Monday, February 28, 2011

Simple Web Icons Features

Simple web icons are among the principal features of minimalistic design. Moreover, simple icons along with other elements of design should be used moderately. Among the secrets is minimizing icons use in general. Reduce the amount of simple icons. Use them only where it is essential. Refrain the optional simple web icons.

Simple web icons design includes limited amount of color, reserved shades, clear elements, soft lighting. One of the best benefits of Simple web icons is that they do not distract website visitors from the main idea of your internet site.

Rules for simple icons design:

  • minimal usage of duplication
  • less amount of graphical elements
  • maximum intuitive clarity
  • clear typography in simple web icons
  • less icons

Simple web icons and minimalistic design

Additionally to simple icons themselves lightweight background textures and patterns are very important for the design and content perception. The eyes should focus on the web-site content or some most important blocks but not on the background pattern or image itself. So the background should be of a light simple shade making it secondary compared with the foreground items like simple web icons.

Another prominent feature of the lightweight and clear design is no doubt clear typography. Select simple icons names according to their function and keep in mind that such names should be precise, and meaningful. Also use understandable as well as enough large font for headings on simple web icons.

Also for creating a great clean simple icons design you may use enough white or empty space. Extra spaces keep elements more understandable. For that reason it is easier to work with them. Some extra space between simple web icons will do your design no harm at all.

In general the minimalistic trend isn't entirely minimal. Nevertheless the dominance of white space there are still some simple icons, light textures, neat styles and bold fonts. Bear in mind that minimal isn't exactly the same as simple. From the very begining minimal meant plain typographic eliminating images and styling. But modern design demands something much more than black text on white background to make the site distinguish among thousands of other plain sites. Add more zest to your web site layout with a help of some unusual coloring, catchy simple icons, half-transparent and lightweight textures and patterns. Also reduce design elements to the most essential items.

Simple is often used as a synonym of smart. Simple icons is the greatest solution if you'd like your site look wonderful and professional.

Sunday, February 27, 2011

Vintage Icons As A Part Of Vintage Design

In case your want your website looks archaic - use Vintage web icons. They are probably the most noticeable and easy-to-apply graphical elements. With a help of vintage web icons you can easily create the vintage atmosphere at your internet site Also use vintage typography, less-saturated colors and retro textures. Your web site visitors will definitely like antique air of your new design.

Retro trend is all about the styles of the70s and 80s. Retro advertising art from the 1950s is bold and striking. Nowadays with a help of computer technologies it is possible to put a new face on this type of art and easily use its characters in webpage design and printing. Often such faces in the vintage web icons are retro cars, pin-up girls, soldiers and politicians of the former times as well.Most frequently used retro cars are Fiat 500, the 1970 Dodge Challenger, the 1969 Chevrolet Samara, the 1964 Ford Mustang etc. You can effortlessly find Vintage web icons that contain hints to retro cars concepts. This will help to attract much more attention to your web page layout. They are perfect for the internet sites concerning auto sales, transporting services, tour sites etc.A pin-up model is another popular character used in vintage icons design and other website graphics styling. Typically it presents images of how the really sexy and attractive woman should look like. Pin-up images are great for vintage web icons or clip-art designed for the model agencies, websites regarding health and beauty areas.

Military and security guard web sites may effectively use soldiers and officers with an outdated appearance to win the visitors favour and trust.

There is no limit in usage of specific characters. You may apply creativity and use them unconventionally. Thus you will surprise your visitors. So far as you know it is a very good way to turn your potentional clients minds to your online business.

Patterns and Typography for vintage icons and other graphics

Vintage patterns recommended for usage in vintage icons design is the following:

  • patterns containing vintage papers;
  • with vintage frames;
  • with outmoded florals;
  • paper and bagging, gold-cloth as the texture fabric;
  • wooden or bronze textures for vintage icons.

Authentic fonts to be used for developing vintage icons titles, content headings and texts are Matchbook, Bazar Medium, Embossed, Hill House,-Fontleroy Brown, Fusty Saddle, Just Old Fashion, Goudy Bookletter 1911, Rocket Script, Parisian, Star Avenue etc. Feel free to discover and purchase on the internet the best suitable fonts that will perfect match your design.

Try to get a such vintage-inspired design that looks contemporary and appropriate, but no old-fashioned. The goal is to create the warm and noble, antique feel using Vintage web icons and also images and styled blocks for the web site layout. Certainly your visitors will come back to your online site with a grateful smile over and over again. They will feel comfortable and cozy at your website.

But try to avoid stuffiness in your vintage design look. Please don't forget that the main focus should be made on the products, services or content of your internet site not on the web page design.

Saturday, February 26, 2011

Benefits Of Realistic Icons.

Realistic web icons are crucial elements of the present day pieces of software program, applications and add-ons.

As far as you know online pages demand special methods for representation and promotion. The most successful way is of course including realistic icons into the web page design. They help users to get a quick initial impression of what business area and what products he/she is going to have to do with. The icons should be placed on website homepage to be noticeable at once.

You may hire the experienced designer to create some unique set of icons meeting your internet-site individual requirements and products. But remember that such way of creating of realistic icons is very expensive and takes a great deal of time. After all the results of custom order are not clear. Sometimes even professional web site designers produce not exactly that you want. Sometimes some of web designers simply take icons that were created earlier and vary colors and shades, use some other effects and then sell realistic icons as exclusive items. Though in fact they aren't.

