Mark Sullivan
I read these lines some time ago while surfing on the web, but since then they have been a great source of inspiration for me.
Hi! My name is (...)
This post is brought to you by Shopify. Shopify is an ecommerce solutions made by designers, for designers. For more information visit shopify.com/boagworld.
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Before I reveal the reason why the majority of blogs fail and what makes the select few succeed, I want to explain why I believe institutional blogs are so important. Why your organisation should blog
An organisational blog has huge potential. Just some of the benefits include: Search engine (...)
CSS Frameworks allow you to rapidly improve and speed up your development time when used correctly, and provide a powerful way to style our websites and applications with flexibility and effectiveness.
So How Do We Choose the Right One?
The first step you need to take is to make sure you decide upon a framework that has an established and accurate representation of detailed documentation. This is vital to the steps you’ll take in implementing and utilizing your framework the way it was (...)
Get your favorite site designs featured on About.com: What is your favorite Web design?
More Web design resources and help: Follow me on Twitter or Become a Fan on Facebook
Wordless Wednesday - Reader's Favorite Designs: Alcoholics Anonymous of Midland, Michigan originally appeared on About
Alex Mather’s new ebook ‘10 Steps to Powerful Online Self Promotion for Creatives‘ has just been released and it’s definitely worth checking out. I’m not here to ‘sell’ the book to you but seeing though it’s one of the most common question areas that I get asked about, I thought it was worth sharing. Click here to check out the book & judge for yourself* An overview of what’s included in the book: How to establish a unique selling point, and become an outstanding, credible brand. How to (...)
About MediaLoot
MediaLoot is a brand new online toolbox of premium design resources. It’s a subscription based site that offers designers awesome icons, Photoshop brushes, textures, vectors, print templates, and more. It looks very promising and is created by Jon Phillips of Spyre Studios and Mason & Natalie Hipp of Freelance Folder.Some Samples
Rather than me just chatting up the graphics, I figured you could check out some examples and judge for yourself.
The Prize
MyInkBlog and (...)
Next Day Flyers has offered to give 1,000 business cards and $25 of printing credit to a lucky reader of Designm.ag.
If you’re not familiar with Next Day Flyers they provide offset printing services and specialize in quick printing, mailing and finishing marketing materials. They are available to print business cards, print greeting cards, print door hangers and more. They also offer 24-hour turnaround on all custom printed promotional materials. The company has been around for 8 (...)
Earlier today a new membership-based site, MediaLoot was launched. It is an online toolbox of premium design resources, and they have kindly offered to give five readers of the Vandelay Design blog a one-year membership to the site for free!
MediaLoot is a project of Jon Phillips of Spyre Studios and Mason Hipp of Freelance Folder. Members of MediaLoot are able to download resources like textures, icons, vectors, brushes, templates and more. The goal of MediaLoot is to eliminate the (...)
The web is alive and growing more active with each new day. The increasing number of sites that crop up on the daily shows no signs of slowing, and as the online ranks grow, designers are constantly looking for ways to make their sites stand out from the rest. As this brainstorming scramble begins, some [...]
Advance Level PHP Tutorials with Scripts, Demos and Sources
Where are you and what is around you?
Geolocation is a hot topic. Google just got the patent on geolocated advertising, mobile phones allow us to pinpoint ourselves on the planet and find things nearby and with augmented reality applications we can even find our way by filming our surrounding and finding hidden treasures by moving our mobile around. Using geolocation as a developer is quite easy, you can do a few things: If you are building something in a social network, you can get the (...)
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Google Geo Developers Blog
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You’ve probably heard that Apple recently released the iPad. The absence of Flash Player on the device seems to have awakened the HTML5 vs. Flash debate. Apparently, it’s the final nail in the coffin for Flash. Either that, or the HTML5 community is overhyping its still nascent markup language update. The arguments run wide, strong, and legitimate on both sides. Yet both sides might also be wrong. Designer/developer Dan Mall is equally adept at web standards and Flash; what matters, he says, (...)
Congratulations to Trevor C, Rommel Miraflores, and Jess. They were the 3 lucky winners of a free Floral Mega Pack of vectors from Designious.com. I’d like to take a second and give a special thanks to Alex, from Designious. In the past 1-2 years, he has generously donated hundreds (if not thousands) of dollars worth of vectors to the BittBox readership. Thanks again Alex for all the lovely vector goodness. We all appreciate it. (...)
I had big plans for the Oscars last night. No I didn’t go to some overpriced “Oscar Party” at a fancy restaurant, where martinis cost $15 a pop, the entree about 3 times that much, and never mind the “red carpet”-worthy outfit that would have hit my pocketbook right were it hurt. Nope, those days were officially over.
Like the millions of people from around the globe, I tuned in to watch the 82nd Annual Academy Awards. It was a wonderful soiree, an intimate, casual gathering of 200 of my (...)
The trouble with Photoshop Tutorials is that there are a lot of them out there, but you only want the very best, most creative ones.
In this post, we’ve collected 40 of the very best and most extravagant tutorials for working with type. After working through a few of the most appealing looking ones to you, you should have more than a few ideas for creating your own, unique effects!
