Art Directors Club of Europe

Blake Allen Design

Brian Hoff

Brancozero

The Grid System

Markus Albers

margaretlondon.com

Designing the News

Patrick Fry

postmachina

Rikcat Industries

GUNNER design house

fuse.

FRKT

Face.

edgewood

Black Estate

Traffic

FLOWmarket

sold-out.ch

Perky Bros LLC

Dewitte Casse

Ork Posters

Tim Bjorn – Design Studio

ArnaudBeelen.

Academy

QUE

AdKiivi

yugop.com

Proud Creative

iA

Fitzroy & Finn

Cirus family

TrouwAmsterdam

James Chambers

mrhobday.com

Music Design Agency

Not coming to a theater near you

Mash

lydia stone

Marcus Kraft

million

Established

SJH

anothercompany.org

We are Sofa

distrop

Stephane Elbaz

LEONG LEONG

Rebecca Niazi-Shahabi

Rob Schellenberg

SvB

Sven Stuckenschmidt

Jeroen Homan

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

Eighty Two Design

Bounty Bev

Visual Notion

Critical Zero

Eric Campbell / Est.86

FeedStitch

Blackwave Creative

yooda

z-index.it

thepixel.com/blog

Morphix

Skype

unblab.com

twitter101

reichweite.cc

Owltastic

Squaredeye

polargold

Frenzy Labs

Elbow Park

CampaignMonitor

backbeatmedia

Maniac Monkey Media

Black Sea Fishery

Orion Advisor

barackobama.com

bartelme

mozilla.com

2creative

icebrrg

powerset

Birdie

designchuchi.ch

StrawPoll

lucino-gene.com

EnviraMedia

loewydesign

Alex Swanson

eyedraw

Kyan

branded07

Ready Made Designs

The House Media

knight.com

nude designs

Vegas Uncorked

Deli Bar

elemodo

Jar Design

AWP Express

Brad Colbow

nclud

Vimeo

los colores olvidados

billytamplin.com

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

So here is our inspirational selection for this week: beautiful gradients in web design. And don’t forget to tell us if you have some samples of gradients to share.

serj.ca

Holdfire

onehub

theserved.com

foehn

ectomachine

socialsnack

standrewsmtairy.org

Charlie Gentle

lionite

adworks

istudentpro.com

reinvigorate

four24

newism

icebrrg

MediaLoot

Envato

marshillchurch.org

gositewave.com

Bluedots Design

markmeup.co.uk

Beehive App

Satisfaction Remote

playintraffik.com

weareconsumer.com

GlobalSpendSolutions

BokicaBo

digiti.be

carbonmade.com

jonwallacedesign

imakemycase.case-mate.com

workatplay

Healthy Harvest

Lyrically Noted

chris-armstrong.com/ticktalk

adflavor

rareview

Thunder Game Works

bizbreakapp.com

mospromstroy.com

Harmony Republic

lightsbydallas.com

eastpoint

Glitch

Elbow Park

koffieverkeerd.be

fuelbrandinc.com

electricpulp.com

slovaczech.com

booyant.com

knight.com/liquidity

justmademyday.com

vegasuncorked.com

code23

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

I really like retro and vintage stuff… websites, posters, print, adds, everything. I think it’s amazing how an ‘old style’ still get our attention and appreciation. For this selection of retro and vintage web designs, you will see retro and vintage elements, fonts, images, colors, textures, etc. I hope you enjoy the selection. And of course, if you have a cool retro/vintage site to share with us, the comments are open.

Eighty Two Design

targetscope

singularityconcepts.com

fortyseven media

thigpendesigns.com

icblind.com

edgewater

WebDesigner.ro

Level 2 Design

Custom Design

Kretivia, New Media Production

Big Rig Design

THUNDERfuel

Thrush

mediaBOOM

Radio – The New York Moon

fivecentstand.com

LATAKA

Ali Felski

The Dollar Dreadful

phizz.biz

Style 4 you

Mister-Aero

iso50

Tricycle Terror

sensisoft.com

Small Stone re-cordings

prahba.com

tomatic

Visit Cascadia

Tennessee

jacksonfish.com

Carrozzeria Verga

the Retrovert

Sauro Motel

Antique Piano Shop

painisgood.com

Eric Henning Magic

The Wayward Irregular

flatwoodsfolkart.com

Brocante Boutique

Buy Vintage Clothing

Farinella

What’s your Problem?

