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High Speed Photography : Frozen in Time

2010-03-17T15:36:03Z

In a blink of the eye, a lot can happen. A lot of astonishing things happen in a split of a second, but they are moving too quickly for us to see. High speed photography is the art of photographing a rapidly occurring event. Depending on the event to be photographed, methods range from use of ultra-short time flash exposures to producing lots of exposures in a split-second. Seemingly frozen in time, a lot of photographers have their own special method doing high speed photography. The usual photographic flash component offers a flash that lasts around a thousandth of a second (a millisecond). But photographic flash component used in high speed photography is so much quicker than this, and it creates a flash of light around a microsecond (a millionth of a second). This let you to freeze time through pictures that are happening tremendously fast.

It’s not easy to come up with a perfect shot while capturing rapidly occurring event, photographers that specialize in this type of photography are masters of patience. Below are some incredibly cool images that shows the beautiful combination of artistic expression and technical precision.

Splash | Avi_Abrams

Breaking the Rules | Beforethecoffee

Blue tit in Flight | Burrard Lucas

Cig | David Neff

Crash Test | Fiat

Kiwi Drop | Tpphoto

Near Death Experience | Bda668

Water Animation | Aziz J.Hayat

Frog Leap | Michael Durham

Bullet Shot | David Neff

Waterfigure, Object and Extra Splash | Fotoopa

Happy New Year! | Robert D Bruce

Lights Out | James Neeley

Balloon Explosion | Aziz J.Hayat

Whiplash! | Alastair Batchelor

Smash | Mark Watson

Flower | Fotoopa

Dart | OSUSTUDENT

From Below | Jens Erik Mikkelsen

Broken Bulb | Swashbuckle Pics

Death to Tomatoes | Photoboothguy

Santa Better Watch Out | Alan Sailer

The Infamous Hairflip | Micah Camara

Waterfigure | Fotoopa

Cognac | Byredis

High Speed Balloon Ripping | Infiltrator

Shotgun Shot Sequence | Andrew Davidhazy

Nikon Splash | LSG

Here are more inspirational photography entries we’ve previously published. Check them out!

15 Noteworthy Websites That Changed the Internet

2010-03-17T13:12:43Z

There are millions of websites out there. Many of them are unique, either in small ways or in large ones. But the individual impact of any particular site on the overall Internet is generally negligible, if there’s any impact at all.

Not so with the fifteen sites here. These sites changed the Internet, mostly for good, in substantial ways. Included here is everything from Geocities (which could probably be blamed entirely, either directly or indirectly, for every ugly web design “trend” that’s ever been) to Wikipedia (which has made information almost universally accessible) to Google (which has changed or influenced virtually everything online).

1. Wikipedia

Changed the way we find information. Before Wikipedia, most online encyclopedias were either sorely lacking in information, or required you to have a paid subscription to access their content. Wikipedia changed all that by not only allowing anyone to view the content for free, but also by allowing individual users to review and update content, making it more complete and accurate overall. Wikipedia also brought crowdsourcing and user-generated content to the mainstream online, making both much more viable and valuable.

2. Amazon.com

Changed the way we shop. Prior to Amazon.com, online shopping wasn’t much different than shopping out of a mail-order catalog, except it wasn’t nearly as popular. While Amazon started out selling just books and related items, it has expanded to sell virtually anything you can think of, either directly or through partner sites large and small. Amazon also made free shipping a standard on orders over a certain dollar value, which has impacted the shipping rates and policies of many other online retailers.

3. Hotmail

Changed the way we use email. Before Hotmail came along, email was basically tethered to a single computer. When you checked your email, it was pulled and deleted from the remote server, meaning the only place you could view it was at your computer. Need an email at home that you received at work? Too bad. There was no way to access it unless you went back to the office. Hotmail changed all that by providing webmail that could be accessed from any computer with an Internet connection. Now, web-based email is widely used and provided by a huge variety of providers. Even though Hotmail is no longer the primary provider of webmail (and is now owned by Microsoft), they were still pioneers in the technology.

4. Facebook

Changed the way friends connected. While Facebook wasn’t the first social network, it has definitely become the most popular and has really changed the way friends interact with one another. Sure, people use FB to talk online, but they’re also increasingly using it as a way to plan get-togethers offline. They’re using it to follow and interact with their favorite bands, actors, and other personalities. People use it to keep in touch with business contacts, friends, family, and acquaintances. Facebook has made social networking mainstream, across a variety of demographics and virtually worldwide.

5. Project Gutenberg

Changed the way we read. Project Gutenberg has a much longer history than most people realize. They created the first ebooks, and gave them away for free. You can now read virtually every major book in the public domain, sometimes in multiple languages on their site. Without the pioneering steps the founders of Project Gutenberg took, ebooks would not be where they are today.

6. Twitter

Changed the way we communicate. Twitter has made one of the biggest impacts on the Internet in recent memory. The idea that 140-character messages, broadcast publicly (for the most part), would change the way people communicate with one another would have been hard to believe ten years ago. But Twitter has become not just a powerhouse in the way individual communicate with one another, but also in the way businesses communicate with their customers. Complaining about poor customer service on Twitter can often result in almost instant messages from the company in question, and often results in a satisfactory resolution. Twitter has also made celebrities more accessible, with hundreds of celebs now using the service to interact with their fans.

7. Pandora

Changed the way we find new music. Before Pandora, if you wanted to listen to music online, you usually turned to a streaming radio station with pre-programmed content. Sure, you might get lucky and find a station that had mostly music you liked, but maybe it wasn’t diverse enough, or it still kept playing that one song you HATED. Pandora changed all that. Now, you can program your own radio station by just entering the name or a song or artist and then giving the thumbs up or down to music played. With a minimal amount of user input, Pandora has gotten surprisingly good at creating playlists that reflect one’s musical taste. The bonus is that songs or artists you might not have heard of are often thrown into the mix, based on what you already like.

8. Apple

Made minimalist web design cool. Apple had one of the first corporate websites designed with a minimalist aesthetic. As far back as the late 90s, Apple was starting to show a more minimalist take on web design than many other corporate sites, and by early 2000, they’d adopted the white and gray color scheme and top navigation they still employ today.

9. YouTube

Changed entertainment. Before YouTube, there weren’t many options if you wanted to watch a video online. You could sometimes find a video here or there, but with bandwidth costs, they were few and far between. Website owners just didn’t want to pay the extra costs associated with video content. Then YouTube came along and made it free to post any video you wanted (as long as it wasn’t copyrighted or over ten minutes long). Web users now had a centralized place to go to watch video online. And because of YouTube’s pioneering effort, online video is now enjoyed by millions every day.

10. Craigslist

Changed classifieds. Online classified sites used to be nearly unusable. Between the huge number of spam postings and the fact there were few if any local listings in most areas, there wasn’t much point in using them. But then Craigslist caught on and suddenly there was an online classifieds site that rivaled most local newspaper classifieds. Now you can use Craigslist to find almost anything, no matter where you live.

11. The Drudge Report

Changed the stature of online news. When the Monica Lewinsky/President Clinton story broke in 1998, it wasn’t a mainstream news source that first reported it. Instead, The Drudge Report held those honors, forever changing the standing of online news sources. Now, online news sources break stories on a regular basis, and are considered by most to be just as reliable as television or print news sources.

12. GeoCities

Made the web more accessible. In the early days of the Internet, the only people online (for the most part) were scientists, academics, and those involved in technology. It wasn’t a very exciting place. Then came GeoCities, and suddenly anyone could set up their own webpage for free. Sure, GeoCities spawned a legion of horrifically ugly websites, but it also got a lot of regular people involved in the Internet for the first time and was likely the first design experience of many early web designers.

13. Digg

Changed the way we find and share news. Digg was originally set up as an experiment, but it has completely changed the way many people find news online. The idea of users determining which news was important, relevant, and interesting rather than editors or executives at big news organizations was revolutionary. Now, user-generated news sites are all over the place, both for mainstream news and for individual industries and niches.

14. LiveJournal

Hooked millions on blogging. Blogging wasn’t invented by LiveJournal, but they were the first site to offer free blogs to their members. Millions now use LiveJournal, and tens of millions more blog elsewhere, either through other blog hosts or on their own websites. If it weren’t for LiveJournal and similar free blogs hosts that came later, blogging might not have caught on as the global phenomenon it has become.

15. Google

Changed everything. This one might seem a bit dramatic, but it really is true. Google has invaded virtually every aspect of the Internet. No matter what you do online, you probably interact with one Google service or another multiple times every day. And most people use at least one Google product or service one a regular basis personally. Whether it’s a Blogger blog, a Picasa photo album, a Google search, or even a YouTube video (or any of the dozens of other services Google owns), Google-controlled sites are everywhere.

About Author – Cameron Chapman is a professional Web and graphic designer with over 7 years of experience. She writes for a number of blogs, including her own, Cameron Chapman On Writing. She’s also the author of Internet Famous: A Practical Guide to Becoming an Online Celebrity.

“Call to Action” Buttons: Guidelines, Best Practices and Examples

2010-03-17T09:06:18Z

Call to action buttons on websites are often neglected. Designers sometimes don’t understand exactly what makes a good call to action button beyond being attractive and fitting into the overall design. But call to action buttons are too important to be designed without some kind of understanding of what makes them effective. After all, the main point of a call to action button is to get visitors to do something.

It’s important to gain at least a basic understanding of how color, scale, language, and other factors influence the conversion rate of a call to action button. The concepts here aren’t complicated, but they do take a bit of forethought and planning to create the most effective call to action buttons possible within a given design. Read on for more information on each of these points and more.

The Purpose of “Call to Action” Buttons

Call to action buttons can serve a variety of functions. After all, “call to action” is really a bit vague. All it means is that it’s main purpose is to get a visitor to your site to do something. That something could be adding a product to their shopping cart, downloading something, requesting information, or just about anything else.

Because call to action buttons have such varied purposes, a lot of consideration has to go into what the button aims to achieve. The type of site, the target market, and the desired action can all play a role in how to best design a call to action button.

Types of “Call to Action” Buttons

There are a few different types of call to action buttons. While each type aims to get visitors to perform a certain action, that action can vary considerably. Below are the most common types of call to action buttons, based on the action they want you to take.

1. Add to Cart Buttons

E-commerce sites generally use a number of call to action buttons, but the most widely-used one is the “add to cart” button. These buttons generally appear on individual product pages. Their purpose is to entice customers to purchase an item. Common design elements in add to cart buttons include simple wording (such as “Add to Cart” or “Add to Bag” or “Buy Now“) and the use of icons (usually a bag or cart).

2. Download Buttons

Download buttons are similar to add to cart buttons in that they’re trying to entice a visitor to take possession of an item. In the case of download buttons, many designers opt to include more information than other types of buttons (such as version information or download size).

3. Trial Buttons

Some sites try to entice their visitors to try their offerings, generally in the form of a free trial. This could be a free download or a free account, depending on the particular site. Some sites use the “less-is-more” philosophy and keep the language on their buttons to a minimum, while others like to offer more information on what the trial contains.

4. Learn More Buttons

Learn more buttons are generally used at the end of a block of teaser information (often on the home page). These buttons are usually simple, but often oversized to attract visitor attention.

