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50 Incredible Stop Motion Videos

By Vailancio Rodrigues, December 31st, 2008 in Inspiration | 121 Comments

Stop motion animation is one of the hottest areas of film-making today. Stop motion is an animation art through which one can spring life in inanimate things and do the unnatural. It works by shooting a single frame of an object, then moving the object slightly, and then shooting another frame. When the film runs continuously in a film projector, or other video playback system, the illusion of fluid motion is created and the objects appear to move by themselves. This is similar to the animation of cartoons, but using real objects instead of drawings.

Well, how can you make use of stop motion in web design? Some design agencies integrate stop motion in their showreels, some may use it to present a product or a service. The main advantage of the technique is that it really looks different, unusual and therefore memorable. In technical terms, stop motion consists of many forms according to techniques used to create, animate and film it - pixilation, cutout animation, time-lapse, clay animation and many more. Stop motion animation is time-consuming, repetitive process which requires patience.

Below we present over 50 amazing examples of stop motion videos, a tribute to hard work of animators, artists and creative folks.

You may be interested in the following related posts:
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Hand-Drawing Style In Modern Web Design - Volume 2

By Smashing Editorial, June 18th, 2008 in Design Showcase | 124 Comments

When it comes to web design too often perfect, colorful and boxy designs make the cut; however, the reality is different as it is hard to find objects with a perfect shape and a perfect color in our daily routine. To achieve a unique and communicative design we need to consider more creative approaches. For instance, we can draw sites by ourselves — or at least some parts of it.

The main purpose of hand-drawn elements lies in their ability to convey a personality and an individual note in times when perfect, boxy and rounded elements can be found almost everywhere. They look different and they can make a web-site look different. And this is what we usually are after in the first place.

And in fact, this is done quite often: whether a blog, a shop, an ad, a private page, or some collaborative project — doesn’t matter whether with Flash or (X)HTML. This post presents fresh examples of hand-drawing style in modern web design. All screenshots can be clicked and lead to the sites from which they’ve been taken.

Please also have a look at our previous showcase
- Hand-Drawing Style In Modern Web Design
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Inspirational PDF Magazines

By Smashing Editorial, April 22nd, 2008 in Design Showcase | 140 Comments

PDF magazines are a great promotional tool used by companies and collectives. They are quick to put together, can be attached to emails, or made available as free downloads. Numerous visual arts publications from around the world are available for you to draw inspiration from. These magazines serve as excellent sources of both conceptual and visual design. Furthermore, it's both interesting and important to know what other artists do — to explore new artistic style, learn new techniques and make new contacts.

View great illustration, photography, graphic design, painting, typography, and various other visual and communication arts. Dig into ideas with artist interviews and articles. Or flip through these pages to discover new visual solutions and styles. Below you'll find both well-established and new PDF magazines for you to download and to draw inspiration from.

You may also want to consider visiting
- the post 42 Design/Tech Magazines To Read which presents an overview of over 40 established international design/tech-related magazines, blogs and resources.
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Footers In Modern Web Design: Creative Examples and Ideas

By Smashing Editorial, April 8th, 2008 in Design Showcase | 181 Comments

According to classic principles of web design, everything at the bottom of the page isn't that important. Most users think like that. And most designers are convinced that this is true. Site elements at the bottom of the page aren't really able to catch visitors' attention which is why footers are often forgotten or ignored and not given the attention they deserve.

In fact, most footers are rather boring and uninspiring. Designers often use the bottom area to mention everything they haven't found place for at the top of the site. E.g. disclaimers, W3C-buttons, copyright, "back to the top"-link and contact details. But if most designers forget it, why don't make use of it? Why don't use footers to impress visitors with something they actually don't expect at all?

This post presents creative examples of footers and ideas for footer design. We've tried to identify some trends and some interesting approaches you may want to use or develop further in your projects.

You might also want to take a look at the posts
- CSS-Based Footers: Modern Solutions which showcases even more excellent examples of CSS-based footers.
- Navigation Menus: Trends and Examples with recent trends, examples and innovative solutions for design of modern navigation menus.
- Pagination Gallery: Examples And Good Practices with good practices of pagination design as well as some examples of when and how the pagination is usually implemented.
- Tag Clouds Gallery: Examples And Good Practices presents creative examples and ideas for design of tag clouds.
Basically, footers need to provide users with the information they are looking for. This is why contact details and a brief information about site or / and site owners needs to be placed in the footer. Corporate designs may need to provide driving directions, telephone number, a web form or at least an e-mail.

