Here we are again, showcasing some 10 cool new blogs & websites we come across lately aka Inspired Websites. Feel free to leave a comment and suggest other interesting stuff for the creative community.
Tuesday Total Textures is post series that will bring a new life to your Tuesdays. Every week I'll be posting some free hi resolution textures that you can use in your projects. Check out this week's textures, download the ones you like and start making your texture collection.
Planet Texture
Art Nouveau Pattern Texture
Colour Creation
Grungy Texture
Peeling
Rainbow Water
Presswood
a (...)
In this tutorial I will show you the steps I have used for making the Butterfly in the spring image.
After 13 years of being a vital part of web designs, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) has evolved into a powerful tool, allowing you to develop more efficient and better-looking sites. Many of the new features in the latest CSS revision (CSS3) are rich and take the quality of our designs to the next level.
We’ll be looking at a few of the essential things you need to know about CSS3. With all of these new features, it’s important to place emphasis on the most important ones to get you (...)
Java provides automatic garbage collection,sometimes you will want to know how large the object heap is and how much of it is left. You can use this result to know about the efficiency of your application or program,that is you may come to know how many more objects you can instantiate. To obtain these values use totalMemory() and freeMemory() methods.
Since Java Garbage Collector runs periodically to check the dangling object references and empty Strings and to recycle these unused (...)
Nature is something that inspires all artists, designers and photographers on a day-to-day basis. Wherever it is you work, rest or play, there will always be nature around you, and whether you intend to or not it’s always going to influence you in one way or another. This round-up of nature-themed Photoshop artwork is sure to get your creative heads buzzing!
Mother Nature Is Crying
This incredible piece of digital artwork uses various manipulative skills to produce a realistic yet (...)
You can argue that a minute is a minute, no matter who you are or where you live, but the perceived speed of time can change person-by-person and even minute-by-minute. Ask anyone who has ever done something they have not enjoyed; they may say that time slowed and dragged by. And consider the idiom, “Time flies when you’re having fun.” Time often seems to go too fast when we’re enjoying something, like a vacation or a movie.
While you can’t lengthen or shorten time at your leisure, you can (...)
Regular readers of Think Vitamin may know that Carsonified, the company behind the blog, also run a number of web related events in Europe and the USA. We thought you might like to know that we recently launched our free to join event affiliate program. Here’s how we describe it on the web site:
The Carsonified Affiliate Program allows you to earn money. Every time a ticket to an event is purchased thanks to someone clicking on your affiliate link or banner we pay you £20. Sell five (...)
1. Back Up All Your Files Now
"Procrastination is the bad habit of putting off until the day after tomorrow what should have been done the day before yesterday." – Napoleon Hill
I’m sure that you’ve heard this over and over again but how many of you have actually taken the time to actually do it? Just a few days ago, I read about a designer on Twitter who lost some of his files due to some of his hardware malfunctioning. That is such a bummer. Let’s learn from his experience and (...)
Press Release
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By Neil Skirrow
As web technologies constantly advance, the skills a developer is expected to have are constantly increasing. Web users are beginning to expect Ajax interfaces, charts and graphs and a whole host of other tricks and features. This means web developers not only have to be skilled with HTML and a server-s
It’s important to promote your design business. This is especially true when economic times are challenging, you’ve got news to announce, or you’re simply hungry for growth. Many forms of promotion are available to the modern designer – with banner ads and Google AdWords among the most popular. In this digital age, it’s ea
Showcase of 40 useful and powerful CSS tools and generators. These tools can really relieve developers work in many ways – I understand you like always to do everything by yourself but it’s not the best way in the most cases, because it really takes time and such liberty we don’t always have.
This is considered to be really complete list about everything CSS related, as CSS lover myself I really evaluate good automated ways so I can focus on things I enjoy the most – creating elegant, usable (...)
This article is sponsored by SSLmatic which sells SSL certificates (RapidSSL, Geotrust, Verisign) for much cheaper prices & offers great support. Check their site to get the cheap SSL certificates.
In the process of launching an e-store, when it comes to choosing the right solution, you will get puzzled by the hundreds of solutions available.
The options range from simple and free shopping cart systems to complex and paid e-commerce softwares which can charge you for both getting (...)
This is our weekly Twitter Design News Round-Up, a collection of fresh design related resources that we have shared via Twitter in the past week.
Just in case you are not one of our Twitter followers, click here: twitter.com/speckyboy, and you’ll be kept up to date with loads of design news and resources.
As always, if you have any cool links that you would like to share, do not hesitate to share them here: Submit News. Thanks to everyone that has been emailing. Inspirational CSS:
Opera (...)
Time for some more learning!!! Photo manipulation is a technique of editing the images so as to produce a kind of illusion or deception. Its amazing usage and ethical concerns made it a marvelous subject of interest for everybody. It has opened doors to unlimited creativity and innovation. There can be a great combination of two opposites in a single image. You can modify the image in any way you want. So, BestPSDtoHTML decided to give its readers a collection of cool Photo manipulation (...)
