The world that surrounds the topic of Web Design is home to many debates and opinions on best practices or generally how things should and shouldn’t be done. While many of these opinions are accepted and taken on board by everyone, there are some that end up being split into two opposing camps. One camp will provide an expert opinion for one side of the argument, while the other contradicts with an equally valid argument. Let’s take a look at the five most popular debates; the ones that often end up developing into digital riots with opinions flying like arrows across the vast no-man’s land known as the comments section.

Should links open in a new window?

Camp one says:

Links to external sites should always open in new windows. There’s nothing more annoying than browsing a website, clicking a link and being whisked off to a totally new site, losing the page you wanted to revisit. Internal links should maintain the browser session in the current page, but anything that leaves the site should open in a new tab or window.

Camp two says:

As web designers we shouldn’t take the control away from the user. Whether a link needs opening in a new window is their choice. There’s nothing more annoying than a website taking control of my browser and opening a new tab or window for a link without my permission; if I wanted to open it in a new window, I’d do so! The problem only gets worse with inexperienced computer users, new windows break their trusty ‘back button’.

The mediator says:

In general, opening a new window should be avoided, but is recommended for some situations such as opening a help link in a shopping cart or opening a non-html document such as a PDF. To further aid the usability of your site, use a small icon to identify links that do open in a new window, or provide an options panel that’s configured with Javascript.

Further reading:

• Should Links Open In New Windows?
• Beware of Opening Links in a New Window”
• Open New Windows for PDF and other Non-Web Documents

continue reading…

The importance of a unique, memorable and well designed blog, especially within the design community, should not be underestimated – First impressions will always count and your blog gives you an opportunity to showcase your skills and highlight how professional and serious you are as a designer.

For most web designers, designing an original blog shouldn’t be a problem, the difficulty lies in trying encapsulate your blog writing style and character within the design – That is the tricky part.

In this article that is exactly what we have done, showcased 50 amazing personal blog designs that successfully capture the character of the designer.

Clean Blog Designs

Brian Hoff

Ed Nacional

Krisztian Puska – z8

Rientola

Trent White – TWhite Design

Zander Martineau – Rather Splendid

Julian Wilson

Justin Windle – Soulwire

Adelle Charles

Make Film Work

Bedrich Ríos

Mercy

Ray Glover – Cynosura's Weblog

David DeSandro

Illustration Blog Designs

Kilian Muster

Chris Kaufman

Nick La – N.Design

Jason Gray

D Bnonn Tennant – Information Highwayman

continue reading…

This post is a collection of latest community news submitted on tripwire magazine by readers and other blog owners.  Most new posts in the web design and development community is included making this regular post a really fast and easy consumable overview of what is going on just now.  You can find more community news here

Create an Wooden Background Website Layout in Photoshop

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31 Stunning Black And White Photographs

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50+ Free Fonts Collection for Web Designers and Logo Artists

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How to Convert a WordPress Blog into WordPress MU

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10 Tips For Becoming A More Efficient Web Designer

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Free Social Network Icons from IconShock

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Learn how to create a clean busines layout

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Whats the Best way to Promote your Latest Article?

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21 Wonderful Logos for your Daily Dose of Inspiration

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How to Find the Best Keywords and Ideas for Your Articles

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How to Create Perfect Radial Shapes in Illustrator

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How To Create A Retro Style Text Effect Using Illustrator

In this tutorial It explains how to easily create a 3d text and merge it into a retro-style scene. We will use Illustrator for the text,

Ten Dirty Secrets of Web Hosting Services

When looking for a web hosting service, you should be careful as there are a lot of things they may try to hide from you.

Proportion: Definition and Gallery

Proportion (or scale) refers to the relative size and scale of the various elements in a design. In essence, this takes design elements and contrasts their sizes greatly for emphasis.

Eight Greatest Things About Open Source

Linux Environment: This is a given, granted, but no one can exclude the brainchild of Linus Torvalds when talking about open source. What was begun as a learning experience…

What You Should NEVER do With Your Web Hosting Account

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50+ Creative Business Card Designs

Do you need the creative Business for your Business? We assembled Fresh collection stimulate your creative juices for your own beautiful business.

50+ Unique and Inspiring Blue Logo Designs

This 50+ Unique and Inspiring Blue Logo Designs are especially compiled for logo designers who are momentarily out of ideas.

