2009 June | Webdesigner Depot

30 Jun
50 Dazzling Examples of Polar Panorama Photography
Inspiration, Photography, Photoshop
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Polar panoramas, also known as stereographic projections or ‘little planets’, are spectacular images that are created out of panoramic photos.
While the effects are quite stunning, these images are actually very easy for anyone to produce.
The basic principle is to take a panoramic photo, make some easy changes to it, and finally apply a Photoshop filter (Distort > Polar Coordinates) to complete the effect.
For detailed instructions, please follow this easy tutorial.
Here are 50 dazzling examples of polar panorama photography. Read more
29 Jun
12 Essential Rules to Follow When Designing a Logo
Branding, Design, Logos
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The logo is the face of any brand — the very first impression — so its design is extremely important.
When executed correctly, a logo is a powerful asset to your client’s brand.
However, creating an effective visual representation of a brand requires much more than just graphic design.
Like any line of work that involves a set of specific skills, logo design requires plenty of practice and experience for it to be successful; knowledge is definitely power for any graphic designer.
For this reason, we have outlined 12 essential rules to follow in order to design an effective logo. Read more
28 Jun
Our Favorite Tweets of the Week
Jun 21-27, 2009
Best Of, Compilation, Twitter
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Every week we tweet a lot of interesting stuff highlighting great content that we find on the web that can be of interest to web designers.
The best way to keep track of our tweets is simply to follow us on Twitter, however, in case you missed some here’s a quick and useful compilation of the best tweets that we sent out this past week.
Note that this is only a very small selection of the links that we tweeted about, so don’t miss out.
To keep up to date with all the cool links, simply follow us @DesignerDepot
Read more
26 Jun
An Artistic Homage to Michael Jackson
Design, Inspiration
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As the world pays tribute to the king of pop, we’ve decided to do so in WDD in a unique and artistic way.
In this post, we feature a selection of some amazing artistic creations portraying Michael Jackson, created by various artists around the world.
These creations bring an engaging and unique exploration into the multifaceted talent that was, and still is, Michael Jackson.
For more information about the artists’ creations, please click on the images below to visit their websites.
Please share any other great artistic creations about Michael that you may know of by posting the links in the comments’ area and we’ll be sure to add the most impressive ones to this post. Read more
26 Jun
100 Creative Twitter Backgrounds Featuring Illustration
Design, Illustrations, Twitter
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If you’ve ever created a Twitter account and customized it with some text, you would have discovered that the amount of text that you can display to describe yourself is very limited.
This is where designing, creating, and publishing a creative Twitter background and using it as your billboard comes into place.
Many designers and creatives utilize actual illustrations and images that will attract the viewers’ attention. By capturing a reader’s imagination in the process, illustrative backgrounds will most likely remain within their memory for a longer period of time.
Here are 100 creative Twitter backgrounds that feature illustration, that should inspire your own Twitter designs. Read more
25 Jun
10 Tools to Improve Your Site’s Usability on a Low Budget
Usability, User Interface
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Testing the usability of your site is one of the smartest things you can do. Usability involves making a website’s interface easier to use and simpler to understand, so that the user’s experience is as enjoyable as possible.
The more usable a site is, the more satisfying it will be to interact with it — and happy visitors translate into happy customers.
Ideas about what makes for the best website design don’t always translate perfectly when put into practice. Elements that one person might consider easy to use may actually turn out to be confusing for someone else.
In this article, we’ll review 10 tools that you can use to improve your website’s usability even if you’re on a low budget.
Read more
24 Jun
The Fantastic Photography of Clark Little
Inspiration, Photography
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Today we’re featuring the fantastic photography of Clark Little, an amazing surf photographer.
His photographs have been mesmerizing the world since 2007, with captivating photos taken inside waves as well as stunning angles usually only seen by hard core surfers.
His work has been showcased extensively through the media such as on the Today Show, Good Morning America, Inside Edition as well as multiple publishers and newspapers in the U.S. and abroad.
His limited Edition book, The Shorebreak Art of Clark Little, is now in production and will be available for purchase online in the summer of 2009.
Now, let’s browse through some of his collection and enjoy this breathtaking experience… Read more
23 Jun
5 Pet Peeves Designers Have With Developers (and How to Avoid Them)
Web Designers, Web Developers
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Cats and dogs. Cain and Abel. Designers and developers. These are just a few of the great historical face-offs.
Designers and developers often seem to come from different planets and have completely different brains.
Developers want a website to work right, designers want it to look right.
While these goals have a lot of overlap (and, of course, I’m stereotyping here a bit), the differences often come down to the designer and developer’s expectations of success.
