Something has changed here today. Smashing Magazine has shaped up. We know that extensive design changes usually create a split echo: some readers are happy and appreciate the additional features and benefits, while others don’t want to see anything change because they’re comfortable in their old habits. However, publishers have to update their websites from time to time to improve the user experience and add new features. And that day has come for Smashing Magazine.
Wet Paint!
Smashing Magazine’s redesign was done by Liam McKay and his design agency, WeFunction. We also tweaked a couple of things in the design. Footer and sidebar illustrations were designed by Pasquale D’Silva. Smashing Magazine may look a bit different at first glance, but keeping the general structure intact was very important to us. After all, we don’t want to confuse our readers; rather, we want their experience to improve.
So, minor details aside, what exactly has changed on Smashing Magazine? Here’s a summary:
You can now visit pages of our regular authors (e.g. Kayla Knight). There, you’ll find information about them, see an overview of their posts on Smashing Magazine and follow their Twitter stream. You can also visit a page that lists all of our regular authors.
You can now rate articles on Smashing Magazine (in the comments area of each post). The highest-rated and most-commented articles are displayed on the post’s category page (e.g. Graphics). And you can find an overview of our categories on the All Categories page.
You can now leave threaded replies to comments. Pages that have a huge number of comments are now paginated.
User-submitted design news now appears in the widget on the right side. This news is pulled from our sister website, Noupe. Everyone can submit news, which lands in the moderation queue and is manually approved by our moderators.
This sidebar widget also features recent jobs and the latest Smashing Forum entries.
We have re-organized our tags, removed duplicates and replaced some of them with more meaningful labels. You can now use our Tag Explorer (the “Popular tags” link at the top of the page) to navigate Smashing Magazine.
And Then There Is The Network
If you’ve already had a look at the new front page, you would have found some changes there, too: not just recent Smashing Magazine posts, but contributions from other design magazines. That’s because we’ve 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 game are Webdesigner Depot, Noupe, SixRevisions, UX Booth, Hongkiat, ThinkVitamin, Web Designer Wall, Designm.ag, Boagworld and Speckyboy. We call it 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.
Our main RSS feed (the one you are subscribed to) will not automatically contain excerpts of posts from our network members. We will have a separate SM network feed for that.
In fact, every network member has its very own channel on Smashing Magazine, with recent posts and Twitter updates. All content is manually approved and promoted on the network — no automation at all. So, you can be sure you’ll get only the best articles.
Needless to say, we will still be publishing our own insightful articles, which you can always find on our front page. The last article always appears at the top, with older posts clearly highlighted in a black box among the other SM network posts.
We are aware that this huge change will lead to misunderstandings and may cause problems at first. But we are certain it was the right decision and that everyone will benefit from it. If you prefer the old version of Smashing Magazine (the one without the posts from our network), you can use Smashing Magazine’s channel page, which is exactly the same as our front page before the redesign. Or just stick to our main RSS feed, which contains only Smashing Magazine’s posts.
Want To Join The Network?
The main requirement for membership in our content network is that you regularly publish high-quality content on your blog or magazine. You don’t have to be popular or have a lot of traffic; you could be just starting out. You can apply for membership by sending an email to network@smashingmagazine.com. We will be reviewing membership periodically, so please be patient and stay tuned for updates.
What Do You Think?
This redesign is work in progress. Your opinion is very important to us. The design definitely could use some changes and we are willing to improve it with your help. Of course, we may have missed something. Have you found any mistakes, bugs, errors or problems yet.
What do you think of the whole thing? We are open to your suggestions, ideas and criticism. Please let us know what you think in the comments to this post!
Today we are listing here 10 Most Popular multiple language wordpress plugins, which will allows visitors to toggle wordpress based website to any supported language. The multi-lingual sites are becoming essential for many businesses, especially those that market products internationally.
All of the plugins listed below supports all western character sets as well as non-western languages, such as Asian and Arabic.
WPML makes it possible to turn WordPress blogs multilingual in a few minutes with no knowledge of PHP or WordPress. Its advanced features allow professional web developers to build full multilingual websites.
qTranslate makes creation of multilingual content as easy as working with a single language. qTranslate supports infinite languages, which can be easily added/modified/deleted via the comfortable Configuration Page. All you need to do is activate the plugin and start writing the content!
xili-language plugin provides an automatic selection of language in theme according to the language of displayed post(s). xili-language select on the fly the .mo files present in the theme’s folder.
The plugin allows visitors to choose their language. It makes all the BuddyPress elements multilingual including the main site and all guest sites. Guest blogs can choose their language and create multilingual contents. Additionally, each guest can choose the admin language individually.
Transposh translation filter for WordPress offers a unique approach to blog translation. It allows your blog to be translated by your readers in-context.
mLanguage adds Multilanguage Support to your Blog. You have to write only one post/site by tagging the different languages. Easily switch between the Languages with the Menu without reloading the site and many more.
You can manage and edit all gettext translation files (.po/.mo) directly out of your WordPress Admin Center without any need of an external editor. It automatically detects the gettext ready components (like WordPress itself or any plugin / theme supporting gettext), is able to scan the related source files and assists you using Google translate API during translation. This plugin supports WordPress MU and allows explicit WPMU plugin translation too.
This plugin offers Complete language transliteration support for your wordpress blogs in Persian, Tamil, Telugu, Hindi, Malayalam, Kannada, Arabic, Nepali, Marathi, Punjabi, Bengali, Gujarati and Urdu using google transliteration API. Visitors can use Ctrl+G key combination to toggle between english and selected language.
We all love desktop wallpapers as they always come in handy and you will always find a wallpaper to express your feelings or mood. I know some of my friends who keep changing their desktop background almost on a daily basis. Unless like me, who rarely change their desktop wallpaper. So, How about you? When was the last time you changed desktop background?
It’s trick-or-treat time so gather the goblins, conjure up some creative costumes and prepare scary, and don’t forget about your computers. In this post we present amazing collection of Halloween wallpapers related to ghosts, witches, rituals, haunted houses and, of Course, lots of pumpkins and candles. Hopefully, everybody will find something interesting to charm up their desktop in this bewitching season. All wallpapers can be downloaded for free from their original source.
You may be interested in the following related articles as well.
Please feel free to join us and you are always welcome to share your thoughts even if you have more reference links related to other Halloween wallpapers that our readers may like.
Amazing Halloween Wallpapers to Charm Up Your Desktop
Wallpapers can serve as an excellent source of inspiration. Infect, we designers, can derive inspiration from almost everything around, and this collection can fulfills your bewitching inspiration related needs as we can promise you that when you start browsing them further in details it will surely refresh your memory and force you to download any or all for your desktop right now.
