Monday, February 28, 2011

Simple Icons Important Features

Simple icons are among the principal features of minimalistic design. Keep in mind that simple icons and also other design elements should be used moderately. One of the tips is minimizing icons use in general. Reduce the amount of simple icons. Use them only where it is absolutely necessary. Refrain the optional simple web icons. They may serve multiple functions.

Simple web icons design consists of limited amount of color, reserved shades, clear elements, soft lighting. One of the greatest advantages of Simple icons is that they don't distract website visitors from the main idea of your website.

Rules for simple icons design:

  • minimal usage of duplication
  • less amount of graphical elements
  • maximum intuitive clarity
  • clear typography in simple web icons
  • less icons

How to develop minimalistic design with simple web icons

Additionally to simple icons themselves lightweight background textures and patterns are essential for the design and content perception. The eyes should focus on the internet site content or some important blocks but not on the background pattern or image itself. Creating the background use a light simple shade. This makes it secondary compared with the foreground items like simple web icons.

One more well known feature of the lightweight and clear design is definitely clear typography. Pick simple icons names in accordance with their function and remember that such names should be precise, and meaningful. Headings placed on simple web icons should be of readable font and huge enough for easy reading. Clear hierarchy need to be followed as well.

Also for creating a great clean simple icons design you may use enough white or empty space. Extra spaces keep elements more understandable. As a result it is more convenient to work with them. Even if you use some extra space between simple web icons this dont harm to the design of your site at all.

Speaking about the minimalistic trend in general it's not totally minimal. Despite its great amount of white space there are still some simple icons, light textures, neat styles and bold fonts. Don't forget that minimal isn't exactly the same as simple. Initially minimal meant plain typographic excluding images and styling. Nowadays there's a great number of various websites over the Internet. Thats why modern design requires something more than black text on white background. Reducing elements of design to the most important items you can add much more zest to your internet site layout with some uncommon coloring, catchy simple icons, half-transparent and lightweight textures and patterns.

Simple = smart. Simple icons is the greatest choice if you'd like your internet-site look wonderful and professional.

The Truth About Realistic Icons

Realism traces back to the 1850s when this movement unfolded in French art. Over the hundreds of years it came through all kinds of art and design. Realism in webpage design is successfully represented by Realistic web icons.

Details about background of realistic icons

Sunday, February 27, 2011

Primary Advantages Of Realistic Web Icons.

Realistic icons are essential elements of the ultra-modern website design. You can also meet them in software programs, applications and add-ons, etc.

Web-sites are a special niche demanding special means of representation as well as promotion. One of these methods is including realistic icons into your web page design. No doubt icons will help users of your web site to get a quick initial impression of your web business and also products that you offer. The icons should be placed on web page homepage to be noticeable at once.

You may hire the experienced designer to create some unique set of icons meeting your website personal requirements and products. But such custom orders of realistic icons are quite expensive and take significant time period. After all the results of custom order are not clear. Even professional web-designers fall short of the mark known as non-uniqueness. To save time and smoothen things down they take icons designed earlier and simply play with the colors and shades, use some other effects and sell realistic icons as exclusive items.

Another way of getting nice web icons is finding authoritative icons resources. They're numerous Realistic web icons stocks and providers on the internet. The great advantage of this method of getting web icons is that you see what you buy. The cost may be less than in case with custom orders. Additionally you save your valuable time. So as far as you see now - stocks are much more preferable for finding properly designed and low-priced realistic icons . All these benefits make icon stocks the great deal.

Some useful information for utilizing realistic icons

Creating realistic icons you need to build the basic pictograms first. It should look simple and motivated enough to create one icon significantly differ from another. It should look vivid enough if being displayed at worse resolution, resized, discolored or blurred. The person should be able to identify the icon meaning just by looking at its outlines for a short period of time. You can make a test and see if it's possible to discern the icon within just one second.<\p>

After you find the formula of the basic silhouette and it is stable you possibly can make realistic icons more eye-catching by adding decorative elements. Don't overload icons with the details and color tints. Design should look integral and reserved. You can also make the edges anti-aliased. So don't forget the simple rule - the decoration shouldn't take away from the icons essence and functions.

