Filed under Articles, Design, Inspiration, roundup, showcase, Trends, Typography, Web Design by Chris Spooner
With websites being built from digital code it’s difficult to imagine them being crafted by hand, but this post showcases a bunch of websites that feature custom hand lettering in traditional mediums. In place of fonts these websites boast hand crafted typography to add a real artistic touch to the design. G’nosh Austin Eastciders The [...]
Continue Reading "Showcase of Artistic Hand Lettering in Web Design"Filed under Articles, Coding, CSS, css3, Design, generators, interface, links, Resources, roundup, Tips, Tools, Web Design by Chris Spooner
With the latest advances in CSS3 many of the effects that were once only achievable in Photoshop can now be replicated in CSS code, but it’s sometimes difficult to visualise the appearance of these effects when staring at a few lines of syntax. This is where CSS generators come in handy, this roundup of tools [...]
Continue Reading "Handy Roundup of CSS3 Generators and Tools"Filed under adobe illustrator, Articles, custom, Design, Graphic design, Inspiration, lettering, logo design, logos, showcase, Typography, Vector by Chris Spooner
One way to create an absolutely unique logo design is to craft the lettering by hand, as opposed to selecting an existing font. This allows the designer to create the perfect logo with their own custom ligatures, tails and loops. This post showcases 20 inspiring examples of custom lettering logos, each featuring the designer’s initial [...]
Continue Reading "Inspiring Examples of Custom Lettering Logo Designs"Filed under Articles, backgrounds, clean, Inspiration, minimal, pure, roundup, showcase, Trends, Web Design, white by Chris Spooner
Whenever we start work designing a website one of the first things we always do is throw a bunch of colours and textures onto the canvas, but sometimes a design will benefit from the clean and crisp appearance of a pure white background. This showcase rounds up 20 minimal website designs that prove that sometimes [...]
Continue Reading "20 Pure Websites with Clean White Backgrounds"Filed under Articles, Design, doodle, Graphic design, hand draw, illustration, links, Logo, logo design, sketch by Chris Spooner
Logos don’t always have to feature perfectly designed abstract icons or devices, sometimes a basic hand drawn sketch or doodle can express the casual or fun values a brand is aiming for. This post rounds up a huge collection of over 50 cool logos all based on a hand drawn style. Piccolo by Matt Vergotis [...]
Continue Reading "Showcase of Cool Hand Drawn, Doodle & Sketch Logos"Filed under Animation, Articles, Coding, CSS, css3, Design, keyframes, links, Resources, Web Design by Chris Spooner
We started seeing experimentation and articles about CSS3 @keyframes animation in 2011, but back then support was limited to webkit browsers. As of mid 2011 Firefox 5 gained support, and we can expect the next incarnation of Internet Explorer (10) to also show support, so now is the perfect time to get to grips with [...]
Continue Reading "Useful Links for Learning CSS @Keyframes Animation"Filed under Articles, Blog, blogger, blogging, links, maintenance, plugins, techniques, Tips, Web Design, Wordpress by Chris Spooner
Just like servicing a car, or giving your house a spring clean, WordPress really benefits from a good once-over every now and again to keep it running fast and efficiently. This post rounds up 10 useful plugins that will really help service and maintain your WordPress blog. Updating the WordPress core, updating plugins and changing [...]
Continue Reading "10 Plugins to Help Spring Clean Your WordPress Blog"Filed under Articles, Inspiration, interactive, interface, javascript, jQuery, layouts, links, roundup, showcase, Trends, Web Design by Chris Spooner
Whenever we think of interactive websites Flash immediately springs to mind, but nowadays we’re seeing websites featuring all that cool interactivity and animation that are based purely on HTML and CSS. This post rounds up some of the coolest websites powered by Javascript (particularly the jQuery framework) that all offer a rich browsing experience. Hard [...]
Continue Reading "Showcase of Interactive Websites Powered by jQuery"Filed under Articles, Inspiration, interactive, interface, javascript, jQuery, layouts, links, roundup, showcase, Trends, Web Design by Chris Spooner
Whenever we think of interactive websites Flash immediately springs to mind, but nowadays we’re seeing websites featuring all that cool interactivity and animation that are based purely on HTML and CSS. This post rounds up some of the coolest websites powered by Javascript (particularly the jQuery framework) that all offer a rich browsing experience. Hard [...]
