I Love Design - A Designer Blog

Free Retro Vintage WordPress theme

noreply@blogger.com (Maddy) — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 12:15:00 +0000

Today I read an article about free WordPress theme. The one of the most fantastic free wp themes you can find, with LOTS OF FEATURES: drag and drop layout creator, 3 different sliders, 100+ shortcodes (via WP text editor) and MUCH MUCH more…

Download this Amazing WordPress theme today!

Features:

Unlimited layouts with our drag & drop layout generator
20+ different boxes styles to customize your widgets
100+ shortcodes (with graphic interface within an HTML editor)

and more,

Photo Gallery with categories / albums.
Products, Services and Portfolio pages with categories.
Photo frames with fancy hover effects.
Ready to use contact form.
Testimonial page
Dropdown menus
Featured items – custom boxes
Several fonts, google web font directlory
Introductory boxes
Social widgets

Not enough ? great ! … Please check all features included !

Do you want to see it in action ? Check the working demo

Can read more about it here ...

Web design Inspiration - Fresh list of ideas

noreply@blogger.com (Maddy) — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 06:58:00 +0000

Every designer needs inspiration but finding inspiration is not always as easy as it sounds. Sometimes will take more time than we expect. Here I’ve composed a list inspiration that I found it recently.

Share your favorite sources of inspiration in the comments.

Screenalicious

CSS elite

CSS Clip


Design Fridge

A quick and easy way to accurately measure the speed of your website

noreply@blogger.com (Maddy) — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 06:13:00 +0000

We all know that Google take the page loading speed of a site into account, when determining the site's search engine ranking. So sites with slow loading times, will rank lower than similar sites, which load faster. Performance matters. Improving your site’s performance is the easiest way to increase pageviews, conversions and sales. So, how would you measure the speed / performance of your site?

Introducing Google's Page Speed Online - A web-based tool that allows users to analyze pages at any time, in any browser, without downloading an extension. Google's Page Speed Online, analayze and give you suggestions for improving the speed of your site.

Try Google Page Speed Online

Create High Quality Web Layout - 6 Most Useful Photoshop Tutorials [PART - II]

noreply@blogger.com (Maddy) — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 09:47:00 +0000

Design a Food Blog Layout in Photoshop

Textured Portfolio Layout Design

Grungy Web Design from Scratch

Design a Creative Portfolio

Create a Grungy Translucent Web Portfolio Design

Designing a Professional Website from the Sketch to the Code

Too much into Technology!!!!! - LOL

noreply@blogger.com (Maddy) — Sun, 27 Mar 2011 18:30:00 +0000

And this is the best one

Tips to Effectively Organize your Photoshop Layers

noreply@blogger.com (Maddy) — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 18:30:00 +0000

We designers tend to get frustrated with developers when they take liberties with our work. But we have to understand they’re not entirely at fault.
Put yourself in their shoes: imagine what it’s like opening a Photoshop file (PSD), only to find a jumble of poorly labeled layers and folders, plus a heap of unchecked hidden layers and other half-baked ideas that didn’t make it to fruition.

The following tutorial outlines how to create organized, designer and developer friendly PSD files.
This is in no way the only solution, but hopefully it will encourage better practice in the web design world.

Read More...

Create High Quality Web Design Layout - 10 Most Useful Photoshop Tutorials [Part I]

noreply@blogger.com (Maddy) — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 11:18:00 +0000

Professional, Stylish & attractive portfolio design

See the tutorial

Preview | Download

See the tutorial

Watercolor-Themed web layout

See the tutorial

Impressive web hosting layout

See the tutorial

Hand drawn layout

See the tutorial

Professional Website from Scratch

See the tutorial

Wedding album - Elegant web layout

Preview | Download

Beauty spa website template

Preview | Download

Useful Free resources(psd files) for Web / Graphics Designer

noreply@blogger.com (Maddy) — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 07:06:00 +0000

There are tons of useful and quality free web & graphic design resources on the Internet. But finding & choosing the right one that suits your needs can be a tedious task as it is time consuming and tiresome.

Keeping this in mind, we have collected a list of some of the best websites that provide graphic designers enough food for thought. It's all available for FREE!