5. Sign Up Buttons

Sign up buttons appear most commonly in two different versions. The first type is usually directly associated with a sign up form. The second type is usually used in a similar fashion to “add to cart” buttons, as a way for users to purchase or sign up for a service or account, before they actually reach a sign-up form.

There are other types of call to action buttons, but these are the most common. Guidelines that apply to those above will likely also apply to any other type of call to action button you might be designing.

Using Negative Space Effectively

You want your call to action buttons to stand out from the surrounding content and really command attention from your site visitors. To that end, you need to make use of negative space around those buttons. Incorporate blank space between your content and your call to action button. While this is less important (and less common) on some buttons, such as add to cart buttons, with others, like those to learn more, work better with more space.

It’s important to balance the amount of negative space you have around the buttons with the size of the buttons themselves. It’s about proportion. You want your button, the space around it, and the surrounding content to all look like they go together, even with disparities in size. You may have to fiddle around with things a bit in order to get them looking just right.

Some guidelines:

Make sure there’s enough space around your button so that it doesn’t feel cluttered
Consider principles like the rule of thirds or the Golden Ratio when determining how much space to include
Negative space gives your call to action button room to stand out among your other content and sets it apart

Size and Color

How large your call to action buttons are is very important. A button that’s too large will overpower everything around it. A button that’s too small will get lost in the shuffle of all the other content on a page. You want your button to be large enough to stand out without overwhelming the design.

Color can be used to great effect to help balance the size of your buttons. For larger buttons, choose a color that’s less prominent within your design (but still stands out again the background). For a smaller button, you may want to choose a brighter, contrasting color to really make the button pop. In either case, make sure the color you use sets the button apart without clashing with the site’s overall design.

Some guidelines:

Your call to action buttons should ideally be the largest buttons on a given page
Use contrasting colors to make smaller buttons stand out more
Use less distinct colors to make oversized buttons fit in better
You call to action buttons need to command attention without overwhelming your design

Language

The exact wording you choose to use on your call to action buttons can have a huge effect on conversion. Compare “Buy Now” with “Add to Cart“. One is much more urgent than the other one. Or how about “Try it for Free” with “Free Trial“? One is much punchier than the other and stands out more.

The language you use on your call to action buttons should be as straight-forward and simple as possible. You want visitors to know with just a glance exactly what they’ll get when the click on a button. If they question it, that means they’ve paused, which can lead to lower conversion rates.

Don’t forget your font sizes, too. The text on your call to action button should be large and bold, properly suited to the size and color of the button itself. Make sure there’s sufficient contrast and that the text is easy to read.

Some guidelines:

Use simple, direct language
Use a large, bold font on the button for the main text
Make sure the language clearly calls for a specific action

Create Urgency

You want visitors on your site to carry out the desired actions with as little thought as possible. While you don’t want to deceive your visitors, the more opportunities you give them to stop and consider what they’re doing, the more opportunities you’re giving them to say “no”.

You want your buttons to give them the impression that they need to act right away. You want to encourage them to make their decision immediately, on the spur of the moment. While this won’t work for every call to action button (especially those to purchase high-ticket items), for low-cost or free actions, having visitors click with little forethought is desirable.

Some guidelines:

Encourage your visitors to act immediately
Don’t give your visitors any reason to pause
While urgency is important, don’t mislead your visitors in any way

Provide Extra Information

Where appropriate, use your call to action buttons to give visitors extra information about what they’re going to get if they click on the button. This is most commonly seen with trial buttons or download buttons. Common examples of extra information include the length of time a free trial will last or the size of a file download. Version information is also commonly seen.

When including extra information, remember that you need to keep the focus on the actual call to action. Make sure that the text for the language enticing visitors to act is most prominent, with other information much less visible.

Some guidelines:

Only include extra information when it adds to the user experience
Extra information is only appropriate on some types of call to action buttons, most notably download or trial buttons
Make sure the main call to action is still the most prominent text on your button

Prioritize

It’s important to prioritize the call to action buttons on your page if there’s more than one. This can be done in a number of ways, but the most common are through the use of color and size.

Use color to highlight the most important button on a page, or to make the less important ones seem less prominent. Or use size to make the most important button stand out (by making it larger) and de-emphasizing the less-important ones.

Icons and Images

Including visual cues in your call to action buttons can also help to increase conversion rates. An icon of a shopping cart on an “add to cart” button, for instance, or an arrow on a download button are both good examples. Think of unique icons to use, too, but make sure that the icon adds to the user experience by clarifying what the button is for, and doesn’t add any confusion.

Some guidelines:

Make sure the icons you use help clarify your button’s meaning, rather than confuse it
Easily-recognized icons can immediately indicate meaning to your visitors
Don’t be afraid to use less-commonly used icons, as long as their meaning is still clear

Examples

Here are a few examples of great call to action buttons. While they don’t all perfectly conform to the guidelines above, they meet enough of the criteria to be considered great.

Livestream
Differentiating the “buy now” (for paid options) and “sign up” (for free options) buttons is a good strategy.

Windows 7
The big, green “Get Windows7″ button is easy for visitors to spot.

Fileshare HQ
The bright green button here really stands out against the white background.

Logbook
Using different colors for the “Download” and “Buy” buttons sets them apart and gives priority to the “Buy” button.

TasteBook
This button makes great use of an icon and uses larger, bold text to stand out.

GoodBarry
Another bright green call to action button.

Lifetree Creative
Continuing the same typeface from the body copy to the call to action button creates a sense of cohesion.

The Resumator
A bright red call to action button with bold type stands out against the blue background.

Notepod
A good example of including extra information in a call to action button.

Inkd
A great example of prioritizing buttons with size.

Elegant Themes
Another excellent example of using color to stand out without clashing with surrounding design elements.

ZenDesk
Another great example of making a button stand out using color.

Storenvy
A round button is unexpected and stands out, especially when surrounded by a white border.

Bara’Mail
Sometimes a button that blends in works better in your overall site design, especially when the action is less urgent.

More Resources

Call to Action Buttons: Examples and Best Practices – From Smashing Magazine
Good Call-to-Action Buttons – From UX Booth
Call to Action Buttons: Does Size Matter? – From Get Elastic
10 Techniques for an Effective “Call to Action” – From Boagworld
5 Tips for Creating an Effective Call to Action Button – From SitePoint

Architecture Photography: Beauty of Interior and Exterior Designs

2010-03-17T08:42:12Z

American architect Julia Morgan once said, “Architecture is a visual art, and the buildings speak for themselves.“.

Indeed, architecture serves as a voice to express the artistic stance of the architect at that time. Photography takes a step further to interpret architecture in several ways. What used to be an accurate portrayal of the structure has now gradually evolved into a manipulation of different perspectives to bring out the interesting elements of a single structure. The art of photographing architecture takes on many forms. Whether it is photographing the exterior or interior, many awesome images can be resulted with the correct techniques and more importantly, the observant eye to spot the different points of view.

Like other types of photography, what lies ahead is always a series of challenges for photographers before an excellent shot is taken. However, there are two main challenges in architecture photography – Lighting and Image distortion. When photographing the exterior, natural lighting is all you have got and you have to capture the building at its most glamorous moment. Image distortion occurs when the building has lines running horizontally and vertically and they appear distorted. The right equipment and the right angles would prevent that pitfall.

Interior architecture with repeating patterns and geometric shapes is a bonus to photographers. Employing the use of different camera angles would reveal the beauty of these designs. Architecture with unique and unusual structures also tend to catch our attention. We can’t help but start to ponder how it was made (or maybe built) possible. Photography comes into play as it does justice to impressive architecture.

You probably haven’t seen all the architecture in the entire globe, so we shall bring you bits of the world. Here is a collection of architecture photography that will keep you bedazzled. If you are amazed at these images, your jaws will drop in awe when you get to see the real McCoy.

Golden ceiling of Budapest Parliament | jackfre2

Balcony Harmony | roevin

Void of silence | Mindcage

Caracole | Giulio Ercolani

Lost in lines | Semir

St. Peter’s Basilica | jborowski_photo

Swirling at an angle | wonder_lick

86 Down Below | NazZmedia-Photography

Vortex | stefano longhi

Taj Mahal | sensorfleck

SOH Sails | Susie Knudsen

Way Up | christian_wind

“Vers une architecture” Towards an architecture | * galaad *

Cloisters at Durham Cathedral | Coiled_Pasta

Escaleras Helicoidales Spiral staircase | SoWhat -

Esplanade Singapore | Jusup Sukatendel

Architecture in Rotterdam | Dennis Veldman

Soaring buildings | Sebastian Trandafir

Aussie Architecture | ‘ Toshio ‘

Cathedral of Stairs | shutterBRI

Ceiling of Budapest | kimbar

Octagonal Chapter House of York Minster | KCLam

City of the Arts and the Sciences of Valencia, Spain | mhdezhdez

Arrow Heads of Esplanade Singapore | Guang Ye

El trono episcopal | SoWhat -

Let’s dance | Myxi

Alien architecture | Austrittswunde

ljusterapi | Dezeen

Observer | Kamuro

Perforated Roof | roevin

Symmetrical watercube | toomanytribbles

Underground Starship | roevin

It’s a long way up | nicksflix

Hyatt Lobby, Atlanta | scilit

Space architecture | Carsten Velten

Musical Architecture | Mauro Mendula

Architectural Contrasts | Alexandra Baltog

About Author – Kelly Swee is a new media consultant from Singapore. She specialize in video media platform and has a keen interest in digital media design artworks.

50+ Free High Quality Gothic & Horror Fonts

2010-03-17T08:38:44Z

Typography plays an important role and is an integral part of any design; be it print or web. Sometimes, when there is no room for images, typeface is all you’ve got to give the audience an idea what the whole thing is all about.

Image credit: Sven the ghost by Starfy

But one common thing in designing with typeface is – we usually use a particular font once for any design or campaign. It’s probably not worth buying, certainly not economically feasible from a business standpoint.

If you have recently receive assignment or job to create design for something gothic, spooky or old-fashioned we urge that you take a look at the following free fonts we’ve collected before adding premium fonts to your shopping cart. Here’s a list of 50+ free gothic and horror fonts you may want to bookmark.

Here are more font relative article we’ve previously published:

Full list after jump.

Cold Night for Alligators

Feast of Flesh BB

The haine au carre

Cannibal Corpse

Solstice Of Suffering

You Murderer Font

Sin of the innoccent

Windswept MF

13th Ghostwrite

Splywaj

Almost Dead Bloody

About author: Dainis is blogger from Latvia. He is webmaster of Psdeluxe.com (Photoshop deluxe) – Design community where you find photoshop tutorials and useful resources for web and graphic designers. Follow Dainis on Twitter

Photo Manipulation: 26 Excellent Photoshopped Robotic Animals

2010-03-17T09:26:10Z

Photoshop is cool, and we mean really cool! With the right technique and some creativity you can totally turn any image into something extraordinary with a bigger impact. It’s fun to just take a photo, manipulate and see what output becomes.

Today we want to show you some amusing photo manipulation – the robotic animals. These images comes from our talented friends over at worth1000 who took Photoshop into the next level by manipulating photos of normal animal and turned them into robotic creative by injecting mechanical parts into their body. We hope this inspires you and help your creativity.

Quick article recommendations for animal lovers:

Enjoy!