Textures have become more popular and been put to greater use in recent years. They’re not limited to Web design either; textures of all kinds are used in print design, illustration, traditional art, TV commercials… you name it! Texture is 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.
Over the last weeks we collected numerous examples of beautiful textured Web designs to inspire you, followed by a small collection of links to help you get started in using textures in your own designs.
If you like this post, you may be interested in reading some of our other texture-related articles:
Callum Chapman is a freelance designer from UK. When he isn’t designing for clients, he writes at Circlebox Blog (as well as many others in the community), makes free downloadable high-resolution textures and retweets design-related articles.
Inspiration is vital for any designer. This is why so many CSS galleries, design galleries and artistic showcases are floating around on the Web. Designers use these at certain times for a quick fix of inspiration, especially when the pressure of deadlines prevent them from seeking out offline, or “alternative,” forms of inspiration, as important as they are.
No designer should ever feel that taking time to find true inspiration is time wasted. This article explores offline sources of inspiration and discusses how they can be treated as a part of the design process. Furthermore, we’ll look into a few methods of deriving this inspiration, so it becomes an active part of creativity and be done more effectively.
The first step to getting into the habit of finding offline, or “natural,” inspiration is to stop looking at online inspiration in the first place. For many designers, online is the first place to look. It shouldn’t be.
The problem with showcases and galleries is that most of us tend to copy bits and pieces of them, thus creating a mish-mash of everything we’ve seen. This isn’t how design, or any creative field, should work. While graphic and Web designers are different from traditional artists, we should treat the creative “back end” any different. After all, we got into this field to be creative and express our artistic talents, so why don’t we?
Online Inspiration Isn’t Bad
Before delving any deeper, let’s get one thing straight: the point of this article is not to say that online inspiration isn’t unproductive in any way. In fact, it is quite a good thing and can very well produce the intended effect.
The unproductive part is when designers turn to it as their sole channel of inspiration. Showcases and galleries, rather, serve best as examples of best practices and ideas. Our designs should stem instead from our own creativity, aided by this online inspiration.
How to Stop the Cycle
For many of us, going to a CSS gallery the moment we start working on a new project is routine. Whether because we are behind in our work or just anxious to get started, true inspiration gets put on the backburner more and more over time. Hopefully, this article will help convince you that finding true inspiration is necessary to the design process. Even if you’re convinced, though, breaking old habits can be hard.
The trick is to consider alternative inspiration an an essential part of the job. While it feels more like play than work at first, finding true inspiration should mean more than browsing through the same material over and over. And we should know that in a creative industry, having fun is okay; it doesn’t mean we’re being unproductive.
We have to consider taking a walk, visiting a museum and sketching as parts of our job description, things that help us get our jobs done faster and less painfully. We’ll discuss below when we should seek out these other forms of inspiration and when it is okay to sift through galleries and showcases.
2. Forms Of Offline Inspiration
Let’s start by discussing what we can do to derive new forms of offline inspiration. Below are some tried and true methods for uplifting one’s inner creativity… without using a browser.
Nature
Nature is easily one of the places to find inspiration. Not only does it have variety, color and interest, but it takes its effect on us by mere instinct. Because of this, finding inspiration on a walk, a hike or just sitting in a park doesn’t take much effort. Let’s look at a few specific places where one can find it, though.
Weather Weather is just one part of what nature has to offer. Because weather is so closely related to mood, it can be a great source of inspiration. Think of your favorite season, a stormy night or a sunny day at the beach; take in the colors, textures and mood and implement them in a design.
Life Forms While weather can influence and inspire mood, life forms have yet far more variety than weather. Whether plant life or animals, a number of exquisitely designed elements are available from which to draw inspiration, through texture, shape, color, etc.
Geography and Landscape Geography and landscape is another major source of inspiration. Taking in your natural surroundings can have a calming effect on your mind and motivate you to design. Beyond whatever comes to you naturally, look at shape, texture and color, too.
The above are just a few quick examples of how nature can and should be used for inspiration. These are definitely the first choices for many designers who want a new creative outlook, and for a great reason.
The trick is to figure out how to get workable inspiration from nature and integrate it into a design. For specific examples on how to achieve this in detail, check out 17 Techniques for Creating Designs Inspired by Nature.
Museum Visits
Like nature, simply walking through a museum can relieve stress and, in turn, inspire. It doesn’t have to be a museum for art or design either. A science museum, historical museum or even aquarium or zoo can work. The point is to see things that are not in our everyday lives, while being in an environment that allows you to really focus on and appreciate them.
Being in a museum can lead us to new things, such as:
Alternative cultures and their arts;
Traditional or classical art;
An attention to different senses and a more empirical way of thinking (think of a science museum);
Weird, strange or outrageous exhibits to help us think outside of the box (like a “Ripley’s Believe It or Not” museum);
Historical objects that are shown in photographs and other media.
Because these experiences can lead to such alternative ways of thinking, they are great for getting away from the daily grind that is suppressing your imagination.
Drawing and Sketching
Many designers begin a project by sketching, but far too many jump straight into wireframes, layouts and then the final draft.
Instead of starting the design phase cold, sketch freely. Doodle, draw ideas, sketch abstract and non-abstract textures and shapes. When sketching for inspiration, don’t think of it as any other stage in the design process. Have fun with it; be carefree and laid back. Free-drawing is a great way to put all of those ideas in your head down on paper.
Many designers very likely grew up sketching and drawing. A lot of us probably had books or other resources on “How to draw,” explaining the technical aspects of drawing characters and other subjects. Doing this now at a more advanced level can be inspirational. Doing so, we advance our skills and are motivated to practice new illustration techniques. So, make an effort to refine your basic drawing and sketching skills.
Experiencing new things is a part of life. Without this, we fall into a rut. Think about it: when we began designing, we were full of ideas, motivation and inspiration. After doing it for so long, though, designing can become routine and uninspiring.
This is a part of life. But we obviously can’t quit our jobs and pursue unrelated goals whenever we feel like it. Instead, we must find a way to keep life exciting while maintaining our careers.
Try a new hobby that you find exciting, and then bring it into your designs. For example, if you’re learning a new language, incorporate the culture and styles associated with that language into your designs. If you’re learning a new craft, how can you incorporate the textures, shapes and actions of it into a design? Countless hobbies are out there. No matter how quirky or seemingly unproductive yours is, if you have a passion for it, it will help.
