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23 Inspiring Mac Related Websites

2012-05-29T05:34:26Z

A while back we showcased lists of Inspiring iPhone App Sites, iPad App Sites and other Mac Related sites. Since almost every Mac related app seems to really embrace the “Mac syle of design” and deliver beautiful websites, we decided to gather a new list to show here. From inspiring textures, backgrounds, patterns, typography, image galleries and minimalistic layouts, there are a lot of nice designs here to keep you inspired. Check it out!

Cheddar

Cheddar keeps your world organized. It’s easy to use on your iPhone and the web. Simple and always in sync. You’ll love it!

Spell Tower

A game of words.

Paper

Paper is where ideas begin. It’s the easiest and most beautiful way to create on iPad. Capture your ideas as sketches, diagrams, illustrations, notes or drawings and share them across the web.

layer cake

Bye bye, “Save for Web/Devices”. To turn PSD elements into images for your website or app, simply name your layer groups once and let Layer Cake do its magic.

droplr

Droplr is the easiest and best way to share files, large and small, over the internet. Period.

Wunderkit

Another project shouldn’t require another place to organize it, it’s about time you had a home for everything. With Wunderkit you can work on all of your projects from one single place, and gain greater control and focus over what you need to do.

The Cocktail App

With this app you will look on cocktails from a completely new angle.

Showcase

Your own portfolio on the go!

Gradient

Gradient streamlines the creation of CSS3 Gradients. It is a simple yet powerful tool to help you get rid of the clumsiness of vendor prefixes.

Sipp

An iPhone app for wine lovers.

Iris

Finally, a beautiful and simple way to browse Instagram on your iPad!

Flight Card

Flight Card is a flight tracking application, incredibly beautiful, simple and intuitive. Just search for your flight by number or route, track it and share its status with your family and friends.

BeachWeather

Check the weather forecasts at your favorite beaches. BeachWeather for iPhone contains several thousands coastal cities throughout Europe, Mexico, Brazil and the United States.

local hero

LocalHero helps you find the right friends in your network for the things you need now.

popset

Popset is the easiest way to create and share beautiful sets of photos.

Meridian

Meridian is your personal guide to all the places you visit.

Banca

A beautiful and powerful currency (exchange) converter, very simple to use.

Gemini

Gemini will quickly find and help you remove duplicates from your Mac. Make this routine task easy and fun with Gemini!

ListBook

Shopping lists, things to do or to remember – with ListBook and its elegant user interface, creating as many lists as you want is a breeze and thanks to iCloud your data gets wirelessly synced between your iPad and iPhone.

The Hit List

The Hit List manages the daily chaos of your modern life. It’s easy to learn — it’s as easy as making lists. And it’s powerful enough to let you plan, then forget, then act when the time is right.

Day One

Day One is a micro-journal / diary / text logging application that makes it easy to quickly enter your thoughts and memories and have them sync and available in the cloud.

Stylapps

Stylapps – application is your way to enjoy daily showcase of the most stylish applications in App Store.

Stamped

Stamped is a new way to recommend only what you like best — restaurants, books, movies, music and more. No noise, no strangers, just the things you and your friends love.

App Sites

20 Creative Personal Blog Web Designs

2012-05-28T15:42:04Z

As clearly and concisely defined by Wikipedia, a blog is ‘a personal journal published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete entries (“posts”)…’. But when you do read back that definition you soon realize how far we have drifted away from it, especially over the last couple of years and particularly within the design community. Once upon-a-time a blog was a place where you could express your opinions, your thoughts and your ideas. Nothing more, nothing less. Just your personal writing.

Nowadays though, a blog is viewed as many things (a marketing tool, a means for businesses to communicate with customers, a portfolio, an ecommerce solution, and on, and on…) and very rarely do you come across a new blog that fits into the definition I highlighted above. Yes, I know that the web is continually evolving, and that trends do come and go. But when I was researching this post, I found myself yearning for a bygone era when discovering a new personal blog, especially within the design community, could often be exciting and educational.

Anyway, back to this post, the good news is that I did manage find 20 blogs, mainly from the design community, that not only do they meet the criteria set out by the Wikipedia definition above, but that are also beautifully and originally designed as well. Just as ‘blogs’ should be.

