» Web Design

The Showcase of Beautiful Pinhole Photography

Vailancio Rodrigues — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 14:36:15 +0000

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Camera is a remarkable piece of innovation. However, it is people — professionals and newbies alike — who make it truly remarkable. It’s the photographer behind the camera. It’s their imagination, passion and talent and knowledge of the medium. You don’t need a high-end costly equipment to get beautiful results. Just your talent, a way of looking at different things and imagination is together more than enough for a great shot. It’s also the ability to envision the final result in your mind which is important.

Pinhole camera is a simple home-made camera (toy camera) which only uses film or CCD sensor (more recently) enclosed in a fully opaque container and does not use any lenses or any kind of optical instruments. You can easily construct this camera yourself using things lying around like match boxes or any kind of boxes, paper, duct tape etc. The small amount of light passing through this pin sized hole produces image onto a photographic film or a CCD sensor.

If you don’t want to get your hands dirty on creating a pin hole camera by yourself, you can use your DSLR with some modifications (replacing camera lenses with a pinhole). Also, pinhole cameras are available in the market: and they are quite popular, too — after all, you don’t have to worry about the focus and distortions as there are no lenses involved. Also, you might end up with lovely motion blurred photographs.

In today’s weekend post we present beautiful and inspiring photographs shot using a pinhole camera. Please notice how photographers use the camera creatively to produce quite remarkable images. At the bottom of this post you will find links to some photographers and references to related resources to get you started. Also, we listed related Flickr pools which contain thousands of further examples of what can be achieved with this techniques. Get inspired, folks!

[Offtopic: by the way, did you know that Smashing Magazine has one of the most influential and popular Twitter accounts? Join our discussions and get updates about useful tools and resources — follow us on Twitter!]

Beautiful Inspiring Pinhole Camera Photographs

Tarquin Coates

Tetsuya

The calmness of blue by Andrew Watson

Invader by TEIKO

An Oceanic Ghost Forest by Danielle Hughson

The Iron Cycloid by Scott Speck

Matteo Bagnoli

The Sleeping Zebra by Scott Speck

Sarah Knopf

Follow The Tunes by Tim Franco

Remarkable Photographers

And here is a brief overview of some remarkable photographers from Flickr. These are some of great photographers that will come to your mind every time you think of pinhole photography. They have added a new demission to photography: their photostreams are full of beautiful photographs.

Zeb Andrews

Tea Room

Scott Speck

Further Resources

http://www.smashingmagazine.com

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Seven Must-See Videos and Presentations for Web App Developers

Louis Lazaris — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 07:57:23 +0000

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In previous video roundups, we’ve collected together some interesting videos and presentations from a variety of speakers discussing topics covering usability, graphic design, CSS frameworks, web standards, and more. In this small roundup, we’ve included seven videos that we think would be of great interest to web app developers in particular, with less focus on design and standards.

These presentations are a little more technically heavy than ones we’ve featured in the past, but we think they’re worth every minute. Check them out, and be sure to comment to include links to any related videos that you feel are worth mentioning.

[Offtopic: by the way, did you know that there is a Smashing eBook Series? Book #1 is Professional Web Design, 242 pages for just $9,90.]

Speed Up Your JavaScript

Speaker: Nicholas C. Zakas

As an interpreted language, JavaScript is filled with hidden performance issues that conspire to slow down your code and ruin the user experience. Learn exactly what is fast, what is slow, and what you can do to squeeze that last bit of performance out of your JavaScript code.

Notable Quotes:

“The problem is that JavaScript is slow… And the secondary problem is that people notice that it’s slow, because a lot of the web is about perceived performance. If your [code] is slow and people perceive it to be slow, then you're in a lot of trouble."

"Really the issue is, browsers aren't going to help you with your code. They don't care that your code is running slow, they're not going to do anything to adapt for it. So really, if something has to be done to speed up your code, it pretty much has to be done by you."

Series of articles by the author on the same topic:

Further Info:

HTML 5 and Internet Explorer 9

Speaker: Giorgio Sardo

Giorgio Sardo talks about HTML5, CSS3, SVG, and fast JavaScript support coming in the Internet Explorer 9 platform. His presentation includes demos showcasing the latest code, providing best practices on how to make web application standards compliant, fast and interoperable across browsers.

This is a humorous presentation that will be of interest to front-end developers who want to create cutting-edge applications while keeping up with the latest developments in web standards.

Notable Quotes:

"How many of you are still on IE6? You're more than welcome to leave the room now."

"Microsoft is committed to web standards. And I'm very serious when I say this. [audience laughter] It's not a joke!"

"Our job as browser vendors is to make sure that we give you a professional implementation of HTML5, something you can rely on, something that, if you start building your application today, in one year from now it will not break just because the standard changes."

Further Information:

A similar presentation by the same speaker on MSDN

Introduction to HTML 5

Speaker: Brad Neuberg

If you want to know what's new in HTML 5 but haven't had a chance to do much reading on the topic yet, this video by Brad Neuberg provides a solid introduction to HTML 5's most powerful capabilities and features. In this presentation he discusses five aspects of the HTML5 spec: (1) Canvas and SVG; (2) HTML5 Video; (3) The Geolocation API; (4) The HTML5 database and application cache; and (5) Web Workers.

This is a great video and a must-see for anyone that wants to start building powerful web apps using HTML5's newest features.

Notable Quotes:

"One of the things that's really unique about HTML5 is it [allows you to] drop SVG right into a normal HTML page, so it really makes SVG a core part of HTML."

"Currently, video is complicated, and it's outside your control... In 2009 video really should be a part of the browser... HTML5 now gives you a video tag that really works very similar to the image tag, so you don't have to have very complicated objects or plugins — video just works."

"Using all this JavaScript... we can end up not writing apps great, that end up freezing the browser, causing it to run slowly... HTML 5 gives you something called Web Workers, and this lets you run JavaScript in the background in such a way that it won't 'hose' or kill the browser."

Further Information:

Brad Neuberg's website

eCSStender: the 'jQuery of CSS'

Speaker: Aaron Gustafson

In this video, Aaron Gustafson discusses an overview of his new JavaScript library along with demos and example code to demonstrate how it can be used. Along the way, Gustafson includes some interesting points on the history of the HTML and CSS specs. He also discusses the library's compatibility with IE6 and CSS3 selectors.

Notable Quotes:

"You can use [eCSStender] for patching older browsers... basically standardizing implementations across browsers."

"What the extension in the case of border-radius is doing is actually figuring out what it is that it needs to do and then building the implementation that the browser wants... It greatly simplifies the design process."

Further Information:

10 Things I Learned From the jQuery Source

Speaker: Paul Irish

This is a unique, informative, and entertaining screencast from one of the web's best JavaScript developers. Irish is funny and down-to-earth while he reveals some cool little nuggets that he's discovered from examining the jQuery source. The screencast is a remake of Irish's presentation at the recent Texas JavaScript Conference.

Notable Quote:

"Everyone... considers jQuery this black box, and this black box is this magical box that just works — it has this great API, we use it, we don't have to worry about how it actually works internally, we're not going to look inside the source and figure it out. But I'm here to say, if you do, I think you're going to benefit from it."

Further Information:

Steve Huffman on Lessons Learned at Reddit

Speaker: Steve Huffman

A presentation from Future of Web Apps Miami 2010 by reddit co-founder Steve Huffman. Huffman explains some of the most important lessons he and his development team learned while reddit was growing. This is a highly technical presentation that concludes with some audience Q&A.

Notable Quotes:

"If this talk had existed when we were starting reddit, I think it would have saved me a lot of time, so I hope something in here isn't obvious to you now and you can learn from it."

"I dreaded my phone ringing. Nobody would call me for any other reason than to tell me Reddit was down. Even my mother would call me and say, 'Steve, your website’s not working.' Thanks mom."

"Wasting disc and memory is totally fine if you’re not making your users wait. Discs and memory are far cheaper than annoying your customers."

Further Information:

The Paradox of Choice

Speaker: Barry Schwartz

This video, on the surface, is not about web development in any way, but provides an interesting viewpoint on "freedom of choice" and may well remind app and website designers to avoid bombarding users with choices and complicated options. Some very controversial insights are given here into what makes people happier, providing some food for thought for those concerned about usability.

Notable Quotes:

"The way to maximize freedom, is to maximize choice. The more choice people have, the more freedom they have, and the more freedom they have, the more welfare they have. This I think is so deeply embedded in the water supply, that it wouldn't occur to anyone to question it."

"[Having too much choice] produces paralysis rather than liberation. With so many options to choose from, people find it very difficult to choose at all."

Further Information:

Watch the video on TED

http://www.smashingmagazine.com

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Showcase of Beautiful Photography

Smashing Editorial — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 13:35:03 +0000

Sometimes, a picture can be powerful enough to be inspirational material all by itself. To provide you with some inspiration for the upcoming week, this sunday we feature some truly beautiful and impressive images from talented artists and photographers worldwide.

Whether in black and white or in colors, they are all related by a strong sense of composition and an emphasis on lightening and colors work. All images are linked to their sources, which you are encouraged to visit. Other work of the photographers we have featured here is certainly worth discovering as well. Please notice that some images are available as prints as well.

