Speckyboy Design Magazine

Weekly Web Design and Development Inspiration – N.15

admin — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 09:49:56 +0000

This is week 15 of our wed design inspiration round-up, and it has been a good week. I am loving the clean 31Three redesign and the dark simplicity of Friendly Ducks site, this weeks flash designs, as always, are rich full of creativity and oddly enough, a lot of yellow.
Send us a recommendation for next weeks Weekly Web Design and Development Inspiration (for our review), by clicking here: Submit News.

Paperjam Design

Wes Bos

Puppetbrain

Kari Jobe

Friendly Duck

31Three

Sebastian Laube

Ryandc.co.uk

Loaf Creative

TWhite Design

Tripping Words

Liverpool Design Symposium

Mark Schlesinger

Wendys Real Time

Proximity GERMANY

Koodoz Design

Envira Media

You might like… previous Weekly Inspirations

40 Awesome and Fresh Wordpress Themes

admin — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 11:37:21 +0000

Think back to three years ago and to the standards of blogging platforms and to the power of the then themes. Wordpress and its community changed all that, the blogging platform has evolved into an industry standard power house CMS, yet it is still easy to use and build upon. That is why it is so popular.
Theme design has matched the WP CMSs evolution step for step, thanks to the many talented designers and developers, we showcase the best free, and the relatively fresh themes the Wordpress community has to offer.

Blog and Portfolio Themes

Photo and Video Blogging Themes

Work-a-holic

Demo

Source

Fullscreen

Demo

Source

PhotoView v.1.1

Demo

Source

Selecta

Demo

Source

The Vodpod

Demo

Source

Magazine Themes

Pure Magazine

Demo

Source

Berita Business

Demo

Source

Arras Theme

Demo

Source

Wall Magazine

Demo

Source

WPLine 1.0

Demo

Source

Unique Themes

AppCloud – Ecommerce Theme

Demo

Source

LiveTwit

Demo

Source

Visiting Card

Demo

Source

Designer TimVanDamme designed his mini site and everyone praised it a lot for unique, beautiful concept. Usually it happens when you are really active on social media sites, you blog less. And his design was perfect solution for those who have a domain name but don’t need/want much content on the website.

ComicPress – The WordPress Comic Publishing Theme

Demo

Source

ComicPress is a WordPress theme for presenting your comic and blog posts. It's clean neutral style is designed to be used right out of the box, but with a little CSS knowledge you can style it as custom as you can imagine.

The Seven Five

Demo

Source

The Seven Five is a semi-automatic “Lifestream” WordPress theme taking minimalism to an entirely new level. This theme is intended for those looking for a simple, efficient and clean solution for integrating all the services you have come to love such as Twitter, and Flickr.

Ice Breaker

Demo

Source

Ice Breaker is a free domain parking theme for WordPress with four different color schemes, and easy customization through custom widgets and a theme options page.

WP Blueprint

Demo

Source

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50 Examples of Effective Uses of Typography Within Web Design

admin — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 11:26:30 +0000

Currently, two of the most popular web design trends are: taking the minimal approach, which we will look at next week, and the use of clever and creative typography. Today we focus on typography.
Not only do we showcase typography in the classic sense, but also illustrate that the combination of web design and great typography can be used effectively, along with clever color selection, and create usable web sites thats base design is dominated by text, for either navigation, a good headline, a logo or even used for the entire content.
As the selection below illustrates there are no limitation to using typography within web design.
Below you will find 50 varied styles and examples of creative and effective typography within web design.

Hull Digital Live 09

Project 365

ESPIRA

Oliver Kavanagh

Denise Chandler

Brunet-García Advertising Inc

Random Thought Pattern

StackOverflow DevDays

New to York

The Skyline

gregorywood.co.uk

Gareth Dickey

Ryan Keiser

Love Freelancing

Bobulate

FIT Digital

A Way Back

Jack Bloom

The Personal Disquiet of Mark Boulton

Ribbons of Red

Inspire

Design Taxi

Great Works

daus.trala.la

Circus

Nick Sigler

MAD in Spain

One day without Google

Five Simple Steps

Second And Park

Brooklyn Fare

Snook.ca

The Beast Is Back

River City Church of Jacksonville

Inkcover Blog

Web Designer dan Blogger Cepu

Europe by Designers

Denise Chandler

m360

Jon Brousseau

Gritti Rollo

Present Joys

Mark Wallis

Paulo Zoom

For A Beautiful Web

DearIE6 – So Long

LOREM IPSUM

Independent Studio

Filmaster

Intersected Blog

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This Weeks Twitter Design News Roundup N.09

