We’ve recently shown you our picks of both red in web design and the use of strong earth tones. It seems a lot of designers find these collections inspiring in different ways, so this time we’ve had a look at blue. The color blue is often related to sky, water and referred to as a natural universal color. It can be used to have a design look both conservative and modern in combination with the right elements and typography.

Now, let’s have a look at our picks this time.

And remember, as usual we’re looking forward to hearing your feedback on this. Also, don’t forget to share the article if you like it. Enjoy!

Steven Little Design

Phoenix Web Design

Koormann

Drag City

The Bigger Design

Reichweite

North 2

Yiipu

Made by Many

NoseRub

Iceberg

Spaceship Collaborative

Talker

BestPass

Today’s Document

Nudge Design

Root Creative

Quero Meu Cloud

Icelab

Lead Zeppelin

Keepio

iiNTENSE Media

Eskalation

Festival Creative

Edward Dark

Worry Free Labs

Box.net

Designstraw

Tweetsicles

Jenny Karlsson

KeyFruit

Mighty Dream

Biba 2010

Simple Storage

Pocari Sweat

Dj Pony

Maria Gardell

Established 1986

Blue Sky Resumes

Applicom

Blue Awesome

DD Consulting

Drk

It’s Our Water

Bohemia

The folks at Gizmodo published 124 photographies for a new challenge: Frozen Ice. There are, without any doubt, some fantastic photos form landscape to spectacular and intriguing macro shots. The goog news for amateur photographers is that each photo has technical details like camera used, aperture, lens used, filters, etc. so you can have an idea of what was needed for that pretty ice shot.

You can view the complete gallery at the Gizmodo website.

The photo we used here in the article is from Nichi Tonsberg and this is the description: Here in Denmark we are having a really cold winter and the fjord which i live close to have been frozen, but warmer weather and alot of wind created these 2-3m high ice structures. I think the sun got some nice contrasts in the scene. Shot with an Olympus E-620 standard kit-lens 14-42mm , did a bit of contrast enhancement in photoshop. Iso 100, F3.5, 1/800.

Ballistic Publishing is proud to announce EXPOSÉ 9, the ninth edition of the premier annual artbook celebrating the creative talents of digital artists worldwide. EXPOSÉ is the digital art industry’s premier annual publication, featuring the finest digital artwork the world has ever seen.

Ballistic Publishing is now calling on artists to submit digital images for consideration in EXPOSÉ 9. Images can be created in any 3D or digital illustration application. Photoshop and digitally manipulated photography is also welcome. We are interested in digitally-created fine art, whether it be 2D or 3D, for commercial use, or personal satisfaction.

There is no cost or limit to enter work for inclusion in EXPOSÉ 9. As with all Ballistic Publishing showcase publications, artists with work published in EXPOSÉ 9 will receive a complementary copy of the book and will enjoy worldwide exposure in the premier collection of digitally-created artwork to ever be published.

You’ll have until February 28, 2011 to submit your digital artwork. Good Luck to submitters!

…”EXPOSÉ series of book are the industry’s first annual art book celebrating the creative talents of digital artists worldwide. It grew to be a global success receiving critical acclaim from all quarters of the digital art industry. Selected by a panel of industry leaders these books showcases the finest digital artwork in the known universe…”

Web design showcases are many and they’re a very popular way of getting new inspiration when you’re trying to be creative with your own work. This time we’ve once again looked through hundreds of designs to find some of the best dark ones. These succeed using dark palettes to capture the viewers attention. As you’ll see these darker designs can work really well with some stronger highlight colors or stand alone well. When having a dark website, the content many times stands out as much stronger and easy to focus at. As always we’d love to hear your feedback in the comment. Which one is your favorite?

Let’s have a look!

