Website Design Blog: discussion, Inspiration and More... » Showcases

Best Twitter Backgrounds

Designussion — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 11:58:30 +0000

I have been running into more and more great twitter backgrounds. I chose these not only because of how they look, but how well they match their branding. In many cases, they dont just take exact design elements from their website, just suttle hints from it. Really a lot of thought put into these. Here are some great Twitter Designs:

Big Jon Evans

David Leggett

Elite Styles

Tiffany DeMichele

Alison Gianotto

Twestival Jozi

Scott Clark

Vonster

Kelley Hupcey

5 Best Call To Action Landing Pages

Designussion — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 03:32:01 +0000

One of the toughest things I struggle with is creating the most usable design for a very specific call to action. Whether it is for download, filling out a form, or buying something. A clean call-to-action is by far the most critical part of any website and for whatever reason, it is often overlooked.

I came across 5 really good sites today why I was on my hunt…I may add more to this post later.

1. MailChimp.com – the page is clean, simple and the way it stands out really only has 2 options. Sign Up Free is nicely prominent.

2. Twitter, I know, it is a cop out for me to put it in, but their “Get Started Now” button stands out like me on a dance floor:

3. Mint.com was the king of conversion for a very long time with this website:

4. PBwiki – Everything summed up in 3 great buttons. Really nice and clean, this is one of my favorites.

5. The guys over at Digital Telepathy did a bang up job for PathwayGenomics.com. Really clean and simple:

Why you should be building more followers on Twitter

Designussion — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 21:42:46 +0000

Building your reputation online as a designer

Many of you use Twitter on a daily basis to communicate with friends and family and to keep up with the latest news. I’ve been using Twitter since the start of Designussion and it has been pivotal to its success and growth. I have a strong following on Twitter with nearly 4000 followers!

Many of you may have your own blog/website to promote and be stuck for ideas. My number one tip for anyone looking to grow their reputation is through Twitter! More followers = more visitors = more money One of my trade secrets has been using a well known site called GetMoreTwitters.net – their service helped me to grow my follower base at an affordable cost and not have to worry about doing it myself (I can get on with my design work!). I’d highly recommend trying them out if you need more followers on Twitter, they are really trustworthy and affordable – definitely one of my best investments since starting Designussion.

As the number of followers you have builds, you will have more people Tweeting your posts/designs and people will start flocking to your site to see more of your work. Enjoy, and thank me when you’re a millionaire!

Neil Kornswiet

18 Outstanding Typography Photoshop Tutorials Of 2010

Designussion — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 15:06:03 +0000

Typography is always a fascinating aspect of design and some designers are better at it than others. Each and every designer has had to develop and learn their own techniques to be able to produce some of the great typography art work they do. Luckily enough, the design community is active and many designers are nice enough to provide us with tutorials on how they create their typography.

In this post, Designussion showcases 18 outstanding typography tutorials to get you started.

How To Create A Gold Text Effect In Photoshop

10 minute tutorial type within type

photorealistic perspective

The wornweatheredstamped look

web design trend showcase letterpress text effect

How to Create Eroded Metal Text with Photoshop

How to Create 3D Text Blocks in Photoshop

Create 3-d With Awesome Lighting

Create a Cool Wet Ink Typography Effect in Photoshop

Grunge Type Photoshop Tutorial

How to Make Patch on Clothes

Logo Design Project Step by Step Walkthrough

Distorted type effects

Create a Transparent Text Effect with Fresh Grass Texture and Custom Brushset

The new way to create 3D text

VANITY LICENSE PLATE

How to Create High Quality Metal 3D Text in Photoshop

How to Create a Copper Photoshop Text Effect

40 Tutorials for Creating Amazing Icons

Tom Walker — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 17:04:22 +0000

The web, computers and mobile phones would be nothing without the humble icon. We use icons to navigate our way around computers and the internet and, on the whole, would be absolutely lost without them. You’ll be amazed by how many icons are firmly lodged in your brain: when presented with a Search, Mail or Battery icon, for instance, you’ll instantly know exactly what it means and what it does.

Icons are tiny, but powerful; underestimate them at your peril. Internet giants like Facebook, Twitter and Windows Live Messenger rely heavily on icon design to boost user numbers, and Microsoft and Apple are constantly refining and redesigning their icons in a fierce battle to stand out from one another and define their respective brand identities.