It doesn’t even have to be a hobby, but just something to get your mind off of work. For example, if you’re redecorating a room, there had to be some initial inspiration that drew you into it; use that spark in your design. Other life experiences involving family, friends and events can play a role in design, too.
The point is to enjoy hobbies and general life events more, and stop thinking of them as unrelated to work.
Music
Music brings emotion and puts imagery in our heads. It is a great art to jog our imagination.
While the techniques mentioned thus far may appeal only to some people, everyone should try music, because it relies on no visual source and can lead to the most creative outcomes. Deriving inspiration from music may not be as easy (because it is more abstract than a pattern, texture or shape), but it certainly gets our imagination and creativity flowing.
How you use this method is really up to you, but for more tips, check out Smashing’s other post, “Drawing Inspiration From Music.”
Photography
Using photos is an excellent way to incorporate many of the above methods, without having to travel around the world. Flying across the world to see the wildlife in the jungle or a foreign culture’s practices is not practical. Photographs, rather, capture real-life images from which you can draw inspiration and come up with texture, shapes, subjects and more.
While photography can be considered “online inspiration,” it is different in that one cannot take bits of a photograph and turn it directly into a design (the way you can with another website). Rather, one must use skill and creativity to turn it into a workable design, just as you would use a natural object in the wild.
Below are a few favorite photography showcases to get you inspired:
As with any other form of inspiration, take texture, color, shape, style and depth into account. In viewing art from different eras and cultures, we can draw inspiration from the style without copying the subject.
One’s Own Imagination
Think like a child again. With a bit of relaxation, we can come up with our own ideas again, without even an external trigger of the imagination. We can’t elaborate much more on this: the method will be unique to each individual. But it is bound to create the most original designs of all.
For a few fun tips on how to be imaginative, take a look at the simple WikiHow article ““How to Be Imaginative.”
3. Deriving Inspiration From These Sources
Knowing how to find inspiration through alternative sources comes down to the art and science of design. Rather than merely copy trends and examples, we have to use our knowledge of texture, shape, proximity and so forth to build fresh design. Our new sources of inspiration may now be difficult to harness but are sure to release our creativity.
Here following are some basic guidelines you can take to derive inspiration from any offline source.
Look at Texture
Many sources of inspiration are visual in nature, which means they may have interesting textures, whether from an animal skin or a wrinkled petal.
Many designs are not much more than texture at all. But even without conventional imagery, we understand the design perfectly well.
Everything has a shape that highlights its texture. We look at different shapes every day, but rarely do we stop to appreciate it. No matter what it is taken from, a design could resemble the source of inspiration itself or just bits and pieces of it.
Take the time to examine the object’s shape, angles, edges and dimensions. They may spark new ideas or lead to an idea for an element in your design.
Nature-inspired Web design was quite a trend there for a while, and it is still going pretty strong. The trend is notable because color is given such special attention and is implemented so carefully in designs. Green, blue and brown earthy hues are incredibly popular, and these colors and a bit of authentic texture are all a design needs to be nature-inspired.
We can apply the same attention to other offline sources of inspiration. For example, painters from different eras preferred different color palettes, and we can borrow these palettes for today’s designs. Likewise, different cultures, landscapes and imagery all provide a unique sets of colors to inspire us. All we have to do is stop and take notice.
Viewing the things we see every day from a fresh perspective makes them design-worthy. This could mean viewing them close up, upside down, from far away or from an entirely different angle. Whatever you choose, look at an object from an unusual perspective to discover something new about it.
We can be motivated to create something new after winding down for the day, after taking a walk, or after viewing some interesting photographs. But when it comes down to actually designing, we may still not know where to begin.
Just as we did when writing essays back in high school, we must first define our design’s theme; that is, come up with a “thesis” for our design. We may be inspired by Renaissance art that we viewed at a museum, but we might find that there is too much in the artwork to base a design on.
This is when we need to get specific. Should your design reflect the textures, colors and shapes of that era, or should it evoke a typical publication of that era (a website being a publication itself after all)?
Come up with a specific subject and idea for the design, taken from your much broader source of inspiration. Don’t just go with a nature theme; choose a cheerful snowy morning theme. Don’t use a book as a whole, but rather use an event recounted in the book, or an emotion that the event evokes.
You could incorporate a number of ideas from any source of inspiration, so be specific and choose one particular message to guide the design.
Collect Resources and Bits of Inspiration
Before starting the design phase, collect resources that you will need to complete the design. If your design is inspired by Renaissance art, assemble tutorials on creating old-paper effects, gather some period typography and collect any other textures, symbols, shapes and imagery that could be used in the design.
What’s great about this part is that even though you’re not actively designing, you’re still putting pieces together that will guide you to the final design. In other words, you’re in the process of brainstorming.
4. When To Use Offline Inspiration
There is a trend among designers to say that any offline inspiration is okay, but offline and online inspiration need to be balanced.
Offline inspiration sources are best for the early phases of a design. They keep you from going straight to CSS galleries the moment a new project begins, only to copy elements of the most original designs. Offline inspiration helps us come up with our own ideas and fall back on our own creativity.
5. When To Use Showcases And Galleries
Showcases and galleries are not a great source of inspiration early on. Rather, they are great to learn best practices and refine usability and see examples of how specific elements have been implemented. They are useful for turning inspiration into a workable design with solid usability.
For example, if you’re designing a blog theme, you could look at the styles of various “Read More” links and see which ones have the best effect. You could check out the navigation style of different website types (e.g. portfolio, realty website, Mac application website, etc.). Consistency among certain website elements is a good thing.
Showcases and galleries can also help generate ideas for style. An app website, for example, obviously wouldn’t look good with a grunge style. Some stylistic choices may not be that obvious, though, and CSS galleries can help us achieve a look that is original yet appropriate.
Conclusion
As you can see, both offline and online inspiration have their place. Knowing when to use each is the key to getting your creativity back and producing some original work once again. Hopefully, this post has motivated you to take the time to find alternative sources of inspiration.
We have just briefly touched on methods of finding alternative inspiration. There are, of course, many more. Feel free to share your own habits and techniques for gaining inspiration. The ways are surely endless, and we have to find the one that works best for us.
Further Resources
You may also be interested in these additional references:
Kayla Knight is a college student, freelancer and blogger. In her spare time, she maintains two blogs, Webitect.net and DesignFinds.Me, as well as a portfolio. Feel free to get in touch with her through her blogs, or follow her on Twitter: @KaylaMaeKnight.
A lot of designers think CMYK is the way to go when designing for print. We will, of course, always use CMYK-based ink, but this does not mean you have to work with CMYK files. You can work with RGB images to perfectly optimize your print colors and save a great deal of time in the process.
