tripwire magazine

Good Logos are not easy to design at all but they are essential for any successful business. This article is a logo designers toolbox to get you started creating logos. First of all logo design requires knowledge of the business and how to use this information in the logo design process. Logos should be relevant, timeless and aligned with the strategy and the products and or services offered. Once you have the concept in place and a solid idea you need to be able to create the image in tools like Illustrator. This article provides links to a lot of tutorials that will help you pick up the needed skills. Please share with us you ideas, favourite tools, comments and online resources we should add.

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IT seams like on of the trends in Web Designs currently is using Bokeh Effects for Background designs. I have to admit that I like it a lot if it is used right. So what is Bokeh? In photography, bokeh is the blur in out-of-focus areas of an image. Bokeh occurs for parts of the scene that lie outside the depth of field. In web design it is not any type of bokeh that is being used but in particular the kind of Bokeh you will get from drops of water reflecting light while not being in focus.  Some would also claim that Bokeh of this kind could look like blood cells under extreme magnification. What over it is being photographed or if the bokeh is simply synthetic and created in Photoshop it makes website backgrounds look really dynamic and appealing. This post showcase excellent examples of Bokeh inspired web design and then provide a large list of Bokeh textures that you can use yourself. Share your site or just one you know if it’s missing in this article.

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Wall decoration is an interesting subject and there are many possibilities. Lately wall stickers have invaded walls in private homes and in official buildings and they really help creating unique rooms and Individual impressions. I want to share some really great walls from the DGI City in Copenhagen some time ago. Decorated with paint and wall stickers, that shows scenes from the city of Copenhagen. I also have found other great wall decorations from the archives that may interest you.

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Call to action is a term used for elements in a web page that basically request an action from the user. Typically a press on a web page button indicates that a user is making a decision of some kind and buttons are one of the most important building blocks we have to implement call to action. Buttons are for that reason very important elements and they need to be well integrated with the overall design, easy to spot and use. Styling of buttons is typically achieved using CSS and graphic elements but there are a few other techniques available as well. Generally styling html form elements is difficult and is one of the areas where cross browser compatibility may still be an issues when trying to create a design that looks the same no matter what browser is used. This article first cover the basics of using submit buttons on web pages and then dig into more advanced techniques for applying enhancements to buttons to increase how well they "call-to-action" for your visitor.

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The Internet truly is the land of opportunities of our time.  The amount of online sales transactions are increasing at an incredible rate and while opportunities seams nearly endless competition is harder than ever.  Being able reach anyone with a connection to the Internet certainly is amazing and the only problem is that the number of competitors have gone up at the same rate.  If you don’t manage to surface and get online presence the millions of potential buyers will surf by you store without noticing it.  Customers today can pick and choose, compare, analyze etc. your products and services against others making it essential to know your competitors well and more important to get a sale whenever you have the opportunity! This is where Landing Page Design becomes important and rally can make a great difference. This article provides essential tips and examples on creating Landing Pages that work.

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There are many design related blogs at the moment and every day new players show up. The main strategy for the vast majority of design related blogs is to publish many articles with great content to attract readers, quantity seams more important than quality. Some of them have a creative and unique design but it is static and remain the same on the many posts and pages put online. Don’t get me wrong – I think this is OK but we could all learn a lot from a few design blogs that have chosen a completely different strategy. These few blogs provide a unique design on each post with excellent use of typography, backgrounds and colors to support the theme of the individual post. This is raw inspiration that you simply need to pick up!

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Portfolio websites and blogs are critical for freelance designers to build an online presence and to tease potential customers to buy their services. Many designers have learned this and this means the competition is hard. That is why portfolios simply need to be awesome and stand out from all the others to be noticed and generate business. An important aspect of portfolios is presentation of the designers work and this is where slideshow applications comes in handy. They look good, improve usability and gives visitors to the portfolio simple access to the material being presented. This post brings an overview of more than 25 excellent slideshow solutions to enhance your portfolio.

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If you’re a web designer you know how important it is to pick up fresh inspiration and new ideas. This post showcase 25 hand picked Beautiful Websites with excellent visual artistry, integrated sound, ease of use, and pure uniqueness. Enjoy, be inspires and please leave a comment to share links to your own favorite web site designs.

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Why would anyone have a boring and completely non-inspiring desktop when it is possible to spice it up with loads of great looking apple inspired wallpapers? This post provides you more than 40 awesome wallpapers that will make your desktop rock!

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Using textures in web design have become quite popular. Textures are great for giving the design a more realistic look and feel but should be used with caution. Adding too much texture risk making the design too messy and it easily becomes a bit grunge’ish. I personally like simple textures or simply noise that break the colours a bit and gives depth and brings the design to life when used right. This post brings 25 sites with different use of textures for your inspiration. Drop a comment and share if you like some of them or if you know others I should add.

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