Mascots are a great way of giving a personality and a natural touch to you site! You can either use them as a logo in themselves, or next with your site logo, but in any case, they are a simple and effective way of suggesting what your site is about and giving it a specific character, connecting it to an image that makes it memorable, in a word, giving it an identity that people can relate to!

Compared to the way in which this kind of mascot could be used in print (where there are certain color and complexity restrictions), when you create a mascot that is meant just for the web you have much more creative freedom: you can use as many colors or effects as you wish if you feel that this would be in line with what your site is about, for instance. Of course, you can still use a very simple drawing style as well. It all depends on what you are trying to express through your mascot, what your target audience is and, of course, on keeping in mind that you have to make your mascot blend in with the rest of the site. There are certain tips that you should look at in this respect (and you can find a good tutorial about that on vector.tutsplus.com, for instance).

Continue Reading

In this post we’ll be looking at some awesome site backgrounds that have been created in Adobe Illustrator or in other similar programs, and have an unmistakable, specific ‘vector look’ which is very trendy currently. They usually use shiny looking illustrations as part of the background graphics, or collages of various decorative elements, again with a digital look.

In this case it is very important what image you choose to feature on the background: creativity is more than necessary in the choice you make. It is enough to rightly place one illustration whose drawing style and original subject is astounding and you will convey a special personality and character to the whole site.

Continue Reading

In this article we’ll be looking at another awesome and very popular trend in web-design: that of creating an entire graphic world that one should explore! Entering the site is like visiting a strange planet or an unknown house - you never know what to expect, what will cross your way or what will pop up in front of you! We’ve seen that before in our previous articles but this time we’ll be looking at a different procedure and technique for creating this spectacular alternate reality: it will no be a world that is drawn or illustrated; the baffling element is that this time the unreal world is created from very realistic images, combined in a strange or unexpected way.

The effect is dazzling - you will feel like stepping into an unusual dream where all your familiar realities are recomposed and, generally, juggled with in the most unexpected way! Sometimes the site graphics stays closer to a recognizable reality and other times it just creates an alternate world from scratch but it uses very realistic pictures to do that and the contradiction is shockingly beautiful!

Continue Reading

Twitter is a continually growing trend with a shocking popularity worldwide so it’s impossible to avoid a Twitter-related article here (the Twitter icon on the right side of this very article is enough proof of my statement, and very hard to ignore, indeed!).

This time we will discuss about Twitter from a designer’s perspective and we’ll be referring to Twitter background designs - something you really shouldn’t take for granted if you care about giving a clue of your personality to your followers, and that at the first glance! So we’ll be looking at some Tweeter backgrounds that are impressive because of their original and very well-balanced graphics, and, in fact, because they have style! A Twitter background is much less demanding than that of a site or blog, but considering that thousands of people could relate to you through that, you should give it a bit of thought, however.

Continue Reading

The sketchy look templates are currently a trendy style for illustrators and, why not, for web-designers as well. This is why we have decided to dedicate it an entire article and showcase some of the most original, intriguing and inspiring sites or blogs in this style that we could find. The advantage for adopting this kind of graphics is that you will get a very vibrant, natural look which will convey a sense of sincerity and originality to your site or blog.

It is free, it is natural, it is living art!!! What more freedom do you want other than to draw whatever your imagination dictates you? You can get to extremely interesting combinations of images in this way, that you couldn’t have possibly thought of otherwise. Just the act of placing one drawing next to another can bring very original results to begin with and when you’ll start making these sketches, drawings or cartoons interact, the results will be surpassing your expectations. You have the examples in this collection as a proof of the infinite possibilities you have in this type of graphics.

Probably the best advantage of the sketchy design is that your site or blog will have a truly unique look. No other site on the web will look like it because you have applied your own, personal, drawing style to it. This could be a very true expression of your style, and if you manage to give your hand-drawn graphics a definite, unmistakable personality you will surely have a successful site design.

Continue Reading

In our previous post we discussed about tips to making efficient and professional looking single page portfolio sites. Just to help you put those ideas into practice, this article will bring some excellent examples of single-page websites which will surely inspire you! They are extremely relevant because of the original, unusual or creative means they’ve used in the site design and functionality. You can pick up new ideas from each of these links and, why not, apply them to your own portfolio or use them as a starting point for creating your own original designs! It would be a good idea to analyze the way all these sites manage to obtain balance between the background and the work displayed, the very professional way of structuring information and the very fluid navigation displayed there.

They prove a point about efficiency, outstanding creativity and carefully studied graphics. In terms of the technique preferred for this type of sites, using the HTML (with CSS and Javascript) would be the most suitable, as it can easily be adapted to the desired functionality of such a site and, most of all, is easily indexed by Google. However, one must admit that the most spectacular results are usually obtained with Flash and, as in most of the cases, the designer also intends to sweep you off your feet, this can be a preferable variant. Especially as such a spectacular site can get a lot of publicity coming from the experts in the field (magazines, web design prizes, blogs etc.). Of course, a middle way is also possible: a HTML site with extremely ingenious use of Javascripts (Moo Tools,  ProScroll, jScrollPane, LightBox and so on) can kill two birds with one stone - and in this case, the project would be all the more challenging for you!

Continue Reading

In this post you will actually find two sources of inspiration: photography (which you must admit is indispensable to any graphic artist), and a specific type of design: that for photographers’ portfolios websites. Right from the start you will surely notice that the photographer’s sites are quite different from all the other creative portfolio sites that we’ve looked at so far. For a photographer, the site should be an almost invisible, in any case, non-disturbing, frame for his photography. This is why extremely minimalist design is preferred or photos tend to expand all over the screen and create the graphics of the site in themselves. Probably because of the nature of photography, which is like capturing frozen memories of fleeting, shifting moments in time, most photographers seem to have a preference for static websites, where you can take your time to concentrate on individual frames or pictures.

No more will you find bewildering, shifting backgrounds, that seem to slip through your fingers or that you need to explore step by step! In photographers’ sites clear, global vision is preferred, with a strong focus on the pictures themselves, which become the leading actors on the scene.
Continue Reading