You may be interested in the following related posts:
For several of the following tips to work, you will have to create and save all of your Photoshop images and artwork in RGB color mode. If you’re a veteran designer, you probably think this goes against what you’ve been taught, which is to use CMYK color mode. Well, technology has come a long way, and nowadays RGB color mode is better because it produces a wider range of colors and allows you to use one image for several media, including print and Web.
Think of it this way: RGB colors (red, green, and blue) are created with light. That’s why your computer monitor and TV use RGB colors to produce its fantastic range of colors. CMYK colors (cyan, magenta, yellow and key, or black), on the other hand, are created by putting ink to paper. “Ink-on-paper colors” will never be as bright or saturated as the colors on your computer screen or TV, no matter how much ink you add to the paper. So, to get the widest range of colors possible, you need to save all of your Photoshop files in RGB color mode. Most of the time, you won’t even have to think about it, because almost every photographer will supply you with RGB images. All you have to do is keep them in that mode.
A 3-D map showing the range of the Adobe RGB (1998) color space, the sRGB (or small RGB) color space and the common newspaper CMYK color space. sRGB’s range is much smaller than Adobe RGB’s. Working in the Adobe RGB color space would result in much brighter colors. The range of the CMYK color space is much narrower. Especially for this newspaper, the white in CMYK mode isn’t white at all. It’s more of a dirty brown.
2. Specify The Right Color Settings
To successfully use an RGB image in Adobe InDesign, you first need to specify the appropriate color settings. Fortunately, Adobe has made it really easy for you to specify the right settings and quickly apply them across its Creative Suite. This is where Adobe Bridge comes in.
To specify a color setting in Adobe Bridge, choose Edit → Creative Suite Color Settings and then select your region: either “North America Prepress 2,” “Europe Prepress 2″ or “Japan Prepress 2.” If your region isn’t displayed in the dialog box, select “Show Expanded List Of Color Settings Files” at the bottom of the dialog box. After clicking “Apply,” the setting you have specified will be applied to Adobe InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator and Acrobat.
3. Ditch Photoshop EPS Files And Use PSD Files Instead
After your images and artwork have been saved in RGB color mode and you’ve specified the right color settings, it’s time to start designing. Do you still keep a copy of your native Photoshop (PSD) files and save TIFF or EPS versions, which you then import into InDesign? If so, you’re missing out on some valuable opportunities.
If you’ve been using InDesign for a while, you probably already know that it honors transparency effects in PSD files, but that’s not all. When you import PSD files, InDesign also honors clipping paths, spot colors, alpha channels, duotone colors and vector information (such as Smart Objects). You can even access all the layers in a PSD file by selecting “Show Import Options” when you import an image or choosing Object → Object Layer Options after importing an image. With all of these time-saving opportunities, saving all of your Photoshop images in the PSD file format is a no-brainer.
4. Accurately Simulate CMYK While Working In RGB
Keep in mind that even though you’re importing RGB images with bright and saturated colors, InDesign actually shows you what the CMYK equivalent of each image will look like. So, how does InDesign make that color conversion properly? Well, because you’ve specified the appropriate color settings in Adobe Bridge, InDesign will use those settings to accurately display each RGB image when it’s converted to CMYK color mode.
InDesign even goes a step further and shows you exactly how the colors in a layout will appear when printed on a certain type of paper using a specific output device. Simply choose View → Proof Setup → Custom. Then choose an output device from the “Device to Simulate” pop-up menu, and select the “Simulate Paper Color” option. After clicking “Okay,” the color of your pages will change, and your images will appear darker and less saturated. So, to get a good idea of how your layout will appear when printed on coated paper using a sheet-fed printer, choose “U.S. Sheetfed Coated v2.” This feature is great because it gives you an accurate idea of how your colors will appear when they’re printed.
If you use Photoshop, you may be wondering, “Wouldn’t it be nice if Photoshop could do the same trick, so that I can see what happens to my RGB images when they’re converted to CMYK?” Well, of course it can. Just choose View → Proof Colors, and make sure that “Working CMYK” is specified by choosing View → Proof Setup → Working CMYK. When you proof colors, you’re not actually changing the color mode of the image, so you can continue working in RGB color mode while simulating CMYK. This is yet another reason not to convert your Photoshop files to CMYK.
The top part of this image is a “SoftProof” of how this RGB image will appear when printed in a newspaper. The bottom part shows the original sRGB. The dirty color is actually the color of the paper. As you can see, the color of the paper affects all other colors.
5. Selecting the Right CMYK Output Profile For The Job
There are many different kinds of paper, such as recycled and brownish paper for newspapers, glossy paper for magazines, uncoated paper for stationary and bright-white coated paper for high-quality brochures. As you can imagine, each type has different characteristics when it comes to printing. The recycled paper sucks up more ink, and if you don’t take this into account, your beautiful full-color photos will become too dark, and the ink will blur over the paper, creating an ugly brownish effect.
So, how do you optimize artwork for all of these different kinds of papers? Well, that’s the easy part. Standard CMYK inks have been tested on every type of paper to the extreme. The way cyan, magenta, yellow and black are printed on a specific type of paper is documented in an ICC profile. All you need to do is download these free “Color Profiles” and select the right one when you export a PDF using InDesign (Export → Output → Color Conversion & Destination). If you’re not sure what kind of paper your printer will use, simply ask them. Most printers would rather answer a simple question than clean up colors afterward.
The information provided by the color setting that you specified in Adobe Bridge is used by InDesign to determine how to convert RGB images to the CMYK color space when you output a document. By using InDesign instead of Photoshop to make that conversion, you gain the benefits outlined in the following point.
6. Use InDesign Instead Of Photoshop To Make The Final Color Conversion
There are several good reasons to let InDesign do the conversion:
Images are all converted at the same time instead of one at a time before you import each into InDesign.
You can reuse the same image for different purposes. For instance, you might want to re-use the image on your website for a brochure, magazine or newspaper. If you let InDesign do the color conversion, it will optimize your RGB images for whatever output device and type of paper you choose.
You can simulate how the colors in a layout will appear on different kinds of paper using the same RGB images.
When you use Photoshop to convert all of your images to CMYK before importing them into your InDesign layouts, you prevent InDesign from optimizing the color for different output devices and paper types. If you make the conversion to CMYK first and start designing later, you might unwittingly alter the “maximum ink” and other important color-related characteristics that were pre-defined in your Photoshop file when Photoshop converted your RGB image to CMYK.
As a result, when you work on the colors and contrast later, what you see on screen won’t be what you get in print because you have altered the optimal colors.