The Guide To Landing A Graphic Design Job

The first question in this new series tackles the dilemma of finding a job as a Graphic Designer without much actual design experience.

35 Ultimate Useful Android Applications

Andriod (Google mobile operating system) market is growing day by day as this OS giving lot of user friendly applications, some of those listing today as our visitors and readers demand. Android on..

Golden Fish – Free Illustration

If your website is about pets or fishes, feel free to download this illustration. Not only it’s well done but also free to use.

Codeigniter shopping cart v1.1 Part 15: contact page and sending email message

Contact page allows visitors to send a message through a form. It has a reCaptcha in order to avoid spam. I will cover the contact page and sending email message to an administrator in this article.

Quote Portal for iPhone is The Epitome of Simplicity and Brilliance

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Coffee Shop Posters: 17 Creative Design Examples

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Photography By Warwick Saint

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Over 500 Beautiful Frames

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3 Best Solutions to make your own custom Linux

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15 Gothic Fonts for Designers

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Over 800 Beautiful Backgrounds

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Top 3 Internal link building Tactics

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Showcase Of Web Design In Ukraine

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continue reading…

Our sponsors Pixmac.com, are offering the chance to five of our readers to win a $199 subscription each to there marvelous microstock photo site service.

That is a huge prize fund of $995 to be shared amongst the winners!
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For a chance to win this great prize all you have to do is state your Pixmac Nickname in the comments section below and describe how you are or are planning to use the images.

If you haven’t signed up to Pixmac as yet, and you want to enter this competition you will firstly need to signup, its free and you can do it here: Pixmac Registration.

And then come back here and submit your comment.
So, these are the simple steps to follow:

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Good luck to everyone!

About Pixmac

Pixmac.com is the leader in microstock photo site services, with a monumentally huge 10 million+ stock photos and resources at there disposal, it is by far the leader in there field.

You can find almost any image you could dream of at Pixmac, from Valentine’s Day and spring photos to Easter stock photos. They also have classic royalty free pictures of business, people, animals or nature which can suit any of your advertising or professional presentation needs, as well as huge celebrity collections, Dreamstime images, Fotolia images, Corbis images and Image Source collections.

With its one stop shopping it takes less than three minutes to download an image and local payment methods are accepted.
What more could you want from a stock image service?
You can also follow them on Twitter and Facebook.

Whether you are reading a printed magazine or a web article it is very rarely the content that draws you in at first, the hook is always the title or the headline. A well written and thought out title or headline are fundamental, it has to not only describe with very few words the articles content but also has to be formatted in a way that it draws the attention of your readers and is a seemingly must read – a difficult combination to achieve.

There are many ways of of making your headlines that little bit more distinctive, none are as important as choosing the correct font. Most fonts can be big and bold, but finding one with a little bit of character that helps emphasize and describe the title and the content can be difficult.

With that in mind, Peter Olexa from Fonts2u has put together this article of his top 20 beautiful, professional and distinctive free fonts you shouldn’t be missing from your font library.

01 Diavolo

02 Fertigo

03 Museo

04 Comfortaa

05 Raspoutine Demi Bold

06 Gauntlet Classic

07 DuePuntoZero

continue reading…

We all love Javascript. With jQuery, it is now so easy to write really nice JavaScript effects. jQuery is a fast and concise JavaScript Library that simplifies HTML document traversing, event handling, animating, and Ajax interactions for rapid web development

Creating right click with the help of jquery is real easy and can be implemented very quickly. While trying for my one of the project , I made one and sharing it today.

A design showcase is a website dedicated to seeking out the latest and greatest designs from the web, whether it’s a website, flash presentation or a piece of print work.

A showcase of the very best web designs from the last week

If you are a software manufacturer and you need a great design to represent your company and your products then you need to design an eye catching web layout.

In the previous posts this and this, I wrote about a Codeigniter Event Calendar. The problem with them was you can’t use it with javascript disabled. This time I added a link to a date. When you click the date where there are events, it will take you to a page showing all the event for that day. So you can use it with javascript disabled. Check it out.

A showcase of most outstanding and spectacular castle artworks from around the web.

If you use the Windows 7 operating system, you will find here useful wallpaper for your PC. Overall, I've compiled the best 30 Windows 7 wallpapers from deviantART community. I hope in this post you will find most perfect for your PC.

