Archive for October, 2008»
The whole may be more than the sum of its parts, but without the parts, there is no whole. Lest that sound like some weird philosophical meandering to you, take comfort in observing the finer aspects of creative and appealing user interface design.
The following list bucks tradition by not being tied to one particular theme; although, as you’ll see, there are subtle threads running through them. While excellent, none of these designs are perfect, and I’ve pointed out room for improvement we can learn from.
Give it a go. Grab a coffee and take time to explore further. As you would a quality timepiece made of thousands of parts, analyze and enjoy how intricate parts come together to create a cohesive experience. Look closely and see what makes each website design tick.
You may also want to take a look at the following related articles:
Saving repetitive tasks as Photoshop actions can save you a lot of time, allowing you to automate your work and improve workflow efficiency. A Photoshop action is a recording of a sequence of commands and operations that you can save and access later on.
We’ve searched for the best downloadable Photoshop actions that can help you improve your workflow and perform complex techniques with the push of a button. In this collection, you’ll find more than 350 free hand-picked Photoshop actions that you can use to speed up your graphics creation.
Note: It’s important to check the license of each action set you download and use.
Quick Introduction to Photoshop Actions
For those unfamiliar with Photoshop actions, they’re simply pre-recorded tasks that you can save and reuse anytime. Photoshop actions commonly have an .atn file extension. Installing a Photoshop action for more recent versions of Photoshop is easy: simply drag the .atn file onto the Actions palette or place it directly inside your Adobe Photoshop\Presets\Photoshop Actions folder. For a more comprehensive discussion of Photoshop actions, check out this complete guide to Photoshop actions.
Cellar Heat: A Free WordPress Theme
We love our readers. We respect the hard work of designers and developers across the globe. And we try to do our best to make the Web design community stronger and the Web a little bit prettier. Therefore, we ask talented artists and creative professionals to showcase their skills and release something unique and beautiful as a gift to the community. And when designers agree, truly impressive works see the light of day.
Today we are glad to release Cellar Heat: a free professional WordPress theme created by Evan Eckard. The design of this theme focuses on patterns and typography, and it comes in two flavors. It is designed especially for Smashing Magazine and its readers.
Download the theme for free!
You can use the theme freely for all of your projects without any restrictions. However, it’s forbidden to sell or redistribute the theme without both the designer’s and Smashing Magazine’s permission. Please link to this article if you would like to spread the word. You may modify the theme as you wish, but if you plan to release your modification, please ask our permission first.
50 Stunning Underwater Photos
by Vailancio Rodrigues and Smashing Magazine Editorial Team
Of all the different types of photography showcased on Smashing Magazine, underwater photography is probably one of the most difficult to practice. It requires a very specialized equipment and the knowledge of some advanced techniques to get a perfect picture. You need to get the correct exposure, accurate focus, controlled movement of your subject and a pleasing color balance; you also have to deal with low light. Underwater photos offen suffer from loss of color and contrast when taken at a significant depth. Such photos are always adjusted with color balance to help offset the blueish tint of the water.
Because underwater photography is a specialized art, relatively few photographers attempt it. But it offers many exciting and rare photographic opportunities for fresh and truly different vivid images. Most often, photographers use a traditional film or digital camera covered in a watertight casing. Professionals prefer to use special underwater cameras.
Below, we present over 50 beautiful examples of underwater photos, created by artists and professional photographers. All works featured below have the artists and photographers’ names linked to their portfolios or websites. At the bottom of this post you’ll fine some links to Flickr groups where you can find more similar and exciting photos.
35 Phenomenal Fractal Art Pictures
By Robert Bowen and Smashing Editorial Team
In the realm of digital art, so many wonderful and playful genres exist that stimulate the imagination, but so few do it with the intricate style of fractal art. Fractal art is achieved through the mathematical calculations of fractal objects being visually displayed, with the use of self-similar transforms that are generated and manipulated with different assigned geometric properties to produce multiple variations of the shape in continually reducing patterns. Sounds extremely technical and not that artistic, true, but these equations create some of the most mesmerizing and inspiring artwork to emerge from the digital art arena.
In this edition of our Monday Inspiration series, we look at awe-inspiring examples of the dynamic digital art sensation that is fractal art with 50 Phenomenal Fractal Art Renders. Setting across the vast sea of cyberspace to find these works was such an amazing task as so many fantastic pieces surfaced. Here are scaled-down versions of some of the most breathtaking ones that were uncovered, though the full-sized versions (linked through the image) offer a much more spectacular view of these mathematical masterpieces.
Books Giveaway: Winners
Last week we announced a books giveaway (the page take minutes to load) — we were giving away 10 professional web design-related books that cover the topics CSS, usability, user interface design, innovation, web navigation, web form design and JavaScript programming.
We genuinely appreciate our community and respect our readers for reading us, and now we wanted to give something back. Over 3,500 readers participated in the giveaway. And the winners are now announced in this post.