Short discourse on history of realistic icons.

]]> http://flashcmsbest.wordpress.com/2011/02/27/find-all-information-about-realistic-icons/feed/ 0 moonfieldgreg http://flashcmsbest.wordpress.com/2011/02/26/vintage-web-icons-and-web-design/ http://flashcmsbest.wordpress.com/2011/02/26/vintage-web-icons-and-web-design/#comments Sat, 26 Feb 2011 04:12:19 +0000 moonfieldgreg http://flashcmsbest.wordpress.com/?p=98 ]]> In case your want your site looks archaic – use Vintage web icons. They’re one of the most noticeable and easy-to-apply graphical elements. With a help of vintage web icons it is easy to create the vintage atmosphere at your webpage Also use vintage typography, less-saturated colors and retro textures. Your internet site visitors will definitely like antique air of your new design.

Retro came from the70s and 80s. Retro advertising art from the 1950s is bold and striking. Computer technologies enable to put a new face on this type of art using its characters in webpage design and printing. These faces outlined in the vintage web icons are more often retro cars, pin-up girls, soldiers and politicians of the former times.Undoubtedly among the most often used retro cars are Fiat 500, the 1970 Dodge Challenger, the 1969 Chevrolet Samara, the 1964 Ford Mustang etc. Vintage web icons may include hints to retro cars concepts for attracting more attention to your web site layout. They are perfect for the web sites concerning auto sales, transporting services, tour sites etc.A pin-up model is another popular character used in vintage icons design and other site graphics styling. Usually it presents images of how the really sexy and beautiful woman should look like. If you are an owner of the webpage regarding health and beauty areas or the model agencies – keep in mind that you can use pin-up images that are great for vintage web icon.

In case you have a web-site that is connected with military and security guard you may successfully use images of soldiers and officers with outdated appearance to attract much more attention and win the visitors trust.

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

Patterns and Typography for vintage icons

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.

For creating vintage icons titles, content headings and texts you can use such authentic fonts as Matchbook, Bazar Medium, Embossed, Hill House,-Fontleroy Brown, Fusty Saddle, Just Old Fashion, Goudy Bookletter 1911, Rocket Script, Parisian, Star Avenue etc. You are absolutely free to find and purchase the fonts to match your design on the net.

Try to pick up 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 with a help of Vintage icons and also images and styled blocks for the web site design. Without doubt your visitors will return to your web page with a grateful smile again and again. They will feel more comfortable and cozy at your web-site.

But try not to make your vintage design look too stuffy, it is best to be aware that professional layout is formal-looking and the major focus should be made on the goods, services or content your web site offers.

Minimalism in webdesign

Lets discover what minimalistic web page design means. Undoubtedly the first features are simplicity and lightweight elements. Simple icons include all this. This type of icons doesnt have complex wordings, figures, textures and patterns. Less even implies more in some areas and to some degree. Website creation is just that area.

Today minimalistic design is something uncommon. As far as you know high present day technologies have one big drawback – usually they lead to the loss of simplicity. These days the contemporary trend is to combine minimalistic web page design with CSS3 and HTML5. Internet site 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;

As far as you know web sites require special methods for representation and promotion. One of the most powerful way is certainly including realistic icons into the web page design. Undoubtedly icons will help users of your web site to get a quick initial impression of your internet business and also products that you offer. If you want to make icons noticeable – place them on the web-site’s home page.

Certainly if you want to have icons that fulfil all your demands you need to hire the professional designer who can make some exclusive set of icons. But such custom orders of realistic icons are very expensive and take significant time period. In fact the results of custom order are not clear. Often even professional site designers create not exactly that you want. Sometimes many of site designers simply take icons that were created earlier and vary colors and shades, use some other effects and sell realistic icons as unique items.

Another way of getting nice web icons is finding authoritative icons resources. There are numerous Realistic web icons stocks and providers on the net. The great advantage of this method of getting web icons is that you see what you pay for. The price may be less than in case with custom orders. In addition, 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 .

