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 It requires to combine the modern clean blocks and the outdated ones.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.