Monday, February 28, 2011

Simple Icons Important Features

Simple web icons are among the principal features of minimalistic design. Please remember simple icons along with other design elements should be used moderately. Among the tips is minimizing icons use in general. Reduce the amount of simple icons. Use them only where it is essential. Optional simple web icons are to be refrained from repetition or eluded.

Limited amount of color, reserved shades, clear elements, soft lighting are being used for simple web icons design. One of the best advantages of Simple icons is that they don't distract website visitors from the main idea of your internet site.

These rules for simple icons design can be outlined:

  • minimal usage of duplication
  • less amount of graphical elements
  • maximum intuitive clarity
  • clear typography in simple web icons
  • less icons

How to create minimalistic design with simple web icons

Additionally to simple icons themselves lightweight background textures and patterns are very important for the design and content perception. The eyes should focus on the web site content or some essential blocks but not on the background pattern or image itself. So the background should be of a light simple shade making it secondary compared with the foreground items like simple web icons.

Clear typography is an additional prominent feature of the lightweight and clear design. Choose simple icons names in accordance with their function and remember that such names ought to be precise, and meaningful. Also use understandable and enough large font for headings on simple web icons.

Also for developing a great clean simple icons design you may use enough white or empty space. Extra spaces keep elements more readable. For that reason it is faster and easier to work with them. In case you use some extra space between simple web icons this dont harm to the design of your site at all.

Speaking about the minimalistic trend in most cases it isn't totally minimal. Despite its great amount of white space there are still some simple icons, light textures, neat styles and bold fonts. Minimal isn't exactly the same as simple. From the very begining minimal meant plain typographic excluding images and styling. But contemporary design demands something much more than black text on white background to make the web page distinguish among thousands of other plain web sites. Reducing design elements to the most important items you can add more zest to your web page layout with some unusual coloring, catchy simple icons, half-transparent and lightweight textures and patterns.

Simple = smart. While creating the modern web site design you should keep in mind the eternal truth stating that genius is based on simplicity. Simple icons is the best solution if you'd like your internet-site look fantastic and professional.

Realistic Icons Important Info.

Realistic icons are very important elements of the present day web design. You can also meet them in software programs, applications and add-ons, etc.

Web sites are a special niche demanding special means of representation as well as promotion. One of these techniques is including realistic icons into the web design. Without doubt icons will help users of your web site to get a quick initial impression of your online business as well as products that you offer. The icons should be placed on internet site homepage to be noticeable at once.

Of course if you want to have icons that fulfil all your requirements you need to hire the professional designer who can make some exclusive set of icons. But such custom orders of realistic icons are very expensive and take significant time period. After all the results of custom order aren't clear. Often even professional site designers create not exactly that you want. To save lots of time and smoothen things down they take icons created earlier and simply play with the colors and shades, use some other effects and sell realistic icons as exclusive items. Though in fact they are not.

Another source of getting wonderful web icons is finding authoritative icons resources. There are different Realistic icons stocks and providers on the net. You see what you pay for and the price may occur essentially lower than in case with custom orders. Moreover you save your valuable time. Thus for finding nice and low-cost realistic icons stocks are much more preferable.

Tricks for utilizing realistic icons

Designing realistic icons you have to build the basic pictograms first. It should look vivid enough if being displayed at worse resolution, resized, discolored or blurred. The icon should be recognizable at first sight. You can conduct a test and see if it's possible to discern the icon within less than a second.<\p>

The next step is to make realistic icons more eye-catching by adding decorative elements. Icons shouldn't be overloaded with the details and color tints. Design should look integral and reserved. You can also make the edges anti-aliased. So remember the simple rule - the decoration shouldn't take away from the icons essence and functions.

The icons are usually stored in vector format which makes it pretty simple to edit. You're free to resize, rotate, adjust the edges and edit outlines, change the color scheme and add more details etc. So you needn't be an experienced designer or an artist to use them.

Realistic icons may be helpful in case you need to design the interface layout of the new software or IT services. But don't forget if you want to produce good quality and eye-catching realistic icons you should be patient because it's not easy. Generally you need to modify the high-resolution photos in order to get truly realistic images.

Sunday, February 27, 2011

The Essence Of 2d Web Icons

2D web icons and other objects are well known for their flexibility. This versatility is reached by rendering them at various resolutions suitable for various output devices.