Hipstery

readymadedesigns.co.uk

Team Fannypack

thisbythem.com

huxleyprairiefest.com

bullet

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

Here are 50 beautiful brown web designs that will inspire you. You will see that brown makes a great base color for a design and works well with many other colors.

SpoonGraphics

adflavor.net

Whashtenaw Community College

new{concept}

Nine Lion

student.opendoorsuk.org

Tea Round

arqandgraph.com

rzmota.com

coolshowcase.com

youandigraphics.com

Watermelon Ministries

momentify.com

lifeinmono.net

YummyCss

ColouringCode

Diego Valobra

en.casino-lemonade.com

loungelizard.com

James Lai Creative

Wawa Coffeetopia

sugarrhyme.com

respiromedia.com

uniquexports.com

kovidesign

StoryPixel

ideafoundry

Mayflower Brewing

authenticstyle.co.uk

Floral Productions

thethingswemake

noedesign.com

happilycreate.com

Turncolor

paavejhjem.dk

blogsolid

whoorayrecords.com

Gianni’s

electricpulp.com

Quo

97bottles.com

bigsweaterdesign.com

Cellar

mattbrett.com

spicedjack94.com

barista

Hippo House

juliusmattsson.com

bloggerbakeoff.com

Candes

Church on the Rock

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

ok.cogaoke.com

theiheartfilm.com

scheppsdesign.com

giantantmedia.com

adflavor.net

Voices of Haiti

maggietaylor.com

jamesmli.net

freshlimesoda

monkeyworks illustration

jeroenhoman.com

Chalet Minouchet

LogicbombMedia

swiths.com

established1986.com

crush + lovely

Walk to Washington

DPS – Designer Peter Steven

harmonyrepublic.com

bikeandsaddle.com

Istok Pavlovic

spoutcreative.com

custodialabuse.org

the Blizzards

the darling tree

giantantmedia.com

frisk web

villadario.it

Min Tran’s Blog

nickstedt.de

theseen.biz

colazionedamichy.it

Jobs on The Wall

goodbytes.be

Healthy Harvest

dnadarwin.org

spoongraphics

Inspire 2010

kilian muster

carolrivello

xgraphica.com

Ronnie Wright

Camille Boidron

Divensis

KalyanChatterjee

designfabrika

thinkup.org

corvus

pixelthread

baneydesign

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

The Light from Above

To effectively create depth, one must understand light sources. A light source creates two things: highlights and shadows. The combination of these two things can make something appear as if it’s coming off the page, since lighter elements appear closer and darker elements appear further away.

A light source can come from any direction, but normally light comes from above. Our brains are even wired to expect this. That’s why it’s a typical practice in web design to use a 1px highlight on the top of an element to make it pop, and a darker 1px line on the bottom as a shadow.

Lines that Make Edges Pop

Icon Dock is a great example of how to effectively use subtle 1px lines to achieve depth. Nick La, the designer and owner of Icon Dock, uses 1px lines all over the place to make various design elements pop. Notice the 1px highlight that runs across the top of the main banner area. This pushes the top away from the background and gives the edge a slightly raised look.

Also notice the 1px highlight lining the bottom of the nav bar. This is a nice touch and amazing attention to detail. It gives the illusion of a slightly reflected highlight, but more importantly it helps separate the dark color of the nav bar from the shadow below. If the line was not there the bottom edge of the bar would blend with the shadow and be lost.

If we look at the bottom of the Icon Dock design we will see that the highlight/shadow combination is completed with the use of a dark 1px shadow that runs along the bottom edge of the content box.

UXBooth uses the same technique to give the green bar separating the header form the content a slightly three dimensional look. Notice the light green line on top and the dark green line along the bottom.

Make Buttons Stand Out

Buttons are another element where this technique can work wonders. Since buttons are meant to be clicked, it helps if they look as if they are raised off the page a bit. The buttons on NOSOTROS use a slightly lighter color than the background that brings it closer to the eye, but it is the 1px border around the buttons that completes the effect and makes the buttons look very clickable.

Michael Dick’s portfolio also uses pixel perfect lines to highlight the edges of the main navigation buttons. What I really love about these lines is the fact that they are broken and worn looking to match the grungy style of the over all design. Whether he did or not, it appears that Michael painstakingly erased random portions of the lines to give it this tattered look. It’s this kind of attention to detail that sets some designs apart from the rest.

