design collective

A few dozen ICON of perfect quality is not where the constraints on

2008-10-29T22:23:00.000-07:00

Vista High PX
More than 150 icons based on the model of Windows Vista.

Office Space Icon Set for Windows Vista
Contains the icons in all sizes, both ico and png formats.

iVista Icon Pack
iVista Icon Pack contains 146 high quality (256×256 pixels) icons; PNG and ICO formats. This package includes: Alarm Icons, CD and DVD Icons, Files Icons, Folder Icons, Hardware Icons, Network Icons, Printer Icons, Program Icons, Start Menu Icons and more…

iVista Icon Pack 2
iVista Icon Pack 2 contains 92 high quality (256×256 pixels) icons; PNG and ICO formats. This package includes: Alarm Icons, CDs and DVDs Icons, Devices Icons, Files Icons, Folder Icons, Network Icons, Other Icons, Start Menu Icons and more…

XP Icons
Icons offered by Icongalore.com

Royalty Free Icons for Toolbar and Web
Here you can download free Mac OS X icons for your desktop. These icons are free for personal use.

Friendly Fire Icon Pack
Friendly Fire pack contains 25 high quality (256×256 pixels) icons; PNG and ICO formats. This package includes: Girl smiley icon, Cocktail smiley icon, Cool smiley icon, Googles smiley icon and more…

Yoritsuki Icons
This file contains 35 icons that are associated with hot springs in Japan.

Antique Icons
A collection of 33 antique style application icons.

Vista Glass Folder Icons
A collection of 8 icons.

Arzo Icons Vol. 1
A set of 24 icons.

Gaming Icons Pack
Gaming icons in 3d cartoon style.

Mario Galaxy Luma Icons
6 Icons. PNG format.

Christmas Icons
13 Christmas Icons. 256×256 - 48×48.

Wifun Icons by Rokey
6 Icons. PNG and ICO formats.

Grzanka’s Icons
Icons 128×128 - Made in Photoshop.

Fantastic Dream by Rokey
Welcome to the Dreaming World.

Eico 1 year by Rokey
That’s for Eicostudio 1 year Celebration Icon Set.

128×128 Icons Set 5
Set of 9 (128×128 ICO, PNG) Icons.

Antares Iconset
All are available in PNG 512px

Perfect Fanstasy
This pack Contain 62 Icons.

Monster Icons
128px Icons in ICO and PNG formats.

128×128 Icons Set 4
Set of 15 (128×128 ICO, PNG) Icons

iMac Icons
These icons are based on the newest iMac. 256 .png’s of each plus original PSD.

Camino Icons
A few icons for the Mac OSX super browser Camino, 5 colors and a retro look for your favorite browser.

Nes Icons Pack
A pack of 9 Icons.

iLife and iWork ‘08 Icons
Even Includes Appleworks 6, and Aperture.

Mouse Category Season 03
Done in CorelDRAW. Finalized in Photoshop.

Mouse Category Season 02
This time all the png files are 128×128 with transparent shadow.

Mouse Category Season 01
PNG downloading is available now.

DeskMundo Live Icons
All are in 256×256 Pixels.

Computers PNG Icons
66 PNG Icons.

File Icons V.3
100 different file extensions. Includes 100 PNGs and 100 Icons.

Gamepads Icons
Gamepads Icons And PNG’s. 256 x 256 and 48 x 48.

40 Glamour ICO and PNG Icons
Pack of 40 ICO and PNG glamour Icons for Windows.

Fashion Icon Set 2
23 Fashion Icons in PNG and ICO format.

Vista RTM Style PNG and ICO
Created (17) 256 x 256 PNG’s and ICO’s for personal use only.

Darkness Blue
5 PNG and ICO icons.

Xi4Dox Icons
15 Icons in PNG and ICO formats.

Ricebowl Icons
Ricebowl is an icon collection for Linux, Mac OS X. Windows might be supported as well in the future.

CS3 Icons Set Replacement
8 PNG-ICO-ICNS. 11 formats. 16×16 to 256×256.

Translucent HD Drives Icons
8 Icons [PNG and ICO].

iVista Missing Icons
Contains 45 Icons. PNG and ICO formats.

Finding Nemo Vista Icons
Finding Nemo set full of color and detailed characteristics, with a glossy finished to make these icons look smooth giving them a really cool appearance.

Consoles Vista Icons
This icons set comes with detailed characteristics, keeping the exactly same colors of the real ones, designed in an isometric perspective so you can see almost all the details of the consoles. This is a cool professional icon set inspired in those who are mad about electronic devices.

Influens Icons
There are 42 icons (.ICO) and 2 .PSD template for files.

Bagg and Box’s Icons
This Pack contains 70 icons makes for baggs and boxs .ICO for Windows ( XP, Vista) and PNG.

BigBand
Pack of 22 Icons.

Crazy iMac Vol. 2
20 iMac Icons (ICO, PNG, INCS).

Alert’s Icons Pack 4
264 Icons in Pack with transparent backgrounds (alpha channel PNG).

Christmas Dock Icons
Christmas Dock Icons 512px PNG.

Caterpillar Dock Icons
256×256 Pixels in PNG format.

Mexican Icons
Available in PNG (256) Win (ICO) and Mac (ICNS).

Carbon PLUS
A set of over 20 bonus dock icons in PNG format.

Stainless Dock Icons
1 Yahoo Icon, 1 Maxthon Icon and 1 The Sims2 Icon

Adobe Creative Suite 2 Icons
A Pack of 5 Icons. PNG and ICO formats.

Original Messenger Pack V.2
This pack contain 3 Icons.

Christmas Pack
Christmas Icon Pack by Yellowicon team.

Keyboard Keys Icons
Pack including 178 PNG keys of your keyboard, capitals, specials types, bonus.

Apple Icons V.2
An Apple Pack witch contains 5 PNG files.

RTM SideBar Icons
There are 27 Icons with a glass and no glass overlay in PNG and ICO formats.

Summer Collection
Summer Collection contains 74 green and sunny Icons in PNG format.

The Office Collection
154 Icons. PNG, Mac, and Windows formats. 256×256

Transformers Vista Icons
This set of Icons contains graphic illustrations of trasformers movie, like the extruded logo of decepticons and autobots, you also will find the main characters of the movie like optimus prime and megatron.

Christmas XP
A Few Xmas Icons which can be used to replace some icons in your dock or desktop. It can be used as cliparts as well.

Choose your sport Icons
8 Icons about sport areas. PNG format to 256×256 pixels. ICO format to 128×128 pixels.

Rayman Raving Rabbids PNG Icons
PNG Icons for Rayman Raving Rabbids.

Boxes
Set of 9 Box themed folder PNG’s (500 x 500).

Surprise! Icon Pack
Surprise! Icon Pack V.2.

Daft Punk Icons
ICO, ICNS and PNG formats.

Zen Micro Icons
A group of 22 Files featuring the Creative Zen Micro Digital Player.

Converse All-Star Icons
30 PNG files. 256×256.

Folder Icon Pack
This Folder Icon Pack includes regular folder icon, favorite folder Icon, download folder Icon, music folder Icon, picture folder Icon and video folder Icon. All are available in PNG(256px) and ICO(128px) file format.

Dsquared Trash Icons
A set of 16 Icons. 8 different colours.

Medieval Helmets Icons.
Pack that contains 12 PNG Icons 128×128.

Boxes Crystals: CS3 Icons
Pack of 8 Icons. PNG and ICO formats.

Oh, Doctor! Icons
10 Icons for ours Doctors!

Song Zhu Mei Windows Version
A pack of 6 Icons.

SeventySeven Icons for Windows
Windows Version. ICO’s and PNG’s included.

MetalTunes Icons
3 PNG Icons.

Games Icons
4 Icons. PNG and ICO. 256×256.

Soviet Patch PNG files
A pack of 4 PNG Icons.

Mail Kit Icons
20 Icons of mail, envelopp, mailbox, icard, address. Made in 4 colors (silver, black, red and blue). Comes with ICNS, ICO and PNG formats.

Cubonic Icons
Set of Icons for drive replacement. ICO, PNG and ICNS. 3 Styles, 21 Icons.

Office Tools
This pack contains 8 office tools icons.

Famicom 3D
56 Icons with the look 80′ NES plays: It’s Famicom 3D. A pack which should like nostalgic of Nintendo

Rounder
43 Icons. 128?128 PNG’s.

Autumn Breeze
6 Icons for Windows in 8 Sizes.

Accumulator Icons
5 Icons in PNG format.

Mini Icons
PSD format. 513×61.

Design collective

Dellipack 2: A Free Icon Set

2008-10-29T00:11:00.001-07:00

We are always looking for creative and talented artists and designers. Once we find them, we ask them to cooperate with us and release something for free. We provide them with the full freedom to showcase their professionalism and express their creativity. You can find our previous releases in our section Freebies.

Today we are glad to release The DelliPack 2! icon set. This second set of “delicious icons” contains 15 icons: a build icon, a home icon, an interact icon, a monitor icon, a pen icon, a phonebook icon and other icons which can be useful for both corporate and personal projects. You can use the set for free — without any restrictions whatsoever. You can also take a look at the Dellipack 1: A Free Icon Set

The icons are available in the .png-format in the resolutions 256×256px, 128×128px, 64×64px, 48×48px, 32×32px and 16×16px. This icon set was designed by Wendell Fernandes and is now released as a gift for Smashing Magazine and its readers.

Download Icons For Free!

You can use the icons for private and commercial projects, blogs and web-sites for free, without any restrictions whatsoever. However, you are not allowed to sell or redistribute the icons without author’s and Smashing Magazine’s permission.

PNG files (4 Mb)

Thank you, Wendell!

Feed Me Animals: A Free RSS Feed Icon Set

2008-10-29T00:04:00.000-07:00

Another day — another fresh freebie. Today we are glad to release Feed Me Animals: A Free RSS Feed Vector Icon Set, designed by Mirjami Manninen especially for Smashing Magazine and its readers. This set contains 5 original RSS-feed icons. The icons are available in in .png, .jpg, .eps and .psd.

Download the icon set for free!

You can use the set for all of your projects for free and without any restrictions. You can freely use it for both your private and commercial projects, including software, online services, templates and themes. The set may not be resold, sublicensed, rented, transferred or otherwise made available for use. Please link to this article if you would like to spread the word.

preview (0.3 Mb)
download the set (png and jpg-files are available) (.zip, 1.4 Mb)
download .psd (.zip, 3,9 Mb)
download .eps (.zip, 3,1 Mb)

Behind the design

As always, here are some insights from the designer herself:

“Smashing Magazine is one of the best resources of inspiration for me, I have found it very useful in my daily work. There has been lots of great freebies released, so I also wanted to share something special with the Smashing Magazine readers.

I work a lot as an illustrator, and one day when I was playing around with RSS-feed icons, this idea came to my mind. I decided to make the whole set of these little animals. Hope you enjoy them!”

– Mirjami

Thank you very much, Mirjami! We appreciate your efforts.

Embedded comment form for Blogger News and Issues

2008-10-27T05:20:00.000-07:00

I’ve just read a good news from Blogger Buzz - the embedded comment form is brought out of Blogger In Draft and now is available to everyone. This is probably the most requested feature for Blogger, and I’m sure many of you will want to use this straight away! This feature puts the comment form at the bottom of each post page, below the comments, instead of on the separate, Blogger-styled page.

The embedded comment form is more convenient for your readers because they can use it to post a comment immediately, without clicking over to a different page.

Features of the embedded comment form

“Comment as”: Choose your profile when commenting. You can use your Google account, OpenID, Name/URL and all of the settings previously available when using a pop-up or full page comment form (depending on the settings you have chosen).