2D Icons may include the following items:

  • raster pictures (digital graphics);
  • styled text as a typeset for 2D Icons;
  • vector models (geometric graphics).

The above-mentioned items can be managed by 2D transformations such as rotation, scaling or angular position and many others. Meshing basic models you will get more complex ones.

Because of the layers technique 2D web icons can create the illusion of all 3D characteristics such as shadow, reflection or highlighting. The layers really should maintain the definite hierarchy and order carefully.

2.5D Icons vs 3D and 2D Icons

The layered 2Dicons are also generally known as 2.5D models. This technology offers web site designers ability to work with any layer with no need of touching the others. This kind of 2D object creation is preferred by the most of the leading graphics editors.

2.5D is a synonym to pseudo 3D and is interpreted as "two-and-a-half-dimensional" graphics. Models created with 2.5D technology look like tridimensional while in fact they aren't. The featured projection represents both front and side views.

This technology used for designing 2D web icons is frequently attained by the special lighting effect. 3D illusion is reached as a result of virtual light source to the left or to the right side and above the users monitor.

Friday, February 25, 2011

Vintage Icons As A Part Of Vintage Web Design

In case your want your site looks archaic - use Vintage icons. They are probably the most noticeable and easy-to-apply graphical elements. Vintage web icons suppose authentic use of vintage typography, less-saturated colors and retro textures to help creating the vintage air emanating from the web-site. Antique air is going to charm and brings unconscious smiles to the faces of your website visitors.

Retro trend is all about the styles of the70s and 80s. Retro advertising art from the 1950s is bold and eye-catchy. Computer technologies allow to put a new face on this type of art using its characters in web page design and printing. These faces outlined in the vintage web icons are more often retro cars, pin-up girls, soldiers and politicians of the former times.For sure among the most frequently used retro cars are Fiat 500, the 1970 Dodge Challenger, the 1969 Chevrolet Samara, the 1964 Ford Mustang etc. Vintage web icons may include hints to retro cars concepts for attracting more interest to your web site layout. They are ideal for the internet sites concerning auto sales, transporting services, tour sites etc.Also you can face a such popular character as a pin-up model that is used in vintage icons design as well as other internet site graphics styling. It usually depicts exaggerated, idealized images of how the really beautiful and sexy woman should look like. If you're an owner of the web site regarding health and beauty areas or the model agencies - keep in mind that you can use pin-up images that are great for vintage web icon.

Military and security guard internet sites may effectively use soldiers and officers with an outdated appearance to win the site visitors favour and trust.

Usage of specific characters is not limited to the above-mentioned ones. You may apply creativity and use them unconventionally. Thus you will surprise your visitors. As far as you know it is a good way to turn your potentional customers minds to your web business.

Patterns and Typography for vintage icons and other graphics

Vintage patterns recommended for usage in vintage icons design is the following:

  • patterns containing vintage papers;
  • with vintage frames;
  • with outmoded florals;
  • paper and bagging, gold-cloth as the texture fabric;
  • wooden or bronze textures for vintage icons.

For creating vintage icons titles, content headings and texts you can use such authentic fonts as Matchbook, Bazar Medium, Embossed, Hill House,-Fontleroy Brown, Fusty Saddle, Just Old Fashion, Goudy Bookletter 1911, Rocket Script, Parisian, Star Avenue etc. Feel free to discover and purchase on the net the best suitable fonts that will ideal match your design.

If being relevant to the topic, general style and idea of your web site vintage-inspired design is supposed to look modern and appropriate, but no old-fashioned. If you create the warm and noble, antique feel with a help of Vintage icons, images and styled blocks for the website layout, your visitors will come to your site with a happy smile over and over again. They will feel comfortable and cozy at your web page.

But try not to make your vintage design look too stuffy, you need to be aware that professional layout is formal-looking and the major emphasis should be made on the goods, services or content your internet site provides.

The Truth About Realistic Icons

The very first mention about realism happened in 1850 when it was spread over French art. Over the centuries it came through all types of art and design. Realism in web design is effectively represented by Realistic icons.

Brief discourse on history of realistic icons.