The websites listed below offer you a collection of the latest & high-quality website templates, Wordpress templates, Twitter background, vector graphics, logos, icons, creative business cards, text effects, photo manipulations, psd wallpapers and much more for FREE. You’ll be able to download the files instantly without signing up or paying a single dollar. But please ensure that it doesn't violate any copyright laws.
We hope this post would have given new inspirations and ideas for your designs.

If you know any other useful resources, please add up in the comments. Thank You :)

http://www.designkindle.com/

http://psdho.me/

http://www.premiumpixels.com/

http://psdgraphics.iulzi.com/

http://www.freepsd.com/

http://www.graphicsfuel.com/

http://www.psdtemplates.com/

http://psdstyle.net/

http://freephotoshopdownload.net/

http://www.bevelandemboss.net/

http://freepsdtheme.com/

http://www.premiumpsd.com

SEO Tip - Adding meta tags to blogger blogs[blogspot]

noreply@blogger.com (Maddy) — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 08:52:00 +0000

Meta tags is an important factor in SEO.(Search Engine Optimisation). Meta tags which describes and tells what your site is all about to search engines . By adding meta tags your blog get crawled and indexed by search engines more accurately and that brings more traffic to your blog

Lets see how to add meta tags in blogger blog ,

- Navigate to the Dashboard > Layout > Edit HTML

- Add below code into your section

<b:if cond='data:blog.url == data:blog.homepageUrl'>
<meta content='INDEX,FOLLOW' name='ROBOTS'/>
<meta content='DESCRIPTION HERE' name='description'/>
<meta content='KEYWORDS' name='keywords'/>
<meta content='AUTHOR NAME' name='author'/>
<title><data:blog.pageTitle/></title>
<b:else/>

Note:
DESCRIPTION HERE: Write your blog description
KEYWORDS: Write the keywords of your blog
AUTHOR NAME: Write the author's name

**Ensure Maximum characters for Title Tag - 60 , Site Description - 150 , Keywords - 200

You don't need to do it manually, there are tons of 'Automatic Meta Tags Generator' to make this process easy for you!
Finally by using a 'Meta tags analyzer tool', you can check whether you have added the meta tags correctly or not.

Keep posting!! All the best!

Get the best apps for your PC

noreply@blogger.com (Maddy) — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 12:43:00 +0000

Today while surfing the net, I have come across a website, www.allmyapps.com. Allmyapps.com is the application Store for Windows. The easiest way to discover and manage the best desktop and web apps.Allmyapps.com offers a beautiful and secure environment to discover, download, install, update and share the best free and paid apps.

Adobe Browserlab - Useful And Advance Tool For Cross-Browser Compatibility Check

noreply@blogger.com (Maddy) — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 07:03:00 +0000

Preview web pages across multiple browsers and operating systems
Accurately pinpoint compatibility issues and compare web pages at a glance to easily identify differences and potential problems. Preview full screenshots with multiple view options and customizable test settings.

With the integration of Dreamweaver CS5 or Firebug, you can also give BrowserLab permission to preview web pages that are behind a firewall.

Read more...

The Photoshop Etiquette Manifesto

noreply@blogger.com (Maddy) — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 08:46:00 +0000

The Photoshop Etiquette Manifesto for Web Designers is a list of helpful and *subtle* suggestions to organize Photoshop Documents, making the transfer of them less painful.

Take back your PSDs and become a Layer Mayor! Learn more...

A Hassle-Free Way to Search FREE PSD files

noreply@blogger.com (Maddy) — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 12:38:00 +0000

There are tons of free high-quality psd files on the web. No more searching for free PSD files on numerous sites to find and download the high quality ones.

SearchPSD, a search engine to find free psd files online. SearchPSD allows users to find more free psd files based on keywords or category. There are over 1,500 free psd files you can get from there. And you can also submit your own psd files to the site.

Learm more, http://searchpsd.com

Burn Tool / Dodge Tool

noreply@blogger.com (Maddy) — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 06:00:00 +0000

Burn Tool / Dodge Tool

Convincing light and deceiving shadows...
Bringing light and shadow into flat images can be a challenging thing to do convincingly. The burn tool and the dodge tool are both designed to help you accomplish this task in a realistic and believable way.

As long as you follow some basic guidelines, you'll have no trouble creating images with real depth. But what are those guidelines? Read on for the simple guide to authentic shadow and light.

