Thursday, February 24, 2011

Simple Web Icons Features

Simple icons are among the principal features of minimalistic design. In addition, simple icons and other design elements should be used moderately. Simple icons are meant to be used where they are absolutely important and eliminated where it's possible. Optional simple web icons are to be refrained from repetition or eluded.

Limited amount of color, reserved tones, clear elements, soft lighting are being used for simple web icons design. Simple web icons are created out of elegant and simple elements which do not distract webpage visitors from the main navigation and webpage idea.

These rules for simple icons design can be outlined:

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

Some important tips for creating a minimalistic design with simple web icons

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

One more prominent feature of the lightweight and clear design is for sure clear typography. Simple icons names (if there're any) should be precise, meaningful and equivalent to their function. Headings placed on simple web icons need to be of readable font and huge enough for easy reading. Clear hierarchy should be followed as well.

Enough white or empty space is helpful for creating a great clean simple icons design. Extra spaces keep elements separate and for that reason more readable and simpler to work with. In case you use some extra space between simple web icons this do not harm to the design of your site at all.

Generally the minimalistic trend is not entirely minimal. Despite its great amount of white space there are still some simple icons, light textures, neat styles and bold fonts. Minimal isn't exactly the same as simple. From the very begining minimal meant plain typographic eliminating images and styling. Today there's a great amount of various web pages over the Internet. Thats why modern design requires something more than black text on white background. Reducing design elements to the most important items you can add much more zest to your web-site layout with some uncommon coloring, catchy simple icons, half-transparent and lightweight textures and patterns.

Simple is often used as a synonym of smart. Simple icons is the best solution if you'd like your site look fantastic and professional.

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

2d Icons And Models Information And Facts

2D web icons are actually well known for their flexibility. This is achieved by the peculiarity of rendering them at different resolutions ideal for various output devices.

2D Icons may include the next items:

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

All these items can be managed by 2D transformations for example rotation, scaling or angular position etc. Meshing basic models you will get more complex ones.

Because of the layers technique 2D web icons can create the illusion of all 3D characteristics like shadow, reflection or highlighting. The layers should maintain the definite hierarchy and order carefully. This makes editing 2D icons and related objects simpler.

2.5D Icons vs 3D and 2D Icons

The layered 2Dicons are usually generally known as 2.5D models. This technology allows site designers to work with any layer without the need of touching the others. The most of the well known graphics editors choose this kind of 2D object creation.

2.5D is a synonym to pseudo 3D and is interpreted as "two-and-a-half-dimensional" graphics. Models that were created with a help of with 2.5D technology appear to be tridimensional while in fact they are not.

This technology used for designing 2D web icons is often attained by the special lighting effect. 3D illusion can be reached due to the virtual light source to the left or to the right side and above the users monitor.

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Simple Icons As Bright Features Of Minimalistic Web Design

Simple web icons are created not to make the design beautiful but rather minimal and modern. Lightweight Simple icons are supposed to be built to improve web site user interaction.

Minimalistic web page design

Lets discover what minimalistic web site design indicates. Of course the first features are simplicity and lightweight elements. Simple icons involve all of this. This type of icons does not have complex wordings, figures, textures and patterns. Less even implies more in some areas and to some degree. Web development is exactly such area.

Minimalistic design is rather an unexpected trend nowadays. So far as you know high present day technologies have one great weakness - frequently they lead to the loss of simplicity. Nowadays the contemporary trend is to mix minimalistic web page design with CSS3 and HTML5. Website with simple design often contain brave and off-color effects and actively use CSS and Ajax.

Among essential features of the modern simple web page design are the following:

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

Monday, February 21, 2011

Line Web Icons Development - Various Techniques

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

One additional way is adding some halftones and shades to the object. You can do it by using short lines and crosshatching. Please don't afraid to vary their frequency and also pencil pressure. Such variety creates more three-dimensional look to the object. This particular trick is widely used in world wide web design as well. So this method is definitely helping in creation of amazing Line icons, logos and buttons.The lines with the dots not combining the singular elements are known as open lines. The lines can as well be parallel, gesture-like, contour etc. The curves which are essential for creating complex line shapes are called Bezier curves in computer graphics. These curves are handy small features essential for producing the vector shapes like line icons, different buttons etc.Nowadays computer technologies reached such a level when it becomes possible to reproduce the same designs or just build new shapes that based on some older ones. The fantastic thing - you can do it without extra efforts and time. Another benefit is that it is simple to go back to the previous adjustments with a help of the history panel. As a result there's no need to make Line icons from scratch in case you have made some mistakes.