Thursday, February 24, 2011

Line Icons - Get More Scores In Web Design

Lines are more often used for outlining the contours of objects and putting an emphasis on edges. Line icons can be the wonderful decoration of any web design, of course if you have a skill to design them properly.

Lines and their facilities in line icons design.

What's in fact a line? The shortest definition is the next: line is a form that contain both width and length but eliminating depth. The line is not only straight but more often curved. In spite of the being static shapes, Line icons can create an illusion of the dynamic objects. The mood is generally being conditioned by the lines direction. For example horizontal lines in Line web icons bring the feeling of calmness, harmony and stability. Speaking about the vertical lines - they strive for the light movement. Energy and more powerful dynamic feeling pertain to the diagonal lines. If you want to develop refine and modern line icons designs you should use combination of straight lines and curves.

Emergence of line art.

Undoubtedly the earliest kind of line art that familiar to a large amount of artists is curve stitching. Such sort of line art was developed with a help of threads of different colours and needle. Originally the canvas was a card board. This movement is also well known as "String Art". Originally it was found out by Mary Boole as the accessory material for kids to help them study geometry of angles and spaces.Spirelli is a form of string art that's been usually applied to scrap-booking and making cards. Line art existed also in the form of illustrations for print sources before the photography was created. At that time line art included only black and white colours. A few shades of gray were also acceptable and imitated.Line art includes geometry and art and in such a way becomes appealing to both technical and creative sides of human nature, If you want to become a Line web icons designer keep in mind that this process may develop imagination and creativity and also calculation skills.Line art is different from photography or multi-color painting by its ability to be printed to the halftone picture without extra conversion. This type of art is named line drawing and line copy too.

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

2d Icons Rule

2D icons is a wide spread trend in the web development of nowadays. These two-dimensional icons are well known for their flexibility and comparative simplicity. 2.5D Icons is the type of 2D Icons that is closer to pseudo 3D representation.Such models depict both front and side views.

Being initially based on vector graphics devices 2D computer graphics traces back to the 50s. 2D icons are one of the most significant two-dimensional digital design items.

What is actually 2D?It is being associated generally with computer graphics and determined as the two-dimensional way of digital images generation. Two-dimensional models are mainly 2D geometric ones, digital images and texts. The term 2D usually means as models themselves as the techniques and tricks specific to them either.

2D icons and objects don't simply depict the real world items but they are independent objects with their own semantic value. 2D graphics enables to have more direct control over the image than 3D technology. This may be one good reason why they're so beloved and preferred in the world of contemporary internet site design and digital art. 3D graphics is more effective realized in animation or photography than typography or even webpage design.

Thursday, February 17, 2011

Vintage Icons In Present Day Web Site Design

Retro gradually increases its right place in the present day web design industry. Vintage icons symbolizing the old-time styling are the message of classic beauty and noble taste, Vintage design trend evoke gentle feeling in the visitors hearts.Contemporary web site style acquires some vintage twist. Retro and Vintage are becoming the common trends in the present day digital art. Vintage web icons, textures, patterns as well as clip-art bring mystery to your webdesign. They make you plunge into the atmosphere of the old good times, when everything appeared to be so simple, harmless and noble. People believe the good times are over associating them with their period of childhood or sweet youth. Due to this psychological peculiarity of people vintage style is so well-liked.

What is retro and how it is realized in the modern day webpage design industry

In contemporary art retro becomes some conscious norm. You can certainly find sights of retro style in the present day webpage design in the form of vintage icons, old-styled backgrounds, aged photography etc. It is obvious it gives some zest to the feel and look of the ordinary internet websites.

The new retro style quite often incorporates the Web 2.0 look with a vintage twist. It requires to combine the modern clean blocks and the outdated ones. Also there's a necessity to combine aged design elements like Vintage icons, styles and color palettes.

Simple Icons And Web Page Design

Simple icons are created to combine minimalism and modern trend. Light-weight Simple web icons are meant to be created to increase website user interaction.

Minimalistic webdesign

Minimalistic design means simplicity and lightweight elements such as Simple icons. It eliminates complex wordings, figures, textures and patterns. Less even indicates more in some areas and to some extent. Website creation is just that area.

Today minimalistic design is something uncommon. High present day technologies frequently lead to the loss of simplicity. These days the modern trend is to combine minimalistic website design with CSS3 and HTML5. Simple doesn't mean primitive. Website which uses simple design often has off-color effects and also actively use CSS and Ajax.

