All designers were not created equal.
Some possess illustrative abilities that put simple page layout to shame. Today we’ll honor these artists and take a look at 25 beautiful sites from all over the world that feature incredibly creative illustrations.
In design, the simplest of options are often among the best. Using a photographic background is an easy way to make your site beautifully eye-catching. Below you’ll find 30 examples of sites from all over the world using strong photographic elements as background pieces. Some use pure photography while others mix in illustrations, Photoshop effects, and text. Use these as a leaping point for your own ideas the next time you need a fresh design.
Need an idea for your new site design?
Why not look to nature for your inspiration? Today we’ll look at 25 sites either loosely or strictly inspired by some facet of the natural world.
Along the way we’ll discuss four popular trends that most nature inspired sites fit into.
It happens to all of us. You’re cruising along pretending to work while perusing design blogs when all of a sudden your Internet connection disappears.
The first thing you do is give in to your natural reaction to any semi-significant event: tweet about it. Unfortunately, you quickly realize this requires the Internet; blast. Then you start to Google the phone number to your ISP only to realize that this too requires a connection to the web; curse you technological revolution!
You look around for a phone book in vain, knowing for certain that you haven’t used one since Clinton was in office. Finally, you remember that the last time this happened you wrote the number on a piece of paper and put it somewhere on or around your desk.
After no small amount of scrounging and wondering aloud why you didn’t put the number into your phone’s address book, you discover the note and dial the number of your service provider who then informs you that you will be without the Internet for the better part of the day. Now what?
There is no shortage of companies that follow popular design trends to appeal to a mass market. Much more rare is the breed of company that actually sets design trends. Today we’ll examine the techniques of a company that occupies the top of the design food chain: Apple.
Below you’ll find 15 practical ways to follow Apple’s example in creating beautiful interfaces.
A site with fixed-position navigation is one that never allows the user to lose site of the directory links as they scroll.
This simple trick makes for a site that is incredibly easy to navigate and is ideally suited for specific types of content. Below we’ll take a look at both the most common and the most unique uses of fixed navigation in web design.
E-commerce sites are notoriously busy and overcrowded.
Today we’ll be examining a ton of online stores that break this trend by being both functional and attractive. Each of the examples below has a unique lesson to teach us about good e-commerce design. Let’s get started!
Tumblr is an easy to use, fast-growing blogging platform with a strong emphasis on simple, no hassle content sharing. I would describe Tumblr as much more attractive and streamlined than Blogger and a lot simpler than WordPress (though not as powerful).
Like other blogging platforms, Tumblr makes it really easy to change themes on the fly without messing up previously posted content, and with over 275 themes to choose from, you get a lot of variety. However, sorting through hundreds of mediocre themes to find those few golden nuggets of design goodness can be quite the mundane task. That’s why we’ve done the work for you and created this collection of 30 beautifully designed Tumblr themes.
As we arrive at the last month of yet another year, it’s time we revise and reflect on all the goodies this year had to offer. At the same time it’s great to practice the tips and lessons learnt for the years to come! We have brought together a series of what we feel are some of the best tutorials of 2008 from around the web.
We’re starting off with the most useful graphic design tutorials of the past year. In no particular order, read on to see 33 that have stood out in particular.