Sunday, February 20, 2011

The Real Truth About Realistic Icons

The first mention about realism happened in 1850 when it was spread over French art. Over the years it came through all types of art and design. Speaking about realism in internet site design we can say that it's represented here by Realistic icons.

Brief discourse on history of realistic icons.

Primary Advantages Of Realistic Web Icons.

Realistic web icons are necessary elements of the present day pieces of software, applications and add-ons.

As far as you know sites require special ways of representation and promotion. One of these methods is including realistic icons into your web site design. For sure icons will help users of your web site to get a quick initial impression of your online business and also products that you offer. If you want to make icons noticeable - place them on the website's home page.

You may hire the skilled designer to create some unique set of icons meeting your site individual requirements and products. But keep in mind that such way of creating of realistic icons is very expensive and takes a great deal of time. After all the results of custom order are not clear. Even professional web-site designers fall short of the mark known as non-uniqueness. To save time and smoothen things down they take icons created earlier and simply play with the colors and shades, use some other effects and sell realistic icons as exclusive items. Though in fact they aren't.

Finding authoritative icons resources it's another way of getting pleasant web icons. They're different Realistic icons stocks and providers on the net. You see what you pay for and the price may occur essentially lower than in case with custom orders. In addition you save your valuable time. So as far as you see now - stocks are much more preferable for finding properly designed and low-cost realistic icons .

Tips for utilizing realistic icons

Creating realistic icons you need to build the basic pictograms first. It should look vivid enough if being displayed at worse resolution, resized, discolored or blurred. The person should be able to identify the icon meaning just by looking at its outlines for a short time period. How to test your icons? If it is possible to discern the icon within less than a second - it's well done.<\p>

The next task is to make realistic icons more eye-catching by adding decorative elements. Do not overload icons with the details and color tints. Design should look integral and reserved. You can make the edges anti-aliased. The decoration should not detract from the icons essence and functions.

The icons are usually stored in vector format which makes it pretty easy to edit. It enables you to resize, rotate, adjust the edges and edit outlines. You can even change the color scheme and add more details and so on. And don't be afraid - you don't need to have extra knowlages in web page design.

Realistic web icons may be helpful in case you need to design the interface layout of the new software or IT services. Designing high quality, eye-catching and good-looking realistic icons is not an easy task. Generally you should modify the high-resolution photos in order to get truly realistic images.

Saturday, February 19, 2011

Vintage Icons

Retro takes over the modern webpage design industry. Without doubt the best representatives of classic beauty and noble taste are Vintage icons. Present day web site style acquires some vintage twist. Retro and Vintage are becoming the widespread trends in the contemporary digital art. Vintage web icons, textures, patterns as well as clip-art bring mystery to your internet site design. They make you dive into the atmosphere of the old happy times, when everything seemed to be so simple, harmless and noble. People think the good times are over associating them with their period of childhood or sweet youth. Hence vintage style revives for this reason psychological peculiarity of the human nature.

Learn all about retro style in the contemporary internet site design industry

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

Typically the new retro style includes the Web 2.0 look with a vintage twist. It requires good recipe of combining the modern clean blocks and the outdated, aged design elements like Vintage web icons, styles and color palettes.

Get All Important Information About Line Icons

We typically use lines for emphasizing edges as well as outlining the contours of objects. If located and developed reasonably, line icons can be the great decoration of any minimalistic or clear web page design.

Lines and their facilities in line icons design.

What is in fact a line? The shortest definition is the following: line is a form that contain both width and length but eliminating depth. We are accustomed to the fact that the line is usually straight. Newertheless the line is more often curved. Being static shapes, Line web icons can create a sort of illusion of the dynamic objects. The mood is generally being conditioned by the lines direction. As an example horizontal lines in Line icons bring the feeling of calmness, peace and stability. Speaking about the vertical lines - they strive for the light movement. Energy and stronger dynamic feeling pertain to the diagonal lines. If you want to create refine and ultra-modern line icons designs you should use mix of straight lines and curves.

Line art - Line Icons

Undoubtedly the earliest type of line art that familiar to a great deal of artists is curve stitching. It was carried out with threads of different colors as well as needle. Originally the canvas was a card board. String Art is another name for this particular movement. It's founder was a Mary Boole. He created it as the accessory material for children to assist them to study geometry of angles and spaces. Line art existed also like illustrations for print sources before the photography was created. At that time line art included only black and white colors. A few shades of gray were also acceptable and imitated.Appealing to both technical and creative sides of human nature, line art includes geometry and art. If you would like to become a Line web icons designer keep in mind that this process may develop imagination and creativity and also calculation skills.Line art has an ability to be printed to the halftone picture without extra conversion. Thus it is different from photography or multi-color painting.