View catalinuta.com at Design Shack
Lumzy is a Mockup and Prototype creation tool for websites and applications. By Mockup, we mean that quick sketch that gives an idea of what the site or application you are planning to build will look like.
Further more with Lumzy, you can create prototypes of how the site or application will function by adding events within your Lumzy controls. For instance, what happens when the user clicks a button? You can create Message Alerts, Page navigation or Links to external content, when your (...)
Photoshop is the tool of choice for web designers. With that in mind, we’ve rounded up 20 of the latest Photoshop tutorials for designing websites. The end results produced by these tutorials are great looking designs, but keep in mind that it’s not meant for you to reproduce an exact copy and use it as your own. Instead, follow the tutorials and learn new techniques to incorporate into your own designs. Create a Clean and Classy Web Design in Photoshop
Create a Gnarly Snowboarding Themed (...)
Today we’ve got three copies of the new eBook from Rockable and FreelanceSwitch, How to Write Great Copy for the Web, to give away. Entering takes seconds, just leave a comment below and three lucky people will be selected. Win How to Write Great Copy for the Web About the Book
How to Write Great Copy for the Web is the latest book from Rockable Press. You may not know this, but Rockable is Envato’s book publishing house! This book takes a concise and practical approach to writing (...)
I almost titled this post “5 Hot Color Trends for the Web”, but the truth is that I’ve never really considered myself “trendy”- and I’m not sure if trends are something we designers should give much importance to. With design- especially web design- we want to innovate, whether it’s a new spin on a vintage look or a modern design sitting on the cutting-est of edges.
If, like me, you spend an inordinately large amount of time over at COLOURlovers, you’ve probably seen some of these color palettes, (...)
Well yeah, yet another social media icons pack :), but this pack rocks because you not only get icons for : Reddit, Youtube, GoogleBuzz, SlideShare, Blogger, Digg, yahoo, Flickr, StumbleUpon, Technorati, Delicious, Feedburner, Wordress, Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, RSS and Linkind . But also get them 4 shapes: Egg, Beads (those stuff in the abacus), Button, and an Apple :).
The icons are in vector format for you to manipulate as you wish and in 32, 64 and 128px (...)
This post is supported by Webdesigner Depot, a popular web design blog covering tutorials, design trends, blogging and inspirational posts. You can visit WDD at webdesignerdepot.com and follow WDD on Twitter @designerdepot.
Getting a user to visit your site is only step one. If you’re interested in maintaining a long-lasting relationship, it’s going to take some commitment.
By now you’ve probably seen showcases of well designed registration forms, but that’s really only half the story. Effective (...)
If you haven’t gotten around to creating yourself a website or online portfolio, you’re missing out on a great opportunity. In today’s YTD post we discuss the importance of web promotion for graphic designers with David Airey, the famous brand identity designer, blogger and internet marketer extraordinaire. His self-titled website, www.davidairey.com, draws thousands of readers a day and made headlines when the international online community rallied to support his stand against an unscrupulous (...)
Going Digital
People are consuming information much differently these days and it’s your responsibility to make sure your content is available for the most popular forms of consumption. Here, we’ll take a look at distributing content through everything from Zinio to Amazon’s Kindle to Apple’s iPhone.
Personally, I’ve been a fan of the “digital movement” for years and I believe that Adobe has realized that while print is king, the future is digital. Some will argue that paper will never go away (...)
We frequently publish posts on this blog that feature tutorials for learning how to do various things with Photoshop, but we have rarely focused on just the basics. This post is intended for designers or aspiring designers who either want to get started with Photoshop or have limited experience and are looking to improve.
While there are plenty of great learning resources available online, it’s often difficult for beginners to know where to get started because everything seems to be (...)
Microsoft’s Office suite has long been the king of productivity software. And with good reason—it is the most full-featured office suite available. Not only is MS Office deployed extensively throughout enterprises, but many consumers rely on it for their day-to-day word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation needs, too.
But Microsoft Office isn’t cheap. Office Home and Student 2007 sells for $149.95 at the Microsoft Store (the 2008 Mac version is the same price). There are some discounts (...)
Have you ever visited a website with expectations about what you would find only to discover that site held none of the information you were looking for? That site might have had exactly what you’re interested in, but there was no clear path to find it. The site may have been organized in such a way that led you to believe it was about something other than what you were hoping to find.
How long did you stay on that site? Did you take any time to explore it or did you quickly conclude it (...)
WordPress’s popularity and usefulness as a multi-purpose content management system, continues to grow, and the more people flock to using this CMS the more an understanding of some of the basics of how it operates becomes necessary.
In that vein, I have put together this post that examines the WordPress template hierarchy and the use of conditional statements. Technically you only need two files for a WordPress theme to work, index.php and style.css.
However, if you would like to make your (...)