[Offtopic: By the way, did you know that Smashing Magazine has a mobile version? Try it out if you have an iPhone, Blackberry or another capable device.]

Beautiful Photography

Dreaming
Amazing sleeping beauty, where the beauty is actually also the beast, by Peter ツ. Prints are available as well.

Blue Sky

Far And Away

Inside Capitol Hill

The Endpoint
By Jeannette Oerlemans.

Falling Up

Song of Tide
By Wira Nurmansyah from Indonesia.

Blue
By Earl A. Jones.

Bunny Bokeh
Happy bunny bokeh wednesday, by Little Miss Patricia.

The Cat

Abstract
By tanakawho.

Ink Sea
By Hermin Abramovitch.

Fan’s Eye
A macro shot by LauHi.

falltuer

Painter
By an unknown artist (please let us know the photographer in the comments).

Ant, The Driver
By Raphael Guarino.

A purple leaf
By National Geographic.

Flower Petal
By Alistair Campbell.

Keeper
By Wysseri.

Who Feels Love
By Ciuky.

In The Mood 4 Love
By Antonio Navarro Wijkmark.

Tunnel
By Kleemass.

Eyjafjallajökull
By Skarphéðinn Þráinsson.

Susanna Majuri
A disturbing yet insteresting serie of images by Susanna Majuri.

San Torini

Abandoned
By tEdGuY49.

blue canary
By Ursula I Abresch.

Bearded Dragon
A macro shot by LauHi.

Ant (by Unknown)
Please let us know who is the author of this image in the comments.

Light Paintings by Twin Cities Brightest

Last Click

The Plugs
Well, that’s not a beautiful photo per se, but we are confident that this image will spark your imagination for a more productive workflow — at least when it comes to handling cabels and plugs!

Would you like to see more similar inspirational posts?

http://www.smashingmagazine.com

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Web Designers, Don’t Do It Alone

Paul Boag — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 11:34:46 +0000

Whether freelancers, small agency founders or website owners, too many of us work alone. The downside of the digital revolution is isolation. The Web allows us to do alone what previously would have required a team of people. It also frees us from the constraints of geography, allowing us to work from home. But while these are benefits, they also leave us isolated.

[By the way, did you know we have a brand new free Smashing Email Newsletter? Subscribe now and get fresh short tips and tricks on Tuesdays!]

The Dangers Of Isolation

Over time, working in isolation (even if you function as part of a team) can prove harmful to your mental health, business and website. In fact, even if other people are working on a project of yours, if they are junior to you, you can still feel isolated.

lifeandlove, Shutterstock

If you don’t find a peer with whom you can share ideas and discuss your business or project, you face a number of dangers:

Dry up creatively
Creativity is born of interaction. Being consistently creative on your own is hard. The best ideas come from people brainstorming together and from one great idea leading to another. Without someone to bounce ideas around with, your business or project will lack a creative spark.
Lose confidence
Over time we can lose confidence in our abilities or our business. This is especially true when we make mistakes and things go wrong. Without someone to encourage and reassure us, we can begin to second-guess our decisions.
Become over-confident
While some suffer from a lack of confidence, others are over-confident and need to be challenged and questioned. This is a trait I suffer from; I would happily dive headlong into disaster if my fellow directors did not constantly question my ideas. Without people like this, moving your business in entirely the wrong direction would be too easy.
Reach the limit of your knowledge
We can’t all be experts at everything, and yet running a website and a business requires a broad range of skills. When working in isolation and tackling problems beyond your comfort zone, you can easily reach the limit of your expertise and flounder.
Have a blinkered perspective
Another problem with working alone is that you have only a single perspective on your work. By adding another set of eyes to your problems, you gain a broader vision and can approach your challenges from a different angle.
Feel overwhelmed
Running a business or a business-critical website can feel like a burden. You are often required to make big decisions, particularly with hiring and expenditures. Making these decisions alone is a big responsibility and can be really scary. Having someone to share that with would make a big difference.

So, can you identify with any of these traps? If not, then I suggest you read the one about over-confidence again! I don’t believe a single website owner or entrepreneur couldn’t benefit from an outside perspective.

The question, then, is how do you find someone?

Getting An Outside Perspective

The most obvious solution is to partner with somebody at the outset. Whether you work with someone on a website or form a business with an associate, partnerships can be very beneficial. This is what I did with our company, and I haven’t regretted it for a minute. I would be lost without my two co-founders, Chris and Marcus.

That said, I know that not everyone’s experiences with partners have been rosy. Also, by the time you read this, the opportunity for this kind of partnership may have already passed.

What can you do then? What other options are available to those seeking an outside perspective and someone to bounce ideas around with?

Here are some options:

Sleeping partner
This is the approach we took. We have a non-executive director named Brian who works with a number of companies and keeps us on our toes. He has a radically different view of business and constantly challenges us. In return, he has a small stake in the business. He is worth every penny.
Paid consultant
If you don’t fancy having someone so entrenched in your business, why not consider an external consultant with whom you could speak on an ongoing basis? Admittedly, this kind of consultant can be pricey, but they do bring an outside perspective to the table.
Mentor
Another option is to approach a Web designer or website owner you admire and ask them to mentor you. Obviously, these people are probably busy with their own work, but if you are willing to pay for their time, you might get some valuable advice. You’ll usually need only an hour per month to stay on the right track.
Buddy
A buddy would be a cheaper option, someone in a situation similar to yours. The two of you could agree to chat regularly and share the challenges you face as business or website owners, discussing different approaches and ideas.
Community
Yet another option would be to look not for a consultant, mentor or buddy, but for a supportive online community. Loads are around, but make sure the one you join is not too big. You want people to remember you and your circumstances.

Whatever you decide is entirely up to you. The point is, if you want to realize the potential of your website or business, you need the help and encouragement of others. Humans by nature work best in groups, and you are no exception. We are not meant to do it alone!

(al)

http://www.smashingmagazine.com

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50 Fantastic Favicons: Episode 9

Sven Lennartz — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 08:21:27 +0000

Every now and again we showcase fantastic favicons, those tiny pieces of art that you’ll find in your browser’s address bar or when rifling through your bookmarks. These little gems are important because they serve as visual indicators to help visitors easily identify content in their browser. That aside, favicons are just nice to look at, and way too many websites don’t make use of them. We want to change that, which is why we are presenting what is now the ninth episode in our favicons series: a small article with tiny images and fast loading time… for a change.

We’ve written numerous articles about favicons in the past. If you’d like to find out more, feel free to look at these posts:

Any picture’s merit is debatable. But notice that these favicons were chosen not simply for their beauty and originality; it was important to us also that each fit the overall website design and logo. Pay attention to the details of the design.

All favicons are linked, of course, to the websites from where they were taken (if they still exist). Click on them to get more insight into how favicon design relates to overall layout design. The order here does not indicate any ranking.

	Tableau Public
	Gnash Project
	Top Roundups
	Elastic Tabstops
	i-on interactive
	Arc Technology Group
	Kodingen
	Sound Light Vision
	Highcharts
	Faces
	Photoscape
	London Reviews
	Open Faces
	RocketTheme
	Techbridge
	Soft eXpansion
	Screwturn Wiki
	Nimbupani
	Spoonjuice
	Universität Freiburg
	Paragon Software
	iMasters
	TechEBlog
	FitBit
	DropBox
	Axialis
	Swebapps
	Acquia
	Snipt
	MIX Online
	Second Market
	Open X
	Filemail
	55Eleven
	Onehub
	Projectbubble
	Projektwerk
	Medienlab
	Iconshock
	Splitweed
	Goby
	M1 Design
	PageStat
	Commadot
	Babbelblog
	Tammy Hart
	Toufee
	Lion Framework
	High Beam
	Mixxt
	CMSExpo

And finally, all the favicons in one picture:

(al)

http://www.smashingmagazine.com

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Desktop Wallpaper Calendar: March 2010

Smashing Editorial — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 10:43:17 +0000

Desktop wallpapers can serve as an excellent source of inspiration. However, if you use some specific wallpaper for a long period of time, it becomes harder to draw inspiration out of it. That’s why we have decided to supply you with smashing wallpapers over 12 months. And to make them a little bit more distinctive from the usual crowd, we’ve decided to embed calendars for the upcoming month. So if you need to look up some date, isn’t it better to show off a nice wallpaper with a nice calendar instead of launching some default time application?

This post features 45 free desktop wallpapers, created by designers across the globe. Both versions with a calendar and without a calendar can be downloaded for free.

Please notice:

all images can be clicked and lead to the preview of the wallpaper;
you can feature your work in our magazine by taking part in our desktop wallpaper calendar series. We are regularly looking for creative designers and artists to be featured on Smashing Magazine. Are you one of them?

So what wallpapers have we received for March 2010?