Finding authoritative icons resources it can be one other way of getting pleasant web icons. You can certainly find a great amount of numerous Realistic web icons stocks and providers on the internet. You see what you buy and the cost may occur essentially lower than in case with custom orders. Besides, you save much valuable time. So as far as you see now - stocks are much more preferable for finding properly designed and affordable realistic icons . All these positive aspects make icon stocks the great deal.

Tips for utilizing realistic icons

If you make a decision to create a realistic icon first of all you should build the basic pictograms. Also it should look vivid enough if being displayed at worse resolution. The person should be able to identify the icon meaning just by looking at its outlines for a short period of time. You may conduct a test and see if it's possible to discern the icon within less than a second.<\p>

The next step is to make realistic icons more eye-catching with a help of decorative elements. Don't overload icons with the details and color tints. Icons should look well design and reserved. You can also make the edges anti-aliased. So remember the simple rule - the decoration should not detract from the icons essence and functions.

Vector format in which the icons are stored makes them pretty easy to edit. It allows you to resize, rotate, adjust the edges and edit outlines. It's also possible to change the color scheme and add more details etc. So you needn't be an experienced designer or an artist to use them.

If you need to design the interface layout of the new software program or IT services - Realistic web icons may be very useful in this task. Developing high quality, eye-catching and good-looking realistic icons is not an easy task. Truly realistic images may be created only if you take and edit the high-resolution photos. So keep this in your mind.

Friday, February 25, 2011

Simple Icons And Minimalistic Website Design

Simple web icons are designed to unite minimalism along with modern trend. Light-weight Simple web icons are supposed to be made to increase web page user interaction.

Minimalism in internet site design

Minimalistic design means simplicity and light-weight elements such as Simple icons. It reduces complex wordings, figures, textures and patterns. Sometimes less even implies more. It depends on areas and extent. Web development is exactly that area.

Today minimalistic design is something uncommon. As far as you know high present day technologies have one big disadvantage - frequently they lead to the loss of simplicity. Blending minimalistic web page design with CSS3 and HTML5 is becoming more well-known and makes you believe that combining simple elegance and usability is the method for your web page success. Website that uses simple design often has off-color effects and also actively use CSS and Ajax.

The most important features of the present day simple webpage design:

  • grid based design;
  • simple icons;
  • light shading and reserved color transition;
  • light texture of patterns and backgrounds (often transparent like);
  • more empty or white space;
  • simple shapes and figures, clear lines;
  • less amount of various bright colors;
  • clear and readable typography;

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Realistic Icons

The very first mention about realism occurred in 1850 when it was spread over French art. Over the centuries it came through all kinds of art and design. Speaking about realism in web page design we can easily say that it is represented here by Realistic web icons.

Information about history of realistic icons

Vintage Icons

Retro takes over the modern internet site design industry. Undoubtedly the best representatives of classic beauty and noble taste are Vintage web icons. Modern web page style receives some vintage twist. Retro and Vintage are the most well-known and also widely used trends in the modern-day digital art. Vintage web icons, textures, patterns as well as clip-art bring mystery to your website design. They assist you to create the atmosphere of the old good times, with feelings of simplicity, innocence and nobility. People believe the good times are over associating them with their period of childhood or sweet youth. Hence vintage style revives for this reason psychological peculiarity of the human nature.

Retro style and the modern day web page design industry

In contemporary art retro becomes some conscious norm. Having emerged in the post-modern art, it penetrates into the contemporary web design in the form of vintage icons, old-styled backgrounds, aged photography etc. No doubt it gives some zest to the feel and look of the ordinary web sites.

The new retro style quite often incorporates the Web 2.0 look with a vintage twist. It needs to combine the modern clean blocks and the outdated ones. Also there's a necessity to combine aged design elements like Vintage icons, styles and color palettes.

Methods Of Creation Of Line Web Icons

More often Line icons are the objects with the outlined contours. Such design elements are called contour drawings. You can also find another kind of icons: the items are without some strict outlines. They're called gesture drawings. Experienced artists often use such kind of drawings because they are able to repeat the outlines of the object right after seeing it. It's not a complete piece of art but rather a sketch which usually demands 20-30 seconds to be drawn.

One more technique is adding some halftones as well as shades to the object with the help of short lines and crosshatching. Dont afraid to alter their frequency as well as pencil pressure. And this variety impart more three-dimensional look to the object. It helps to produce great Line icons, logos and buttons.The lines with the dots not combining the singular elements are classified as open lines. It may look really striking when being applied to line icons design. The lines can be also parallel, gesture-like, contour etc. Contour drawing includes fantastic simplicity and refinement of line design. The curves which are essential for creating complex line shapes are called Bezier curves in computer graphics. These curves are handy small features essential for producing the vector shapes like line icons, uncommon buttons etc.Computer technologies make it possible to reproduce the identical designs or develop new shapes based on some older ones without extra efforts and time. Moreover, you are able to go back to the previous adjustments due to the history panel. As a result you don't have to make Line web icons from scratch in case you have made some errors.