Among essential features of the contemporary simple web site design are the following:

  • grid based design;
  • simple icons;
  • light shading and reserved color transition;
  • light texture of patterns and backgrounds (often transparent like);
  • more empty or white space;
  • simple shapes and figures, clear lines;
  • less amount of various bright colors;
  • readable and clear typography;

Various Methods For Line Icons Creation

Often Line icons are the objects with the outlined contours. Such design elements are known as contour drawings. It's also possible to find another type of icons: the items are without some strict outlines. They are called gesture drawings. These kinds of drawings are being widely used by experienced artists who can repeat the outlines of the object right after seeing it. It's not a complete piece of art but rather a sketch which usually needs 20-30 seconds to be drawn.

Another technique is adding various halftones and shades to the object by using short lines and crosshatching. Their frequency and pencil pressure can be different. And this variety creates more three-dimensional look to the object. This particular trick is widely used in web design as well. So this method is definitely helping in designing of impressive Line icons, logos and buttons.Also lets get information about open lines. It's such sort of the lines where the dots not combining the singular elements. The lines can as well be parallel, gesture-like, contour etc. Contour drawing consists of fantastic simplicity and refinement of line design. You may be surprise what's bezier curves in computer graphics? It's such type of the curves which are necessary for creating complex line shapes. These curves are real helpers in creation of the vector shapes such as line icons, unusual buttons etc. Computer technologies make it possible to reproduce the identical designs or build new shapes based on some older ones without extra efforts and time. Another advantage is that it is possible to go back to the previous adjustments with a help of the history panel. So you do not have to design Line web icons from scratch after you have made some mistakes.

Friday, January 28, 2011

3D icons: Artistic Or Realistic - That Is The Question

Nevertheless sometimes advantages can be changed into problems. As an example the thoroughness and truthfulness of the picture may be the weakness of 3D icons. This means you are much more free to use artistic vision while drawing some object. Let's take a mobile-phone for example. So its possible to draw it rather similar to a real one but eliminate some extra details, shades and highlights. However, your consciousness discerns it as a phone easily. Often schematic drawings work even better than 3D models. You should analyze each particular situation. To develop an object and make it seem closer to real one 3d icons must repeat very carefully each detail and line. So it's more a kind of technical representation than a piece of art. Though some illustrators manage to create abstract 3D web icons that involve innovative thought and look like true works of art. Realistic and accurate modeling is the most well-known trend of 3D design today.If you're going to use some characters as icons, 3D icons are going to appear more realistic than 2D ones. The characters may remain cartoonish and this will give zest to your website.

Let us enumerate the technical issues you may face while using 3D icons.

So take note of these useful facts while creating the icons design for your website:

It is not possible to show all the glory and details of 3d icons with very poor resolution of the viewers screens;

since the monitor screen is 2D device it won't display the true three-dimensional object as we see it in reality;

3D space is harder to be manipulated and managed in comparison with 2D one;

sometimes users have to download and install some extra software that is needed for correct viewing of 3D web Icons.

In conclusion we can say that both 2D and 3D icons are based on geometric data but 3D objects are the sculpture models, they are more complicated items. And the requirements for creating the high quality 3D web Icons are much severer. 3D icons may lack creativity and abstract air but the facts of depth and volume which are effectively produced with 3D technology are incontestable.

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Create Business Icons For Your Website

How to find a proper design for your internet site? This is a very hard task. You need to design the header graphics and logo, business icons and content placeholders as well as find the fonts according to the business area and wishes of your potential customers.

The successful webpage should include your potential customers expectations. For this reason use the proper business icons, buttons and styles for content blocks.

The first step as the first brick is definitely crucial. At the very begining you have to decide what is the main audience of your internet site. After this think about what do your potential customers expect. Name, hosting provider, content material and design style need to be carefully chosen in line with the results of your research. You should feel what colors and styles of business icons as well as other elements of design reflect the business area your company presents.

