Line Icons - The Beauty Of Web Design

Lines are more frequently used for outlining the contours of objects and putting an emphasis on edges. Line icons can be the wonderful decoration of any web design, certainly if you have a skill to design them properly.

Line icons - to be or not to be....

Let us learn what line actually is. This is a form containing both width and length but eliminating depth.We are accustomed to the fact that the line is usually straight. Newertheless the line is more often curved. The lines can give 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 is generally being conditioned by the lines direction. Horizontal lines in Line icons express calmness, harmony and stability while the vertical ones strive for the light movement. The diagonal lines reveal energy as well as stronger dynamic feeling. If you want to develop refine and modern line icons designs you should use combination of straight lines and curves.

Line Icons Art

For sure the 1st kind of line art that familiar to a large amount of artists is curve stitching. It's carried out with threads of various colours and also needle. The canvas was a cardboard first. String Art is another name for this particular movement. Its founder was a Mary Boole. He created it as the accessory material for kids to assist them to study geometry of angles and spaces. Spirelli is a type of string art that has been usually applied to scrap-booking and making cards. Before the photography appeared line art lived also in the form of illustrations for print sources and included 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. If you desire to become a Line web icons designer remember that this process may develop imagination and creativity as well as calculation skills.Line art differs from photography or multi-color painting by its ability to be printed to the halftone picture with no extra conversion.

Simple Web Icons And Web Design

Simple web icons are among the principal features of minimalistic design. Furthermore, simple icons as well as other elements of design should be used moderately. One of the keys is minimizing icons use in general. Reduce the amount of simple icons. Use them only where it is essential. Optional simple web icons are to be refrained from repetition or eluded.

Simple web icons design consists of limited amount of color, reserved shades, clear elements, soft lighting. One of the best benefits of Simple web 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

Simple web icons and minimalistic design

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 webpage content or some main blocks but not on the background pattern or image itself. Building the background use a light simple shade. This makes it secondary compared with the foreground items like simple web icons.

One more well known feature of the lightweight and clear design is undoubtedly clear typography. Simple icons names (if there are any) should be precise, meaningful and equivalent to their function. Headings placed on simple web icons need to be of readable font and huge enough for easy reading. Clear hierarchy should be followed as well.

Also for developing a great clean simple icons design you may use enough white or empty space. Extra spaces keep elements more readable. As a result it is easier to work with them. Some extra space between simple web icons will do your design no harm at all.

Usually the minimalistic trend isn't 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. From the very begining minimal meant plain typographic eliminating images and styling. Today there is a great number of various sites over the Internet. That's 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 webpage layout with some unusual coloring, catchy simple icons, half-transparent and lightweight textures and patterns.

Simple is often used like a synonym of smart. While creating the modern website design you should bear in mind the eternal truth stating that genius is based on simplicity. Simple web icons is the best choice if you would like your web site look fantastic and professional.

Simple Icons As Greatest Representative Of Minimalistic Internet Page Design

Simple icons are produced not to make the design exquisite but rather minimal and present day. Light-weight Simple web icons are supposed to be created to improve website user interaction.

Minimalism in webpage design

Let's discover what minimalistic webpage design means. Of course the first features are simplicity and lightweight elements. Simple icons include all this. It minimizes complex wordings, figures, textures and patterns. Sometimes less even implies more. It depends on areas and extent. Website creation is just that area.

Today minimalistic webpage design is something unusual. So far as you know high present day technologies have one big disadvantage - frequently they resulted in the loss of simplicity. Nowadays the modern trend is to mix minimalistic web design with CSS3 and HTML5. Web site which uses simple design often has off-color effects and also actively use CSS and Ajax.

The most important features of the present day simple webdesign:

• 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;
• readable and clear typography;

Important Things About Realistic Icons.

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

Online websites are a special niche requiring special ways of representation as well as promotion. Probably the most powerful way is certainly including realistic icons into the 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. The icons should be placed on internet site homepage to be noticeable at once.

You may hire the skilled designer to create some unique set of icons meeting your site personal requirements and products. But keep in mind that such method of creating of realistic icons is very expensive and takes a lot of time. In fact the results of custom order aren't clear. Sometimes even professional site designers produce not exactly that you want. To save lots of time and smoothen things down they take icons created earlier and simply play with the colors and shades, use some other effects and sell realistic icons as unique items.

Another source of getting wonderful web icons is finding authoritative icons resources. You can easily find a great amount of numerous Realistic web icons stocks and providers on the net. You see what you pay for and the cost may occur essentially lower 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 .