Managing expectations is a matter of communication: making points clearly to the other side, finding common ground, and agreeing on goals.
Okay, so maybe it’s not that easy, but it is important for both sides to at least try to understand each other.
In an effort to promote goodwill between designers and developers, I will share some pet peeves I have encountered and explore the issues that lead to them and their solutions. Read more
22 Jun
25+ Useful Infographics for Web Designers
Data Visualization, Infographics, Web Designers
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Infographics can be a great way to quickly reference information.
Instead of pouring over figures and long reports to decipher data, an infographic can immediately make apparent exactly what a dataset actually means.
Below are more than 25 infographics that can be useful to web designers.
Some are incredibly practical, some provide information that might be of interest to designers and some just present data that might be interesting to those who design websites all day.
If you know of any good ones that we may have missed, please add them in the comments section below. Read more
21 Jun
Our Favorite Tweets of the Week
Jun 14-20, 2009
Best Of, Compilation, Twitter
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This week we’re starting a new trend here at WDD: Our favorite tweets of the week!
We tweet a lot of interesting stuff during the week highlighting great content that we find around the web that can be of interest to web designers.
Starting today and every Sunday, we’ll be featuring a selection of the best links that we tweeted during the week.
Although the best way to keep track of our tweets is simply to follow us on Twitter, I realize that if you follow many blogs you might miss a few of our tweets, so this should be a useful and cool compilation of what you may have missed.
Note that this is just a small selection of the tweets that we sent out this past week. For the full list, simply follow us @DesignerDepot Read more
19 Jun
100 Outstanding and Inspirational Infrared Photos
Inspiration, Photography
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Infrared photography produces some of the most amazing photographs on the planet.
In infrared photography, the film or image sensor used within a digital camera is sensitive to infrared lighting, which allows the camera to pick up any light that’s invisible to the human eye.
Objects that are normally bright in visible light look dark, while normally dark objects look especially bright.
In most cases, an infrared filter is used which lets the infrared light to pass through to the camera.
In this article, we’ll take a look at 100 inspirational examples of infrared photography that are sure to both inspire and amaze you. Read more
18 Jun
Create a Realistic Candy Bar in Illustrator
Illustrations, Illustrator, Tutorials
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Realistic renderings can be done easily in Adobe Illustrator.
With vector shapes, the objects can be preserved and edited infinitely which is a great advantage over raster objects.
A few simple tweaks from the Effects menu and an understanding of basic object rendering can create a bold and stunning finish.
In this tutorial, created exclusively for WDD by Wendy Ding, she’ll be guiding you step by step through the stages required to create a realistic candy bar using Illustrator. Read more
17 Jun
10 Web Design Rules That You Can Break
Design, Inspiration, Web Design
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As web design and design in general have evolved, rules have been established to ensure consistent and usable designs.
Some of these rules were created simply because website creators abused certain principles without regard for their users.
But these rules are not enforced by anyone and should be broken when necessary, especially when breaking them would lead to a stunning design.
In this article, we present 10 rules that you can break if it suits your design needs. Read more
16 Jun
30 Photoshop Brushes: ‘Drippy Sprays’
Brushes, Freebies, Photoshop
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Today we bring you a great set of exclusive Photoshop brushes which include 30 high resolution drippy sprays.
The set was created by Grant Friedman from Colorburned exclusively for WDD readers.
These brushes are completely free for both personal and commercial use so you can create any type of project with them with no restrictions, with the exception that we do not allow the redistribution of the brushes in any shape or form.
If you’d like to share these brushes with your friends and colleagues, simply refer them to this page so that they can download their copy.
Below is a full preview of all 30 brushes for quick reference. The download link is at the bottom. Enjoy! Read more
15 Jun
26 Examples of Online T-Shirt Shops
Design, Inspiration, Web Design
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Many e-commerce and shopping websites suffer from poor quality design.
However, when it comes to online t-shirt shops, creativity is high and there are plenty of designs that are worthy of mention.
Many of these sites target the artists who create t-shirt designs, so it seems natural that they would feature an attractive website design.
As you browse through this gallery of online t-shirt shops, there are a few design trends that are worth pointing out … Read more
12 Jun
80 Creative Ways to Customize Your MacBook
Apple, Design, Inspiration
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The MacBook and MacBook Pro are stunning examples of minimalist design.
Their sleek lines, simple shapes, and uncomplicated designs are pinnacles of modern beauty. But let’s face it: they pretty much all look the same.
Whether you have a basic 13″ MacBook, a MacBook Pro, or a MacBook Air, they’re all silver, they’ve all got a very similar shape (even though the Air is significantly thinner than its counterparts), and while they’re never boring, they can sometimes be a bit “blah.”