“Preview” button: Preview your comment before it is published

“Subscribe” link: If you’re logged in to Blogger with your Google Account, you can also subscribe to comments via email by clicking the “Subscribe” link. You don’t need to post a comment to subscribe

How to enable the embedded comment form

To enable the embedded comment form for your blog, go to the Settings -> Comments page and look for the Comment Form Placement setting. Change it to Embedded below post, save your settings, and go check out a post to see the new form in action.

That’s it. If you are using one of my customized Blogger Templates, you will need to do NOTHING more to your template code for this comment form to display

Try it and let me know what you think of this new feature by leaving your comments below.

i-Blog(Black) blogger template

2008-10-27T05:17:00.000-07:00

i-Blog is a modern looking theme original designed by designed.nu. I have just adapted from Wordpress Theme to Blogger Template and now it is available for Bloggers.

DEMO | DOWNLOAD

Features included :

Three columns with right sidebars
Modern design
Google Adsense ready (468×60 banner, 120×600 sidebar, 200×200 sidebar)

Easy to install, easy to use. Nothing more

Make a short Archive Widget Cool

2008-10-23T04:09:00.001-07:00

If you blog contains many posts after blogging for a long time, it should
requires lots of space to diplay the links on widget archive of you page. If you
think the list is too long or you wanna save your space, you can shorten it by
following this tip.

Look at the sample image:

As you see, this archive is pretty short and readers can view your posts on
anyday. It doesn't need much space, does it? You can make this short Archive by
copy and paste this section of code to your HTML Widget:

<script type="text/javascript">

home_page = "http://www.vietwebguide.com/";

timezone = "+07:00";

function submitdate(){

year = document.selectdate.year.options[document.selectdate.year.selectedIndex].value;

month = document.selectdate.month.options[document.selectdate.month.selectedIndex].value;

day = document.selectdate.day.options[document.selectdate.day.selectedIndex].value;

tmax = year+"-"+month+"-"+day+"T23:59:59"+timezone;

tmin = year+"-"+month+"-"+day+"T00:00:00"+timezone;

tlink = home_page+"search?updated-max="+encodeURIComponent(tmax)+"&updated-min="+encodeURIComponent(tmin)+"&max-results=20&arview";

if(year=="" || month=="" || day=="") {

alert("Please select a right date!"); return false;

} else {

self.location.href=tlink;

}

}

</script>

<form name="selectdate">Select a date and click <b>[Go]</b>

to view posts in it: <br/>   

<select name="day" size="-1">

<option value="" selected="selected">Day</option>

<option value="01">1</option>

<option value="02">2</option>

<option value="03">3</option>

<option value="04">4</option>

<option value="05">5</option>

<option value="06">6</option>

<option value="07">7</option>

<option value="08">8</option>

<option value="09">9</option>

<option value="10">10</option>

<option value="11">11</option>

<option value="12">12</option>

<option value="13">13</option>

<option value="14">14</option>

<option value="15">15</option>

<option value="16">16</option>

<option value="17">17</option>

<option value="18">18</option>

<option value="19">19</option>

<option value="20">20</option>

<option value="21">21</option>

<option value="22">22</option>

<option value="23">23</option>

<option value="24">24</option>

<option value="25">25</option>

<option value="26">26</option>

<option value="27">27</option>

<option value="28">28</option>

<option value="29">29</option>

<option value="30">30</option>

<option value="31">31</option>

</select>

-

<select name="month" size="-1">

<option value="" selected="selected">Month</option>

<option value="01">1</option>

<option value="02">2</option>

<option value="003">3</option>

<option value="4">4</option>

<option value="05">5</option>

<option value="06">6</option>

<option value="07">7</option>

<option value="08">8</option>

<option value="09">9</option>

<option value="10">10</option>

<option value="11">11</option>

<option value="12">12</option>

</select>

-

<select name="year" size="-1">

<option value="" selected="selected">Year</option>

<option value="2007">2007</option>

<option value="2008">2008</option>

</select>

→

<input type="button" onclick="submitdate()" value="Go"/>

</form>

Replace the red text with your own:

home_page = "http://www.vietwebguide.com/"; : this is your home page. Dont forget add slash / at the end

timezone = "+07:00"; : this is time-zone of your blog setting.

<option value="2007">2007</option>

<option value="2008">2008</option>

You can add other years for this widget, example

<option value="2008">2009</option>

<option value="2008">2010</option>

Anhvo

Most Viewed Monthly widget

2008-10-23T04:06:00.000-07:00

Before, I have introduced to you 2 Most Viewed widgets, Most viewed (without date and month) and Most viewed ver 1. I have innovated both of previous widgets to release a new one, it is Most Viewed Monthly widget version 1.0, which displayed most viewed post titles in recent month.

It is very simple to add this into your blog by creating a HTML/JavaScript element. Copy and paste this section of code into it:

<script type="text/javascript">

limit = n;

</script>

<script src="http://vietwebguide2.googlepages.com/most-viewed-in-month-v10.js"
type="text/javascript"></script>

Where n is the number of post titles that you'd like to display on your widget.
You can change it to 5, 8, or 10.

If you're interested to try this in your site, please give me some feedback to
help me improve it. Whatever you think, I'd love to hear from you!

Anhvo

Cellar Heat: A Free WordPress Theme

2008-10-22T04:52:00.000-07:00

We love our readers. We respect the hard work of designers and developers across the globe. And we try to do our best to make the Web design community stronger and the Web a little bit prettier. Therefore, we ask talented artists and creative professionals to showcase their skills and release something unique and beautiful as a gift to the community. And when designers agree, truly impressive works see the light of day.

Today we are glad to release Cellar Heat: a free professional WordPress theme created by Evan Eckard. The design of this theme focuses on patterns and typography, and it comes in two flavors. It is designed especially for Smashing Magazine and its readers.

Download the theme for free!

You can use the theme freely for all of your projects without any restrictions. However, it’s forbidden to sell or redistribute the theme without both the designer’s and Smashing Magazine’s permission. Please link to this article if you would like to spread the word. You may modify the theme as you wish, but if you plan to release your modification, please ask our permission first.

Demo: Cellar Heat Dark Demo
Preview: Dark version and Light version
Download: Cellar Heat Dark (.zip, 0.8 Mb) and Cellar Heat Light (.zip, 0.8 Mb)
PSD-sources (20 .psd-files, 30.5 Mb)
Release post on Evan Eckard’s blog

Motivation behind the design

Here are some insights into the design and development process from the designer himself.

“After creating the Gumball Special theme based on an older website of mine called Hellbiscuit, I wanted to create a theme similar in layout that wasn’t image-driven like that one. This layout is a unique design that I produced over a couple of years ago, and it’s finally being released.

“At first I wanted to do a dark theme that would contrast with the Gumball Special design. But after creating the dark version, I decided to produce a light version as well. The only real difference between the themes is the images and style sheets. Ninety percent of the code is the same between the light and dark versions.

“Cellar Heat has a few cool features built in: gravatars are enabled, excerpts of previous and next posts appear on each page, the theme is widgetized (although I can’t guarantee they will look hot), no plug-ins need to be installed and a recent comments section appears in the footer.

Feel free to modify the code and design to fit your tastes; just please leave the footer links intact.”

Thank you, Evan. We appreciate your work and good intentions.

Last but not least…

We are regularly looking for creative designers and artists. You may not know it yet, but we may feature you in one of our upcoming posts.

If you would like to release a free high-quality font, a WordPress theme, some wallpapers or an icon set, please contact us. We would like to support you, too (both financially and with the broad coverage of Smashing Magazine).

Creative User Interfaces in Modern Web Design

2008-10-22T04:51:00.001-07:00

The whole may be more than the sum of its parts, but without the parts, there is no whole. Lest that sound like some weird philosophical meandering to you, take comfort in observing the finer aspects of creative and appealing user interface design.

The following list bucks tradition by not being tied to one particular theme; although, as you’ll see, there are subtle threads running through them. While excellent, none of these designs are perfect, and I’ve pointed out room for improvement we can learn from.

Give it a go. Grab a coffee and take time to explore further. As you would a quality timepiece made of thousands of parts, analyze and enjoy how intricate parts come together to create a cohesive experience. Look closely and see what makes each website design tick.

OkayDave

OkayDave.com
I’ve noticed Dave Werner’s portfolio mentioned in passing on Smashing Magazine before and thought it was well worth a closer look, even if it dates to 2006. One basic way to provide focus and emphasis is to desaturate everything except the target element. On OkayDave, all is in black and white until you mouse over an element.

Things get startlingly more vibrant when you actually click something; a burst of colored particles brighten the screen before transitioning to the selected media. It’s a tad on the over-compressed side but only lasts a second. What a great way to combine very artificial and earthly organics (see Dave’s handwriting and scratchy notes, in particular). And, rewarding visitors for clicking will encourage them to spend more time discovering your content.

Vimeoland

Vimeoland
Video-sharing website Vimeo is known for a number of things, foremost among them being an astoundingly consistent user interface, an example being its very user-friendly roadmap. Vimeoland is a playful form of data visualization: little figurines teleport in, representing unique website users and their status. For example, hearts appear above their heads when they like a video. From time to time, an airplane will fly by.

YouTube may be the biggest video website, but its user interface falls short of Vimeo’s elegance. Vimeo’s video quality, which can go up to true high definition, is superior, too. Something worth thinking about the next time you want to make a film easily accessible.

Grooveshark

Grooveshark.com
Looking for music? Grooveshark may have what you want. In a turbulent time when popular mainstays like Pandora and Muxtape have run into legal tangles because of archaic copyright laws, Grooveshark claims to be in the clear, compensating artists for their work.

Alas, this also means that unlike other services, such as imeem, you can’t (at least yet) embed music on your blog. But I was surprised by how many rare tracks that I searched were already available (they apparently reward people for uploading). Two problems I noticed: (1) some broken help files, and (2) the circular progress indicator will keep going infinitely if it can’t play a song. Hopefully they’ll be smarter about that in the future.

But overall the player is very slick: queued songs visually lock together like Legos, elements slide horizontally to show and hide controls and hierarchies as needed, and the overall blue and gray theme — like a shark! — is sleek.

If you want to download songs, your registration needs to be approved. It’s not an automated process yet, and I’m still waiting for my approval.

SpaceCollective

SpaceCollective.org
Into trans-humanism, fringe science, and the far reaches of space? Space Collective bills itself as “a cross-media information and entertainment channel for post-ideological, non-partisan, forward-thinking terrestrials”. And its website is a joy to visit: in the new posts section, fresh content is arranged in a curved-corner matrix, with green tabs to indicate specific projects.

It seems pretty far out at first, and you may not buy some of the beliefs, but even a glimpse of this imagery will uplift your perspective on humanity’s creativity in the cosmos.

Funnel Design Group

FunnelDesignGroup.com
Do you remember the bizarre devices in the first Myst game that combined familiar elements, and by doing so, came off as alien? The “dentist-chair planetarium” hybrid was a striking example of that. When you visit Funnel’s website, you’ll sense a similar atmosphere: gears are churning away, and a little automaton with a lightbulb for a head is there to help you view its work. It’s almost Steampunk-ish.

I appreciate the detail they’ve gone into: selecting a different section makes the art in the O-shaped viewfinder spring a little, and the title up top closes and opens, as if it were a piece of paper in a rotating carousel. (The old-time Glenn Miller music and whirring sounds are fitting, too.)

Viewzi

Viewzi.com
Finally, in the visual search arena, Viewzi’s results aggregate other websites (like Google and Amazon) and present them in the most sensible context it can detect. For example, searching for “Royksopp” (whose “Remind Me” video has been popular on Smashing Magazine) brings up the album view first. Clicking on it brings up a list of the group’s CD covers.

If that doesn’t suit you, multiple other views — like the traditional “Simple Text” and the pseudo-3D “Photo Tag Cloud” — allow you to explore the same data in different ways. They have other views for specialized searches, so try them all out for appropriate media.