Super Mario bros 1985

"My 25th anniversary tribute to Super Mario bros." Designed by Davide Vicariotto from Italy.

preview
with calendar: 1024×768, 1280×800, 1280×960, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1600×1200, 1680×1050, 1920×1200
without calendar: 1024×768, 1280×800, 1280×960, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1600×1200, 1680×1050, 1920×1200

Haiku on Hanami

"And the wind says swish, swish…" Designed by April Joy E. Jasmin from Philippines.

preview
with calendar: 1024×768, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1200
without calendar: 1024×768, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1200

Butterfly

"The bright colours of March." Designed by Ellen Xue from Canada.

preview
with calendar: 1024×640, 1280×800, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1200
without calendar: 1024×640, 1280×800, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1200

Spring Time

preview
with calendar: 320×480, 1024×768, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1600×1200, 1650×1080
without calendar: 320×480, 1024×768, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1600×1200, 1650×1080

Sticks and Stones

"Was daydreaming and listening to Sticks and Stones by The Pierces over and over againand came up with this idea for the March Calendar." Designed by Kathlyn Marie Salazar from Philippines.

preview
with calendar: 1024×640, 1280×800, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1200, 2560×1600
without calendar: 1024×640, 1280×800, 1440×900, 1680×1050

Searching for spring

preview
with calendar: 800×600, 1024×768, 1280×800, 1280×960, 1400×1050, 1440×900, 1600×1200, 1680×1050, 1920×1200
without calendar: 800×600, 1024×768, 1280×800, 1280×960, 1400×1050, 1440×900, 1600×1200, 1680×1050, 1920×1200

Goes in like a lion and out like a lamb

"Just an illustration for march :)" Designed by Jennifer Herd from Canada.

preview
with calendar: 800×480, 1024×768, 1280×800, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1200
without calendar: 800×480, 1024×768, 1280×800, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1200

Soom

"This is a color-work done 100% with Adobe illustrator CS4, its all about messing with gradients, transparency and a lot of blend tool. “Soom” means breath, this represents the breathing of universal time. the time of the stars." Designed by David Fernandes / Random Spirals from Portugal.

preview
with calendar: 320×480, 1024×768, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1200
without calendar: 320×480, 1024×768, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1200

Up

"Fun spring wallpaper." Designed by Anca Varsandan from Romania.

preview
with calendar: 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200
without calendar: 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200

Even Cupcakes Have Bad Days

preview
with calendar: 1024×768, 1280×800, 1440×900, 1600×1200, 1680×1050, 1920×1200, 1920×1440, 2560×1600
without calendar: 1024×768, 1280×800, 1440×900, 1600×1200, 1680×1050, 1920×1200, 1920×1440, 2560×1600

Ghost Stories

"Background picture by Esa Wendelin" Designed by Marta Miazek from Poland.

preview
with calendar: 640×480, 800×600, 1024×768, 1152×864, 1280×960, 1400×1050, 1600×1200
without calendar: 640×480, 800×600, 1024×768, 1152×864, 1280×960, 1400×1050, 1600×1200

Gummy March

preview
with calendar: 640×480, 800×600, 1024×768, 1152×864, 1280×800, 1280×960, 1280×1024, 1400×1050, 1440×900, 1600×1200, 1680×1050, 1920×1200, 1920×1440, 2560×1600
without calendar: 640×480, 800×600, 1024×768, 1152×864, 1280×800, 1280×960, 1280×1024, 1400×1050, 1440×900, 1600×1200, 1680×1050, 1920×1200, 1920×1440, 2560×1600

A New Day

"It’s the start of a brand new day." Designed by Stephanie Lam from Australia.

preview
with calendar: 1024×768, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1680×1050, 1920×1200
without calendar: 1024×768, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1680×1050, 1920×1200

Lucky Shamrocks

"Despite the three-leaved clover being synonymous with St. Patrick’s Day, I decided that a four-leaved clover would bring more luck to all the readers. Despite the three-leaved clover being synonymous with St. Patrick’s Day, I decided that a four-leaved clover would bring more luck to all the readers. Cheers!" Designed by Crystal Ng from Malaysia.

preview
with calendar: 1024×768, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1900×1200
without calendar: 1024×768, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1900×1200

Fractal

"Inspired by last months article about Mathematics…" Designed by Zhongde Liu from Germany/China.

preview
with calendar: 1024×768, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1680×1050, 1920×1200, 2560×1600
without calendar: 1024×768, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1680×1050, 1920×1200, 2560×1600

Telephones

"The telephone has had a bit of an impact over the last century on the way we communicate, so I thought a telephone-themed wallpaper would be appropriate for the month of its patent." Designed by Dan Sweet from USA.

preview
with calendar: 320×480, 1400×1050, 1440×900, 1600×1200, 1680×1050, 1920×1200
without calendar: 320×480, 1400×1050, 1440×900, 1600×1200, 1680×1050, 1920×1200

Midnight Sun

"The midnight sun sets on the party in the trees." Designed by Chris Alexander (Yipori) from England.

preview
with calendar: 800×600, 1024×768, 1152×864, 1280×800, 1280×960, 1400×1050, 1440×900, 1600×1200, 1680×1050, 1920×1200, 1920×1440
without calendar: 800×600, 1024×768, 1152×864, 1280×800, 1280×960, 1400×1050, 1440×900, 1600×1200, 1680×1050, 1920×1200, 1920×1440

Romanian Tradition Martisorul

preview
with calendar: 800×600, 1024×640, 1280×800, 1280×960, 1400×1050, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1200
without calendar: 800×600, 1024×640, 1280×800, 1280×960, 1400×1050, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1200

Ladybug

"If I would be a ladybug…" Designed by Christine Schirbel from Germany.

preview
with calendar: 1024×640, 1024×768, 1280×800, 1440×900, 1680×1050
without calendar: 1024×640, 1024×768, 1280×800, 1440×900, 1680×1050

Daisy

preview
with calendar: 320×480, 1024×768, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1200
without calendar: 320×480, 1024×768, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1200

Popephoenix

"This what we do. This is how we live. This is how we evolve. All for the sake of art." Designed by Popephoenix from USA.

preview
with calendar: 1024×768, 1280×720, 1900×1200
without calendar: 1024×768, 1280×720, 1900×1200

No Smoking

"Millions of people die every year because of Smoking but yet millions of people still smoke. I Designed this wallpaper just to Celebrate the NO SMOKING Day and raise our voices against this habit that Kills." Designed by Vanshika Wadhwani from Bahrain.

preview
with calendar: 1024×768, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050
without calendar: 1024×768, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050

Women as nature

"Women have long been associated with nature – metaphorically, as in ‘mother Earth’,for instance.International Womens Day is celebrated as the first spring holiday in the Northern Hemisphere, March is considered as the month which brings spring season with Nature Dressed in Green, to Greet the season of spring." Designed by Neelam Asrani from India.

preview
with calendar: 1024×768, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050
without calendar: 1024×768, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050

Spring is coming

"The vision of spring by m-mstudio. Now the nature is awakening!" Designed by m-mstudio from Italy.

preview
with calendar: 1024×768, 1280×800, 1400×1050, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1200

Luminance

preview
with calendar: 320×480, 1024×768, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1200
without calendar: 320×480, 1024×768, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1200

Are you doing all you can?

"Are you doing all you can to become the person you want to be?" Designed by Valerie Morgan from USA.

preview
with calendar: 1024×768, 1280×800, 1440×900, 1600×1200, 1680×1050, 1920×1200, 1920×1440, 2560×1600

Bright Summer

"In America, March is the month of American Red Cross. In India people celebrate Holi – the festival of colors in March. And in history it is the month in which Brutus assassinated Julius Caesar. Moreover, it is the starting of summer with the hot air, in southern Asia. In human color psychology, red is associated with bravery, purity, happiness, good luck, heat/fire, energy, and blood, and emotions that “stir the blood”, including anger, passion, love, pain, and sacrifice." Designed by Ramesh V R from India.

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Ballerine

"The letters with drips represent the cold winter and the ballerine is spring." Designed by Axenis from France.

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Birthday Month

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March Sentense

"Just motivating sentence for March :)" Designed by Temeshi from Poland.

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Winter’s Almost Over

"Winters are long and slushy in Buffalo, NY. March is both the ugliest and most hopeful month, because spring is just around the corner." Designed by Palmer Louise from USA.

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New Beginnings

"I graduated college approximately 2 years ago, and since that time have worked as an IT consultant/auditor for a large accounting firm. I realized early on that I had made a mistake and would never be content until I got back into the world of design and development, which is where my passion truly lies. I have been working for the past year building a portfolio in the hopes to do this. This design is a direct byproduct of this and a hope that with Spring comes a new life and a new beginning." Designed by Noah Jablonski from USA.

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Lucky Me

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Colourfull

"I am presenting a colourfull march." Designed by Sandhya Banshal from India.

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Spring Bloom

"March marks the beginning of a new season and is the time of year when plants begin the grow.The beauty of the month is depicted in this wallpaper." Designed by Ellen Xue from Canada.

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Escaping Winter

"I took this photo of Wharariki Beach while on holiday last month in New Zealand. I hope it brings some good weather this side of the world in March." Designed by Adam Foster from England.

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Why March

"Nothing like a good ol’ anti-war statement. For the record, I am not against the troops. I am against war. Thanks!" Designed by Kris K. from United States.

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Feeling Sheepish

"A visual interpretation of the month that most importantly connects winter with summer, it just sometimes feels a bit sheepish." Designed by Jordan Scott from Canada.

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Chuck misses a tooth

"Was kinda bored and looking for some fun. So, came up with Mr. Chuck who just lost a tooth!" Designed by Abdus Salam from Pakistan.

