Noupe

One of my favorite websites, they have given me many hours of useful posts that I always enjoy. Thanks Noupe!

2008 Most Popular Design Posts, Tutorials and Resources

50 Most Beautiful Icon Sets Created in 2008

Smashing Magazine

An everlasting battle of which of their articles to read first.

Smashing Highlights of 2008

Just Creative Design

Started reading only a short while ago, Jacob Cass has helped the design community in many ways.

2008 Round Up

CrazyLeaf Design Blog

A blog full of many useful resources.

Most Beautiful Websites of 2008

Smashing Apps

Useful website constantly updated.

Exceptional Logo Rebranding in 2008

David Airey

Best Design Blog Posts of 2008

Vector Diary

Best Illustrator Tutorials and Articles of 2008

Abduzeedo

60 Great Adbuzeedo Articles of 2008

Web Designer Wall

Best of CSS Design 2008

Toxel

Top 75 Best Design Resources of 2008

The Design Cubicle

50 Brilliant Design Posts of 2008

Brand New

Best and Worst Logo Re-Designs of 2008

I Love Typography

Best Fonts of 2008

Nettuts

Best Tutorials and Freebies of 2008

Function

I just wanted to add this article, it is probably one of my favorite this year.

50 Stunning Examples of A Great Re-Design

Thank you design bloggers for all the resources you have provided this year.

Here is a list of snowboard designs to inspire you this winter season.

And while your in the winter mood why not try and design your own snowboard. You can download a photoshop outline of a snowboard here: Snowboard Design

]]> http://observin.com/2008/12/28-snowboard-designs-for-inspiration/feed/ 14 http://observin.com/2008/08/web-design-ideas-12-ways-to-improve-your-websites-design/ http://observin.com/2008/08/web-design-ideas-12-ways-to-improve-your-websites-design/#comments Fri, 08 Aug 2008 02:51:48 +0000 Kyle http://observin.com/?p=199 There are lots of ways to improve your site’s web design but sometimes you need help thinking of new ideas. So we have collected a list of creative techniques to help you come up with ideas for your designs.

This will be part one of a series we hope to be writing on simple ways to improve your sites design. If you have any techniques that you like to use or find attractive leave us a comment.

We also plan on offering tutorials on how to do some of these techniques so if you want to know how to do something, leave us a comment!

NAVIGATION

Rather then a traditional horizontal or vertical link setup, try something like a map. This is creative and a great way for your viewers to enjoy your sites navigation. There are a lot of ways to make your navigation different, such as instead of ordinary tabs, try styling them in unique ways such as the tabs on a folder.

BACKGROUND

Grunge in design is a great way to add character to flat colors. Using grunge can add a subtle texture that makes your backgrounds and images stand out.

Find Brushes

There is a fine line between being too simple and being cluttered. Using patterns in your designs correctly can be the perfect addition to your site. Try patterns that you don’t usually see to really stand out.

Find Patterns

Wood is a popular design trend of recent years and is gaining popularity for its ability to blend well with many designs. A subtle use of a wood element is a great idea to fill in a space that could use some life.

Find Wood & Similar Textures

Another trend that is starting to pickup is watercolors. Web designs are evolving further into pieces of art with trends like watercolor. A great way to add texture to your background.

Find Watercolor Brushes

Notebook-like paper lines are great elements for designs that are writing related.

Find Notebook Paper

Adding items like coffee cups, books, pens and other items that you might find on your table are good ways to add personality to your designs,

Find Desk Items

SMALL ADDITIONS

A paperclip is a great way to make a part of your design more realistic; tied together with the notebook paper lines can make realistic looking paper. Nails, tacks, pins etc. could be other objects to use. Tape is another small way to add something to your design.

Find Paper Clips

Post-It Notes are simple ways to style a small sections of your site. If you have a twitter update section using a post it note background could be a way to make the updates stand out.

OTHER

Stitching is another cool technique one can use in their designs to create borders or shapes.

Adding a background to your text can help it stand out. This technique is also effective when you have a background that might make it hard for your readers to see the text.

An interesting addition that I have always found unique is the use of elements such as doors, windows etc. to frame items of your site.

Are there places that you know of to find great resources for your website? Leave us a comment and help others.

Have any other ideas? Give us your and you’ll be credited for them, just leave a comment below the post.

1. Sex Drive

The symbolism is clear and effective. The red colour of title and speedometer needle contrasts with the white background which makes it stand out.

2. The Midnight Meat Train

The Midnight Meat Train has great colour and tone. The blurring of the image allows the title to stand out and still manages to create an effective mood.

3. Wall-E

This Wall-E poster is a great example of the use of the rule of thirds method in which an image is broken into 9 section which supposedly creates tension, energy and interest. You can clearly see this technique being used. This is an important design technique and is worth learning more about.

4. 28 Weeks Later

The red background makes the eyes of the women stand out extremely well, focus is also drawn to them and ask the questions, why focus on her eyes? and what is she looking at?

5. Little Miss Sunshine

This simple poster effectively uses a vibrant color to attract attention. The typography is simple but stands out well.

6. Poseidon

The colors and tone of this image is very effective in drawing interest. Although the title is upside down it is still easy to read because of its simple and bold lettering.

7. State of the Union

The symmetry of this poster is what interested me; symmetry can be an effective design technique because in our minds we view symmetry as beautiful and balanced.

8. King Kong

This poster does not even need a title because it uses a character we are all familiar with. This poster also uses framing to cut out what we don’t need to see.