Friday, February 18, 2011

Vintage Web Icons And Vintage Web Design

Vintage icons is one of the most noticeable and easy-to-apply graphical elements you may use in your web site to make it look archaic. Vintage web icons suppose authentic use of vintage typography, less-saturated colors and retro textures to help creating the vintage air emanating from the internet site. Antique air is going to charm and brings unconscious smiles to the faces of your website visitors.

Retro trend is all about the styles of the70s and 80s. Retro advertising art from the 1950s is bold and striking. Presently with a help of computer technologies you can put a new face on this type of art and easily use its characters in internet site design and printing. Often such faces in the vintage web icons are retro cars, pin-up girls, soldiers and politicians of the former times as well.Definitely among the most often used retro cars are Fiat 500, the 1970 Dodge Challenger, the 1969 Chevrolet Samara, the 1964 Ford Mustang etc. You can easily find Vintage icons that contain hints to retro cars concepts. This will help to attract much more attention to your web page layout. This is the fantastic idea for websites that have a deal with auto sales, transporting services, tour sites etc. Also you can face a such common character as a pin-up model that is used in vintage icons design as well as other internet site graphics styling. Usually it presents images of how the really sexy and attractive woman should look like. Pin-up images are great for vintage web icons or clip-art designed for the model agencies, websites regarding health and beauty areas.

In case you have a website that is connected with military and security guard you may successfully use images of soldiers and officers with outdated appearance to attract much more interest and win the visitors trust.

There's no limit in usage of specific characters. Apply your creativity and use them as you wish. This will make people surprise and thus memorize your website.

Patterns and Typography for vintage icons and other graphics

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

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

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

If being relevant to the topic, general style and idea of your website vintage-inspired design is supposed to look contemporary and appropriate, but no old-fashioned. The goal is to create the cozy and noble, antique feel with a help of Vintage web icons and also images and styled blocks for the webpage layout. Doubtlessly your visitors will return to your webpage with a happy smile over and over again. They will feel more comfortable and cozy at your internet site.

But try not to make your vintage design look too stuffy, it is best to be aware that professional layout is formal-looking and the major focus should be made on the products, services or content material your web site provides.

Thursday, February 17, 2011

2d Icons Information

Today 2D web icons is a wide spread trend in the modern web design. These two-dimensional icons are notable for their flexibility and comparative simplicity. 2.5D Icons is the type of 2D Icons that is closer to pseudo 3D representation.

Being initially based on vector graphics devices 2D computer graphics traces back to the 50s. Nowadays2D icons are one of the most essential two-dimensional digital design items.

What's actually 2D?Generally it is being connected with computer graphics and determined as the two-dimensional way of digital images generation. Two-dimensional models are mainly 2D geometric ones, digital images and texts. The term 2D comprises not only the models themselves but the techniques and tricks specific to them as well.

2D icons and objects don't just depict the real world items but are independent objects with their own semantic value. 2D graphics can help you to get more direct control of the image than 3D technology. This may be one of the reasons why they are so beloved and preferred in the world of present day webpage design and digital art. 3D graphics is better realized in animation or photography than typography and sometimes even internet site design.

Sunday, January 30, 2011

Types Of The Glossy Web Icons

Glass icons can be considered an independent icon style though it is logical to assume that glass style is just one of the types of the shiny, glossy design.

Other types of the glossy web icons design that can be marked out:

  • glass icons;
  • metal icons;
  • glass-metal icons;
  • transparent icons.

Transparent and half-transparent glossy icons can be aqua, crystal, plastic etc.

Moreover, there are partly glass and partly stained icons meaning the objects contain some glassy or stained elements.

Glass icons are usually depicted with reflecting. It is one of the standard features of the "Web 2.0" icons. Creation of vertical reflection effect for web icons is certainly simple furthermore you can find a great amount of tutorials on the internet teaching how to do this.

The crisp and pure look of glass icons makes navigating through the internet pages eye-catching and playful. If you wish to create such neat web icons it is simple to find hundreds of tutorials on the Internet.

Creation of glass web icons.

Adobe Photoshop is the most well known software for creating web icons. Photoshop is becoming more and more flexible and multitasking software for design. Nowadays it allows to create almost all visual effects used for the graphic design. A lot of the great web icons designs were created with a help of this software. The most important feature of the latest Photoshop versions is the ability to combine pixel painting with vector tool for creating glass icons, buttons, characters etc.<\p>

The easiest way to design Glass icons is to make the "glass" layer overlap the image. By using the "eraser" tool you'll be able to build an empty diagonal line through the image. You are supposed to proceed using eraser for making adjustments to the glass layer until the moment when the glass effect repeats the contour of the icon. It should kind of the glass haze in the opposite sides. As soon as this procedure complete the further adjustments should be applied.

