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Fabulous Street Photography Examples

Radwa — Thu, 17 May 2012 23:18:01 +0000

Street Photography is defined as the photographs that cover the street activities and taken in public places. This type of photography includes taking photos of people, buildings, general elements and actions that takes place in the streets and squares.

In Street Photography, the most remarkable features that you can identify in all of the photographs are sharing the same amount of motion and it is live, which are inspired from the real life in the streets we see every day.

The photographers try to focus on different subjects in the street. Some photographers focus on the people walking or setting in the street; other artists like to focus on the cars and how they move fast creating amazing blur effects in the middle of the photo; and other photographers are more concern with the street elements such as the buildings, fountains, chairs and sidewalk areas.

Vasile Boeriu

Killntyme

Håvard Flaatten

Steve Hill

Duchesse-2-Guermante

Biljana Vujicic

Antonello Crippa

Sagi-k

Jericho1405

Benowski

MyPrivateParty

Sagi-k

Fotolympus

YuriBonder

Sagi-k

Robert

Jericho1405

Goran Bisic

YuriBonder

fotolympus

oO-Rein-Oo

Sblourg

Bdwfh

oO-Rein-Oo

Bdwfh

Duendeverde

NeveN

Fbuk

MyPrivateParty

Tips for Building Professional Web Portfolios

Rafiq Elmansy (admin) — Thu, 17 May 2012 14:15:23 +0000

There is no doubt that looking for a design job or clients is like selling your services to these clients. When clients need a design job, they will first review your resume and web portfolio or samples DVD for more information about your creativity and experience.

Therefore, your portfolio is the most important part of your identity, because it is the fastest way to offer a real look into your skills for a client or a company. There are countless cases of designers getting their applications rejected due to some tiny mistakes in their portfolios, such as hard navigation that makes it difficult for clients to reach the designers’ work samples.

So it may be a good idea to consider the following tips in this article when building your portfolio. We are not trying to MIT your creativity, instead, we are going to give you guidelines that you should keep in mind while brainstorming the ideas for your personal portfolio.

Of course, there may be other useful ideas that we would love to hear. If you have a suggestion or work portfolio that you would like to share with us, you can do this at the end of the article using the comments area.

The tips in this article are generally divided into two main sections, content-related tips and visual design and structure-related tips. Let us start with content-related tips:

Direct access to your work samples

You aim when building your portfolio is to show off your designs and work samples to prospective clients or companies. Thus, the most important part of the portfolio is your work samples area. The site visitor should be able to see your work once they access the website. If you can provide a large number of work samples, you can direct them to a portfolio page where the rest of your work can be found.

How you show each piece of your work is very important as well. Each sample should include a clean and large image preview, a description, information about the project and a link to its URL if it is a web page or web application.

As we have mentioned earlier, you need to select your best samples to preview in your portfolio. Adding work that does not reflect your real talent can mislead the client about your skills. So this is an important point when you are designing your portfolio page.

Add an about me page

The about page is very important because it introduces you to the visitors of the site in a personal manner. It is a chance for the visitor to hear your voice and you can talk about yourself similarly to interviews. When you write the about page, base it on your own style and voice and do not use third personal sentences.

Also, it is a good place to add the most important pieces of information about yourself and your history. Try to use descriptive words and expressions to reach your audience easily.

While the portfolio site does not need to have many pages and content, the About page an essential part of your website that should be easy to reach, or may even be the first page that your audience sees when they visit the website.

Your News

When building your portfolio, make sure to leave a place for your news and updates. For example, you can add updates about the conferences and seminars that you attend and help you develop your skills. Also, you can add updates about new softwares that you’re learning about and the courses that you’re taking.

Clear contact information link

In some profiles you can find great work and designs, but you never find a way to get in touch with the designer or sometimes it is not correct information. In order to let clients and companies get in touch with you, you need to provide clear and easy to reach contact information.

These days, business and interviews can be done through multiple methods, such as email, phone and chat applications. However, it is recommended that you provide a variety of ways for the site visitors to get in touch with you.

In addition to the above information, you can also add links to your social media site profiles, such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Flickr…etc.

While the tips above are very essential for your profile, the following tips focus on the visual design and structure of the site, and how you can make it more usable and user friendly for your audience.

Easy to navigate and use

Your design portfolio website menus and links are with which your clients can navigate through the site. Some designers build their portfolio in an artistic style without considering how the visitor will navigate through the site, which leads them to leave the site without reaching your information.

Clear design that reflects your creativity

When you are designing your own portfolio, you do not need the design to be only creative, but also clear enough to attract the visitors’ eye to view your artwork.

Complex designs can distract the audience, especially if you keep adding content; it will make it even more complex due to the images and information that you frequently add to the site.

With a little overview of the design trends you can also notice that clear and minimal designs are always new and do not go out-of-date because of their simplicity and usability.

Another technical benefit of using clear designs is that most of their structures are using CSS colors and a few images, which enable them to load fast, especially when the client is viewing it on a mobile or tablet.

