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An Incredibly Inspiring Collection of Avatar Fan Art

Brian Lovin — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 11:00:19 +0000

[tweetmeme] Avatar has taken the world by storm, leading the box office in the US for more than four straight weeks and earning enough dough globally to earn it the rights of the number two grossing movie in the history of…ever. Props to you James. However, such a movie doesn’t become so popular without its fans. And its fans aren’t satisfied until they’ve somehow contributed to the “Avatar universe.” In a recent trip to Deviant Art, I found quite the stunning collection of Avatar-related fan art. This post is my collection of incredibly inspiring Avatar fan art for your enjoyment and inspiration.

Freebie – Kaleidoscope Circles Photoshop Brush Pack

Angie Bowen — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 13:26:15 +0000

Download the Kaleidoscope Circles Brush Pack

Please do not repackage, redistribute or direct link to the download. If you would like to share these textures please link to this page.

It is a fairly well known fact around the design community, that folks love the freebies! And in that spirit, Arbenting has brought a special free Photoshop brush pack for the Elite by Design readers. This high resolution Kaleidoscope Brush Pack is free for anyone to download and use for commercial and non-commercial purposes alike. We only ask that you do not repackage or redistribute the brushes.

Brian had expressed interest in starting a freebie section for his site and we could not resist the opportunity to get it rolling for him. The Arbenting team are suckers for the brushes and we hope that you all enjoy using them as much as we do making them. If not, try harder!

And THIS Is Why You Don’t Steal Online Content

Brian Lovin — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 23:39:32 +0000

Update: The site that was stealing content has removed their post, although I did not get any sort of reply email. And to the people that were emailing me from Web Design Tuts with those dirty messages – it was other people stealing WDT content, not the other way around

Second Update: The site owner has kindly emailed me and apologized for what happened. The article was removed and no harm was done. I will keep this post up as a way to help deter future content thieves. Look everyone, if you’re going to take content, at least don’t steal someone’s bandwidth, and it never hurts to give a credit link. We all make mistakes, but hopefully this will prevent some from happening down the road.

Today I received an email from a reader of Web Design Tuts informing me that someone had republished one my first tutorials on another site. I checked it out, and there it was – my six hours, and 2,000 words of work. I scrolled the page looking for any kind of link or credit to WDT, none. I soon realized that they were even grabbing the images right off of my server, thus taking up my bandwidth!

And THIS, my good people, is why you should NEVER steal online content. I have emailed them and left a comment asking for them to kindly remove the tutorial. Until they do, their readers will see what they have done.

I realize that this happens every day online, but listen everyone: the internet is a community. As bloggers especially, we need to work together to build better websites and put together better content. Stealing is never the right way to go about doing this.

Launching Web Design Tuts

Brian Lovin — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 23:00:25 +0000

Well I knew it couldn’t stay a secret forever. Today, after writing a 6 hour, 2,000 word Photoshop tutorial, I went ahead and did an early-open for Web Design Tuts. I rolled out a couple of Twitter updates to get a few people’s reactions to the site. Some loved it. Some hated it.

@BuildInternet was the first to actually look up Web Design Tuts on Who Is and noticed that the nameservers were pointed to Elite By Design. And the secret was out!

So yes, I am launching Web Design Tuts as a companion site to Elite By Design. I’ve written some posts in the past here on EBD about web design, but there was something within me that wanted to take it further and really push myself to teach other people what I know, and grow as a designer in the process. I plan on writing one post per week at first on both Web Design Tuts and Elite By Design. As the sites gain more momentum, I’ll be more comfortable increasing the posting rate and even hiring some guest posters down the road.

Until then, feel free to check out Web Design Tuts and read How To Design The PSD Tuts Website In Photoshop. Please be sure to subscribe to the feed so you can get updated when our next post rolls out.

On a side note, I’ve received a few emails, direct messages, and comments calling me out on copying PSD Tuts in naming the site Web Design Tuts. In fact, just a few minutes after launch I already had someone hating the blog.

Let me assure you a couple of things:

I didn’t name the website to try and emulate or impersonate Collis and his wonderful websites.
I am not affiliated with the Envato network.
I support Collis and the Envato network and I am in no way trying to push my site by ‘playing their name.’

If you have anything you’d like to talk to me about in regards to Elite By Design, Web Design Tuts, or if you’d just like to leave your opinion, don’t hesitate to comment on this post or get in touch with me.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts and opinions on the new site.