Pound & Grain

Antoine Wette

Leaflet

Physical Productions

Xhtml-lab

Notio Web Design

Fluxar Studios

Jose Luis Merino Parra

Marko Cvetkovic

Tunnel Bravo

Chuan Film

Born with Design

Private Grave

Phobiahz

Qube

Kode Hurts My Brain

Almosh82

Diego Huerta

Otterball

Akufen

Element gallery

Hinton Group

Psynai Design

Kapone

DonQ Rum

Abstraktion

David Fooks

Westbrook Brewing

Jesse Dodds

Blue Collar Interactive

Dead Pixel Studio

Okimok

Future of Web Design

The Toke

Corking Design

Jet Cooper

Mediasoldier

Efingo

Jordy Joel

Natalie Sklobovskaya

Wrkborn

Foobi

Blake Allen Design

Leah Haggar

Black Estate

Soiree Studios

The Old State Blog

Dallas Web Design

Build

Postmachina

Christmas is here and millions around the globe are preparing for a holiday season filled with a lot of joy and quality time with their families. We’ve decided to put together a collection of some inspiring art for you. Hopefully these great pieces can inspire you to get in the mood for the holidays, and maybe even have you create your own pieces?

Enjoy!

Christmas Kiwi

Christmas

Christmas Volcano

Christmas play

Christmas Elf

A sweet Christmas

Roots of Christmas

Ready for Christmas?

Christmas card

Feelin’ alot like Christmas

Have a Merry Christmas

Christmas gift

Merry mousie Christmas

Christmas town

Christmas in Hohen Neuendorf

Otter and Santa

Santa must be getting old..

Happy Xmas polar bear

Santa Clause

Christmas card 2010

Vintage Christmas card

Merry Christmas

Christmas in Hyrule

Christmas magic

Merry Christmas

Christmas in Mirandropolis

Love

Elf

Merry Christmas

Teddy

Tru Blood Beverage

Mountain Dew

Fanta

Crush

Minute Maid

Snapple

Faygo

Jones Soda

Fruit Shoot

Coca Cola

Pepsi

Dr Pepper

Kool-Aid

Schweppes

Voss

Sprite

Simply Orange Juice

Canada Dry

7up

Vault

Sundrop

Shasta

Sunkist

Bluesky

Big Red

Sierra Mist

Guarana

Battery

Rockstar

Shark

Wired

Drank

180

Jolt

Full Throttle

Rip It

Bawls

SunnyD

Sokenbicha

Slow Cow

Those were our 40 beverage websites. Thirsty yet?

As you can see there’s definitely a couple of trends that several brands follow, and all of these seem good at keeping their product in focus. We’d love to hear your comments on these. Which is our favorite?

In the final post on Jolby, SmashingShare looks at awesome artwork by talented Josh and Colby from Jolby.

After meeting in design school at the Art Institutes, Josh Kenyon and Colby Nichols began their design careers in their hometown of San Diego. As their lives and careers progressed they found themselves in two very separate cities: Josh in Chicago and Colby in Portland. Though it would seem the distance would end their creative alliance, the two found new ways to co-produce, proving they may possibly share the same brain. Jolby combines their talents through Colby’s artistic obsession with creatures and shapes and Josh’s creative love for pattern and texture. In 2009, Josh moved to Portland, OR bringing the two artists together to collaborate in the same city for the first time.

One thing that most designers and creative minds have in common is the ability to feel inspired by looking at other people’s work. Many different types of design even interact with each other and use similar styles. This time we’re going to have a look at something that for many is a great inspirational source: Typography. Typography is a wide term that includes everything from the layout of old printed books, signs, ads and even digital art.

Where typography in the past was something used to front content it has today grown into an art-form of it’s own. Sometimes typography has a clear message and many times designers use strong words or quotes accompanied by a certain type of letters. Other times the word(s) included are more or less random and the strong use of different effects is the meaning behind it.

The showcase we’ve out together here is one with a lot of colors included. These great pieces will show you the great diversity of typographic art, with lots of colors and different techniques.

