Sometimes, all it takes is a little spark to intrigue the designer. From letterpress printing to photography, these twenty sites represent some of the best designs in the world.

1. Design You Trust

Design You Trust is packed with articles, advertisements, inspiration and news for the design community.

2. Deviant Art

Amateurs and professionals from all styles call DeviantArt home.

3. Illypads

Illypads features digital art and illustrations from artists around the world.

4. The Inspiration Room

This site focuses on the artistry of companies. Links go to videos, music videos and billboards.

5. Creative Tempest

From pictures drawn in beach sand to surreal photographs, this site has it all.

6. Minimalissimo

Minimalissimo exemplifies the beauty in simplicity with stark design pictures from all genres.

7. Best Web Gallery

This site delivers examples of the best web sites in terms of design, CSS and flash.

8. The Dieline

An easily navigable showcase for packaging design.

9. I Love Typography

Exactly as the title states, this site is for those who love the artistry of fonts.

10. Beast Pieces

Dedicated to the best designed letterpress pieces.

11. FormFiftyFive

Inspire and share great design ideas at FormFiftyFive. Examples of gorgeous printed material.

12. Moluv

Web design at its best. Moluv collects brilliant examples of web sites to highlight.

13. Creattica

A gallery with examples of design excellence from flash, photography and motion graphics.

14. Unmatched Style

Carefully chosen graphics deliver unmatched style in web site design.

15. PageCrush

PageCrush gives the best designers in the world a chance to showcase their work.

16. DesignShack

Offers a gallery and articles related to providing exemplary web designs.

17. Woodtyper

This site demonstrates the beauty of wood type through penmanship, engraving and letterpress printing.

18. Desktopography

Inspiration inducing desktop wallpapers can be found here.

19. PDF Mags

The site is devoted to PDF magazines about beauty, photography and design.

20. Design Flavr

Great user submitted works are highlighted here.

Designers, like their designs, come in all sha

Gareth is an online marketer and freelancer. He is a blogger for Broadband Compare NI, Northern Ireland’s leading broadband comparison website, they aim to bring broadband Northern Ireland the best deals for their customers.pes and sizes. These sites were selected to provide something for everyone.

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• January 6, 2010 -- A Monitor for Every Budget – What Monitor for Photography and Design? (5)
• January 6, 2010 -- 5 Free Web Design Proposal Contracts (22)
• April 12, 2009 -- Do you need a design degree to freelance? (16)

While the art of photography continues to develop with new technologies and colour capture, the classic aesthetic of black and white photos continues to be a major current of the form. Monochrome images tend to have a distinctive atmosphere, with the emphasis on light and dark, composition and mood.

This post brings together 30 examples of the amazing possibilities of black and white photography, beautiful images to amaze and inspire.

1. Canyon de Chelly, View of Valley from Mountain, 1941 (Ansel Adams)

Ansel Adams was a master of black and white photography, best known for his landscape images of the American West, which reflected his environmentalist sensibilities. This dramatic scene shows a view of Canyon de Chelly in Arizona, taken by Adams in 1941.

2. Elephant with Exploding Dust (Nick Brandt)

Nick Brandt’s photography concentrates on the animals and land of Africa, an attempt to record the wildlife before it disappears completely. In his black and white images of elephants he captures the weight and power of the animals as they interact with their natural habitat.

3. Single Teared Emotion (Megyarsh)

This black and white shot reveals the complexion of the model’s skin in amazing detail, and the crisp shine of the tear about roll down her cheek. The photographer made the image using an Olympus SP350 digital camera.

4. Commuters in Train Station, Chicago, 1949 (Stanley Kubrick)

In addition to his work in film, American director Stanley Kubrick was also a notable photographer, working for Look magazine in the late 1940s. This evocative image of commuters at a train station formed part of an assignment to record the city of Chicago for the magazine, which Kubrick carried out in 1949.

5. A Portrait in Darkness (Sean McGrath)

Photographer Sean McGrath took this moody portrait using his Nikon D80 digital camera.

6. Fashion Model Underwater in Dolphin Tank, Marineland, Florida, 1939 (Toni Frissell)

Fashion and portrait photographer Toni Frissell conducted a long-running series of images of models underwater, such as this exquisite picture of a woman in a dolphin tank at Marineland in Florida, taken in 1939.

7. Leeds Corn Exchange (Paul Stevenson)

Paul Stevenson’s magnificent architectural shot captures the restored Victorian interior of Leeds Corn Exchange with its vast domed ceiling.

