Monday, February 28, 2011

Simple Web Icons Important Characteristics

Simple icons are among the principal features of minimalistic design. Do not forget that simple icons along with other design elements should be used moderately. Reduce the amount of simple icons. Use them only where it is absolutely necessary. Optional simple web icons are to be refrained from repetition or eluded. They may serve multiple functions.

Limited amount of color, reserved shades, clear elements, soft lighting are being used for simple web icons design. One of the greatest advantages of Simple icons is that they don't distract website visitors from the main idea of your website.

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

How to produce minimalistic design with simple web icons

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 internet site content or some most important blocks but not on the background pattern or image itself. So the background needs to be of a light simple shade making it secondary compared with the foreground items like simple web icons.

Clear typography is another prominent feature of the lightweight and clear design. Select simple icons names according to their function and bear in mind such names ought to be precise, and also meaningful. 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 helpful for creating a great clean simple icons design. Extra spaces keep elements more readable. Due to this fact it is easier to work with them. Even if you use some extra space between simple web icons this do not harm to the design of your site at all.

Speaking about the minimalistic trend in general it is not totally minimal. Despite its great amount of white space there are still some simple icons, light textures, neat styles and bold fonts. Minimal is just not exactly the same as simple. Initially minimal meant plain typographic excluding images and styling. Today there's a great amount of various website pages over the Internet. Thats why modern design requires something more than black text on white background. Reducing elements of design to the most essential items you can add much more zest to your web-site layout with some uncommon coloring, catchy simple icons, half-transparent and lightweight textures and patterns.

Simple = smart. While creating the modern website design you should bear in mind the eternal truth stating that genius lies in simplicity. Simple web icons is the greatest solution if you'd like your internet-site look fantastic and professional.

Line Icons - The Beauty Of Website Design

We usually use lines for emphasizing edges as well as outlining the contours of objects. If located and developed reasonably, line icons can be the excellent decoration of any minimalistic or clear web site design.

What are line icons?

What's in fact a line? The shortest definition is the next: 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. Inspite of the being static shapes, Line web icons can make 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 stronger dynamic feeling pertain to the diagonal lines. If you'd like to develop refine and ultra-modern line icons designs you should use combination of straight lines and curves.

Line art - Line Icons

Definitely the earliest type of line art that familiar to a great deal of artists is curve stitching. It's carried out with threads of different colors and needle. Initially the canvas was a cardboard. This movement is also well known as "String Art". Its founder was a Mary Boole. He developed it as the accessory material for children to assist them to 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 lived also in the form of illustrations for print sources before the photography was invented. At that time line art involved only black and white colours. A few 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 web icons may develop special imagination and creativity along with calculation skills.Line art has an ability to be printed to the halftone picture without extra conversion. Thus it is different from photography or multi-color painting. This type of art is named line drawing and line copy too.

Sunday, February 27, 2011

Vintage Icons And Internet Site Design

Retro steadily increases its right place in the present day web page design field. No doubt the best representatives of classic beauty and noble taste are Vintage web icons. Contemporary internet site style acquires some vintage twist. Retro and Vintage are becoming the wide-spread trends in the modern-day digital art. Vintage web icons, textures, patterns as well as clip-art bring mystery to your design. They assist you to create the atmosphere of the old happy times, with feelings of simplicity, innocence and nobility. People usually associate childhood or youth with happy times. For this reason psychological peculiarity of people vintage style is so popular.

Retro style and the modern web site design industry

Speaking about retro in simple terms we should outline an aged or culturally out-of-date trend that has become some conscious norm in the modern art. You can certainly find sights of retro style in the contemporary web design in the form of vintage icons, old-styled backgrounds, aged photography etc.

Typically the new retro style includes the Web 2.0 look with a vintage twist. It needs to mix the modern clean blocks and the outdated ones. Also there is a necessity to mix aged design elements like Vintage web icons, styles and color palettes.

2d Icons And Models

2D icons as well as other objects are well known for their flexibility. This is achieved by the peculiarity of rendering them at different resolutions ideal for various output devices.

2D Icons may embody the next 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 simple models you may get more complex ones.

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

2.5D Icons

2Dicons also are known as 2.5D models. This technology offers web site designers ability to work with any layer without touching the others. The best of the prominent graphics editors choose this kind of 2D object development.

2.5D is a synonym to pseudo 3D and is interpreted as "two-and-a-half-dimensional" graphics. Models which were built with a help of with 2.5D technology appear to be tridimensional while in fact they are not. The featured projection represents both front and side views.

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

Friday, February 25, 2011

Proven Methods To Create Line Icons

The objects with the outlined contours is another kind of Line icons. Such design elements are known as contour drawings. Also you can find another type of icons: the items are without some strict outlines. They are called gesture drawings. These kinds of drawings are being widely used by experienced designers who are able to repeat the outlines of the object right after seeing it.