Here they are:

Visual Idiot

Rivers & Robots

Elliot Jay Stocks

Trent Walton

Jon Phillips

Dave Gamache

Karl Fernandes

Stuart Frisby

Sacha Greif

Jean-Philippe Gams

Janna Hagan (A Student's Guide to Web Design)

Hardly Code Blog

Jason VanLue

Jason Stone

The Mavenist

Tim Van Damme

Thomas Aull

Russ Maschmeyer

Girl With A Camera – Ashley Baxter

Massimo Dutti

Osvaldas Valutis

You might also like…

40 Examples of Brilliant Responsive Website Layouts →
30 Highly Unusual Web Designs →
A Showcase of Typography in Webdesign →
A Showcase of 50 Amazing Personal Blog Web Designs (2010)→

30 Beautiful Dark Website Designs for Inspiration

2012-05-27T10:57:54Z

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Using dark colors in your web design can create a look that’s edgy. This showcase features some excellent dark website designs for your inspiration. At the end of this showcase, you’ll find several more resources related to dark web designs.

1. The Old Barber Shop

2. 76 Synthesizer

3. JUXT Interactive

4. Alien Bikes

5. DesignWise

6. Indubitablee

7. Gold Top Cider

8. Gangibob

9. JoshSullivan.me

10. Michelle Carrillo

11. BlissfullyAware

12. Designers.MX

13. Power Of One

14. Jet Cooper

15. Riser

16. Kansas City CreepFest

17. Champion Boxing Fitness

18. Adrian Baxter

19. Rune Werner Molnes

20. Moa Beer

21. Luhse Tea

22. La Bubbly

23. Founders Fund

24. Thismanslife

25. Dan Ogborn

26. Hiut Denim

27. CultStory

28. Tim Roussilhe Portfolio

29. Bluecadet Interactive

30. The Weather

More Dark Website Design Resources

You might also like to check out these other posts:

About the Author

Jacob Gube is the Founder and Chief Editor of Six Revisions. He’s also a web developer/designer who specializes in front-end development (JavaScript, HTML, CSS) and also a book author. If you’d like to connect with him, head on over to the contact page and follow him on Twitter: @sixrevisions.

30 Beautiful iOS App Website Designs for Inspiration

2012-05-25T10:26:25Z

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An iOS mobile app often has a website associated with it. This website is often for promotional and informational purposes (i.e. to share information about the app, to offer insights on how users would benefit from the app, for hosting videos and screenshots of the app, etc.).

In this showcase, you’ll find beautiful websites of various iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch apps for web design inspiration.

If you’d like to see more iPhone app websites, please do check out this previously published showcase: 35 Beautiful iPhone App Website Designs.

Duet

Paper

Instagallery

Postmates

blip.me

76 Synthesizer

OATBook iPhone App

Fontain

Opuss

Day One

batch

Flight Card

dribbblr

Kinotopic

Nizo for iPhone

Jambalaya

Snapette App

Keypoint

Facecard iPhone App

Domino Box App

Bord

The Typography Manual

Momento

forkly

Lite Weight iPhone App

Notica

Sipp

Path

Luminance

iStudiez Pro

About the Author

Websites That Come In Black

2012-05-24T12:12:22Z

Bold, power, elegance, formality, mystery—few of the many words associated with the color black and the very reason why it’s gaining popularity as the main color or theme of website designs.

In contrast to white or to other light-colored websites used mostly in corporate and informational sites, black or dark-colored websites focus more to visual and artistic viewers. Black gives the feeling of perspective and depth which illuminates what the website is about. This is important so that the website may impart the vision and message it wants its visitors to see. This then helps the website gain more power over its audience. Hence for web designers and artists, black simply makes their canvass a work of art in the web design world.

Using black and dark themes in web designing conveys many types of feelings and emotions towards its visitors. The main reason for being is to let the photos, images and other visual elements to stand out. This allows emphasis at the right area and provide concise look of the web design.

Lastly, black color theme provides a whole new taste of creativity. The irony of it all may be because black is solely the main color used but it still creates the feeling of uniqueness on each website, giving the site some variation.

Take a look at these black-inspired web designs and embrace the depth and creativity on each design. Let this be an inspiration to every aspiring web designer, go and get those black canvasses.

Black Estate Vineyard

Mutant Labs

Blue Collar

Der-Vigilant.de

You The Designer

The Progressive One

Crypo. Biz

The Borland Gallery

Wear The Mask. Slipknot1

The Joker Blogs

21 Inspiring Minimalistic Web Designs

2012-05-21T04:02:06Z

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Here at WDL, we really like minimalism and we believe that the “less is more” principal can result in amazing websites. Minimalism, explained as the essence of something, is when we reduce something to its necessary elements. What is the right amount of elements to compose a minimal design is a polemic subject, but we can all agree that having few elements make a layout elegant, easy to understand/use and pleasant to see. Today we gathered a few examples of minimalistic designs to inspire you, check it out.

b14

Eleven Made

Elliot Jay Stocks

12th of Never

Academy

Teacake

It’s Numbered

Irving & Co

Socket Studios

Regenerate Music Co

FO

Antidote

twenty8twelve

Visual Supply Co

Andy Chak

Oliver Spencer

fruute

Pollen

François Deladerriere

grain&gram

Studio Octopi

The Best Designs
Minimal Sites

20 Creative Examples of Intro Videos in Web Design

2012-05-21T07:00:06Z

Remember when websites used to feature Flash intro videos as part of a splash page? These days video use in Web Design is much more creative (and UX friendly!) with many sites using video to provide an introduction or a tour of their product or service. This post rounds up 20 great examples of video intro use in modern web design, with these designs using video as embedded objects or as lightbox style popups with the help of Javascript.