GoDesignate

GoDesignate.com
Here’s another fine example of a goodie-hook. The Web developers at Buffalo were inspired to create this after a “‘discussion about whose turn it was to make the tea.” It provides a clean twist on the old “cards in the hat” process and takes seconds to use. The reference to Buffalo at the bottom is a compact pixelfont, a subtle reassurance that they’re not intrusive marketers.

I couldn’t help but ask if this was actually used by the company, and Dan Griffiths, Managing Director, graciously replied:

“Glad you like it! We do use it for all sorts of things still. You should see some of the things people use it for. :)”

“Should I leave my husband?” was one of the strangest ones I have noticed!

Some more from a list of highlights Dan shared with me:

“Why does my boss call me lady?”

“Will Chris ever regain his masculinity?”

“Should I make a new site design based on Buffalo’s design?”

When hooks like this are in tune with your company’s overall image and sense of humor they build brand familiarity through repeated usage, not to mention subsequent smiles.

Hypnoteis

Hypnoteis.nl
Teis Albers is fond of splashy color. His style is more about grungy splashes of paint and pseudo-decoupage, as demonstrated in his gritty depictions of font flourishes set against a backdrop of various animal and human body parts. But similar to Pagano’s website, clicking on any thumbnail will dynamically zoom and enlarge that picture without refreshing the page. While Pagano’s zooms are Flash-based, Albers uses the magic of Highslide JavaScript.

Serge Seidlitz

Serge Seidlitz
But sometimes you want to make everything stand out, and that’s what this guy is here for. Using a mess-on-the-bedroom-floor approach similar to Werner’s, Seidlitz has nothing fancy in the way of mouse-overs. But his motley assemblage of mayhem does invite clicking: he even urges you to “click on things.”

Needless to say, if you keep updating your portfolio with new stuff, maintaining a website like this could become a time-consuming jumble. But if you already have a wealth of work to show off, the discover-my-creative-chaos approach might work for you.

Six Pixels of Separation

Six Pixels of Separation is Mitch Joel’s showcase of social media insights. It looks pretty usual and boring at the first glance, but a closer look reveals a close attention to detail. Consider how sparse graphical elements are used for maximum effect. Embedded podcasts fit perfectly into the theme; it’s relatively easy to navigate, despite the large amount of links; and leaving a comment rewards you with a surprising (but non-annoying) pop-up; try it!

There are too many social media blogs out there that buy into the same generic “Web 2.0″ conventions. Six Pixels bucks that banality with a layout that doesn’t get in the way of “the meat” and is all the better for it.

Fontpark 2.0

Fontpark 2.0
When I see Web typography guides, they’re often in the Roman characters that I’m well familiar with, so it’s refreshing to look beyond this style and bask in what else is happening around the world.

Japan’s Morisawa is a venerable typesetting company, and in addition to a brief but helpful primer on Japanese Kanji Culture, they have created Fontpark, a unique way of looking at characters with hundreds of years of history. Sit back and watch pieces be animated into animals and faces, or be an active participant and submit your work to the gallery.

Like FontStruct, this is a novel way of promoting your paid products with a quality freebie, another kind of goodie-hook. It may not be as funny as CSS Homer, but finding faces in the swashes and strokes is enlightening nonetheless.

Picnik

Picnik.com
Staying on the food theme, here is a Picnik of a very special sort. Sure, you rely on Photoshop for your more heavy-handed tasks, and rising Web-based image editors such as a.viary boast complex features. But when you want to retouch photos in a jiffy, Picnik is nothing short of a usability dream!

From the smooth registration form (observe how password and email confirmation fields are hidden until you need them, reducing the perception of complexity) to the actual “in-the-basket” look and feel of this Flash application, Picnik is a joy to use inside and out. It simply puts other Web-based image editors to shame — or at least inspires them to do better.

Bestiario

Bestiario.org
Fancy more data visualization? This isn’t as playful as Vimeoland but is substantial in its own right. At first, the lack of anti-aliasing may hurt your eyes, but scroll over (or down) the projects and watch the collection unfold. It’s almost like a very graphical elevator.

It’s fun to move your cursor to the right, whereupon the whole gallery will tilt, as if to look at you askance and ask “Now what?” Well, there’s a pop-out collection of tags on the far right, containing another way to navigate the set. And if you love mathematical visuals…

Phatterism

Phatterism.com
This website is one of the neatest ways I’ve seen (even if somewhat impractical) to share a blog (and other media). Upon visiting, Luis Santi Jr. will greet you with ample white space, fidgeting and occasionally gazing to his left, imploring you to check out his stuff. Like Funnel Design, he’s got his own head-bopping music, which reminds me of the Austin Powers movies.

Click “TXT” and Luis goes to work for you, pulling out an index card of his journal entries. His hand even moves a bit unsteadily, adding to the realistic feel. If you click on a title, you’ll see him scribbling a note, then hold it up for you. The shakes are gone now and the handwriting is obviously a font, but what impressed me is how he presents his comments; they, too, are shown as separate note cards.

What a fun way to show yourself off! For more of Santi’s work, see his main portfolio.

Energi Design

Clickenergi.com
From the get-go, Steve Holmes’ compact Flash website doesn’t have very much, but what’s on it is amazing. He has done video tutorials for well-known stock content provider ArtBeats, and you owe it to yourself to watch his demo reel. The earlier, more up-tempo music he used when I first saw this a while ago was better, but the visuals are captivating nonetheless. If you enjoy type-in-motion videos like Justice’s “DVNO,” this will definitely appeal to you.

Mirror’s Edge

MirrorsEdge.com
It seems like every big game title coming out nowadays needs a Flash website. They’re usually very glossy and don’t have a lot of content, but the techniques involved are well worth experiencing. Mirror’s Edge, which is due for release in November 2008, has already been acclaimed for its aesthetics. Promoting a game with authoritarian cyberpunk gloom but set in a very clean white-blue city, the website complements it almost perfectly.

The waving of the main character’s hair and the slow rotation of the city are nice little touches. Games with such a striking and individual look are rare (some of my favorites include the Wipeout series and Ico) and beg to be copied. Of course, the irony is that copycatting leads to angry cries that the spawns are too derivative.

Observe also that the buttons and headers are slightly askew but not horrendously so, lending a certain sense of dynamic imbalance that reflects the fleet-footed parkour seen in the game.

Like.com

Like.com
Visual search continues to rise. A couple of decades ago, the mere idea of searching through thousands of catalogued images seemed improbable. Today, we can enjoy it everyday on websites like Flickr. Websites such as Riya’s Like.com go a few steps further, and they claim to be “slowly innovating” by improving facial and object recognition. Like a handbag but think the material’s a bit too shiny? Narrow not just by color but by style, and feel like you have more investment in (and control over) the overall search process.

Someday, this will be commonplace too, but until then, it’s flirty fun to drill through look-alike Halloween costumes to pick out one that’s just right for you.

Navigaya

Navigaya.com
Think visual search is too quiet? Navigaya is another value-added search aggregator with a twist: by default, as you search, a halftone-mottled music video (from YouTube) plays in the background. Most of the selections are electronic dance, and, while not immediately obvious, you can reveal the transport controls by moving your cursor to the top of the screen.

Highlights to look out for: the blurred in-and-out (not just faded) effect for hover tips and certain menus, and dotted icons for arrows and other buttons. It’s a tight, dark design that gives the appearance of staying in the background even when it’s in the foreground.

Overall, Navigaya is too claustrophobic at times for my taste compared to Viewzi, because it mainly shows its search engine results in windows within windows. But if you like your search activities to be an information onslaught, give this a spin.

What common threads can you identify running through different design styles? The surfaces may look different, but the underlying spirits and code may have more in common than you think. Take a moment to gaze, absorb, and mentally deconstruct; it will increase your overall understanding of why great Web design works.

5 excellent wordpress admin themes and more....

2008-10-22T04:36:00.001-07:00

Tired of default wordpress admin themes? Looking for something to spice up your wordpress’ admin section? Here is a great list to help you get started. The order of these admin themes is based on my opinion (#1 is the best )

1. Fluency wordpress admin theme

Features

Smooth grey color scheme
Menus rearranged, main menus down left, sub menus across the top
Easy installation
v1.1 is fully compatible with the stable release of WordPress 2.5
v1.2 is fully compatible with the stable release of WordPress 2.6

2. Admin Drop Down Menu wordpress admin theme

Features

Hide the various admin menus that are splattered all over the place in WordPress 2.5
Insert a new menu on the top dark grey bar, which is unused (wasted space!) otherwise
Remove a few useless links on the upper right corner
Tested with Firefox 2.x, Opera 9.x and MSIE 6
Easy installation

3. JP Admin Stylish Blue wordpress admin theme

Features

Keep the same default admin structure
Professional dark blue color scheme
Easy installation

4. Leopard Admin wordpress admin theme

Features

Links have been moved to the sidebar with icons
Professional design
Easy installation

5. Baltic Amber wordpress admin theme

Features

Create your own colour scheme by specifying only two base colours
Have the theme colours change randomly every time you reload the page, or at any time interval you choose
Improve the scanability of the plugin list by replacing the darker background colour with a green ribbon on the side for the activated plugins.
Easy installation

Hint

We will get a killing wordpress admin theme when combining Fluency (#1) and Admin Drop Down Menu (#2) into one. Yeah, I’m using this admin theme

Conclusion

Customizable admin color schemes are an awesome addition to WordPress 2.5+ and you can be assured that another large design overhaul won’t be applied again any time soon.

Make Random Banners for Blogspot

2008-10-18T04:44:00.000-07:00

Have you ever visited a website or a blog? And when you refresh or reload it, the banners of header change in turn or randomly. If you have never visited it so far, you can visit http://jaya-example.blogspot.com. Try to refresh the pages a few times or click the links available in that blog so that the pages can be reloaded. Look at the banners or images in the header; they can appear in turn randomly, right. This random header banners can give new situation in our blog or website. Would you like to know how it happens? Just read the rest of this posting, ok!

There are some steps you have to do to make random banner, they are;

First Step

The first step is that you must have some banners; three, four or five banners depend on your will. To make the banners, you can use some program, for example adobe Photoshop, CorelDraw and others. I am sorry because I am not the expert of making banner, so I won't explain here. Just find them in some banner provider or seller in the internet.

Second Step

In the second step, you have to upload the banners in hosting you usually save the images, for example www.photobucket.com.

After the uploading is finished, copy the URL Address of the banners and paste them in notepad or another text editor. These URL address will be inserted into the script that I will give

Third Step

In the third step, you have to insert into the template code you have. The script is

<script type="text/javascript">         
var banner= new Array()          
banner[0]="bannerURL0"          
banner[1]="bannerURL1"          
banner[2]="bannerURL2"          
banner[3]="bannerURL3"          
banner[4]="bannerURL4"          
banner[5]="bannerURL5"          
banner[6]="bannerURL6"          
banner[7]="bannerURL7"          
banner[8]="bannerURL8"          
banner[9]="bannerURL9"          
var random=Math.floor(10*Math.random());          
document.write("<style>");          
document.write("#header {");          
document.write(' background:url("' + banner[random] + '") no-repeat top left;');          
document.write(" }");          
document.write("</style>");          
</script>

If you see the script above, I give 10 banners but 10 is not absolute, you can add as many banners as you want. But remember to you add the code in var random=Mat.