Adobe Design Achievement Awards 2011

noreply@blogger.com (Maddy) — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 12:53:00 +0000

What Your Web Design Says About You (Infographic) - by Dona Collins

noreply@blogger.com (Maddy) — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 06:08:00 +0000

Font and color choices in a website say certain things about the owner of the site. Though colors and symbols may have different meanings in other cultures, this only reaffirms the notion that design choices do affect the perception of the user, which in turn affects the message attempting to be conveyed.

Click here an infographic that delves into the meanings of fonts and colors in the context of web design.

Subscriber Count Icons (PSD & PNG)

noreply@blogger.com (Maddy) — Fri, 19 Nov 2010 08:07:00 +0000

Social Media Icons, love ‘em or loathe ‘em, they always come in handy! Today’s freebie is a set of three social media icons perfect for displaying your RSS subscriber count, Twitter followers and Facebook fans.

Each icon comes in 32x32px .png format and as always the editable PSD is included. Let me know if you find them useful and enjoy the download!Download it from Premium Pixels

Top 10 Ways to Enhance your Creativity

noreply@blogger.com (Maddy) — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 10:06:00 +0000

by Diana Robinson, Ph.D.

Creativity is generally regarded as desirable, and something to be enhanced. With this view in mind, below are some steps to help the development of creativity. However, although creativity is often thought of as relating to the creative and performing arts, remember that can take many forms. The criminal can turn creativity to illegal use as easily as the artist puts brush to canvas. Do not assume, therefore, that creativity is good in and of itself. Like most forms of power, it can be used for good or for harm.

1. Insist on giving yourself daydreaming time.

Schedule it if necessary. During that time allow no shoulds or musts to intrude. Give your mind this time to float freely, untethered to tasks. Do not think of what you will be doing when this time is over. Allow yourself to gaze out of the window, stare at the clouds, daydream.

2. Be curious.

Ask why? How? How come? Don't accept easy answers if they don't make sense to you.

3. Ignore tradition.

Just because something has always been done that way, or used for that purpose, doesn't mean things can't change.

4. Play a game with yourself--or with others--in trying to find the most uses other than the obvious ones for every-day items like paperclips, bricks, anything that comes to mind.

Like most of these points, this will stretch and develop your creativity muscles.

5. Ask "What if?"

Pick one aspect of an ordinary situation and imagine what would change if that one aspect were different. Follow this through in all its implications.

6. Read science fiction.

Allow yourself to become immersed in the worlds it depicts. Contemplate impossible things and parallel universes. The Queen of Hearts advised Alice to believe one impossible thing every day before breakfast. It was good advice.

7. Accept your initial ideas without judgment.

Give them time to grow and develop before you test them. Butterflies that have just emerged from the crysalis have wet, crumpled wings. Give them time to develop before you decide if they can fly. The reason brainstorming has become such a standby when group creativity is involved is that all criticism is put on hold during the initial idea-generating phase. Allow yourself the same freedom.

8. Take risks.

It's okay to be wrong. By definition, to be creative you must consider new, and therefore untested, ideas. Einstein said that he could have ninety-nine ideas that were wrong before he got the one that was right.

9. Enjoy the PROCESS of creation.

Do not focus on the result. The secret and ecstasy of creating is being in the flow, of losing yourself in the process. If you constantly break the flow to check to how the final result will look to others, to ask yourself, "Will it sell?" "Will it win?" you will subvert the process and possibly damage your creation.

10. Go ahead and DO IT!

Don't wait for the perfect moment, it won't arrive. Painters paint, scrape the paint off and paint again. Writers write and delete. They don't wait until they can do it perfectly before they start. You do not need twelve sharpened pencils and perfect silence before you put pen to paper. Remember that Shakespeare wrote in an age when the whole family sat at the same table and shared the same oil lamp. It is unlikely that he had a separate study or could wait until the family had gone to bed in order to write. You CAN follow your muse.

About the Author

Diana Robinson, Ph.D., Personal Development & Business Coach, who offers two free e-zines and/or a half-hour of free coaching by phone. She can be reached at Diana@ChoiceCoach.com, or visited on the web at http://www.ChoiceCoach.com

8 Ways to Drive a Graphic Designer Mad

noreply@blogger.com (Maddy) — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 09:06:00 +0000

As everyone knows, graphic designers are the reason there are so many wars in this world. They get inside our heads with their subliminal advertising, force us against our will to spend money on the worst pieces of shit, and eventually, drive us to depression and random acts of violence. And of course, most of them are communists.

