Thursday, February 24, 2011

Methods Of Creation Of Line Icons

More often Line icons are the objects with the outlined contours. They are known as contour drawings. Also you can find another kind of icons: the items are without some strict outlines. They are called gesture drawings. Skilled designers often use such kind of drawings because they're able to repeat the outlines of the object right after seeing it.

One more technique is adding various halftones as well as shades to the object with the help of short lines and crosshatching. Their frequency and pencil pressure can be different. And this variety impart more three-dimensional look to the object. So this technique is definitely helping in designing of fantastic Line web icons, logos and buttons.Furthermore lets get info about open lines. It is such sort of the lines where the dots not combining the singular elements. The lines can be gesture-like, parallel, contour etc. as well. Contour drawing includes fantastic simplicity and refinement of line design. You may be surprise what is bezier curves in computer graphics? It's such type of the curves that are essential for creating complex line shapes. These curves are useful small features necessary for creating the vector shapes like line icons, unusual buttons etc.Computer technologies make it possible to reproduce the same designs or develop new shapes based on some older ones without extra efforts and time. Another advantage is that it is easy to return to the previous adjustments with a help of the history panel. As a result there's no need to make Line icons from scratch if you have made some errors.

Simple Icons

Simple web icons are among the principal features of minimalistic design. Moreover, simple icons along with other design elements should be used moderately. Among the tips is minimizing icons use in general. Simple icons are supposed to be used where they're absolutely necessary and eliminated where it's possible. Refrain the optional simple web icons. They may serve several functions.

Limited amount of color, reserved shades, clear elements, soft lighting are being used for simple web icons design. One of the best advantages of Simple web icons is that they don't distract website visitors from the main idea of your internet site.

Rules for simple icons design:

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

Minimalistic design with simple web icons

Do not forget about lightweight background textures and patterns. They are also essential for the design and content perception as well as simple icons. The background pattern or images should not catch all the attention of your visitors. The eyes should focus on the web-site content or some main blocks. Building the background use a light simple shade. This makes it secondary compared with the foreground items like simple web icons.

Clear typography is an additional prominent feature of the lightweight and clear design. Simple icons names (if there are any) should be precise, meaningful and equivalent to their function. Headings placed on simple web icons need to be of readable font and large enough for easy reading.

Enough white or empty space is effective for developing a great clean simple icons design. Extra spaces keep elements more readable. Due to this fact it is faster and easier to work with them. In case you use some extra space between simple web icons this dont harm to the design of your site at all.

Speaking about the minimalistic trend in most cases it is not totally minimal. Despite its great amount of white space there are still some simple icons, light textures, neat styles and bold fonts. Remember minimal just isn't exactly the same as simple. Initially minimal meant plain typographic excluding images and styling. Today there is a great amount of various sites over the Internet. Thats why modern design requires something more than black text on white background. Add more zest to your web-site layout with a help of some unusual coloring, catchy simple icons, half-transparent and lightweight textures and patterns. Also reduce elements of design to the most essential items.

Simple is often used like a synonym of smart. While creating the modern web design you should keep in mind the eternal truth stating that genius is based on simplicity. Simple web icons look great and professional especially for a clean business style design.

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Vintage Web Icons As An Element Of Vintage Design

In case your want your site looks archaic - use Vintage web icons. They are one of the most noticeable and easy-to-apply graphical elements. Vintage web icons suppose authentic use of vintage typography, less-saturated colors and retro textures to help creating the vintage air emanating from the internet site. Antique air is going to charm and brings unconscious smiles to the faces of your website visitors.

Retro trend is all about the styles of the70s and 80s. Retro advertising art from the 1950s is bold and eye-catchy. Computer technologies help to put a new face on this type of art using its characters in website design and printing. These faces outlined in the vintage web icons are more often retro cars, pin-up girls, soldiers and politicians of the former times.Undoubtedly among the most often used retro cars are Fiat 500, the 1970 Dodge Challenger, the 1969 Chevrolet Samara, the 1964 Ford Mustang etc. Vintage icons may contain hints to retro cars concepts for attracting more interest to your web site layout. They are perfect for the web sites concerning auto sales, transporting services, tour sites etc.Also you can face a such well-known character as a pin-up model that is used in vintage icons design as well as other web-site graphics styling. Often it presents images of how the really sexy and attractive woman should look like. Pin-up images are great for vintage web icons or clip-art designed for the model agencies, websites regarding health and beauty areas.