Professional web-site designers should use this effect carefully and remember that glass-fever may look ridiculous . Keep in mind glass icons should be used with taste so that the website style could remain professional and reserved.

Saturday, January 29, 2011

How To Create High Quality Web Site Layout With Business Web Icons

How to find a proper design for your webpage? This is a really hard task. The header graphics, logos, business icons and content placeholders as well as the fonts - all this stuff needs to be well designed. While doing this bear in mind the business area and needs of your potential customers.

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

The 1st step as the first brick is very crucial. At the very begining you have to decide what's the main audience of your internet site. After this think about what can your potential customers expect. Starting with the results of this research you should choose the appropriate name, hosting provider, content material and design style. You should feel what colors and styles of business icons as well as other elements of design reflect the business area your company presents.

To make the right choice you should remember that various colors evoke certain emotions in various groups of people. As an example if you are going to create the web page for some club, it is more efficient to use business icons of bright disco colors and unusual forms. Also in such a case pay attention to the fact that tints of red as manifestation of passion and sex are pertinent for business icons, logos or buttons. If you are developing the web site for some consulting company its look and feel is supposed to be clear, calm and reserved. You need to avoid playful lines and light-minded graphics. Cool colors and simple recognizable shapes of business icons are preferable. Such a web-site will make your potential clients believe into professionalism and stability of your company.

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Glass Web Icons

Web icons impart classy and clean look to your web site making its design amazing and professional. Though this effect should be reasonably used since it can be harmful for the design perception.

Glass web iconsare incredibly well-liked and attractive elements of web-site or blog decor. This glass icon style is so powerful thing that can easily impart the perfect, clear and professional look to your internet-site, presentation or desktop and embody a kind of the "Web 2.0" spirit.

Glass icons usage pro and contra.

In spite of the elaborate and intricate feel and look of the web icons designed in the glass style, it is obvious that the process of their creation is rather simple. Glass icons can normally be designed within a few minutes with Photoshop, Illustrator or Corel software program, so it's not a big deal even for the newbies in the design sphere. So you do not need to have extra web design knowledges. Everything you need is some helpful tutorial, some skills of working with these pieces of software and the images you are going to turn into glass web icons.

The glass effect is considered to have been borrowed from the Apples OSX operating system style and copied by Windows. Of course you may argue that Glass web icons are so firmly associated with Apple product that the glass-styled elements make people think of the entirely different brand which makes the usage if this type of web icons meaningless, but you can not deny the fact that the glass icons style has numerous advantages .

Probably the most essential feature of the modern site is social bookmarking web icons. Using attractive glossy icons for this purpose is an excellent advantage for the website promotion. This fact is very easily explained: attractive social bookmarks improve the probability of the visitors clicking on them and the amount of the clicks increases correspondingly. So as a result you are able to promote your content more effectively.

Thursday, January 13, 2011

2d icons versus 3d icons in modern website graphics

2D and 3D icons comparative analysis

As for the 3d Icons the light source plays important role for creating authentic three-dimensional images. It is appropriate and even recommended to use several light sources in website design today however they should follow basic rules of physics and be truthful. Several lights usually make 3D web icons look softer and more realistic.

Both 2D and 3D icons represent the volume found in the three-dimensional world but use various ways of creating this illusion. 2D Icons can certainly represent volume to less extent than 3D Icons. One of the disadvantages of 2D Icons are flat images that show just one perspective. To this weakness you can add one more - detailed highlights and imperceptible soft shadows are missing. Also the shades usage is really limited.

3D web icons can be proud of all these features instead. But 3D is mathematical replication of the data which anyway limits its usage. In some case 3D objects like 3D Icons may be successfully replaced by 2D ones or by the videos with the sounds. 3D dimension can be created due to the software used for 3D modeling. It is very important depict 3D icons in correlation with the other objects in the neighborhood and the environment they are placed into.

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

DreamWeaver Website Templates - Could They Be Of Any Use?

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

Nowadays over the Internet you'll be able to find a great number of Dreamweaver Web Templates to any taste. But first of all you need to decide what kind of web template you want to have: free Dreamweaver Template or premium one. Free web theme can be a very good choice if you need to save your pennies. But if you would like to have exclusive design and excellent quality you should look for premium Dreamweaver Templates. Anyway you have a unique opportunity to redesign your webpage in no time.

So Dreamweaver website themes can help to save your valuable time and money. Themes are a great way to maintain consistency across a web site. Don't panic if you have some difficulties - 24 hour support teams always glad to help. You can also use step by step web design online course or tutorials. Make a present to your webpage - redesign it using a new Dreamweaver theme and attract more visitors right now! Use this unique chance to be on the crest of the wave of Internet world.