1px Lines Can Be Very Groovy

Another technique for creating depth with 1px lines is pairing one light and one dark line right next to one another. This creates the illusion of an inset groove, but the key is the placement of each. As mentioned earlier, our brains are wired to assume the light source is coming from above or the top. Notice here that the dark line on top is representing the shadow cast by the top edge of the groove. The light line represents the highlight created by the bottom edge.

If we reverse the positions of the two lines, we loose our groove. Now it appears to be more of a lip that is casting a shadow.

Now let’s get our groove back and take a look at some sites that use this technique to perfection. Atebits uses grooves to separate content and uses the same technique on the main navigation bar to separate the links. This type of line work looks as if it was laser etched into the surface of the design, which is a perfect fit for the over all style of the site.

Tim Van Damme’s portfolio has grooves everywhere. Along with some gradients, the 1px lines here that make up the grooves give this design lots of depth and makes the big buttons look very clickable.

1. Always start with a CSS Reset

Writing CSS code can become a bit mundane when you’re having to write specific code over and over again just to get various browsers to display your layout the same. That is where CSS Reset’s come into play. With industry leaders like Eric Meyer releasing a pretty kick ass css reset stylesheet, there’s really no reason to not get all of your browsers ‘back to zero’ and build off of it. Some people have said that css reset stylesheets aren’t needed (Jonathan Snook being one of them), but once you get used to the reset and what items you’re coding, it becomes much easier to ensure that every browser is displaying items properly.

2. Indent your css rules for easier scanning

When you’ve got 500 lines of css code to sift through, it can become straining on the eyes. So, instead of writing out the css code like this:

.classname {
background: #FFF;
border: 0;
color: #252525;
float: left;
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
}

You can indent the rules to make scrolling through the file and finding the proper css classes and ID’s easier.

.classname {
	background: #FFF;
	border: 0;
	color: #252525;
	float: left;
	margin: 0;
	padding: 0;
}

3. Comments are your very best friend

In the spirit of keeping your stylesheets clean and easy to read, comments are going to be a great way for you to keep things structured and clean. By commenting out blocks of code, the scanning process we mentioned above becomes another 10X easier because you can scan and look for items such as the header, sidebar, content and footer code because you have each section of code commented like below.

 /********** HEADER code here **********/

Doing this will not only save you time scanning but will be great for your clients when you pass along the code – they’ll be able to find items easier, fix items themselves and not have to email you 4-5 times a week for simple 1-2 minute changes. The benefits of clean css code goes much deeper than making the file look pretty.

4. One Rule = One Line … Multiple Rules = Multiple Lines

Following the simple rule above, you can cut down on the clutter in your css files drastically. Below you will see the two different ways you can write your css code out – some people swear by putting everything on a single line, but I tend to believe in the above mentioned rules: one rule = one line, while multiple rules = multiple lines.

.classname { border: 0; }

.classname {
	background: #FFF;
	border: 0;
	color: #252525;
	float: left;
	margin: 0;
	padding: 0;
}

5. Stay consistant with your code

I’ve not only stayed cosistant in my css styles throughout stylesheets I’ve written, but if you look at the various css code I’ve displayed in this article, you’ll see I have actually stayed consistant with them. It isn’t something you’ll tend to visually notice on a daily basis, but over time you’ll begin to pick up patterns on how you write specific lines of code and it will throw you off if you ever write something different. It makes things harder to find and runs your time up when you could have easily cured the problem by sticking to a specific style of writing for your css stylesheet files.

For instance, if you’re writing everything in blocks of code to separate different items of the page for easy editing, keep with it. Don’t change the way you write your code every time you write a new stylesheet. It’s just not practical.

6. Separate your hacks and conditional elements

Some people will swear against using any css hacks and scream something like “if the user can’t upgrade his browser, to hell with him!” – which we all know is not something everyone is in the position to say. So, writing conditional elements and various css hacks in your files becomes pretty much routine. But the idea that all of it needs to be in one file is wrong (in my opinion). Separating them from your main style.css file will allow you to make edits and adjustments to the hacks and conditional elements easier, without effecting your main css code.

A sample of how to separate your files could be like the code below, which would give you a separate stylesheet if your viewer is using any internet explorer browser less than IE8, along with your main style.css file and a print.css file (make sure you add the proper “” characters at the beginning and end of each line in the code below):

     link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/css/style.css" media="screen, projection"
     !--[if lt IE 8]
       link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/css/ie.css" media="screen"
       ![endif]--
       link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/css/print.css" media="print"

7. Learn (and use) shorthand code

Shorthand css code will allow you to speed up the writing process, cut down on clutter in your stylesheets and will allow you to find things much easier. So, why do so many people still write out their css in a long hand format like this?!?!