Continue Reading "Showcase of Interactive Websites Powered by jQuery"Filed under Articles, Design, interface, landscapes, links, roundup, showcase, Trends, Web Design by Chris Spooner
Despite being confined to the Internet some website designs reflect the awe and freedom of the vast outdoors through their design. This post showcases 20 awe-inspiring websites based on a landscape theme, each one featuring a beautiful landscape image in the form of a large photograph or a hand drawn illustration. Dave Gamache momentum Lake [...]
Continue Reading "20 Examples of Landscape Themed Web Designs"Filed under Articles, font-face, Fonts, links, Resources, roundup, showcase, Typography, Web Design, web fonts by Chris Spooner
Remember back when @font-face and Google Fonts were first introduced? We only had the choice of a handful of custom fonts we could use. Nowadays it’s quite the opposite, we’re spoilt for choice with hundreds of cool fonts licensed for free @font-face embedding. This post rounds up a collection of 20 stylish sans-serif fonts, all [...]
Continue Reading "20 Free Sans-Serif Fonts Licensed for @Font-Face"Filed under actions, Adobe Photoshop, Articles, Design, design resources, effect, Graphic design, Photo Effects, photography, photoshop, Resources by Chris Spooner
There’s an abundance of Photoshop actions available that allow you to quickly transform your photos with a retro or vintage effect, the problem is choosing the best actions from this vast collection. Over 40 Photoshop actions were downloaded and tested to create this showcase of the best freely downloadable retro and vintage actions. The original [...]
Continue Reading "25 Tried and Tested Retro & Vintage Photoshop Actions"Filed under Articles, Design, Inspiration, interface, layouts, roundup, showcase, Trends, Web Design by Chris Spooner
We often assume the more detail we put into our website designs the better they will be, but great design doesn’t always have to include all the bells and whistles. This post showcases a variety of sites that are based on solid colour backgrounds. You won’t see a gradient, texture or pattern but all these [...]
Continue Reading "Showcase of Solid Color Backgrounds in Web Design"Filed under Articles, Coding, Design, guides, links, Resources, roundup, theme, Tutorial, Tutorials, Web Design, Wordpress by Chris Spooner
WordPress is one of the most popular applications in the web design community not only for its ease of use as a blogging platform, but for its versatility in any kind of content managed website. Building custom themes for WordPress is pretty straight forward, making it one of the easiest templating systems to master. This [...]
Continue Reading "15 Tutorials To Help You Build WordPress Themes"Filed under adobe illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Art, Articles, Design, Graphic design, illustration, Inspiration, roundup, showcase, Vector, vector graphics, vexel, vextor by Chris Spooner
Vector and Vexel Art are two techniques of creating highly realistic images using Photoshop or Illustrator. As the name suggests, Vector Art is built entirely of vector graphics whereas Vexel art is pixel based, but the process is very similar in that layers and layers are drawn to form the overall portrait. The more layers, [...]
Continue Reading "35 Beautiful Examples of Vector & Vexel Art Portraits"Filed under Articles, badge, Design, emblem, Graphic design, illustration, Inspiration, logo design, logos, roundup, showcase, wings by Chris Spooner
History provides us with plenty of winged designs from old air force emblems and pin badges, but more recently we can see designers taking inspiration from military aviation and using the style of winged badges in their logo work to create prestigious designs. This post showcases 30 inspirational examples of modern day logo designs each [...]
Continue Reading "Inspirational Showcase of Logo Designs with Wings"Filed under 30 Minute Redesigns, Articles by Tom
Each week I will analyze one of our reader’s websites. I then redesign their site in just 30 minutes, showing just how much can be improved in a small period of time. This week: The Muffin House gets a redesign.
Continue Reading "30 Minute Redesign #79: The Muffin House"Filed under Articles, brands, logos by Guest Blogger
We are living in a world where water is sold with a name, clothes are being marketed with signature signs and food items are being …
Continue Reading "The Rise and Fall of Famous Brands – Why Do They Fail?"Filed under Articles, Inspiration by Tom
Today we feature the work of Jared Nickerson, a wonderful illustrator based in Seattle. Jared’s work is bright and vibrant, and often hugely detailed.
Continue Reading "Featured Artist: Jared Nickerson"Filed under Articles, Inspiration by Tom
Networking and promotion is a huge part of being a successful graphic designer. Today we run through a comprehensive list of networking tools and resources at your disposal (and they’re all free!).
Continue Reading "The Ultimate Guide to Networking and Promotion for Graphic Designers"