So to do my part to save the world from them, i made a list of things you can do when working with a graphic designer, to assure that they have a burn-out and leave this business FOREVER.

Read the 8 Ways here: http://groy82.blogspot.com/2007/03/8-ways-to-drive-graphic-designer-mad.html

Choosing the perfect Colors for your Website

noreply@blogger.com (Maddy) — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 10:53:00 +0000

Understand Your Color

When designing a website choose colors wisely. Your choice of colors for your website should mirror the message and feeling you to hope to communicate to the viewer. Let's take a look at some colors and what they mean to you and your website.

Black - the color of sophistication
Black speaks to power, sophistication, formality, elegance, wealth, mystery and style. Black can make color burst from the web page. It is a natural classic color and never goes out of style. Too much black can darken a mood and affect emotions very easily. When designing for a gallery of art or photography, a black or gray background can be used to make the other colors stand out.

Negatives: Death, unknown, fear, dark, sad, threatening, wicked, morbid and dangerous.

Red - the color of passion
Red is the color of passion, strength, energy, fire, love, excitement, speed, leadership and power. When using red in your website design it is best to us it as an accent color. It is a perfect color for 'Special Offer' or 'Buy Now' buttons on websites and Email ads, as it attracts the eye.

Negatives: Danger, fire, blood, war, anger, stop, revolution, radicalism and aggression

Green - the color of nature
Green implies movement, nature, spring, fertility, youth, environment, money (US), good luck, safety and generosity. It is the most restful color for the human eye and it can improve vision. Green works well as an accent or secondary color. Use green to indicate safety. Olive green is the traditional color of peace.

Negatives: Inexperience, envy, misfortune, jealousy, illness and greed

Blue - the color of stability
Blue is a color of peace, harmony, tranquility, health, coolness, confidence, loyalty, conservatism, dependability and technology. Blue is a safe choice for most uses.

Negatives: Depression, coldness,obscenity, conservatism and winter

White – the color of purity

White represents cleanliness, purity, and spirituality. It represents life and marriage in Western cultures, but it represents death in Eastern cultures.

Yellow - the color of ideas
Yellow can convey sunlight, joy, happiness, optimism, idealism, wealth (gold), summer and hope. It is the brightest color and intellectuals love yellow.

Negatives: Cowardice, illness, hazards, dishonesty and avarice

Orange - the color of energy
Orange conveys creativity, confidence, balance, heat, enthusiasm, flamboyance and playfulness. Orange is very effective for promoting food products and children's products such as toys.

Negatives: Warning, danger and cheapness

Pink – the color of romance

Pink is the softer side of red. Pink is romantic, calming and feminine.

The Top 30 Dreameaver Shortcuts that Save You Time

noreply@blogger.com (Maddy) — Sat, 01 May 2010 10:00:00 +0000

Dreamweaver is a very powerful webpage creator. Using Dreamweaver can help you save time when designing a website. Built in FTP, website testing, link checking and validation are just a few of the program’s powerful time savers. Why not save even more time and take a look at these powerful keyboard shortcuts?

For those of us that like hard-coding our designs, these shortcuts will still save us plenty of time.

Importance of a good site layout

noreply@blogger.com (Maddy) — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 06:26:00 +0000

Importance of a good site layout

Websites are judged by content and layout. How good your content maybe, if your layout is not appealing, visitors will not be eager to come back.

Points to consider while designing a website layout

Website design is not a one time activity. Almost all websites alter their layouts to give it a new and better look. Also with advancement in technology, underlying code also changes accordingly, adding new possibilities of providing a better layout.

1.Keep it simple: A simple website layout is user friendly. Do not create complex navigational links using complex scripts or images that mayn't be viewable correctly in different browsers. Also search engines cannot index the site properly if complex navigation is involved. Minimize the use of bulky images which take long to load. Use smaller icons to attract visitor's attention instead.

2.Readable font size and face: Use a standard font size of "-1" (11 or 12 pixels if using styles) so that visitors can read the content easily. Select a professional looking font face (Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif are very common). Avoid using fancy fonts like Comic Sans (unless it is a personal website). Use appropriate spacing between lines (12 or more pixels) to avoid clumsiness.

