Inspiration - Page 70

Inspiration / 31 May 2012

Best and Worst Design: 50 U.S. State Websites

In the past, we took a look at fifty of the best and worst university websites from around the United States, a post which launched an interesting discussion about how web design projects can be destroyed by committees and politics, even if talented designers are leading up the team.

Today we’re following that up with a similar discussion on official state websites. Which U.S. states have the absolute best looking websites and which have sites that look like they haven’t been updated since Clinton was in the Oval Office? Read on to see how your state ranked.

Tumblr Themes / 16 May 2012

10 Tips for Awesome Tumblr Theme Design

Here at Design Shack, WordPress is our bread and butter, but in the world of blogging platforms, we have lots of love for Tumblr as well. It’s simple, gorgeous, and simply enjoyable to use.

Today we’re going to take a look at what makes a great Tumblr theme. With thousands of options in the Tumblr theme garden, it can be difficult to stand out.

Why do some themes catch so much attention while others are ignored? Good design holds the answer. Not all themes are created equally, and knowing what aesthetic cues to look for can help you choose a Tumblr theme that will serve you well.

Inspiration / 11 Apr 2012

200+ Pinterest Boards for Designers to Follow

If you love design inspiration, you should be on Pinterest. This free service has really taken off and designers everywhere are using it to collect and archive examples of great design. Whether you’re a typography nut, need some ideas for design books to read, or want some inspiration for out of the box brochure ideas, there are designers on Pinterest who are no doubt pinning exactly what you’re looking for.

Much like, Twitter, the key to enjoying Pinterest is to find and follow users that share your interests. The trick here is that while every user has multiple “boards,” only some of them are actually design related. We’ve spent hours and hours hunting and have found over two hundred of the best Pinterest boards that designers should find useful. Read on to check them out!

Inspiration / 21 Mar 2012

105 Remarkable Retro Logos

It’s time for another massive logo collection. This time around we’ve sifted through thousands of great logos to find over one hundred that were designed in a retro or vintage style.

If you’re looking for some good old fashioned logo design inspiration, this post will surely get your creative brain firing on all cylinders. From robots to muscle cars, these logos are flat out cool.

Inspiration / 17 Feb 2012

Developing a Color Scheme and Color Management Tips

Building a website can come with a few unexpected hiccups, one of those being color. Understanding color choices, and how colors may render on different computers is the first step to ensuring that your site has the look you intended.

In addition to finding and selecting colors that work for you, it is wise to develop and manage a color scheme for your project. It is simple to create a set of swatches in common image software such as Adobe’s Photoshop or Illustrator and organize colors in such a way that they are easy to find and use.

Inspiration / 14 Feb 2012

100 Awesome Logos With Script Typography

What do script typefaces suggest in a design? Will they make your design dainty or masculine? Timeless or retro? Goofy or sophisticated? Would you believe me if I said all of the above and more?

Today we’re going to look at a massive, handpicked selection of logos from Logopond that all use script and cursive writing in some form or another. The point is to showcase the incredible versatility of these types of fonts. The next time you’re designing a logo and wondering if a script is appropriate, you’ll be able to come back here and browse the various themes that different types of scripts can suggest.

Inspiration / 10 Nov 2011

Close Photoshop and Grab a Pencil: The Lost Art of Thumbnail Sketches

Long before web UI mockups came along, print designers would hone their ideas using a tried and true method called thumbnail sketching. This practice seems to be somewhat of a lost art so we’re going to shed some light on it!

Today we’ll briefly discuss what thumbnail sketches are, some tips for creating them and how to effectively implement them into your already busy workflow.

Inspiration / 8 Sep 2011

30 Useful and Hilarious Lorem Ipsum Generators

Lorem ipsum represents a long-held tradition for designers, typographers and the like. Some people hate it and argue for its demise, but others ignore the hate as they create awesome tools to help create filler text for everyone from bacon lovers to Charlie Sheen fans.

Today we’re going to briefly discuss why lorem ipsum and its brethren still have legitimate uses and then we’ll have some fun as we check out thirty great dummy content generators that you’ll definitely want to bookmark.

Inspiration / 29 Aug 2011

Important Marketing Lessons From Outrageous Vintage Advertisements

I absolutely love looking at old ads from the early to mid 20th century. The themes covered and claims that are made are often so completely outrageous that you wonder how they ever made it to print. Looking at these, you can’t help but marvel how far advertising has come.

How much advancement have we really made in this area though? Aren’t the advertising ploys of past generations still the same tricks used by marketers today? Follow along as we take a look at some truly ridiculous ads and how they really aren’t so different from advertising we see today.

Inspiration / 17 Jun 2011

50 Creative and Clever Examples of Outdoor Advertising

Outdoor advertising is an incredibly rich and diverse medium that allows a very unique spectrum of creativity for designers to play with. Sometimes you have to catch someone’s attention in a split second, other times you can do something fun and interactive.

Today we’ve scoured Ads of the World and come up with fifty particularly creative billboards, bus stops, subway ceilings and more. If you need a fresh blast of creativity to boost your next project, take a look!

Inspiration / 1 Apr 2011

20 Great Sign Up Form Examples to Learn From

Sign up forms come in many different shapes and sizes. Some are a single field, others are a multi-step process that stretch over several screens.

Today we’ll take a look at 20 attractive and functional forms to see if we can find any useful ideas that you can apply the next time you’re building a sign up form.

Inspiration / 13 Aug 2010

Designing in the Dark: 10 Dark Sites and Their Color Schemes

What goes well with a black website? Today we’ll find out but taking a look at some excellent examples of dark web design along with their primary color palettes.

Each website will have a screenshot along with a brief description, a visual representation of the color scheme, and a link to download the Photoshop color swatches from Pictaculous.