7. Download All The Profiles
Different CMYK Color Profiles are available for different kind of papers and print processes. Several organizations provide top-of-the-line ICC profiles, all of which can be downloaded for free at the bottom of this page. The most common are:
Newspaper: ISOnewspaper
Magazines: ISOWebcoated
Full Color Offset:
U.S. Web Coated (SWOP) v2
ISOCated_v2
ISOuncoated
Europe ISOCoated FOGRA27
(or the new one, FOGRA39)
8. Exporting A Perfect CMYK PDF Using RGB Images
Once you’ve downloaded and installed the ICC profiles, they’ll be available to InDesign. You don’t even need to select the right profile and assign it to your InDesign document. All you have to do is select the right ICC profile when you export the document to PDF (Export → Output → Color Conversion & Destination). Although you don’t need to assign the right CMYK profile, I would recommend it, because it allows InDesign to match the colors when you select the “Proof Colors” command.
After choosing File → Export and specifying Adobe PDF as the file format, select the “Output” category on the left side of the “Export Adobe PDF” dialog box. Choose the appropriate CMYK destination from the “Destination” menu, so that InDesign can optimally convert all RGB images to CMYK. Also, be sure to select “Convert to Destination (Preserve Numbers)” from the “Color Conversion” menu so that the colors you’ve created in InDesign will maintain their original values.
9. Avoiding Errors When Using RGB Images And Spot Colors
You can use RGB images even when producing a high-end brochure that has die-cut embossed areas and spot UV coating. All you have to do is lay everything out in InDesign and then use a spot color to define the areas that will be die-cut, embossed or UV-coated. Make sure that the spot color objects are placed on top of the RGB images and that they are set to overprint: choose Window → Attributes to open the “Attributes” panel and select “Overprint Fill.”
When you export the document to PDF, the RGB images will convert to CMYK, and all of your spot colors will remain unchanged. I recommend that you check the color separations in Adobe Acrobat to make sure that everything that needs to overprint has been set to “Overprint” (Advanced → Print Production → Output Preview).
The cover of a brochure for a well-known Dutch beer brand. Adobe InDesign’s “Separations Preview” shows the RGB image in CMYK. Scene 2 shows the parts that will be highlighted using a glossy ultraviolet coating. Scene 3 is the part that will be embossed. Scene 4 shows all of the colors combined. (The combined image looks a bit weird because the UV coating and embossed parts have been given a extra spot color so that the printer can keep them separate from the full-color artwork).
10. Share Your PDF Files With Acrobat.com
Now you have but one problem to solve: getting that high-resolution PDF to your client and the printer. Email won’t work because a high-resolution PDF is usually too big. Most printers offer an FTP website, but many clients don’t know how to use FTP. Fortunately, sending out large files is much easier with Acrobat.com, which is a free Web-based service provided by Adobe.
With this incredibly easy and free service, you get your own online storage where you can upload high-resolution PDF files. You can notify your client and printer via email that a PDF is ready to download. And the email even contains a preview of the PDF. If you don’t want Adobe to email your clients, Acrobat.com lets you create a short URL to include in your own email. You can create an online “vault” if you wish, but no log-in or registration is required by default for your client or printer to access the PDF. You can even share PDF files on your website or blog using the embed code provided.
All of the color profiles and tricks in this article can be used throughout the entire Creative Suite: 1, 2, 3 and 4. ICC Profiles can be accessed from the following directories:
Mac OS X: …/Library/ColorSync/Profiles
Windows: …\Windows\system32\spool\drivers\color
Owning a copy of Adobe Acrobat is not necessary, but the application comes in handy when checking the PDF files that you’ve exported from Adobe InDesign. Adobe Acrobat even lets you see which destination profile you have specified in InDesign by choosing Advanced → Print Production → Output Preview. Quark XPress users can use these same ICC profiles.
Keep in mind that experimenting with color can create undesired results if you’re not sure what you’re doing. I highly recommend speaking with your printer before altering your workflow because he won’t be expecting color-optimized artwork if you’ve never bothered to submit it before. Should you have any doubts about the colors in a design, ordering a color proof on paper is always a good idea.
Related posts
You may be interested in the following related posts:
Marco Kramer is a graphic designer who works in the Netherlands. He specializes in the technical aspects of the design process. As such, he refers to his position as Digital Engineer. Marco has been publishing articles about pre-press and design-related topics for eight years on his blogs DigitalEngineer.net and MacMojo. He has recently started publishing articles for an international audience. (Illustrations by Frank De Man.)
Now is an exciting time to be creating CSS layouts. After years of what felt like the same old techniques for the same old browsers, we’re finally seeing browsers implement CSS 3, HTML 5 and other technologies that give us cool new tools and tricks for our designs.
But all of this change can be stressful, too. How do you keep up with all of the new techniques and make sure your Web pages look great on the increasing number of browsers and devices out there? In part 1 of this article, you’ll learn the five essential characteristics of successful modern CSS websites. In part 2 of this article, you’ll learn about the techniques and tools that you need to achieve these characteristics.
We won’t talk about design trends and styles that characterize modern CSS-based layouts. These styles are always changing. Instead, we’ll focus on the broad underlying concepts that you need to know to create the most successful CSS layouts using the latest techniques. For instance, separating content and presentation is still a fundamental concept of CSS Web pages. But other characteristics of modern CSS Web pages are new or more important than ever. A modern CSS-based website is: progressively enhanced, adaptive to diverse users, modular, efficient and typographically rich.
Progressively enhanced,
Adaptive to diverse users,
Modular,
Efficient,
Typographically rich.
Progressive Enhancement
Progressive enhancement means creating a solid page with appropriate markup for content and adding advanced styling (and perhaps scripting) to the page for browsers that can handle it. It results in web pages that are usable by all browsers but that do not look identical in all browsers. Users of newer, more advanced browsers get to see more cool visual effects and nice usability enhancements.
The idea of allowing a design to look different in different browsers is not new. CSS gurus have been preaching this for years because font availability and rendering, color tone, pixel calculations and other technical factors have always varied between browsers and platforms. Most Web designers avoid “pixel perfection” and have accepted the idea of their designs looking slightly different in different browsers. But progressive enhancement, which has grown in popularity over the past few years, takes it a step further. Designs that are progressively enhanced may look more than slightly different in different browsers; they might look very different.
For example, the tweetCC website has a number of CSS 3 properties that add attractive visual touches, like drop-shadows behind text, multiple columns of text and different-colored background “images” (without there having to be actually different images). These effects are seen to various extents in different browsers, with old browsers like IE 6 looking the “plainest.” However, even in IE 6, the text is perfectly readable, and the design is perfectly usable.
tweetCC in Safari.
tweetCC in IE 6.
