Knowtebook - Webworkers Daily Milk » design

Smashing Flyer Designs Volume #1

Knowtebook — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 15:47:59 +0000

Flyer designs have always been one of the most powerful marketing tools available to businesses and organizations. If you are having a creative block or you are looking for samples of what you would like to show to your designer then check out the flyer design ideas for some inspiration! Click on the flyer to see the whole knowte!

30+ Outstanding Ways styling Comment Zones

Knowtebook — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 09:01:35 +0000

While the form design can be appealing, and sometimes entertaining, the actual comments themselves should be the larger focus. After all, you want your readers to feel comfortable engaging in a discussion on your blog - from typography, to element placement (name, date, etc.) all the way down to color and organization, comment zones are extremely important to a web design. That’s why Brian showcases 30 and more creative and original comment zones. He chose those specific examples based on typography, organization, color, information placement, image use, and readability. There are two parts. You need to click on both of them. Enjoy!

Volume 1

Volume 2

Convert your Image To Vector Online For Free

Knowtebook — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 08:05:30 +0000

If you would like to convert any image to vector, there is an easy way to do that without using any software like Photoshop or Illustrator. Vector Magic allows you to convert images to vector directly from their website.

Just upload any image from your computer. It is very easy to use, just follow the instruction and you will have your vector image. Then select the output vector (EPS) or in Bitmap (PNG) to download. They have are different prize-plans, but if you register new you will get 2 tries for free.

Inspirational Cross Cultural Webdesign - Volume #1: Asia

Knowtebook — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 09:52:14 +0000

Working international as a webworker means being flexibel in design habits. All of us have their own personal style when designing websites, but cultural habits get more and more important as well. For example Coke had once brought up an ad with women in bikinis and tried to sell the ad globally. You may can imagine that this was not be as successfull in the arabien countries as it was in western countries. So we have to take care of cultural habits and to localize design components. Lets take a look at some asian webdesign in this issue. We plan to cover some more countries during the next weeks to point out differences to be aware off.

Culture impact issues in general

In the first run we have to look at the culture issues that have an impact on cross cultural Webdesign.

Metaphors: Fundamental concepts communicated via words, images, sounds, and tactile experiences. Conceptsof pages, shopping carts, chatrooms, and blogs (Weblogs) are examples. The pace of metaphor invention and neologism will increase because of rapid development, deployment, and distribution through the Web.
Navigation: Movement through content and tools. Examples include dialogue techniques such as menus, dialogue boxes, control panels, icons, tool palettes, and windows.
Interaction: Input/output techniques, including feedback. Examples include the choices of keyboards, mice, pens, or microphones for input and the use of drag-and-drop selection/action sequences.
Appearance: Visual, auditory, and tactile characteristics. Examples include choices of colors, fonts, verbal style (e.g., verbose/lterse or informal/formal), sound cues, and vibration modes.

Example 1 - Colors

Bruce Arnold explains if you are aiming at global audiences it is worth remembering that colours have significant associations. White in many asian cultures is associated with death, in contrast to the black in many European cultures. Red means happiness in China, anger/danger in Japan and fife/creativity in India. Green and saffron yellow have particular associations in Islam and among Buddhist demographics. When you are in doubt which colorstyle to use, go for “CUTE” style rather than “cool” (and don’t be afraid of cuty characters either).

Traditional Design in smoth colors

Red and dark colors

Example 2 - Navigation

Design principles regarding website navigation (eg. assisting users to readily identify where they are, where they have been and where they might go) have a cross-cultural application. There are also differences in how people from different cultures read a page. Many read from left to right, top to bottom. Some read from right to left. Some read from bottom to top. In modern times, it has become increasingly common for these languages to be written horizontally, from left to right, with successive rows going from top to bottom, under the influence of European languages such as English.

Googles uniqe design differs in asian countries

Very playful and flashy

45 Excellent Free Web Templates

Knowtebook — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 09:21:24 +0000

Free Design Templates don’t have to be ugly, cluttered,and boring, Some web-sites offer high quality templates for free you can use them for your personal and commercial projects without any restrictions.

Free Template Examples

Pattern Freebies: 26.000+ Free Photoshop Patterns for any use

Knowtebook — Sat, 17 May 2008 11:02:58 +0000

Patterns can be used to make really awesome and realistic graphics. Nick La used for his Parallax Gallery a wooden floor pattern which you can see below.

If you need some free patterns, here are some links!

CGTextures

The worlds largest texture site with over 25000+ free textures.

Filter Forge

The Filter Library is a free online repository of filters created by our designers and Filter Forge users. You can submit your own filters to the Filter Library, and if they get popular with the Filter Forge users, you can earn rewards including a free copy of Filter Forge.

About.com - Sue’s Wood Pattern Textures Set

IN TEXTURE : Creative Texture Source

Creation studio of high resolution textures for computer graphic designers, multimedia designers. Royalty free textures for private and commercial use.

Update: Site is closed!

Textures

More than 1350 texture to download. textures on the site are divided into catalogue.
They are working on inteligent search method, wich will let you to find a requested texture more easily. Excellent use for backgrounds, in games or in 3D programs

Whats about you! Where do you get your patterns?

Tutorial: The Importance of SEO for Designers

Knowtebook — Fri, 09 May 2008 10:13:58 +0000

According to a poll Nick La conducted, just over 1 out of 10 people don’t think SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is mandatory as a designer; and what really surprised him was about 24% don’t even know what SEO is! If you’re among the quarter of people who don’t know what SEO is or understand how it can help you, you should really read this article. This is an SEO guide for designers who want to learn about making it easier for websites or blogs to be found by search engines. He will explain the common mistakes made by designers and developers.

Increase Your Readership by Creating A Mobile Version

Knowtebook — Tue, 06 May 2008 13:21:30 +0000

By this time there are more mobiles sold than people exist. The Market for mobile devices will highly increase during the next few years. So it is very important to distribute the content to increase your readership & conquer the mobile web!

Features

Custom domain name* - Use your own domain name or sub domain.
SMS Widget - Place our SMS Widget onto your blog so your readers can get your mobile link via SMS message.
Automatic Redirect - Use our Automatic Redirect code to detect and redirect your mobile visitors to your mobile site.
Brand your mobile site - Upload your own image header/logo, grow your brands presence.
Generate revenue - Enroll in our revenue sharing program and earn 50% of all advertising profits using Google AdSense Mobile and AdMob!
Automatic Image Resizing - Got images? Too big for a mobile screen? No problem, we’ll shrink them down for you!
It’s affordable - By affordable we mean free. Yes we have a Professional level account, but all of our core features are available to everyone free of charge.
Fully Compliant - Your mobile site will render perfect on your visitors mobile devices as we’re 100% .mobi compliant!
Fully Hosted - No need to download anything! Just create your mobile site and we’ll do the rest!

Mobile Design: Screen size trends for 2008+

Knowtebook — Sun, 04 May 2008 15:13:39 +0000

Morten Hjerde has compared some available and coming devices that could represent a trend. LG and Samsung seems to be partial to the 400 x 240 screen size. They have released several devices with this screen size the last year. Follow him up to an analysis of mobile screen size trends.

CSS: Perfect pagination style using CSS

Knowtebook — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 16:14:58 +0000

This tutorial explains how to design a pagination for search results or more in general to split a long list of records in more pages. It’s a question I often receive, so Antonio Lupetti decided to publish a very simple post which explains how to design a perfect pagination style using some lines of HTML and CSS code.