Because blogger template has two kinds of template, classic template and new template, placement of the code/script is different and I will divide the explanations into two parts. But before explaining the steps, I would like to give the sample code that contains I have uploaded and have the URL address. The URL addresses are:

http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t253/rohman24/banner_1.gif
http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t253/rohman24/banner_2.gif
http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t253/rohman24/banner_3.gif
http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t253/rohman24/banner_4.gif
http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t253/rohman24/banner5.gif
http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t253/rohman24/banner_6.gif
http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t253/rohman24/banner_7.gif
http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t253/rohman24/banner_8.gif
http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t253/rohman24/banner_9.gif
http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t253/rohman24/banner_10.gif

And the banner sample is as follows (the image has been minimized]

The script sample of the banners is:

And below are the steps to make random banners;

For Classic Template

Log in into blogger with your id
Click Template
Click Edit HTML
Copy the whole HTML code and paste into notepad and save. It is aimed to anticipate if you make mistake in editing your template and you still have the back up.
Copy and pate the following code under <div id='header'>

<script type="text/javascript"> var banner= new Array() banner[0]="http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t253/rohman24/banner_1.gif" banner[1]="http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t253/rohman24/banner_2.gif" banner[2]="http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t253/rohman24/banner_3.gif" banner[3]="http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t253/rohman24/banner_4.gif" banner[4]="http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t253/rohman24/banner_5.gif" banner[5]="http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t253/rohman24/banner_6.gif" banner[6]="http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t253/rohman24/banner_7.gif" banner[7]="http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t253/rohman24/banner_8.gif" banner[8]="http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t253/rohman24/banner_9.gif" banner[9]="http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t253/rohman24/banner_10.gif" var random=Math.floor(10*Math.random()); document.write("<style>"); document.write("#header {"); document.write(' background:url("' + banner[random] + '") no-repeat top left;'); document.write(" }"); document.write("</style>"); </script>
Save the full template
Finished

For New Template

Log in into blogger with your id
Click Layouts
Click Page Elements tab
Click Add a Gadget
Click HTML/JavaScript
Copy pastes the following code into it.

<script type="text/javascript"> var banner= new Array() banner[0]="http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t253/rohman24/banner_1.gif" banner[1]="http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t253/rohman24/banner_2.gif" banner[2]="http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t253/rohman24/banner_3.gif" banner[3]="http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t253/rohman24/banner_4.gif" banner[4]="http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t253/rohman24/banner_5.gif" banner[5]="http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t253/rohman24/banner_6.gif" banner[6]="http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t253/rohman24/banner_7.gif" banner[7]="http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t253/rohman24/banner_8.gif" banner[8]="http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t253/rohman24/banner_9.gif" banner[9]="http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t253/rohman24/banner_10.gif" var random=Math.floor(10*Math.random()); document.write("<style>"); document.write("#header {"); document.write(' background:url("' + banner[random] + '") no-repeat top left;'); document.write(" }"); document.write("</style>"); </script>
Click SAVE CHANGES
Finished

Remember, the codes above are only sample, please change the URL address of the banners with your own URL address of the banners.

There might be some templates and the header banners are not suitable with your interest or will. Actually, you can change the size of the header. For example, I use minima template;

@media all {     
#header {      
width:660px;      
margin:0 auto 10px;      
border:1px solid #ccc;      
}

The code above show that the width of the banner header id 660 pixel,s we can change that value with our interest value. And the height of the banner header is not defined. Now, in order to make our banner match with our own, we must insert the additional code as a definition.

For example; the height you want is 150px, then the additional code is height:150px; so the code above will look like below;

@media all {     
#header {      
width:660px;      
height:150px;      
margin:0 auto 10px;      
border:1px solid #ccc;      
}

Each template is different but blogger template usually write #header in its HTML code in the template.

Good Luck!!!

Magazine Template For Blogspot Ver 2

2008-10-18T02:03:00.000-07:00

1- Visionary Reloaded, Magazine Style Blogger Theme:

Demo | Download

2- Template Tabs, Magazine Style Blogger Theme:

Demo | Download

3- Revolution, Magazine Style Blogger Theme:

Demo | Download

4- Langit, Magazine Style Blogger Template

Demo | Download

5- Maggo, Magazine Style Blogger Template:

Demo | Download

6- Statement Blogger Theme (Originally by BlogOhBlog):

Demo | Download

7- Adpress Blogger Theme (Originally by BlogOhBlog):

8- DF Marine

9- Vibrant

10 - Connexion

Enjoy and feel free to leave your comments / suggestions.

Design24h.com

How to Add Label Cloud Widget For Blogger Ver 2 ?

2008-10-18T01:55:00.000-07:00

Blogger Hacks- How To Put Widgets Label Cloud Or Widgets Tag Cloud On Blogger Sidebar

A tag cloud or label cloud for blogger is a list of all the labels used within a blogger blog displayed with style.You can see a demo of the Label cloud widget here on my site. This Tag Cloud Widget was originally developed by phydeaux3. I have just simplified and made it easier to install..

You can see a good implementation of this label cloud widget on one of our readers blog -Speak Media Blog.
First Of all Goto Your blogger Layout>Page Elements page and add a Labels Widget there..You can Do that using the Add a Page Element Option on that page.

Blogger Hacks- How To Put Widgets Label Cloud Or Widgets Tag Cloud On Blogger Sidebar

Choose to sort the labels Alphabetically when prompted.

After Adding the Label Widget Goto Layout>Edit Html (Do not expand the widget templates for the sake of easy explanation)

You will find some code similar to


<b:widget id='Label1' locked='false' title='Labels' type='Label'/>

Add Code New


<b:widget id='Label1' locked='false' title='Label Cloud' type='Label'>
<b:includable id='main'>
<b:if cond='data:title'>
<h2><data:title/></h2>
</b:if>
<div class='widget-content'>
 <div id='labelCloud'/>
  <p align='center'>
  <script type='text/javascript'>
  var cloudMin = 1;
  var maxFontSize = 25;
  var maxColor = [0,255,0];
  var minFontSize = 10;
  var minColor = [0,0,0];
  var lcShowCount = false;
  // Don't change anything past this point -----------------
  // Cloud function s() ripped from del.icio.us
  function s(a,b,i,x){
  if(a&gt;b){
  var m=(a-b)/Math.log(x),v=a-Math.floor(Math.log(i)*m)
  }
  else{
  var m=(b-a)/Math.log(x),v=Math.floor(Math.log(i)*m+a)
  }
  return v
  }

var c=[];
  var labelCount = new Array(); 
  var ts = new Object;
  <b:loop values='data:labels' var='label'>
  var theName = &quot;<data:label.name/>&quot;;
  ts[theName] = <data:label.count/>;
  </b:loop>
for (t in ts){
  if (!labelCount[ts[t]]){
  labelCount[ts[t]] = new Array(ts[t])
  }
  }
  var ta=cloudMin-1;
  tz = labelCount.length - cloudMin;
  lc2 = document.getElementById(&#39;labelCloud&#39;);
  ul = document.createElement(&#39;ul&#39;);
  ul.className = &#39;label-cloud&#39;;
  for(var t in ts){
  if(ts[t] &lt; cloudMin){
  continue;
  }
  for (var i=0;3 &gt; i;i++) {
  c[i]=s(minColor[i],maxColor[i],ts[t]-ta,tz)
  } 
  var fs = s(minFontSize,maxFontSize,ts[t]-ta,tz);
  li = document.createElement(&#39;li&#39;);
  li.style.fontSize = fs+&#39;px&#39;;
a = document.createElement(&#39;a&#39;);
  a.title = ts[t]+&#39; Posts in &#39;+t;
  a.style.color = &#39;rgb(&#39;+c[0]+&#39;,&#39;+c[1]+&#39;,&#39;+c[2]+&#39;)&#39;;
  a.href = &#39;/search/label/&#39;+encodeURIComponent(t);
  if (lcShowCount){
  span = document.createElement(&#39;span&#39;);
  span.innerHTML = &#39;(&#39;+ts[t]+&#39;) &#39;;
  span.className = &#39;label-count&#39;;
  a.appendChild(document.createTextNode(t));
  li.appendChild(a);
  li.appendChild(span);
  }
  else {
  a.appendChild(document.createTextNode(t));
  li.appendChild(a);
  }
  ul.appendChild(li);
  abnk = document.createTextNode(&#39; &#39;);
  ul.appendChild(abnk);
  }
  lc2.appendChild(ul); 
  </script>
  </p>
  <noscript>
  <ul>
  <b:loop values='data:labels' var='label'>
  <li>
  <b:if cond='data:blog.url == data:label.url'>
  <data:label.name/>
  <b:else/>
  <a expr:href='data:label.url'><data:label.name/></a>
  </b:if>
  (<data:label.count/>)
  </li>
  </b:loop>
  </ul>
  </noscript>
  <b:include name='quickedit'/>
  </div>
</b:includable>
</b:widget>

Now find


]]></b:skin>

Add CSS Label Cloud Widgets for Blogger


#labelCloud {text-align:center;font-family:arial,sans-serif;}
#labelCloud .label-cloud li{display:inline;background-image:none !important;padding:0 5px;margin:0;vertical-align:baseline !important;border:0 !important;}
#labelCloud ul{list-style-type:none;margin:0 auto;padding:0;}
#labelCloud a img{border:0;display:inline;margin:0 0 0 3px;padding:0}
#labelCloud a{text-decoration:none}
#labelCloud a:hover{text-decoration:underline}
#labelCloud li a{}
#labelCloud .label-cloud {}
#labelCloud .label-count {padding-left:0.2em;font-size:9px;color:#000}
#labelCloud .label-cloud li:before{content:&quot;&quot; !important}
]]></b:skin>

Save your template and now you should get a working Label Cloud On your Blog.

Magazine Template 2

2008-10-16T22:15:00.001-07:00

Today, I would like to launch a template which is called “ Magazine Template 2 ”. Please check out http://magazinetemplate2.blogspot.com to see the demo of magazine template 2.

This template has been tested in the following browser

FireFox 3.0.1, Opera 9.51, Google Chrome, Safari 3.1.2, Flock 1.2.5, Netscape Navigator 9.0.0.6, Internet Explorer 7 .

Generally, this template is good at all browser except at Internet explorer 7. There is a little bug at posting column but I will fix it in the future

Terms and service

By downloading and using our blogger template, you agree to the following terms:

The template is free to download
You may NOT resell the template
Don't delete A Credits link to this blog
You may modify, translate or distribute all of the template
You may use the template for personal or commercial projects

Below is the link to download it

Enjoy the new template of your blog!

Free Software Vector Flower Art

2008-10-16T22:09:00.000-07:00

Magazine Daily Inspired: free professional Blogger Template new

2008-10-16T22:06:00.000-07:00

Finally, after a lot of requests I released the "Daily Inspired" template for all Blogger users for free. This post explains how to customize it. If you have some problems or suggests please add a comment. In the next days I'll update this section with news and new tips about this template.

You can download this template (an html file you can customize quickly using, for example, Dreamweaver) at the following link but, first to use it on your blog, read carefully the disclaimer.

Download this Blogger Template

Disclaimer

PLEASE, READ THIS! This is an highly customized Blogger template which I suggest to use only if you have familiarity with HTML, CSS and Blogger. Before to make changes on your actual Blogger template, save a copy of your template on your local hard disk, so, if something go wrong with the update, you can restore it. Take a mind, if you use custom Widgets on your actual Blogger template, they will be removed using this template. I'm not responsible for eventual problems. Ok?

Customize Template

Add Blog Logo
To add your logo on this template find this code:

... and add a logo image within <td> element instead of "Your logo here".

Add tab on the navigation bar
If you want to add a new tab on the navigation bar find this comment:

...and add this code:

Then, create a new post on blogger (= a new page...), add some content, publish it and copy the URL of this new post instead of POST_URL within the previous code. In this way your post will be a not a simple "post" but a page (for example take a look at my Tutorials page).

Search field
In order to use custom search on this template find this code:

<div id="search-bar">
<form action="http://YOUR_SITE.blogspot.com/search" method="get">

...and change YOUR_SITE.blogspot.com/search with the URL of your blog. For example on this site is woork.blogspot.com/search

Customized Home Page
You can customize you Blogger home page adding a special section which will appear only on your home page. For example, on my Blog I added this section:

How to do it? Find this code:

... and add some HTML code which will be displayed only on home page.