In CSS 3-capable browsers like Safari (top), the tweetCC website shows a number of visual effects that you can’t see in IE 6 (bottom).
These significant differences between browsers are perfectly okay, not only because that is the built-in nature of the Web, but because progressive enhancement brings the following benefits:
More robust pages Rather than use the graceful degradation method to create a fully functional page and then work backwards to make it function in less-capable browsers, you focus first on creating a solid “base” page that works everywhere.
Happier users You start building the page making sure the basic functionality and styling is the same for everyone. People with old browsers, mobile devices and assistive technology are happy because the pages are clean and reliable and work well. People with the latest and greatest browsers are happy because they get a rich, polished experience.
Reduced development time You don’t have to spend hours trying to get everything to look perfect and identical in all browsers. Nor do you have to spend much time reverse-engineering your pages to work in older browsers after you have completed the fully functional and styled versions (as is the case with the graceful degradation method).
Reduced maintenance time If a new browser or new technology comes out, you can add new features to what you already have, without altering and possibly breaking your existing features. You have only one base version of the page or code to update, rather than multiple versions (which is the case with graceful degradation).
More fun It’s just plain fun to be able to use cool and creative new techniques on your Web pages, and not have to wait years for old browsers to die off.
Modern CSS-based Web pages have to accommodate the diverse range of browsers, devices, screen resolutions, font sizes, assistive technologies and other factors that users bring to the table. This concept is also not new but is growing in importance as Web users become increasingly diverse. For instance, a few years ago, you could count on almost all of your users having one of three screen resolutions. Now, users could be viewing your pages on 10-inch netbooks, 30-inch widescreen monitors or anything in between, not to mention tiny mobile devices.
In his article “Smart columns with CSS and jQuery” Soh Tanaka describes his techniques that adapts the layout depending on the current browser window size.
Creating Web designs that work for all users in all scenarios will never possible. But the more users you can please, the better: for them, for your clients and for you. Successful CSS layouts now have to be more flexible and adaptable than ever before to the increasing variety of ways in which users browse the Web.
Consider factors such as these when creating CSS layouts:
Browser Is the design attractive and usable with the most current and popular browsers? Is it at least usable with old browsers?
Platform Does the design work on PC, Mac and Linux machines?
Device Does the design adapt to low-resolution mobile devices? How does it look on mobile devices that have full resolution (e.g. iPhones)?
Screen resolution Does the design stay together at multiple viewport (i.e. window) widths? Is it attractive and easy to read at different widths? If the design does adapt to different viewport widths, does it correct for extremely narrow or wide viewports (e.g. by using the min-width and max-width properties)?
Font sizes Does the design accommodate different default font sizes? Does the design hold together when the font size is changed on the fly? Is it attractive and easy to read at different font sizes?
Color Does the design make sense and is the content readable in black and white? Would it work if you are color blind or have poor vision or cannot detect color contrast?
JavaScript presence Does the page work without JavaScript?
Image presence Does the content make sense and is it readable without images (either background or foreground)?
Assistive technology/disability Does the page work well in screen readers? Does the page work well without a mouse?
This is not a comprehensive list; and even so, you would not be able to accommodate every one of these variations in your design. But the more you can account for, the more user-friendly, robust and successful your website will be.
See these resources on user diversity and Web page adaptability:
Modern websites are no longer collections of static pages. Pieces of content and design components are reused throughout a website and even shared between websites, as content management systems (CMS), RSS aggregation and user-generated content increase in popularity. Modern design components have to be able to adapt to all of the different places they will be used and the different types and amount of content they will contain.
Object Oriented CSS is Nicole Sulivan’s attempt to create a framework that would allow developers to write fast, maintainable, standards-based, modular front end code.
Modular CSS, in a broad sense, is CSS that can be broken down into chunks that work independently to create design components that can themselves be reused independently. This might mean separating your style into multiple sheets, such as layout.css, type.css, and color.css. Or it might mean creating a collection of universal CSS classes for form layout that you can apply to any form on your website, rather than have to style each form individually. CMS’, frameworks, layout grids and other tools all help you create more modular Web pages.
Modular CSS offers these benefits (depending on which techniques and tools you use):
Smaller file sizes When all of the content across your website is styled with only a handful of CSS classes, rather than an array of CSS IDs that only work on particular pieces of content on particular pages, your style sheets will have many fewer redundant lines of code.
Reduced development time Using frameworks, standard classes and other modular CSS tools keeps you from having to re-invent the wheel every time you start a new website. By using your own or other developers’ tried and true CSS classes, you spend less time testing and tweaking in different browsers.
Reduced maintenance time When your style sheets include broad, reusable classes that work anywhere on your website, you don’t have to come up with new styles when you add new content. Also, when your CSS is lean and well organized, you spend less time tracking down problems in your style sheets when browser bugs pop up.
Easier maintenance for others In addition to making maintenance less time-consuming for you, well-organized CSS and smartly named classes also make maintenance easier for developers who weren’t involved in the initial development of the style sheets. They’ll be able to find what they need and use it more easily. CMS’ and frameworks also allow people who are not as familiar with your website to update it easily, without screwing anything up.
More design flexibility Frameworks and layout grids make it easy, for instance, to switch between different types of layout on different pages or to plug in different types of content on a single page.
More consistent design By reusing the same classes and avoiding location-specific styling, you ensure that all elements of the same type look the same throughout the website. CMS’ and frameworks provide even more insurance against design inconsistency.
Modern CSS-based websites should be efficient in two ways:
Efficient for you to develop,
Efficient for the server and browser to display to users.
As Web developers, we can all agree that efficiency on the development side is a good thing. If you can save time while still producing high-quality work, then why wouldn’t you adopt more efficient CSS development practices? But creating pages that perform efficiently for users is sometimes not given enough attention. Even though connection speeds are getting faster and faster, page load times are still very important to users. In fact, as connection speeds increase, users might expect all pages to load very quickly, so making sure your website can keep up is important. Shaving just a couple of seconds off the loading time can make a big difference.
We’ve already discussed how modular CSS reduces development and maintenance time and makes your workflow a lot faster and more efficient. A myriad of tools are out there to help you write CSS quickly, which we’ll cover in part 2 of this article. You can also streamline your CSS development process by using many of the new effects offered by CSS 3, which cut down on your time spent creating graphics and coding usability enhancements.