The beauty of the MacBooks though, is that they make the perfect blank canvas for customization. Whether you want to just carry it around in a spiffy sleeve or bag, or commit a bit more with a skin or sleeve, there’s something out there available no matter what your taste or personality.
Below you’ll find 80 different skins, sleeves, decals and cases to customize your MacBook and make it reflect who you are. Most of the companies featured have additional products available on their websites. Read more
11 Jun
Doing Social Good with a Great Hosting Provider
Review, Web Hosting
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Let me first get this out of the way: my blog posts at WDD are not for sale, and I stand to profit in no way from this post.
That being said, I want to tell you about my success in finding great web hosting, as well as a good hosting deal for WDD readers that also lets you do some social good (more about this below).
Choosing the right web hosting provider is one of the most difficult business decisions I’ve had to make.
I realized early on in the game that the quality of the hosting and support is much more important than the price, because a website can build or break your reputation, and I didn’t want to mess around with hosts that would leave me in embarrassing situations. Read more
10 Jun
40 Examples of Incredible Photo Manipulation
Inspiration, Photography, Photoshop
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Photo manipulation is an ever evolving collaboration between photography and graphic design.
Combining certain elements to create a unique image, that can convince even the most experienced set of eyes, requires a very creative set of skills.
Because the manipulation of a photo gives a realistic view of an unreal picture, you should have an open mind when gathering ideas on how to get creative with your images.
Photo manipulations are a great source for inspiration, generally because designers are able to express their creativity through various aspects of design.
Several of the following images contain illustrative elements, while others display a more realistic approach.
So here are 40 of the most incredible examples of photo manipulation. Read more
9 Jun
5 Rotten Things No One Else Has Told You About the Clients You’ll Work For
Clients, Freelancing
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In over 10 years of freelancing I’ve had the fortune, and sometimes misfortune, of working with some unusual clients.
While each client is a unique individual, I’ve found that many characteristics and behaviors are similar from client to client.
Most of my clients are typically small business owners in the US.
If you are working with a different type of clientele, your experience may differ, but probably not by too much.
It’s my hope that in learning this information you’ll be able to make better preparations and decisions for yourself and your business. Read more
8 Jun
100+ Portraits of Iconic People of All Time
Art, Inspiration, Photography
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Today we bring you a great collection of portraits of the most iconic people throughout history.
Portraits explore the relationship between the subject and the photographer or artist and usually continue to impress the viewer years after they have been created.
The common thread running through all of these portraits is superlative design. Each is a masterpiece in its own right, from the medieval painted portraits right up to the most current photographs.
This collection is arranged in alphabetical order and is by no means complete. We encourage you to post comments as to which portraits we’ve missed, that you feel should be part of this collection.
We hope that this collection inspires you, makes you gasp and even smile. We want you to come away with a sense of what made each portrait unique and memorable, and incorporate these concepts into your own portraits.
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4 Jun
10 Tips to Create a More Usable Web
Accessibility, Usability, User Interface
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Whether it’s your portfolio, a blog, a marketing web site, or a collection of games, we all want to attract visitors to our website and to ensure that they have a pleasant experience.
Usability measures the level of a user’s experience and can be characterized by how easily a given task can be completed; whether it’s done with prior knowledge, or by having the user learn a new way to interact. I think Jakob Nielson probably explained it best when he said:
“Usability is a quality attribute that assesses how easy user interfaces are to use. The word “usability” also refers to methods for improving ease–of–use during the design process.”
In this article I hope to give you some form of a usability checklist, covering topics from form design to simple navigation tips that you can apply to any Web project.
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3 Jun
25 Awesome Facebook Apps for Designers
Applications, Facebook, Web Designers
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Facebook might not have all the glittery text and obnoxious backgrounds that MySpace has, but it still has its fair share of useless apps.
This is especially true if you have ever tried to search for creative Facebook apps or those that may be of interest to creative people.
If you have ever searched for such a thing, you have no doubt realized that there is an abundance of useless apps. This is the reason that I went through just about every app on Facebook to find the very few that were best suited for creative individuals, or had some sort of visual flair about them.
So here are 25 awesome Facebook applications that most designers will enjoy in their Facebook pages. Read more
1 Jun
50 Great Examples of Data Visualization
Design, Information, Visualization
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Wrapping your brain around data online can be challenging, especially when dealing with huge volumes of information.
And trying to find related content can also be difficult, depending on what data you’re looking for.
But data visualizations can make all of that much easier, allowing you to see the concepts that you’re learning about in a more interesting, and often more useful manner.
Below are 50 of the best data visualizations and tools for creating your own visualizations out there, covering everything from Digg activity to network connectivity to what’s currently happening on Twitter.
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