The icons are often stored in vector format that makes it pretty easy to edit. It enables you to resize, rotate, adjust the edges and edit outlines. You can even change the color scheme and add more details etc. And do not be afraid - there's no need to have extra knowlages in website design.

If you want to design the interface layout of the new software program or IT services - Realistic web icons may be very helpful in this task. Bear in mind if you'd like to generate top quality and eye-catching realistic icons you need to be patient because it is not easy. Truly realistic images may be produced only if you take and modify the high-resolution photos. So bear this in mind.

Simple Icons As Greatest Representative Of Minimalistic Internet Site Design

Simple icons are created not to make the design delightful but rather minimal and present day. Amazing and lightweight Simple web icons are aimed to improve web site user interaction.

Minimalistic webdesign

Lets find out what minimalistic web design means. Undoubtedly the first features are simplicity and light-weight elements. Simple icons include all of this. This kind of icons doesnt have complex wordings, figures, textures and patterns. Sometimes less even means more. It depends on areas and extent. Internet site design is just such area.

Minimalistic design is rather an unexpected trend today. As far as you know high modern technologies have one great disadvantage - often they lead to the loss of simplicity. Blending minimalistic website design with CSS3 and HTML5 is becoming more well-known and makes you believe that combining simple elegance and usability is the method for your website success. Internet site with simple design often contain brave and off-color effects and actively use CSS and Ajax.

Among essential features of the contemporary simple website design are the following:

  • grid based design;
  • simple icons;
  • light shading and reserved color transition;
  • light texture of patterns and backgrounds (often transparent like);
  • more empty or white space;
  • simple shapes and figures, clear lines;
  • less amount of various bright colors;
  • clear and readable typography;

Saturday, February 26, 2011

Vintage Icons

Retro takes over the modern web design industry. Vintage web icons representing the old-time styling are the message of classic beauty and noble taste, Vintage design trend evoke gentle feeling in the visitors hearts.In the present day modern web site style usually comprises some vintage twist. Retro and Vintage are becoming the widespread trends in the modern-day digital art. Vintage icons, textures, patterns as well as clip-art bring mystery to your web site design. They make you dive into the atmosphere of the old good times, when everything appeared to be so simple, innocent and noble. People usually associate childhood or youth with good times. Thus vintage style revives for this reason psychological peculiarity of the human nature.

Learn all about retro style

Speaking about retro in simple terms we'd outline an aged or culturally out-of-date trend that has become some conscious norm in the modern art. It is simple to find sights of retro style in the present day internet site design in the form of vintage icons, old-styled backgrounds, aged photography etc.

The new retro style quite often incorporates the Web 2.0 look with a vintage twist. It needs to mix the present day clean blocks and the outdated ones. Also there's a necessity to mix aged design elements like Vintage web icons, styles and color palettes.

Thursday, February 24, 2011

Line Icons - The Beauty Of Web Site Design

We usually use lines for emphasizing edges as well as outlining the contours of objects. Line icons can be the fantastic decoration of any website design, of course if you have a skill to design them thoroughly.

Line icons - to be or not to be....

Lets discover what line actually is. It is just a form containing both width and length but eliminating depth.We are accustomed to the fact that the line is usually straight. Newertheless the line is more often curved. The lines can render some appropriate mood or feeling of a movement. In spite of the being static shapes, Line icons can create an illusion of the dynamic objects. The mood is usually being conditioned by the lines direction. For example horizontal lines in Line web icons bring the feeling of calmness, peace and stability. Speaking about the vertical lines - they strive for the light movement. The diagonal lines reveal energy along with stronger dynamic feeling. If you wish to create refine and modern line icons designs you should use combination of straight lines and curves.

Emergence of line art.

Without doubt the very first kind of line art that familiar to a great amount of artists is curve stitching. It's carried out with threads of various colours as well as needle. The canvas was a card board first. This movement is also well known as "String Art". Generally it was found out by Mary Boole as the accessory material for children to help them study geometry of angles and spaces.Spirelli is a type of string art that's been usually applied to scrap-booking and making cards. Line art existed also in the form of illustrations for print sources before the photography was invented. At that time line art included only black and white colors. Some shades of gray were also acceptable and imitated.Appealing to both technical and creative sides of human nature, line art combines geometry and art. Creating Line icons may develop special imagination and creativity along with calculation skills.Line art differs from photography or multi-color painting by its ability to be printed to the halftone pic free of extra conversion. This kind of art is named line drawing and line copy too.