Vimeo

Sevenly

Nest

Paper

Pocket

Letter Learner

Anthm

GoPro

Things for iPad

FiftyThree

La Bubbly

iA Writer

Sir John A Day

St. John’s University

Visit Norway

Project Re:Brief

Starved for Attention

Union State Neighborhood

Social Design House

Sony Make.Believe

Websites With Seamless Social Media Integration

2012-05-18T07:59:54Z

Well, its official: social media is here to stay. While it can be difficult to keep up with the ever-changing social landscape, a basic understanding and implementation of the different platforms available can get big results. Companies of all sizes are taking advantage of the free publicity and word-of-mouth that social media can offer them.

One of the most logical ways for companies to capitalize on this trend is to integrate their social media campaigns with their websites. Unfortunately, some websites treat their social media links as an after-thought, and it shows. These sites will often use stock icons supplied by the social media outlets that do little to coordinate with the look and feel of the website itself. In other cases, the links might just be shoved into any blank space that was previously unoccupied. Either way, this is no way to treat such a potentially valuable marketing tool.

The following collection of websites, on the other hand, do a fantastic job of integrating their social media campaigns into the design itself. Through custom designed icons and typography, these social media elements fit into the page stylistically, and are easily accessible without overwhelming the user.

Websites With Seamless Social Media Integration

Trailer Park Truck is food truck based in Los Angeles, and they want to make sure their fans can always find their current location. They placed their twitter and Facebook links in the left margin of the site in what looks like an attached wooden sign.

Adventure World is a theme park in Australia with a fun, retro website. Rather than use icons that might clash with the site’s design, they opt for the typographic treatment. They chose a quirky script font that coordinates perfectly with the images as well as the other typography on the site.

Lefft is the portfolio site for Irish Illustrator and UX designer, Paddy Donnelly. The site as a whole has a very colorful, tactile feel to it, and the social icons complement this beautifully. A subtle hover effect darkens the icons as you mouse over them.

Brand designer Aran Down‘s portfolio site has recurring ribbon embellishments used throughout. This treatment works very well with the custom-colored social icons used.

No Leath is a women’s shoe company with a pretty slick parallax scrolling site. Not wanting their social links to be left behind as their customers scroll, they are in a fixed position, right underneath the main navigation. They have been subtly customized in black, with a slight bevel to match the black leather shoes of course. Gotta match the shoes.

Flint Boutique specializes in wedding invitation design, and that is translated very nicely into their website. Their oversized Facebook button includes a variation on the traditional Facebook “f” inserted into a heart. That combined with coordinating typefaces and a faux-stamped texture makes it feel as handmade as their invitations.

The portfolio site for Pixel Peak design is a study in simplicity. It follows a very grid-like structure and the attention to detail is spot-on. The social icons blend in with the header seamlessly, and the hover effect on each slides up to reveal a pop of color.

Carl Rosekilly‘s design portfolio site is layered, dark and bright all at once. His links to Facebook, Twitter and Flickr are meant to look like little discarded bits of paper, which may not work on other sites, but it fits this grungy, layered site very well.

Tigi Hair Products uses an ultra elegant black bird icon positioned above an equally eye-pleasing Twitter feed. It cycles through their most recent tweets, one at a time. It is just large enough and centered on the page for maximum impact.

The Rexona For Men site wants to know what makes you a superhero? Styled like a comic book, the social icons take on the shape of shields.

The Thomas Oliver Band doesn’t want you to forget to follow them, tweet them, or email them. That’s why they practically nailed their social buttons to the floor. As you scroll up and down their site, the simply styled buttons remain anchored to the bottom of the window.

The World Wildlife Fund’s Earth Hour 2012 site is simple, using cool colors, simple shapes and plenty of white space. They chose to use an oversized footer with a large Twitter call-to-action. It matches the aesthetic established for the rest of the site, while calling due attention to itself.

Blind Pig Design is the portfolio site for designer Aaron Awad. It has a hip, illustrated vibe with subtly distressed elements for character. He uses a halftone pattern for his social media icons, which lets them fit right into their surroundings nicely.