admin — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 12:05:38 +0000

The big news in this weeks Twitter design news round-up, was Smashing Magazines creation of the Smashing Network, well it was big for us. We also have a couple of great Photoshop tutorials, a few inspirational showcases, some useful tools and apps, overall there is a lot of good reading.
If you have any cool links that you would like to share, do not hesitate to send them to us here: Submit News.
You can follow us (if you like) via Twitter here: twitter.com/speckyboy.

WordPress Visual Cheat Sheet

This WP cheat sheet, from Woorkup, contains the full reference guide for WP Template Tags with detailed descriptions and sample codes.

Showcase Of Beautiful Textured Web Designs

Textures have become more popular and been put to greater use in recent years, they are one of the best ways to add depth to your design, whether it’s subtle noise on a clean vector illustration or a lot of grunginess throughout a layout. In this article there are numerous examples of beautiful textured Web designs to inspire you, and as a bonus, there is a small collection of links to help you get started with using textures in your own designs.

Basic House Icon – PS Tutorial

In this tutorial, you'll go through the simple steps and techniques to design a simple, yet attractive house icon. There are no intricate curves or complex brush work, just simple shapes along with layer styles. The aim of the tutorial is to help you get familiar with the correct use of colors and efficient use of layer styles.

Minimal and Modern Portfolio Layout – PS Tutorial

This is Part 1 of a tutorial series that will show you how to create a clean and modern-looking website using Photoshop. In Part 2 you will learn how to convert it into an HTML/CSS template.

Blog Headers: 20 Great Examples and Best Practices

In this article you will learn all about essential elements within a web designs header. You will also learn how to implement the tecniques, as well as view some excellent examples.

Simple Content Slider jQuery Plugin- Tutorial

Web Typography: Font Embedding Services

There are a lot of options out there for using other-than-websafe fonts in your website designs. Dynamic text replacement methods or resorting to very long fontstacks (where most of your visitors won’t see the font you wanted anyway) have long been the standard for using anything other than websafe fonts.
But the @font-face function changes all that. With most major, modern browsers now compatible with it, services are cropping up all over for providing the fonts you want to embed on your site without eating up your bandwidth and server space.

Simple Desktops

Simple Desktops is a collection of desktop wallpapers that are very basic and minimal.

CSS Techniques Web Developer Should Use

In this article the author highlights some of the best tricks and techniques for using CSS.

The Complete Guide to Google Wave

Google Wave is a new web-based collaboration tool that's notoriously difficult to understand. This guide will help. Here you'll learn how to use Google Wave to get things done with your group. Because Wave is such a new product that's evolving quickly, this guidebook is a work in progress that will update in concert with Wave as it grows and changes.

Smashing Magazine’s Redesign and Smashing Network

You have probably noticed that Smshing Magazine has has a redesign, not a major redesign, more of a reorganisation. It does look good and is a great improvement.
They also announced the Smashing Network, They have teamed up with 18 other magazines to house a productive and comprehensive meeting place for designers and developers, showcasing truly the best content around. Among those joining the network are Webdesigner Depot, Noupe, SixRevisions, UX Booth, Hongkiat, ThinkVitamin, Web Designer Wall, Designm.ag, Boagworld an, of course, we have!

99 High Definition Widescreen Wallpapers

Fireworks vs Photoshop Compression

Fireworks is the little brother of Photoshop, no doubt about it. It is no were near as powerful nor as popular. How good is it really? I can tell you this, according to this article, that Fireworks image compression is far greater than Photoshops! Now that is controversial.
In this detailed and informative article from Web Designer Wall, they have tested many images and outline how good Fireworks compression actually is.

The 16 Most Influential Web Design Blogs of 2009

This is a collection of the 16 most influential web design blogs on the internet in 2009.

Stylizer, A Highly Refined Visual CSS Editor, For Everyone From CSS Novice To CSS Ninja

[video]Stylizer lets you design CSS layouts in real-time right on a browser, without any loss in control. It's much faster and more intuitive than using an external editor like Notepad or Dreamweaver. Have a look at the video above for more details.
Choosing a CSS editor comes down to your preferences, Stylizer is a new editor that I am hightlighting for everyone to try.