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Very Helpful Information Regarding 2d Icons

2D web icons is a wide spread trend in the web development of nowadays. Being two-dimensional, they are well known for their flexibility and comparative simplicity. 2.5D Icons is the type of 2D Icons that is closer to pseudo 3D representation.Such models depict both front and side views.

2D computer graphics was initially based on vector graphics devices. Nowadays2D web icons are among the most significant two-dimensional digital design items.

Today I want to find out what actually 2D is.It is being associated generally with computer graphics and determined as the two-dimensional method of digital images generation. Two-dimensional models are mainly 2D geometric ones, digital images and texts. The term 2D includes not only the models themselves but the techniques and tricks specific to them as well.

2D icons and objects don't just represent the real world items but are independent objects with their own semantic value. 2D graphics helps to have more direct control over the image than 3D technology. This one of the main reasons why they are so preferred in the world of contemporary internet site design. 3D graphics is more effective realized in animation or photography than typography and sometimes even web page design.

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Vintage Icons And Web Site Design

In case your want your website looks archaic - use Vintage icons. They are one of the most noticeable and easy-to-apply graphical elements. Vintage web icons suppose authentic use of vintage typography, less-saturated colors and retro textures to help creating the vintage air emanating from the internet site. Your web site visitors will certainly like antique air of your new design.

Retro came from the70s and 80s. Retro advertising art from the 1950s is bold and eye-catchy. Computer technologies allow to put a new face on this type of art using its characters in web site design and printing. Usually such faces in the vintage web icons are retro cars, pin-up girls, soldiers and politicians of the former times as well.Most frequently used retro cars are Fiat 500, the 1970 Dodge Challenger, the 1969 Chevrolet Samara, the 1964 Ford Mustang etc. You can easily find Vintage web icons that contain hints to retro cars concepts. This will help to attract more attention to your web page layout. This is the great idea for websites that have a deal with auto sales, transporting services, tour sites etc. A pin-up model is another popular character used in vintage icons design and other internet site graphics styling. Typically it presents images of how the really sexy and beautiful woman should look like. Pin-up images are great for vintage web icons or clip-art designed for the model agencies, websites regarding health and beauty areas.

In case you have a website that is connected with military and security guard you may effectively use images of soldiers and officers with outdated appearance to attract much more attention and win the visitors trust.

Usage of specific characters is not limited to the above-mentioned ones. You may apply creativity and use them unconventionally. This will help to make people surprise and thus memorize your web page.

Vintage Icons Patterns

Vintage patterns recommended for usage in vintage icons design is the following:

  • patterns containing vintage papers;
  • with vintage frames;
  • with outmoded florals;
  • paper and bagging, gold-cloth as the texture fabric;
  • wooden or bronze textures for vintage icons.

For developing vintage icons titles, content headings and texts you can use such authentic fonts as Matchbook, Bazar Medium, Embossed, Hill House,-Fontleroy Brown, Fusty Saddle, Just Old Fashion, Goudy Bookletter 1911, Rocket Script, Parisian, Star Avenue etc. You are absolutely free to find and purchase the fonts to match your design on the net.

Try to get a such vintage-inspired layout that looks fashionable and appropriate, but no old-fashioned. The goal is to create the cozy and noble, antique feel using Vintage web icons as well as images and styled blocks for the site layout. Without any doubt your visitors will come back to your web-site with a happy smile again and again. They will feel more comfortable and cozy at your website.

But try not to make your vintage design look too stuffy, you need to be aware that professional design is formal-looking and the major focus should be made on the goods, services or content your website presents.

Line Icons Creation - Various Techniques

Often Line web icons are the objects with the outlined contours. They're called contour drawings. There're items without some strict outlines which are rather some hint than actual contour of line icons. They're known as gesture drawings. Experienced designers usually use such kind of drawings because they are able to repeat the outlines of the object just after seeing it. It is not a complete piece of art but rather a sketch which usually needs 20-30 seconds to be drawn.