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

There is no limit in usage of specific characters. Apply your creativity and use them as you want. Thus you will surprise your visitors. As far as you know it is a good way to turn your potentional clients minds to your web business.

Vintage Icons Patterns and Typography

Highly recommended Vintage patterns in vintage icons design:

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

For creating vintage icons titles, content headings and texts you can use such authentic fonts as Matchbook, Bazar Medium, Embossed, Hill House,-Fontleroy Brown, Fusty Saddle, Just Old Fashion, Goudy Bookletter 1911, Rocket Script, Parisian, Star Avenue etc. Feel free to find and purchase on the web the best appropriate fonts that will ideal match your design.

Try to pick up a such vintage-inspired design that looks modern and suitable, but no old-fashioned. The goal is to create the warm and noble, antique feel using Vintage icons as well as images and styled blocks for the website design. Certainly your visitors will return to your website with a happy smile again and again. They will feel more comfortable and cozy at your web-site.

But try to avoid stuffiness in your vintage design look. Please don't forget that the main focus should be made on the products, services or content of your internet site not on the internet site design.

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Benefits Of Realistic Web Icons.

Realistic web icons are very important elements of the present day pieces of software program, applications and add-ons.

As far as you know online sites demand special means of representation and promotion. Probably the most effective way is certainly including realistic icons into the web site design. No doubt icons will help users of your web site to get a quick initial impression of your online business and also products that you offer. The icons should be placed on webpage homepage to be noticeable at once.

Of course if you want to have icons that fulfil all your demands you need to hire the professional designer who can make some unique set of icons. But such custom orders of realistic icons are very expensive and take significant time period. After all the results of custom order aren't clear. Even professional web site designers fall short of the mark known as non-uniqueness. Often some of site designers simply take icons that were created earlier and vary colors and shades, use some other effects and then sell realistic icons as exclusive items.

Another way of getting attractive web icons is finding authoritative icons resources. You can simply find a great amount of various Realistic web icons stocks and providers on the web. The great advantage of this kind of of getting web icons is that you see what you pay for. The cost may be less than in case with custom orders. Additionally you save your valuable time. So as far as you see now - stocks are much more preferable for finding well designed and inexpensive realistic icons . All these advantages make icon stocks the great deal.

Tips for utilizing realistic icons

Designing realistic icons you have to build the basic pictograms first. It should look vivid enough if being displayed at worse resolution, resized, discolored or blurred. The icon should be recognizable at first sight. You may conduct a test and see if it's possible to discern the icon within just one second.<\p>

When you find the formula of the basic silhouette and it is stable you possibly can make realistic icons more eye-catching by adding decorative elements. Icons shouldn't be overloaded with the details and color tints. Icons should look well design and also reserved. You can also make the edges anti-aliased. So keep in mind the simple rule - the decoration shouldn't detract from the icons essence and functions.

Vector format in which the icons are stored makes them pretty simple to edit. You are free to resize, rotate, adjust the edges and modify outlines, change the color scheme and add more details etc. So you don't have to be an experienced designer or an artist to use them.

If you need to design the interface layout of the new software program or IT services - Realistic icons may be very helpful in this task. Developing top quality, eye-catching and good-looking realistic icons is not an easy task. Generally you need to edit the high-resolution photos in order to get truly realistic images.

Sunday, February 20, 2011

Simple Icons And Minimalistic Web Site Design

Simple web icons are produced to combine minimalism and modern trend. Wonderful and lightweight Simple web icons are aimed to increase web-site user interaction.

Minimalism in web site design

Lets discover what minimalistic web page design means. Undoubtedly the first features are simplicity and lightweight elements. Simple web icons contain all this. It minimizes complex wordings, figures, textures and patterns. Less even means more in some areas and to some extent. Website design is exactly such area.

Today minimalistic design is something uncommon. High modern technologies usually lead to the loss of simplicity. Blending minimalistic web site design with CSS3 and HTML5 is becoming more popular and makes you believe that combining simple elegance and usability is the formula for your internet site success. Internet site which uses simple design often has off-color effects and also actively use CSS and Ajax.