How To: Hackintosh a Dell Mini 10v Into a Leopard Netbook

Who would have thought that it was possible to hack a Dell Mini 10v and change it into a Leopard Netbook. It is possible. Have a read of this great article and find out how it was done. Brilliant.

Design Firm Shows Gadgets From the Near Future

A radio without any knobs. A bathroom where a clear display wirelessly streams vital statistics on your health. And a user interface that takes brain waves and translates them into commands for a computer.
These are some of the products in development by Cambridge Consultants, a product design and development company. It showed off some of its latest inventions at a daylong event last week in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

DASH Robot Can Fall Off a 28m Building and Keep Running (Video)

The world's smallest working train model

Measuring a tiny eighth of an inch by quarter of an inch, this carefully crafted piece of engineering is the world's smallest working train model.
The five-carriage train, which is 35,200 times smaller than a real train, nips around an oval route even taking in a ride through a tunnel on its three-quarter inch track.

Previous Twitter News…

Twitter Design News Roundup N.08 »
Twitter Design News Roundup N.07 »
Twitter Design News Roundup N.06 »
Twitter Design News Roundup N.05 »
Twitter Design News Roundup N.04 »
Twitter Design News Roundup N.03 »
Twitter Design News Roundup N.02 »
Twitter Design News Roundup N.01 »

40 Fresh and Free Icon Sets for Web Designers and Bloggers

admin — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 10:59:30 +0000

One of the most sought after elements of any web design are icons. If you are creative enough to design your own icon set and tailor make them for your sites design, you are very lucky, and I am envious. For the rest of us, we have to settle for the work of the many talented graphic designers who release there icon designs freely, and to them we are grateful.
In this post we have collected 40 recently released free icon-sets for web designers, developers and bloggers.

Web Designer and Developer Icon Sets

1000 Farm-Fresh Web Icons

178 Amazing Web Design Icons

Led Icon Set

RRZE Icon Set

Lemonade At Work Icon Set

The Webdesigner Sketchup Icons

Basic Set

30 Free Vector Icons

Token

Admin Panel Iconset

Lovely Website Icons Pack

Lovely Website Icons Pack 2

PixelMixer

Quartz Icon Pack

RSS Icon Sets

200+ RSS Icons: “Supra”

RSS Feed Animals

Icon Feed Jeans

RSS At Sea Icons

Social Bookmarking Icon Sets

Webset Icons

Speckyboy Social Bookmarking Icons

Large Icons Social

Free iPhone Social Bookmarking Icon Set 1

iPhone Social Bookmarking Icons Set 2

Social and Web Icons

Thinking Networks Icons

Old Bottle Crowns Icon Set

Stamp Social Bookmarks and RSS Feed Icons

Mazu-Mazu ikonki

Contact Icon Pack

Mate BW Social Icons

Twi-Birds Icons

Twitter Icons

Birdies: A Free Twitter Icon Set

Tweet Me Up Scotty

Twitter Icon Pack

Twitter Icon Pack 2

Twitter Icon Pack 3

Random Developer Icon Sets

Glyphish

40+ Free Vector Stickers

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Introduction to Smashing Magazines Design Blog Network

admin — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 10:25:32 +0000

Over the last weekend, Smashing Magazine has not only had a major face lift, it also introduced everybody to the Smashing Network. And we are we are delighted to be apart of it.
You can read the original article here: Smashing Magazine’s Redesign and Smashing Network.

What is the Smashing Network?

“The idea behind the network is to promote high-quality content on the Web design scene and to make it worthwhile for publishers to produce useful and interesting design-related articles. We want our community to benefit from these articles and support the publishers with direct traffic from the Smashing Magazine.”

From Smashing Magazine.

Basically, Smashing Magazine has teamed up with 18 other design magazines, among those are Webdesigner Depot, Noupe, SixRevisions, UX Booth, Hongkiat, ThinkVitamin, Web Designer Wall, Designm.ag, Boagworld, Onextrapixel and, of course, Speckyboy Design Magazine. Only high quality articles from each blog are featured on Smashing Magazines front page, giving readers, not only a wide selection of articles, resources and tutorials, but also guarnatees high quality writing.
Every network member has its very own channel (page), which has recent posts and Twitter updates, and the reader also has the option to subscribe via RSS to any network member they choose.
The Smashing Magazine Network Blogs.
Speckyboy Design Magazine Network Page.