The portfolio site for Marco Rosella has one of the most interesting navigation concepts I’ve ever seen. Rather than scrolling up, down, or side-to-side, you zoom into the content on the z axis. When you zoom in far enough to get to the contact info, that’s where you will find links to his Linkedin, Twitter and Facebook, cut into interesting, organic shapes.

Moovents is a social media agency, so one would expect great social media integration in their website. Keeping it simple, but sophisticated and noticeable, their social icons are greyscale versions of the famous logos, presented front and center in the header bar.

House musician Ricky Ryan‘s website features small but mighty social links colored in shades of copper. Placed right under the musician’s logo, (which stays in place no matter where you are within the site’s horizontal navigation) they are not likely to be missed.

The site for Upward Creative has a very mod 1960s look, and the simple row of circular icons certainly lends itself to that era as well.

Pulp Fingers is a team of designers and developers that specialize in making apps. The overall look of the site is very retro and playful, with typography and images seemingly cut out of construction paper. The Facebook and Twitter icons have a similar look, with a slight paper texture.

The minimalist site for Tokyu Agency deserves minimalist icons as well. Breaking free of their usual enclosing shapes, these icons use only the familiar initials as links. Only a slightly darker color than that of the background, they are barely there, yet always there, as they are in a fixed position at the top of the window. A mouseover reveals a colorful circle background for each icon.

Layout Lab‘s website is light and breezy with lots of negative space and a healthy dose of lime green for flavor. The links to their Twitter and Dribble accounts look right at home in fixed tabs on the upper left side of the window.

The site for Fancy Rhino uses triangles as a recurring design element. Team member photos, and portfolio work all appear in triangular shapes, so why not their social links? A simple row of triangles on their contact section communicates the different ways you can follow their work.

Friendly Gents is a Cincinnati web design studio with a vintage barbershop-inspired site. They use a lot of distressed fabric textures, and their social media links look like they are literally embossed into the fabric.

Ghosthorses‘ website is another with a quirky retro style. It uses a lot of mid-century typography, and textured ribbon embellishments. Their custom styled Twitter feed and follow button fit the rest of the page’s style like a glove.

Fringe Web Development goes even further back in time, with a turn of the century look and feel. The main navigation is in a left sidebar with a row of simple, elegantly styled social buttons right beneath it.

Liechtenecker is a “superfresh” web agency in Germany. Their site is fun, colorful, and textured, and the honeycomb-shaped social links are no different. They stand out in contrast to the neutral beige background, yet they complement the visuals on the rest of the site perfectly.

Share Your Thoughts

That does it for our list, but now its your turn to get social and share some of your own favorites. Which did you like on this list? Do you have any others that we missed that should to be included? Take a moment and give us your opinions in the comment section below.

(rb)

Responsive Web Design – Ideas, Technology, and Examples

2012-05-17T11:00:16Z

The web design industry is constantly evolving, whether that be with the latest trends in design – big header images, large photographic backgrounds, etc, or with the latest technologies – HTML5, jQuery, CSS3, and so on. It's important as a web designer and developer to keep up with these ever changing “trends” within the industry.

One of the biggest “trends” that has hit this field over the past year or so, is the concept of responsive web design. It has become much more than just a buzz word and has taken the industry by storm. It is clearly not going away. If anything, if you haven’t already got on board with it, it maybe it's about time to start warming to the idea.

Responsive Web Design

What is Responsive Web Design?

Responsive web design is the term given to the concept of designing and developing a website so that the layout changes depending on the device/viewport on which the website is being viewed. By device, this could be a mobile phone, tablet, laptop, desktop computer, or even a smart TV. The term 'Responsive Web Design' was coined by its creator, Ethan Marcotte – his book is highly recommended reading “A Book Apart - Responsive web design”

Image source: Flickr

In the book, Ethan covers where the term 'Responsive Web Design' came from and why it was required.

As a start, its' important to understand that responsive web design is not one particular technology or item but in fact it is a collection of techniques and ideas, which together establish a new way of thinking in moving the web design industry forward.

Why is Responsive Web Design Such a Big Thing?

With technologies evolving and new products and devices being introduced to the market it's only natural that consumers will want to keep up with the latest gadgets that we become more and more reliant on.

First it was desktop computers and laptops, then mobile phones and tablets. What's next?

The fact that we are in an era where it is becoming easier to browse the web means that we need to make it easier for consumers to “reach” us and see what we have to offer, at their convenience.

We naturally have a requirement as designers and developers to provide our end user with the option, or rather, convenience to browse through whatever medium (within reason) they see fit. Therefore, we need to provide a clearer means of portraying the information on different screen sizes, whether this be big or small, vertically or horizontally.