The most important features of the modern simple web site design:

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

Vintage Icons In Today'S Webpage Design

Retro takes over the modern web page design industry. Vintage icons representing the old-time styling are the message of classic beauty and noble taste, Vintage design trend arouses gentle feeling in the visitors hearts.In the present day modern day site style usually involves some vintage twist. Retro and Vintage are the most famous and also widely used trends in the modern digital art. Vintage icons, textures, patterns as well as clip-art bring mystery to your webpage design. They assist you to create the atmosphere of the old good times, with feelings of simplicity, innocence and nobility. People always associate childhood or youth with happy times. Due to this psychological peculiarity of people vintage style is so well-known.

Retro style and the modern day web site design industry

Speaking about retro in simple terms we'd outline an aged or culturally out-of-date trend that has become some conscious norm in today's art. Having emerged in the post-modern art, it penetrates into the contemporary webdesign in the form of vintage icons, old-style backgrounds, aged photography etc. No doubt it gives some zest to the feel and look of the ordinary web pages.

Typically the new retro style includes the Web 2.0 look with a vintage twist. It requires good recipe of mixing the ultra-modern clean blocks and the outdated, aged design elements like Vintage icons, styles and color palettes.

The Essence Of 2d Icons And Models All In All

2D icons are really well known for their flexibility. This is achieved by the peculiarity of rendering them at different resolutions suitable for various output devices.

2D Icons may include the below items:

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

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

Because of the layers technique 2D web icons can create the illusion of all 3D characteristics like shadow, reflection or highlighting. The layers really should maintain the certain hierarchy and order carefully. This makes modifying 2D icons and similar objects simpler.

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

The layered 2Dicons are also known as 2.5D models. This technology allows web developers to work with any layer with no need of touching the others. This type of 2D object creation is preferred by the most of the well known graphics editors.

2.5D is a synonym to pseudo 3D. This means "two-and-a-half-dimensional" graphics. Models that were created with a help of with 2.5D technology appear to be tridimensional while in fact they're not.

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

Saturday, February 19, 2011

Realistic Icons

The first mention about realism took place in 1850 when it's spread over French art. Over the 100's of years it came through all kinds of art and design. Realism in web site design is successfully represented by Realistic icons.

History of realistic icons

Line Is Refine: Line Icons As An Evidence

Lines are more frequently used for outlining the contours of objects and emphasizing edges. Line icons can be the fantastic decoration of any website design, of course if you have a skill to design them thoroughly.

Line Icons - what do you know about them?

What is in fact a line? The shortest definition is the following: line is a form that contain both width and length but eliminating depth. We are accustomed to the fact that the line is usually straight. Newertheless the line is more often curved. The lines can provide some appropriate mood or feeling of a movement. Being static shapes, Line icons can create a sort of illusion of the dynamic objects. The mood depends on the lines direction. As an example horizontal lines in Line icons bring the feeling of calmness, peace and stability. Speaking about the vertical lines - they strive for the light movement. The diagonal lines reflect energy as well as stronger dynamic feeling. If you need to develop refine and modern line icons designs you should use mix of straight lines and curves.

Line Icons Art

For sure the initial kind of line art that familiar to a great amount of artists is curve stitching. Such kind of line art was developed with a help of threads of different colors and needle. Originally the canvas was a cardboard. String Art is another name for this movement. Originally it was found out by Mary Boole as the accessory material for kids to help them study geometry of angles and spaces. Line art existed also in the form of illustrations for print sources before the photography was invented. At that time line art involved only black and white colours. Several tones of gray were also acceptable.Line art combines geometry and art and in such a way becomes appealing to both technical and creative sides of human nature, Designing Line web icons may develop special imagination and creativity as well as calculation skills.Line art has an ability to be printed to the halftone picture with no extra conversion. Thus it's different from photography or multi-color painting.

Thursday, February 17, 2011

Two-Dimensional Graphics - 2d Icons Rule

2D icons is a wide spread trend in the web design of nowadays. These two-dimensional icons are notable for their flexibility and comparative simplicity. 2.5D Icons is the type of 2D Icons that is closer to pseudo 3D representation.