As an essential element of website navigation, you need to ensure that your icons are polished and attractive. Fortunately, there is a wealth of icon design tutorials available to help you create stunning icons in Photoshop or Illustrator. We’ve scoured the web to bring you the very best. Some are more suitable for experts, while others are accessible to anyone with the most limited graphic design experience. Take a look below and find the ones that are right for you.

1. Create a Van Icon in Photoshop

2. Create an iPod Earbuds Icon in Illustrator

3. Create an iPod Shuffle Icon in Photoshop

4. Create a Vector Safari Compass Icon in Illustrator

5. Create a Chinese Food Icon in Illustrator

6. Create a Satellite Dish Icon in Photoshop

7. Create a Diamond Ring Icon in Illustrator

8. Create a Shiny Dice Icon in Illustrator

9. Create a Sony PlayStation Icon in Photoshop

10. Create a Light Bulb Icon in Illustrator

11. Create a Paint Roller Icon in Photoshop

12. Create a Vista Error Icon in Photoshop

13. Create an iTunes Icon in Illustrator

14. Create a Cute Panda Icon in Illustrator

15. Create a Camera Lens Icon in Illustrator

16. Create an Alarm Clock Icon in Illustrator

17. Create a Calendar Icon in Illustrator

18. Create a Shopping Basket Icon in Illustrator

19. Create a Scissors Icon in Photoshop

20. Create a Film Slate Icon in Illustrator

21. Create a Key Fob Icon in Photoshop

22. Create a Geeky Glasses Icon in Illustrator

23. Create a Juicy RSS Feed Icon in Illustrator

24. Create a Folder Icon in Photoshop

25. Create a Yahoo Smiley in Photoshop

26. Create a Jaguar Folder Icon in Photoshop

27. Create an LG LCD Monitor Icon in Photoshop

28. Create a Yellow Helmet Icon in Photoshop

29. Create a Glossy Download Icon in Photoshop

30. Create a Hard Drive Icon in Photoshop

31. Create a USB Stick Icon in Photoshop

32. Create a Shiny Lock Icon in Photoshop

33. Create an Electronic Torch Icon in Photoshop

34. Create a Postal Packet Icon in Photoshop

35. Create a Thermometer Icon in Photoshop

36. Create a Mac OS X Mail Icon in Photoshop

37. Create a Watch Icon in Photoshop

38. Create Handy Web 2.0 Icons in Photoshop

39. Create a Traffic Cone Icon in Photoshop

40. Create a Wii Controller Icon in Photoshop

Neil Kornswiet

Design Blogs You Should Be Following On Twitter

Designussion — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 11:18:15 +0000

With the vast majority of design blogs within the blogging community its hard to keep up with who is saying what. Using twitter along side your favorite RSS reader is a great way to find out about new articles that design blogs are writing up. As a designer, these are some of the design blogs we thing you should be following on twitter to keep up to date with designs latest trends and discussion.

Following the popular showcase of design related twitters you should follow in this post, Designussion take a look at design blogs that you should be following on twitter.

Left Your Blog Out? Tell Us!

Designussion loves user contribution so if we have left you out, why not leave us a comment with a mention about your design blog. We will be sure to add it in if it fits the criteria.

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12 Remarkable Web Based RSS Readers

Designussion — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 19:49:32 +0000

Keeping up with the your reading is an essential part of growing and learning as a designer. Using a web based browser allows you to keep your favorite blogs all one in central location even when moving from one device to another. In this post, Designussion showcases 12 awesome web based RSS readers which allow you to customize, organize, search and catagorize articles.

What is RSS?

RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication”. It is a way to easily distribute a list of headlines, update notices, and sometimes content to a wide number of people. It is used by computer programs that organize those headlines and notices for easy reading.

Google Reader

Google Reader, the most popular RSS reader is a Web-based aggregator, capable of reading Atom and RSS feeds online or offline. It was released by Google on October 7, 2005 throughGoogle Labs

Mysyndicaat

mySyndicaat is a news mastering tool that allows you to retrieve, filter, mix and monitor content from remote content sources available on the web. Collected content is cached by mySyndicaat and can be retrieved later on either by using mySyndicaat content viewer, or by subscribing to is using any RSS 2.0-compliant RSS aggregator.