Image source: Flickr

It has been noted that in the past creating different versions of a website was the way forward, however it was not the most practical solution, especially as in most cases the user would end up having to download a lot of extra code and design, alongside receiving a poor user journey.
This is why responsive web design has become such a big thing.

Responsive web design provides us with the solution of meeting these requirements without having to create and design different versions of a website depending on the device.

One point to make is that from a business perspective it is not essential we make these changes or adjustments, but rather by doing so we are inevitably meeting the unconscious needs of our end user.

OK so we know what responsive web design is and we know why we may need it. The next step would be how to go about producing it.

How to Make a Website Responsive

As mentioned earlier responsive web design is a collection of techniques and ideas. The two main techniques consist of flexible grid and media queries.

Flexible grid
When designing a website we first start off in Photoshop, making sure each element is designed to pixel perfect measurements. We then translate this design into code, all again based on pixels.

This is fine, and still correct. The website will be viewable all on devices, however not in the most convenient manner, or the prettiest. Stating pixel measurements and viewing on a screen smaller than the one it is intended for forces horrible scrollbars to appear.

Hence we need a solution that is fluid, more relative to the issue, but also keeps its proportional values.

To find a proportional value of an item we use the formula:

“ target / content = results ”

Image source: Flickr

It's quite an important formula and one that is key to making designs responsive.

If all values are proportional then the grid based design will scale nicely between devices. So, in other words, no scrollbars.

So, for example, using a Photoshop design mock up, we can find the layout width, typically this could be 960px (this being your main body container). Now say you want this container to “shrink” to 310px wide then the formula would read as follows:

310px / 960px = 0.32291666666667

To obtain the percentage value we multiply by 100 to get: 32.291666666667%

More often than not the percentage value may result in NOT being a whole number. If this is the case then it is important to NOT round up or down to the nearest whole number. Although it may look pretty, your machine will understand the figures in a proportional manner, so its important to keep them as they are!

The Grid System
Perfect grid layout that can be very useful.

Once the fluid grid is in place, the web design is scalable but not responsive.

That is where media queries come into play.

Media Queries

CSS3 media queries go hand in hand with the flexible grid to make responsive web design work.

Luckily CSS3 is supported by many modern browsers.

Media queries were first investigated by W3C a few years ago. A media query allows you to gain information about the viewport from which the user/visitor is looking at the website and target that particular screen size by applying specific CSS styles.

For the purpose of making web sites responsive it can be said that the most important media feature is the “min-width”, this property allows us to apply specific CSS styles if the browser window (in pixels) drops below a particular width.

As a starting point, and possibly the most common pixel min-widths that are targeted are the following:

320px
480px
600px
768px
900px
1200px

Image source: Flickr

It goes without saying that targeting more resolutions will naturally require more time and effort, so it generally depends on the clients' requirements and your judgment as to whether targeting all resolutions is necessary or not.

Progressive Enhancement

Progressive enhancement is the term or rather strategy for web design which focuses on the content, rather than device or browser. The aim is to enhance the web design by creating semantic HTML markup and giving prominence to accessibility and content.

Many web designers will argue that content is the most important element of a website project and should therefore be considered ahead of the presentation layer, or design.

With this in mind, we could relate progressive enhancement to responsive web design by aiming to design for mobile first.

Essentially when designing for mobile first the restriction due to the smaller screen automatically pushes the thought process into considering what important elements (content) need to be featured for this device. Therefore we naturally start to design around content.

Obviously as the screen sizes differ between tablets, laptops and desktops more space is available and therefore secondary content (social media or RSS links) can be added in a "nice to have" manner for the larger mediums.

It can be said that designing for mobiles enriches the experience of the user by focusing on the content and providing them, the user, with what is considered the most important elements on first view/load.

Showcase of Responsive Web Designs in Action

Below are a few examples of responsive web design in action. The screenshots show a couple of the variations, however to see the full variation of each site (in some cases there are more than others), view the website and change the browser window size. Alternatively view the website on a different device.

Full Frontal

Future of Web Design London

Responsive Web Design Resources

Responsive web design concentrates quite heavily on devices, viewports and how to gracefully degrade the designs we create across these mediums. In all of the “hype” about RWD we shouldn’t forget Progressive enhancement and its relationship with responsive web design.

Conclusion

It's safe to say that as technology evolves and new gadgets are invented, new trends happen.

Do you think responsive web design is here to stay? What do you think of responsive web design? Let us know what you think at the bottom of this article.

21 Awesome Bright and Colorful Websites

2012-05-15T18:56:27Z

Finding the right color scheme for a website design can often be a real challenge. Bright colors are sometimes not favored by designers, but in the right situation they can be very effective.