Your name below each post title
To customize the name below each post title find this code:

<i>by <a href="#">Your Name</a></i>

...and change Your Name with your real name or an alias, and change the link to a page with some information about you.

Add sections on the sidebar
If you want to create new sections on the sidebar use this code:

<h3><div>Section Title</div></h3>
<div class="section-w">

</div>

About me section
To add your personal information find this code:

...and customize this section adding an image and a short description of you.

Recent Post
You may active a Feedburner account to enable Recent Post and Recent Comments list. I used FeedBurner BuzzBoost service to add a section with recent entries and recent comments. If you have a FeedBurner account login, clik on "Publicize" tab and select "BuzzBoost" service:

Follow instructions on the page and copy and paste BuzzBoost code on this template, within the section Recent Post.

Take a look at this post for other tips about blogger:
7 Tips to design professional blog layout using Blogger

Categories on the sidebar
Take a look at my categories section on the sidebar:

In order to display categories on two columns I didn't use automatic Blogger categories list but I created manually each category using this code:

<li><a href="http://YOUR_BLOG.com/search/label/LABEL?max-results=10">Label</a></li>

You can use the previous code to add new categories on categories section. If you know an alternative way to display categories (automatically) splitted on two column please add a comment!

Download
Download this Blogger Template

Top 10 Blogger Templates "HOT" For Blogspot

2008-10-16T22:05:00.000-07:00

Charcoal is a great Blogger theme converted from the original WP theme by Jinsona. Most of the WordPress themes lose their feel and shine when they are converted to Blogger template but we don’t see anything like that here. It is a two column theme with a navigation bar, built in feed and bookmark icons.
Demo

Art Imagination By Jackbook

It is a vivid, grunge three column Blogger template with a beautiful background design in it. It should be nice for blogs which focus on design and web development or the ones who swear by Photoshop.

Demo

Enlighten

Enlighten is a simple with not much bells and whistles. The beautiful glossy blue gives it a heavenly feel in a and black background.
Demo

Naturescharm

The main reason why this theme has been added into this list is its cool navigation bar. It’s pretty light and I believe you can also change its header as per your needs which is reason enough for giving it a try.
Demo

Dreamwork Redux

The black background design makes this Blogger theme stand out from the others. This template has some built in features like Recent Posts, Recent Comments, Archives and Categories List.

Demo

Capung

Capung is a single column Blogger theme with a navigation bar to link other pages and an elaborate footer you can utilize to add your widgets or to put ads. This theme is ideal for Photobloggers if only you are damant on using Blogger because there are far better WordPress themes for Photo Blogs.

Demo

Dark World

Dark World is originally a WordPress theme which has been transported to Blogger from the Hive Designs. The 2 column layout is pretty simple which doesn’t steal your eyes away from the content.

Demo

Vector Lover

Vector Lover is another WordPress template transported for the Blogger. It is fully customizable and has an inbuilt search engine bar. Yuu can also change the colors from the control panel.

Demo

Zanblue

Zanblue has also been converted from a theme by Ophelia Nicholson. This them happens to have some mouse over effects with my favorite sun-ray design on its header.

Demo

Daily Inspired

It’s impossible not to talk about this theme by an Italian designer Antonio Lupetti when you are talking about Blogger templates. Daily Inspired is a free Blogger professional looking magazine style theme which also means it is your best bet if you want to set up an online magazine on Blogger. Who will create a magazine on Blogger is the question now?

Demo

Share My Template(Design Collective) Free

2008-10-14T22:07:00.001-07:00

Pro Magazine is a free professional magazine style theme designed by Nngmok and was converted to Blogger template by me. Even though Pro Magazine blogger template doesn’t have middle category bar because of the limit of Blogspot ~~(and/or the limit of my skill)~~, it is still a high quality must-have theme.

DEMO

Features included :

Two/Three columns depend on your cutomization
Professional design with magazine style
Built-in search box
Three footer widgets
Banner ad ready (468×60)(3 Baner)
Google Adsense ready (300×250 rectangle, 120×600 sidebar)
Read More Automatic
Nice Numbered Page Navigation For Blogger(Auto)
Feed RRS Email
Loading Fast

How to Create an Effective Print Advertisement - Tips for Graphic Designers

2008-10-14T22:02:00.001-07:00

How to Create an Effective Print Ad – The Unconventional Wisdom of an Ad Maverick

Before writing this article, I perused the web looking to see what “experts” had to say about the subject of print ad design. The general consensus is to play it safe. Pshaw, I say! True enough, if you stick to tried and true formulas, there is no danger of hosing up your ad, but if you are brave, amazing things can happen. Of course, this is just my opinion based on my personal experiences in designing ads for clients and it is definitely a riskier proposition. So if you like to play it safe, you may want to look elsewhere, but if you ready to take a risk with potential big rewards, read on my friend.

Step One: Decide What Your Print Advertisement is Selling Before You Try to Design It

Are you selling a specific product or the company as a whole? Either way, you need to figure out what makes what you are selling special and valuable to the potential buyer. Let me be the first to tell you, it is NOT because you or your product is the best. Nor is it because you are the most at something unless it is quantifiable. People are inundated with “We have the best burgers, advice, candy, _insert your product or service here_”. It means nothing and when I say nothing, I really mean it so don’t even think about it. As far as “the most” goes, never claim to be “The most reputable, professional, knowledgeable, _insert your adjective here_”, because no one will believe you. Now, if you can claim, “The most cars sold in North Carolina” or “The most widely read newspaper in Charlotte”, that is a claim that can be quantified and therefore can establish a true leadership position. True leadership is a great selling point because people are comfortable with buying your product or service if everyone else buys it too. I like to call this the Lemming Effect. If you can’t claim a true leadership position, you need to sell the sizzle not the steak. By selling the sizzle, I mean sell the main benefit of your product or service. Tell the reader what’s in it for him if he buys your product. For example DON’T sell this, “Reliable Investment Strategies.” DO sell this, “Our Clients Average a 20% Higher Return on Investments. You can too.” You are selling the benefit of investing with your company.

Step Two: Formulate a Concept for Your Print Advertisement Design

Now that you know what you are selling you are ready to formulate a concept. The “experts” say look at several competing companies and do something similar, but not identical. I say look at your competition and so something entirely different. I mean think about it, if you are just like everyone else, why would anyone pay attention? The objective is to thoughtfully set yourself apart. Don’t do something just for the sake of being different, your concept has to make sense for the publication and the audience. Think of some of the most successful advertising campaigns whether it be print or broadcast. They are not obvious or trite. The launch of Infinity Autos never showed a car. “Got Milk?” pictured celebrities with milk mustaches, not an image of a glass of milk. Most recently, Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty features real women, not models, not product shots, yet pictures of nude 50 year old women are sending products off the shelves. Think outside the box, but be smart about appealing to your demographic.

Step Three: Write Down The Copy for Your Print Advertisement Layout

This is something everybody thinks they can do. They can’t. Copywriting is something best left to a professional, but no matter who writes the copy, there are a few irrefutable truths to consider. First, people don’t read content. They skim it. You have precious few words to get your point across. Remember not to talk about how great your company or product is, emphasize the benefit to potential buyers.. Most, importantly keep it brief. Next, stay on point! You have already decided what you are selling, only advertise that one thing. If you are advertising a product, write about the benefits of that product and don’t try to cram the entire company history into the copy or the ad will loose its efficacy. Lastly, there should always be a call to action. Tell your client to buy your product, visit your website or call you…now!

Step Four: Putting It All Together

The first thing you need to consider is white space, white space, white space. White space can be any color, really. It just needs to be space clear of copy or distracting graphics. A cluttered ad turns people off. The more white space you have, the more likely one will read your ad. Make sure your headline, imagery and copy all tie in and flow well together. And just so that you know, your logo doesn’t need to be the size of a house. It needs to be large enough to be evident, but that’s it.

Step 5: Submit and Repeat

Assuming you have chosen an appropriate publication, you should run your ad multiple times. People expect their phones to ring off the hook after one publication. It rarely works that way. Frequency is the most important factor in getting readers to contact you. If you have run an ad 3 or more times and you haven’t gotten a call, there is probably a problem with the ad or the publication you choose. If it does begin working after several runs, change the ad out periodically to keep things fresh.

In short, do what you can, hire a professional to do what you can’t and always think outside the box.

Don't Forget To Check Out Our Resources Page for Print Advertising

And Our Second Resources Page for Print Advertising

Also Check Out Our List of Free Print Design Templates

More Articles Online About Print Ad Design and Layout

Basic Concepts on Advertising?

3 Tips For Taking Good Photos For Websites or Print Ads

10 Tips to better print design

What To Remember For Successful Print Designs

Effective Yellow Pages Ad Design - 8 Steps to Guarantee Your Success

Graphic Design Tips to Make Your Printed Materials Stand Out

Magazine Advertising - Tips for Getting the Most For Your Advertising Dollar

Some tips on advertising and marketing…..

Real Estate Flyers - 10 Tips You Must Know

Article written by Joann Stylianos, owner of Big Fish Media an advertising and design agency providing Charlotte website design and Lake Norman website design in North Carolina.

List of Graphic Design Podcasts on Topics Graphic Design, Web Design, Typography and More

2008-10-14T22:00:00.000-07:00

List of Graphic Design Podcasts on Topics Graphic Design, Web Design, Typography and More

Podcasting, is a radio show like production that is typically listened to on an iPod (hence the 'pod in podcasting) or other audio player that supports mp3 . Many of us don't realize that there are many podcasts on graphic design as well as many other topics. I have found a load of design related podcasts that I am sure will peak your interests. Just think of it as radio shows geared towards you and your love of design. You will even find Podcasts on Photoshop, Illustrator, Typography, Freelancing, as well as Web Design and Graphic Design. Podcasting is not unlike time-shifted video software and devices like TiVo, which let you watch what you want when you want by recording and storing video, except that podcasting is used for audio and is currently free of charge. Note, however, that this technology can be used to push any kind of file, including software updates, pictures, and videos.

Below you will find a large list of graphic design related podcasts. Enjoy!

49 Sparks

The 49Sparks Podcast is focused on design and trends. It's mostly video because that way you see the people, their passion and what it is they're talking about. These design podcasts are about one minute long because that way you know where the important stuff is - and we know your time is precious!

The Freelancer : Marsh Graphic Design

Lindsay Marsh, owner of Marsh Graphic Design has created several audio and video podcasts she calls the Freelancer. They cover various topics related to the freelance graphic designer. She plans on doing these pretty regularly and from what we see there is a lot of potential here. I suggest you check them out.

.Net Magazine

Paul Boag is the main voice on this podcast and has various big names in the industry (in the UK) come on the show and discuss various web design architectures and more technical aspects of web design in general. They cover a healthy array of things in the news with web design as well as talk about new trends in web design. A great podcast for those interested in the programming and business side of web design.

Audible Ajax Podcast

Ajaxians get together to talk about the big news in the last month or so. We discuss IE 8, the state of standards, Acid3 testing, the Open Web, and more.

Be A Design Group

Be A Design Group is a podcast / blog for graphic designers. It was created in March of 2004 by Adrian Hanft and Bennett Holzworth. In their relatively short history, they have grown to be one of the most widely read graphic design podcasts around. Their authors are all practicing designers, and that is the main audience that they write to. None of them are celebrities, and you probably wouldn’t even recognize their work if you saw it. Their belief is that to be a great designer you must be an active growing designer. That means that they don’t know all the answers, but they are enthusiastic about figuring things out. They expect that their ideas are going to be challenged, and enjoy nothing more than a passionate debate.

Boag World

Boagworld began as the personal blog of Paul Boag, where he mainly discussed web design issues. However, Paul quickly discovered that writing was hard work and so turned to the emerging medium of podcasting.