Smashing Network Video

Onextrapixel has created a fun introduction to the network, it includes a lot of fast motion that demonstrates the high velocity and power of information sharing over the web. It also introduced the various blogs that feature within the network.

Thanks to Smashing Magazine

Maybe you know or maybe you don’t, but I am a regular writer on Smashing Magazine (you can view my author page here: Paul Andrew), I also write for other design blogs as well as run Speckyboy Design Magazine. The accumulation of all these factors, including the network, has allowed me to be a full time freelance design writer.

Thanks to Vitaly Friedman (Smashing Magazine Chief Editor) and all the staff over at Smashing Magazine for organising and pioneering an exciting time for web and graphic design writing and offering readers a wide range of high quality articles and resources.

OK…I better get back to writing…speak to you soon.

Weekly Web Design and Development Inspiration – N.14

admin — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 07:40:10 +0000

There is a nice selection of sites in todays Weekly Web Design and Development Inspiration, especially IOKON and Slidedeck who have both created very clean and stylish sites and the redesign from Fubiz and Adii, as always, are awesome. And of course this round-up would not be complete without the obligatory minimal design (EMQuinn and Bobulate), my favorite web design style.
Send us a recommendation for next weeks Weekly Web Design and Development Inspiration (for our review), by clicking here: Submit News.

The Molitor

Hello Kavita

IOKON Media

EMQuinn

Oyster Design

Adii Rockstar

SlideDeck = Slideshows + Presentations + Video

Fubiz Interactive

Bobulate

Make Photoshop Faster

NERDFILMS.tv

My Minnesota Orchestra

Analog Studio

FIT Digital

You might like… previous Weekly Inspirations

25 Last Minute Traditional and Downloadable Halloween Masks

admin — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 16:21:01 +0000

Have you remembered your Halloween mask? If you haven’t, we have a cheap and cheerful solution to your problem: Downloadable traditional Halloween masks. Yep, click on any of the mask images below and press ‘print’, and hey presto you have your very own DIY Halloween mask, you will be the envy of everybody (not, really!).
Below you will find masks for traditional Hallween monsters (Frankenstein, Dracula, Witches…), Star Wars characters, and you will even find a mask for the very cool Christopher Walken. Happy Halloween!

Happy Ghost

Halloween Pumpkin

Bloody Vampire

Dracula

Witch Chin Mask

Frankenstein Chin Mask

Frankenstein Full

The Grinch

Creepy Eyes

Ghost

Yoda Mask

Chewbacca Mask

Darth Vader Mask

C3PO Mask

R2D2 Mask

Shocktrooper Mask

The Emperor Mask

Anakin Skywalker Mask

Obiwan Kenobi Mask

Christoper Walken

The Free Fun Fings Mask Collection

Five Free Social Bookmarking Icons for our Readers

admin — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 10:10:59 +0000

If you have followed this design magazine for a while, you will know how much we love well designed icons, especially the free variety. So, when Iconshock offered us the opportunity to have an icon-set exclusively designed for our readers, we jamp at the chance.
What type and what style of icon should we ask for? We opted for an understated social bookmarking iconset for the following services: Twitter, Facebook, Digg, Delicious and Reddit. I am sure you will agree, they look amazing, we love them!

Speckyboy Social Bookmarking Icon-Set

The icon sets download package contains five icons, available in both 256px and 512px and with the added bonus of the Illustrator (ai.) source files.
The icons are free for personal or commercial use.
Download Speckyboys Social Bookmark Icon-Set

Thanks to Iconshock

A big thank you to Iconshock for giving us the opportunity to give something back to our readers.
If you are looking for high quality custom icons, you should give Iconshock a visit, they also have a great selection of free icons as well.

18 Creative and Horrific Digital Images for Halloween

admin — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 10:42:48 +0000

Horror art can be defined as being “the intrusion of a disturbing supernatural element into everyday human experience” (via Wikipedia). Chilling description isn’t it? Or, if you prefer, it could be described as being blood, guts and gore.
Horror can be [mostly] a very disturbing art, it can also be very memorable and creative. It is the latter two elements that we have captured for todays post.

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