3.Use web safe eye pleasing colors: The choice of colors may reflect one's personal taste. Every webmaster or designer wants the color combination that he/she likes best. However, it is a wise decision to get feedback from users or friends about what they feel about the color combination of the website. Use web safe colors whenever possible.

4.Webpage Dimensions: One important aspect of layout is keeping track of dimensions of a web page. Most successful commercial websites limit the width and height of the webpage so that the important content of the webpage lies within the top 600x600 viewable area without scrolling. To avoid a horizontal scrollbar, set the page layout to expand and shrink with changes in browser window size. Sometimes this interferes with image and text positions relative to each other and throws the layout structure out of synch. The best choice is to limit the width by placing a table with a fixed width of 750 or 775 pixels. See the layout of this web page for an example. The page height should not be any more than 4 scroll lengths. Limit the content of the page and if more content needs to be added, move it to a new web page. Provide a navigational link to the next page and a link back from the second page. This will also increase your website's page views (adding more advertising space).

5.Limit File Size: Webpage size is defined by the total size of text, images and supporting files (including javascript, flash etc.) that is downloaded from the server to view a webpage. Page size is very critical for high volume websites because of high bandwidth needed. However, it is also very important for any other site in order to keep loading times to a minimum. Most of the population on the internet use a slow 56K modem to access the internet. And smaller page sizes load faster. If you look at some very high volume websites like Yahoo.com and Google.com, they hardly have any images, making their site load faster. There is a trade off between making your webpage look nicer with lots of graphics and making it faster to load. The rough target for page size should be below 35K for at least the cover page. However, for ecommerce sites, it is often not possible because they have to present multiple product images to attract attention. As a general rule of thumb, a visitor will leave your site if the loading time is more than 8 secs.

Tips & tricks

Extract Javascript code and styles from within the html page to external .js and .css files. Create a link from each html page to these external files. Browsers download these files only once and caches them on the user's computer. This will reduce the size of the individual html pages.

Use Server Side Includes(SSI) for centralizing common content. Read this article for more details. Use a background which creates a contrast to the font colors and graphics. Look at media sites like movies.com for an example. It uses a dark background with lighter fonts in order to create a theatre like setting. However, the site is easy to read and navigate.

Check regularly for broken links. Using a link checker or checking the list of 404 errors (File not found) in your website logs (or stats) will help maintain site links. Maintenance of links to external sites can be centralized using link tracking tools.

9 Essential Principles for Good Web Design

noreply@blogger.com (Maddy) — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 09:16:00 +0000

- In Designing by Collis

Web design can be deceptively difficult. Getting a design that is both usable and pleasing, delivers information and builds brand, is technically sound and visually coherent...

Read more>>

Photoshop - 15 very important and useful tricks

noreply@blogger.com (Maddy) — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 06:19:00 +0000

Following are 15 very important and useful tricks :

1. Press D to get default foreground and background colours. ( Black/white ).

2. Press X to toggle between foreground and background colour palette.

3. To fill object with foreground colour use alt + backspace.

4. To fill object with background colour use ctrl + backspace.

5. To change blending mode quickly use alt + shift + alphabet
(e.g) like V for vivid and S for screen etc.

6. To toggle between various blending modes use shift + ( Plus sign ).

7. To increase brush size use ( [ ) OR ( ] ) a 10px jump.

8. To add to selection use shift key and the subtract from selection use alt key.

9. Use TAB key to hide and unhide palettes.

10.To hide / unhide all palettes except tools use shift + TAB.

11.Use ctrl and + to zoom in / ctrl and - to zoom out.

12.Press F to shuffle between various screen modes.

13.Press Q to shuffle between standard and quick mask mode.

14.Double clicking on ruler will bring up the preference dialogue box.

15. Use ctrl + T to transform the shape.

How to Boost Your Creativity

noreply@blogger.com (Maddy) — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 10:58:00 +0000

20 Tips from Psychology for Boosting Creativity

By Kendra Van Wagner, About.com

According to cognitive psychologist Robert J. Sternberg, creativity can be broadly defined as "...the process of producing something that is both original and worthwhile" (2003). Creativity is all about finding new ways of solving problems and approaching situations. This isn't a skill restricted to artists, musicians or writers; it is a useful skill for people from all walks of life. If you've ever wanted to boost your creativity, these tips can help. Read here>>