Robotic Mosquito | Catfish08

Leportron 6603 | Gavh

Mechano-Squirrel | AlterThis

Cyber W’horse 1K | MatSat

Slither | MarcSTLouis

Robo-Chicken | YearoftheDragon

Cybermantis | Trit

Monkey Bot 2.0 | Dechko

S-D Z632 | Thunderhorse

Battle Snail | Claven

Ferrari Dragonfly | Terrence

Robo-Turtle | Omerican

LadyCybug | Alliex

Armageddillo | Chris

RoboMantis | Jaylee1

Robo Lobster | solipsism

Wireless Doggle | Linglie

Driller Worm | vipez666

Baluga | Eumesmo

The Prototype | Svethead

Peamanmeatinator | Chris

Overkill | Pepey78

Robolizard | Garsaelon

FlaminGr0b0t | Chris

Mechtrout | solipsism

Cyber Cat | Mandrak

Note: No animals were hurt during these photo manipulations.

Freebie Release: Social Trucks Icon Set

2010-03-17T09:14:25Z

Every now and then we find ways to reward our readers to show how much we appreciate the support they’ve given to us along the way. Sometimes we create giveaway contests; sometimes we give out freebies and hope that some will find them useful.

Today we would like to release yet another set of social network icons – The Social Truck Icons.

Social Truck Icon set consists of 10 social network icons; delivered as PNGs at the super-size of 512 pixels and these cute icons are designed by Andrea Austoni exclusively for Hongkiat.com readers only. Andrea is an Italian freelance designer currently living in Krakow, Poland. He specializes in icon design and illustration. He runs Cute Little Factory, his portfolio and blog, where he frequently publishes tutorials and freebies.

As usual, these icons are absolutely free and you are allowed to use them in personal or commercial project. Just don’t redistribute, re-sell or attempt to make profit out of it. If you like it, consider linking back to this entry or share it with your friends.

We hope these Social Truck icons will bring you more traffic or caused a traffic congestion on your website or blog :-)

Download Social Truck Icons now.

45 Creative Resumes to Seize Attention

2010-03-17T09:10:12Z

Are you one of those job seekers who have been sending far too many resumes and been hit with far too many disappointment? The problem may not lie with your qualification or skills set. Employer filters tons of resumes on daily basis, only the outstanding ones get noticed.

A creative resume is fairly important. Not only it resembles your personality, it also speaks your capability and creativity. Putting more effort and thoughts into creating an impressive resume is definitely worthwhile, as it is usually the first thing any employer sees before flipping through your entire portfolio.

Today we want to bring to your attention a collective of 45 creative and beautiful resumes that will definitely impress an employer. Let’s not take any chances to let your dream job slip away (again). Full list after jump.

Curriculum Vitae by Jonny-Rocket
A CV that probably laid the author the job and great at attracting attention among several hundred applicants.

Resume by Pau Morgan

Me, Myself Curriculum Vitae by Novisurjadi

Life Chart Resume
Author’s first take at visualizing general tasks he does daily between age 0-32. It also highlights significant events of the last 20 years.

Resume by Arianedenise

Resume on Fabric
Just a creative way to get a graphic design job, while expressing author’s parallel interest in fabric and sewing.

Curriculum Vitae by Mistis
A retro and vintage CV with pictures.

Curriculum Vitae by iTudor

Curriculum Vitae by Verine

Curriculum Vitae by bulooji

Curriculum Vitae by Fransanchez

Vinyl Record-Themed Resume
A relatively clean teaser of a graphic designer’s resume, black and white version. Made to match a vinyl record-themed portfolio design.

Michael Anderson Resume Infographic
A different perspective on the typical time-line theme resume. This is just concept art, as there are almost no real metrics represented except for time.

Resume by ChuckDLay
A copy of author’s resume included in each issue of DESGINERD toward the end where the novelty ads would normally be.

Resume by Adam Stephenson

Resume by Anna Yenina

Personal Resume Draft by Steven Duncan
An eye catching resume illustrating author’s education and work-place experience since high school.

Graphic Design Resume by SunnyBlack
A resume that designed for a typographic class.

Resume Advice by Gusbodr

2009 Resume SID Santos
Resume on a paper cup, tissue paper and a piece of receipt.

Resume Passport

Resume Confidential 2008 by Sercan Tunali

Resume by Kelly Haller
A newly designed resume for my business practices class.

Server Resume by Matthew Villalovos
A resume that designed for someone who was applying to be a waiter at a restaurant.

Resume and Card

2004 Resume SID Santos
Fold the resume to become a 3-D box.

Box Ad 2.1
A resume/self-promo box and big enough to print out and fold up.

Original Resume T-shirt
Resume T-shirt by BlackBirdTees.

Curriculum Vitae by Greg Dizzia
This is an appendage to a traditional resume, to be included as a forward page in portfolio.

Curriculum Vitate by Sofiane42

Curriculum Vitae by Uito2

Curriculum Vitae by AkiDesign

Curriculum Vitae by fede-moral

Curriculum Vitae by Michael Farrow
8 pages booklet type CV.

Curriculum Vitae by 802.11

Timeline Resume
A timelie resume and work history by Robert Berg.

Work Resume by Yingzhy Luqiu
A non-traditional resume.

Resume by David Bonggas
Resume in urban-art version and done with adobe photoshop CS3.

TLS Resume 2008

Character Resume by SeanMcNally

Resume by Rush.Me

A2 Poster CV by Hippiedesigner
CV interpreted into a A2 poster. A poster designed to be printed A2 size, put in a A4 envelope and mailed to prospective employers.

Visual Resume by Oona
A resume that more cuter and eye-catching than type-on-paper-crap.

Typographic Resume by Christa
A typographic resume by Christa.

Resume by Krista Gregg

Design Multilingual Website: A Beginner’s Guide

2010-03-17T09:11:58Z

By: Christian Arno

The ‘look and feel‘ of a website is the cornerstone of any successful online venture. But the very nature of the internet means that the instant you upload your carefully constructed pages onto the World Wide Web, you’re global.

Image: via YukoTVXQ

Indeed, regardless of whether you intend to make buckets of cash from your website or simply build a strong international following online, there are numerous aspects of your site’s design you should consider from the start, to ensure it’s flexible and adaptable to international requirements. If you want to build a number of foreign-language equivalents of your main site, they need to be properly localized before you launch and the process can be made much less painful if you plan from the start.

1. Text

Image: via subgrafik

For those more inclined towards the front-end design aspect of websites than the ‘behind the scenes’ system-related aspects, consider this technical truism: computers deal with numbers, not letters.

Indeed, letters and other characters are displayed by having a number designated to each one through a system of encoding. Traditionally, there were lots of encoding systems covering different languages, but Unicode changed all that.

Unicode provides a unique number for every character, regardless of platform, program or language. It has been adopted by industry leaders such as Apple, HP, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, Sun and many others. Importantly, it is supported in most of the common operating systems and browsers. The development of Unicode is one of the most significant global software technology trends in recent years.

Most of the popular web design applications such as Dreamweaver and, for real beginners, Microsoft Front Page, facilitate the development of Unicode web pages.

Unicode can currently be used for over 90 scripts, and has a repertoire of over 100,000 characters. UTF-8 is a variable-length character encoding for Unicode that is familiar to most programmers. It is the best option when creating websites for international markets, as it allows you to use characters from many different languages. For example, German uses the ‘Eszett’ symbol (ß) in place of ’ss’, whilst three German vowels use the Umlaut (ä, ö and ü).

In short, you’re best using Unicode if you’re planning on adapting your website for other languages.

2. Color symbolism

Image: via djFargo

Color is an important facet of any website. Your choice of colors will depend on whatever product or service you’re selling. If you’re an environmental company from the west, you may have a lot of green on your site…if you run a water sports business, there may be a lot of blue.

However, your choice of colors should also reflect your target audience. For example, red can denote ‘danger’, ‘love’ or ‘passion’ in Western cultures; whilst it signifies ‘purity’ in India and ‘good luck‘ or ‘celebration’ in China.

Orange has religious connotations for Protestants in Northern Ireland, whilst it also represents ‘autumn’ (‘fall’), ‘Halloween’ or ‘creativity’ in many Westerns cultures too.

Green represents ’spring’, ‘nature’ and the environment in many cultures, but if you’re ever thinking of depicting a green hat on your site, it’s worth knowing that this signifies that a man’s wife is cheating on him in China. It can also represent an exorcism.

Other examples are Purple: ‘royalty’ (Western) or ‘mourning’ (Thailand). Interestingly, black denotes ‘funerals’ or ‘death’ in Western cultures, but in many Eastern cultures white is used to denote this.

To avoid having to overhaul your website when targeting a new market, carefully consider your color scheme from the start.

3. Content

Image: via leekrya

Nobody will visit your website for the design alone. The online marketing mantra ‘content is king‘ certainly rings true for most websites – you have to offer genuinely useful content for your domestic and international visitors.

Adapting your content for international markets requires a two-step process: localization and optimization.

Localization

The localization aspect simply requires a professionally qualified native-speaking translator for each of your target markets. If you’re serious about making money from your international websites, then you have to consider dialects too.

For example, many words mean different things in French (France), Canadian French and Swiss/Belgian French. ‘Lunch’ is déjeuner in France, but dîner in Switzerland and Belgium. And in France, dîner is the word for ‘evening meal’. Coche in Spain is the word for a ‘car’, whilst in many South American countries, it means a baby-stroller. Indeed, a baby-stroller will be unfamiliar to UK readers, who’ll be more likely to use a ‘pushchair’ or ‘buggy’.

So you get the point. If you’re serious about your global endeavors, you have to treat each of your target markets as separate entities.

The translation of your website is made a lot easier if you use minimal Flash content on your site, as it’s difficult to edit, copy and carry out word counts, processes that are crucial to the translation process. Moreover, words are the food of search engines, and given that the likes of Google can’t detect words embedded in Flash files, these kinds of sites aren’t very SEO friendly.

Optimization

In terms of optimizing your website for international markets, you shouldn’t translate your keywords and phrases directly from your English language website. People may use abbreviations, acronyms or synonyms to search for a product locally, so you have to research what terms consumers actually use to search for items in each of your markets.

These phrases should then be incorporated into your professionally translated website, preferably on a dedicated ‘in-country’ domain (see below).

4. Domains

Image: via Heberger Site

It may be cheaper and more convenient to have a single domain for all your target countries, but from a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) perspective, there’s an argument that says it’s best to have a dedicated top-level domain (TLD) for each of your target countries, (e.g. ‘co.uk’ for the UK or ‘.ch’ for Switzerland etc). Search engines use the top-level domain to help establish the ‘location‘ of the website (‘geo-targeting’), which will affect your position on country-specific search engines (Google.co.uk, Google.fr, etc)

Similarly, it’s best to check that each of your domains is hosted on a server in your target country too, as search engines use this information to determine your website’s location.

The website address of the domain you purchase is important too as Google reads the words in the URL. So if your company produces software, for example, you may want to have the word ’software’ in the URL, though this should be translated into the language of your target country.

Developing websites to support multiple languages is a challenging endeavor; if you choose to have one domain to host several multi-language versions of your site, ensure you create a different sub-domain for each language. So if, for example, your TLD is: http://www.mycompany.com, then the sub-domain for its German language version would be http://de.mycompany.com. Conversely, the in-country domain would be: http://www.mycompany.de.