Get ready to have a look at some truly inspiring colorful typography.

Enjoy!

Instant

Life type

Typo-graphic dope

Colorful peace

Duplex

Day Dreamer

Be happy

I love art

Desire

Great work works

Joy

Green

Share design

Smile

Creativity typo

3D typo effect

Cosmique

CMYK

Deja vu

TypoGraphy

Addiction

720

Wander

Freedom

Kick it

Colors

The good old days

.CMYK

Art

Angelpunkt

Maxon

Easy drive

Just do it

Love is gonna tear us apart

Paint

Summer

Dance for ever

First sun

Disco labamba

Cmyk

Those were our picks of 40 amazing and inspiring colorful typography pieces. We hope you’ve been inspired!

We’d also love to hear your comments. Which piece is your favorite? Do you have any typographic art you’d like to share with us?

Thanks!

In part two of a series featured by SmashingShare in association with Recave, we look at Martin Ansin’s awesome Star Trek, Phantom of the Opera and Archer illustrations.

Martin Ansin is a professional illustrator based in Montevideo, Uruguay — where the summer is not too hot, the winter not too cold, and the people not that many. With a background as a sequential artist and advertising art director for over a decade, his work reflects his enthusiasm for striking images as a means to tell an engaging story.

Follow Martin: twitter, linkedin, flickr

Star Trek, The Original Series: Space Seed

The Phantom Of The Opera

Archer

Today we see a lot of different types of web design, simply because almost anything is possible. Everyone have high speed Internet and we can browse websites that we couldn’t even dream of ten years ago. The trends change and today there are several different ones that are popular.

This time we’re having a look at some websites that use some of the more uncommon color-schemes related to earth tones. These are usually soft and easy on the eye and can be popular amongst many different readers.

Here’s a selection of 50 earth toned web designs that we hope will help you get inspired for your own work.

Enjoy!

Espresso apartments

Snagly

Matias Mancini

Journeys with no return

Greenlane winery

The legacy companies

Quipsologies

Passy

Cakemail

Gran Fibra

Sadama Turg

Alinga

Cure

Hey Indy

Musicians corner

Boho girl

International storytelling center

Third culture studios

Transformology

Tenthmil

Spring

Karl the gorilla

Creativepayne

Paul Ramirez

Iris Diamant

SimpleBits

BBQwar

Pic fresh

Unconventional guides

BlackMoon design

Michela Chiucini

Word refuge

Kevin Lucius

Filcka

All for design

The energycell

Brookside resort

Cuisine saine

Art in my coffee

Rich Brown

Washtenaw community college

New adventures in web design

Vector stories

Shawnelle Cherry

Sc41 Furniture

Matt Dempsey

Tales from the yoga studio

Brewfest 2010

Wireframe plus

Ten out of tenn

Those were our 50 picks of web designs with heavy use of earth tones. We’d love to hear your feedback and maybe you have some nice websites using this type of colors to share with us?

Leave us a comment, and remember to share the article if you enjoyed it.

Thanks and good luck with your designs!

With millions of websites online, a unique design with creative flare is important. We came across a few websites that caught our attention and had to bookmark them. View our short list of inspirational designs is a step towards a feature we’re planning on launching monthly.

If you have a great website, send us your link for consideration in our next post!

There sure are many inspiring web designs around these days. The use of colors, illustrations, images and effects that we can use these days, give us the possibility to use our creativity to the fullest.

This time we’ve collected 45 websites that are using the color red to catch our attention. Here you’ll find both designs using red as the main color and designs using red as a strong element in the design besides other colors. Red is a strong and “loud” color that often stands out. This means that the chance of failing when using such a vivid color is definitely present.

We’ve put together this collection choosing designs that we think are good looking and well executed.

Enjoy!