These are 100 beautiful and colorful vectors for design and inspiration. Free EPS Files for Floral Ornament backgrounds. I hope you find them useful and cool.

Amazing nature and wildlife photograhy. Roeselien Raimond is a passionate photographer – totally in love with animals & nature- who’d like to spend almost every minute of the day on photography.

Google has for many years doodled on their homepage. These doodles are decorative changes that Google makes to their cooperate logo to celebrate certain holidays and other world events. In keeping with the decade long tradition, Google has doodled Olympic events on their website to commemorate this special global event.

Beautiful portrait photography by Mehmet Turgut, creative fashion photographer, based in Turkey

If you're a movie fan I am sure you'll enjoy this collection of 20 beautiful movie/brand fonts. All these are free and I think they should be part of any designer's font library.

Amazing photos of beautiful women by creative fashion photographer Evan Romine.

As you know, new icon sets are published every day on various web design blogs. I have monitored many of these blogs a long time and I thought, therefore, show some of the best-looking icon sets I’ve seen recently. I hope you will like them.

Domestic Landscapes is an ongoing archive that includes hundreds of images, the product of more than ten years’ work by Dutch photographer Bert Teunissen.

Orlando wedding and engagement photographer. Leigh Taylor Photography is an award winning, natural light, on location photographer

Merry Christmas everyone! In this week’s roundup of creative goodness, we have a fantastic icon design tutorial; a great website design tutorial allowing you to create a cool sidebar effect; a roundup of awesome snowboard designs; a handy web design tip to keep your site’s accessibility in check; and an overview of various usability tips.

PSDFan

PSDFan hosts this fantastic step-by-step icon design tutorial that shows you how to design a beautiful Google Calender icon in Photoshop. Using subtle shadows and textures the final design boasts plenty of realism.

DesignM.ag

DesignM.ag originally published this tutorial earlier in the year, but I thought it deserved a fresh look! Find out how to create the popular sticky-sidebar effect on your website with this brilliant walkthrough and demo.

DesignrFix

The skiing and snowboarding season is here, so it’s quite fitting that DesignrFix have put together this awesome design inspiration rounded of 60+ amazing snowboard designs. A great resource for fans of illustrative design!

24Ways

24Ways is back again this year, and has been packed full of daily web design goodies. This particular tip on the use of the :focus selector captured my attention, and provides a super useful tip for those who want to balance their websites between good design and accessibility.

UX Booth

UX Booth is a great place to learn about all things surrounding the topic of usability. This post titled The Weaker Side of Usability Guidelines highlights a range of uncommon usability recommendations.

In this tutorial, we’ll create a textured site layout by layering multiple images. Creating highly-textured web design layouts is easier than you may think. You can learn to build image intensive designs rapidly. For intermediate Photoshop designers creating this design will take less than an hour, and you’ll learn some professional tips along the way. Let’s get started!

Final Image Preview

Want access to the full PSD files and downloadable copies of every tutorial, including this one? Join Psd Plus for just $9/month. You can view the final image preview below.

Tutorial Details

• Program: Photoshop CS4
• Difficulty: Intermediate
• Estimated Completion Time: 60 minutes

Take a look at the site design we’ll be creating below.

Materials Needed

• Download grunge texture
• Download wood seamless texture
• Flower stock image (included in the Psd Plus source files)
• Leaf stock image: (included in the Psd Plus source files)

Video Tutorial

Our video editor Gavin Steele has created this video tutorial to compliment this text + image tutorial.

Step 1

In this tutorial we’ll use some stock images to create a highly-textured web layout. Let’s start by creating a new document with the following size: 1000 pixels by 1000 pixels.

Step 2

Now go ahead and download the seamless wood texture from Grafplus.com. Here you can find the download link: Download wood seamless texture. Open the “texture-small.jpg” in Photoshop and then go to Edit > Define pattern. Choose a name for your pattern and click OK. You can now close the image with the wood texture.

Step 3

Select the “background” layer and press on Command + J. This shortcut will duplicate the “background” layer. Select this new layer and from the top menu select Layer > Layer Style > Pattern Overlay… Use the pattern you created a few seconds ago.

Step 4

Use the Rectangle Tool to create some vertical bars with different colors/

Step 5

Select all these shapes in the layer palette by holding down the Command key and with your mouse click on each layer). In this way you will select all the shapes.