Tricks for utilizing realistic icons

Creating realistic icons you have to build the basic pictograms first. It should look vivid enough if being displayed at worse resolution, resized, discolored or blurred. The icon must be recognizable at first sight. How to test your icons? If it is possible to discern the icon within just one second - it's well done.<\p>

After you find the formula of the basic silhouette and it is stable you possibly can make realistic icons more eye-catching with the addition of decorative elements. Don't 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.

Vector format in which the icons are stored makes them pretty simple to modify. You're free to resize, rotate, adjust the edges and modify outlines, change the color scheme and add more details etc. So you don't have to be an experienced designer or an artist to use them.

Realistic web icons may be helpful in case you need to design the interface layout of the new software program or IT services. Creating premium quality, eye-catching and good-looking realistic icons is not an easy task. Generally you should edit the high-resolution photos to get truly realistic images.

Line Web Icons Development - Various Techniques

Usually Line web icons are the objects with the outlined contours. They're called contour drawings. There're items without some strict outlines that are rather some hint than actual contour of line icons. They are referred to as gesture drawings. Such drawings are being widely used by skilled designers who are able to repeat the outlines of the object right after seeing it.

One more technique is adding various halftones as well as shades to the object by using short lines and crosshatching. Their frequency and pencil pressure can be different. And this variety impart more three-dimensional look to the object. So this technique is really helping in creation of great Line icons, logos and buttons.Also lets get info regarding open lines. It is such type of the lines where the dots not combining the singular elements. It may look really striking when being applied to line icons design. The lines can as well be parallel, gesture-like, contour and so on. The curves which are important for creating complex line shapes are called Bezier curves in computer graphics. These curves are useful small features important for producing the vector shapes like line icons, different buttons etc.Computer technologies have the ability to reproduce the same designs or build new shapes based on some older ones without extra efforts and time. Another benefit is that it is possible to go back to the previous adjustments with a help of the history panel. So you don't have to design Line icons from scratch after you have made some errors.

2d Web Icons

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

2D Icons 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 will get more complex ones.

As a result of layers technique 2D web icons can create the illusion of all 3D characteristics such as shadow, reflection or highlighting. The layers should keep the definite hierarchy and order carefully. This makes modifying 2D icons and related objects easier.

2.5D Icons

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

2.5D is a synonym to pseudo 3D and is interpreted as "two-and-a-half-dimensional" graphics. Models that were created with a help of with 2.5D technology appear to be tridimensional but in fact they're not.

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

The Truth About Realistic Icons

Realism traces back to the 1850s when this movement unfolded in French art. It is really carried over the hundreds of years and penetrated into all kinds of art and design. Realism in web design is effectively represented by Realistic icons.

Realistic icons background

Vintage Icons And Internet Site Design

Retro takes over the modern webpage design industry. Without doubt the best representatives of classic beauty and noble taste are Vintage icons. Modern day web page 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 internet page design. They help you to create the atmosphere of the old happy times, with feelings of simplicity, innocence and nobility. People think the good times are over associating them with their period of childhood or sweet youth. Hence vintage style revives due to this psychological peculiarity of the human nature.

Learn all about retro style in the contemporary web page design industry

In today's art retro becomes some conscious norm. It is simple to find sights of retro style in the present day webpage design in the form of vintage icons, old-styled backgrounds, aged photography etc.

The new retro style quite often incorporates the Web 2.0 look with a vintage twist. It requires good recipe of mixing present day clean blocks and the outdated, aged elements of design like Vintage web icons, styles and color palettes.

Vintage Web Icons And Vintage Web Design

If your want your web site looks archaic - use Vintage icons. They're one of the most noticeable and easy-to-apply graphical elements. With a help of vintage web icons you can easily create the vintage atmosphere at your webpage Also use vintage typography, less-saturated colors and retro textures. Antique air is going to charm and brings unconscious smiles to the faces of your website visitors.

Retro trend is all about the styles of the70s and 80s. Retro advertising art from the 1950s is bold and eye-catchy. Computer technologies help to put a new face on this type of art using its characters in web page 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.Certainly 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 site layout. This is the great idea for websites that have a deal with auto sales, transporting services, tour sites etc. A pin-up model is another popular character used in vintage icons design and other web-site graphics styling. Often it presents images of how the really sexy and beautiful woman should look like. If you are an owner of the website 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.

Military and security guard web sites may effectively use soldiers and officers with an outdated appearance to win the visitors favour and trust.

Usage of specific characters is not limited to the above-mentioned ones. You may apply creativity and use them unconventionally. Thus you will surprise your visitors. As far as you know it is a great way to turn your potentional clients minds to your website.

Vintage Icons Patterns and Typography

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.