One additional technique is adding some halftones and shades to the object. It can be done with the help of short lines and crosshatching. Do not afraid to alter their frequency and pencil pressure. And this variety creates more three-dimensional look to the object. So this method is really helping in creation of fantastic Line web icons, logos and buttons.Also lets get info regarding open lines. It's such sort of the lines where the dots not combining the singular elements. The lines can be also parallel, gesture-like, contour and so on. You may be wonder what's bezier curves in computer graphics? It is such type of the curves which are essential for creating complex line shapes. These curves are handy small features important for producing the vector shapes like line icons, unusual buttons etc.Nowadays computer technologies reached such a level when it becomes possible to reproduce exactly the same designs or just build new shapes that based on some older ones. The fantastic thing - it can be done without extra efforts and time. Another benefit is that it is easy to return to the previous adjustments with a help of the history panel. As a result there's no need to make Line web icons from scratch if you have made some faults.

Realistic Icons Important Info.

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

As far as you know sites demand special means of representation and promotion. One of these techniques is including realistic icons into your website design. They help users to get a effective initial impression of what business area and what products he/she is going to have to do with. If you want to make icons noticeable - place them on the web site's home page.

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

Finding authoritative icons resources it is another way of getting wonderful web icons. You can certainly find a great amount of numerous Realistic web icons stocks and providers on the net. You see what you pay for and the price 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 low-cost realistic icons . All these benefits make icon stocks the great deal.

Some useful information for utilizing realistic icons

If you make a decision to create a realistic icon first of all you have to build the basic pictograms. Also it should look vivid enough if being shown at worse resolution. The person should be able to recognize the icon meaning just by looking at its outlines for a short period of time. You can 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 the addition of decorative elements. Icons really should not be overloaded with the details and color tints. Icons should look well design and reserved. You may make the edges anti-aliased. The decoration should not detract from the icons essence and functions.

The icons are usually stored in vector format that makes it pretty easy to edit. You are free to resize, rotate, adjust the edges and modify outlines, change the color scheme and add more details etc. And don't be worried - you don't need to have extra knowlages in web site design.

Realistic icons may be handy in case you need to design the interface layout of the new software or IT services. Bear in mind if you wish to generate good quality and eye-catching realistic icons you should be patient because it's not easy. Truly realistic images may be created only if you take and modify the high-resolution photos. So keep this in mind.

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Realistic Is Not Mystic: Discovering The Real Truth About Realistic Icons

The very first mention about realism happened in 1850 when it was spread over French art. It is really carried over the centuries and penetrated into all kinds of art as well as design. Speaking about realism in web page design we can easily say that it's represented here by Realistic icons.

Quick discourse on history of realistic icons.

Vintage Web Icons As A Part Of Vintage Design

Vintage web icons is one of the most noticeable and easy-to-apply graphical elements you may use in your website to make it look archaic. Vintage web icons suppose authentic use of vintage typography, less-saturated colors and retro textures to help creating the vintage air emanating from the web-site. Your website 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 website 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.No doubt 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 contain hints to retro cars concepts for attracting 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. 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 - bear 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.

Usage of specific characters is not limited to the above-mentioned ones. Apply your creativity and use them as you wish. This will help to make people surprise and thus remember your site.

Vintage Icons Patterns

Highly recommended Vintage patterns in vintage icons design:

  • 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.

If being relevant to the topic, general style and idea of your web page vintage-inspired design is supposed to look modern and appropriate, but no old-fashioned. If you create the warm and noble, antique feel with a help of Vintage web icons, images and styled blocks for the site layout, your visitors will come to your site with a thankful smile over and over again. They will feel more comfortable and cozy at your site.

But try not to make your vintage design look too stuffy, you need to be aware that professional layout is formal-looking and the major emphasis should be made on the products, services or content your website provides.

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Simple Icons As Greatest Representative Of Minimalistic Web Site Design

Simple icons are created not to make the design delightful but rather minimal and modern. Wonderful and lightweight Simple icons are aimed to improve web site user interaction.

Minimalistic website design - prevalent trend

Lets discover what minimalistic web page design indicates. Certainly the first features are simplicity and light-weight elements. Simple icons involve all this. It reduces complex wordings, figures, textures and patterns. Sometimes less even implies more. It depends on areas and extent. Website design is exactly that area.

Today minimalistic internet site design is something unusual. High modern technologies usually lead to the loss of simplicity. Blending minimalistic website design with CSS3 and HTML5 is becoming more well-liked and makes you believe that combining simple elegance and usability is the method for your web site 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 web site 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;

Monday, February 21, 2011

2d Icons Tips And Tricks

2D web icons is a wide spread trend in the web site design of nowadays. Being two-dimensional, they are notable for their flexibility and comparative simplicity. 2.5D Icons is the type of 2D Icons that is closer to pseudo 3D representation.Such models depict both front and side views.

2D computer graphics was initially based on vector graphics devices. 2D icons are one of the most essential two-dimensional digital design items.

What is actually 2D?Generally it is being associated with computer graphics and determined as the two-dimensional way of digital images generation. Two-dimensional models mostly are 2D geometric ones, digital images and texts. The term 2D usually means as models themselves as the techniques and tricks specific to them either.

2D web icons and objects don't just represent the real world items but they are independent objects with their own semantic value. 2D graphics enables us to get much more direct control of the image than 3D technology. This one of the reasons why they are so preferred in the world of contemporary web site design.