Step 6

When you have all shapes selected press on Command + E (this shortcut will merge all the layers into a single one). Change the blending mode to Color Dodge, and the Opacity value to between 40% and 50%.

Step 7

Now it is time to add another great stock image. Visit grafplus one more time and download the following image: grunge texture. Place this image in your document at the top. Go to File > Place, and select this nice grunge texture.

Step 8

Be sure you have this layer selected and then apply a simple drop shadow. Layer > Layer styles > Drop Shadow.

Step 9

Use the Rectangular Marquee Tool to make a selection as shown.

Step 10

Be sure you have the layer with the grunge texture selected, and then press Command + J (this shortcut will create a new layer via cut). Select the new layer and rotate the layer 180 Degrees (Edit > Transform > Rotate 180. Place this new layer on top of the layout with the Move tool. Go ahead and add your logo now as well. For this tutorial I’m using the text: “PSDtuts+.”

Step 11

Change the blending mode for the text logo to Color Burn.

Step 12

Use the same technique to cut some buttons and a footer. Here you can see the result.

Step 13

If you want to create a distinct button with another color you have to select the layer with the button you want to make it unique, and then press Command + U to bring up the Hue/ Saturation settings. Check the Colorize checkbox, and move the sliders to the right or left until you’re happy with the result.

Continue Learning…

“Watercolor in graphic design has become very trendy the last couple of years, many websites and incredible designers are using this style and taking it to another level. Even knowing the technique is important in this kind of design, is more about creativity and experimentation. You will learn how to use the Art History Brush and combine it with watercolor custom brushes to create a nice background header image and more. Let’s get it started!”Alvaro Guzman

Here is a link to the written version of the tutorial Create a Watercolor-Themed Website Design with Photoshop and the video version is below.

Watercolor in graphic design has become very trendy the last couple of years, many websites and incredible designers are using this style and taking it to another level. Even knowing the technique is important in this kind of design, is more about creativity and experimentation. You will learn how to use the Art History Brush and combine it with watercolor custom brushes to create a nice background header image and more. Let’s get it started!

Final Image Preview

Take a look at the image we’ll be creating. Want access to the full PSD files and downloadable copies of every tutorial, including this one? Join Psd Plus for just $9/month. You can view the final image preview below.

Tutorial Details

• Program: Adobe Photoshop CS4
• Difficulty: Intermediate – Advanced
• Estimated Completion Time: 4 hours

Video Tutorial

Our video editor Gavin Steele has created this video tutorial to compliment this text + image tutorial.

Before Getting Started

This tutorial should not be followed as a step by step guide, many of the steps are descriptions of the creative process involved on the making of this particular design style. Even though this isn’t a basic tutorial, it can be easily followed by any level of Photoshop user, but I’ll skip the explanation of very basic instructions like adding a Guide or creating a Layer mask.

As a full time web designer I have experience dealing with clients which need a design finished in a matter of days or even hours, and when you’re running out of time every minute is precious gold, so I’ll try to give you some time saving tips that will come in handy later.

Not all designers knows CSS, if you’re one of them you must know from the very beginning that you’re designing something that will be sliced and put into pieces; repeating backgrounds, text layers, and large image backgrounds must be perfectly placed into the design to avoid undesired changes.

Imagine What You Want to Achieve

It’s a good practice to start with a sketch or a wireframe in order to have an idea of where to put the elements in the canvas. Here is my rough draft:

For this design I’ll go for a fixed width and center aligned elements. Let’s start designing!

Step 1 – Setting Up the Template

We will download a PSD template from 960 Grid System, open the 12 columns template. This isn’t mandatory, you can start creating a 960px width document and draw some guides on it, but downloading the template will save a couple of minutes. Open it and Save it with any name you want.

You’ll need to expand the image’s width in order to see how your design looks on wider resolutions, for this go to Image > Canvas size and set the width value to 1420 pixels, from the center to the sides. I’m putting all the template’s built-in layers into a folder named "Template."

Step 2 – Main Repeating Background

Find a good paper texture, I’m using this one. This image will repeat all across the page background but it needs some previous editing. Select a square from the paper texture using the Rectangular Marquee Tool, Copy the area and paste it into a new document (You can chose Clipboard from the Preset dropdown). Then, go to Filter > Other > Offset and there change the Horizontal and Vertical values in order to put the borders’ offset close to the center. Next using the Clone Tool fix the hard lines in the middle. Once you have finished the cloning, Select All (Command + A) and copy the edited image on the clipboard.

