Fresh inspiration, portfolios, galleries and new showcases of remarkable web design and artwork in general is what every creative head needs to refuel. Break your creativity block by exploring galleries of art, design and photography or showcases of web designs (blogs, portfolios and online-shops) and design elements (search box, back-to-top-link).
Popular tags in this category: Photos, Showcases, Portfolios, E-commerce, Blogs, Navigation, Logos, Favicons.
When designing a large website, especially one that contains a store, you may be required to design a system for ordering online, or a multi-step process of another sort. Walking users through this process by making it easy and intuitive is key to helping increase conversion rates. Any frustration along the way may cause them to leave and pursue other options. Progress trackers are designed to help users through a multi-step process and it is vital that such trackers be well designed in order to keep users informed about what section they are currently on, what section they have completed, and what tasks remain.
In this article we will look at various uses of progress trackers and see how they've been implemented, what they are doing well, and what they are not doing well.
You may not be familiar with the term 'progress tracker', also called a 'progress indicator' — but chances are good that you have encountered one at one time or another. They are used in online stores when placing an order, signing up to an online product or service, or even when booking a holiday online. Progress trackers guide the user through a number of steps in order to complete a specified process.
Read more...I love beautiful things. There's very little in the world that takes my breath away quite like an object that was lovingly crafted, built with care and passion, and presented with the sort of pride that befits a marvelously well-made item.
That which is beautiful is increasingly difficult to come by in a world where a premium is placed on speed, and things are made to be disposable. We often sacrifice real craftsmanship at the altar of expediency. While we are still capable of recognizing the value of something that has been expertly constructed, we often choose the cheap and easy option instead.
Read more...We all know how popular WordPress is. Hundreds of blogs that we visit daily use WordPress to publish their content. Over the past year, there have been a few different services that have popped up that allows you to post content online a lot faster than WordPress would. Two of the most popular ones are Tumblr and Posterous.
While posting content through these services is incredibly easy, the hard part is choosing which one to use. They both have their pros and cons. I actually asked around Twitter for people's opinion on which they liked best: Tumblr or Posterous?
Read more...Many designers and artists have a true love for vintage and retro design and share their passion when the opportunity arises. One could probably find several hundred showcases of retro designs on display today in the 21st century, but not many of actual vintage ones that were used in the 1940s, '50s and '60s and are still in use today.
To celebrate the beauty of vintage and retro typography, we have compiled a showcase of vintage and retro signage to inspire you: a great excuse to take five minutes out to admire the styles, whether simple or complex, and the love that went into creating these gorgeous vintage signs.
Read more...It's always nice to go to a bookstore, grab a book of logo designs, sit down, inhale that new-book smell and absorb the goodness. But knowing where all of these designs, fonts and creative elements have come from is also good. In this article, we look at modern art movements and a series of diverse logos inspired by those movements. You may be surprised by how easily these colors, shapes and strokes can be adapted to logo design. Have a look, see how logo design works and maybe even draw inspiration for your own creativity.
In 1919, the Bauhaus school was founded in Weimar Germany. More of a lifestyle than a school, Bauhaus was based on the static rules of Art Deco. One basic idea of the Bauhaus was to remove everything superfluous and break a design down to its essential elements. This static minimalism changed everything and can still be found in design today, such as in the logos of Faboo Taboo and Axion.
Read more...The navigation menu is perhaps a website's single most important component. Navigation gives you a window onto the website designer's creative ability to produce a functional yet visually impressive element that's fundamental to most websites. Because of their value to websites, navigation menus are customarily placed in the most visible location of the page, and thus can make a significant impact on the visitor's first impression.
The design of a navigation menu has to be outstanding in order to sustain the user's interest. As the adage goes, "Content is king," but getting to the content requires navigation. In this post, we'll be explore some of the more recent trends in navigation design. We'll look at the aesthetics that recur in today's best Web designs. The focus here is on the visual direction that leading designers are taking.
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A little over a week ago, an article that I wrote was published on Smashing Magazine entitled, Design Something Every Day!
This post was a challenge for all designers to design something daily for the entire 2010. The post actually generated a lot of great response from the design community and there are a lot of people who have decided to make it part of their New Year's resolution.
Read more...Companies spend thousands upon thousands of dollars every year in advertisement. Some companies even spend millions of dollars. Print advertisements take up a large portion of those advertising dollars.
There are different types of advertising techniques that these companies use in their campaigns. One such technique is to use a series of advertisements to promote a particular product or brand. Today, we will look at 10 clever and effective series of advertisements as well as the reason why I chose to include each of them.
Read more...The Holidays are finally here. The hustle and bustle of Christmas is very obvious as the malls and stores are packed out with last-minute shoppers searching for presents to give away to the friends and loved ones. Christmas is in about 24 hours (here in Long Beach), and the new year is just around the corner.
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