Some useful information for utilizing realistic icons

Designing realistic icons you have to build the basic pictograms first. It should look simple and motivated enough to make one icon significantly differ from another. Also it should look vivid enough if being shown 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 is possible to discern the icon within just one second.

After you find the formula of the basic silhouette and it is stable you possibly can make realistic icons more eye-catching by adding decorative elements. Do not overload icons with the details and color tints. Design should look integral and reserved. You can also make the edges anti-aliased. The decoration shouldn’t detract from the icons essence and functions.

The icons are often stored in vector format that makes it pretty simple to edit. It enables you to resize, rotate, adjust the edges and edit outlines. Also you can change the color scheme and add more details and so on. And don’t be afraid – you don’t need to have extra knowlages in web page design.

If you wish to design the interface layout of the new software or IT services – Realistic web icons may be very useful in this task. But remember if you want to create top quality and eye-catching realistic icons you should be patient because it is not easy. Generally you should modify the high-resolution photos in order to get truly realistic images.

Limited amount of color, reserved shades, clear elements, soft lighting are being used for simple web icons design. Simple web icons are produced out of elegant and simple elements which really don’t distract site visitors from the main navigation and web-site idea.

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

Minimalistic design with simple web icons

Additionally to simple icons themselves lightweight background textures and patterns are important for the design and content perception. The eyes should focus on the website content or some important blocks but not on the background pattern or image itself. Producing the background use a light simple shade. This makes it secondary compared with the foreground items like simple web icons.

One more outstanding feature of the lightweight and clear design is without doubt clear typography. Simple icons names (if there are any) should be precise, meaningful and equivalent to their function. Also use readable and enough large font for headings on simple web icons. Clear hierarchy should be followed as well.

Enough white or empty space is effective for developing a wonderful clean simple icons design. Extra spaces keep elements more understandable. For that reason it is faster and easier to work with them. Some extra space between simple web icons will do your design no harm at all.

Usually the minimalistic trend is not entirely minimal. Nevertheless the dominance of white space there are still some simple icons, light textures, neat styles and bold fonts. Minimal isn’t exactly the same as simple. Initially minimal meant plain typographic excluding images and styling. Nowadays there is a great amount of various websites over the Internet. Thats why modern design demands something more than black text on white background. Reducing design elements to the most important items you can add more zest to your internet site layout with some unusual coloring, catchy simple icons, half-transparent and lightweight textures and patterns.

Simple is often used like a synonym of smart. Simple web icons is the best solution if you would like your web site look great and professional.

Another technique is adding some halftones as well as shades to the object by using short lines and crosshatching. Please don’t afraid to alter their frequency and pencil pressure. And this variety creates more three-dimensional look to the object. It helps to create great Line web icons, logos and buttons.The lines with the dots not combining the singular elements are known as open lines. The lines can be gesture-like, parallel, contour etc. as well. The curves that are important for creating complex line shapes are called Bezier curves in computer graphics. These curves are real helpers in creation of the vector shapes such as line icons, different buttons etc. Nowadays computer technologies reached such a level when it becomes possible to reproduce the identical designs or just build new shapes that based on some older ones. The great thing – you can do it without extra efforts and time. Furthermore, you can go back to the previous adjustments due to the history panel. So you do not have to design Line web icons from scratch after you’ve made some errors.

Lines and their facilities in line icons design.

Lets find out what line actually is. The shortest definition is the following: line is a form that contain both width and length but eliminating depth. The line is not only straight but more often curved. The lines can render some appropriate mood or feeling of a movement. In spite of the being static shapes, Line web icons can create an illusion of the dynamic objects. The mood depends on the lines direction. Horizontal lines in Line web icons embody calmness, harmony and also stability while the vertical ones strive for the light movement. Energy and more powerful dynamic feeling pertain to the diagonal lines. If you want to develop refine and ultra-modern line icons designs you should use mix of straight lines and curves.