Maurivan Luiz

Proiect 1000

SmashMobile

Chrome bagsstore

Kenny Meyers

Dishizzle

Hotdoc.pl

Big spaceship

Helveti-Tweet

Siege audio

Acko

Daksha design

Erskine design

Sublimeo

Doug Dosberg

Christophe Peyras

Adora

Codebutton

Sibling rivalry

Carmilla Vampire

Nick de Jardine

Jon Wallace design

Double happy

Loja birds

Red nose day

OLA Interactive agency

Gorilla coffee

Clickfarm interactive

FinerHome

UMO jazz orchestra

Pars Kunt

Red ant

Dan Friml

Mobile vikings

Sonze design studio

Rob James

The Zimmerman agency

Mixoart

Eight hour day

Jake Przespo

Dellustrations

CWD Web design

Markup service

Leketembe

Designers couch

We hope you’ve enjoyed these 45 great examples of red in web design.

Which one is your favorite? Do YOU have a red web design?

We’d love to hear from you in the comments!

Simply amazing art using sand. We came across this video and had to share it with our audience.

If branding is about creating stories, then brochures are the fashion industry’s storybooks. Every page a reader turns in a fashion brochure should enrich the brand’s latest story in her mind. That brand story must be embodied not just in the elegance of the clothes, but also in the tastefulness of the brochure design. When done right, fashion brochures can expose the beauty and fierceness in the couture collections they advertise.

The following images are 50 examples of stunning fashion brochure design, made to be fresh and fabulous eye candy for their season. I hope you appreciate not just every cut and swatch of fabric they were made to advertise, but also their stylish and harmonious layout and design.

Example of Fashion Brochure Designs

We offer testking E20-001 tutorials for beginner as well as professional web designers to help them boost their expertise in web designing. Download testking 350-018 guide and testking 642-661 demo to learn how to create fantastic websites.

Gears of War 3 – Ashes to Ashes is being hyped to be the best thing since sliced bread… but you will have to wait as it is not due for release until April 2011.

The Gears of War games are third-person shooter video games developed by Epic Games and published by Microsoft Game Studios.
Gears of War 3 will initially be produced exclusively for the Xbox 360, with new characters, including a playable female character – Anya.

Here we are showcasing Gears of War 3 wallpapers and screenshots. After the showcase are a few videos, websites and forums dedicated to Gears of War 3. You should be able to find everything you need to know about the game, and many resources from this article – enjoy!

Other Wallpapers You Might Be Interested In:

• StarCraft 2 Wallpaper Collection
• 20 Free Windows 7 Wallpapers
• 30 Beautiful Chinese Landscape Wallpapers

Gears of War 3 Wallpapers

Gears of War 3 Screenshots

Gears of War 3 Videos

A few teaser and trailer videos of the Gears of War 3 game and gameplay

Gears of War 3 Xbox 360 Trailer – Ashes to Ashes

More Gears of War 3 News & Previews

Gears of War 3 Demo – E3 2010 Microsoft Conference

Gears of War 3 Gameplay – Beast Mode Part 1

Websites

The most comprehensive websites offering news and information about Gears of War 3

• Official Microsoft Gears of War website  http://gearsofwar.xbox.com/ – The official site for all Gears of War games. The latest news and official images are posted regularly on this site
• IGN: Gears of War 3  http://uk.xbox360.ign.com/objects/143/14304771.html – Brings you the latest updates, videos, news and images for Gears of War 3
• Gears of War 3  http://gearsofwar3.net/ – A site totally dedicated to Gears of War 3 with all the information you could want, and possibly more!

Forums – Have Your Say

If you have something to say about the game, or are interested in the views of others, here are some forums for Gears of War 3

• Epic Games Gears of War 3 Forum  http://forums.epicgames.com/forumdisplay.php?f=390
• Giant Bomb Gears of War 3 Forum  http://www.giantbomb.com/gears-of-war-3/61-30615/forums/
• Gears of War 3 Forum  http://gearsofwar3.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?fid=1

With all this information at hand, you can discover everything there is to know about the upcoming Gears of War 3 game – if you want to stay in touch until the game’s release, you will have to visit these listed sites regularly as they are updated often.