Tutorials:
How to Create a Stereoscopic Image for Crossed Eye Image Viewing
This tutorial will teach you how (...)
Today saw the launch of the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games logo.
Glasgow design agency Marque is responsible for the identity design project, said to have cost £95,000. This fee covers such elements as brand guidelines, animated work, visual language, typography, photographic style, and art direction.
Developing a specific logo for the event is a requirement made by the the Commonwealth Games Federation as part of the contract for hosting the games.
Having a logo allows the organisers (...)
Typography plays an important role and is an integral part of any design; be it print or web. Sometimes, when there is no room for images, typeface is all you’ve got to give the audience an idea what the whole thing is all about.
Image credit: Sven the ghost by Starfy
But one common thing in designing with typeface is – we usually use a particular font once for any design or campaign. It’s probably not worth buying, certainly not economically feasible from a business standpoint.
If you (...)
In a recent entry on his Real World Illustrator blog, design software expert Mordy Golding recalled an AOL Vector Forum he participated in way back in the day. "Every Tuesday evening," Mordy wrote, "the Vector Forum would have a live one-hour chat, where we'd pick a topic and discuss all things vector. I learned so much from those chats, and I was also able to share what I was learning with others."
read (...)
Thanks to this fine piece of huffduffing I’m reminded that there hasn’t been a Biscuit Friday for over four years. That’s about to be rectified. To the tune of the Hokey Cokey:
Facebook Mum
YouTube Dad
Seabass, manbag
Fifty quid to Chad
Would the congregation like to rise and sing
Hymn number 252
Here come the Barmy Army
They’re absolutely crazy
Bart, Elvis and the baby
Kill kill kill stab murder and dispatch
From Petty Sessions on CSI:Ambleside.
Read or add (...)
Very high resolution and detail in this set of images of a concrete wall textures, great for many themes including construction, industrial, urban projects and more.
In this set are included 12 textures.
File size: ~92 MB
Image resolution: 4288 x 2848 pixels
Want access to our huge collection of 70.000 items including this set of
Building with progressive enhancement is essential to ensuring a usable experience for all. But how do you determine which browsers should receive the enhanced experience and which should stick with the basic experience?
Introducing EnhanceJS, a JavaScript framework designed specifically to deliver a usable experience to the widest possible audience, by testing the browser to determine whether it is capable of correctly supporting a range of essential CSS and JavaScript properties, and (...)
To effectively manage a project with very little mistakes, you must make it a priority to plan. Diving into the development process with not a single clue as to what elements go where or how certain aspects of a websites interface differ from one another is dooming yourself to hard-earned headaches.
For as long as humans have been able to hold a pen and a paper in hand, we have been prototyping and although different from now, “wireframing“. This dates back to thousands of years ago when (...)
Last series of ornaments were so well received that here you have another series of free vector floral ornaments from another poetry book from 1886. You can notice how similar they are since they share the same time and art period.
Personally I love them so they will keep coming for a while. Hope you enjoy them. Preview
Download 2,4Mb .zip in [ .eps .svg]
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
Related posts:14 Vector Floral Ornaments Pack 02 Four Vector (...)
Go Media teamed up with Imagekind to offer a limited edition print run of our Weapons of Mass Creation poster in support of the Weapons of Mass Creation fest.
All proceeds of these art prints go to help raise money in support of the festival being held on May 22 & 23 in Cleveland, Ohio.
The WMC fest is a celebration of all things creative: art, film, and music. There are only 100 prints available, so order fast! Use the coupon code FreeGoMedia to get yourself free shipping!
The Weapons (...)
As much as developers like ourselves love to learn, there are only so many conferences we can attend in a given year. Add to that fact that many development conferences are quite expensive and that raises the barriers even more. If you are a new developer, have just branched out into freelancing or are starting your own shop, finding the time and money to attend a conference with your peers seems like a long shot. Does this sound discouraging? Well, I have good news! If you 1) Don’t mind (...)
HDR (High Dynamic Range) is a set of techniques that allow to represent wide range of intensity levels between lightest and darkest areas of the image. Taking and presenting amazing pictures is something every photographer strive for. Here is where HRD comes to play. You can actually produces som eof the very rare masterpieces using this technique. Basically, HRD is about taking so many exposures and mingling them to make one single image. One can well imagine how awesome that photo would (...)
Demo & Info
That’s right, we’ve worked on a Joomla Theme. Although we love Wordpress we realize it’s not everybodies’ first choice of CMS. So we felt it was only fair to make something just as pretty as our Wordpress themes for the Joomla people.
The result, Hallmark, a premium Joomla theme ideal for running news/magazine sites - or your own personal blog. We’ve even included a custom styled comments system, something which is optional but really is pretty and can help add that extra bit (...)
In our recent post we showed you how to mock up a wooden background layout in Photoshop. In this post we will show you how to covert that PSD to HTML.
As we know the Average screen size is 1024×768, we have created the PSD for that size and we are going to code for that [...]
Massive Freebies Password: d08YkM1
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Hello Spring. It’s been a long time.