5. Navigation

Image: via Little Miss. Sunshine

Navigation is a crucial aspect of the web design process. Consistency and ‘landmarking’ help web users find their way around your site and. Navigation should be intuitive.

If you have a vertical menu bar on the left of your English-language website, it’s worth considering switching this to the right for languages that read ‘right to left’ (RTL), such as Arabic. This isn’t essential, as you can have menus on the opposite side of the page, but it all depends how you want your website to appear to your visitors. Alternatively, use a horizontal menu bar to eliminate the need to make any amendments at all.

You might also want to consider creating an ‘entrance page‘ to your site, where users choose the navigation language of the site. Or, you can use English as the default language, and have clearly labeled options for switching to other languages.

Some businesses use IP2Country services that automatically detect the country of the visitor based on their IP address. Some simple, dynamic code on your web pages will enable this – however, this method isn’t always 100% reliable, so it’s perhaps best leaving the language selection process to the user.

And there you have it. These are just some of the basic issues to consider when building a multilingual friendly website. Good luck conquering the world!

About author: Christian Arno is the founder of Lingo24, a multi-million dollar international translation and localization company with more than a hundred employees in over 60 countries. Learn more about multilingual web design.

60 Creative Flash Websites You Should Not Miss

2010-03-17T08:46:00Z

Flash has been around for ages; from the days of Macromedia Flash to Adobe’s acquisition. It is a platform that opens up a whole new room of opportunities and possibilities how website can be presented.

Despite the fact that Flash has limitations like SEO-unfriendly, plug-in required, slow loading (sometimes), etc, it is still one of the best approaches to create interactive websites that will impress your visitors. In today’s post we’ve collected 60 really creative Flash websites created by expert Flash developers all over the world. Take a look, your inspiration could start from here.

More flash related articles we’ve previously published:

Enjoy!

Brought to you by:

The 3rd Generation Prius

Tag Galaxy

Tag Galaxy is a very good flash application that uses Papervision3D with beautiful transition effects to explore Flickr photos via virtual planetary systems. You enter a tag and related tags appear with beautiful planetary systems.

Mercedes-Benz | B-Class

The CLUE Virtual Mansion

Flash 3D game. Beautifully made.

If Your Milk Carton MoOOos, You Win!

Case-Mate: I Make My Case

You can design your custom iPhone case in this cool Flash application.

Plate Interactive

Creative idea with fantastic effects.

SposiAmo

Wedding planner site from Italy. Elegant design with romantic background music.

DG Estilistas

Cheese & Burger Society

GT3 Creative

Skoda Yeti – Catch and Win!

Lois Jeans | SPRING SUMMER ‘09

Harajuku

Christmas Tweets

IKEA Soft Toys AID

Infrared5

Pearl Jam Ten Game

Stefan Kovac – Portfolio

Flash presentation of Stefan Kovac’s selected web & interactive work.

The Scruffs game – unofficial site

Herbal Essences Spice

Beautiful graphic design, and nice animations. The website also has game.

TheOleg | Freelance designer

This is the site of Ukrainian freelance designer Oleg Kostyuk.

Daniel Kusaka

Interactive Design Portfolio of Daniel Kusaka from Brazil. Interesting design.

Wonderful Moment Project

Volkswagen Efficiency : Volkswagen UK

PIAGGIO MP3

Kasulo.ws

Portfolio of Ricardo Dias featuring web and print contents. Gorgeous design, and inspiring idea.

Lech.pl

LECH beer in 3D

Pritt – Knutselwereld

GOOD | How do we achieve harmony?

Verbatim Championship

Cool robots with cute animation.

McCafé / Make Your Own Cappuccino Art

You can make your own cappuccino art and save to gallery. McCafe from McDonalds.

HBO Imagine

TESTEMALE-PHOTOS.COM

Bernard Testemale’s professional photography portfolio site.

Levi’s® 501® 2007

THE PROFILER™

Use The Profiler to visualize what’s behind your profile picture, and discover what goes on in your friends’ heads. You can connect with your facebook.

Red Bull Soapbox Racer

Red Bull Soapbox Racer is a 3D racing game in Flash.

Toyota: Every 5 seconds

Featuring Toyota cars: Yaris, Auris, Corolla, Avensis, Camry, RAV4, Prado.

hiroshi seo / photographs TIME:LINE

hiroshi seo is a photographer from Japan.

Samsung Jet | Smarter than Smartphone

Bloody Rage 2

Bloody Rage 2 is a 3D Fighting game created in flash using Away3D engine.

Volvo FH16 700

Polo

2Advanced v5 – Attractor

2Advanced Studios

The Economist: Thinking Space

Virtual Sean | The Official Sean Kingston Site

Sean Kingston Sing Along with Lil Sean Karaoke

TWIGITAL

Twigital is an interactive 3D twitter visualisation in Flash.

thetoke™ interactive / broadcast

interactive, broadcast, art, motion, sound design, and flash development.

EnergyLab

Maria Filó – Verão 2010

FIFA Street 3

Coke Live Music Festival

The RailAway Express

The RailAway Express is an Away3D experiment looks like a roller coaster.

Aerial Virtual tour of New York City, USA

Amazing view of New York City 2009 virtual tour.

Relapse

Eminem’s new album website.

the951 – The legend is back.

DJ Hero

DJ Hero website for DJ lovers.

Morgan Stanley Matrix. Ideas into action

Honda Accord 2008

SAIZEN MEDIA STUDIOS

NIGHTWISH – Saizen Media Studios portfolio of selected works. Extremely beautiful graphic design and stunning animations.

Beautiful Black and White Photography of Animals

2010-03-17T08:43:36Z

Black & White Photography is one of the oldest forms of photography. For many decades, black and white photography ruled the scene even when colors were introduced. In the fine arts industry, monochrome prints have a propensity to command the highest prices. Many of us are still stunned by the purity and beauty of black and white photography.

There are a lot of similarities between animal photography and hunting. You have to sneak up on them; you got to have patience to capture the perfect moment. A stunning animal image can be priceless, timeless and compelling at the same time. Today we are going to show you some examples of the beauty of black and white photography through photographing various animals. Enjoy!

More related entries:

Full list after jump.

25 Beautiful Animal Black & White Photos

Let’s take a look at some of the really beautiful photo shots of various animals in contrasting black and white.

Elephants MGD | younggalleryphoto

White Majesty | Spike83

Zebra, Tanzania | National Geographic

untitled | sd@blog of all

Crossing Lines | Lowonlands

Lowland Gorillas, Bronx Zoo | National Geographic

Black Bow | Bubblywums

8 Hippos on Mara River | younggalleryphoto

Sade, the Persian Leopard | Wendysalisbury

Silent friend | Wendysalisbury

untitled | Richard Conde

“Mucche cavalli aironi ecc….” | luporosso

Jamie with goats | Bodiver

Rattlesnake eye | iPhotograph

White Cat | Vishuddha

“I can has sunlight?” | Danimator

Pinguins’ scene | aGinger

“You lookin at me?” | Piotr M

Taureau tout seul | berend

Filly in black and white | Dirk Delbaere

Mei Lan & Lun | Cassie

Humpback Whales, Tahiti | National Geographic

“Don’t look at me , I’m not ready” | yves.lecoq

Untitled | vidyo

Lovers | habaneros

E-Commerce Design Resources: The Ultimate Round-Up

2010-03-17T09:13:07Z

E-commerce design requires much of the same design knowledge and skill as any other type of web design. The pages are built from many of the same elements – headers, footers, columns, graphics, and text, among other things. But there are additional elements that need to be considered, from both a design and usability standpoint. Site architecture is often more complicated, with products sometimes falling into multiple categories. Product pages need to be laid out in a way that makes it easy for customers to see exactly what it is they’re getting. And the checkout process needs to be as simple and streamlined as possible while still capturing necessary information and encouraging repeat business. Overall, e-commerce design takes a bit more planning and care than simpler website forms.

A good e-commerce design will guide customers through finding the product they’re looking for through the end of their purchase. It will make them comfortable making an online purchase in general, and specifically from your site. And it will do so in a way that’s as user-friendly as possible. Design can play a huge part in this process, as a good design will guide them through the process seamlessly.

Below is a roundup of more than 100 e-commerce site resources. There are sources to inspire you, a collection of excellent shopping carts and e-commerce platforms, a ton of stock icons you can use in your designs, and a few tutorials to help you out. We’ve even included some ready-made e-commerce templates that you can customize and that can be used with or without a CMS.

1. Inspiration

The first place to start with any new website design is with inspiration. Below are some great roundups and collections of inspiring e-commerce designs to get you thinking.

General Inspiration

20 of the Best e-commerce Websites – A roundup of excellent e-commerce site designs from Tutorial Blog.

Cart Craze – A gallery that showcases only e-commerce site designs.

23 Excellent Examples of How to Design Online Stores – A great roundup of fantastic e-commerce sites from InspectElement.

20 Well Designed E-Commerce Websites – A showcase of site designs from Dzine Blog.

50 Inspirational e-commerce Website Designs – An awesome showcase from Vandelay Design Blog.

35 Excellent e-commerce User Interface Designs – Another great e-commerce design showcase from Vandelay Design Blog.

Call to Action Buttons

107 Add to Cart Buttons of the Top Online Retailers – A roundup of add to cart buttons from some top online stores, as well as some analysis.

80 Examples of Add to Cart Buttons for Design Inspiration – This is a phenomenal collection of add to cart buttons assembled by Six Revisions.

20 e-commerce Add To Cart Buttons For Your Inspiration – Another excellent roundup of real-world examples.

“Add to Cart” Button Showcase – A post from Vandelay Design Blog that showcases a variety of add to cart buttons.

2. Shopping Carts and e-commerce Platforms

Unless your e-commerce site has very, very unique needs, you’ll save yourself a lot of time by using a ready-made shopping cart or e-commerce platform. Below are some of the best, many of which are free, and some of which will work alongside other CMSs.

Stand-Alone Carts

PrestaShop – A free, open-source, scalable shopping cart with an intuitive interface.

OpenCart – A free, PHP-based, open-source shopping cart that includes support for product reviews, automatic image resizing, and downloadable products.

Magento – An e-commerce platform that includes both free community versions and paid enterprise versions.

CubeCart – A shopping cart with two versions available, one of which is free.

Zen Cart – A free open-source shopping cart with free add-ons available.

osCommerce – A free and open source shopping cart that powers more than 225,000 online stores around the world.

Digistore – A free, open source shopping cart built on osCommerce.

StoreSprite – A free and powerful PHP/MySQL shopping cart that’s easy to use.

BossCart – A PHP-based shopping cart with free and premium versions available.

FatFreeCart – A copy-and-paste shopping cart solution that works with PayPal or Google Checkout and doesn’t require you to sign up for an account or install anything.

Plugins

WordPress e-Commerce – A free, open source plugin for WP with free and paid add-ons.

Shopp – An incredibly easy to use, premium shopping cart for WP.

Ubercart – A shopping cart plugin for Drupal 5 or 6.

Drupal e-Commerce – An e-commerce plugin for Drupal that works with PayPal, Authorize.net, and other payment systems.