One additional technique is adding some halftones and shades to the object. You can do it by using short lines and crosshatching. Please don't afraid to vary their frequency and pencil pressure. This variety creates more three-dimensional look to the object. This particular trick is widely used in web design as well. It helps to produce amazing Line icons, logos and buttons.Furthermore lets get info regarding open lines. It is such type of the lines where the dots not combining the singular elements. It may look really striking when being applied to line icons design. The lines can as well be parallel, gesture-like, contour and so on. The curves which are essential for creating complex line shapes are called Bezier curves in computer graphics. These curves are real helpers in creation of the vector shapes such as line icons, unusual buttons etc. Computer technologies make it possible to reproduce the same designs or develop new shapes based on some older ones without extra efforts and time. Another benefit is that it's easy to return to the previous adjustments with a help of the history panel. So you do not have to design Line icons from scratch after you have made some errors.

The Essence Of 2d Icons And Models All In All

2D web icons are really notable for their flexibility. This versatility is achieved by rendering them at various resolutions ideal for various output devices.

2D Icons items:

  • raster pictures (digital graphics);
  • styled text as a typeset for 2D Icons;
  • vector models (geometric graphics).

These items can be managed by 2D transformations such as rotation, scaling or angular position etc. Meshing basic models you may get more advanced ones.

Due to the layers technique 2D web icons can create the illusion of all 3D characteristics such as shadow, reflection or highlighting. The layers should keep the definite hierarchy and order carefully. This makes modifying 2D icons and related objects easier.

2.5D Icons as the pseudo 3D kind of 2D Icons

The layered 2Dicons are usually generally known as 2.5D models. This technology offers web site designers ability to work with any layer without the need of touching the others. The most of the prominent graphics editors choose this type of 2D object development.

2.5D is a synonym to pseudo 3D and is interpreted as "two-and-a-half-dimensional" graphics. Models created with 2.5D technology appear to be tridimensional while in fact they're not.

This technology used for designing 2D web icons is frequently achieved by the special lighting effect. 3D illusion is reached due to the virtual source of light to the left or to the right side and above the users monitor.

Sunday, January 30, 2011

Business Icons - Professional Tips

Choosing design for your future webpage is a complex and tedious process. The header graphics, logos, business icons and content placeholders and of course the fonts - all this stuff needs to be well designed. While doing this bear in mind the business area and desires of your potential customers.

Think about your potential customers expectations - use the proper business icons, buttons and styles for content blocks.

Firstly you need to find out what's the main audience of your website and what do your potential customers expect. Name, hosting provider, content material and design style need to be carefully chosen in line with the results of your research. Initially you are to correlate the designed color scheme and layout with your potential customers expectations. Also think over what colors and styles of business icons as well as other design elements should be used to reflect the business area your company represents.

To make the right choice you should take into account that different colors evoke certain emotions in various groups of people. For example, you've got a night-club related business and want to create astonishing web presence. Use business icons of bright disco colors and unusual forms and you'll get the fantastic result. You may design them to give a dynamic and lively feel, air of relax and pleasure to your web page. Also in such a case pay attention to the fact that tints of red as manifestation of passion and sex are pertinent for business icons, logos or buttons. But dont use bright colors if you want to build the web site for some consulting company. Web design should be clear, calm and reserved. As well avoid playful lines and also light-minded graphics. So build a internet site using cool colors and simple recognizable shapes of business icons. Such a web-site will make your potential clients believe into professionalism and stability of your company.

Friday, January 28, 2011

Business Web Icons Important Information

Simplicity is really a queen of beauty. Simple business icons, clear typography and sufficient air (white spaces) are indicators of serious potential, safety and stability of your company. The most customary colors for designing business icons are black, white, gray and blue. Verdana is the greatest readable font ever, so it's recommended for use in the wordings for business icons if there're any. Black text on white business icons with some boardings or light shapes is classical. The content blocks are to be of light, close to white colors. business icons style needs minimalism. Don't develop a great amount of multi-color icons, flashy objects, logos and graphics. In such a way you risk to produce the internet site messy.

The importance of business icons originality

The new web sites which are not so reputed yet require professional look to make the Internet surfers notice them. Web 2.0 style is the most popular web style used by the designers world-wide nowadays. The web 2.0 logos and business web icons look fresh and clean. Exclusive logo is anyway the face of your company represented on the net.

