Feb 22, 2010
Mozilla Firefox is a very popular browser, especially among web designers and developers. These days, with such a crowded field, staying at the top of the browser heap takes a lot of work. One of the factors that make Firefox so well-liked is the huge library of great extensions that enhance your browsing experience. Among the massive list of add-ons, many are vital to web designers and developers. If used, it will make your workflow quicker and more productive.
Let’s look at our top 20 essential Firefox extensions geared for people who build websites.
The Web Developer add-on extends Mozilla Firefox by adding a toolbar with various options for working with web pages. For example, it has an option to inspect CSS styles of page elements that will tell you what CSS attributes they have, and which styles affect them.
Feb 5, 2010
Adding illustrative elements to a web design can take it to a whole new level. Illustrations add a uniqueness and character to a design, giving it the ability to make it truly stand out from the crowd. Designers and artists use them in various parts of a design: as backgrounds, as part of a captivating header, or as an accent within the content area.
In this article, you’ll be able to set your eyes on some of the best examples of websites that have chosen to use illustrated elements as part of the design.
Feb 4, 2010
In this massive collection of resources, you’ll find all sorts of resources including: tutorial sites, Photoshop Brushes, patterns, Photoshop Actions, showcases/collections, and much more.
Photoshop Tutorial Sites
Psdtuts+ is a weblog and Photoshop site that features high-quality Photoshop tutorials. On Psdtuts+, you’ll find tutorials such as “Creating a Touching Story Scene in Photoshop” and tips and tricks like “Using Adobe Kuler to Enhance Your Photoshop Color Workflow“.
Tutorial9 is a website that publishes excellent Photoshop tutorials such as “Draw a Classy 3D Poker Chip in Photoshop” and “Render a Realistic CD in Photoshop“.
PSDFAN publishes high-quality tutorials, Photoshop freebies, and interviews with designers and artists.
Photoshop Ninja is a site dedicated to Photoshop. It shares tutorials and tips such as “Opening Photoshop layered files as merged files“, “Creating overlapping text layers“, and “Why is my Photoshop layer style or effect not working?“.
Feb 3, 2010
Lately, there has been a trend towards incorporating hand drawn elements into web designs, bringing sketches and drawings that we typically see in the paper medium onto the web. Hand drawn elements can be seen in navigation bars, as backgrounds, as accenting elements, or as an entire site theme. They give a design a very unique, out-of-the-box, and organic/realistic look.
In this collection, you will be able to find some of the best designs that have hand drawn, “sketched” elements infused into them for your inspiration.
Feb 2, 2010
An effective logo sets the tone and public perception of your brand, and therefore careful thought and creativity must be put into constructing it.
In this article, you’ll find a large collection of tutorials and resources on the topic of designing logos by some of the most well-respected logo designers in the industry.
Logo Design Tutorials
Designer/Author Chuck Green shows us the general process he takes when designing a logo.
This downloadable tutorial goes through the process of designing an illustrative logo.
Artist Von. R. Glitschka discusses his creative process for designing an illustrative logo.
Take a peak into a real-world project to see an actual logo designer in action.
Feb 1, 2010
Flash is an excellent technology for dealing with data visualization. It being client-side, it can reduce the amount of work your server has to perform in order to generate graphs and charts. Because of its robust ability in dealing with sleek and fluid animation and complex user interactivity, Flash is an excellent web and (and even desktop) application technology for dealing with graphing data.
In this article, you will find ten excellent Flash components that will help you in building stunningly attractive, complex, and interactive data visuals. These components will help you create an assortment of graphs and charts to aid in presenting otherwise boring and stale numerical data.
Open Flash Chart is an open source Flash-based graphing and charting solution developed using ActionScript 3 and compiled using Flex. Open Flash Chart’s features include interactivity of your charts with tooltips, the ability to resize your charts client-side, and being able to save your graphs as images.
Jan 31, 2010
The utilization of paper as a design element in a web design is one of the most popular design trends. By using scraps of paper, cardboard textures, notebooks and notepads, a designer is able to compose an interesting and elaborate design. You’ll see paper used in various kinds of design components - in backgrounds, navigation menus, content areas, and all sorts of other web page parts.
In this showcase, you’ll see some of the best web designs that involve the use of paper elements and textures - for your inspiration.
Jan 30, 2010
Music lovers often are sensitive to design. This probably explains why so many music websites are so wonderfully designed and inspiring.
In this article, you’ll be able to discover 30 beautiful music websites that stand out from the crowd.
Jan 24, 2010
Retro and vintage web designs have become increasingly popular. Ironically, the more and more the web progresses, the more designers start to revert back to old retro styles. For your design inspiration, here are 40 beautifully-designed websites that revert back in time to retro and vintage styles.
If you liked this collection, please consider also reading 20 Beautiful Vintage Photoshop Brush Sets.
Mar 25, 2009
Vintage designs has gotten very popular over the past years, and it seems the trend keeps on going.
In this round-up, you’ll find 20 vintage Photoshop brushes you can download for free. There are over 300 individual vintage brushes here, so you will have a broad choice of brushes to apply onto your designs.
Each brush set was first tested, and the images you see below are previews of what to expect from each brush pack.
2. 1920s ladies by 500ml brushes (7 brushes)