Be A Design

Be a Design Group is an invitation to all people to participate in design. It is a place where designers can test new ideas, share observations, and comment on cultural trends. Their definition of design is intentionally broad so that the subject matter of their posts can be diverse and unlimited.

Cocobongo artworks

Cocobongo artworks Motion-graphics & Interactive Media

Designer Network

Podcasting subscription management is a benefit for the education of graphic design students and is an important historical reference for graphic design researchers. The global accessibility of this new media provides students both in a traditional classroom and in WBE to have the same access to information. The creation of this website that connects students and researchers with design-based presentations and lectures will enrich the collective knowledge base of graphic design.

Design Flux

A Pocast and DVD Magaine about Motion Graphics and Design.

Dexigner

Delivering design related news, events, competitions, and resources, Dexigner is the leading online portal for designers. Dexigner also provides a design directory, database, agenda and weekly newsletter.

Dreamweaver Podcasts

Free Dreamweaver Video Tutorial Podcasts.

Engines OF Creation

A podcast devoted to providing insight into web related issues, trends and design and develop practices.

Graphic Design Forum

A podcast is available from graphic design forum about recent design topics on the boards.

Graphics and Web Design Tutorials

Graphic Design and Web Design related podcasts. Learn to apply filters, effects, and gradient mesh to artwork in Adobe Illustrator

Graphicdesignpodcast

Hiring a graphic designer can be an equally fun and infuriating process. Where do I find a good designer? How much do they charge? How do I know beyond my own taste if this work is good? Who owns the art? These questions and more are answered.

Indesign Secrets

Adobe InDesign is taking the publishing world by storm. But if you try to find reliable information about InDesign on the Web you'll find yourself scouring Adobe's site or muddling through dozens of other sites for a tip or two.

Lunar's Podcast

Lunar Design partnerships with our clients, both large & small, have won awards, received rave reviews in publications & are part of museum collections around the world. Our greatest tribute, how ever is when client returns year after year to explore new ideas, fresh products & original brands. Please take a look at some of the products born from these long standing relationship, & some new collaborate work.

PodCastDirectory.com

Podcast about almost every thing.

Photoshop Tutorials by Dr. Photoshop

Learn Photoshop and digital media tips and tutorial through video and audio. Its easy on the eye. We will show some tips and tricks for people of all skills.

Photoshop User TV Podcast

Watch each week as "The Photoshop Guys" (Dave Cross, Matt Kloskowski, and Scott Kelby) from the National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP) share the hottest Adobe Photoshop tutorials, the latest insider tricks, and the coolest timesaving, job-saving shortcuts to make your time in Photoshop more productive, more efficient, and more fun. Now entering it's second year as one of the world's top-ranked video Podcasts, new 30-minute episodes of Photoshop User TV are posted each Monday, and include the latest Photoshop news, step-by-step tutorials, interviews and tips from the leading more….

Pro Photography Show

The photo show for pro's, aspiring pro's, and photographers who want to go further. ProPhotoShow.net is the broadcast & web resource for photographers. Talk, news, tips and forums. Business ideas, shooting tech...more

Pod Been

A podcast to share of knowledge that I have learned over the years. This is the first volume of the series, an introduction to logo

Quick Tips

Tune in Each week as Photoshop Expert Justin Seeley takes you through a new step-by-step Photoshop video tutorial featuring some of the hottest industry tips, tricks, and time saving workarounds.

Rookie Designer

Rookie Designer was founded by Adam Hay in 2005, about one year into the growth of this new medium referred to as podcasting.Tired of the typical jargon laden, elitist discussions about the design field of work, Adam set out to create a resource for ALL designers, young and old, experienced and non. Born was the Rookie Designer podcast, bringing tips, techniques and discussion delivered in an easy-to-understand format.

Web AXE

Practical web accessibility tips. Podcast and blog for programmers, writers, artists, project managers, or anyone else interested in techniques for web development with accessibility in mind

Web Design Show

2 designers talk about the basics of web design hopefully in a funny, entertaining way.

You Suck at WEB DESIGN

You Suck at Web Design” is a humorous (attempting to be, that is) writing project about life as a web designer in our current flurry of web acronyms, standards compliance, WYSIWYG, style sheets, hacks, digging, 2.0-this and Ajax-that. It’s mostly a commentary on the life of a freelancer, and a horribly lop-side disdain for the corporate world and it’s micro management.

Franklin McMahon Studio Podcast

A podcast for creative media artists involved in photography, animation, graphic design, music, broadcast, moviemaking and other multimedia. Media Artist Secrets provides inspiration, tells how to market your talents, fine-tune your vision, etc.

The Prepared Mind Podcast

The Prepared Mind focuses on discussion about the graphic design industry and the challenges facing it.

Altyris Podcast

A monthly program from the creative minds of Altyris Advertising covering trends and strategies in marketing, advertising, public relations, graphic design, etc.

Poor Irishman Internet Marketing Podcast

Poor Irishman.com provides web marketing, graphic design and layout, content creation and management, domain name registration, and secure website hosting services.

Design Matters Podcast

Design Matters with Debbie Millman is an opinionated and provocative internet talk radio show. The show combines a stimulating point of view about graphic design, branding and cultural anthropology. In a business world dependent on change, design is one of the few differentiators left. Explore the challenging and compelling canvas of today’s design world with Debbie Millman and her weekly guests live every Friday from 3-4pm est.

Type Radio Podcast

Typeradio is the the radio channel on type & design. Type is speech on paper. Typeradio is speech on type. Typeradio is a Microfm broadcast, a MP3 internet radio stream and a podcast station. Since 2004 Typeradio (which is Donald Beekman, Liza Enebeis aka LoveLiza & Underware) is visiting different design events around the world, to meet designers and to talk.

The Web 2.0 Show Podcast

The Web 2.0 show focuses on interviewing the developers and entrepreneurs who are creating the next generation of web services and media delivery. Its still a young show but they are detyermined to make it work. Check back at this one in about 3 months and I guarantee you’ll see them blowing up the spot.

AIGA Design Conference Podcast

AIGA has gotten it right! They have supplied podcasts of all of the main stage presentations from their 2005 Design Conference. In addition to the podcasts, they have also provided bonus slides and backstage interviews.

List of Vector Conversion Software - 30+ Tools to Turn Photos into Line Art and Illustrations

2008-10-14T21:58:00.000-07:00

I love Vector Magic, a free online vectorization tool. It is a really cool browser-based tool that can be used to turn a photograph into an illustration. It doesn't always succeed in getting that look that you might be looking for, but it does a pretty good job. I usually just use it to play around with photos to see what Vector Magic can do with it, but it also can be very useful if you want to convert a photo into an illustration. I started to wonder how many other vectorization tools and software packages there were out there and I was surprised to find out that there are a ton o them. Basically, most of these tools turn Raster / Bitmap / Photo Images into Line Art / Illustrations / Vector Art. What you might be wondering is:

What is the difference between Raster and Vector Images?

There are many differences between vector and raster images. The main difference is that vector images are able to be stretched or shrunk without losing any quality within the image, while raster images cannot be stretched without looking pixelated and degraded in quality. The reason for this is that a vector image is really a mathematical equation and are composed of paths and lines and are either curved or straight. However, raster images are composed of pixels. For this reason, logos are normally vector graphics because they can be shown huge or small and still have the same quality. I hope that you can now see why vector graphics are loved by graphic designers.If you are still confused, here is a nice collection of Vector Vs. Raster Images Articles.

List of Vector Conversion Software - Tools to Turn Photos into Line Art and Illustrations

Vector Magic

(Free) Browser-Based, and free, photo to vector illustration conversion online tool. Convert bitmap images to vector images with a few simple clicks. Just upload your image and we will guide you through the process

Adobe Illustrator Live Trace Tool

($499) Adobe Illustrator CS3 is the standard in the graphic design and web design industry as a vector illustration software. However, Adobe Illustrator also includes a Live Trace tool that can quickly and accurately convert photos, scans, or other bitmap images to editable and scalable vector paths. Adobe CS3 also includes curve recognition, circle recognition, arc recognition, orthogonal line detection, corner detection, line connection, and much more. Available for Windows and Mac OS.

Able Vector

(Free to Try, $10 to Buy) Able Vector is an application (just for AUTOCAD users) and service (for everybody) that can be used to vectorise digital images, to vectorgraph (such as Macromedia Freehand, Adobe Illustrator or AutoCAD, CorelDraw, IronCAD, TigerCAD, etc.) in line style. With AbleVector you cannot to import and edit your company logo, idiograph or other picture (.tiff, .jpeg, .bmp, etc . . .) in your own vector image and allow you to change color and edit individual elements. Available for Windows OS.

Algolab Raster to Vector Conversion Toolkit

(Free to Try / I think price is $99 to buy) AlgoLab Raster to Vector Conversion Toolkit converts architect, mechanical and various technical drawings, maps and other types of line artwork including black and white graphics for books and journals from raster to vector formats. This means that a paper drawing can be scanned, line artwork automatically recognized and represented in a vector format that then can be imported to your CAD or drawing program. Toolkit has the unique special feature to refine curves. So with a proper choice of parameters a vectorized drawing composed of curves normally looks better than the original one. Toolkit is designed to provide quality of high-end products. Even those who have one of such high-end products may certainly find that at least for some kind of drawings Toolkit provides better quality of the output vector files. So it is reasonable to have Toolkit available. Available for Windows OS.

AlgoLab Photo Vector

(Free to Try / I think price is $99 to buy) AlgoLab Photo Vector is a handy tool for designers and CAD/CAM professionals to cleanup, make fast corrections, edit color designs with or without further conversion to vector formats. It may be especially useful for designs on fabric, textile, jacquard, carpets, mats, vinyl and other materials. Photo Vector is your best choice to cleanup scanned designs and edit colors. Available for Windows OS.

Auto Trace

(Free) AutoTrace is a software program created in 1998 for converting bitmap images to vector graphics.
The aim of the AutoTrace project is the development of a freely available application with a functionality similar to CorelTrace or Adobe Streamline. AutoTrace can export universal DXF, offers curve recognition, and corner detection. AutoTrace is free software and is distributed under the term of GNU GPL.AutoTrace can be used on Windows, Mac, Unix, and Amiga OS operating systems.

Boris Red

Boris Red includes a Vector Trace tool that enables the conversion from a raster bitmap image such as a tiff, jpeg or a frame from a movie clip to a scalable vector graphic with a way to extrude any of the resulting vector shapes. Your images can be converted into vector graphics by choosing the Vector Trace tool and then dragging this Vector Trace Tool over the image that you want to be converted. There are even advanced tracing option, inlcuding the ability to select the color or alpha channel with which to base the conversion. Boris Red is available for Windows and Mac OS.

Canvas 11

($349) Canvas' AutoTrace filter can support tracing of not only color and grayscale images, but also black and white as well. Define the channel, threshold, resolution, as well as final color mode and trace type to refine the vector output to your needs. If you work with technical illustrations and graphics, you know how daunting the task can be when a project requires various documents, images, and data – even legacy files from obscure formats or obsolete products. When Canvas X auto-traces a channel, it leaves the original image unchanged and applies the current stroke to the resulting vector objects. When the tracing is complete, you can move the vector objects away from the image. Available for Windows OS.

GentleDraw

(Free to Try / $19.95 to Buy) GentleDraw is a program for creation of 3D models from black-and-white images using vector conversion. You can move and rotate 3D models just by dragging them, changes are shown on the screen in real time. You can easily adjust color, texture, borders and animation settings. GentleDraw can save animations as animated GIF files. The program includes 3D models borders editor and animation routes trace editor. GentleDraw is a quick and easy way to produce high-quality animated GIF files. Available for Windows OS.

