Daily Web Design Inspiration & Ideas
Smashing Magazine has put together another great set of resources for some excellent FREE icons. There are some really good ones in this set. My favorites? The Shield Icon Set by basstar. Great colors and excellent shield design! What are your favorites?
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Here is a little video tutorial I did on creating a certificate seal or a badge, what ever you want to call this. I used Photoshop CS3 to create this although it can be done in Illustrator for even better results. Since Illustrator creates vector graphics, it would be a lot cleaner and would be re-sizeable. This video tutorial is a quickie.
At the end on the video, I also desided to change the color of the outer edge of the seal to gold.
Let me know what you think.
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Ai Vault is an excellent resource for tutorials and information about how to effectively use Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop. This is a treasure trove if you use these two programs on a consistent basis for graphic or web design. Here’s what they have to say about their site:
“Ai Vault is a blog showcasing and offering some of the best of web illustrator related tutorials and resources . Here you will find Brushes , Symbols , swatches and patterns to download freely , not only that you will also find helpful tutorials written by expert illustration artists .”
Not only will you find some great freebies (check out the “Free Friday Illustrations”), you can also purchase some really excellent brushes, vector packs, and other great stuff. I would encourage you to check in at Ai Vault frequently for new content and material to spur you on to greater creativity! We will also be diving into more of their information here in the blog as well. I think we’ll also do a feature about their logo too…it’s great!
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If you are in need of well designed icons, check out FreeIconsDownload.com. They have 17 different categories of icons available, all for the low, low price of…FREE. Free is always a great price to pay. It’s an even better price when the free stuff is good, quality stuff and that’s definitely the case with the icons available at FreeIconsDownload.com. The only caveat is that you need to check out the usage permissions given by the artists who designed the icons. Some artists want links with attribution, while others are willing to let you use them free and clear (non-commercial mainly). However, you may be able to obtain permission for commercial project usage by simply contacting the icon’s creator.
The icons available at FreeIconsDownload.com are definitely worth taking a look at when you have a chance.
**This is the first site review we have done due to someone submitting a request to us (check out the nice, shiny button that you can click on to request a review of your site). If you’d like for us to review your site and feature it here in the blog, drop us a line. We’ll happily check it out for you!
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I came across this article today at Smashing Magazine that contained some links to a host of useful, creative icons. Here’s what Wikipedia had to say about icons and their usage. I know it’s not new information for anyone who is familiar with web design, but sometimes it’s a good idea to ‘refresh’ the brain.
“Icons may represent a file, folder, application or device on a computer operating system. In modern usage today, the icon can represent anything that the users want it to: any macro command or process, mood-signaling, or any other indicator. User friendliness also demands error-free operation, where the icons are distinct from each other, self explanatory, and easily visible under all possible user setups.
Icons may also be found on the desktop, toolbars and in the menus of computer application software such as Microsoft Word. Icons are made more use-friendly by being very distinct from every other icon. Each Icon-set may also have unifying features that show that similar icons are related to each other. Icons show this by:
- Contrasting Sizes
- Composition (large or small area, top/bottom, left/right, centered/perimeter)
- Pattern-contrast (Horizontal-striped, vertical-striped, slanted-stripes, circles, oblongs, …)
- Light-On-Dark, or Dark-On-Light
- Framed/Shadowed
- Color contrasts
- Fine-detail (with thin lined drawings)
- Animation
Virtually every major computer operating system has the ability to use an icon-based graphical user interface (GUI) to display information to end users; this is evident in the usage of the term “icon” in the WIMP computing paradigm (for Windows, Icons, Menu, Pointers).”
In addition to the usages listed in Wikipedia’s definition, some of these icons are probably useful in site designs as well. Many of the icons listed in the article are restriction free for your use. Some of them have Creative Commons licensing attached to them, so please double check their usage abilities and requirements. If you find other good collections of icons, please let us know and we’ll be happy to feature them here.
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The source site for this is: http://www.allbatts.com
The icons on this site look nice. Simple 2-d image or illustration with a white outline around it with a nice drop shadow. I also like what they did to the background. You can see that it consists of two colors, a darker and a lighter shade of a color actually, separated with a rounded treatment which makes it look kinda glossy.
This website, allbatts.com specializes in batteries, all kinds, cell phones batteries, digital camera batteries, lap tops, etc. I am actually going to use them for my battery needs. One of them right now is my camera. It
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