Step 3 – Set up the Repeating Background

Paste the piece of paper and paste it into the main document. Using the Free Transform Controls paste the right side of the image over the middle Guide and the left side over the first Guide from the left and the Top border matching the top of the document.

Once you’ve perfectly place the first piece of paper, duplicate it and place it to the right, this way you’ll be covering the actual 960px area. Then duplicate the Paper pieces twice to the left and right of the 960px bounds in order to cover the entire canvas surface, then grab the 4 paper layers and duplicate them vertically and place them below the existing ones, do it as many times as needed until you cover all the canvas. Finally put all the Paper layers into a folder named "Background Texture," and if you want it for easier manipulation duplicate it and Merge the Group then hide the original folder.

Step 4 – Header Background

Now let’s add the header’s background, for this I’m using this image of a mountain landscape. Using the Marquee Tool select a wide portion of the image and paste it into the main document and name the layer something like "Landscape."

Now we will give this picture a fake HDR style, that will make it look more like a painting than a photography. Duplicate it and hit Command + I to invert the colors, set the Saturation to -100 in the Hue/Saturation panel (Command + U) and then change its Blending Mode to Overlay. Finally Select both layers "Landscape" and "Landscape copy" into one.

Step 5 – Using the Art History Brush

Now we will use the Art History Brush to make our picture look like a painting, select the Art History Brush by Clicking and holding over the History Brush Tool (Y) in the Tools Panel. To make this wonderful feature work, you will need to create a Snapshot first to work with, for this go to Window > History to show the History Panel, and click over the New Snapshot button at the bottom. Then in the Options Panel, chose any irregular Brush Tip (I’m using a 36px Chalk tip) set Mode to Normal, Opacity to 25% Style Tight Short, Area 25px and Tolerance 0%. Then paint over the "Landscape" layer, you will see how the image turns into a painting fairly easily.

After that, you just need to change the Opacity, Area and Brush Tip values according your needs, e.g. I’m using a larger Brush Tip and increasing its area to paint over the borders.

Step 6 – Watercolor Layer Mask

Create a Layer Mask > Reveal All to the "Landscape" layer, now we will try to merge the image better with the repeating background using some watercolor Brushes. I’m using this Watercolor brushes set by mcbadshoes. Keep this brush set handy since we will use it during the entire process.

Grab any of the brushes, set the foreground color to Black and paint some marks directly over the Layer Mask, which is important. These brushes have different opacities so you can play with them; in case you’re using another brush set, you must change the Brush Opacity and Flow values every time you paint a mark. The idea of this step is to melt down the image’s borders with the paper background, try to place your watercolor marks all across the border with some spots inside the image.

It doesn’t matter if the landscape is out of the template Guides, you can slice the header as a large background image when coding.

Step 7 – Add a Top Gradient

Just to make the coding a little bit more difficult (just kidding) we will add a vertical Gradient Fill Layer (#96AFCE – #FFFFFF) and set its Blend Mode to Linear Burn.

Step 8 – Content Background

Using the Rounded Rectangle Tool, set the Corner Radius to 15px in the Options panel and draw a rectangle from the second Guide from the left to the penultimate Guide at the Right side. I often use those guides just in case I need to add a drop shadow or some other effect to the background later. In this case we will leave the Rounded Rectangle as is, just changing its Fill value to 35% and adding a 1px Inside Stroke style. Changing the Fill Opacity makes the Layer Effects retain plenty of color so the stroke look really good and you can still allow some watercolor background through the fill. You can name this layer "Content Bg."

It’s important to set every stroke effect Inside the object, adding a stroke outside will increase the element’s dimension and we don’t want that.

Step 9 – Think Like a Coder

Even our translucent background looks pretty good, coding it will be a little bit hard, yet not impossible. It’s easier to code a plain color background than a transparent one, so duplicate the Rounded Rectangle and place the copy above it. Set the Fill to 100% again and hide the Stroke Style. Now add Layer Mask > Hide All to it and fill it with a Linear Black to White gradient in order to hide the top of the new Rounded Rectangle. You can help yourself with a couple of extra Horizontal Guides.