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Spring Is The Season

"Spring is the season of new, young and vibrant colors. My idea behind this creation is to leave behind the darkness of failure, tears, pain and broken hearts. Brighten yourself with new colors, hopes and thoughts like these flowers." Designed by Upasana Jain from India.

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Ultimate Sophistication

"I’m keeping the description simple to. The motivation behind this design was reading the Leonardo DaVinci quote online, liking it and wanting to do something to illustrate it." Designed by H??vard Bergersen from Norway.

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Sploosh

"Bring in March with a sploosh." Designed by Ryan McLeod from Scotland.

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Stripy

"Be simple and bold this march :)" Designed by Akash Chandrayan from India.

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Standing Tall

"Like any designer, I derive inspiration from nature. And animals are my favourite. Still I remember the tall, majestic Giraffes that I saw in my school excursion. Have a beautiful month." Designed by Ganesh k Swaminaathan from India.

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Olympic Mania

"Desktop Wallpaper for March, 2010, Inspired by Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter games." Designed by Sagar from Bangladesh.

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Join in next month!

Please notice that we respect the ideas and motivation behind artists’ work which is why we’ve given artists full freedom to explore their creativity and express emotions and experience through their works. And this is also why the themes of the wallpapers weren’t anyhow influenced by us, but designed from scratch by the artists themselves.

Thanks to all designers for participation. Join in next month!

What’s your favorite?

What’s your favourite theme or wallpaper for this month? Please let us know in the comments! And have a smashing March, folks!

http://www.smashingmagazine.com

Related Arizona SEO and Web Design Tips

Art Manifestos and Their Applications in Contemporary Design

Dan Redding — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 13:31:04 +0000

The way you express yourself with words is a crucial extension of your creative identity. Professional designers are usually busy focusing on the visual aspects of their craft, but visual arts and literary arts collide and coincide regularly. The two fields meet not just in typography, but also in press releases, social networking communication, slogans, promotional materials, ‘About Me’ pages, marketing strategies, and every single pitch, contract, and email you’ve ever sent to a client.

What might happen if you injected some of those materials with a healthy dose of poetry, humor, or bravado? Obviously, doing so will not be appropriate in some forums, but when it is, this may be a good way to express yourself and differentiate your brand from the crowd.

Some of the most electrifying examples of writing about art and design come in the form of the manifesto. The manifesto has played a pivotal role in some of the most important creative movements of the previous century: Futurism, Surrealism, and Cubism among them. Most graphic designers working today will probably not require their own manifesto, but it can be helpful to write a mission statement or expression of your creative goals. Likewise, most of us probably don’t intend to launch a full-scale ‘movement,’ but this genre of writing may inspire you to reconsider the literary content of your creative work and its public representation.

What is a manifesto?

The 1963 Fluxus manifesto by George Maciunas includes rousing proclamations in the form of both handwriting and typewriter copy.

The artists’ manifesto is a “document of an ideology, crafted to convince and convert” (Mary Ann Caws, Manifesto: a Century of isms). The word ‘manifesto’ contains elements of the Latin terms ‘manus’ (hand) and ‘festus,’ which may be derived from the root ‘fendere,’ as in ‘offendere.’ In other words, the manifesto is a personal or even handwritten statement intending to shock, inspire, or offend. Most of the artists in this selection lived in times that they felt desperately required change, and their solution was revolution.

Artists’ manifestos were being written as early as 1886, but the genre developed into a “new literary sport” after the publication of Italian artist/provocateur F.T. Marinetti’s first Futurist manifesto in 1909 (Marjorie Perloff, The Futurist Moment). Marinetti’s writing had mythmaking qualities; this ringleader of the Futurists “became a public figure as a result of, not prior to the publication” of his manifesto.

Here are four artists’ manifestos, beginning with that of Futurism – the lunatic grandaddy of all artists’ manifestos. A review of each manifesto is accompanied by historical context, images of relevant artwork, and inspiration for contemporary applications of the ideas within.

Futurism

An Overview

“Everything of any value is theatrical.” –F.T. Marinetti

Futurism originated in Italy in 1909 as an avant-garde movement that glorified technology, modernity, and even war. In their artwork, the Futurists strove to capture the speed and ‘force lines’ of motion and progress. This ideology pushed their work towards abstraction, and Futurism helped fuel the invention of Cubism.

Highlights from the Manifestos

F.T. Marinetti’s Futurist manifesto was first published in French newspaper Le Figaro in 1909. The manifesto text is preceded by a disclaimer about the author’s “singularly audacious ideas.”

“We have been up all night, my friends and I, beneath mosque lamps whose brass cupolas are bright as our souls, because like them they were illuminated by the internal glow of electric hearts… we have been discussing right up to the limits of logic and scrawling the paper with demented writing.”

So begins F.T. Marinetti’s Futurist manifesto, which is full of “demented writing” and poetic language (”celestial bivouacs,” “rogue locomotives”) intended to rouse and mesmerize. The concept of the “internal glow of electric hearts” is an example of Marinetti’s glorification of industrial machinery and his desire to emulate it. This fascination with technology is a familiar notion in this current gadget age we live in today.

Perhaps even more than most artistic movements, the Futurists were obsessed with demolishing the ideals that preceded them. In his Manifesto of Futurist Painters (1910), Italian artist Umberto Boccioni declared, “We will fight with all our might the fanatical, senseless and snobbish religion of the past, a religion encouraged by the vicious existence of museums. We rebel against that spineless worshipping of old canvases, old statues and old bric-a-brac, against everything which is filthy and worm-ridden and corroded by time. We consider the habitual contempt for everything which is young, new and burning with life to be unjust and even criminal. ”

“We want no part of it, the past”, Marinetti wrote, “we the young and strong Futurists!”

Futurist Work Samples

Fortunato Depero’s book Depero Futurista, 1927.

The Futurists excelled at experimental typography, and there’s no greater example than Fortunato Depero’s book Depero Futurista, boldly bound with two metal bolts. Once again, the Futurists are seizing the opportunity to incorporate industrial machinery into their work. This also must’ve made the book annoyingly difficult to shelve, which probably had them brimming with mischievous glee.

Two internal pages from Depero Futurista.

Depero’s page layouts reveal the force of his bold compositional strength. View the designer’s advertisments for Campari for further evidence of his typographic and compositional muscle.

Umberto Boccioni, The City Rises, 1910.

Boccioni exalts the colossal energy of the massive horses in this scene of urban labor. The horses test the limits of their harnesses while men direct the explosive equestrian strength. Man and horse appear almost as one. The artist could not have compressed more dynamism onto the canvas.

Contemporary Applications

Is your business a brand or a bland?

The Futurists excelled at drama. Say what you will about their work (the paintings are somewhat repetitive and occasionally, well, ugly), but they were never boring. It is a movement that never murmured, preferring to shout, sing, or scream.

Futurism shares a major quality with the contemporary web design community and that is a passion for progressive technology. The Futurists were intensely devoted to smashing the past while realizing the future. Web designers are always pushing the boundaries of what we’re capable of achieving, whether we’re developing new uses for content management systems or discussing the future potential of CSS (see the Surrealism section of this article for some distant future ideas). The lesson here is Always Evolve.

Another lesson is to keep it personal. Marinetti’s manifesto obsesses over machines, but it does so with intense emotion, which is a fundamentally human quality. In other words, don’t let your professional writing grow too cold. Those who excel in social networking excel at this aspect. Especially if your business identity is stark and pristine, a human touch goes a long way.

Dada

An Overview

To the Dadaists, logic was a pestilence. They believed that logic had led to a culturally and morally deficient society. These artists were so appalled by World War I that they violently rejected existing notions of culture, aesthetics, and even reason. Their work was anti-war, anti-bourgeois, and anti-conformity. Freedom was the goal; Dada sought to liberate a variety of media and its meanings from the shackles of the past. The Dadaists’ most powerful tools were biting satire and brazen provocation. Their ideology laid the foundation for Surrealism and their delight in anarchy makes them a cultural precursor to the punk movement that was born half a century later.

One of the most widely recognized symbols of the Dada movement is Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain (1917). The artist turned a urinal on its back, scrawled the absurd pseudonym ‘R. Mutt’ on its side, and declared it art. It was a lewd gesture towards the notion of contemporary art itself, which Duchamp criticized as being too ‘retinal’ in nature – mere aesthetic decoration. He succeeded with his ‘readymades’ at putting art “in the service of the mind” (hence, the constant labeling of his work as ‘conceptual’). The piece is emblematic of “the vehemently untraditional and bitingly critical nature of the Dada movement” (Marcel Duchamp 1887-1968, an essay by Nan Rosenthal). Dadaism assaulted the traditional values of fine art; Duchamp’s work succeeded in redefining the conception of what belongs in a museum setting, and therefore, the conception of what is considered art.

Highlights from the Manifestos

The Dadaists published many polemical manifestoes designed to provoke their critics and un-define their work. They insisted that the word ‘Dada’ was nonsense and that they were not a ‘movement.’ Each manifesto does its best to shatter any conventional thought on the matter. One such manifesto concludes, “Long live Dadaism in word and image! … To be against this manifesto is to be a Dadaist!”

