Using texture is a great way of adding personality and depth to a webdesign. It doesn’t matter if you choose to use texture only in the navigation menu, the header or if you go with a totally textured background, as long as you pick the right texture and don’t over use it, the result, most of time, will be elegant and beautiful, as the examples we’re showing you in this post. (more…)
I’m reading the book The Laws of Simplicity and it is really nice to browse around looking for minimal and clean designs after understanding more about the laws John Maeda talks about. My favorite law is probably “reduce” – the simplest way to achieve simplicity is through thoughtful reduction. If we get the concept of “how simple can something be?” and apply to web design, the result will certainly be some nice and minimal layouts, like the ones we will show today. We gathered several different approaches of minimal websites to show you that reducing elements in a page delivers a beautiful layout. And remember that a minimal layout doesn’t need to be white or single colored, you may add colors, images and other details and still have a minimal website. Check it out. (more…)
It’s that time of year again, time to recap the best about the year ending and prepare for a new year. Last week we kicked off our “Best of…” series with the Best Best Free UI PSDs of 2012. So for this week, we will show you the best free fonts we saw here in 2012. Make sure to pick your favorites to add to your library for the start of 2013. (more…)
It’s that time of year again, time for our “Best of…” series, where we look back over the past year and pick our favorite freebies and resources. For this week, we’ve went back through all the UI PSDs that we’ve covered over the past year and picked the ones that really stand out. Because there are so many very good ones to sift through, it’s always a difficult choice, but here are the ones we think are the best of the best. (more…)
The parallax effect has been around for a while and since we noticed that our readers really like the technique, we decided to gather a few tools and tutorials to help you implement parallax scrolling in your own projects. This effect creates an illusion of depth and movement in the screen, and if well applied, can result in an engaging experience for the user. Like any other effect, the key is moderation. Using parallax to give your website some depth and added interest is great, but try to avoid too much of it or you may end up with a site that has too much going on. (more…)
Have you noticed that lately the use of images in web design is getting very popular? More and more, we can see that images are being incorporated in designs in an inspiring way, and the result can be spectacular. When properly edited and positioned, an image can give a design a nice and elegant look, as the examples we gathered here today. From huge images as backgrounds to small thumbnails and headers, we will see several great examples of how to incorporate images in your projects in a beautiful and inspiring way. (more…)
It is pretty interesting to realize that at the same time that design tools and techniques are always evolving, some principles remain the same. And usually these principles are the most important ones. Today we gathered a list with eight books we believe every designer should read. Some of them are old, others new, but they all have very important things we need to keep in mind when designing something. In case you heard of these books but never had the time to read them, take your time because it is worth it. In case you never heard of them, take your time to learn more about each book and pick one (or more) to read. (more…)
It’s always inspiring to browse some well designed app websites. From pricing to eye catching images, interesting headers and product info, you can find a lot of inspiration in a app site. Today we gathered a few examples of beautifully designed app websites – apps for both iPhone and Android, that provide us with a variety of ideas, always with really great design. (more…)
White space is the blank space, the empty space, between elements. It’s the space we leave between elements to give a layout an elegant look, a clean look. Lately we can see that more and more designers are realizing the importance of creating clean designs, designs that are user friendly and that take advantage of white space. From using white space in headers, footers, between menus, between images and information, texts and sidebars, here you will see great examples of whites space usage in web design. Remember that white space doesn’t need to be white, it may be any color, as long as it is empty. (more…)
Being able to put together beautiful typography is important for every designer. Being able to distinguish the difference of type, where type is a set of characters and typography is the art of arranging type in beautiful ways. A good way to get typographical inspiration is browsing other designers work. In all media the challenge is the same, deliver something that will get users attention and will have an impressive visual. With that in mind, today we gathered some nice examples of type in printed ads to inspire you. (more…)