Easy to update

Active designers have very dynamic portfolios where they frequently add updates of their new work samples. Thus, you need to keep in mind while building your portfolio that you should update it by adding new works, resumes and new information about your career and skills.

When you are building your website, you need to make it as dynamic as possible. For example, if you are building a Flash-based portfolio, you have to make sure that you can update your information easily through an external XML file that allows you to add text and images without having to open the Flash source files again and again.

You can also build your portfolio based on Content Management Systems (CMS), such as WordPress, Joomla, Drupal and others, because they support editing and to updating your content easily with a simple mouse click.

The above tips provide some general thought that you should keep in mind when you are building your design portfolio. There are some specific tips and content that is related to specific design fields or design skills. Share with us your ideas and what else you think can be added to a work portfolio to get the most out if it.

10 Flickr Groups for Challenge-Thirsty Photographers

TomChu — Wed, 16 May 2012 12:02:29 +0000

Everyone likes a good challenge now and again. Sometimes those challenges are against ourselves, working to accomplish a goal. Sometimes they are against a situation that seems insurmountable. Or they might be against others, trying to make it to the very top.

In photography, it is always a good idea to occasionally challenge yourself in order to push your creativity and skills to a new level. Not to mention, it can be a lot of fun. So if you are looking for a good photography prompt or two, and some like-minded, friendly people to do it with, check out these 10 Flickr groups.

Challenge You

The photographers in this group refer to themselves as “blood-thirsty,” always looking to provide the very best photo in a challenge and make it to the coveted Champion’s Pool. Despite this, the people are nice and the challenges are a ton of fun. But it is the resulting collection of photos that really impress the viewer with some really great shots.

Challenges Universe

While there are more than 2,000 members in this group, there are less than 400 photos in their group pool, despite being an incredibly active group with hourly updates. This should set the tone for the challenges presented here. The winning images are incredibly detailed and beautifully done, which you can see in the description where they show a few of the uploads in the group. If you are joining this Flickr pool, be ready for some serious competition.

Take Aim

Created back in 2005, this group has been consistently active and provides a number of excellent prompts for users who want to have regular challenges with plenty of feedback and encouragement. They do two challenges at a time that run for 10 days each. Voting, comments and decisions are then made, and the winners have their work featured on the group’s front page. There are only 107 members, which is a benefit because the contests are much more focused than with many other groups.

The Monthly Challenges Group

This group is supposed to do a monthly challenge, but they can be kind of lax on keeping up. However, they have done a ton of challenges in the past and they welcome members to go through them and post their attempts. So if you don’t mind a more casual environment and are more interested in prompts than competitions, you should join up with this one.

Challenge Themes Daily

If you want something fast paced, this is the perfect group pool for you. They post daily challenges and have a voting time of 12 hours to make the process even more rapid fire than it used to be when the time was 24 hours. They require everyone taking part to vote on photos every time they join in a challenge, so you can be sure of plenty of feedback, whether your shots win or not.

Challenges and Comments

Image source

With a duel purpose to act as both a challenge and a way to gain comments on its users’ photos, this is a nicely active group. You can check for currently open challenges, and there are usually several open at a time. They ask that everyone vote, comment and invite people when possible to keep things growing. There are some beautiful photos here to check out in the group’s main pool.

The Challenge Group Game

A large number of challenges are always open in this group, sometimes up to a dozen at a time. They are open to anyone to try, and the group is so active that you will always have someone to talk to about the challenges, get or give advice or receive feedback. They occasionally have “special challenges” that you should look out for. To see the last winners, check out their front page.

Beautiful World Challenge

This group does challenges built entirely around nature, as their “beautiful world” prompts. Landscapes, pictures of natural phenomena like storms and animals are among the accepted topics. They are very specific and a little fussy on what is and isn’t allowed. You can see a complete list on the front page. But these strict rules help to enhance the difficulty of the challenge, which could be considered a plus.

Friendly Challenges

Image source

A ton of members and a ton of challenges are both boasted in this group. Well established and extremely active, you can find something here for you no matter who you are. They put an emphasis on being friendly here, and no catty or rude behavior is allowed, which is a nice touch on a site where people can easily get into stupid fights.

Professional Photographers Challenge

Professionals who want a challenge can enjoy this group. It isn’t very active but there are a large number of members who are in the industry. So it is a great way to network, as well as take part in the many past challenges currently in the group.

Conclusion

Flickr members can really enjoy the many challenge groups that they have to offer on their site. What are some of your favorite challenge groups? Let us know in the comments.

Useful iPad Apps for Taking Notes and Brainstorming

Rafiq Elmansy (admin) — Tue, 15 May 2012 18:27:31 +0000

Recently, many designers have started to rely on the iPad as a fast and easy tool to manage tasks, such as checking emails, reviewing files and taking notes and drafts from clients. iPad apps are an essential part of any designer’s iPad apps library for taking notes. These apps allow designers to save time while they are with clients or take drafts of their ideas instead of losing or forgetting them.