Dadaist poet Tristan Tzara’s 1918 Dada Manifesto is a blustering rant. It is full of sound and fury, signifying nada. “DADA DOES NOT MEAN ANYTHING,” it demands. Intoxicated with energy, Tzara delivers stream-of-consciousness poetry that reels from social commentary to dream-drunk nonsense. “I destroy the drawers of the brain, and those of social organisation: to sow demoralisation everywhere, and throw heaven’s hand into hell, hell’s eyes into heaven.”

“Publicity and business are also poetic elements,” Tzara writes, foreshadowing Warhol’s claim that “business art is the best art.”

Work Samples

This gorgeous cover design for Le Coeur à Barbe: Journal Transparent (1922) is attributed to the writer and artist Iliazd (also known as Ilia Zdanevich). Publication of this esoteric, single-issue journal was prompted by a feud between Dada leaders Francis Picabia and Tristan Tzara. The cover is regarded as an important example of early Twentieth-century avant-garde page layout.

Photomontage by Raoul Hausmann

Photomontage and collage developed into two of Dada’s most effective tools of artistic communication. The reappropriation of images from the mass media allowed for deft social commentary. Dissonant combinations of photos, advertisements and text seemed to capture the jolts of modern reality.

Contemporary Applications

Dadaism was a revolt, an “attack on the culture of a bankrupt society,” which “brought about a violent renewal of meanings” (The Dada Movement 1915-1923, by Marc Dachy).

Those of us who achieve notoriety as designers face a unique opportunity: the opportunity to be heard. Can you use that power to take a stand for your beliefs, to bring about change through good design and positive values? We make a statement – actively or passively – by every professional association we make, every client we choose to represent, and every product we validate by inclusion in our portfolio. Here in America, our designs exist in a culture fractured by deep ethical fissures. It is a culture where gun violence rears its hideous head in the headlines regularly – recently, on a daily basis. It is a culture where so desperate is the desire for fame that people are willing to infiltrate a White House party or stage a hoax involving the life of a child – all in the hopes of achieving reality television stardom. If the Dadaists realized a desire to shift their problematic cultural values, so should we, no matter what nationality we are. We do not require a ‘movement’ to do so. Cultural change is also affected by the simple choices of intelligent individuals. You do not need a soapbox. But look down; you may be standing on one.

If the best thing we designers have to get upset about are the font choices in Ikea brochures, our priorities are unbalanced. There are plenty of better things to rebell against – namely war, climate change, and the filmography of Nicolas Cage.

Surrealism

An Overview

René Magritte’s work is known for clever twists of visual logic.

Surrealism is a weird dream. This dream can be a vivid exploration of personal identity (Frida Kahlo) or a startling hallucination fraught with Freudian fears (Salvador Dalí). Oh, and there’s often weird fruit involved (think pomegranates or an orange in a doorway).

In short, Surrealism sought to explore the unconcious in order to break creative ground. Their artwork rejects rational thought in favor of absurdity and illogicality, suggesting that these qualities may offer more accurate representations of modern life’s disturbing complexities.

Highlights from the Manifesto

“We are still living under the reign of logic,” begins André Breton’s Le Manifeste du Surréalisme (1924). Breton rails against the supremacy of logic, and credits the work of Sigmund Freud for unleashing a “current of opinion” on the subjects of dreams and the subconscious. “Perhaps the imagination is on the verge of recovering its rights,” says Breton. “If the depths of our minds conceal strange forces capable of augmenting or conquering those on the surface, it is in our greatest interest to capture them.”

Ironically, Breton’s is the most sober and rationally argued manifesto in this selection. He is laying the philosophical groundwork for the artwork that will be built upon these ideals. The wildest language he uses is employed in this assessment of the dream state: “The mind of the dreaming man is fully satisfied with whatever happens to it. The agonizing question of possibility does not arise. Kill, plunder more quickly, love as much as you wish. And if you die, are you not sure of being roused from the dead? Let yourself be led.”

Work Samples

A razor is drawn towards a woman’s eye in this still from the film Un Chien Andalou by Salvador Dalí and Luis Buñuel, 1928.

Un Chien Andalou is a piece of Surrealist film that has had a profound and lasting impact on cinema. It can be seen as an example of Dalí’s skill with “the usual paralyzing tricks of eye-fooling.” The film has been thoroughly absorbed by pop culture; the rock band Pixies famously refer to it in the song ‘Debaser’ when Frank Black wails, “Got me a movie / I want you to know / Slicin’ up eyeballs!”

Max Ernst, The Temptation of St. Anthony, 1945.

Goblins and gremlins galore! Ernst’s take on this classic painter’s narrative is visual feast of nightmares, but its monsters are also a bit cartoony with their grinning jowls and muppet eyes. St. Anthony is being overtaken and physically invaded by transforming plant creatures. Ernst described St. Anthony’s plight thusly: “Shrieking for help and light across the stagnant water of his dark, sick mind, St. Anthony receives as an answer an echo of his fear: the laughter of the monsters created by his visions.”

Corresponding visual sensibilities might be found in the work of contemporary filmmakers Tim Burton and Joe Dante (director of Gremlins and a memorable segment of Twilight Zone: The Movie). For another Surrealist take on the tale of St. Anthony, view Dalí’s composition of the same title.

Contemporary Applications

In many aspects of graphic design and marketing, the idea reigns supreme. A clever concept can be the key to a unique logo design; a startling idea can distinguish an advertisement from the crowd. Surrealists like Dalí and Magritte were idea men. View any of Magritte’s major works and you are looking at a stroke of conceptual brilliance that would humble the cleverest contemporary illustrator.

The conceptual strength shows in their words as well. Consider this choice quote from Dalí: “I consider perversion and vice to be the most revolutionary forms of thought and activity, just as I consider love to be the only attitude worthy of the life of a man.”

Dalí’s most famous painting is The Persistence of Memory, with its melting clocks, which have become the most recognized symbol of Surrealism. The theme of that painting is time, and the multiple melting clocks imply the simultaneous existence of various temporalities. What if we allowed ourselves similar freedoms with our imagination? What will CSS look like in ten years, or fifty (assuming CSS and civilization are still in existence)? What if there were a ‘Time’ property in CSS, and what would it do beyond mere animation? Perhaps CSS of the future will have a variety of temporal qualities, and perhaps it will go 3D as well. Could tomorrow’s cascading style sheets create a holographic effect? Could the cascade apply to past, present, and future?

Fluxus

An Overview

Like a cloud, Fluxus tends to appear in a different shape from one moment to the next. Their goal of ‘intermedia’ creativity blurred the boundaries of visual art, music, publishing, graphic design, and performance art. An international movement that began in the early 1960’s, the Fluxus artists entertained the absurdly paradoxical notion of becoming an “anti-art art movement.” Much like their ideological predecessors in Dadaism, this meant that they would attack the reigning notions of what art could or could not be. It also reveals their predilection for the absurd.

Highlights from the Manifesto

ABOVE: A portion of George Maciunas’ Fluxus Manifesto.

Like Fluxus itself, George Maciunas’ manifesto is a wild mongrel of a thing. According to Fluxus scholar Simon Anderson, Fluxus “deliberately experimented with, ignored, and tore down so many of the barriers and heirarchies of contemporary culture that no analogy suffices: [Fluxus] defies description, a condition that is perhaps its most potent source of strength.” (In the Spirit of Fluxus, Janet Jenkins, ed.)

Maciunas’ manifesto – which includes collaged literary definitions juxtaposed with his ranting handwritten voice – directly reflects the nature of his movement. It’s a good reminder: does the literary content of your design business accurately reflect the voice of your visual content?

Maciunas asked Fluxus artists to ‘purge’ their work of “bourgeois sickness” and “professional & commercialized culture.” A professional demeanor in the design industry is of utmost importance. However, if you’ve ever met a branding professional whose entire personality has been crafted into an ‘elevator pitch,’ you know how creepy and cold that can be. Speak to people like friends when you can. Never speak to them like just another potential sale. That’s rude and it makes you seem robotic.

Fluxus Work Samples

Fluxkit, 1969, various Fluxus artists.

Fluxus was a graphic designer’s dream: typographic freedom, multimedia publishing, visual puns galore, audacious self-promotion. Looking for inspiration for your next promotional mailer? The Fluxus artists packed dozens of clever ideas into the diverse contents of their witty, mass-produced ‘Fluxkits’ and ‘Fluxboxes.’ Make absolutely sure to view the dense, inspiring collection in the Fluxus room at the Tate Modern the next time you’re in London.

Ben Vautier, Fluxbox containing God, 1961.

Fluxus was conceived as a publishing enterprise specializing in pamphlets, flyers, games, and various unpredictable objets d’art. The spirit of publishing remained central to its nature even though Fluxus artists eventually tried their hands at every other medium under the sun.

Contemporary Applications

“Too bad he died before its advent,” wrote the Village Voice, “(Fluxus founder George Maciunas) would’ve loved the internet.” If the internet is a playground, then take time to play between professional projects. Many of us draw for fun often, but when’s the last time you built a website for fun? Build a site for your own amusement. Build a humorous site that raises money for charity. Build a site in a day.

Fluxus artists spent a lot of time probing the concept of ‘intermedia’ art and performances. What applications or intersections of your media haven’t you considered yet? The Fluxus artists were fond of puzzles and games; what if you built a website that had a logic puzzle built into the code, with clues hidden in the ‘target’ function so that users could hunt for them by rolling their cursor over areas of text?