How does it work? This content must be vertically scrollable, so the repeating white background should be easy to expand to the bottom; let’s try it!. Grab the Direct Selection Tool (A) and select the bottom points of the Vector Rectangle, then using the Cursors move the points a few pixels down, it should work fine.

Step 10 – Pages Navigation

Using the Rounded Rectangle Tool, add a blue (#3F5060) rectangle at the top of the design, set its Fill value to 50% and add a 1px blue (#3F5060) Stroke layer style to it. Using the Type Tool, type the pages over the navigation background layer, I’m using "Futura Std" typeface this time, but feel free to change it.

Next, paint a small white watercolor mark behind the text as a hover effect and change the selected word’s color into dark blue (#223A54).

Step 11 – Melting Backgrounds

Next rasterize the "Content Bg" layer or convert it into a Smart Object, add a Layer Mask > Reveal All to it and using a black, soft Brush paint some spots over the Layer Mask. This process will melt down the "Content Bg" with the Watercolor landscape giving the design a polished look.

Step 12 – Page Title

Let’s add the Page Title. I’m using the "Futura Std" Typeface. I’m using these colors for the type: #F2F6FC and #E1EDFF. Now for the background, paint a single blue (#112C37) watercolor mark into a layer below the logo layers and change its Blend Mode to Soft Light. It’s a good idea to organize our layers into folders, so we will put all the involved layers into a folder named "Logo."

Step 13 – More Watercolor Marks

In order to increase the visual impact of the background, add more watercolor marks using several colors, place them all across the top border just above the "Landscape" layer. Then change its Blending Mode to Overlay. Finally add a big sky blue (#51D3D3) watercolor mark into a new layer just above "Landscape" and below "Content B.g" Then change its Blend Mode to Overlay as well.

Step 14 – How About Adding an Actual Paintbrush?

Using real life objects in web design is very trendy, we will add an actual paint brush image to our design. Open this picture extract a part of the paint brush and paste it into the main design across the header with its tip close to the watercolor mark created in the previous step. You can use a Layer Mask and a little, soft, black brush to feather the brush tip.

Continue Learning…

Now a days you can see a increasing trend of using nature elements in web-design. incorporating nature elements like trees , landscape, sea, sky etc in to the design gives a more realistic and pleasant look to the website

Here i’ve collected 30+ website designs base on nature theme, its quite interesting and inspiring to see how designers take colors and elements for nature and bring them in to web design, hope you all will like this collection

1.) 84Colors

2.) Hrasi

3.) Reklambyrå stockholm

4.) Dara’s Garden

5.) Springtime in Tennessee

6.) Adventure Travel

7.) Morphix Design Studio

8.) Native Springs Water

9.) Qird Studio

10.) Aquatory Group

11.) MacAllan Ridge

12.) kulturbanause blog

13.) Lendl Allen V. Trazo

14.) Viget Inspire

15.) Weingut Trumme

16.) 4design

17.) Adit SHukla

18.) Agami Creative

19.) Hellenic Holidays

Continue Learning…

This post is a collection of latest community news submitted on tripwire magazine by readers and other blog owners.  Most new posts in the web design and development community is included making this regular post a really fast and easy consumable overview of what is going on just now.  You can find more community news here

Photography by Leigh Taylor

Orlando wedding and engagement photographer. Leigh Taylor Photography is an award winning, natural light, on location photographer

Fresh Icon Sets You Probably Haven’t Seen Before

New icon sets are published every day on web design blogs. I have monitored many of these blogs a long time and I thought, therefore, show some of the best-looking icon sets I’ve seen recently.

Why Olympic Posters Are Terrible

Olympic posters have evolved a great deal over the last hundred years or so. David Ross, former Art Director of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, talks about it.

20 Eye Catchy Free 3D Fonts For Your Next Designs

In this article you will find 20 Eye Catchy Free 3D Fonts For Your Next Designs that can improve user experience. If you are designing a poster and you would like to add a some depth to it, maybe

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Weekly Inspiration No. 05

If you’re looking for something to inspire yourself then you just have to take a look at our new weekly blog. Enjoy this sensational collection of creative art work and design!

50 Beautiful Examples of Red Logo Designs for Inspiration

These 50 Beautiful Examples of Red Logo Designs for Inspiration will surely lighten up your day and will make you feel the love surrounding you this season.