In this post we’ll showcase examples of 21 different bright and colorful websites. Hopfully, seeing these examples will give you some inspiration when you’re considering color schemes in your own work. By seeing what other designers are doing and how they are able to make colorful web designs work, you may get some ideas of your own.

Brooks Shoe Advisor

Adventure World

Global Team Travel

SulaFest

Corona Radiata

Mastec

Hitmo

Anet Design

Belong

S.O.S. Mamute

Trinity Web Tech

Dribbble Draft

Marlin Jackson

Mark Fasel Design

Viget

House

Social Forces

Art4Web

Fuzzco

Daniel Sitek

The New Web Design Guidelines

For more design inspiration please see:

Showcase of Artistic Hand Lettering in Web Design

2012-05-14T07:00:27Z

With websites being built from digital code it’s difficult to imagine them being crafted by hand, but this post showcases a bunch of websites that feature custom hand lettering in traditional mediums. In place of fonts these websites boast hand crafted typography to add a real artistic touch to the design.

G’nosh

Austin Eastciders

The Soup Peddler

Kansas City CreepFest

GiveBeyond.Me

Whitmans

Kyle Steed

Kolonien

Odosketch

Marie Catribs

Amazee Labs

Let’s Do This!

War Child

ConvergeSE 2012

Full Frontal 2011

Making Connections Everyday

Brand New Conference

35 Navigation Menus for Your Design Inspiration

2012-05-08T10:55:32Z

Navigation menus are an important part of any web design for usability purposes, but they can also serve to improve the look and feel of the website. When designing navigation menus there are any number of different approaches that you can take, and in this post we’ll show 35 examples of sites with attractive menus. These examples sites can serve as an excellent source of inspiration for your own projects, as every website needs a good navigation menu.

Pulp Fingers

The Thomas Oliver Band

Belong

Luhse Tea

Sir John A Day

Mustache

CarnationGroup

Hitmo

Happy Cog

Ascension Latorre

United Pixelworkers

VerBella

The Work Cycle

Viljami Salminen

CaptainDash

Nike Chosen Series

Kisko Labs

Tabspresso

What Happens Next

Formfett

826 Seattle

Kyan

SimpleBits

Column Five

Helen & Hard

Cookiesound

Tao Community

Chimp Chomp

Analog

Guided

Lake Nona

Conde Nast

Lacoste L!VE

Riot

Spin

For more design inspiration please see:

30 Sites with Great (and Not So Great) Mascots

2012-05-08T13:45:53Z

All professional websites include a logo, and sometimes that logo is also a character. Yet, this logo character is not necessarily what we would label a "mascot." With a graphic logo, you will find that graphic everywhere, including in designs for brochure and business card printing. However, a website mascot may only land online, especially if the character is too detailed or large-scale to fit onto smaller print materials.

More and more we are seeing a trend in web design to include both a logo and a character or mascot. Sometimes, this mascot is used to help guide visitors through the website. Other times, the little guy, gal, or animal remains solely on the home page. No matter how often the mascot is incorporated into the site, it is always clear that this character is more than just a logo. The mascot is there to help get you excited about or endear you to the company, just as a mascot for a sports team does.

In this collection, we found 30 sites with mascots – and couldn’t help but notice the monkey theme. As you check out these pages, ask yourself whether or not the mascot distracts from the brand or builds upon it. In some cases, the character is a useful, personalizing agent that helps you connect with the brand better. In other cases, the mascot seems to be some 3rd entity injecting itself into the design.

Which of the mascots below work to build and which distract? Do you think mascots help improve brand recognition or not? Does it all depend on the brand in the end?

12 Killer Sites that do Parallax Part 2

2012-05-09T13:00:09Z

We pooled all of your requests and submissions from the first post and put together a part 2—Its the best batch yet. Another set of 12 awesome sites that do parallax scrolling perfectly.

Christian Gaillard Paintings

Cindy Sherman

Resign Film

The 2 Minute Test

Biamar

ala

Saucony

New Zealand 100% Pure

Five3

River | Absolut Svea

GlobalTV | Bomb Girls

Vesmirny Program

If you didn’t see the first batch of Parallax Scrolling Websites, swing on by! We loved seeing everyone’s recommendations and suggestions and hope you dig this second part!

Which sites are your favorite or are there some other sites you think do the Parallax Scrolling well that we didn’t list? Which are your least favorite? Let us know in the comments below!

World of Watercolor: Beautiful Watercolor Effects in Web Design and Tutorials

2012-05-07T08:00:13Z

Using watercolor in web design is not a new thing that designers are implementing, by any means. In fact, it has been used in web design for years. In no small part due to the fact that digital watercolor effects are inspiring and attention-grabbing, and on top of that, easy to achieve. In this collection, we have put together some beautiful examples of watercolor effects in web design for your inspiration.