Line Icons Art

Curve stitching may be the first type of line art known to the artists. Such type of line art was developed with a help of threads of different colours and needle. Initially the canvas was a card board. This movement is also well known as “String Art”. Originally it was found out by Mary Boole as the accessory material for children to help them study geometry of angles and spaces.Spirelli is a form of string art that has been traditionally applied to scrap-booking and making cards. Line art existed also like illustrations for print sources before the photography was created. At that time line art involved only black and white colors. Some shades of gray were also acceptable and imitated.Appealing to both technical and creative sides of human nature, line art combines geometry and art. Designing Line icons may develop special imagination and creativity along with calculation skills.Line art has an ability to be printed to the halftone pic with no extra conversion. Thus it’s different from photography or multi-color painting.

Learn all about retro style

In modern art retro becomes some conscious norm. Having emerged in the post-modern art, it penetrates into the present day web page design in the form of vintage icons, old-style backgrounds, aged photography etc. It is obvious it gives some zest to the feel and look of the ordinary web pages.

Usually the new retro style includes the Web 2.0 look with a vintage twist. It requires good recipe of mixing the ultra-modern clean blocks and the outdated, aged elements of design like Vintage web icons, styles and color palettes.

2D Icons may embody the following items:

• raster pictures (digital graphics);
• styled text as a typeset for 2D Icons;
• vector models (geometric graphics).

These items can be managed by 2D transformations for example rotation, scaling or angular position etc. Meshing basic models you may get more complex ones.

As a result of layers technique 2D icons can create the illusion of all 3D characteristics like shadow, reflection or highlighting. The layers really should maintain the definite hierarchy and order carefully.

2.5D Icons vs 3D and 2D Icons

2Dicons are also well known as 2.5D models. This technology provides web designers ability to work with any layer without touching the others. This type of 2D object creation is liked by the most of the famous graphics editors.

2.5D is a synonym to pseudo 3D. This means “two-and-a-half-dimensional” graphics. Models created with 2.5D technology look like tridimensional while in fact they are not. The featured projection depicts both front and side views.

This technology used for designing 2D web icons is frequently achieved by the special lighting effect. 3D illusion can be reached due to the virtual light source to the left or to the right side and above the users monitor.

]]> http://flashcmsbest.wordpress.com/2011/02/22/the-essence-of-2d-web-icons/feed/ 0 moonfieldgreg http://flashcmsbest.wordpress.com/2011/01/30/business-icons-details/ http://flashcmsbest.wordpress.com/2011/01/30/business-icons-details/#comments Sun, 30 Jan 2011 01:57:27 +0000 moonfieldgreg http://flashcmsbest.wordpress.com/?p=77 ]]> How to find a proper design for your web page? This can be a very difficult task. The header graphics, logos, business icons and content placeholders and of course the fonts – all this stuff needs to be well designed. While doing this keep in mind the business area and desires of your potential customers.

The successful internet site should include your potential customers expectations. For this reason use the suitable business icons, buttons and styles for content blocks.

The initial step as the first brick is really important. At the very begining you have to decide what’s the main audience of your web page. Next think about what can your potential customers expect. Starting with the results of this research you should choose the appropriate name, hosting provider, content and design style. You should feel what colors and styles of business icons and other elements of design reflect the business area your company represents.

You need to keep in mind that different colors evoke certain emotions in various groups of people. For example, you’ve got a night-club related business and want to create incredible web presence. Use business icons of bright disco colors and unusual forms and you will get the amazing result. Also in such a case pay attention to the fact that tints of red as manifestation of passion and sex are pertinent for business icons, logos or buttons. If you’re building the website for some consulting company its look and feel is supposed to be clear, calm and reserved. As well avoid playful lines and even light-minded graphics. Cool colors and simple recognizable shapes of business icons are preferable. Such a internet site will make your potential clients believe into professionalism and stability of your company.