.classname {
	margin-left: 1px;
	margin-right: 2px;
	margin-bottom: 4px;
	margin-top: 1px;
}

Writing the above code in shorthand format allow things to look so much cleaner. Shorthand code also follow the clockwise writing format – so each number (as seen below) goes like this: top, right, bottom, left.

.classname { margin: 1px 2px 4px 1px; }

8. Create and use a table of contents

Writing in a table of contents in the beginning of your stylesheet will allow you, as well as anyone else viewing your css file, to find where the specific items in your code are before they even have to scroll. Need to find and edit your content code to change a color of a specific piece of text? Looking at the table of contents shows you that it’s the third header down in the css file. Coupled with the rule from above about adding in commented areas to separate blocks of code, this will help keep your code lean and mean – plus, very easy to edit.

/*****************************************************
1. HEADER code
2. NAVIGATION code
3. CONTENT code
4. SIDEBAR code
5. FOOTER code
*****************************************************/

9. Keep your class and ID names easy to follow

There’s nothing worse than going to edit a piece of code, only to find that they named their css code like this:

.wackyblueline5 { ... }
.leftsidesection { ... }
#bodyleftcurve2 { ... }

Picking the proper naming structure for your css classes and ID’s can help you dig through your stylesheet files as well as your html files, to edit the code. I would recommend sticking with names like this, which keep things clear and easy to understand:

.sidebar-title { ... }
.postwrap { ... }
.main-navigation { ... }

10. Alphabetize your css code for easier reading

This is one tip that I’ve just come to realize is actually worthwhile and one that I’m beginning to use on a daily basis when writing css code. Alphabetizing your rules will allow you to easily jump in, find the proper line of code you need to edit, change it and move on. Check out the code below and see how the beginning letters of each line go in alphabetical order, which allows you to easily scan and find the proper line. Looking for font-size? well, you know where F comes in the alphabet, right? So finding it in these lines of code will be much easier.

.classname {
	border: 1px solid #dedede;
	color: #000;
	font-size: 18px;
	line-height: 24px;
	margin: 48px;
	padding: 0;
	position: relative;
	z-index: 101;
}

What about you? Any tips for us?

I know the readers here are highly skilled so I would like to pass the baton on to you and let you weigh in, in the comments section with what your thoughts are on these tips and also share tips of your own. I’m looking forward to finding out what you think works best. I hope you enjoyed the article and would love if you spread the word through your various social media profiles. Thanks!

About the Author

Mike Smith is a blogger who writes about social media and marketing and he’s a blog designer at Guerrilla.

ColoRotate

As well as being a useful way to choose colors, ColoRotate looks cool and is actually fun to use. Instead of using two dimensional viewers, it presents color palettes to you in 3d and in real time.

Kuler

Kuler is a community driven web app that lets your browse color palettes created by others. You can also create your own by using the color wheel, harmony rules, and color sliders.

Color Scheme Designer

Color Scheme Designer has been around for a while, but was just recently updated with a brand new interface and a new color scheme generating engine.

COLOURlovers

COLOURlovers provides more than just a way to find color palettes. It is also a place to network with other people to discuss color related topics, and read interesting articles about all things color.

Copaso

Copaso is COLOURlovers palette generating tool. It’s rich feature set allows you to save colors to a scratch pad, extract colors from a photo, and publish a palette for thousands of other people to see.

Color Blender

Color Blender let’s you select a preferred color and then it generates a six color blend based on that color. From there you can tweak each individual color.

Toucan

Toucan allows you to select up to 20 colors for each palette either by using color association or from an uploaded image.

ColorMunki

ColorMunki gives you the ability to search colors from built in libraries and using keywords.

Color Wizard

With Color Wizard you can submit a base color and it generates color schemes based on your color’s complementary color, split complementary colors, analogous colors and other variations.

Color Explorer

Color Explorer is a fairly new color palette generating tool, but boasts a well organized set of features.

Here are are 10 well designed blogs that all possess smart and innovative layouts. These should help inspire you to be different.

SpaceCollective

NEWTOYORK

ANidea

Jason Santa Maria

GOOD

Alpha Multimedia Solutions

Alex Buga

UX Magazine

Information Architects

Wilson Miner