9. Band of Brothers

The two parts of this poster I like are the background image and the typography. The top is unique because it is much like a silhouette of the soldiers, the background color and harsh clouds helps display the tone of the image. The typography is interesting because it is spaced to fit equal distances between the edge of the poster and the text.

10. Saving Private Ryan

A similar poster to the band of brothers also uses the silhouette effect. The four faces blend effectively into the clouds. The typography uses all lower cases and separates the words “saving” and “private ryan” by bolding one and narrowing the other.

11. Scarface

The background is whats interesting in this poster, as the two colors fuse together through Al Pacino’s image making his expression, gun and closed fist stand out.

12. Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas

This poster is just wacky, it is an example of how experimentation can turn out great results.

13. Walk The Line

Vector Art stands out quite well as it increases the simplicity of the colors, making each layer stand out more.

14. American History X

Another simple black and white image chooses what it wants to display and stand out. When you use black on white the black images stand out because of the strong contrast.

15. Vacancy

This is personally one of my favorites, the tone is extremely strong from the multiple dark textures which also allow the creatively placed title to stand out. A tip here is to think of creative ways to display your content.

16. The Spirit

The textures and colors give this image a gritty dark feeling.

17. V For Vendetta

This retro inspired poster was not afraid to take elements from old wartime propaganda images.

18. The Invisible

This poster uses a creative way to display something which ordinarily would be… invisible. The rain also helps seperate the dark outline from what would be a dark night.

19. Underworld

The poster uses backlighting to make the character stand out. This is an effective technique, use a dark background but behind text or an image try putting a lighter color or glow behind it.

20. The Dark Knight

The blurred image in the background helps to make the title stand out.

21. The Matrix Reloaded

This is an incredibly simple poster but is a perfect example of simplicity and black on white. The posters character stands out incredibly clear against the complete white background.

22. Shaun Of The Dead

This poster is extremely creative. The typography is unique as it uses a zombies reaching arm to create the letter A. The doors are unique framing tools. I really like designs who use images such as doors or windows to frame objects. The faces of the zombies are all saturated while the main character is coloured and holding a vibrant yellow bouqeut, which heavily contrasts the depressing faces of the zombies. The slogan is also perfect as it explains exactly what is going on.

When your viewing this poster ask yourself, “would this image be the same without the color placed on the main character?” Simply adding the color turns the movie from a zombie movie into a romantic comedy.

23. Day Watch

This image is a great example of focal point. The funneling crows helps draw the focus down the image into the center, which is conveniently where the title is.

24. Casino Royale

The use of shadows and different focuses helps to make specific images of this poster stand out.

25. Batman Begins

The bright sun behind Batman helps draw your attention to the character, while the white title also stands out prominately against the black.

26. King Arthur

If you do not know the controversy behind this poster you should probably look it up. But that aside this poster is different, rather then using a simple background to allow the title to be easily seen, the poster uses a somewhat cluttered background which blends together allowing the title to be seen prominently.

27. The Nightmare Before Christmas

Yet another silhouette effect, this may be one of the best examples of how using contrasting colors can draw attention to wherever you would like.

28. Sideways

The rule of thirds and the use of hand drawn images is a refreshing change from the movie shots traditionally used. The one thing I do not like about this poster is how dark the title is.

29. Big Fish

The warm use of colors, large title text, silhouette and unique display of lettering summarizes many techniques that can be found in interesting designs.

30. Pirates of the Carribean

The use of a well known symbol in a creative way is a great way to stand out and drawn in attention.

31. Secret Window

This is a moody image, it uses framing effectively to inspire curiosity into what is outside the frame. It also uses the title of the movie effectively by creating a eerie mood and having the shadow of a window frame on the face of the character.

I hope that you find this list useful.

I would also like to hear where you get your inspiration from so if you have something in particular leave a comment!

The benefits of creating a theme for your website is that it allows you to seperate your website from the competition and create a lasting impression on your users. A theme also helps to inspire creativity as you can style ordinary elements such as buttons or a sidebar with elements that are inspired from your theme.

There are so many websites on the internet, how are you going to make yourself unique?

As we have already discussed, creating a theme can help individualize your site from its competitors. Creating a theme that is relevant to your topic can make your site much more unique. Using textures, elements and images can improve your websites overall look.

Deciding On A Theme

What your website theme is going to be will depend on what type of website you are creating. For our purposes we will pretend we are making a web design site. One benefit of this genre is that there are a million directions that you can go.

When you have so many directions to go with there are two general choices you can make: Make a completely unique theme or make a theme that relates to your website name. If your website was called Pirate Designs you could make a theme using elements related to pirates.

Designing With Your Theme

Alright so lets pretend our web design site is called Pirate Designs, how are we going to design our website? First lets think of what comes to mind when we think of pirates. When I think of pirates I think ships, swords, cross bones, guns, gold and treasure.

We could use wood for the background, a treasure chest pieces to build a sidebar, cross bones for a logo. For colors its best to use colors that work well together, using different shades of brown from dark brown to a light tan would work well for a pirate inspired theme.

Other elements that you can style are things such as list bullets which could be gold bullion’s, input boxes could have a gold border etc.

You can see that once you decide on a theme and start designing it, it gets easier to think of creative ways to style your site. If your stuck on your theme search on a image site using the keywords related to your theme to get inspired.

Finding & Making Your Theme Elements

You can find some great free patterns and textures from these sites:

Squidfingers

DinPattern

Shizoo

For images you can check out:

Flickr

stock.xchng

I hope that you found this post interesting and useful.

We would love to compile a list of website that use unique and creative themes for their websites so if you have one leave us a link in the comments below and maybe your site will be featured.