Web Design Ledger

10 Fresh and Useful jQuery Plugins

Henry — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 05:04:25 +0000

When it comes to adding JavaScript functionality to a website, jQuery has become the solution of choice for web designers and developers. With it’s ease of use and ever-growing selection of plugins, there’s really no point to look elsewhere. Awesome jQuery plugins are popping up everyday, and we’re always on the look out. So for this post, I’ve gathered 10 fresh plugins that you should find very useful.

Cute Balloon

Cute Balloon is a jQuery script that allow you to easy make a beauty tool tip balloon, also with ajax content.

Captify

Captify is a plugin that displays simple, pretty image captions that appear on rollover. The goal of Captify is to be easy to use, small/simple, and completely ready for use in production environments (unlike ImageCaptions at the moment). Also, it’s only 2.3kb!

gvChart

gvChart is a plugin for jQuery, that uses Google Charts to create interactive visualization by using data from the HTML table tag. It is easy in use and additionally it allows you to create five types of the charts.

jmapping

This plugin is designed for quick development of a page that implements a Google Map with a list of the locations that are specified within the HTML.

jQuery.validity

jQuery.validity is an elegant and powerful jQuery plug-in you can use to setup client-side form validation. Instead of writing validation manually or balancing some unwieldy server-side framework, validity allows you to design client-side validation in a manner that feels natural and straightforward.

Animated table sort

This plugin allows you to animatedly sort a table based on a column’s s, or on the content/value of a child/descendant element within those s. The various s fly to their new homes, giving a nice effect.

Flare Video

This plugin gives you the ability to easily add an HTML5 video player with Flash fallback.

Coin Slider

Coin Slider is a jQuery image slider plugin with a unique square transition effect.

Blockster

Blockster is a Javascript transition effect designed for ‘featured content’ rotators or slideshows. Its underlying concept is to transition between one element to the next block by block. It is highly customisable in terms of how many blocks are involved, whether they fade in or simply appear, whether they appear in order or randomly, and more.

Colortip

Colortip converts the title attributes of elements withing your page, into a series of colorful tooltips. Six color themes are available, so you can easily match it with the rest of your design.

11 New High-Quality Free Fonts

Henry — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 06:39:44 +0000

Every week we try to hunt down high-quality freebies for our readers. One of our favorite freebies to find for you are fonts, because everybody knows… you can never have too many fonts in your library. In this post, we’ve rounded up 11 brand new fonts that are super high-quality. I especially love the AW Conqueror font family. You’re sure to find a use for these in your designs. Enjoy!

AW Conqueror

(to download, click on Solutions > Typefaces in the left menu)

Alt Tiwo

Alt Matey

Doughboy

The Olney Font Family

Geomancy

Paper Boat

Neu Eichmass

Oh! Mai Mai!

Ingleby

BS Konstata

WDL Premium: Japanese Orchard Photoshop Brushes

Henry — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 06:05:11 +0000

Today we’re releasing a set of Beautiful Photoshop brushes for our WDL Premium Members. This set from Azigos is called Japanese Orchard and contains 17 high-resolution brushes. If you’re looking to add beautiful hand drawn elements to your nature inspired design, these brushes are what you need.

Be sure to check out Azigos for more high-quality Photoshop brushes.

Here is a preview of the brushes. There are 17 in all.

Download Japanese Orchard

Premium Member

You must be a WDL Premium member to download this file.

About this Partner

Azigos is a project launched by Thomas Béal to provide Premium Photoshop Brushes to the design community.

45 Inspiring Design Agency Websites

gmuller — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 05:41:09 +0000

A while ago, we showcased a list of 50 Inspiring Portfolio Designs which featured a collection of portfolio websites belonging mainly to individual designers. Today, along those same lines, we’re presenting a collection of design agency websites. We want to show you how some of the talented design studios out there are presenting their work and attracting new clients. Enjoy, and get inspired!