VirtueMart – A free shopping cart plugin for Joomla.

Seber Cart – A small, easy to use shopping cart plugin for Joomla.

Joomla jQuery Cart – jCart is an easy-to-install and customize, free Ajax shopping cart.

3. Stock Icons and Design Elements

There’s no sense in reinventing the wheel. Rather than creating all of your icons from scratch, why not see if there are some stock icons out there that suit your needs? Below are dozens of great options, as well as some general design elements (like pricing tables) you can use on your site.

Stock e-commerce Themes

35 Free High-Quality E-Commerce Templates – A great roundup of premade e-commerce themes, most of which can be adapted to meet your own needs, from Smashing Magazine.

25 Magento Templates for Your E-Commerce Business – Another great collection from Smashing Magazine of Magento templates.

20+ Best e-commerce (WordPress Themes, Templates, Icons, Flash Sites) Collection – An excellent collection of templates and other design elements.

The Clothes Shop Theme – A plugin-free WordPress online clothing store theme.

The Furniture Store Theme – A plugin-free furniture store WordPress theme.

enVirashop – A plugin-free, flexible e-commerce theme for WordPress.

wpShop Reloaded – A flexible WordPress e-commerce theme with two child themes.

RGBSTore e-commerce – An e-commerce-ready HTML template that can work with Magento, osCommerce, Zen Cart and others.

Boutique – An elegant e-commerce HTML template.

Sancart – A simple OpenCart e-commerce template.

OScomm E-Commerce Template – An e-commerce HTML template.

ClassyShop – An e-commerce template built on the 960 grid system.

Store Theme – A theme from Templatic that turns your standard WP installation into an online store.

Crafty Cart Theme – A great, free WP theme that turns your WP site into an online store.

SimpleCart(js) – Another free WP theme to turn your site into an online store.

Market Theme – Market is yet another theme that lets you turn a standard WP installation into an online store.

ShopperPress – A WP theme that turns your WP install into an e-commerce site that works with Google Checkout, PayPal, Authorize.net, and a number of other payment gateways.

Design Elements

e-commerce Web Elements, Dark Grey & Green – A set of design elements in dark gray and lime green for your e-commerce site.

Web 2.0 Button (e-commerce #2) – A collection of e-commerce call to action buttons.

e-commerce Web Elements – A set of editable design elements with customizable color schemes.

Web Pack (Price Table, Banner, Buttons…) – A set of black and gray buttons and other design elements.

Price Table – Customizable price table elements.

Colorful Pricing Table – A very colorful, fully customizable price table element.

Pricing Tables – 5 Pack – A collection of pricing tables that includes 3D, horizontal, and vertical versions.

Pricing Tables – A pricing table element that includes a features list.

Super Bright Pricing Tables – A collection of pricing tables in four colors that can be mixed and matched.

General Icons

Vector Free Shipping Bag Set – A set of free shipping shopping bag vector icons.

Free Shipping Tag Icon – A vector hang tag with a “free shipping” message.

13 E-Commerce Icons – A great collection that includes sale, credit card and shopping cart icons.

Universal Icons – Set 16 (Shopping) – A set of premium icons from iStockPhoto.

Sale and Shopping Icons – Alto Series – Another set of premium icons from iStockPhoto.

Shopping & Consumerism Icons – White or Black Series – A set of simple premium icons from iStockPhoto.

Set of 77 Web Icons – A huge set of blue icons that includes a shopping cart and various other icons useful for an e-commerce site.

BlueSakura – A set of 45 icons, including various shopping cart icons.

Icon Set n9 – Commerce – A set of e-commerce icons that includes a shoping cart, basket, sign, gift, and more.

Icon Set n8 – Commerce – Another set of glossy e-commerce icons, including a credit card, shopping cart, and hang tag.

Stylish Cardboard Tag Icons – A set of customizable hang tag icons.

Beautiful e-commerce Icons – A free icon set from Nettuts+ that includes shopping cart, bag, cash register, and other icons.

Hola Icons – Shopping – A set of glossy, informal icons.

Simple Icons on Black Background – Set 4 – A set of simple grayscale icons including a shopping cart and basket.

Shopping Icons Set – A set of bright e-commerce icons that includes a sale tag, credit cards, and shopping basket.

Shopping Icons Fresh Collection – Set 10 – A set of cartoonish e-commerce icons.

Smooth Icon Set – A set of glossy icons that includes shopping carts and credit cards.

Shopping Icons Retro Revival Collection – Set 9 – A set of retro, illustrated e-commerce icons.

Green Icons Retro Revival Collection – Set 5 – A set of green-themed icons that includes a shopping basket among others.

Shopping Icon Set (Isometric) – A mostly yellow and green set of icons.

E-Commerce Icon Set – A set of green-toned icons, including a shopping cart, shopping basket, and credit card icon.

Themes Ultimate Icon Set – A collection of icons that includes a shopping cart and other e-commerce icons.

200 Mini Icons – A huge collection of mini icons that includes shopping cart icons.

Web Icon Set – A set of blue e-commerce and other icons.

Glossy Internet Icons – Set 4 – A collection of square, glossy icons that includes shopping carts, credit cards, shopping baskets, and various other useful e-commerce icons.

Colorful Stickers Part 3 Icon Set – A sticker-style icon set that includes a number of shopping cart icons.

Flames Web Icons – A collection of 50 flaming circle icons, including a shopping cart, dollar sign, and others.

Glossy Icon Set – A set of fuschia e-commerce icons.

Futuristica Icons – A set of icons styled like robots that includes a shopping cart icon.

Shopping Icons – Smooth Series – A set of very polished-looking e-commerce icons.

Free Shipping Icon – A vector cardboard box free shipping icon.

Web Assortment – A collection of colorful icons that includes a hang tag and shopping basket.

Halloween Shop Icons – A set of Halloween-themed icons that includes a shopping cart, basket, and gifts.

Free Shipping Icon – Another cardboard box free shipping icon.

Credit Card and Payment Method Icons

Credit Card Icon – A generic credit card icon, available as a 256×256 pixel PNG.

Chalkwork Payments (Free) – A free and royalty-free set of icons from Mezzoblue that includes credit cards and other payment methods.

Free Icons – e-commerce – Three credit card icons: Visa, MasterCard, and American Express.

Credit Card Icons Set – A set of free credit card icons available up to 72 pixels square.

Credit Cards – A generic credit card icon.

Country Flag Icons

Country Flag Icons – A set of 36 glossy, country flag icons.

243 Country Flag Icons – A huge set of country flag icons with a slight gloss effect.

World Flag Icons Pack – A set of round country flag icons with a total of 288 icons included.

XP Flags Icon – A set of wavy flag icons that includes the flags of the UK, US, Scotland, England and Spain.

Flag Icons – A set of 247 flag icons in GIF and PNG formats.

World Flag Orbs – A set of orb-shaped icons of world flags.

Flags – A collection of round country flag icons.

110 Famous City Flag Icons – While not as widely useful as country flags, these city flags might also come in handy on some e-commerce sites.

50 Flag Icons – A set of square flag icons with rounded corners.

Rounded Flag Icons – A set of glossy, round icons available in 3 sizes: 124×124, 48×48 and 24×24.

Shopping Cart, Bag and Basket Icons

Shopping Basket Icon – A free icon of a shopping basket, available up to 256×256 pixels.

Shopping Paper Bags Icons – A set of paper shopping bag icons in a variety of colors.

Free Icon Set – This set from Luka Pensa includes four different shopping cart icons (as well as some others you may find useful).

Shopping Basket Icons 3D – A 3-dimensional shopping basket icon set designed by OoflyingmoonoO.

Bubble Icon Series – Shopping Baskets and Carts – A set of premium shopping cart and basket icons from iStockPhoto.

Shop Cart Icons – A set of four shopping cart icons, including add to cart and remove from cart icons.

Shopping Cart Icon – A slightly different shopping cart design from Bartelme Design.

E-Shop Icon – Another interesting shopping cart icon design.

Shopping Cart – A shopping cart icon with a twist.

Shopping Cart – A small, simple shopping cart icon/button.

3D Shopping Cart – Another 3D shopping cart icon.

4. Tutorials

If you need a bit of extra help with the design and setup of your e-commerce site, the articles and tutorials below are a good place to start. Check out general design tutorials, too, as many elements of e-commerce sites are shared with other types of sites.

General Tutorials

Design an e-commerce Website in Photoshop – A great design tutorial from DesignM.ag.

How to Build an Online Store with WordPress – A simple tutorial for building an e-commerce site with WordPress.

How To Create an e-commerce Websit with WordPress in Under 5 Minutes – A video tutorial from WordPress.tv.

Call to Action Buttons

Add-to-Cart Buttons: Bigger is Better – An analysis of how size impacts the effectiveness of add-to-cart buttons.

How to Design Buttons to Help Improve Usability – While not strictly limited to add to cart buttons, this post offers great insight on creating better buttons.

Add to Cart Button Tutorial – The Best Converting Button to Use – A simple tutorial from Internet Marketers Arsenal for creating a high-performing add to cart button.

Scalable CSS Buttons Using PNG and Background Colors – A tutorial for creating CSS buttons from David’s Kitchen.

Add to Cart Photoshop Tutorial – A tutorial for creating a rounded add to cart button from PSD Master.

Web 2.0 Button – A tutorial for creating a Web 2.0-style call to action button.

Further Resources

Open Source E-Commerce Shopping Carts – Best Of – Hongkiat.com
15 Free Shopping Cart Icons – [Re]Encoded.com
30 High-Quality Icons Sets for E-Commerce Designs – Six Revisions
Shopping Cart Icons – Hidden Pixel
Ultimate e-commerce Starter Kits for WordPress Users – WebDesignBooth

Is there any thing we’ve missed out? Drop us a comment

Freebie Release: Social Network Icon Set

2010-03-17T09:26:30Z

Today we are releasing yet another high quality icon set. Here is a set of 10 social network icons specially created for hongkiat readers from our friend at Iconshock.

These Iconshock icon set comes in 6 different sizes: 12×12, 16×16, 24×24, 128×128, 256×256 and 512×512 covering social various social network logos like Blogger, Delicious, Facebook, Flickr, Linked-in, Reddit, RSS feed, Stumble Upon, Technorati and Twitter. All icons are free and you can download and use them in either personal or commercial project. If you like what you are downloading, consider linking back to this article :)

Download Social Network Icons Set.

More Icons

Here are more icons we’ve previousled released:

25 Beautiful Examples of Action Sequence Photography

2010-02-20T07:10:16Z

Sequence photography is a technique of shooting a series of images in where the subject is captured in successive motion. Sequence photography is a wonderful way of conveying motion in a static image. A merged photo sequence can radically show a different perspective much more than what can be captured in a single image.

When you’re creating a sequence photo make sure you get all the action you need. This can be done by choosing shooting a moving. Make sure you have a camera that able to do high shutter speeds. A DSRL that can shoot 3-5fps can get you great results. Then set the camera up on a sturdy tripod so displacement between frames. Then determine the exposure and multiply by the quantity of frames you are going to shoot. Another way would be to quickly shoot a series of separate frames and merged them all together later with the help of photoshop. Below are some truly amazing examples of sequence photography. We hope you enjoy them.