Authentic fonts to be used for developing vintage icons titles, content headings and texts are Matchbook, Bazar Medium, Embossed, Hill House,-Fontleroy Brown, Fusty Saddle, Just Old Fashion, Goudy Bookletter 1911, Rocket Script, Parisian, Star Avenue etc. Feel absolutely free to find and purchase on the internet the best appropriate fonts that will perfect match your design.

Try to get a such vintage-inspired layout that looks modern and appropriate, but no old-fashioned. If you create the warm and noble, antique feel using Vintage web icons, images and styled blocks for the webpage layout, your visitors will come to your site with a thankful smile over and over again.

But try to avoid stuffiness in your vintage design look. Please don't forget that the main emphasis should be made on the goods, services or content material of your web page not on the web page design.

2d Icons Facts

Today 2D web icons is a wide spread trend in the modern day web design. 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 originally based on vector graphics devices. 2D web icons are one of the most significant two-dimensional digital design items.

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

2D icons and objects are independent objects with their own semantic value. 2D graphics enables to have more direct control of the image than 3D technology. This one of the main reasons why they are so preferred in the world of contemporary website design. 3D graphics is better realized in animation or photography than typography or even internet site design.

Glass Icons

Web icons bring clean look to your website making its design eye-catching and more professional. However this effect should be reasonably used because it can be harmful for the design perception.

Glass iconsare extremely well-liked and attractive elements of web-site or blog decor. This glass icon style is so effective thing that can easily impart the perfect, clear and professional look to your internet site, presentation or desktop and embody a kind of the "Web 2.0" spirit.

Pluses and minuses of the glass icons usage.

In spite of the elaborate and intricate feel and look of the web icons designed in the glass style, it is obvious that the process of their creation is rather simple. Glass web icons can normally be designed within a couple of minutes with Photoshop, Illustrator or Corel application, so it's not a big problem even for the newbies in the design sphere. All you need is some helpful tutorial, some skills of working with these pieces of software and the images you are going to turn into glass web icons.

The glass effect is considered to have been borrowed from the Apples OSX operating system style and copied by Windows. Of course you may argue that Glass web icons are so strongly associated with Apple product that the glass-styled elements make people think of the entirely different brand which makes the usage if this type of web icons meaningless, but you cannot deny the fact that the glass icons style has a great deal of benefits .

Social bookmarking web icons is a crucial feature of the present day internet site. If you want to have got a great advantage for the online site promotion use eye-catching glossy icons for this purpose. Attractive social bookmarks improve the possibility of the visitors clicking on them and the number of the clicks increases correspondingly. Due to this fact you are able to promote and bookmark your content more effectively.

Business Icons Information And Facts

How to choose a proper design for your web page? This is a very hard task. The header graphics, logos, business icons and content placeholders as well as the fonts - all this stuff needs to be properly designed. While doing this bear in mind the business area and needs of your potential customers.

Take into account your potential customers expectations - use the proper business icons, buttons and styles for content blocks.

Firstly you need to decide what's the main audience of your web-site and what do your potential customers expect. Starting with the results of this research you should choose the appropriate name, hosting provider, content material and design style. Initially you are to correlate the planned color scheme and layout with your potential customers expectations. You should feel what colors and styles of business icons as well as other elements of design reflect the business area your company presents.

Make sure you keep in mind that different colors evoke certain emotions in various groups of people. For example if you are going to create the web site for some nightclub, it is more effective to use business icons of bright disco colors and unusual forms. 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 are developing the web page for some consulting company its look and feel is supposed to be clear, calm and reserved. You need to avoid playful lines and light-minded graphics. Cool colors and simple recognizable shapes of business icons are preferable. Such a site will make your potential clients believe into professionalism and stability of your company.

3D icons Technical Issues

The thoroughness and truthfulness of the picture may be even the negative aspect 3D icons possess. It means you are much more free to use artistic vision while drawing some object. Lets take a mobile-phone as an example. So its possible to draw it rather similar to a real one but eliminate additional details, shades and highlights. Sometimes schematic drawings work even better than 3D models. But to decide what to use you must analyze each definite situation. To develop an object and make it seem closer to real one 3d icons should repeat carefully every detail and line. So to answer the question we can claim it's more like a kind of technical representation than a piece of art. Though some illustrators manage to create abstract 3D icons that involve creative thought and look like true works of art. Realistic and accurate modeling is the most famous trend of 3D design nowadays.Speaking about realism, if you are planning to use some characters as icons, we can surely say that 3D icons are much more realistic than 2D ones. The characters may remain cartoonish and this will give zest to your website.

Let us enumerate the technical issues you may face while using 3D icons.