Every couple weeks or so, we scavenge Flickr for some wonderfully inspiring photography to build color schemes from. The results can be used to start graphic and web projects of all sizes. As we’ve said before, inspiration comes in funny places sometimes.
Photos are all found via Flickr (follow image links for author info). Color schemes are available to download through COLOURlovers.Springtime Inspired Palettes
We’ve compiled photos and palettes below that (...)
Last week I posted a CSS3 dropdown menu and someone complained that I didn’t explain the CSS code in detail. Well, here is a post on the basics of the new properties: text-shadow, box-shadow, and border-radius. These CSS3 properties are commonly used to enhance layout and good to know.
The past three months, I had a chance to work with two great interns. It was a pleasure walking them through the process of taking a project from the sketch/thumbnail stages to Photoshop mock-up, to print ready art/html/css.
Before their intership ended. I gave them a few tips on preparing for their interviews. I'm sharing the same tips here, in hopes, it may be helpful to other designers just starting out.
I would like to also thank Emily Lewis, owner of A Blog Not Limited, with (...)
A menu with a visual active state is a popular technique on web sites for obvious reasons: It gives the user a clear signal of where he/she is on the site, especially for visitors coming from a search engine or deep link It can be attractive and signal a well-structured and balanced site Used carefully, it can replace the classic breadcrumb trail.
This article aim to explain how some popular techniques are used to achieve an active state, including a digestion of our latest laboratory (...)
The truth is, a lot of email newsletters suck. Sometimes, I open one up and am greeted by a blank page (hello, images with no alternative text). Sometimes, there’s just too much text and no incentive to click through to a landing page. And sometimes, the subject line is so boring, I don’t even bother opening the newsletter at all.
There are some great newsletters out there, of course- they’re the ones I always open, because I know they probably a). Look great, and b). Have something (...)
Graphic designers often ask how I made the switch to self-employment. Here’s a quick overview of that period in my life in 2004/05.
I was working as publications officer for Myeloma UK, a cancer charity in Edinburgh. My responsibilities included print design, print buying, and managing the web content.
In 2004 I resigned in order to travel the world. At the time I had no intention of returning my previous role, and was in fact considering a life teaching English in Asia, but in 2005 after (...)
It’s hard to imagine pushing the limits of object oriented PHP so far that your web servers choke, but the truth is those limits are reached faster than you think. We’ve run some tests over at Wufoo and it turns out that any sort of mass object creation is pretty much not going to work at scale. The problem is this limit on object creation forces developers to balance code consistency, which is desirable—especially for the old-schoolers, with performance. While replacing objects with arrays (...)
Download 17 Years Of Soulful Drum & Bass (100MB MP3)
Drum & bass is often associated with an aggressive, intensely electronic sound; but its draw for me has always been the promise of drum & bass as the new jazz, the new soul.
Lush melodies, warm synthesizers, intricate beats, double bass and soulful vocals -- these are all the things which I want to hear from my drum & bass. To commemorate a new decade, I decided to look back over my listening history, pick out my favourite soulful (...)
The fact that web browsers have different ways of displaying alternative text when images are missing or disabled is something that I talked about in Safari, WebKit and alt text for missing images and Steve Faulkner expanded on in alt and title content display in popular browsers.
In How should Web browsers render alternative text?, Vlad Alexander asks (and answers) a few questions on this topic.
Read full post
Posted in Accessibility, (...)
Although much valuable information for all sorts of web and print professionals can be found online, it is often difficult to weed through all the noise and find good quality content. I believe it’s vital that professionals in different creative fields supplement their online l
We all know that slick interface designs are pretty to look at. Personally, I ogle over them like the centerfold in a mens magazine. Is that weird? The more sleek and intuitive the design, the more I am drawn to it. Obviously, one of the results of good interface design is usability. Give me an app that looks pretty and works the way I expect it to and I am sold. Where do I pay?
I’m sure none of you will argue with the general statements above. Well, maybe the one about the mens (...)
In this week’s roundup of creative goodness, we have a unique Illustrator tutorial covering the creation of watercolor effects; a CSS tutorial on the popular sprites technique; a fantastic introduction and overview of CSS attribute selectors; another brilliant Illustrator tutorial, this time creating a bright and crisp illustration; and a well presented bunch of typography tips.
Design Instruct
This unique tutorial from the freshly launched Design Instruct covers some great tips on how (...)
I am excited to announce that my first post for Six Revisions has been published. I would like to thank Jacob Gube for helping me through this process to get to the finished product. He is a talented stand up guy who I am looking forward to working with in the future. [...]
This is a great insight to why as a designer you should choose to use one of the most powerful social media tools around for designers twitter.
Every one shares their personal findings from around the web
Twitter is an essential tool which should be used by every designer and even web designers or web developers. I believe twitter is a good tool for designers because everyone shares resources, tutorials and articles related to your niche dependent upon the people you choose to follow on (...)
Today we're happy to announce a special edition of our Inspired Giveaway series, in collaboration with the coolest brand for Apple fans! Yes iLadies and eGentlemen - we're happy to give away some fresh goodies from the cool chaps at Incase - six just launched Monochrome Slider Cases - three for (...)