More on photography:

Full list after jump.

Ray Demski

Sequence backmobe | loic2co

Xfighters Madrid | Ray Demski

Björn Dunkerbeck | Ray Demski

Strobed Sequence | JK Photography Studio

Greggins Jumping green water | ivotedforkodos

Snowboard Sequence Photography | Marcio Abe

Mike Metzger | Jake Ashcraft

Experiment | k4rp

Phil on ‘Stab in the Dark’ | Enlightened Fellow

Pastrana’s Red Bull No Limits Jump Practice | BNQT

Jordan | mr.ainsworth

Hollywood | Sandy’s dad

Waterjump | Edmunds Brencis

Jeff Jensen | Entity Boardshop

Stonegate Quarterpipe | nickteezy408

Sequence Summer Jump | Dragan Zlatonovic

Snowboarding shots | Jaime Vedres

Coming at ya | Cropley Imagery

Catherine Ryan

All FMX Sequence | Jason Halayko

Falls Clones | Timhaiti

Humpback Whale in Sequence | Seawayblog

Ski Sequence Action | Lev Akhsanov

Aiden Raley | Ty Fitzgerald

100+ Maya 3D Tutorials For Beginners, Intermediate and Advanced Users

2010-03-17T08:41:11Z

When it comes to high-end 3d computer graphics and 3d modeling software package, Autodesk Maya is always one of application to be considered. Maya plays an important role in the 3d visualization and animation industry and they are top choices for many designers on large or small-scale production.

If you are looking to picking up Maya to design your 3d models, this article is for you. We’ve collected more than 100 useful Maya 3D tutorials, ranging from beginner level to intermediate and advanced users. Full list after jump.

For Beginners

Flying Butterfly Animation – Tutorial for Beginners
This tutorial will teach you to make a simple butterfly and animate it.

Animate a Logo Forming from Particles in Maya
In this tutorial Abed Ibrahim will walk you through the process of creating an animated logo using particles in Maya, and then reverse the rendered animation in any video editing software of your choice.

Create a coin 3D model
This tutorial will show you how to create very realistic coin using only maya 3d.

Flying Arrows
This tutorial will teach you how to create flying arrows.

Creating Text In Maya
This tutorial covers how to create text in Maya.

Make A Screw-Driver
This is a basic modelling tutorial that will teach you how to make a screw-driver and render it.

Basics Of Maya Key Frame Animation
This tutorial will teach you the fundamentals of the way Maya animates.

3D Street Lamp Modeling
This tutorial will teach you how to modeling 3d street lamp.

Melting Text
This tutorial will teach you explore some of the tools and options of fluid to create melting text effect like smoke.

Spiral Modeling
Learn how to model a spiral.

5 Tricks On Using Cameras In Maya
This tutorial covers 5 cool tricks you can do using cameras in Maya.

Create 3D Heart Model
Learn how to create a heart from poly cube.

Create Awesome Cloth Simulations using nDynamics in Maya
In this tutorial you will learn how to use nDynamics’ passive colliders and ncloth objects, in conjunction with fields like air and gravity, to easily simulate realistic dynamic objects such as a windy flag or a water container.

Boolean Modeling in Maya
This tutorial covers in depth, basic boolean operations, anatomy of a boolean, where to use booleans, and common boolean errors.

Basic Technique of Creating An Animation
In this tutorial you’ll learn the very basic technique of creating an animation in Maya.

Animated Arrows
This tutorial will teach you how to create animated arrows.

How Shaders Work In Maya
This tutorial teaches you how materials work, and how to create materials in Maya.

Grab and Move an Object
In this tutorial I will explain how to grab and move an object.

Finding Distances In Maya
This tutorial teaches you how to find distances in Maya.

Duplicate Special
Duplicate Special lets you duplicate objects, change the transformation attributes of the duplicated object(s), and duplicate mulitple objects at a time.

Creating Natural Light
This tutorial will teach you how to make a light rig that will generate a nice, clean, soft overall light that’s tinted green.

Creating Lightning In Maya
This tutorial covers how to create lightning effects in Maya.

Create Simple Wave
Create simple wave using Sine Deformer for flag wave if you not using soft body or for fish tail.

How to Rendering Shadow Only
This tutorial will teach you how to rendering shadow only. This is simple and fast.

Importing Audio Into Maya
This tutorial covers how to import audio into Maya.

Making Blendshapes
This is the first part of a multi-part tutorial on blend shapes.

Modelling Hammer
In this tutorial we will be modeling a hammer with help of poly and subdiv.

Model and Texture a Photo-realistic USB Cable with Maya and Mental Ray
In this tutorial you will go through the process of modeling and rendering a Photo-realistic USB cable in Autodesk Maya.

Modeling a Face
This tutorial will teach you how to model a basic face that can be used for cartoon or realistic.

Modeling A Knife
This tutorial will teach you how to model a knife quickly, using Maya.

Modeling Saw
n this Maya tutorial we will learn how to modeling saw.

Parent/Child in Maya
Learn how parent and child function works in Maya.

Pivot Points
This tutorial covers how to edit pivot points in Maya.

Creating Gears
This tutorial will teach you how to create gears.

Getting started with Mental Ray’s Final Gather
This tutorial was designed to teach anyone who is interested in rendering with Mental Ray’s Final Gather.

Two Tips For Move And Rotate Tools
This covers some tool settings that I found useful to help the modeling process.

Understanding Lights in Maya
This tutorial will explore Maya’s default light options for every and each light in the list

Using Revolve
This tutorial will teach you how to use revolve tool in Maya.

Using The Extrude Tool
This tutorial will cover in depth the extrude tool and all of its functions.

Modelling LCD Monitor
This tutorial will use allot extrude, scale, move, and split polygon object to create a LCD Monitor.

Building a Polygon Arch
This tutorial will show the method I used for making my arches in a building.

Wireframe Rendering
In this Maya tutorial we will learn how to create wire-frame rendering.

How to Create a Wine Glass
Create a wineglass using the curve tool.

For Intermediate Users

Modeling a Coca-Cola Bottle
This tutorial is intended to show you how to make a Coca-Cola bottle using Maya.

How do Create A Flash Photography Effect
This tutorial will teach you how to create a flash photography effect in Maya.

Modeling A Head Using Nurbs
Modeling a head using Nurbs-Polygon technique by Sasan Rafiee.

3D Modeling Keroro Gunso
In this Maya tutorial we will learn how to modeling Keroro Gunso.

Realistic Ear Modeling
This tutorial is mainly aimed at those users with experience in polygon modeling.

Realistic Eye Modeling for 3D Characters
A tutorial on how to model and apply shaders to get realistic eyes, the “windows of your character’s soul”.

Build a Reusable Light Rig in Maya
In this tutorial you will learn how to setup a basic lighting rig in Maya.

Caustics
Tthis tutorial will teach you how to make a picture of a glass using caustics.

Modelling in Alias – Ceiling light
Learn how to create ceiling light in Maya.

Modeling Kempston Pro Joystick
In this tutorial you will learn how to model kempston pro joystick using polygons and NURBS.

Animate a Dancing Ice Cream Bar in Cinema 4D and After Effects
In this 125 step monstrosity of a tutorial you will learn everything you need to know to make a dancing ice cream bar animation in Cinema 4D, and then composite it in After Effects.

Adding A Vase on Your Table
Table is a multiple functioned object, but without a nice flower vase looks incomplete. Follow the tutorial and see how it’s made in Maya.

Create Fire in Maya
In this tutorial we will learn how to create fire effect from scratch using Maya particle system which will help you achieving your desired look.

Create a New York Subway Entrance in Maya
Learn how to model the low-poly mesh from reference, and then move on to creating the high-poly source for the purpose of baking normal maps.

Tutorial on How to Make Car Rims
This tutorial will guide you on how to create a realistic looking chrome car rims.

Creating A Holiday Ball
This tutorial will teach you how to create a holiday ball from polygonal primitives.

Creating a Lava Lamp in Maya
This tutorial presents a step by step project for the modeling, shading, lighting and rendering of a realistic lava lamp.

Create A Photo-realistic Nut

Maya’s Paint Geometry Tool
This tutorial covers the basics of Maya’s Paint Geometry Tool.

How to Create a Realistic Looking Dirt Layer using Maya Transfer Maps
In this tutorial you will learn a simple technique of adding dust and dirt to your 3d objects, without overdoing it, to finally give them a more lifelike and realistic feel.

How to Create an Awesome Fire Effect Using Maya Fluids
In this tutorial you will learn how to create a fire animation inside Maya, and adjust the settings for your own projects.

Modelling A Poly Table Fan
This video tutorial shows step by step various quick modeling techniques including curve extrude, surfaces, poly tube, Smooth, bevel, curve revolve, extrude, and more, to create a polygonal fan table.

Creating Dynamic Mud Effect Using Soft Body
This tutorial covers how to make effect that one dynamic sphere make trail on surface while moving over it’s surface, similar like some ball moving over mud.

Making Eyelid Rig with Driven Keys and Expressions
Goal for this tutorial is to make few blend shapes for 4 position of eye and drive that blend shapes automatically as eye ball rotating.

Model a Spitfire War Plane
This tutorial shows you how to model a spit fire war plane.

Modeling A Toy Dragonfly
This tutorial covers how to model, texture, and render a toy dragonfly.

Modeling Hand
This tutorial covers how to model a human hand.

Modeling Human
Learn how to model a human.

Modeling Human: Naruto Chibi
This Maya Tutorial will explain about modeling human especially in the form of anime.

Texturing Resolution Tips

Create Cool Looking Cartoon Dog
This tutorial shows you how to create this cool looking cartoon dog – Starting with the image planes and moving onto the modeling which covers nurbs, polygons and sub divs.

Spotlight Fog
Learn how to add fog to a spotlight.

Page Turn Animation
This Tutorial would teach you, how to turn a page in Maya, using Maya’s skeleton setup.

Gaseous Effects

Ford Focus Tutorial Series
Learn how to model a ford focus WRX.

Model Airplane in Maya
In this video tutorial show how to model an airline airpalne step by step as in Maya.

Video Tutorial Portal Light in Maya
Video tutorial on how to create portal light in Maya.

Using Projection Mapping in Maya
This tutorial explains how to use simple tri planar (box) projection and planar projection to shade two walls, one with decal, all done in only one material.

Making A Battleship in Maya
This tutorial will explain how to make ship in Maya using Nurbs curves, surfaces and poly geometry.

Creating a Low Poly Dragon
This tutorial will explain how to use Maya polygons to create dragon.

Creating CG nature
This tutorial is going to show you how to make terrain, trees and grass using Maya.

Chain Gun in Maya tutorial
This tutorial will show you how to model a chain gun and control rig for firing and aiming using basic MEL scripts.

Candle Flame
Learn how to build a candle flame in Maya.

The Egg and The Fog
In this exercise you are going to learn how to crack an egg and have light beams coming out of the cracks.

For Advanced Users

Non Photo Realistic Shading in Maya
This tutorial describes how to achieve a Non photo realistic shading effect in Maya

“Blind Warrior” by Ryan Lim
This tutorial will briefly describe how Ryan Lim created his blind warrior from a painting

Modeling a foot in Maya
This tutorial will teach you how to model a realistic looking foot in Maya.