8. Whirl and Reach Out (Procsilas)

This image shows another amazing piece of 19th Century architecture, the spiral staircase of the Phare des Baleines Lighthouse on France’s west coast. The coiling perspective was captured by pointing the camera from the floor below the 257 steps that lead to the tower’s viewing gallery and light at the top.

9. Tree in Mist (Per Ola Wiberg)

Per Ola Wiberg’s atmospheric monochromatic shot shows a landscape on the Swedish island of Ekero, the scene shrouded in autumnal morning mist.

10. Yoyogi National Stadium (Guwashi999)

This image shows Japan’s Yoyogi National Stadium in Tokyo, rendered with the high dynamic range (HDR) process. HDR emphasises the differences in tonality between areas of light and dark, and is particularly effective with black and white images, as we see in this picture with its brooding sky and luminous highlights.

11. Old Man’s Sheep (Kris Haamer)

Photographer Kris Haamer’s captured this shot at Ihasalu, a small coastal village in northern Estonia. The black and white tonality adds to the timeless, rustic quality of the scene.

12. Running through the Gate of Golkonda Fort, Hyderabad (Sukanto Debnath)

This image by Sukanto Debnath shows children dashing through the gates of an Indian fortress, with their blurred movement contrasting nicely with the stillness and detail of the citadel’s gates.

13. Statue at Pere Lachaise Graveyard in Paris (Shadowgate)

There’s a haunting beauty to this statue, found in Paris’s Pere Lachaise graveyard and captured in stark black and white tones.

14. A Change of Scenery (Kevin Dooley)

Photographer Kevin Dooley used his Canon PowerShot G7 camera to capture in fine detail the billowing forms of clouds high above Arizona in this amazing aerial shot.

15. Kids (Esyckr)

There’s a curious quality of light, heightened by the monochrome tonality, in this image of the church of Saint-Etienne-du-Mont in Paris.

16. Heaton Hall Heaton Park Manchester Folly (Waka Jawaka)

This is another local landmark building shot from an unusual angle, in this case the temple in Manchester’s Heaton Park. The sweep of the gravel bathed in light, the detail of the rotunda’s Tuscan columns combine with the dark drama of the stormy sky to striking effect.

17. Recession (Mugley)

In this image, the sharp angles of the Eureka Tower in Melbourne are nicely contrasted against the streaks and fluffs of the clouds above.

18. Barcelona (Bert K)

This image of a Barcelona cloisters has an elegant geometry in the perspective of the arches, shadows and sharp areas of sunlight.

19. Silver Print 14 (Mr Gilles)

This stylish black and white picture carries a suggestion of narrative in the interaction of its simple elements.

20. Tall and Short (Ben Sonkua)

Ben Sonkua’s shot, taken using a Canon EOS 40D in a park in Toronto, features a beautiful pairing of a solitary bench and symmetrically shaped tree.

21. Wings (Frielp)

This action shot captures the detail of the gull in flight with remarkable detail, the sunlight picking out highlights across the bird’s wingtips.

22. Lounging at Boo Bradley’s (Avhell)

This bar room interior was taken using an Olympus E-P1 during a beer festival in the US city of Mobile, Alabama.

23. Clevedon Pier (Me’nthedogs)

The sepia-like quality in this long-exposure digital photograph, combined with the elegant Victorian architecture, lends the image a distinctive old-world feel. The structure is Clevedon Pier in the Bristol Channel.

24. Israel / West Bank / Occupied Territories (Antifluor)

The photographer perfectly captured this moment in time, a boy gleefully leaping through the air, recorded in glorious black and white.

25. Power (Krypty ZA)

This amazing image was made using a very long exposure on a Canon EOS 5D Mark II, with a wide-angle lens and black and white filter, to capture the stillness of the power plant’s chimneys and the wispy movement of the steam and clouds.

26. Atacando a la iglesia (Zyllan)

In this cleverly composed image the photographer has juxtaposed the spire of St Clement Danes Church in London with an adjacent statue on the Gladstone Memorial, with the tonal pattern across the picture adding to the sense of drama.

27. Hey You! (Calmtwood)

A high-aperture setting on a Canon EOS 400D camera allowed the photographer to capture this delicately detailed study of a baby’s foot.

28. Angela (Tiago Ribeiro)

Tiago Ribeiro’s beautiful black and white portrait balances crisply focused detail on the model’s face with brilliantly handled areas of ‘bokeh’ blur across the background.

29. Laughing Horse (Pdam2)

The photographer used an Olympus Zuiko digital camera to capture this charming equine portrait.

30. Curled (Brunkfordbraun)

This superb macro shot of unusually curled petals of a flower’s petals is made all the more effective by its delicate monochrome tonality. This image, along with all those we have seen in this post, demonstrates the stunning possibilities of black and white photography.