Hijaak Pro Graphic File Conversion Software

(Approximately $90) HiJaak 5.0 supports over 115 graphic file formats including Kodak's FlashPix for digital photography, animated GIF support for the Web and more CAD formats. Plus full support for EPS graphics, GIF, BMP and TIF images, Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop files. HiJaak's raster, vector and 3D engines work to improve the quality of graphics as you convert them. Available for Windows OS.

Imagaro Z

($299 - $690) Imagaro Z is a revolutionary new graphic software utility at a revolutionary new price! In addition to great autotracing, automatically reconstruct many objects to their original shape with a click of the mouse. Stop wasting time trying to identify a specific font! Texts can be quickly identified regenerated and automatically replaced with the correct typeface to give you a perfect look. Everybody working with graphics needs high quality scalable originals. Imagaro Z will take you there fast. With a minimum of effort, the intuitive editing tools in Imagaro Z turn scanned or imported artwork into perfectly shaped, scalable graphics, which can then be used for almost any purpose. Imagaro Z produces high quality scalable graphics when scanning graphics from stickers, ads, business cards, letter heads or other paper copies. This software has everything you need from scanning, super quick and accurate Sensedge autotracing, FontEye typeface recognition and advanced "smart" editing tools that maximize your productivity. A newly added bitmap resizing feature lets you work with low resolution graphics and small internet files. Use this feature in the enhancement of bitmaps to adjust the size, resolution, etc. This also enables you to achieve better results in your final image. Fully compatible with other graphic software tools, this is a "must have" utility for every graphic designers toolbox. Available for Windows and Mac OS.

InkScape

(Free) An Open Source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, CorelDraw, or Xara X, using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format. Inkscape can be used to trace bitmap images to convert it to a vector graphic. Inkscape supports many advanced SVG features (markers, clones, alpha blending, etc.) and great care is taken in designing a streamlined interface. It is very easy to edit nodes, perform complex path operations, trace bitmaps and much more. We also aim to maintain a thriving user and developer community by using open, community-oriented development. Available for Windows and Mac OS.

LineTracer

(Free) LineTracer is a tool for converting scanned hand-drawn sketches to vector format. It exports to EPS, which means the output can be used by about any program. It is primarily meant for helping illustrators and animators. The application is GUI based and runs on Windows. Currently it works best with images that have about 200-300 DPI. Available for Windows OS.

Logo Spruce

($199) LogoSpruce lets you tidy logos and other scanned artwork quickly within Adobe Illustrator, using intuitive drawing and trimming tools. To help you work faster, turn on the Auto-Guides and LogoSpruce automatically identifies endpoints, midpoints, and tangent lines. Using LogoSpruce and its hyper-drawing tools, you'll soon be tracing faster than ever. LogoSpruce's tools include Trim tools(click a path segment, delete to nearest intersection), Hyper-drawing tools (Straight line tool, 3-point bezier tool, tangent arc tools), Auto-guides (Cursors change automatically to reflec), One-touch guide lines (place horizontal, vertical, and angled guide lines with a single click), Move to align tools (Align an object, or group of objects, to a base object), Raster Rotation (Drag along an edge to quickly level any bitmap), and Path Conversion tools (Convert a path to an arc and back, in a few clicks). Available for Windows and Mac OS.

Magic Tracer

($59.95) MagicTracer is a raster to vector converter for Windows. With over 100 customizable functions, MagicTracer works as your all-purpose tool for raster to vector converting. It even comes complete with a simple interface and real-time previews that allow you to see how a custom setting will affect your project. MagicTracer is used for personal and professional projects alike, whether you are a hobbyist or an architectural design company. If you need vector conversion and tracing MagicTracer may be what you need. Raster to vector conversion will assist anyone who does lots of vector image cleanup in becoming more productive. MagicTracer includes curve recognition, circle recognition, arc recognition, orthogonal line detection, corner detection, line connection, and much more.Available for Windows OS.

Macromedia Freehand MX Tracing Tool

($399) Macromedia Freehand MX is a vector illustration software that also comes with tools to trace bitmap images into vector illustrations. Just keep in mind that Adobe doesn't plan to make more versions of Freehand anymore. With Macromedia Freehand MX, you can convert an image to line art, for use in Fireworks MX or Flash MX, using the Freehand's Trace Tool. Macromedia Freehand MX includes curve recognition, circle recognition, arc recognition, orthogonal line detection, corner detection, line connection, and much more. Available for Windows and Mac OS.

Panopticum Vectorizer

(Free to Try / $32 to Buy) Panopticum Vectorizer 1.2 is a new handy tool for vectorizing color raster images. It was designed as a plug-in for Adobe Illustrator, thus user can use it in the medium of the mentioned editor. Panopticum Vectorizer will help user convert a raster image into vector image with defined contour precision in a blink. The color settings allow the number of colors vary from 2 to 256. The automatic preview window will give user opportunity to visualise vectorizing settings changes.Available for Windows and Mac OS.

PoTrace

(Free) Potrace(TM) is a utility for tracing a bitmap, which means, transforming a bitmap into a smooth, scalable image. The input is a bitmap (PBM, PGM, PPM, or BMP format), and the default output is an encapsulated PostScript file (EPS). A typical use is to create EPS files from scanned data, such as company or university logos, handwritten notes, etc. The resulting image is not "jaggy" like a bitmap, but smooth. It can then be rendered at any resolution. Potrace can currently produce the following output formats: EPS, PostScript, PDF, SVG (scalable vector graphics), Xfig, Gimppath, and PGM (for easy antialiasing). Additional backends might be added in the future. Mkbitmap is a program distributed with Potrace which can be used to pre-process the input for better tracing behavior on greyscale and color images. See the mkbitmap examples page. Look at this amazing example (above). PoTrace can be used on Windows, Mac, Unix, and Amiga OS operating systems.

Project 5 Photocut Processor

(Free to Try, $295 to Buy) Project5 Photocut Processor is a raster to vector conversion program that produces photographic effect in vinyl using vinyl cutter only. You can overcome vinyl graphics limitations and produce any continuous tone image (photograph, landscape, etc.) with no additional costs. With Project5, you can produce any duotone bitmap. Project5 Photocut Processor is a raster to vector conversion program that produces photographic effect in vinyl using vinyl cutter only. Project5 is easy to use and has a very short learning curve. Project5 integrates with major part of drawing and sign software. Plug-ins for CorelDRAW versions 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 are available. Project5 is the fastest application in its class. It's ready to produce up to 160 square feet of bitmaps per hour and is suitable for large sign shops. Available for Windows OS.

Raster to Vector Software

(Approx. $99) Raster to Vector is a stand-alone program that converts scanned drawings, maps and raster images into accurate vector files (such as DXF, HPGL, WMF, EMF, etc) for editing in any CAD application. Key features include input raster image formats: BMP, JPG, TIF, GIF, PNG, PCX, TGA, RLE, JPE, J2K, JAS, JBG, MNG and more, output vector formats: DXF, HPGL, EMF, WMF and others, create center lines and outlines, outline solid raster areas, color, Gray and black-and-white images vectorization, scale images in the X and Y directions to make them larger or smaller, increase or decrease brightness and contrast, tracing raster lines, arcs, circles, arrow lines, dash lines, polylines, hatches on monochrome, grayscale or color images, automatic correction: restoring of intersections, aligning, joining fragments, joining fragments to line, arc, circle and polyline, removing low sized vector objects, correction of recognized texts, automatically straighten images to a reference line, remove speckles of color to make colors more uniform, can adjust tolerance levels, batch processing, and more. Available for Windows OS.

Real Draw Pro

(Try for Free / Buy for $299) Real Draw Pro is not really a bitmap to vector software, rather a combination of both vector and bitmap together. Real-DRAW Pro happily combine vector, 2D, 3D and bitmap editing in one drawing package. It seamlessly moves from one form to another, eliminating time-consuming conversion operations and the need for multiple drawing packages. Unlike in a normal vector editor you can actually paint directly onto any vector object using airbrushes, 3D or Artistic brushes and special Image Nozzles. You can paint on the canvas and the strokes will become another object to which you can apply effects, just as with vector objects. No other program can do this. As if this isn't enough, Real-DRAW can also be used as an SVG editor (Scaleable Vector Graphics supported by all XML enabled web-browsers) with import/export support of color fills, outlines and transparencies. You can even export the whole design into Adobe Photoshop keeping all the layers, transparency channels, shadow layers and layer names as you created them in Real-DRAW. There are many more features that I can't even include them all here. Available for Windows OS.

Silhouette

(Price range from $250-$350) Silhouette graphics art software for Macintosh and Windows instantly converts black and white or color bitmap images into vector designs ready for use. Graphic artists are faced every day with the problem of having to redesign logos or illustrations because the files they have to use are less than perfect (faxes, visiting cards, low definition files) or the original fonts have gone missing. Silhouette is available as plugin for Adobe Illustrator™ and as standalone application. Available for Windows and Mac OS.

Synthetik Software Studio Artist 3.5

($375) Studio Artist has resolution independent raster painting with vector editing capabilities. The program's vectorizer is an artistic raster image to vector region converter. This new version includes the Vectorizer, which is a steroid enhanced artistic raster image to vector region converter. Studio Artist is the first and only software program that can automatically paint, draw and auto-rotoscope. Studio Artist examines a source image or video and then re-renders it in the style you choose, automatically or interactively. And now with version 3.5, Studio Artist has been expanded to include automatic vector art and animation. Instantly make cool resolution independent vector animations from any Quicktime video source. Available for Mac OS.

TraceLine : Convert images to vector outlines

(Free to Try / $79 to Buy) TraceLine converts scanned and imported bitmap graphics to scalable outlines that can be used in other applications for any use. TraceLine can be used by anyone that wants to convert hand drawn sketches to editable paths, convert logos and graphics to editable paths, and convert photos to editable paths. It is very easy. First, you sketch out your design on paper, then you scan your design directly into TraceLine, or import an image from file, and then you trace your design and transfer it to your favourite graphics application. TraceLine also converts both monochrome and colour images. Simply specify the number of colours you wish to produce and TraceLine automatically carries out the colour reduction. The resulting colour blocks are calculated at the average value and you can see a visualisation before tracing. Click on the thumbnail to see a larger picture. Available for Windows OS.

Xaos Tools : Segmation

($129) Segmation transforms images into vectors, contours and patterns. This versatile plug-in converts your Photoshop images into intriguing line art, paint-by-number, and Escher-like patterns. Apply within Photoshop or save outlines and colors in EPS for Illustrator or Freehand. Some of its' features include the ability to xport PostScript EPSs and six additional formats, ability to generate the most versatile and creative conversions to vector contours, includes 168 malleable, Escher-like pattern presets in 17 categories, print shuge pictures from any printer directly within the plug-in, ability to create, import, and export custom color palettes. 15 thematic palettes get you started, the ability to optimize images for the internet with Web enhancing color-reduction, and much more. Segmation renders your images from the most simple to detailed contours, redefines your images when put into thematic palettes, and recreates your images into designer patterns for gorgeous use in print, multimedia or on the web. Available for Windows OS.

Trix TracTrix Raster to Vector Conversion

($695) Open over 100 raster formats and edit. To convert drawings, TracTrix automatically traces pixels in the lines of the scan and converts them to vectors. You can then edit these in your CAD or NC application. Convert scans of drawings, logos, boards etc. in BMP, C4, CALS, TIFF, JPEG and other raster formats to DWG, DXF, HPGL, IGES and EPS formats. With color separation, text recognition, clean-up and editing tools.Available for Windows OS.

Vector Eye

(Free to Try / $59 - $119 to Buy) Faster than a tracing hand, this powerful software is the raster to vector converter you need for Illustrator (Adobe), CorelDraw (Corel), Flash (Macromedia), Mobile Designer (Beatware), Swish, Inkscape (freeware) and any vector-based software. Just scan any sketch, or select an image, make some bitmap adjustements (scale, select zone, enhance, swap colors, rotate...) and VectorEye will automatically create multiple file corresponding to differents settings. You can analyse, modify till the result suits you (quality, weight, number of vectors). Just save it in the appropriate format for your purpose and drop into your favorite vector editor or authoring tool to complete or animate your design. You could also use the batch system to launch hundreds of vectorization processes.Available for Windows OS.