Low Poly Game Character Hair
This tutorial will go with a more interesting hairstyle.

How to Create A Simple Crowd

Making of Skull head Mobster

Sub Scattering of Particles
‘ZBrush , Blender & Maya Training: Sub Scattering of Particles – Video Tutorials’
by Jason Welsh

Dr Julian’s Texturing Tutorial
By Julian Jeremy Johnson-Mortimer.

Growing Flowers
This tutorial will show you how to create growing flowers from surface; the flowers will gradually randomly grow up and will retain their original status when they reach to growing limit.

How to Build – A Next-Gen Game Car
This tutorial is intended to present a method of creating a next gen vehicle asset.

Making of Sohrab
By Farzad Dalvand, Iran.

Making of the Standing Beauty
This tutorial will explain the steps taken to create the standing beauty.

Modeling Morgane
By Cousigne Adrien

Revolution
By Zhang Yang, China.

Secrets of Swimsuit Babe
Making an attractive woman is always a goal for most CG enthusiasts.

Create a Cool Looking Molecule Effect
This tutorial will focus on creating a cool molecule type object with Maya and finish the project off in After Effects.

Create a Realistic Tree in Maya
This tutorial will help you to make a realistic tree.

Create a Spectacular Crash Animation With Maya Dynamics
In this tutorial we will learn how to use Maya’s powerful animation, dynamics, and camera tools to create an explosive crash effect between two vehicles.

Creating an Old Farm
By Daniel VIJOI.

Creating Logo Effect from Matrix
Learn how to reproduce some of the logo effect of the film “Matrix” using maya particles and expressions.

Domino Effect
This tutorial will discuss on several issues, how to setup the geometry and how to apply passive to active key switch among them.

Facial Animation Rig for Delgo
By Warren Grubb.

Making of Varga In MAYA
This tutorial will summarize the workflow used for one of author’s characters with lots of images and some print-screens.

Making of “The Tunnel” in Maya
n this tutorial you will learn how to create a fantastic tunnel scene in Maya, and then add some final lighting touches in Photoshop.

Making of the Rider
By Christopher Adajar, France.

Making of the Prince
by Robert Vari, Hungary

Making of the Joker
By Mohammadtaghi Aibaghi Esfehani, Iran.

Making of the Alien Nature
By Pascal Raimbault, New Zealand.

Making of Portrait of a Troll
By Jonas Persson, Sweden.

Making of Kid
By Rakesh Sandhu.

Making of Gladiator
By Christopher Adajar, Paris.

Making of Cheese Platter
This tutorial will explain how the author did this Cheese Platter the best that I can.

Creating A Spaceship Fleet Using Particle Instance
This tutorial is going to show you how to use particle instancer to create fleet of spaceships flying across the planes.

The Making of Mafia Wars 3D
This tutorial is going to explain how author made this “Mafia wars” picture.

The Fisheye Camera

Surface Emitted Particles on SoftBody Tenticles
The following concept tutorial will be covering Surface Emitted Particles on SoftBody tenticles to create a spiraling array particle system for futuristic gun blasts or whatever.

Street Cop Workflow
By Mashru Mishu

Making of Tiger Zoo
By Massimo Right.

Lava Shader Effects in Maya
This tutorial will explain how to make a shader for lava effects using Maya’s material editor, called Hypershade.

Destroying a Wall Using Rigid Bodies and Particles in Maya
This tutorial will explain how to use rigid bodies, forces and particles to create shatter effect in Maya.

Organic Modeling and Animation

Creating A Flame Thrower
This tutorial will show you how can you create Flame Thrower

Creating High Res Polygonal Models
This tutorial will concentrate on how to use smoothed polygonal geometry to create high res models.

How to Create A Model of Nissan 350-Z
This is a step-by-step tutorial that explain how to create 350Z’s body using polygonal modeling in Maya environment.

UV mapping Techniques and Workflow
This tutorial is designed to show most of the UV mapping techniques and tricks that I use day in and day out.

Making of ‘Snapshot of a Zombie’
By Jelle Van de Weghe.

Winners for DepositPhotos Stock Photo Accounts

2010-03-17T09:28:06Z

Congratulation to the following ten winners who had previously participated in a contest held on 2nd of February. You’ll be getting a free stock photo account from DepositPhotos loaded with 50 credits.

Here are our winners :-)

thomasbdl
Diana Gomez
wenhong
Friedbeef
scottishsimon
Mr.Bintang
Silvio
yahoowong
Cat
Woutermesker

Once again thank you all for participating and congratulation to the winners.

Note: If you are maintaining your songs with iTunes, you may want to know we have a TidySongs giveaway contest that will be ending next Monday.

50 Freelance Job Sites For Designers & Programmers – Best Of

2010-03-17T08:40:31Z

By Dainis

Being a freelancer can be extremely advantageous and it is probably a dream for many designers and developers. Not only you get to choose the job you are really interested in, you also have total flexibility in terms of time, whom you want to work with and where you want to work at.

However, there is always a flip side of a coin. What happens when if you are out of jobs suddenly? This following article is dedicated to designers and developers who wanted to achieve financial freedom in freelancing. We showcase a list of 50 Best Freelance Job Sites and you might want to go through to see if you’ve missed some of them. If you a company or individual looking to outsourcing or hire, these following sites might come in handy too. Full list after jump.

Digitalpoint Forum

Aside from being a very useful forum for webmaster, Digitalpoint is also an extremely strategic place where you can outsource work and seek relevant freelance professionals.

Smashing Jobs

A great thing about posting your job at this site is that the jobs listed here are soon featured among one of the top 20 blogs of the world. This is again a nice job portal to find programming and designing jobs, besides all others.

Elance

A famous online portal for freelancers, this is an ultimate place to meet professionals with business, technical and marketing expertise to get work done at an affordable price.

Odesk

Since its inception in 2004, this online marketplace truly embarked a revolution in the way world works. It’s win-win approach for both service providers and employers with meaningful work as well as top-flight talent, makes it an asset for both parties. Average size of a job here is $5,000.

GetAFreelancer

Bag a project or post a project on this platform to get the best bids from gamut of skilled web designers, copywriters or freelance programmers. Provide work or get work at the best prices. Sign up today as a work provider or a work seeker. A word of caution – Stay alert before trusting anyone as there are a lot many fraudsters as well, on both sides.

Sitepoint Marketplace

Sitepoint is a well-known paid webmaster forum. Looking to hire category providers a marketplace where you can find freelancers or clients from different industries and different countries.

Simply Hired

This online job portal allows you to find all kinds of jobs, whether freelance or full-time, based on your location, skills and experience in the field.

RentACoder

Rent a coder is a website where a software developer can get plenty of jobs there and in return can earn plenty of money. This is perfectly a legit site and the fact that it is only a medium for giving work to interested hunters makes it tempting.

Metafilter Jobs

Search and share jobs with other members of the site and mark the distance of your job from you, based on the latitude/latitude entered in your profile.

Problogger Jobs

If you are also one of the blogging enthusiasts, who has or who wishes to explore the income potential of this fun-filled hobby of ‘blogging,’ problogger.net is your right choice. Collaborate with other bloggers, share experiences and take your blogs to great heights. The jobs section of this blog can land you with several blogging jobs that pays you well along with enjoying what you love to do.

Dice

Dice is a job search engine dedicated to only finding technology jobs. It offers a targeted niche space for finding exactly the technology position you might be looking for. Dice also offers advice on writing resumes and obtaining IT certification, as well as a variety of discussion forums.

Scriptlance

Get access to thousands of designers and programmers with immense in-depth knowledge about an array of programming languages, ranging from Joomla, C++ to SEO requirements.

Guru

Like other freelance websites, this is another of the sources to find the indutry’s most ultimate professionals from world over. However, safer way to pay through Escrow gives this site an edge over other freelance sites. From business, creative arts to technology, select your favorite category and get started.

99designs

If you like to draw and your drawings are good and you want to earn from it, you can try your hand at 99Designs. 99Designs, basically is a site where various companies fulfill their need of designing their logos, banners, websites etc. They just give you the information about the background of their company, its ideas and goals. The designers use these facts and design logos or whatever is required by the company. If the contest holding company likes the job, it awards the designer with the pre specified prize money.

Behance Job

Find productivity and creativity go hand in hand at the job list section of this site that claims to ‘make ideas happen.’ This exclusive site is known to convert creativity into lucrative services or products to promote unique ideas.

Mistersoft Freelancing

Your needs may encompass a flash designer, a copywriter, a SEO manager, a coder, a data entry expert or any other professional, find the best of the lot at this amazing site for freelancers.

37signals Jobs

37signals job board provides a wide array of content from many geographies. If you’re looking to hire programmers and designers from around the U.S., 37signals looks like a site worth dipping your feet into.

Bixee

This hybrid job portal also form a part of Ibibo, which is a famous Indian social networking platform. Hence, you can find suitable jobs and research innovative content at the same time.

Jobs on Webdesignerwall

Design Jobs on the Wall — a job board managed by Web Designer Wall, where creative professionals come to find job opportunities. When you post your job here, it will be instantly featured on Web Designer Wall and others network sites where designers will see it. Due to website strong following, Web Designer Wall appears on loads of online portals and design publications.

Coroflot

Coroflot is an employment site for creative professionals – design firms post job openings and designers post portfolios – Coroflot makes the connection. Career and hiring advice, portfolio tips, how to find a design job and design salary surveys make Coroflot a valuable resource for the design community.

Freelanceswitch Jobs

Catering to the demands of all freelance professionals, this site is not just another place to find projects or seek the best of the manpower. Instead, it also serves as an information bank for freelancers and clients, providing them tips for easy and beneficial dealing as well as a healthy and interactive work environment.

Designm.ag

Array of designers and developers can now find full-time or freelance jobs all over the world in just a few clicks. Thank to Designm, talented professionals of the industry are now paid for what they are worth of and no longer have to toil to bag a handful of small and not-so-lucrative projects.

Lime Exchange

Making the ends meet between freelance talent and small or big scale businesses all over the world, Limeexchange allows professionals to not only find lucrative opportunities or get work done but also interact with one another at QnA platform and share recommendations and tips globally, about their respective industries.

GetACoder

The growth of a business is decided by the resources that it is able to explore and access, to get the competitive advantage. Save costs and enhance efficiencies by outsourcing your programming, writing and web designing jobs to the right people at this famous online freelance portal.

Crowd Spring

What makes Crowdspring different is that it doesn’t feel like a marketplace. You’re not trying to outbid each other with a better price. You’re not competing against others who have a better portfolio. How you approach a project, and how creative you really are is what can get you that project. You still get to compete with others, but it’s a healthy kind of competition. You put up your design to win the project, and not your price.

iFreelance

Your need may be of an experienced professional or an affordable novice, this is the place to find the top-notch photographers, web designers, proofreaders, data entry, bookkeeping and other such skilled freelancers. Freelancers are also free to choose projects that cater to their interest. What more? You need not bother to pay commissions to any mediator.

People per hour

Based on the simple bidding system, hire efficient freelancers here and enjoy the on-demand flexibility while saving money at the same time. Marketing, legal, accounting, writing, programming are some of the most common industry types covered by this site.