nclud

Solid Giant

uber

web://contact

R/GA

Icelab

Hicksdesign

Squarefour

Mooze Design

Bearded Studio

Worry Free Labs

Creative Mash

Baker Associates

zee

Frexy

Creativepayne

Pepperminted

Qube Studio

Cafundó Estúdio Criativo

SoftFacade

Komrade

Collision

Atelier Santaclara

DesignStudio

here design

Stockholm Design Lab

Mash Design

Design is Kinky Studio

The Church of London

Mr B and Friends

xhtml kitchen

Studio Mister

We are Lighthouse

Drexler

Studio Breakfast

Amateur Creative

Leterme Dowling

vgrafiks

Studio Hari

Marah Creative

Justalab

Metaset

Pixel Thread

Birch Studio

Source:

The Best Designs
Site Inspire

About the Author

Gisele Muller is someone that recently discovered a new career online. A person that really likes technology, design, photography and creativity. An eternal geek wannabe, tech fan and a communication lover! Current location: Porto Alegre, RS – Brazil. Twitter: @gismullr

200+ Seamless Patterns Perfect for Website Backgrounds

Henry — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 06:15:00 +0000

We’re always on the lookout for great freebies to share with our readers, and today we’ve got some seamless patterns. Seamless patterns are a great way to add a lot of detail to a design and fill up a big area, such as a background. Here are over 200 patterns that are perfect for creating website backgrounds. You can use these as they are, or use them as a foundation to build upon.

Photoshop Stripe patterns (20 patterns)

Free Vector Seamless Backgrounds (6 patterns)

Seamless Paper Patterns (6 patterns)

Patterns .38 (25 patterns)

Patterns 17 – Fancy (4 patterns)

Woven Plaid Swatches (25 patterns)

Seamless Polka Dot Pattern Swatches (25 patterns)

Pretty Plaids (30 patterns)

Halftone Patterns (52 patterns)

Retro Tartan (10 patterns)

WDL Premium: Floral Vector Pack

Henry — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 04:54:31 +0000

Today we’re releasing a set of floral vectors for our WDL Premium Members. This set from Designious has 10 floral vector flourishes that can be scaled to any size. They are perfect for adding an organic or natural feel to a design.

Be sure to check out Designious for more design resources.

Here is a preview of the vectors. There are 10 in all.

Download Floral Vector Pack

Premium Member

You must be a WDL Premium member to download this file.

About this Partner

Designious Designious is a small design studio specialized in creating amazing vector art and design elements for designers

15 Logos With Hidden Messages

thardy — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 04:01:59 +0000

Designing logos can be very difficult. When designing a logo you want it to stand out from the crowd yet still be really simple. Sometimes the designer is really clever and makes the logo very simple yet includes a hidden message within the logo that has deeper meaning. In this article we have 15 logos with hidden messages, some of which you will have heard of before and some maybe new to you but hopefully you will enjoy them all.

Amazon

The Amazon logo is an extremely simple logo and while the arrow may just look like a smile it actually points from a to z. This represents that Amazon sell everything from a to z and the smile on the customers face when they bought a product.

Baskin Robbins

The Baskin Robbins logo may look like it includes a simple BR above the name but if you take another look you will that it includes a pink number 31. This is a reference to the original 31 flavors.

Chick-fil-a

The Chick-fil-a logo incorporates a chicken into the C. Although this isn’t very hidden, it is still very clever.

Eighty20

The eighty20 logo is a bit of a geeky one to figure out, the two lines of squares represent a binary sequence with the blue squares being 1’s and the grey squares being 0’s. Which makes 1010000 which represents eighty and 0010100 which represents 20.

F1

The F1 logo is a fairly simple one to figure out. The negative space in the middle creates the 1.

Facebook Places

If you didn’t already know Facebook Places, is Facebooks new geolocational product. Which is in direct competition with the current leader in that area Foursquare. Now if you take another look at Facebook Places logo you will notice it is a 4 in a square now is this a coincidence or a dig at Foursquare?

Fedex

The FedEx logo look like a plain text based logo but if you take a second look between the E and the x you will see an arrows which represents the speed and accuracy of the companies deliveries.

Milwaukee Brewers

The old Milwaukee Brewers logo may look like a simple catchers mitt holding a ball, but if you take a second you will see the team’s initials M and B.

Museum of London

The Museum of London logo may look like a modern logo design but it actually represents the geographic area of london as it as grew over time.