Or what if we plundered the online trends of other industries for ideas we can implement in design projects? The first bullet listed in these online media predictions in the publishing industry has ‘viral gold’ written all over it. Who will exploit ‘intermedia’ opportunities like these?

Web designers work in one of the only thriving, pivotal industries of this extraordinarily progressive era. Almost all prominent cultural industries have been thrown into upheaval due to the evolutionary progress of the web and a variety of other twenty-first century factors. Cultural monoliths are falling to their knees all around us – the record industry, the publishing industry, and the automobile industry among them. How can we learn from them? And more importantly, how can we help each other evolve?

Web design in the twenty-first century means much more than the unfolding potential of CSS and the dead, discarded shells of old browser versions. It means that we will be central to social, cultural, and political revolutions worldwide. It means opportunity – the opportunity to expand and assist the progress of global cultures.

In Conclusion

Build your business into a brilliant brand, not a boring bland. Seek new and unusual intersections of media. Look at the big picture. What’s going on in your neighbor’s industry today that will affect yours tomorrow?

Go to a museum. Put more art in your design. Always evolve. Be witty and unpredictable. Just remember, as illustrator Sergio Baradat once said, “It’s okay to pull a rabbit out of your hat, but sometimes a rabbit out of a hat is not what’s called for.”

Promote positive change in the world around you when you can. Support a charitable cause. Use your voice. Don’t waste words. Make them sing and dance.

Would you like to see more similar posts on Smashing Magazine?

This article is one of our experimentations of the new content formats on Smashing Magazine. Did you find it interesting? Did you find it useful? Did you find it too easy or too difficult? Please let us know in the poll below and in the comments to this post! We are looking forward to your feedback!

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The Definitive Guide To Styling Web Links

Lee Munroe — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 12:48:09 +0000

Hyperlinks (or links) connect Web pages. They are what make the Web work, enabling us to travel from one page to the next at the click of a button. As Web Standardistas put it, “without hypertext links the Web wouldn’t be the Web, it would simply be a collection of separate, unconnected pages.”. So without links, we’d be lost. We look for them on the page when we want to venture further. Sure, we pause to read a bit, but inevitably we end up clicking a link of some sort.

[Offtopic: By the way, did you know that Smashing Magazine has a mobile version? Try it out if you have an iPhone, Blackberry or another capable device.]

Styling Links

When you style links, remember that users don’t read; they scan. You’ve heard that before, and it’s true. So, make sure your links are obvious. They should also indicate where they will take the user.

Let’s start by looking at CSS selectors and pseudo-classes:

a:link { }
Unvisited link.
a:visited { }
Visited links.
a:hover { }
The user mouses over a link.
a:focus { }
The user clicks on a link.
a:active { }
The user has clicked a link.

The TLC uses not only plaint text links, but also icons to communicate the corresponding file types.

Ensure Contrast

Links should stand out not only from the background but from the surrounding text. If the font color is black and the link color is black, you have a problem. Make your links stand out by using one or more than one of the following techniques.

text-decortation: underline;
Underline.
font-weight: bold;
Bold.
font-size: 1.4em;
Enlarge.
color: #ed490a;
Color.
background-color: #c0c0c0;
Background.
border-bottom: 2px solid #a959c3;
Border.

If you decide to make links blue, then make sure no other text (including headings) is blue, because users will expect it to be a link, too.

Also, don’t underline text that isn’t linked because users expect underlined text to be a link. And keep in mind users with poor sight. Red won’t stand out to someone who is color blind, so consider underlining or bolding links, in addition to changing the color.

A helpful technique that I always use is to slightly blur the focus. Links with good contrast should still stand out when you look at the page.

Don’t Forget About Visited Links

Visited links are often overlooked, but they are very helpful, especially on larger websites. Knowing where they’ve been before is helpful for users, whether because they want to avoid pages they’ve visited or to make a point of visiting them again.

Give visited links a darker shade of color, so that they stand out but aren’t as obvious as unvisited links.

Use the Title Attribute

The title attribute is usually overlooked, but it’s a convenient way to add descriptions to your links and can be especially useful for those who rely on screen readers.

Example

Use Button Styles

To make really important links stand out—say, a call to action or a “More info” link at the bottom—use a button style. And you can reuse the style again and again without having to edit any graphics.

For more information, check out “Super-Awesome Buttons With CSS3 and RGBA” and “Call to Action Buttons.”

Hover State

Offering feedback to users that they’re hovering over a link is good practice. The best way to do this is to change the background color, change the text color or remove the underline.

a:hover { text-decoration:none;
text-shadow: 0 0 2px #999;
}

The mouse pointer usually turns from an arrow into a hand when the user hovers over a link. But this functionality is sometimes lost; for example, in IE when the link contains a span element, or on “Submit” buttons. Fix this by adding the cursor type via CSS.

a:hover span { cursor: pointer }

Active State

Provide visual feedback to the user to indicate that they have clicked a link, so that they know to wait. One nice effect is to move the link down one or two pixels, which gives the link the appearance of being pressed.

a:active { padding-top: 2px; }

Apply Padding

Here is a good usability tip. Add padding to your links. This way, the user doesn’t have to hover over the exact point of the text. Instead, they can hover in proximity and still be able to click. This works well for navigation links.

a { padding: 5px; }

Use Icons for File Types

If your links point to files in various formats, inform the user of as much using icons. This prepares them for the file type they are about to open, whether it’s PDF or JPEG, for example.

For some great resources, check out “Fam Fam Fam Silk Icons” and “Social Media Mini Icon Pack.”

Use Icons for Recognition

Just as you would use icons for file types, use icons to identify where links go or what they do. This user can more quickly absorb a visual icon than text.

Make Anchor Text Descriptive

Use meaningful text, not “Click here.” The problem with the latter is that it forces the user to read around the link to understand why they should “Click here.” Anchor text such as “See Britney on a beach” speaks for itself. It’s also more SEO-friendly.

Link Your Logo

Always link your logo to the home page. Most users expect this convention across the Web. That said, don’t assume that users know this. Regular surfers expect it, but a number of users still look for the “Home” link.

Site name

h1 a {
background: url(images/logo.gif) no-repeat top left;
display: block;
text-indent: -9999px;
width: 200px;
height: 60px;
}

Don’t Open New Windows

Just don’t do it. Let the user decide when and where to open a new tab or window. Users expect links to open in the same window. If you really must do it, at least add an icon to show that this will happen. There are exceptions; for example, it you don’t want to break the flow of a check-out process.

Micro-Formats

As the Web becomes more semantic, consider incorporating micro-formats into your link structures, to help machines understand how a link fits into a page and its relationship to other pages. For example, the following…

My Friend

tells search bots that this text links to a friend who I’ve met, which is useful for discovering connections between links. You can also read more about micro-formats.

Showcase Of Links In Web Design

Color Theory for Designers, Part 1: The Meaning of Color

Cameron Chapman — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 10:37:42 +0000

Color in design is very subjective. What evokes one reaction in one person may evoke a very different reaction in somone else. Sometimes this is due to personal preference, and other times due to cultural background. Color theory is a science in itself. Studying how colors affect different people, either individually or as a group, is something some people build their careers on. And there’s a lot to it. Something as simple as changing the exact hue or saturation of a color can evoke a completely different feeling. Cultural differences mean that something that’s happy and uplifting in one country can be depressing in another.

This is the first in a three-part series on color theory. Here we’ll discuss the meanings behind the different color families, and give some examples of how these colors are used (with a bit of analysis for each). In Part 2 we’ll talk about how hue, chroma, value, saturation, tones, tints and shades affect the way we perceive colors. And in Part 3 we’ll discuss how to create effective color palettes for your own designs.

Warm Colors

Warm colors include red, orange, and yellow, and variations of those three colors. These are the colors of fire, of fall leaves, and of sunsets and sunrises, and are generally energizing, passionate, and positive.

Red and yellow are both primary colors, with orange falling in the middle, which means warm colors are all truly warm and aren’t created by combining a warm color with a cool color. Use warm colors in your designs to reflect passion, happiness, enthusiasm, and energy.

Red (Primary Color)

Red is a very hot color. It’s associated with fire, violence, and warfare. It’s also associated with love and passion. In history, it’s been associated with both the Devil and Cupid. Red can actually have a physical effect on people, raising blood pressure and respiration rates. It’s been shown to enhance human metabolism, too.

Red can be associated with anger, but is also associated with importance (think of the red carpet at awards shows and celebrity events). Red also indicates danger (the reason stop lights and signs are red, and that most warning labels are red).

Outside the western world, red has different associations. For example, in China, red is the color of prosperity and happiness. It can also be used to attract good luck. In other eastern cultures, red is worn by brides on their wedding days. In South Africa, however, red is the color of mourning. Red is also associated with communism. Red has become the color associated with AIDS awareness in Africa due to the popularity of the [RED] campaign.

In design, red can be a powerful accent color. It can have an overwhelming effect if it’s used too much in designs, especially in its purest form. It’s a great color to use when power or passion want to be portrayed in the design. Red can be very versatile, though, with brighter versions being more energetic and darker shades being more powerful and elegant.