Vextractor

(Approximately $90) Vextractor is a professional software for converting raster images to vector (vectorizer). Vextractor converts drawings, maps and other images, including photo, logos, black-and-white illustrations from raster to vector format. The program can save converted raster images to the following vector formats: DXF, WMF, EMF, EPS, AI or SVG. Files of these vector formats can be imported to popular vector graphics applications like AutoCAD, Corel Draw, Adobe Illustrator, and many others. Suppose you have an archive of a great number of raster drawings, pictures or logos, which you can only view and print. The possibility to convert that data to the vector format would be very helpful for your work. Now you can convert hand-made drawings to your graphic design, layout, or CAD application and save them to disk. If you have a hardcopy or raster image (photo), and you want to engrave a 3D inscription, logo or image on the metal, wood or plastic. Now you can convert the raster file to the input format (usually, dxf) for a CNC cutting or router system.

Visual Mask

(Free to Try / $39 to Buy) VisualMask is a software tool that cuts images and creates image masks quickly and professionally. VisualMask uses vector shapes to define the different areas of the image. Working with vector shapes, you can always return to any shape and change its position and properties. You can quickly define the different areas of the image. Then, in an ongoing process, refine the definition of the areas that require more precision. Available for Windows OS.

WinTopo Raster to Vector Converter Freeware

(Free) WinTopo is a high quality software application for converting TIF, JPG, PNG, GIF, BMP files and scanned images into useful vector files suitable for CAD, GIS and CNC applications.The freeware version is completely free for everyone to use. This is a highly capable piece of software which produces better results than most expensive commercial alternatives. Over a million users worldwide have already taken advantage of this powerful converter. For most people there is no need to look any further (or to spend any money). Download it right now and start converting your images with the One-Touch Vectorisation button.Available for Windows OS.

WinTopo Raster to Vector Converter Pro

(approximately $360) WinTopo Pro is a high quality raster to vector conversion tool. WinTopo Pro converts images from scanners and other digital sources into vector data suitable for CAD, GIS and CNC systems. You can scan old plans, archive drawings, or even photos and convert them into useful CAD data. Any image which is stored in TIFF, GIF, JPEG, PNG or BMP format can be processed by WinTopo Pro into DXF and other vector file formats. WinTopo Pro builds upon the powerful WinTopo Freeware by including many additional image processing tools, as well as more advanced vectorisation algorithms and options. This highly professional product is the software of choice of major industries worldwide. Our customers include NASA , Microsoft, MIT, British Telecom, BAE Systems, Motorola, EDS, and many branches of the US Department of Defence. Available for Windows OS.

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Below Are More Tools That are Raster to Vector Converters, However, they are more for CAD and technical drawings, but if you are looking for this, you might like them.

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Acme TraceArt

TraceART is a professional raster to vector conversion program (Vectorizer) released by us. TraceART can let you quickly convert uneditable scanned paper drawings into accurate vector files for editing in any CAD program. It saves the converted file as an industry standard DXF file (Data Exchange Format) that can be read by any CAD program that supports this format. TraceART is a direct replacement for traditional tracing and digitizing, releases you from tiring work. CAD programs can only work with vector files. If you want to edit a raster file in your CAD program you must first convert it into a vector file. You do this using raster to vector conversion software. Once you have converted the raster file to vector you will be able to import it into your CAD program and edit it just like any other drawings you have created using you CAD program.

Easy Trace

(Over $1000) Easy Trace is a proprietary computer application for doing raster to vector conversion. It is only available for versions of Microsoft Windows. This raster to vector conversion program is released by the Easy Trace Group, a company based in Russia. Easy Trace is very feature-rich and integrates very closely with AutoCAD. Available for Windows OS.

Raster to Vector 7.0

(Free to Try / $99 to Buy) Raster to Vector is a stand-alone program that converts scanned drawings, maps and raster images into accurate vector files (such as DXF, HPGL, WMF, EMF) for editing in any CAD application. Any image which is stored in BMP, JPG, TIF, GIF, PNG, and other formats can be processed by Raster to Vector into CAD DXF and other vector file formats. Create center lines and outlines; scale images in the X and Y directions to make them larger or smaller; increase or decrease brightness and contrast. Available for Windows OS.

Scan2Cad

(Free to Try) The Scan2CAD raster to vector trial lets you load your own raster images and convert them to vectors. There is no restriction on the size or number of images you can convert during the trial. Available for Windows OS.

TraceIT: free bitmap tracer for LD2000 and FB3

TraceIT is a program for raster to vector conversion. Based on original algorithms TraceIT provides the maximum speed for bitmap tracing. TraceIT can operate with a wide range of raster formats including almost every bitmap type such as: BMP, GIF, TIF, JPG, PSD etc. In addition to standard bitmap images, TraceIT can also trace video files in AVI, MOV or MPEG formats. TraceIT can extract some exact frames from video file, trace a range of frames or a whole file. TraceIT includes a complete image processor that can be used at all phases of image transformations -- from image capture using a TWAIN compatible scanner, to actual laser projection. TraceIT includes a raster editor that can be used to clean the image before tracing. The raster editor includes all necessary tools like Pen, EyeDropper or Fill. Zoom Window also can help to edit the image. There is even a vector editor that allows you to edit the resulting traced image. Once a bitmap has been traced, you can save the result in laser formats like ILDA, or even windows formats like WMF and BMP.

Vector Graphics ActiveX

(Free) Vector Graphics ActiveX is a graphics component oriented for creating business and technology solutions. Based on COM technology it can be used by other applications to process graphic documents, analyze and visualize any kind of processes. Vector Graphics ActiveX is the ultimate graphics solution for you. It is the easy-to-use for creating technical drawings, illustrations and presentation, training material and business reports, charts and diagrams and much more. Vector Graphics ActiveX offers a wide range of new features and enhancements designed to increase productivity and extend your creative possibilities. Component is based on Layer-Class-Shape architecture. It means, that all displayed shapes are owned by the certain classes and can not exist themselves. Drawing shapes depends on a classes they are belonging, but each shape has an opportunity to draw itself. Thus the constructed architecture allows to repeatedly reduce the size of the stored data, to increase speed of loading and displaying documents, and also to provide excellent speed of program work with documents containing around 1 000 000 shapes.

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2008-10-14T21:51:00.000-07:00

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35 Beautiful Vintage and Retro Photoshop Tutorials

2008-10-14T21:50:00.001-07:00

By Jacob Gube

With the recent post on retro and vintage in modern web design, it’s time to put the theory into practice. We’ve scoured the Web to find some impressive Photoshop tutorials that can help you achieve an "old-fashioned" look-and-feel in your designs. In this post, we go back to the 1900’s all theway to the 1980’s to showcase a variety of vintage- and retro-inspired designs that involve poster art, collages and graphical elements. Whether you’re into print design or web design, you’ll find something you can use or build upon.

Without further ado, we present 35 high-quality vintage and retro Adobe Photoshop tutorials that may help your design… well, travel back in time.

Vintage and Retro Photoshop Tutorials

Colorization Tutorial
This short tutorial showcases a method for colorizing a black and white photo to achieve an aged, vintage look.

Wicked-Worn Vintage Pop Art Design
Mesh vintage pop art with grunge to create a unique mash-up of the two popular design styles.

Retro Grunge Poster
Wield the Pen Tool and utilize some free brushes and textures to achieve this retro-grunge hybrid look-and-feel.

Vintage Film Style Video
Use a stock image of an old TV and Photoshop CS3 Extended to play vintage-style video clips inside the TV.

Give Your Photos a Retro Comic Book Effect
Here’s another method for creating a retro-stylec comic book effect to your photos using Photoshop.

WWII Airplane
Recreate the World War II airplane brushed-metal texture and paintings in this excellent Photoshop tutorial that involves using Noise and Blur filters.

Cool Vintage Collage Design
In this Photoshop tutorial, you will learn how to use old advertisements, hand-written text, and patterns to create a vintage design.

Pin-up Effect
This video tutorial showcases how you can create the classic 50’s pin-up effect using some Photoshop filters and Blending Modes.

Radio Knobs/Dials of the Past
Learn how to design old-school radio knobs/dials in this Photoshop tutorial by skillfully using of the Marquee Tool in Photoshop.

Old Fantasy Map of Your Area
Learn how to create a vintage, aged map using a screen shot of the area of your interest in Yahoo! Maps.

Turn of the Century Vaudeville Poster
Create a beautiful turn-of-the-century poster geared towards intermediate to advanced Photoshop users.

Virtual Letterman Jacket
In this Photoshop tutorial, you will learn how to design retro-style varsity/letterman lettering using some ingenious Layer Styles.

B-movie poster art
In this tutorial, you can learn the techniques involved in recreating B-movie posters from the golden age of cinema.

Gigposter Design
In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to create a retro-styled poster using Photoshop and Illustrator.

Vintage Polaroid Effect
This photo treatment tutorial shares a method for creating a vintage look using modern, colored digital photos.

Photoshop Vintage Effect
Learn how to age modern digital pictures by adjusting contrast, saturation, and Curves in this short step-by-step Photoshop tutorial.

Vintage Fifties Letter
Create this aged letter envelope by following this Photoshop tutorial that’s aimed at intermediate Photoshop users.

Vintage Truck
In this short Photoshop tutorial, you’ll learn some techniques on how to use colored digital stock images to give it a vintage/retro look-and-feel.

Make it worn
Learn how to create a worn look-and-feel web design background, using detailed from scanned book pages.

Comic Book Photo Effect
Learn how to take ordinary photos and give it a retro-styled, pop art comic book effect.

Vintage collages in Photoshop
In this tutorial, you can gain insights and learn useful methods on how to achieve a vintage collage.

Make your own pop art
Learn the techniques involved in creating your own classic 50’s style pop art.

Hot Chick on a Muscle Car
Create a retro-styled post card using stock photos that are linked to by the author of the tutorial.

Retro Wallpaper/Poster
This step-by-step tutorial walks the readers through the process of creating a retro wallpaper/poster.

Retro Style Game Controller
Illustrate an old-school gaming console joystick using Photoshop with this wonderful tutorial.

Retro Stars
Use the Polygonal Lasso Tool to create stars and then add multi-colored streaks to it, to achieve this popular ’80’s look and feel.

Sweet Radio Station Advert Design
Learn how to create a radio station advertisement with retro curves with the help of Illustrator (or download them from vector stock sites).

Pop Art Inspired by Lichtenstein
Create Lichtenstein-style pop art design by studying this Photoshop tutorial geared for intermediate designers.

Retro Lighting - Ford Mustang
You can utilize the Custom Shape Tool for elements of the design to recreate this 70’s inspired design.

Mix Cool Retro Curves into Your Photographs
Combine retro with modern design styles and elements to create this stunning photo effect.

Photoshop Serigraphs
Learn how you can take a portrait to recreate this Andy Warhol inspired pop-art.

Retro Sunflower Design
Remake this sunflower-themed retro wallpaper using ready-to-use Photoshop brushes, the Ellipse Marquee Tool, and custom shapes from the Custom Shape Tool.

Retro Summer Poster Illustration
Utilize some of Photoshop’s vector tools to create a summery retro poster illustration.

3D Retro Strip
Use the Pen Tool to create 3-dimensional retro strips.

Abstract Retro-Pop Wallpaper
This tutorial shows readers how to design a colorful retro-pop wallpaper using stock photo for texture and the RNS Bobo Dylan Font.

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New template blogger date 15/10/2008

35 Beautiful Vintage and Retro Photoshop Tutorials

Vintage and Retro Photoshop Tutorials