NBC

The NBC logo has a hidden peacock above the above text which is looking to the right, this represents the companies motto to look forward and not back, and also that they are proud of the programs they broadcast.

Northwest Airlines

The old Northwest Airlines logo may look like a simple logo but if you take a closer look the symbol on the left actually represent both N and W and because it is enclosed within the circle it also represents a compass pointing northwest.

Piano Forest

The Piano Forest logo may look like a simple text logo with trees above it, but if you take another look you will see that the trees actually represent keys on a piano.

Toblerone

The Toblerone logo contains the image of a bear hidden in the Matterhorn mountain, which is where Toblerone originally came from.

Tostitos

The Tostitos logo includes two people sharing a chip and a bowl of salsa, this conveys an idea of people connecting with each other over a bowl of chips.

Treacy Shoes

The Treacy Shoes logo is very cute logo with a shoe hidden between the t and s.

About The Author

Thomas Hardy is a freelance web designer from Newcastle upon Tyne (UK), here is his portfolio. He founded Design-Heaven and Work-Killer, where he regularly blogs. You will also find him on Twitter and Facebook.

Theme Trust Launches

Henry — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 17:44:11 +0000

Just over 2 years ago, I left my full time job as a web designer to go freelance, and it’s been one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. It’s been a wonderful ride up to this point, as I’ve been able to work on many exciting client projects and start several of my own ventures, one of which has become my full time job. With WDL being my main focus for the past year, I’ve had little time to do much design work. I miss designing and I miss providing clients with awesome websites. So, in an effort to fill this design void, I’ve started a small WordPress theme shop called Theme Trust, and today the doors are opening for business.

To celebrate the launch, we are offering a special promotion that gives you a 30% discount on any theme. Just enter the code “launch” at checkout to receive the discount. This special is only good for 1 week, and will expire on August 30, 2010.

Affiliate Program

Also, If you want to earn some extra cash and help us promote the themes, Theme Trust has an affiliate program that pays 30% on each sale.

55 Excellent Examples of Websites Using HTML5

gmuller — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 04:30:42 +0000

HTML5 is the new and updated version of the web standard and famous HTML. HTML5 has tons of new features, techniques and elements that allow designers to create new and beautiful stuff. The new standard incorporates features like video playback and drag-and-drop that have been previously dependent on third-party browser plug-ins such as Adobe Flash and Microsoft Silverlight. With HTML5 you can add some really nice effects to your website with ease… it’s for sure a nice way to go. So based on that, we decided to gather a list showing some excellent examples of sites that are already using HTML5… and we did find some really nice examples, check it out.

Colosseo Type

fishtank

TS3 Trefl

Information Highwayman

Jeroen Homan

Keyzo IT Solutions

M-M Studio

mollar

Spaghetti – Mude.

the energy cell

les intégristes

OusmaneNdiaye

UX London 2010

Samay Bhavsar

Benoit Letondor

Cibgraphics

Avon Renew

Ivana Vasilj

Klix

pmbennett.net

Cazinc

landscapists.info

Silvio Bompan

Deaf Pigeon

mike mai

kloudesign

MediaTinta

Design Heroes

Rider

Studio78

subcide.com

Sports et Loisirs

orengina.net

GreenHouse

Elliot Swan Designs

belleslettres.eu

D’Âme Bio

Isabelle Montminy

Le Cube

cystyleit

Daily Abduzeedo

Bounty Bev

chrisvalleskey.com

websache.de

Slim Kiwi

Joel Jenkins

for a beautiful web

Daniel Dengler

Idea Foundry

Ella Design

András Lengyel

Cherry Blossom

Clear Ideaz

Fedena

I am Jamie

Source:

HTML5 Gallery

About the Author

Designious Mega Vector Pack Giveaway: Winners Announced

Henry — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 12:48:12 +0000

Last week we ran a Designious giveaway where 10 WDL readers would get to pick a mega vector pack of their choice. Yesterday the winners were randomly selected, and today we are announcing those winners. So… Congratulations to the following ten people.

Angie
Su Hall
Jodi Hendrickson
Mark Bult
DavidC
Chris Morris
Linda Goodwin
Michael M.
Martine
Emma G

A representative from Designious will be contacting you with instructions on how to claim your prize.