Examples

The dark shades of red in this design give a powerful and elegant feel to the site.

The true red accents stand out against the dark red background, and give a powerful and high-end feeling to the site.

The very bright red accents on this site give a sense of energy and movement.

The dark red on this site, because it’s combined with grunge elements, seems more like the color of blood.

Dark red, when combined with white and gray, gives a very elegant and professional impression.

Orange (Secondary Color)

Orange is a very vibrant and energetic color. In its muted forms, it can be associated with the earth and with autumn. Because of its association with the changing seasons, orange can represent change and movement in general.

Because orange is associated with the fruit of the same name, it can be associated with health and vitality. In designs, orange commands attention without being as overpowering as red. It’s often considered more friendly and inviting, and less in-your-face.

Examples

The bright orange box draws attention to its contents, even with the other bright red elements on the page.

Orange is used here in its most obvious incarnation, to represent fire.

The dark orange, when set against the lime green, almost acts as a neutral and grounding color here.

Orange is used here to give a friendly and inviting impression.

The orange accents here add a lot of visual interest and bring attention to the call to action.

Yellow (Primary Color)

Yellow is often considered the brightest and most energizing of the warm colors. It’s associated with happiness and sunshine. Yellow can also be associated with deceit and cowardice, though (calling someone yellow is calling them a coward).

Yellow is also associated with hope, as can be seen in some countries when yellow ribbons are displayed by families who have loved ones at war. Yellow is also associated with danger, though not as strongly as red.

In some countries, yellow has very different connotations. In Egypt, for example, yellow is for mourning. In Japan, it represents courage, and in India it’s a color for merchants.

In your designs, bright yellow can lend a sense of happiness and cheerfulness. Softer yellows are commonly used as a gender-neutral color for babies (rather than blue or pink) and young children. Light yellows also give a more calm feeling of happiness than bright yellows. Dark yellows and gold-hued yellows can sometimes look antique and be used in designs where a sense of permanence is desired.

Examples

The bright yellow header and graphics used throughout this site give a sense of energy and positivity.

The light yellow is used almost as a neutral in the header here, and combined with the hand-drawn illustrations gives a very cheerful impresison.

The bright yellow accents bring attention to the most important parts of this site.

The bright yellow sunflower reminds visitors of summer on this site, and combined with the antique-yellow background, it gives a homey and established feeling.

The bright yellow header here adds a bit of extra energy to this design.

Cool Colors

Cool colors include green, blue, and purple, are often more subdued than warm colors. They are the colors of night, of water, of nature, and are usually calming, relaxing, and somewhat reserved.

Blue is the only primary color within the cool spectrum, which means the other colors are created by combining blue with a warm color (yellow for green and red for purple). Greens take on some of the attributes of yellow, and purple takes on some of the attributes of red. Use cool colors in your designs to give a sense of calm or professionalism.

Green (Secondary Color)

Green is a very down-to-earth color. It can represent new beginnings and growth. It also signifies renewal and abundance. Alternatively, green can also represent envy or jealousy, and a lack of experience.

Green has many of the same calming attributes that blue has, but it also incorporates some of the energy of yellow. In design, green can have a balancing and harmonizing effect, and is very stable. It’s appropriate for designs related to wealth, stability, renewal, and nature. Brighter greens are more energizing and vibrant, while olive greens are more representative of the natural world. Dark greens are the most stable and representative of affluence.

Examples

The extremely muted greens of this site give it a very down-to-earth and natural feeling.

The bright green header of this site mixed with the leaf motif gives it a very natural and vibrant feeling.

The more olive-toned green of this site gives it a natural feeling, which is very appropriate for the content.

The brighter, more retro-looking greens of this site give it a very fresh, energized feeling.

Another olive green site with a very natural feeling.

Blue (Primary Color)

Blue is often associated with sadness in the English language. Blue is also used extensively to represent calmness and responsibility. Light blues can be refreshing and friendly. Dark blues are more strong and reliable. Blue is also associated with peace, and has spiritual and religious connotations in many cultures and traditions (for example, the Virgin Mary is generally depicted wearing blue robes).

The meaning of blue is widely affected depending on the exact shade and hue. In design, the exact shade of blue you select will have a huge impact on how your designs are perceived. Light blues are often relaxed and calming. Bright blues can be energizing and refreshing. Dark blues are excellent for corporate sites or designs where strength and reliability are important.

Examples

The dark blues give this a feeling of reliability, while the brighter and lighter blues keep it from feeling staid.

The dark blue gives this a site a professional feeling, especially when combined with the white background. But the lighter blue accents add a bit more interest.

The bright, sky blue of this site gives it a young and hip feeling, which is emphasized by the reddish accents.

This site combines a range of blues, which gives it a refreshing feeling overall.

The light, muted blue of this site gives a very relaxed and calm impression.

Purple (Secondary Color)

Purple was long associated with royalty. It’s a combination of red and blue, and takes on some attributes of both. It’s associated with creativity and imagination, too.

In Thailand, purple is the color of mourning for widows. Dark purples are traditionally associated with wealth and royalty, while lighter purples (like lavendar) are considered more romantic.

In design, dark purples can give a sense wealth and luxury. Light purples are softer and are associated with spring and romance.

The dark shade used here evokes the royal heritage of purple, which is very appropriate for the Asprey luxury goods brand.

The light and medium purples here work well to convey a sense of creativity.

The brighter, more reddish purple of this site gives it both a rich and energetic look.

The dark purple background here adds to the creative feeling of the overall site.

The dark purple accents on this site give a sense of luxury and refinement.

Neutrals

Neutral colors often serve as the backdrop in design. They’re commonly combined with brighter accent colors. But they can also be used on their own in designs, and can create very sophisticated layouts. The meanings and impressions of neutral colors are much more affected by the colors that surround them than are warm and cool colors.

Black

Black is the strongest of the neutral colors. On the positive side, it’s commonly associated with power, elegance, and formality. On the negative side, it can be associated with evil, death, and mystery. Black is the traditional color of mourning in many Western countries. It’s also associated with rebellion in some cultures, and is associated with Halloween and the occult.

Black is commonly used in edgier designs, as well as in very elegant designs. It can be either conservative or modern, traditional or unconventional, depending on the colors it’s combined with. In design, black is commonly used for typography and other functional parts, because of it’s neutrality. Black can make it easier to convey a sense of sophistication and mystery in a design.

Examples

The black accents, mixed with the brighter colors and very dark brown background add an edgier look to the overall design.

Black, when mixed with icy blues, looks colder.

The black here, mixed with dark grays and lime green, and an overall grungy theme, adds to the edginess of the design.

The black accents here add an extra layer of sophistication and modernity to the site.

The strong black accents on this site add to the overall sophistication of the design.

White

White is at the opposite end of the spectrum from black, but like black, it can work well with just about any other color. White is often associated with purity, cleanliness, and virtue. In the West, white is commonly worn by brides on their wedding day. It’s also associated with the health care industry, especially with doctors, nurses and dentists. White is associated with goodness, and angels are often depicted in white.

In design, white is generally considered a neutral backdrop that lets other colors in a design have a larger voice. It can help to convey cleanliness and simplicity, though, and is popular in minimalist designs. White in designs can also portray either winter or summer, depending on the other design motifs and colors that surround it.

Examples

The white on the Fuelhaus site is used to contrast against the electric blue.

White backgrounds are very popular on minimalistic sites, and provide great contrast to black typography.

Here, white is used as an accent color, which lightens the overall effect of the site.

White combined with gray gives a soft and clean feeling to this design.

Again, white used as a background lightens the whole design.

Gray

Gray is a neutral color, generally considered on the cool end of the color spectrum. It can sometimes be considered moody or depressing. Light grays can be used in place of white in some designs, and dark grays can be used in place of black.

Gray is generally conservative and formal, but can also be modern. It is sometimes considered a color of mourning. It’s commonly used in corporate designs, where formality and professionalism are key. It can be a very sophisticated color. Pure grays are shades of black, though other grays may have blue or brown hues mixed in. In design, gray backgrounds are very common, as is gray typography.

Examples

Light gray gives a very subdued and quiet feeling to this design.

The light gray background here adds to the modern feeling created by the typography.

The cooler gray on this site gives a modern, sophisticated feel to the site.

The dark gray backround and lighter gray typography lend a decidedly modern look to this design.

The wide spectrum of gray shades used in this design combine to give a sophisticated and professional look to the site.

Brown

Brown is associated with the earth, wood, and stone. It’s a completely natural color and a warm neutral. Brown can be associated with dependability and reliability, with steadfastness, and with earthiness. It can also be considered dull.

In design, brown is commonly used as a background color. It’s also seen in wood textures and sometimes in stone textures. It helps bring a feeling of warmth and wholesomeness to designs. It’s sometimes used in it’s darkest forms as a replacement for black, either in backgrounds or typography.

Examples

The grayish-brown here lends a sense of responsibility and dependability.

The orangish-brown here gives a very earthy and dependable feeling.

The dark brown used in the background here lends an earthy and steadfast look to the overall layout, and lets the brigher colors in the design really get to stand out.

Woodgrain is a popular use of brown, and in this case the warm brown adds some friendliness to an otherwise minimalist site.

The grayish-brown background here lends a feeling of stability and down-to-earthness.

