Saturday, January 29, 2011

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.

Friday, January 28, 2011

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.

Thursday, January 27, 2011

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.

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

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.

Saturday, January 15, 2011

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.

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

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.