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Hand-Drawing Style In Modern Web Design

By Smashing Editorial, January 3rd, 2008 in Design Showcase | 145 Comments

The most valuable and innovative ideas had all been handwritten first. That's no big news, since designers tend to produce first sketches as paper prototypes anyway; still it's important, because web design is different from "usual" design. Of course, it also has a personal note and it is hand-made, however users can't see that. As CSS is "boxy but good", designs tend to have a rather limited appearance — they are too boxy and too right-angled.

If designers want to achieve a different design, they have to draw their sites by themselves — or at least some parts of it. And in fact, this is done quite often: whether a blog, a shop, an ad, a private page, or some collaborative project — doesn't matter whether with Flash or (X)HTML. The main purpose of hand-drawn elements lies in their ability to convey a personality and an individual note in times when colorful, sharp and rounded Web 2.0 elements can be found almost everywhere.

How impressive can the results be? And when can the hand-drawing style be used? Let's take a look at some excellent examples of hand-drawing style in modern web design. All screenshots can be clicked and lead to the sites from which they've been taken.

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Paper Strips Menus

By Smashing Editorial, December 17th, 2007 in Inspiration | 64 Comments

The beauty of an excellent design lies in designer's attention to smallest details. Conventions are our friends; however, to stand out, a design needs a creative spin, an elegant play of colors, some unique flavour — a small detail that would make a big difference.

Where the boundaries between traditional solutions and unusual approaches become fuzzy, designers tend to get creative. However, to come up with unusual ideas isn't that easy, particularly if you are dealing with some daily routine-tasks.

Deb Sofield sticks posts on a paper pile.

Still, nothing is impossible. Even if you're designing a navigation menu there are a number of possibilites you can explore. For instance, have you ever thought of... navigation in form of paper strips?

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30 More Excellent Blog Designs

By Smashing Editorial, November 22nd, 2007 in Design Showcase | 209 Comments

It's not hard to design a weblog, but it's getting harder when you try to achieve a unique weblog design. It doesn't matter what weblog-engine you are using — frequently used themes tend to become boring over time, and they also don't necessarily reflect the unique identity of the blogger.

To create an original design you need fresh ideas and creative design solutions. However, you don't need to go too far with your design experiments. Basically that's a close attention to finest details which makes a weblog stand out and gives it a fresh flavour and soft touch visitors can recognize immediately.

We've selected more of them — over 30 excellent weblog designs with unusual design approaches; these blogs don't only have a unique voice, but they also pay close attention to the finest design details.
- You might find not all of the designs listed below beautiful; but that's not what it's about. They are beautiful in their own way as they are both well-structured and originally designed.
- you can find further blog designs in the post 45 Excellent Blog Designs we've published before;
- you can find even more designs in our Design Showcase section.
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Typography In Motion

By Smashing Editorial, November 19th, 2007 in Fonts, Inspiration | 98 Comments

In most designs typography is used to present information in a rather static way — after all, it has to be read by users. However, it doesn't have to be like this. What effects can be achieved if typography is set in motion? What happens if letters are suddenly floating, jumping and dancing around while sentences are actually interacting with the readers?

Where motion is involved, video is necessary. Below we present some excellent examples of typography embedded into movies and videos — be prepared, "dynamic" typography can be breathtaking.

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45 Excellent Blog Designs

By Smashing Editorial, August 28th, 2007 in Design Showcase | 340 Comments

Designing a blog is easy. Whatever engine you are using and whatever style you prefer, you'll always find a number of templates you can apply to your weblog in seconds. No styling is necessary, no playing with colors is needed and no mind jogging about content presentation is required. However, not every weblog should look like a typical blog. After all, not every blogger wants his or her site to look exactly like hundreds of other ones. In fact, there is a small bunch of creative, outstanding and individually designed from scratch blogs.
In this post we didn't try to showcase some eye-candy (although sometimes eye-candy is indeed offered); the designs listed below were selected for their attention to small details. Pretty and colourful header-graphics doesn't make a good blog. The blog needs a solid visual structure, a profound hierarchy of site elements; it also has to be able to build some kind of a bridge between the content and its presentation. To do this, you need to think about precision, minimalism and sound use of illustration. These criteria were the ones we've used to select the designs listed below. All these aspects make the designs we've selected look... well, not always beautiful, but outstanding, almost excellent in their own kind. Mostly it's the idea the designers used to make the weblog as usable as possible - not the implementation of this idea - which we've been after.
Below you'll find 45 excellent blog designs which impress with creative approaches and attention to details; hopefully you'll find new ideas you can develop further in your own designs. Notice that the screenshots we've provided may give you a wrong impression about the whole design of the sites; in doubt you should take a closer look at headers, footers, comment-areas, site structure and further site elements. Please also notice that you can click on screenshots to get to the sites from which the screenshots have been taken. We've missed something? Definitely! Let us know in the comments!
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