Beige and Tan

Beige is somewhat unique in the color spectrum, as it can take on cool or warm tones depending on the colors surrounding it. It has the warmth of brown and the coolness of white, and, like brown, is sometimes seen as dull. It’s a conservative color in most instances, and is usually reserved for backgrounds. It can also symbolize piety.

Beige in design is generally used in backgrounds, and is commonly seen in backgrounds with a paper texture. It will take on the characteristics of colors around it, meaning it has little effect in itself on the final impression a design gives when used with other colors.

Examples

The light tan background here feels young and fresh because of the bright colors around it.

The light tan background here lends a more conservative and elegant feeling to the overall design.

The yellowish tan background is made even warmer by the orange and brown accents throughout this site’s design.

Tan is popularly used as a paper-bag texture, and in its more grayish form as a concrete or stone texture.

The beige header background and other accents on the site lend a refined and traditional feeling to the overall design.

Cream and Ivory

Ivory and cream are sophisticated colors, with some of the warmth of brown and a lot of the coolness of white. They’re generally quiet, and can often evoke a sense of history. Ivory is a calm color, with some of the pureness associated with white, though it’s a bit warmer.

In design, ivory can lend a sense of elegance and calm to a site. When combined with earthy colors like peach or brown, it can take on an earthy quality. It can also be used to lighten darker colors, without the stark contrast of using white.

Examples

The ivory background here has a warm quality that’s tempered by some of the cooler colors on the site.

The grayish-cream background here is made warmer by the orangish-brown accents.

The cream background adds a sense of understated elegance this site would otherwise be lacking.

The cream background here reinforces the antique theme that runs throughout the design’s graphics.

The ivory combined with other light colors and jewely tones makes this site have a very elegant overall appearance.

In Brief…

While the information contained here might seem just a bit overwhelming, color theory is as much about the feeling a particular shade evokes than anything else. But here’s a quick reference guide for the common meanings of the colors discussed above:

Red: Passion, Love, Anger
Orange: Energy, Happiness, Vitality
Yellow: Happiness, Hope, Deceit
Green: New Beginnings, Abundance, Nature
Blue: Calm, Responsible, Sadness
Purple: Creativity, Royalty, Wealth
Black: Mystery, Elegance, Evil
Gray: Moody, Conservative, Formality
White: Purity, Cleanliness, Virtue
Brown: Nature, Wholesomeness, Dependability
Tan or Beige: Conservative, Piety, Dull
Cream or Ivory: Calm, Elegant, Purity

Further Resources

Color Meanings
A very thorough guide from About.com on color meanings.
Color Wheel Pro: Color Meaning
Another excellent guide to color meanings.
Color
Wikipedia’s entry on color.

http://www.smashingmagazine.com

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The Smashing Book: Already Got Yours?

Smashing Editorial — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 11:42:14 +0000

Have you gotten your copy of The Smashing Book yet? If not, it may still be worth spending $29.90 for this printed book. The book shares technical tips and best practices on typography, usability, UI design, marketing and color usage. It contains interviews with high profile designers and developers. And you will also get a peek behind the curtains of Smashing Magazine. You can buy the book now, it is available and can be shipped right away! And you can also check more details about the book.

Also, in this post we are giving away 35 exclusive Smashing Book Posters (folded, limited edition), and if you want to win one, just leave a comment on this post and tell us what you would do with it! So, let’s find out who are Smashing Magazine’s biggest fans?

Bonus: New Free Chapter Of The Book

Need an appetizer? Here are two free chapters of the Smashing Book (Chapter 1 was released a couple of months ago). You can download them as a PDF:

Smashing Book Around The World

Many things have been happening with and around The Smashing Book in recent weeks. You must have read or heard that it would fall apart immediately upon being opened (okay, that’s a bit of an exaggeration). In fact, the pages loosened quickly, and the reading experience was anything but ideal (the adhesive binding was the culprit). The verdict from many users was thus: brilliant content, very poor binding. And yes, let’s face facts: we indeed did a poor job in our first attempt at offline publishing, but we are willing to learn from our experience and do it better the next time. In fact, the next time has already come.

We have thoroughly monitored the feedback and heard your complaints, which is why we have produced a Corrected Edition of the book, with stable, high-quality stitched binding. Nothing will fall apart here… guaranteed. And the price remains the same.

The release of the Smashing Book has been very exciting. We’ve seen many photos, videos and even unboxing galleries. We have even seen the books being explored by cats, pancakes, cactuses and babies!

Photo by Remworks

Photo by Eddie Ebeling.

Photo by Julien Bob (the cat’s name is Monsieurbleu).

Photo by Danielle Wu.

A Word On The Shipping

We are of course not a postal service, and because we are located in Germany, we had to rely on the German postal service (Deutsche Post) to deliver the books to you. This usually works fairly well, but the first weeks in December certainly weren’t our preferred shipping time. Logistics companies were already busy with the Christmas season, and so delivery of our books went very slowly. And because we have been shipping the books worldwide, delivery times have varied significantly. No wonder it took as long as a couple of weeks for the books to be delivered, slowed down as they were by the holidays.

It’s truly astonishing what can happen to books when you ship a large number of them. There are hundreds of stories: the labels got messed up, damaged, loosened or stuck together; the book was delivered but is sitting in the apartment of a neighbor who has gone on vacation; the mail carrier delivered the book to the wrong house or misread the label; the label has a printing error; my address has changed; the book was left sitting in a delivery container; the postal service sent the book to the wrong state and is in the process of rerouting it; the book is being held up in customs. The list goes on and on. Every day we learn of a number of such cases. If you purchased your book a long while ago but still haven’t received it, please send your order details to our support team at orders@smashingmagazine.com. We’ll be in touch right away and will investigate.

Was It Worth The Wait?

Well, we can’t answer that question because we are obviously biased. But our readers and book reviewers can answer that question for us. Many book reviews are out there, sharing both positive and negative impressions. In our forum, murphyslaw has published a long, very detailed review of every chapter of the book. What do other readers say? Here are a few snippets:

“The advice is pitched at what I would call intermediate-to-advanced level. It’s aimed at web designers, doesn’t include any coding details, and focuses on notions of good practice. Elegant solutions for common problems are offered on almost every page. The book has also been written by a group of professional designers – so they know what they’re talking about.” — Roy Johnson
“The Smashing Book is a great, really great book for everybody who is interested in design and web-development. Especially the typography and learning from the experts chapters where inspirational resources to me. The content is great but I believe the layout of the pages should be as a book. Support the Smashing Magazine Book by ordering your copy and I hope SM will continue the concept of bringing the content by book.” — Sander Baumann, Designworkplan
“The book is basically all of SM’s best articles condensed into a book. This is what you’d expect, as it would be hard to top what they have on the website already. The content is very detailed, perhaps even too much in some cases, but it is like a ‘bible of web design’ covering all the things you should know.” — Lee Munroe
“I think the Smashing Book is a perfect book for web designers and developers of all levels, and I am excited that it lives up to the hype. It provides very comprehensive information that is both useful and essential for designers and developers who want to make the quailty of their websites improve.” — admixweb
“I think the book is a great buy for the price. For all you people still waiting for it to be delivered, it’s worth it!” — ThatDeadPixel
“Overall, this is a great effort from the Smashing Team and all the authors. The book features good web design theory and many practical techniques backed up by real world examples in the form of colourful screenshots. This book will not become obsolete in the short term, and should be placed in everyone’s library. Overall score: 8.5/10 – A Smashing Book!” — Hixdesign

Please note that all errors and inaccuracies are being collected in the Errata, which can be found through our Smashing List of Links (only a few errors have been found so far).

Buy The Book Now!

The Smashing Book is a printed book about best practices in modern Web design. The book shares technical tips and best practices on coding, usability and optimization and explores how to create successful user interfaces and apply marketing principles to increase conversion rates. It also shows how to get the most out of typography, color and branding so that you end up with intuitive and effective Web designs. And lastly, you will also get a peek behind the curtains of Smashing Magazine.

It’s a paperback: 313 pages, full-color images on coated paper, available worldwide. Free shipping to the US and Germany, and reduced shipping costs to other countries. 30-day 100% money-back guarantee. You can find more details about the book in the post Smashing Book: It’s Out Now!

(al)

http://www.smashingmagazine.com

» Web Design

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Desktop Wallpaper Calendar: March 2010

Super Mario bros 1985

Haiku on Hanami

Butterfly

Spring Time

Sticks and Stones

Searching for spring

Goes in like a lion and out like a lamb

Soom

Up

Even Cupcakes Have Bad Days

Ghost Stories

Gummy March

A New Day

Lucky Shamrocks

Fractal

Telephones

Midnight Sun

Romanian Tradition Martisorul

Ladybug

Daisy

Popephoenix

No Smoking

Women as nature

Spring is coming

Luminance

Are you doing all you can?

Bright Summer

Ballerine

Birthday Month

March Sentense

Winter’s Almost Over

New Beginnings

Lucky Me

Colourfull

Spring Bloom

Escaping Winter

Why March

Feeling Sheepish

Chuck misses a tooth

Spring Is The Season

Ultimate Sophistication

Sploosh

Stripy

Standing Tall

Olympic Mania

Join in next month!

What’s your favorite?

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