Artist Allure: A Vitaly S Alexius Showcase

Angie Bowen — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 12:00:39 +0000

Vitaly S Alexius is an innovative graphic artist with a style all of his own, and of his own making. Born in Novokuznetsk, located on the Tom River in south central Siberian Russia in the year of our Big Brother (1984, for all those not acquainted with the reference). With a fascination in all things celestial and a wide range of artistic backgrounds, add a dash of Photoshop enthusiasm, and Vitaly has created a unique artistic voice that shines like the stars from the heavens above. Early in his life, Vitaly grew up in the European architecture and factories that surrounded him,and he immersed himself in it. In the late 90’s Vitaly found himself inexplicably launched overseas to Toronto, Canada where he completed his artistic education and gave rise to his style which he named ’Dreaminism’. Vitaly is currently working in illustration and photography exploring a variety of outlets such as CD/book/comic covers, posters, concept art and more.

Indulge in the following showcase of Vitaly S Alexius’s ’Dreaminism’!

Modern Magic

Modern Magic was a design done for the cover of the New Yorker magazine where we see Vitaly’s love for looming architecture take form. The piece offers a contrast whereas a large metropolis brimming with polluted clouds of air is pitted against a serene cottage resting atop one of the massive structures being bathed cleanly in a vast ray of sunlight.

~There’s no place like home.

Machinery of the Stars

Machinery of the Stars is a dazzling digital display born of a simple concept. ‘Perhaps there is another you, looking up in the sky, across the universe?’ From this simple ponderance, Vitaly turned to his love of the celestial, painting a breathtaking explosion of astral machinery above an expansive cityscape, and a lone person taking it all in lost in the question that inspired the piece.

‘What do you see,
when you look onto the stars,
In the darkest hour of night?’

Symphony of Darkness

Symphony of Darkness is so aptly named it is almost as frightening as the piece itself. This brilliant blend of the macabre and surreal creates a scene of beautiful horror that will stick in your mind for days. There is not much else to say about this work that it does not say for itself, not to mention the aid of the verse the artist attached to it.

‘There ain’t nothing to fear,
But the living fear itself,
And the sound of metallic footsteps
In pitch black darkness,
Where pure despair collects it toll.
Don’t blink or close thy eyes,
Or thou may see it too.’

Consonance

Consonance is a piece that grew from the idea that ‘music is about harmony, like a growing tree’. This inspiring illustration was created as for a school assignment based on the theme ‘Classical Music’, and the monotone creation with subtle flecks of color grant it that ageless flow that create the harmony it reaches for.

Collision of Worlds

Collision of Worlds is another amazing digital masterpiece with a nod to the stellar wonders that fascinated Vitaly as a child. With potent imagination and stunning astral imagery this vibrant creation explodes across the digital canvas coming to life with remarkable ease. No doubt about it, this is what’s like when worlds collide!

‘Falling, falling, falling…
My world was crashing down.’

Starcatchers

Starcatchers is by far the most colorful and rich piece that we have gathered from Vitaly’s gallery. Both in depth and scope, this surrealistic extravaganza delivers the truest essence of art. The artist’s included verse eloquently aids the piece so we shall let them say their part.

‘No certain future in sight

Nothing but darkness in the immeasurable depths of space
Between the horizons of distant stars

No other options upon this path,
But to evolve, and to adapt to the undying laws
That shaped the universe itself.

And even go beyond,
To catch the stars themselves,
In a tight grip of metal
To harness their energy
for our bidding…’

10 Best Free WordPress Themes You Haven’t Seen

Angie Bowen — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 13:00:50 +0000

When it comes to blogging and online content management systems, one name is spoken more often than any other: WordPress. This amazingly user-friendly, endlessly-customizable framework is an open source project that has revolutionized the online community since its creation in 2003. Cropping up on hundreds of thousands of sites across the interweb with eager users and community created plugins to enhance performance, this programming powerhouse shows no signs of slowing down.

With so many sites on the bandwagon, designers and developers have answered the call by bringing a multitude of WordPress-ready themes to keep sites looking fresh and new. Given the popularity of the product, these themes make waves when they land in the cyber sea and finding examples that have not been widely used can be difficult and a little bit intimidating. However, after scouring the vast recesses of the web, we have found a few gems that you may not have seen before. Here are some of the standouts we happened to uncover.

Perfectom Theme

Features

Optimized for all browsers
XHTML/CSS valid
Fixed width
2 columns

This theme offers a clean, very sleek setup for your website. It seems like it would be ideally suited for a fashion blog of some kind. Very crisp, overall.