Please keep in mind that various colors evoke certain emotions in various groups of people. For example, you have a night-club related business and wish to create amazing web presence. Use business icons of bright disco colors and unusual forms and you'll get the wonderful result. Some tints of red as manifestation of passion and sex are pertinent for business icons, logos or buttons in such a case. If you're developing the site for some consulting company its look and feel is supposed to be clear, calm and reserved. You should avoid playful lines and light-minded graphics. Cool colors and simple recognizable shapes of business icons are preferable. Such a site will make your potential clients believe into professionalism and stability of your company.

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Glass Icons - The First Class Design Items

Web icons impart classy and clean look to your site making its design eye-catching and professional. However this effect should be reasonably used because it can be harmful for the design perception.

Nowadays Glass web icons are extremely well-known elements of web page or blog decor. This glass icon style is so powerful thing that can easily impart the perfect, clear and professional look to your site, presentation or desktop and embody a kind of the "Web 2.0" spirit.

Pluses and minuses of the glass icons usage.

In spite of the elaborate and intricate feel and look of the web icons designed in the glass style, it is obvious that the process of their creation is rather simple. You are able to create Glass icons within a few minutes using Photoshop, Illustrator or Corel software. All that you need is some helpful tutorial, some skills of working with these pieces of software and the images you are going to turn into glass web icons.

The glass effect is considered to have been borrowed from the Apples OSX operating system style and copied by Windows. Some may believe that Glass icons are so strongly associated with Apple product that the glass-styled elements make people think of the completely different brand which makes the usage if this type of web icons meaningless, nevertheless the benefits of the glass icons style are obvious.

Probably the most important feature of the modern internet site is social bookmarking web icons. If you want to have got a great advantage for the online site promotion use eye-catching glossy icons for this purpose. Eye-catching social bookmarks improve the probability of the site visitors clicking on them and the number of the clicks increases correspondingly. So as a result you are able to promote your content more effectively.

Saturday, January 15, 2011

3D Icons and 2D Icons in web graphics nowadays

Basic differences between 2D and 3D icons design

Speaking about 3d Icons we should point out that the light source plays a really important role for creating authentic three-dimensional images. It's appropriate and even recommended to use several light sources in web design today but they should follow basic rules of physics and be truthful. So if you need to make 3D web icons look softer and more realistic - use several lights.

The purpose of 2D and 3D icons is to represent the volume found in the three-dimensional world but 2D and 3D icons obtain this illusion by using diverse means. 2D Icons can surely represent volume to less extent than 3D Icons. More often the images are flat and show just one perspective. Detailed highlights and imperceptible soft shadows are missing as a rule. The shades usage is restricted as well.

3D web icons have all these functions instead. Nevertheless won't forget that 3D is nothing but mathematical replication of the data that unfortunately limits its usage. In some case 3D objects like 3D Icons may be successfully replaced by 2D ones or by the videos with the sounds. The sounds give some extra dimensionality to the videos that actually use 2D images.3D dimension can be produced with the software used for 3D modeling. It is recommended to show 3D icons in correlation with the other objects in the neighborhood and the environment they are placed into.

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Why don't we Take A Closer Look At DreamWeaver Templates

You can easlily use these themes to create web pages that have a common structure and appearance. Dreamweaver Templates are useful when you want to make sure that all of the pages in a site share certain characteristics. It is possible to change information very easily on the group of pages by editing the theme and then reapplying it to those pages. While elements unique to each page (such as text or graphics) remain unchanged, common template elements (such as menu bars and links) are updated on all of the pages that use the theme. For example, if you change the copyright info in the Footer of the web theme - Dreamweaver will instantly amend the footers for you automatically. As you can see this is the greates tool to save your time!

These days you can easily discover a fantastic variety of Dreamweaver Themes to any taste over the Net. But first of all you need to decide what kind of theme you want to have: free Dreamweaver Template or premium one. If you really want to save your pennies - Free Dreamweaver template can be a very good choice. But if you want to have exclusive design and extra quality - you should look for premium Dreamweaver Templates. Anyway you have a splendid opportunity to redesign your website in no time.

So at the end I can definitely claim that Dreamweaver website templates are aimed to save your valuable time and money. Themes are a great way to maintain consistency across a site. Even if you have some problems do not panic - 24 hour support teams always glad to help. You can also use step by step web design online course or tutorials. Make a present to your web site - redesign it using a new Dreamweaver theme and attract more visitors right now! Use this unique chance to be on the crest of the wave of Internet world.