Being originally based on vector graphics devices 2D computer graphics traces back to the 50s. Presently2D web icons are one of the most essential two-dimensional digital design items.

What's actually 2D?Generally it is being associated with computer graphics and determined as the two-dimensional way of digital images generation. Two-dimensional models are mainly 2D geometric ones, digital images and texts. The term 2D includes not only the models themselves but the techniques and tricks specific to them at the same time.

2D icons and objects don't just depict the real world items but they are independent objects with their own semantic value. 2D graphics enables us to get more direct control of the image than 3D technology. This might be one good reason why they are so much loved and desired in the world of present day internet site design and digital art.

Friday, January 28, 2011

Business Web Icons Facts

Simplicity is really a queen of beauty. Simple business icons, clear typography and enough air (white spaces) are indicators of great potential, safety and stability of your company. The most customary colours for designing business icons are black, white, gray and blue. If you will use wordings for business icons bear in mind Verdana is the greatest simple and readable font that you can find. This font is the easiest one to discern in various sizes. Black text on white business icons - classic is always up to date. As far as you have already known business icons style needs minimalism. Don't create a great amount of multi-color icons, flashy objects, logos and graphics. In such a way you risk to produce the site messy.

The importance of business icons originality

The new sites which are not so reputed yet require professional look to make the Internet surfers notice them. The most widespread web design style used by the artists all over the world is web 2.0 style. A unique logo is the face of your company. So it's value should be taken into account.

Nice, considered content used in present-day design is really efficient. But unique design is what really makes your business web-site unique. You can forget stealing ideas of other companies logos. Even duplicating of competitor company style is harmful for your webpage reputation. Do not risk! Anyway you will be disclosed or compared with the competitors who have invented those styles earlier.The unique and recognizable logos and business icons that reflect the idea of your online business will help you to take the rightful place on the Internet.

Tips To Develop Professional Site Layout With Business Icons

Choosing design for your future web site is a difficult and tedious task. You need to design the header graphics and logo, business icons and content placeholders as well as find the fonts based on the business area and desires of your potential customers.

The powerful web-site ought to include your potential customers expectations. For this purpose use the right business icons, buttons and styles for content blocks.

First of all you need to decide what is the main audience of your internet site and what do your potential customers expect. Name, hosting provider, content and design style need to be carefully chosen in line with the results of your research. Initially you are to correlate the designed color scheme and layout together with your potential customers expectations. Also think over what colors and styles of business icons and also other design elements should be used to reflect the business area your company represents.

You need to remember that different colors evoke certain emotions in various groups of people. As an example if you are planning to create the website for some nightclub, it is more effective to use business icons of bright disco colors and unusual forms. You may design them to give a dynamic and lively feel, air of relax and pleasure to your web page. Some tints of red as manifestation of passion and sex are pertinent for business icons, logos or buttons in such a case. But do not use bright colors if you need to develop the web page for some consulting company. Web site design should be clear, calm and reserved. Also avoid playful lines and even light-minded graphics. Cool colors and simple recognizable shapes of business icons are preferable. Such a webpage will make your potential clients believe into professionalism and stability of your company.

Sunday, January 23, 2011

Glass Icons Are First Class Design Items

Web icons impart classy and clean look to your web site making its design eye-catching and professional. However this effect should be reasonably used because it can be harmful for the design perception.

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

Glass icons usage pro and contra.

Do the elaborate and intricate look of the web icons designed in the glass style turn your brain and you believe that it is a hard task to do this? You shouldn't be puzzled - it is pretty obvious that the process of their creation is rather simple. Glass web icons can normally be designed within a few minutes with Photoshop, Illustrator or Corel software, so it's not a big problem even for the newbies in the design sphere. So you do not need to have extra web site design knowledges. All you need is some helpful tutorial, some skills of working with these pieces of software and the images you are going to turn into glass web icons.

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

One of the most essential feature of the modern internet site is social bookmarking web icons. Using eye-catching glossy icons for this purpose is a great benefit for the internet site promotion. This fact is easily explained: attractive social bookmarks improve the probability of the visitors clicking on them and the number of the clicks increases correspondingly. Due to this fact you'll be able to promote and bookmark your content more effectively.