CSS Gallery Theme

Features

Built in tagging
Google ads and a sidebar block with 125 x 125 banner ads
Valid XHTML 1.0 transitional and valid CSS

Technically this theme was built as a base for a CSS/website gallery, and wonderfully so, however, personally I think the design also lends itself to being used greatly as a portfolio or as a general showcase gallery.

Langit Theme

Features

Clean and simple
3 columns
Sidebar widget ready
XHTML + CSS valid
Tested in Firefox, Internet Explorer 6, Opera, and Safari
Compatible with WordPress 2.5 and below
Logo PSD and font are included in the package

This is simply a wonderful theme for anyone looking to organize an in-depth blog or manage content that requires multiple category listings and also needs a lot of features. This theme meets both of those stipulations with grace and ease.

Linoluna Theme

Features

Lean and simple CSS
Grid Layout
Tabbed Navigation
Slideshow animated featured articles on front page

An extremely deep magazine theme suited magnificently for multi-author blogs. Among its many accessible features is a fantastic statistics calculator in each post which includes total comments, total views, author name, category, date, and an email address, not to mention the print function.

Monochrome Gallery Theme

Features

Custom admin panel
Easily customize theme
Four widgetized areas
More homepage content
Author Archives
Two page templates
No editing themes files
Blueprint CSS
Valid XHTML and CSS

Monochrome Gallery is a free widgetized theme for WordPress packaged with an author archives page, AJAX slideshow, categorized posts with thumbnails on the homepage, and a CSS framework to aid in customization. Need I say more?

Small Magazine Theme

Features

Unique and fresh design
Widgetized Sidebar
125×125 ad spots
250×250 adsense spot
Easily customizable using CSS
Custom 404 Error page
Fixed width
Right Sidebar
Built in Flickr support
Styled Pagination
Built in Gravatar
Valid CSS & HTML

Here we have a fully loaded magazine theme packed with features. Completely ready to launch your online publication style site with a built in photo gallery and featured articles sections. If it’s a magazine theme you need, look no further.

Arthemia Theme

Features

Drop Down Menus
Automatic image resizing for thumbnails
Gravatar Support
3 column with enhanced footer

On the other hand, when you need the perfect balance between a magazine type setup and blog, then this is your theme. You get the magazine headers and featured articles, with an ordered post section below a featured category break.

Isolated Theme

Features

Contains search, author, and links page templates.
Mootool Accordion for bulk post display.
Collapsible/expandable sidebar.
XHTML1.0 Transitional
Sidebar is above footer, and has 3 columns.
GD Image Titles (Can be disabled via Theme Options Page)
Tested in IE7, IE6, Firefox 1.5, and Opera 9

Probably the most unique theme I have seen in a while, this visually stunning theme, not to mention how technically interesting it is, makes me think of flipping through a book. An easy addition to the list, without question. I expect to see this cropping up all over the web.

Gluttony Theme

Features

Two-column
Widget-ready
Rounded-corners

Yet another fine example of a content based theme. Meaning it is simple and clean while still offering a variety of features. Though none of that detracts from letting the content shine through.

The Morning After Theme

Features

Clean grid-based design
Support for WordPress widgets
A three-column home page
Featured post highlighting
Associating images/thumbnails with recent posts
Customizable logo/header image
Easy CSS classes for adding captions and wrapping text around images in posts
Support for asides
Option for readers to e-mail posts to friends
Option to switch to a print-friendly view to print posts

The theme was created based on a brief survey on the WordPress forums about what people would want to see in a unique magazine-style theme. Nice showcase layout for your recent posts.

Bonus Versatility Lite

Features

Two-collumn theme
Ad-ready
Widgetized Sidebar
Featured Post
Dropdown CSS Menus
Integrated related posts, social bookmarking buttons and more

As a bonus we decided to add a new theme that was just released this week. It’s a nice simple and clean blog theme released under the Creative Commons License.

What underused themes have you discovered recently on your trips around the web that you think would have made a nice addition to the list?

50 Most Fresh and Inspirational Favicons

Angie Bowen — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 12:00:54 +0000

[tweetmeme]

Branding goes deep these days. Logos are not the only way web designers are leaving their mark on the world wide web. They are scaling down their focus to 16 pixels by 16 pixels, making a different kind of mark altogether. Favicons have exploded across the expanse of cyberspace, cropping up in browser tabs and address bars everywhere. These tiny pixel art impressions of the site can be a daunting task for a designer. With such a small canvas for creation, how does one capture the essence of the site? Well, they may be petite, but we found some examples of fashionable favicons that brilliantly use this minuscule medium with both skill and verve.