Bloglines

Bloglines is a FREE online service for searching, subscribing, creating and sharing news feeds, blogs and rich web content. With Bloglines, there is no software to download or install — simply register as a new user and you can instantly begin accessing your account any time, from any computer or mobile device.

Lazyfeed

Lazyfeed is all about letting you watch live updates on every topic you care about. Just add the topics you are interested in and start watching. Real-time updates on those topics will continuously flow in automatically. Don’t surf. Let the web come to you.

Feedly

Based on Google Reader and Twitter, feedly organizes your favourite sites into a fun, magazine-like start page.

Fastladder

Fastladder is a free web-based RSS/Atom feed reader.It enables you to read latest entries from your favorite blogs or news so efficiently.
Comparing to old reading style, visiting one web site to another, you can get much more information in much shorter time.

Superfeedr

Set up by a bunch of 20 and 30-something hackers who think real-time technologies are about to change the web. Superfeedr is capable of accepting RSS and Atom feeds, parsing them and sending you the new entries.

Collected

Collected is a service where you easily gather feeds and news sources in to collections where you (and others!) can get a good overview and follow them on a daily basis. You can even export your collection to a new feed that you can use in your favourite reader such as Google Reader, Net News Wire, etc.

My.alltop

The purpose of Alltop is to help you answer the question, “What’s happening?” in “all the topics” that interest you.

Newsisfree

NewsIsFree is a web site designed to let you access thousands of news sources with a powerful and flexible portal for browsing, indexing and publishing news headlines.

Feedbucket

FeedBucket provides a quick and easy way to view RSS feeds. No need for any fancy software or programming — just enter an address above to view the headlines.

Protopage

Protopage is your own personal page, which you can access from any computer or mobile phone. Use it to read your own selection of news and blogs, keep bookmarks, to-do lists, sticky notes, and much more.

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45 Inspirational Vcard Designs

Designussion — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 15:16:56 +0000

Taking your business card to the next level has become the latest craze on the web. Started by Tim Van Damme, Vcards are electronic business cards that allow a company or individual to display basic information online in a minimalistic manner. Most have decided on a simple, one page design that focuses its design around the Vcard content. From the designs showcased below we can see that they all seem to follow Tim’s original layout displaying some basic information, contact details and a list of their social network accounts.

Tim van damme

Michael villar

Arefjdey

Alexn

Matthewmaber

Chriscarey

Joaosilva

Nouincolor

Flip Sasser

Julianwachholz

Chrisrowe

Chris-wallace

Maykelloomans

Avadh

Stefanamport

Marktyrrell

Visuacademic

Louisgubitosi

Lekevicius

Evertslagter

Meelk

Ivorpadilla

Matthiaskretschmann

Johnphillips

Jbloomfield

Antoneycalvert

Amyberry

Maximilianschoening

Michaelbetsch

Davymacca

Rogieking

Raffaelerasini

Presh

Jakeprzespo

Alibahsisoglu

Mikejolley

Ryanglover

Svensporer

Janvanlysebettens

Jasonmanheim

Jpyl

Carnero

I Want One! Where Do I Get One?

Sites To Build Your Own

card.ly

Vcardfile

Purchase Your Own

Themeforest

Themeforest provide 20 awesome Vcard designs for you to purchase if you want to take your design a little further.

Free Wordpress Themes

The Digital Business Card Wordpress Theme

MiniCard Theme for Wordpress

Visiting Card

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30 Exotic Wallpaper Websites For A Healthier Desktop

Designussion — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 23:09:34 +0000

There are those who often enjoy change and those who don’t. As a web designer using a computer is often a task that fills most of our day so sitting looking at the same screen can often become tedious and boring. Changing your desktop wallpaper often can not only bring a whole new look to your workspace but also spark inspiration and creativeness.

In this post, Designussion showcases 30 exotic wallpaper sites that are sure to land you with a new desktop wallpaper. Why not take it upon yourself to change your wall paper each month and spark some inspiration from within to help you with your web design projects and become a better and healthier designer.

Thanks to ~DragonXP for the awesome monitor icon.