Guest Post: by Tom is an art and design addict. He is currently employed as a full time writer at a leading ink cartridge store where he covers the latest developments in tech, reviews hardware such as the CLT-K4092S and posts on their blog and advertising and printed media.

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• November 3, 2009 -- Amazing Panorama’s – Will Pearson (1)
• August 3, 2010 -- Polishing Photos Off With Shadows & Sharpening (Video Photoshop Tutorial) (0)
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As we move more and more into doing things via ‘clouds’ and online web based applications; one of the few things that I have yet to find is a truely comprehensive intermediate web application for search engine optimisation.. I soon came across one that seemed to fit the bill.

Thus, I went off on a journey and in short, I found no web based SEO applications. There are hundreds if not thousands of fairly good individual tools for various tasks associated with SEO. Some of the more popular web based tools include for instance website grader. There is a previous post I made on such tools here: 10 Great Free SEO Tools and Resources

However, after a few tweets (@AcuityDesigns) I came across Sheer SEO.

Sheer SEO

SheerSEO is an SEO software to track and analyze your SEO campaign. Also helps you with link building.

Sheer SEO is a basic to intermediate tool that offers comprehensive link tracking, and automation and an intuitive UI to help speed up tasks such as directory submission to hundreds of free high PR directories. It couldn’t definitely work as a tool to help a freelance web developer offer basic to intermediate SEO campaigns to his clients.

Have any of you had extensive experience with Sheer SEO? Any negatives?

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Being a web designer should hopefully come with an inherent want to produce and design websites that are great to use for the end-user. As such it makes sense to stay up to date and informed on recent developments, assertions and techniques in relation to User Experience.

The following blogs are how I keep myself informed and improve my understanding of the discipline:

The UX Booth

The UX Booth is a blog by and for the user experience community. Our readership consists mostly of beginning-to-intermediate user experience and interaction designers, but anyone interested in making the web a better place to be is welcome.

Johnny Holland

Johnny originates from the need to have a place where creatives can talk and discuss in a normal, honest and pure way. A place where they can focus and learn about the issue that’s really important: interaction (in the broadest sense of the word). It’s a place where we can get inspired, dare to make mistakes and are able to feel enlighted.

Usability Post

UsabilityPost is a blog about design. Design isn’t what something looks like, design is about how it works. Making something usable means understanding what people expect from your product and thinking of ways to make the use of the product simple and enjoyable.

UI Section – Smashing Magazine

Founded in September 2006, Smashing Magazine delivers useful and innovative information to Web designers and developers. Our aim is to inform our readers about the latest trends and techniques in Web development. We try to convince you not with the quantity but with the quality of the information we present. We hope that makes us different. Smashing Magazine is, and always has been, independent.

UI Trends

UI Trends (uitrends.com) is intended to be

1. a dynamic light-weight repository for interesting user interface designs and trends for website and web applications
2. a place to comment on and discuss user interface designs and trends
3. a source of inspiration for designers and developers

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Brazilian ad agency Moma has given some of the worlds most modern brands a vintage 60s sepia makeover for an ‘Everything Ages Fast’ campaign.

The ads, created by Moma’s Rodolfo Sampaio, have been running in Brazilian newspaper Meio & Mensagem to promote media seminars from Maxi Midia.

Sampaio said: “Maximedia is an event intended for people working in communications. An updating event.

“Being that one of the greatest concerns these professionals have is to constantly reinvent themselves. What’s new today, is old tomorrow. With this in mind we’ve developed this campaign, showing how the tools in communication are quickly outdated. We are greatly impressed and pleased with the feedback we are seeing throughout the world.”

Story via BrandRepublic

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WorkSnug is a really cool augmented reality iPhone app that enables you to find great places to work nearby, from cafes to coworking spaces, complete with reviews.

Below is a short video showing how this great app works! :

WorkSnug  is available for free download from the iTunes App Store. The app initially covers London, and is absolutely amazing.  Coverage for San Francisco, New York, Berlin and Madrid to come.

Give it a run and let us know if WorkSnug helps you to find a great place to work?

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When people look through my photography, they often ask what I do in my post processing to achieve the subtle exaggerated shadows to result in somewhat dramatic / ‘epic’ and overall better looking picture…

The process itself, is relatively simple and from it you can build to create really good looking photos which do not look over worked like the trigger happy HDR stuff we see these days.

Today we take this image of the University College of London and apply a a few simple techniques to sharpen and exaggerate shadows and contrast!

Making Photos Dramatic Using Shadows Photoshop Tutorial from Acuity Designs on Vimeo.