So pay attention to these useful facts while creating the icons design for your webpage:

It is not possible to display all the glory and details of 3d icons with very poor resolution of the viewers monitors;

since the monitor screen is 2D device it won't show the true three-dimensional object as we see it in reality;

2D space is easier to be modified and controlled in comparison with 3D one;

sometimes users need to download extra software that is needed for correct viewing of 3D web Icons.

To sum up we can say that both 2D and 3D icons are based on geometric data but 3D objects are the sculpture models, they're more complex items. And the requirements for creating the high quality 3D web Icons are much severer. No doubt you can claim that 3D web icons may lack creativity and abstract air, nevertheless the facts of depth and volume that are created with a help of 3D technology are incontestable.

Glass Icons Tips And Tricks

Glass icons can be considered an independent icon style.Nevertheless it is logical to assume that glass style is just one of the types of the shiny, glossy design.

Other types of the glossy web icons design that can be marked out:

• glass icons;
• metal icons;
• glass-metal icons;
• transparent icons.

Transparent and half-transparent glossy icons can be aqua, crystal, plastic etc.

Glass web icons are usually depicted with reflecting. It is one of the standard features of the "Web 2.0" icons. You may find various tutorials on the internet instructing to create vertical reflection effect for web icons.

The clean look of glass icons makes navigating through the internet pages playful and attracts many people. In the Internet sources you can definitely find a huge selection of tutorials about the ways of creating such neat web icons.

Creation of glass web icons.

Adobe Photoshop is the most popular software program for creating web icons. Photoshop is becoming steadily more and more flexible software for design. Originally it was rather an image editor and nowadays it enables to create almost all visual effects used for the graphic design. A lot of the great web icons designs were made up of a help of this software program. The ability to combine pixel painting with vector tool for creating glass icons, buttons, characters etc. is a vital feature of the latest Photoshop versions.<\p>

The easiest way to design Glass icons is to make the "glass" layer overlap the image. With a help of the "eraser" tool you'll be able to build an empty diagonal line through the image. You are supposed to proceed using eraser for making adjustments to the glass layer until the moment when the glass effect repeats the contour of the icon. As a result it should create a kind of the glass haze in the opposite sides. After this procedure complete the further adjustments should be applied.

Professional web designers should use this effect carefully and keep in mind that glass-fever may look ridiculous. Glass icons should be combined with taste so that the webpage style could remain professional and reserved.

DreamWeaver Web Templates - Could They Be Of Any Use?

You can easlily use these templates to create web pages that have a common structure and appearance. Dreamweaver Themes are also important if you need to make sure that all of the pages in a site share certain characteristics. You are able to change information on the group of pages by editing the template and then reapplying it to those pages. While elements unique to each page (such as text or graphics) stay unchanged, common theme elements (such as menu bars and links) are updated on all of the pages that use the theme. For example, if you change the copyright info in the Footer of the web theme - Dreamweaver will instantly amend the footers for you automatically. The wonderful tool to save your time!

Today you are able to easily discover an incredible variety of Dreamweaver Themes to any taste over the Internet. But first of all you need to decide what kind of web template you want to have: free Dreamweaver Template or premium one. Free template can be a very good choice if you wish to save your pennies. But if you would like to have exclusive design and extra quality - you should look for premium Dreamweaver Templates. Anyway you have a unique opportunity to redesign your web page in no time.

So at the end I can definitely claim that Dreamweaver templates are aimed to save your valuable time and money. Web templates are a great way to maintain consistency across your website. Even if you have some difficulties don't panic - 24 hour support teams always glad to help. You can also use step by step web design online course or tutorials. Make a present to your web site - redesign it using a new Dreamweaver theme and attract more visitors right now! Dont miss this unique chance to be on the crest of the wave of Internet world.

3D Icons and 2D Icons in web graphics at present

Basic differences between 2D and 3D icons design

As for the 3d Icons the light source plays essential role for creating authentic three-dimensional images. Definitely the using several light sources in web page design nowadays is preferable but bear in mind that they should follow fundamental laws of physics and be truthful. A few lights usually make 3D icons look softer and more realistic.

The purpose of 2D and 3D icons is to represent the volume found in the three-dimensional world but 2D and 3D icons obtain this illusion by using diverse means. 2D Icons can undoubtedly represent volume to less extent than 3D Icons. Among the disadvantages of 2D Icons are flat images that show just one perspective. To this weakness you can also add one more - detailed highlights and imperceptible soft shadows are missing. Also the shades usage is really limited.

3D icons can be proud of all these features instead. But 3D is mathematical replication of the data which anyway limits its usage. Sometimes you can easily replace 3D Icons by 2D ones or by the videos with the sounds - but all this depends on situation. Software used for 3D modeling enables to create that 3D dimension. It is recommended to show 3D icons in correlation with the other objects in the neighborhood and the environment they are placed into.