Some CSS 3 techniques also improve performance and speed. For instance, traditional rounded-corner techniques require multiple images and DIVs for just one box. Using CSS 3 to create rounded corners requires no images, thus reducing the number of HTTP calls to the server and making the page load faster. No images also reduces the number of bytes the user has to download and speeds up page loading. CSS 3 rounded-corners also do not require multiple nested DIVs, which reduces page file size and speeds up page loading again. Simply switching to CSS 3 for rounded corners can give your website a tremendous performance boost, especially if you have many boxes with rounded corners on each page.
Writing clean CSS that takes advantage of shorthand properties, grouped selectors and other efficient syntax is of course just as important as ever for improving performance. Many of the more advanced tricks for making CSS-based pages load faster are also not new but are increasing in usage and importance. For instance, the CSS Sprites technique, whereby a single file holds many small images that are each revealed using the CSS background-position property, was first described by Dave Shea in 2004 but has been improved and added to a great deal since then. Many large enterprise websites now rely heavily on the technique to minimize HTTP requests. And it can improve efficiency for those of us working on smaller websites, too. CSS compression techniques are also increasingly common, and many automated tools make compressing and optimizing your CSS a breeze, as you’ll also learn in part 2 of this article.
Rich typography may seem out of place with the four concepts we have just covered. But we’re not talking about any particular style of typography or fonts, but rather the broader concept of creating readable yet unique-looking text by applying tried and true typographic principles using the newest technologies. Typography is one of the most rapidly evolving areas of Web design right now. And boy, does it need to evolve! While Web designers have had few limits on what they could do graphically with their designs, their limits with typography have been glaring and frustrating.
Until recently, Web designers were limited to working with the fonts on their end users’ machines. Image replacement tricks and clever technologies such as sIFR have opened new possibilities in the past few years, but none of these is terribly easy to work with. In the past year, we’ve finally made great strides in what is possible for type on the Web because of the growing support for CSS 3’s @font-face property, as well as new easy-to-use technologies and services like Cufón and Typekit.
The @font-face rule allows you to link to a font on your server, called a “Web font,” just as you link to images. So you are no longer limited to working with the fonts that most people have installed on their machines. You can now take advantage of the beautiful, unique fonts that you have been dying to use.
The three screenshots above are all examples of what @font-face can do.
The main problem with @font-face, aside from the ever-present issue of browser compatibility, is that most font licenses—even those of free fonts—do not allow you to serve the fonts over the Web. That’s where @font-face services such as Typekit, Fontdeck and Kernest are stepping in. They work with type foundries to license select fonts for Web design on a “rental” basis. These subscription-based services let you rent fonts for your website, giving you a much wider range of fonts to work with, while avoiding licensing issues.
We still have a long way to go, but the new possibilities make typography more important to Web design than ever before. To make your design truly stand out, use these modern typographic techniques, which we’ll cover in even greater detail in Part 2.
See these resources on current CSS typography techniques:
We’ve looked at five characteristics of modern CSS websites:
Progressively enhanced,
Adaptive to diverse users,
Modular,
Efficient,
Typographically rich.
In part 2 of this article, coming soon, we’ll go over the techniques and tools that will help you implement these important characteristics on your CSS-based Web pages.
The web industry nowadays is very productive. During these years there have been many trends followed and every day the designers experiment new techniques creating new tendencies in the art of making website.
Recently is evident the necessity of a direct communication with customers and a website is the first place where a company can make know their cool stuff and services. A well-designed website is important for the growth of a business and often to create a “fresh” and clear image for a company (or a product, or a freelancer) we need the help of the art of simplicity. For these reasons a minimal and super-clean layout can be the perfect solution for an attractive website.
In this post, after a little overview, you’ll see some of the best examples of minimalism in modern web design
The more time and effort you dedicate for a usable, user friendly design and hitting your objectives, the higher are your chances for getting better results in the end of the month.
You may be interested in the following design inspiration related articles as well.
Please feel free to join us and you are always welcome to share your thoughts even if you have more reference links related to design inspiration that our readers may like.
Building a super-clean website that works is not an easy operation. The web designer should create an impressive, harmonious, design using only basic elements.
Contrast
Contrast is the value difference between the colors on your design and it is import in any web design work, but when we talk about minimal website a good contrast is not enough. We need more contrast, we need the perfect balance between background color and text color.
Typography
It has been proved. An opportune use of typography is essential for a good web design work. In some cases, specially when text has a notable relevance, it is the most important design element.
For clean and minimal websites the right choose of the typography, that means a good fonts, appropriate size, correct hierarchy (title, sub-header, body text) and a thoughtful use of the spaces, is absolutely indispensable.
Photos and Images
A good photo or a beautiful illustration can make precious a website, and sometimes the images become the fulcrum of the entire design.
Harmony of Layout
Designing “invisible lines”, planning a proper arrangement of the contents on the page are two important things to do for building a readable and harmonious web page.
Details make the difference
A detail can make the difference, of course. Often a tidy particular is the key to make unique a website.
While compiling this list, it’s always a possibility that we missed some other great minimal and simple designs. Feel free to share it with us.
In the first part of a series on the UX = Brand, the adventure of a web designer starts in a McDonald’s, where he discovers that there is a worm hole between the world of Branding and User Experience Design. Years later he learns that it is the Interface that connects both worlds. This is the first part in a series.
There he goes, the web designer, stepping up to the counter of an empty McDonald’s at 3 o’clock in the morning. He is scanning the overhead menu, putting a cheeseburger in his mental shopping basket. “Cheezubahga, onegaishimasu,” we hear him say, “with an iced tea.”
Waiting for his order, he examines the wireframe of the display on the cash register, the mechanical logic of the deep fat fryers, the input/output logic of the ice cream dispenser. Coming late from work, with his mind still in design mode, he starts tracing the restaurant’s interaction model, drawing arrows from the entrance to the counter to the tables to the trash cans; seeing how the conveyor-belt kitchen, the trays with the paper liners, the bolted down seats and the meals comprise a single, complete customer interface. “They must have run usability tests,” he thinks, taking his tray to the table.
Hungry for Food = Hungry for Words
When we are hungry for food, we follow similar patterns as when we are hungry for information. Similar, infantile patterns. At both times, we fall into a mode of dull impatient demand. We want everything immediately with as little interaction as possible. We want exactly what we expect in the way we are used to get it. When hungry, the last thing we fancy is thinking or making difficult decisions. Because, well, that’s how our body works. And that’s why after a hard day of work we often sleepwalk to McDonald’s.
When we are hungry for knowledge, we inevitably become mentally passive and use all our energies to receive information. Because that’s how our brain works. And that’s why we blindly return to Google search when looking for data.