There are many iPad apps for note-taking and brainstorming in the App store, the important issue is to get the app that really meets your needs. For example, some iPad apps support audio and video recording, while some other iPad apps support sharing notes as PDFs. In this post, I would like to provide suggested examples of the commonly used iPad apps for taking notes and brainstorming. Some of these applications are free and some are paid. After checking these apps, share your experience with us if you had the chance to use any of them.

Bamboo Paper – Notebook

Bamboo Paper by Wacom is one of the comprehensive iPad applications that allows you to take notes, brainstorm and draw drafts using easy-to-use tools and features. Wacom provides a free and paid Pro version of the Paper iPad app. The free version lets you do the following:

Share ideas and send individual pages or an entire book by e-mail
Present your ideas by connecting your iPad to a projector to showcase your sketches
Print a page or an entire book
Mark important notes using bookmarking.

Paper by FiftyThree

Paper is a more artistic iPad app that allows you to take notes, draw sketches, illustrations and drafts using various artistic tools and effects. While the application is free, you can buy individual tools for it that allow you to create more effects.

Ideate

Here is another iPad app that lets you capture notes and drafts and share them with your team and friends. Ideate includes the following features:

Choosing from page templates that most matches your needs
Using clips of images from your iPad or downloaded from the web in you drafts
Various tools and customized pens to sketch ideas
Sharing your ideas through email, Flickr and other social networks.

Penultimate

Penultimate is similar to the other iPad apps for taking notes. In addition to the general features, this app lets you use different styles of pens, ink and bold gel ink. Also, you can share your notes and drafts as PDF files with your team and friends through email, Dropbox and Evernote.

Scribbie Pro

Scribbie Pro has the same features that allow you to take notes and draw drafts and in addition, a function to record audio and video notes that you can save and export. You can also export images and text notes as PDF files.

Notes Plus

Although this iPad app is little bit expensive, it gives you a powerful note-taking tool that includes various features, such as handwriting, typing and audio recording. Also, it allows you to create vector shapes and export images and text as PDFs to share via email.

Note Plus includes the following features:

Handwrite comfortably using your fingers or the stylus pen
Lay your palm comfortably down with the Palm Pad
Insert a keyboard text anywhere on the page
Draw basic drawings with your finger and the application detects them as vector shapes
Record audio while writing your notes
Easy to edit text and fixing errors
Organize your notes in folder structure
Undo/redo feature to create error-free notes
Customization for your best usage.

SmartNote

SmartNote is similar to Notes Plus, but it includes some extra features that you may find useful in your iPad while taking notes, such as importing PDFs, a built-in calculator, document resizing and wireless access to documents and viewing it.

WhiteNote

WhileNote is another useful iPad app for taking notes and drafts. It does not include extra features compared to the above apps, but you may like to give it a try.

Mental Note for iPad

Mental Note is another iPad app for taking text, audio and video notes. You can find the following features in it:

Drawing with your finger or stylus using different colors over text and images
Importing images from the your photo gallery
Recording audio and video notes while adding your text notes
Organizing notes using tags
Protecting your notes with password
Adding a calendar to your notes
Undo/Redo in your notes
Exporting notes top Dropbox
Changing the size and color of the font

PaperDesk

PaperDesk includes some very useful features and gives you more options to create and share notes and drafts. Below are some amazing features in this note-taking iPad app:

Use different sizes, colors and 58 different fonts. Also, it supports bullets and numbers
Draw in different colors using pen and ink and you can use images from your photo library
Import PDFs from other apps, Dropbox and iTunes
Export to Dropbox, Google Docs, email, Twitter and AirPrint
Protect your notes using password protection.

At the end of this article, feel free to share links to other useful iPad apps for taking notes and drafts in the comments area.

20 Stunning Typography Examples

Graphic Mania Editorial — Tue, 15 May 2012 11:25:27 +0000

Typography artworks rely on one of the most important elements of our visual experience, which is type and fonts. This form of art uses the arrangement of font glyphs and letters to build a new visual experience. Digital typography artworks extends this experience by adding effects and photo manipulation tricks to letter glyphs.

Many of these typography artworks are used in printing, advertising campaigns and digital design. In this post, I would like to showcase some stunning typography examples from different artists. If you have enjoyedthis post, do not forget to comment about your favorite design and your ideas about typography art.

Typography example by Irina Bogos

Typography tree by fikriye

Typography by Martin

Longboard girls crew by Benjamin Simon

Stitching font by Filiz Sahin

Morning glory by Aesthetictherapie and Christian Del Moral

Hallucination experimental typeface by Micaela Barrero

Typography example by Serge Haelterman

Typography by Jorrit van rijt

Anabelypster by Patrick Seymour

Some fresh stuff by Peter Tarka

Typography artwork by Mrgraphicsguy