If you strive to be a great designer (like most), then you’re more than likely to know that a web application or websites success many times rely solely on how well designed the User Interface may be. As you scale the web and even read books, there can be an influx of misleading information pertaining to the way you should design your UI.
When in reality you should do what works best for you and your users. Below you will find a variety of excellent User Interface resources that will allow (...)
The natural world will forever be our greatest source of color inspiration. Not a day or season goes by without being able to find a profound experience of color: After the white snow melts away taking with it the stark contrasts of bare tress and black shadows, the grass's green becomes richer each day, until one day. And as quickly as the first transformation happens, an opposite and equally powerful transition takes place. The green retreats, fading into shades of grey and making way for (...)
A popular design phenomenon is that of “office porn”. No, it’s not anything sexual or sinister, but the seemingly never-ending desire of every designer out there to have an office that’s slicker, sexier, and more loaded than technology than the last. From Flickr home office competitions to design firms loaded with Mac Pros and 32 inch displays, the design industry has a major crush on shiny high-performance equipment.
Unfortunately for newbie designers, furnishing a swanky design office (...)
CSS is a wonderful language for presenting web pages. It’s not too difficult to learn, though like most things, it does have a learning curve. Where many people seem to get tripped up is in specific solutions to specific problems. Fortunately there’s a good chance that someone before you has already had the same problem and even better has found a solution.
Here are 47 of those solutions. 47 CSS Tips, Tricks, and Techniques to add to your CSS toolbox. Some you may be familiar with while (...)
How to steer clear of toxic questions like "why does this always happen to me?"
In this tutorial, we’re going to paint a cartoon version of the ‘near-iconic’ Stephen Fry. The cartoon is styled in a comic book fashion but however, there’s still some painting to be done and this in the end, will be make the final image quite detailed.
Step 1
Starting off with a sketch of a younger Stephen Fry, I sketched out his prominent features such as his hair, slightly narrowed nose, dreamy eyes and chubby cheeks.
Step 2
Select the Pen Tool (P) and make sure the “paths” is chosen. (...)
When you're working on creating a print style sheet, you should be aware of the @page rule to help you provide specific styles for the pages. Just be sure to test any CSS you add to print style sheets with the @page rule, as many browsers still don't have good support for it. Learn More About CSS Printing and the @page Rule The @page Rule CSS2 Media Types Create Print-Friendly Pages CSS 3 size Property CSS 3 marks Property
The @page Rule Helps with Printing originally appeared on (...)
Reviewed by James Puckett
In 1983 Rudy VanderLans, Zuzana Licko, Marc Susan, and Menno Meyjes began Emigre, a magazine about “…the global artist who juggles cultures, travels between them, and who is fluent in the cultural symbols of the world. An émigré.”[1] Early issues meandered through essays, interviews, fiction and poetry. VanderLans directed wild layouts that ignored the so-called rules instilled by modernist design pedagogues. After four issues Susan and Meyjes had left the magazine, (...)
This presentation is brought to you by Shopify. Shopify is an ecommerce solutions made by designers, for designers. For more information visit shopify.com/boagworld.
This year at SXSW I spoke about the challenges of design sign off. I shared how at Headscape we have changed our working relationship with clients from one of confrontation to true collaboration. Talk description
Getting design approval can be like pulling teeth. Clients seem to make irrational decisions (...)
I always find myself under the spell of the charismatic, in real life and online.
The power of charisma shines through in a person’s online activity, making them, quite simply, really likeable. They listen, are positive and authentic and as a community manager, I actively try to eke out any ounce of my charisma that I have naturally as well as trying to learn from the insanely likeable.
The effect of charisma became glaringly clear after I read an article published by Psychology Today that (...)
Science fiction has been widely popular for years. Nowadays, technology enables graphic designers and digital artists to illustrate the fantasy of their imagination through digital arts. There are so many futuristic Sci-Fi concepts that have been created by several famous digital artists. They often use Maya and 3D Studio Max for initial modeling and Adobe Photoshop for final retouching.
According to Wikipedia, Science fiction is a genre of fiction. It differs from fantasy in that, (...)
The cool team from Marketcircle have kindly offered two licenses of their Billings application for Mac. Billings 3 is a time tracking and invoicing application that makes running your business a breeze. Fancy winning a copy? Access All Areas members can log in and enter the prize draw!
Billings is a ...
Log in to your Access All Areas account to read the rest of this post.
Not a member? Becoming an Access All Areas member gives you the ability to view exclusive members-only content (...)
A great web design can effectively communicate with the visitors and convey information in a clean manner. Designing a corporate website is a challenging task that requires a designer to break communication barriers while showing clear idea of the website.
Photoshop is cool, and we mean really cool! With the right technique and some creativity you can totally turn any image into something extraordinary with a bigger impact. It’s fun to just take a photo, manipulate and see what output becomes.
Today we want to show you some amusing photo manipulation – the robotic animals. These images comes from our talented friends over at worth1000 who took Photoshop into the next level by manipulating photos of normal animal and turned them into robotic (...)