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Hi all, another treat for you today. We managed to sit down with another great talent in London. Illustrator, Musician, Designer ; Joel Gonsalves. An insightful work with some stunning illustrative work.

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Whilst going through my RSS reader, I came across this amazing achievement of tech and photography via Photography Blog. An amazing 70 Gigapixel 360° panoramic photograph of Budapest.

The photograph was taken from a 100-year-old observation tower built on the highest point of Budapest, the stitched panorama is over 590,000 pixels wide by nearly 121,000 pixels tall. The young Hungarian photographers used two Sony A900 bodies – each outfitted with a Minolta AF 400mm f/4.5 APO G lens and 1.4x teleconverter – on a sturdy tripod complete with a custom-designed robotic head. The image capturing stage of the project took over three hours to finish. The source images were then stitched with Autopano Giga software  and this process took two full days and resulted in a 200GB file!!

Click the image below to see the panorama on their website ( you will need microsoft Silverlight installed)

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Hi all, I thought I would post up 14 blogs that have sat in my subscribe list on Google reader since the dawn of the time. Why do i think these blogs are so special? They actually provoke thought.

I am not a huge fan of sites that post lists / ‘best ofs’ 4 times a week, not a negative nor a criticism, its just not what I want waiting for me in my rss reader. The following blogs for the most part consistently strive to post articles that encourage: community, thought, continuing development, resources, laughter and advice. You might wait 4 days – 10 between posts but when they come – its worth-it.

In no particular order.

Aisle One

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AisleOne is an inspirational resource focused on graphic design, typography, grid systems, minimalism and modernism.

Boag World

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Boagworld is the blog of web strategist Paul Boag who lives in the heart of rural Dorset (hence the cows). He produces a weekly podcast with UX consultant Marcus Lillington on building and running websites.

Design Informer

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Design Informer is a web design and graphic design blog. We feature freelance articles, tutorials, freebies, resources, and inspiration posts.

Freelance Switch

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Our blog covers a vast array of topics about life as a freelancer, from Tax Tips for Freelancers to Determining Your Hourly Rate, Transitioning from Fulltime work to Freelancing to Where to Find Freelance Work and much more. If you’re new to the blog, a great place to begin is our Explore FreelanceSwitch page which has lots of jump points to get you into the material.

The Design Cubicle

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I’m Brian Hoff, a graphic designer from the always-sunny Philadelphia. I collaborate mostly on web design and brand identity, but I’m experienced in building all kinds of quality, strategic design, both on the web and in print.

The Future Buzz

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The Future Buzz is a blog about web marketing/PR strategies, spreading buzz in the blogosphere and building long-term visibility for your brand, business, and art on the web. Bloggers, marketers, freelance writers, entrepreneurs, artists, small business owners and public relations professionals will all benefit from the content here.

The Die Line

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The Dieline is dedicated to the progress of the package design industry and its practitioners, students and enthusiasts. Its purpose is to define and promote the world’s best packaging design, and provide a place where the package design community can review, critique and stay informed of the latest industry trends and design projects being created in the field.

Six Revisions

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Six Revisions is a website that publishes practical and useful articles for designers and web developers. We seek to present exceptional, noteworthy tips, tutorials, and resources that the modern web professional will appreciate.

FormFiftyFive

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Founded in 2005 by an ever growing group of young designers and vagabonds eager to collect and share the best design work they came across, FormFiftyFive soon became an international showcase of creative work.

Pro Blogger

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I started it in September 2004 mainly because I wanted to keep a record of what I was learning about blogging for money. Since then I’ve added well over 3500 articles, tips, tutorials and case studies to my archives here.

Seth Godin

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Seth Godin has written twelve books that have been translated into more than thirty languages. Every one has been a bestseller. He writes about the post-industrial revolution, the way ideas spread, marketing, quitting, leadership and most of all, changing everything.

Noisy Decent Graphics

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First and foremost it’s a blog about graphic design and the life of a graphic designer. Sometimes the blog creeps into design in general and then some related stuff about communication, ideas and inevitably brands.

Freelance Folder

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FreelanceFolder is a community for freelancers, entrepreneurs, work-at-home business owners, and web-workers. We strive to bring you the articles, information, and community you need to succeed.

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• July 25, 2010 -- Maintaining Business Standards As A Freelancer (2)
• June 14, 2010 -- 25 Amazing Photos of World Skylines (4)
• May 11, 2010 -- How to Avoid Over Working Yourself As A Freelancer (4)
• January 6, 2010 -- A Monitor for Every Budget – What Monitor for Photography and Design? (5)