Are you excited about this game? Do you keep up-to-date with the latest news about Gears of War 3? Please share your thoughts and opinions with us in the comments below.

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Creating funny caricature is an art where an artist illustrate it in a way that overstate or distorts the spirit of a person. You must have seen a lot these artworks in editorial cartoons and other media. In this post we are presenting some funny caricatures of famous people for your inspiration. I personally like the last caricature of Steve jobs. You can write which inspired you in the comment section below.

Artwork Credit

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Regardless of personal opinion surrounding logos and branding the fact is a good solid logo will only help you business succeed.

Whether it’s the typeface or the mascot, people will remember your brand through the logo so it pays to have something memorable and creative.

I have scoured a large number of logos to showcase 30 logos of companies I personally found creative, aesthetic and inspiring.

Unplugged

Bckspace

MediaMinck

Swan Note

Mailhouse

Bipolar

Flyer-city

DesignTent

Fetcher

Eco Pup

Nessie

Fusion

Creative Element

Bubble

Amphiro

Octangle

Code Fish

The Color Cure

Human

Killed

First Toy

Say Cheese

Artlovers

SaintMate

Dia de Muertos Party

Handmade

AirCare

Hardrock Recordings

Love My Design

Ideacouch

For newbie web designers, testking 642-515 design tutorials really help to understand the basics of web designing. We have include in our web design course testking 650-393 design guide, testking 646-229 Photoshop Tutorials and Web designing tools

Photo manipulation is an art that require a lot of accuracy and patience. Its always great to see different designers work and how they use their skills to make their work look apart from the rest of the world. This presentation shows some unbelievable and mind blowing pictures. Hope everybody will find this interesting to fire up their creativity.

Images credit: Salamagica

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Clean web design techniques can mostly achieve high level of usability, legibility, and visual appeal, the use of plenty of white space and organized elements gives a professional look at the website.
In this collection, you’ll find 50 Clean Portfolio Web Designs for your inspiration, that let you see more examples about clean web design.

1. Creature

2. SketchyMedia

3. Haus

4. Shyama Golden

5. Neuromodule

6. Simon Corry

7. Vandelay Design

8. Usman Group

9. Shape

10. J. Pink Design

11. Read & Destroy

12. Square Box Studio

13. Jad Limcaco

14. John Likens

15. Studio Breakfast

16. Big Guns Design

17. Veronica Wallstrom

18. Elegantweb

19. AD Creative Group

20. Brett Chaney

21. Medusateam

22. Ola Syse

23. Conway Anderson

24. Creode

25. Schema

26. Ogvidius

27. James Deer Design

28. Deliciously Creative

29. Time Will Tell

30. Creative Agency for Emerging Media

31. Awesem

32. The Church of London

33. Buffalo

34. Borderleft

35. Core8

36. Favela

37. Creative Feed

38. Danstyled

39. Torchbox

40. Espresso

41. Jump Media

42. Digital Visions Queenstown

43. Nordkapp

44. Stark Web Design

45. WeSaySo

46. Pixel8

47. ProudCloud

48. Solv

49. Frish Design Studio

50. Clockwork

Learn all about web designing with test king and gain the best expertise of the field using testking ccnp demos and testking ccda study guide.

A party flyer can fill the dance floor with the perfect combination of creative font and other visual elements. Looking for new and different flyers will definitely hype you up to create a wonderful mix of designs on your own.

Club owners today are looking for new styles and designs in party flyers to attract a huge crowd. As a designer, it is important to look for up-to-date and striking designs for party flyers that will help you go out of the box. This is your lucky day! We’ve collected 50 awe-inspiring party flyer designs for you to look at and be inspired from.

Let’s start the party pumping with this roundup of 50 party flyer designs that will help boost your creative mind.