All of the sites and tutorials have been hand-picked, and demonstrate the allure and beauty that this wonderful effect can add to the web. So, let us take a close look at this collection, and get some inspiring and tempting ideas for web design projects to come. Enjoy!

World of Watercolor

Boompa makes use of appealing and soothing watercolor effects that look astonishingly beautiful and mesmerizing.

Istok Pavlovic‘s website showcases some excellent and visually pleasing watercolor effects not only in the background, but also all over the site.

Chris Sharp uses watercolor effects against a black background, which can be tricky to do and have the effects stand out. But here the balance has been found nicely.

Five Points Interactive uses watercolor effects very decoratively throughout the background and header.

Giancarlo Fajardo, you’ll notice, has some darker tones that blend perfectly with the lighter toned background giving the whole design a very soft look.

Syster has amazing watercolor effects used in the design. And while the header really shines here, the top navigation menus as well as the footer have also been designed quite creatively.

Weberica, while not the most outstanding site design on the list, the large, decorative header makes this design’s use of watercolor effects stand out.

Corvus Art has a very beautiful and visually alluring header design with some exceptional effects that complement the entire site.

Le Bloe‘s designer tried to give a very charming and shimmering look to the design that was accomplished wonderfully with the use of watercolors.

CSS Addict has a very calming and pleasing look, and the watercolor effects used make it even more so.

All for Design, though it is somewhat similar to the design of CSS Addict, it stands apart from it mainly because of the type of watercolor effects used. The big difference is the header.

Football Made in Africa‘s overly imaginative design is full of impressive watercolor effects that add a grungy textured look to the site.

Web Designer Wall is a popular site whose use of watercolor effects really stand out and make the header shine.

Imoments takes an imaginative approach to using watercolors in the web design. The page does not feature any significant content rather just the graphics and astonishing watercolor effects.

Bcandullo
This website’s layout is somewhat busy and full of different kinds of elements. The use of watercolors in the header is quite lively and represents an energetic spirit.

Wccnet contains various beautiful watercolor effects in the footer area, which stands out against rest of the site which is very understated and plain.

Deborah Cavenaugh uses watercolors to great extent, and the effects have been incorporated very well within the design to give it a complete and interesting look.

Davide Savelli‘s website is designed on the concept of minimalism and does not contain too much in the way of graphical elements, which makes the watercolor effects used really pop.

Sunrise Design uses vivid watercolor effects and has successfully pulled it off. The bright green and yellow colors gives the web design a feel of happiness and joy.

Big Cartel‘s use of cool green shades and beautiful illustrations are the main visual draws in this otherwise very simple design.

Small White Bear‘s design brings out a very positive and soothing change in your mood with its soft, comforting watercolor effects.

Efinterns‘s beautiful and gratifying use of watercolor effects works well with this quite unusual, and quite dynamic design.

Pallygiraffe‘s vivid and energetic colors brings the design a feel of liveliness and vigor.

Designer Interviews‘ simple, sophisticated design uses watercolor effects quite minimally, yet they stand apart from the rest of the site.

Billyhughes.oph‘s various shades of blue with beautiful mouse over effects in the header are sufficient enough to grab the attention and make this website a memorable one.

N.design Studio‘s design, uses watercolor effects quite creatively throughout, with big, bold typography and large images.

Xhtml Cafe has a very appealing design with watercolor effects not only in the header, but also in the footer to make it look even more stunning.

Sietedefebrero limits the use of watercolor effects to the header, but the header itself speaks volume about its creation.

Moon Beam Illustrations website stands out, mainly because of the use of excellent watercolor effects. The background textures fully enhance the beauty.

Tutorials

Watercolored Design Studio Blog Layout
In this tutorial you will learn how to make a clean and simple watercolor based layout for a blog. The PSD is available for download.

Creating an Abstract Watercolor Wallpaper
There are plenty of ways to create a watercolor effect in Photoshop. Some are very cheesy and you can easily tell that a simple filter has been used. In this tutorial, we will be using Layer Masking.

Create Cool Watercolor Effects in Photoshop
In this tutorial we will learn how to create cool watercolor effects of your very own in Photoshop to build up your design arsenal.

Create Convincing Watercolor Effects Using Photoshop
This is a short tutorial about creating convincing watercolor effects in Photoshop. We’ll use a picture of a crane, several watercolor brushes and a texture to obtain this particular effect.

Create a Nature Inspired Painted Background in Photoshop
In this tutorial, we will show you some techniques for creating watercolor effect backgrounds.