Cool content used in the modern design is efficient. In case you want to make your webpage unique use unique design. Forget about stealing ideas of other companies logos. Even copying of competitor company style is harmful for your web-site reputation. Don't risk! Only the unique and recognizable logos and business icons that reflect the idea of your online business will help you to take the rightful place on the Internet.

Thursday, January 27, 2011

Glass Icons

Web icons bring clean look to your site making its design eye-catching and much more professional. Nevertheless this effect should be reasonably used because it can be harmful for the design perception.

Today Glass web icons are incredibly popular elements of web-site or blog decor. This glass icon style imparts the perfect, clear and professional look to your webpage, presentation or desktop and embodies a kind of the "Web 2.0" spirit.

Glass icons usage pro and contra.

Do the elaborate and intricate look of the web icons designed in the glass style turn your brain and you think that it is a hard task to do this? You shouldn't be puzzled - it is pretty obvious that the process of their creation is rather simple. You are able to create Glass web icons within a couple of minutes using Photoshop, Illustrator or Corel software. All that you need is some helpful tutorial, some skills of working with these pieces of software and the images you are going to turn into glass web icons.

The glass effect is considered to have been borrowed from the Apples OSX operating-system style and copied by Windows. Some may argue that Glass web icons are so strongly related to Apple product that the glass-styled elements make people think of the totally different brand which makes the usage if this type of web icons meaningless, but the benefits of the glass icons style are obvious.

Social bookmarking web icons is a crucial feature of the present day website. Using attractive glossy icons for this purpose is a fantastic benefit for the internet site promotion. Eye-catching social bookmarks raise the probability of the visitors clicking on them and the number of the clicks increases correspondingly. So due to this fact you are able to promote your content more effectively.

Friday, January 21, 2011

The High Quality Of 3D Web Icons in your project layout

The thoroughness and truthfulness of the picture may be even the disadvantage 3D icons possess. Put simply while drawing some object you are much more free to use artistic vision. As an example, if we take a cell-phone, you'll be able to draw it rather similar to what we associate with its name but eliminate some extra details, shades and highlights. Sometimes schematic drawings work even better than 3D models. You should analyze each definite case. To develop an object and make it seem closer to real one 3d icons should repeat thoroughly every detail and line. So it's much more a kind of technical representation than a piece of art. Though some illustrators manage to develop abstract 3D web icons that involve creative thought and look like true works of art. Today accurate and realistic modeling is anyway the most used trend of 3D design.In case you are going to use some characters as icons, 3D icons are going to appear much more realistic than 2D ones. The characters may stay cartoonish and this will give zest to your website.

The technical issues you may face while using 3D icons in your project layout.

So focus on these useful facts while creating the icons design for your website:

Bad quality of the viewers monitors makes it difficult to depict 3d icons in all their glory and details;

for the reason that the monitor screen is 2D device we cant see the true three-dimensional object as we see it in reall life.

2D space is simpler to be modified and manipulated in comparison with 3D one;

sometimes users have to download and install some extra software that is required for correct viewing of 3D web Icons.

To sum up we can say that both 2D and 3D icons are based on geometric data but 3D objects are the sculpture models, they are more complex items. Also 3D web Icons requirements are much severer. 3D icons may have no creativity and abstract air but the facts of depth and volume which are successfully produced with 3D technology are incontestable.

Thursday, January 13, 2011

3D Icons And 2D Icons Struggle

Basic differences between 2D and 3D icons design

As for the 3d Icons the light source plays essential role for creating authentic three-dimensional images. Undoubtedly the using several light sources in webpage design nowadays is more effective but keep in mind that they should follow fundamental rules of physics and be truthful. If you need to make 3D icons look softer and more realistic - use several lights.

Both 2D and 3D icons represent the volume found in the three-dimensional world but use different methods of creating this illusion. 2D Icons can surely represent volume to less extent than 3D Icons. More often the images are flat and show just one perspective. Detailed highlights and imperceptible soft shadows are missing as a rule. The shades usage is restricted as well.

3D icons can be proud of all these features instead. But 3D is mathematical replication of the data which in any case limits its usage. In some cases you can easily replace 3D Icons by 2D ones or by the videos with the sounds - but all this depends on situation. 3D dimension can be produced due to the software used for 3D modeling. It is recommended to depict 3D icons in correlation with the other objects in the neighborhood and the environment they are placed into.