Vladstudio

Firefox Wallpapers

Wstaylor

Wooden Fish

Linux Wallpapers

Winmodify

Wincustomize

9xmedia

Aeiko

Wallpaperstock

Wallpaperjoe

Peorth

Brodyaga

Animepaper

Spacewallpapers

Blaberize

Soulcore

Crystalxp

Socwall

Shadowness

Deviantart

Bestqualitywallpapers

Netcarshow

Moodflow

Digitaldesktopwallpaper

Gamewallpapers

Macdesktops

Free-wallpaper-download

Dieselstation.com

Endeffect

Design Blogs You Should Follow As An Aspiring Designer

Designussion — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 20:04:25 +0000

As a designer it should be a priority to want to improve, grow and expand as technology and design trends change. One great way to achieve this is to read articles and view others work and with the use of the internet this is easily accessible. There are hundreds of design related blogs out on the net that are pushing out great content for designers to read but sometimes its hard to keep up with what everyone has to say.

In this post, Designussion takes a look at some of the best design related blogs on the Internet which we recommend you should follow. The following blogs are chosen from a personal preference and because of the interest they create. We hope you take the time to subscribe to each of these blogs which will help you grow as a designer.

Smashing Magazine

Founded in September 2006, Smashing Magazine delivers useful and innovative information to Web designers and developers. Their aim is to inform their readers about the latest trends and techniques in Web development.

Abduzeedo

Abduzeedo is a blog about design. Mainly focusing on inspiration Abduzeedo also focuses on providing quality tutorials to its readers.

DesignM.ag

DesignM.ag is a community-based website for web designers and developers. The site includes a popular blog, a user-submitted news section, a design gallery, and a design job board.

Hongkiat

Hongkiat is a blog focusing on providing quality content and online tips for tech users, designers and bloggers.

Inspiredm

Inspiredm is a blog for daily inspirational sources, illustrators, Twitter addicts, iPhone lovers, and other creative humans.

Sixrevisions

Six Revisions is a website that publishes practical and useful articles for designers and web developers. They seek to present exceptional, noteworthy tips, tutorials, and resources that the modern web professional will appreciate.

Naldzgraphics

Naldz Graphics is a Design Blog for designers and design lovers. They are showcasing the best tutorials, freebies, inspirations and other useful and informative resources to help and give love to design community.

Noupe

Noupe passionately delivers stylish and dynamic news for designers and web-developers on all subjects of design, ranging from; CSS, Ajax, Javascript, web design, graphics, typography, advertising & much more.

Web Design Depot

Webdesigner Depot is an exciting platform designed to explore different web and graphic design techniques, great examples and best practices.

Spyrestudios

Spyrestudios are a small design agency located in Montreal, Canada. They also offer web-design services and also collaborate with other designers, bloggers and social media strategist on various projects.

Webdesignledger

The Web Design Ledger is a publication written by web designers for web designers. The primary purpose of this site is to act as a platform for sharing web design related knowledge and resources. Topics range from design inspiration to tips and tutorials and everything in between.

Webdesignerwall

Web Designer Wall serves as Nick La’s public blog where he posts his design ideas, tutorials, and talk about modern web design trends.

1stwebdesigner

1stwebdesigner is a design blog dedicated to bloggers, freelancers, web-developers and designers. Topics focus on web design,graphic design, tutorials and inspirational articles.

Spoongraphics

On this site you’ll find design tutorials covering various techniques and effects in Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop, as well as a look into various other creative topics.

Fudge Graphics

Fudgegraphics can be described as a design inspirational blog. It is a source of freebies such as photoshop brushes, textures and vectors.

Smashing Apps

Smashing Apps is a blog that blogs about free and useful online resources for designers and developers.

Vandelay Design

Through Vandelay Designs blog we aim to provide helpful and informative posts that meet the needs of our readers. The majority of our readers are web designers or online entrepreneurs of some sort

Instantshift

InstantShift is leading design and inspiration related community for web designers and developers daily resource and premium web design and development blog. iShift offers content on various subjects ranging from basic HTML to Network Security.

Fuel You Creativity

This gem is the place to turn to when you’re having one of your “I’m-going-to-implode-if-I-don’t-get-an-idea-soon” moments.

We Function

We Function pride themselfs on giving you Great design & Functionality, providing a website that will impress on first looks, and continue to impress as you explore it.

Just Creative Design

A blog on the main subject of graphic design which provides free graphic design tips, articles & resources on all subjects of design, ranging from, but not limited to; print design, logo design, web design, branding, typography, advertising & more.