Krop

Krop is a Job Board and career resource website for creative professionals. Whether you’re looking for job, or hunting top-notch talent, Krop’s simple and powerful tools are geared towards connecting the worlds brightest minds with the best companies.

Sologig

Bridging the gap between experienced employees and qualified employers, this site is known to have the best talent in varied industries. You can seek both part-time and full-time contracts as well as consulting opportunities that nurture your talent further while filling your pockets.

Joomlancers

All Joomla professionals an now jump with joy as here is the site that caters to different work aspects of Joomla. Come and find work that adds more to your credibility as a Joomla professional and also reward you with a great sum.

Journalism Jobs

This is your best pick if your industry type is journalism and you wish to associate with a magazine, news group, radio, TV or any other type of media. Besides, you may also stay updated with the latest happenings of the industry with the news feeds and articles that are uploaded on the site.

Authentic Jobs

Creative and web professionals can seek reputed full-time and freelance opportunities here and get associated with well-known names of the industry like Sony BMG, HBO, HP, Facebook and many more.

EU Freelance

Eufreelance will help you find new customers around the globe. Submit a project and get the best possible price from skilled developers in India, Ukraine, Russia, Romania and other countries. Eufreelance is targetting the biggest market in the world with buyers from Europe and sellers from the whole world.

GoFreelance

Now it’s easy to market your freelance services and find all the business you need to succeed. Gofreelance have thousands of jobs in database, with fresh contracts and projects being added daily. So kickstart your work-at-home career by signing up for the free edition of The Freelance Job Report to get: Hot jobs and cool projects emailed to you daily and a free 10-day course: ‘The Secrets of Freelance Success’.

Freelance Designers

Industrial designer, advertising design, video production, architects, SEO, web designers and programmers are the primary categories at this job site for freelancers. Divided to precision into several sub categories, you can find your relevant category under the above listed major categories, to seek or provide suitable work.

LogoMyWay

Get an ideal logo designed for your company or website here. Let thousands of eminent professionals compete to get rewarded with your offered sum and in turn provide you gamut of logo choices to choose from. The minimum amount for which you can host a contest here is $200.

Project4hire

This freelance marketplace offers an array of opportunities to contractors and thereby require them to pay a small amount as a commission to tech site, on being awarded a project. Apart from this, it is easy to use and a great platform to post projects and find freelance professionals like coders, consultants, graphic designers, software developers.

Freelancer.co.uk

Empowered by Escrow, this is another reliable site for freelancers. Get started from the marketplace or open or participate in contests, this exclusive site also contains several unusual categories like sourcing & manufacturing, multimedia & media, child care and system administration along with the famous freelance categories such as writing, translation, photography and others.

AllFreelanceWork

This is a true freelancers den with relevant portfolio creation and job site, all available at one place. In short, you learn as you earn.

Pro-Freelance

Pro-Freelance is a platform where freelancers can find all freelance projects from most important sites and the projects owners can find best experts at the best price. you can also freely propose your services on our classified page.

FreelanceWebmarket

Thousands of freelance programmers web designers web developers and many other proffesionals from the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, India and many other countries, expose your ad to 1000s of professionals. You can outsource worldwide or require professional from your country on FreelanceWebmarket and cut your expenses just paying a small fee.

Wordpress Freelance

Wordpress is indeed the best blog hosting site. Come and get your wordpress blog designed and programmed by eminent professionals of the field.

FreelanceWriting

As the name suggests, this site is a hub for those earning a living by writing. From reading tips on different writing styles, participation in writing contests to finding the high end freelance writing projects and career options available to writers, you can find it all here. This is what we call freelancing with a difference.

Php-freelancers

Php-Freelancers is a “One stop ” full service site where a Service buyer can post a project for free and have one of Php-Freelancers highly skilled freelancer’s competitively bid on your projects. Php-Freelancers offers you the confidence that our freelancer’s can meet your project needs no matter how small or large the project is.

Webdirections Jobs

Another online job portal dedicated to web professionals, here you can find jobs at full-time, freelance, part-time or even contractual basis.

Jsninja Jobs

A great site to apply for jobs in US, UK, Canada and other such developed countries. You may also find freelance work here in the fields for developers, designers and writers.

Bidhire

With no freelancer or buyer costs, bidhire gains an upper hand as compared to several other websites like Scriptlance, Elance and many others that charge a sign up fee from buyers and freelancers to post projects or start bidding respectively.

DesignCrowd

DesignCrowd is a graphic design marketplace that gives creative people opportunities. Businesses can post Open Brief Design Contests or Request Quotes for logo design, business card design, advertising artwork and website design.

Feelance-Projects

Freelance-Projects can be a great resource to help you mine for the experts you need to complete your next project. You can do this by simply using their search engine to find posted projects that are similar to what you are wanting to do or those that require the same technologies or programming language expertise that are required for your project.

Programmer Meet Designer

This is quite a unique online job portal, made exclusively for programmers and designers. Here, professionals from the two industries can collaborate with one another and share ideas to create websites that outperform all others, in design and functionality.

FreelancingJob

Webmasters need to have several jobs put together to frame a compelling website. This includes copy-writing, website designing, coding, web developer and several others. Find them all at this emerging online platform.

FreshWebJobs

FreshWebJobs is an online listing of web jobs. It is a site with a simple purpose and simple web site. It is well-designed, letting you know upfront how many jobs exist in different categories. It is still very young website, but very perspective. Currently are available 24 jobs.

AllDevJobs

This site caters to all kinds of professionals who belong to the development and designing jobs in some way or the other. Again, both freelance and full-time jobs are up for grab.

About author: Dainis is blogger from Latvia. He is webmaster of Psdeluxe.com (Photoshop deluxe) – Design community where you find photoshop tutorials and useful resources for web and graphic designers. Follow Dainis on Twitter

40 Brilliant and Creative Examples of Toy Photography

2010-03-17T08:38:03Z

Looking back at our childhood, there were certain toys we favored more than another. Toy-like action figures known as top-sellers in its kind since 1965. These plastic figurines were hawked by serious toy collectors.

Credit: Danbo by Sean Eng

The collectors market was catapulted by action movies, TV shows, sports, cartoon and popular action figures represented or designed by celebrities. Toy photography has also made humongous headway since the early years, they are able to put emotions in the atmosphere for a photo shoot in a way never been practiced before. Here we have put together an awesome collection of toy photography taken in different angles to showcase the figurines at its best.

Animes

Mio

Asuka Langley Resin

Hide and Go Seek

Konata at the Office

In a land of mist…

Chris Mcveigh
A photographer, illustrator, founder of an Internet magazine and writer for Macworld, MacLife and macHOME.

Brian McCarty
Memphis-born toy photographer and director/producer with more than 15 years of experience in working with toys.

References

Giveaway: Music Organizing Application – TidySongs

2010-03-17T09:24:08Z

If you are using iTunes to organize your music, here’s something you may find interesting. Earlier last month I was introduced to this app called TidySongs by Jennifer of Cloudbrain.

TidySongs has a pretty self-descriptive name. It an application with one sole purpose - organizes your iTunes songs. Here’s what TidySongs do:

Remove duplicated songs
Fix miss-spelled song names
Fill up the missing data – artists, years and genres (Something perfectionist collectors will love), and
The function I like most – Add missing album-art so they look cool in your cover flow.

TidySongs is an Adobe Air application, so it will work well on either Windows, Mac or Linux.

The best part is, all these can be done automatically . I’ve been using it for about a month now and I thought it’s quite a cool application. So I went ahead and asked if they can give me some free copies so I can give it away to hongkiat readers, and they say – YES :)

How to Win

TidySongs cost $39 per copy and I’ve got 5 licensed copies to giveaway to our readers. If you are interested in winning one, comment in!

Contest starts today, ends 15th February 2010. Good luck!

(Hongkiat)

30+ Artist Interpretations of Mario and Luigi

2010-03-17T08:33:54Z

By Shane Ward. Shane Ward is a contributing editor of the art/lifestyles sites: Freshbump, Collect3d, and Format Magazine

He’s short and pudgy with a thing for Peaches. He’s an Italian plumber from the Mushroom Kingdom. He is Nintendo’s mascot, and probably the most popular video game character ever. You know him as Mario.

Mario has appeared in over 200 video games, mostly bearing his name, mostly as the iconic smiling plumber with blue overalls and a mustache. But his persona is open to interpretation.

These artists have re-interpreted Mario (and his famous sidekick Luigi) into different styles and moods, offering a fresh take on the character we’ve all come to love.

Anthony Jones
In what looks like oils, Anthony Jones paints one of our favorites, interpreting Mario and Luigi as refined old-style Italian men.

Bob Dob
Mario and Luigi may look like good guys in the video games, but don’t get it twisted. Eating magic mushrooms, head-butting/destroying government property, and a streak of flower-power pyromania have landed the brothers in prison according to Bob Dob.

Darq-V
Luigi looks a little, how do we say, ‘fancy’ in this depiction and Mario looks like he’s gone off the mushroom that landed him in Bob Dob’s jail. Either way, both of them are having a good time.

Dirk Eric Schulz
It’s just a game guys and gals. When the power shuts off, it’s all love and harmony in the Mushroom Kingdom. More.

FeignJoy
He’s just a defenseless Koopa. Pick on someone your own size.

Gabe Swarr
This is what Mario would look like if he was a cardboad box to be personally assembled.

Handre de Jager
We’re not sure what style this is inspired by, but if you can tell us in the comments section you warp to world 6-9.

Javier Burgos Arroyo
The look on their faces says it all. They’re not sure where they are, and we’re not sure what this piece is about, but it sure looks cool!

Jennifer Piazza
Like playing Mario in video games isn’t enough? Next time you’re going all-in at the poker table, we hope you lose your chips for having too much Mario in your life.

Joshy Artist
This looks like Joshy Artist wants to depict a powerful Luigi throwing a fireball, but it looks more like a wimpy Luigi tired of being a side-kick, throwing a temper tantrum.

Jublin
From an artistic stand-point, this is another one of our favorites. Stylstically, it’s extremely fresh and well-done.

Julian Burford
This design is screaming to become the next poster on your wall.

Justin Coffee
We’re not sure what Mario and Luigi have to be sad about, maybe they’re upset you haven’t been playing with them lately? Turn on your Nintendo.

Karrey
Perhaps the most disturbing interpretation in this set, Karrey envisions Mario as a ballerina, who for some reason is holding a cake.

Kazcorro
This is what Mario and Luigi would look like if they were British.

LuigiL

Malinko
Mario, scared? No. Never.

Matt Synowicz
Super Mario equation; grow bigger with a red mushroom or fireball ability with spectrum flower.

Mike P Mitchell
Ya’ll best not come around here agin. Ya hear?

Mike Stefanini
Simply genius, Mike Stefanini could have illustrated mustaches on their own or on just about anyone, but there is no better choice than Mario.

NationPoo
You can call me Disco M.

Pixeloo
This is probably the most unintentionally creepy image we’ve seen in a while.

Rex Hackelberg
Mario party games.

Ryan Wood
Someday we all have to get a real job.

Serioja Inc
Is it just me or do these guys have Gary Coleman syndrome?

University of Fraser Valley
UFV’s pushpin Mario gets virtual, and some very real, attention.

Yves Bourgelas
Perhaps the hardest level ever with all these rivals.

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