Check out the showcase below, and be sure to let us know of your favorite favicons that we may have overlooked!

A List Apart

Trap Solutions

Szpo

Nilesh Chaudhair – Shutterbug

Thinking Woman’s Diary

Reach Group Consulting

myGoya

Juice

India Macromedia User Group

HUGS

Flashaholics

Evozon

Enlightened Lamp Recycling

Jeffery Zeldman Presents

ITC Fonts

Ornamentals Photoshop Brushes

30 Most Inspirational Business Websites

Angie Bowen — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 12:00:15 +0000

[tweetmeme]

It’s no secret at this point, this internet thing is going to be big! Most businesses today have some kind of online presence, usually focused around their website. The marketing value of this tool is virtually immeasurable. Unless you are a company that specializes in measuring the marketing value of of the internet as a mainstream tool for enhancing your business, then you might have an idea. And if that is your business, what kind of website would you have?

Business sites have a different goal than most, to be sure. For most business sites, usability is the main focus when putting the site together. They want to make sure that function takes precedence so that users can easily find their way around to everything that they are looking for. Some businesses believe the look of the site is as important as everything else, and they have achieved usability with an equal focus on aesthetics. Here are the thirty most inspirational business websites that we found.

PhotoImageArt

Group8020

Cad & the Dandy

Assaroe Falls

Mia and Maggie

Coconut Grove Apartments

Expression Tints

Porters Carpet and Furniture

Sunderman Construction

Rock Creek Strategic Marketing

Tastebook

Dornoch Castle Hotel

The Resume Girl

30 Elm

Hotel Oxford

Pink Comb Salon

Best Mortgage Deals

Depozit De USI

101 Prints

Miami Angel Properties

Madame Surto

Empower Walk

EarthGoods Natural Foods

Eliteak Outdoor Furnature

Merchant Vinyl

Fox Plumbing

Oypro Commercial Real Estate

Adcapital Industries

Paul Geller Enterprises

Advanced Recovery Computer Recycling

The Harsh Future Of Web Design?

Matt Hamilton — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 12:00:31 +0000

I think we can all agree that design has been in a constant change since the burst of the Internet, however it seems that the direction of who is doing the designing has also changed from those who are ‘professionals’ in their field to the new breed – ‘home designers’.

So – is this the direction for design in the future? Will design professionals be shunted off to the side to make way for other, cheaper alternatives? Or will people recognize this is killing the industry and the extra money that is paid is for quality?

Spec work seems to be the design of the future. For those who don’t know, spec work is when you hold a ‘competition’ where designers compete against each other in order to win the prize money. The thing that annoys professionals however is that the cost they can charge is being lowered as their profession is cheapened and that they could be competing against unqualified and inexperienced designers.

I myself (being an early design student) have participated in a few spec competitions to experience first-hand what it is like. Out of the 7 or so I entered, I did not come first, however, I received a commendation prize for a good design in which the ‘client’ purchased the exclusive rights to. Out of most of the competitions I entered there were 40-300 participants. Positives can be drawn from these experiences (e.g. practicing design with a real design brief) and that can be good for students however, the still-obvious downside is the cheapening of the industry.

Main reasons why spec work can be seen as ‘bad’.

There can only be 1 winner out of potentially hundreds of entrants
It lowers the amount of business they can receive. Clients see much more opportunity in paying $300 for 100 different designers.

If you take a look at the current spec sites (99designs, CrowdSpring and Incspring) you can see an evident explosion in popularity as word has spread around. As with Newton’s third law of motion, there has been refute for the idea. Protest websites like NO!SPEC have been set up to counter these various spec websites. On the NO!SPEC website it outlines all the various reasons as to why they oppose this idea so I will let you go and read that if you desire. This opens up to the main part of the post where you have your say.

Is spec work the way of the future? Is it going to cheapen the industry permanently or is it just a fad? Are the new younger designers going to replace the current experienced designers? Does education still have a place within the industry with spec work booming?

22 (New) Free High Quality Icons Sets

Brian Lovin — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 12:00:19 +0000

[tweetmeme] Icons are a staple of the design industry – every day new sets are being released into the world, most often with little to no attention. Today we are going to showcase twenty-two new fresh high quality icon sets perfect for your design project. Enjoy!