16 Blogs to Help You Master the Business of Design

It’s important to be sure you understand how to grow your design business. I’ve compiled several of the best blogs talking about the business of design.

40+ Abstract Art Wallpapers, Digital Art Wallpapers, Colorful Wallpapers | Free Download

Download Abstract Art Wallpapers for your desktop screen.

Java Seven Make Developers Most Productive

Each JAVA packages comes with some most helpful techniques for developers.Apart from all other packages, java 7 promises new features like modularization, developer productivity tools

20 Fonts made popular by or inspired by Movies and Brands

If you’re a movie fan I am sure you’ll enjoy this collection of 20 beautiful movie/brand fonts. All these are free and I think they should be part of any designer’s font library.

35 Beautiful & High Quality UI Icon Sets

I have compiled a list of 35 high quality and beautiful icon sets that would be a great addition to anyone’s arsenal.

iPhone-Style Navigation:AJAX + Rotate (Part II)

This is the sequel of previous tutorial discussing how to make iPhone style navigation. Once I promised to talk about how to implement AJAX and how to add cookie onto the script we have made before.

Codeigniter shopping cart v1.1 Part 10: Front page

Today we will work on a webshop controller and its’ views. This module controls all the front-end functions. I will cover the front page in this article. The goals for the front page are the …

CSS3 Tutorial – Website-Navigation based on Border-Radius

This Step-by-Step Navigation-Tutorial is made by CSS3-Properties like Border-Radius. This CSS3-Tutorial demonstrates how easy it can be to get attention to your navigation without any images!

Logo usage #7: Electronics

The area of electronics brands is so wide and deep that I could easily name this article Volume 1. But then again, I think that it would all get extremely boring til the moment we do…

Fish Eye Dock Style Menus

Here are 7 great dock styled plugins and tutorials that will allow you to add your own dock to your website or project, and give your project that extra bit of bling.

CSS3 Tutorial – Website-Navigation based on Border-Radius

This Step-by-Step Navigation-Tutorial is made by CSS3-Properties like Border-Radius. This CSS3-Tutorial demonstrates how easy it can be to get attention to your navigation without any images!

A Collection Of Damask Patterns

Damask has enjoyed something of a mini revival in recent months, this design style is very ornate and highly decorative.

500 Business Card Giveaway from UPrinting

We are very happy to announce that we are staring our second giveaway for our readers. UPrinting have offered to give both-sided, full color 500 business card for the readers of metamags.com.

20+ Exceptional Online Professional Image Editors and Drawing Applications

Here are the list of some popular and Professional Image Editors And Drawing Applications that work online.

20 Shots: Long Exposure Photography Examples

Everybody can find something interesting and unique in the process of doing long exposure shots and outcome sometimes surprises yourself.

20 Best PSD to HTML Service Providers

Converting design files (PSD, PNG, AI etc) to high quality, cross-browser compatible valid top-notch XHTML/ CSS semantic markup manually has never been easy, as it takes lot of time and precision

23+ Crazy Funny Cubicle Pranks

Designers be aware: Just when you thought it was safe to leave your desk or office, think twice. Cause this could happen to you…

FlashMoto Introduces the Multilingual Flash CMS!

FlashMoto is excited to announce the launch of the renewed Multilingual Flash CMS. FlashMoto Control Panel interface has been translated into 12 languages.

10 Best PSD to Drupal Theme Service Providers

CMS(s) provide the ease to operate and manage your website and this is the reason why there are so many content management systems smearing the internet

10 Amazing CSS3 Tutorials and Techiques for Creating Buttons

This is a collection of tutorials about CSS3 button . CSS3 has been in effect despite last year. Yet support for browsers running very slowly.

10 Useful Typography Tools for Designers

Have a look at these 10 useful typography tools sites and let us know your thoughts in comment.

Competitive Intelligence – Data Acquisition and Analysis

You may control all aspects of your website but there are numerous factors beyond site optimization and measurement that impact your revenue directly.

FlashMoto Introduces the Multilingual Flash CMS!

FlashMoto is excited to announce the launch of the renewed Multilingual Flash CMS. FlashMoto Control Panel interface has been translated into 12 languages.

Drupal Themes

Drupal 6.x Themes.Over 30 categories. All templates are user friendly and easy to edit.