Super Cool Watercolor Effect in 10 steps in Photoshop
In this tutorial we will learn how to create a quick and easy watercolor effect for your design needs.

Create a Watercolor-Themed Website Design with Photoshop
In this tutorial you will learn how to use the Art History Brush and combine it with watercolor custom brushes to create a nice background header image and more for web design projects.

Easy Watercolor Painting Effect In Photoshop
In this Photoshop tutorial, you learn how to easily make a photo look more like a watercolor painting. This photo effect works best on images where maintaining rich colors and strong contrast is more important than keeping any fine details, since you’ll be losing a lot of detail with this effect.

All for Now

That wraps up the post on our side, now we are turning the discussion over to you. Use the comment section to tell us your thoughts on the collection and to share some of your favorite sites and tutorials that feature watercolor effects.

(rb)

20 Inspiring Examples of Big Backgrounds in Web Design

2012-05-07T04:24:52Z

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One way to easily define the tone and mood of a website is to use a big background image. However, when doing this, you need to consider that big images often have a lot going on, so it’s important to take a minmal approach with other aspects of the design. Not doing so could result in a website that is far too busy, cluttered, and difficult to navigate. So for your inspiration, here are 20 examples of how to effectively use big background images in web design.

Uber – Portfolio WordPress Theme

Whitmans New York

Studio Octopi

Von Dutch

Hiu Denim Co

Casey Britt

Range Rover Evoque

The Amazing Spider-Man

Suit up or Die Magazine

H-Art

My Own Bike

Tim Roussilhe

Tag Interativa

Stephan Rizon

Jalbert Productions International

8 Bis

Mecenat Musical

Marcus Thomas LLC

Mendo

Project Birdman

The Best Designs
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CSS Design Awards

30 Beautiful Gray Web Designs for Inspiration

2012-05-04T06:29:30Z

Gray is such a versatile color. Lighter shades of gray can be used to make a web design look elegant, clean and professional. Darker shades of gray can make a web design look bold and edgy. In this showcase, you'll see 30 beautiful websites that use gray as a principle color. Continue reading...

Continue Reading: 30 Beautiful Gray Web Designs for Inspiration

20 Pure Websites with Clean White Backgrounds

2012-04-30T07:00:07Z

Whenever we start work designing a website one of the first things we always do is throw a bunch of colours and textures onto the canvas, but sometimes a design will benefit from the clean and crisp appearance of a pure white background. This showcase rounds up 20 minimal website designs that prove that sometimes less is more.

Information Architects

Color Grade It

Face. Works.

MmDesign

The Manual

Andy Mangold

Casey Britt

Kyan

What Happens Next?

La Wine Agency

New Gotham Designs

Big Bite Creative

Wantful

Helen & Hard

Yaron Schoen

b14

Eric Paul Snowden

Whitespace

Hanzell Vineyards

Decorated Playlists

21 Beautiful Examples of Typography in Web Design

2012-04-30T04:31:41Z

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Here at WDL we love typography and we never get tired of gathering good typography inspiration for our readers. From free fonts to type usage in signs and typography videos, we like to give you as many resources as we can on everything surrounding type. Today we decided to gather some examples of beautiful typography usage in web design. We will show you examples here where typography is the main focus, and examples where typography complements the design. Check it out and let us know what do you think.

Bones Brigade DJs

Fifty Three

Fifty Three – Paper

Eynsford Music Festival

Modo Luce

Denise Chandler

Ineo DesignLab

Oliver Russell

Whiteboard

Asics – Stop at Never

Beyonce

Ok Studios

Andy German

MyEnergy

More Mobile Relations

Nature Valley

The New Kinvara 3

QC Merge

Lifetree Creative

Hugo Socié

Elaine Fisher

The Best Designs
Awwwards
CSS Design Awards

50 Awesome Portfolio Websites

2012-05-01T11:11:09Z

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Portfolio websites are often excellent sources of design inspiration because every designer and agency wants to create a great impression with a quality design. Portfolio sites frequently show creativity and innovation that might not be as common yet with other types of sites.

While browsing through the portfolio sites of other designers can provide inspiration for your own portfolio site, it also provides inspiration that can be used on all different types of projects. It’s helpful that there are so many high-quality portfolio sites out there that can be sources of design inspiration.

In this post we’ll showcase 50 excellent portfolio sites so you don’t even have to go out and find these great designs on your own. There are a lot of different approaches that you can take with a portfolio site design, and the examples shown here represent a wide variety of types and styles.

Elabs

Column Five

CarnationGroup

Kerem Suer

Doublethink

Andy O’Dore

Roven Bashier

Roland Hidvegi

Demi Creative

Riot

Nelson Cash

Adrian Tingstad Husby