McDonald’s = Google
McDonald’s is designed for you to switch off your brain as soon as you enter the door. Buying and consuming a Cheeseburger is an automated routine — simple and mindless, like tying shoelaces or riding a bicycle. You don’t need to analyze, guess, evaluate or make difficult decisions because McDonald’s is built in a way that minimizes conscious action. Once learned, the transitions between each step of the ordering process are automatic and seamless. Moreover, in any of its franchises anywhere in the world, McDonald’s provides one consistent user experience. Once learned, ordering, buying and eating becomes an easy routine. It’s just like Google: blunt, focused and clear.
Both McDonalds and Google have a lot in common: both are designed for you to switch off your brain as soon as you enter the “door”.
McDonald’s was driving “user centred design” to the extreme before interaction designers even thought of the notion. From its logo to its tables, from its hamburgers to its trash cans, it’s all designed to be practical and useful rather than aesthetically pleasing.
This functional approach is applied all the way down to the cheeseburger. Standardized in shape, taste, and consistency, it has an identity that is clearly distinct from that of the sandwich. There’s no need for a knife, fork or spoon, plate or pair of chopsticks. In fact, it has a simple hand-to-mouth interaction model not unlike that of baby to breast.
Fast Food Epiphany
The look, feel and taste of McDonald’s food is as branded as its logo. The design of the cheeseburger is a core component of McDonald’s corporate design, just like Ronald McDonald’s and the ketchup and mustard colors of its packaging. Its interface is its brand; its brand is its interface. But so what? Of course, everything at McDonald’s is designed and standardized. Of course, everything is calculated and controlled in a huge global franchise.
My epiphany that night was not that McDonald’s success is based on cold calculation. It was the realization that McDonald’s apparent lack of culinary and aesthetic taste is the result of ‘cold’ user interaction design. McDonald’s design is as user-focused as a high-traffic website. It’s designed so well that it makes us blind like sucklings. Just like Google’s search interface, its beauty is in the interactive experience and not in the object.
A Worm Hole between Branding and UX
In my experience old school branders and interaction designers fundamentally misunderstood and hated each other. They lived in parallel worlds. In one world the designer controlled everything, in the other the user was in charge. What confused me was that the longer I studied McDonald’s frameset, the less I was able to tell whether I was looking at a brand or at an interface. Is this branding or is it user experience design?
I had found what Astronomers call a ‘worm hole.’ A shortcut through space and time that acts like a magic elevator between different realities. McDonald’s seemed to lay at a critical point: the gravitational center of branding, where everything slants into a funnel that leads to a parallel world of user experience design. And back again. Ironically, worm holes have two so called mouths that are connected with a throat:
After discovering that this fascinating indeterminacy between brand and user experience applied to most of the recently successful brands — be it the iPhone, the Wii or Star Bucks — I decided to investigate it by thinking about it and writing about it.
Learning from Babies
Just by watching my baby grow and interact with its world, I learned more about interfaces than I could have possibly imagined. Most of what babies do is learning to interface with their surrounding. Observing the baby drinking its milk, I noticed that the interfacing does not happen on the nipple. It happens more generally between the mother and the child. In other words: The nipple is not an interface; it’s just one touch point. The interface is in the whole experience a child makes during breast feeding. The interface is the way they connect. And this experience defines the brand “Mama” in the beginning.
By studying breast feeding (the blueprint of user interaction) live, I was more and more certain that the correct equation was Brand = User Experience. Translated back into theory: The Interface was in the equals sign, not on the other side of the equation. The interface is what connects the worlds of Branding and User Experience Design. It’s the tunnel. The elevator. The wormhole. The throat.
Make sure you don’t miss the second part of the series on Brand = UX. In the next part we’ll look at the tricky question “What is an Interface? And can it be intuitive?”
Would you like to see the next parts of this series on SM?
Hopefully you’ll find this new format inspirational and interesting. What do you think? Please let us know and comment on this article! Your feedback is very valuable for us and it helps us to meet your expectations. Thank you.
About the author
Oliver Reichenstein is the founder and CEO of iA, a user experience design agency with offices in Tokyo and Zurich.
Once Again, we’ve got something special for our community. InstantShift again came up with cool freebies giveaway as promised. This is our way of saying thanks to our readers for being part of the instantShift community and helping us make it to where we are right now. We never wait for special occasions to announce good freebies. We at InstantShift love to give away things regularly, all year long. This time I’m pleased to announce our latest freebies giveaway where you all can download 48 Professional PSD Logos Designed by Shaboopie.com to InstantShift readers.
Below you’ll find a full preview of all the logos included in this set and the download link appears at the bottom. Since no logo is perfect, they would greatly appreciate your feedback so that they can improve their designs. Enjoy!
One of the most important aspects of identity is a logo. A logo can say everything a viewer needs to know about a company or a personal website. One simple image can engrave an unforgettable memory into a potential follower or a customer. However, logo design is not an easy task. Even the simplest of logos often take a lot of time and thought and may cost thousands of dollars.
In today’s world just about everyone has a website and everyone needs some sort of identity to make a presence on the web. Suppose you are a blogger who has many interesting ideas to share but you have no image to achieve a presence on the web. You don’t want to spend a lot of money on a logo but you are certain you need something to set you apart. This is the idea behind Shaboopie logos. They understand that there is a great need for customizable logos but very few available resources that come at no cost at all. They hope their free logos create an identity for your online presence or at least inspire you to pursue your own designs. Since no logo is perfect, they would greatly appreciate your feedback so that they can improve their designs.
By downloading this logos, under the terms of the Creative Commons License, it is vital that you understood all the terms and conditions where you are free to share and edit them for noncommercial purpose.
While browsing these freebies, it’s always a possibility that you also want to share your great work freely to our readers. Feel free to contact us.
Epicenter Consulting is a custom software development firm that specializes in business-focused solutions that transform the way our clients operate. […]
Established by Lorenzo Richiardi, numeroquattro is specialized in graphic, web and interactive design. It works for public agencies, associations and private firms, providing design and art direction for print and screen. […]
We are a small, enthusiastic design studio. We cherish beautiful things and bring commitment (and obligatory monster hats) to our work every single day. […]
EXITlabs is a small creative studio located in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates offering online solutions, marketing, web design, logo design, communication, branding or advertising. […]
Free reading story books for young readers! Beautifully illustrated, interactive story books with real page flipping and user friendly, clean website design. […]
Mindutopia is an interactive graphic design agency based in West Michigan. We specialize in website design and development, social media and branding campaigns. […]
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