150+ Free Paper Textures for your Next Design

This 150+ Free Paper Textures for your Next Design post is basically a set of unique resources you don’t want to miss.

The 8 Best Forthcoming Web Design Conferences

Attending major web design conferences show potential clients that you take your work very seriously, that you are at the cutting edge of recent developments in your field.

38 Great Tutorials To Convert PSD To HTML/CSS

You designed your website or blog using Photoshop.Then what?Then the design you created must be converted and coded to become alive.This step is a little bit hard but don’t be afraid.

100 Fresh Creative Business Cards

A business card creates a physical connection and bond between you or your business and your customers. Most business cards are dull, boring, and don’t say much about the person

Nine Most Influential Mobile Trends of 2010

There is no denying that last year was the smartphone year, it was the dawn of Android, and at the same time we saw the mobile applications exploded while more buyers preferred ..

Glory: A Beautiful & Free WP Theme for Personal Blogs

Glory theme is Best Suited for Personal Blogs. It has a Fun & Fresh Design.

Freebie: Heart of the Unicorn Vector

This heraldry design finds its inspiration in the recently passed Valentine’s Day, and is freely available for use in both personal and commercial designs. I hope you enjoy it!

40 Free Professional Useful Icon Sets for Web Designers

Most of the websites in this era have really graphical and illustrator based icons which using in software applications as well, the demand for well-designed icons are too much..

3 GIMP Video Tutorial Downloads

Download Hull Design Online’s three top rated video tutorials for The GIMP. These tutorials will allow you to learn new tricks and optimise The GIMP for maximum productivity.

High Five Font – Exclusive Free Font Download

High Five Font is another free font exclusive for ImJustCreative, continuing the process of helping designers spread the word about their font creations. You can download High Five font for free below

35 Amazing Stationery Pack Designs

This post shows a showcase of 35 creative stationery designs for business cards, letterheads and compliments slips. Hope you like it!

9ish captcha solutions to make your web app impressive

Found some really helpful and good looking captcha solutions for you website integration. Thought to share so as to use them freely on your website.

Photography By Boris Ovini

Beautiful portrait photography by Boris Ovini talented fashion photographer, based in Canada, Ottawa, ON.

391 Nice Computer Icons From Icon Gab

A while ago, someone told me about icongab, a blog which provides so many icon set just like iconspedia & vistaicon. I amazed with their collections – they’re so beautiful.

Nine Most Influential Mobile Trends of 2010

There is no denying that last year was the smartphone year, it was the dawn of Android

35 Clever and Creative Billboard Advertising

creating unique outdoor Billboard in high traffic areas such as occupy roads. It is best way of targeting the audience and promoting your product in public.

The Tweek List, 2-19

Freelance Review’s favorite tweets of the week.

5 Free worn colored vintage picture frames

Today we are giving away 5 free worn colored vintage picture frames u can use in your designs, or to use as a frame for your pictures.

Awesome illustrations from the talented designer, Ricardo Gimenes

Ricardo is a graphic/web/motion designer and free lancer who spends most of his time creating awesome illustrations of popular websites.

Beautiful Wildlife Photography by Frtosi

Beautiful Wildlife Photography by Frtosi of various animals

Unique Tool For Nikon’s COOLPIX S70 Touch Camera

MRM Worldwide has joined with Nikon to form an online tool named the Nikon Virtual Touch Experience.

High Quality Green Textures, PSD, Brushes, Vectors, Tutorials and lots more

High Quality Green Textures, PSD, Brushes, Vectors, Tutorials and lots more

Create a Penguins Illustration Tutorial for Global Warming Cause

Global Warming is one of the biggest problems of the 21th century. Global Warming is changing our world and the way we live, it destroying habitats of animals. In this tutorial..

Create Simple A/B Tests In WordPress

A/B testing allows you to try multiple versions and find the one that works best for your goals.

61 Free Vector Apple Graphics

Feeling hungry? How about a fresh, juicy apple? Here is an incredible and delicious collection of 61 vector apple graphics…

Top 40 Authors Of The Famous Design Blogs

Today we’ve decided is to come up with an amazing list of the top 40 authors in the web design, web development and internet industry.

Top 20 Beautiful Websites

Here are my picks for the Top 20 Beautiful Websites based on visual artistry, integrated sound, ease of use, and pure uniqueness.

See full post here…