Free Christmas Icon Sets

We love freebies here at DDA. So this week I’ve scoured the web to bring you the best Christmas icon sets. All of them are free to download from the sites they link to so get downloading and add a bit of Christmas cheer to your web site.

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5 Free Stock Image Galleries

Stock photography is often used in web design to fullfil the needs of a creative assignment instead of hiring a photographer. The number of sites offering stock photography is growing year on year, and whilst the recognisable stock image galleries are still some of the best, Getty Images, Dreamstime, Corbis etc there are also some completely free stock image galleries popping up that can provide designers with quality professional imagary, without adding to the cost of the project. read more

Earth Hour 2009

It’s that time of year again. The third annual Earth Hour is to take place on Saturday 28th March at 20.30, and it seems the organisers have stepped up a gear with both their online marketing campaign and branding.

Earth Hour was created by WWF and Leo Burnett advertising agency in 2007, and this year they have teamed up with Shepard Fairey (Famous for his “Obey Giant” a 1989 street-art project and the more recent “Obama Hope” campaign) to re brand for Earth Hour 2009 and you can immediately see Fairey’s influence in the design. read more

High Dynamic Range Imaging

This week I thought I’d take a look at photo manipulation, namely high dynamic range imaging (HDR) HDR os a way to ‘digitally develop’ photographs using tonal information contained within multiple exposures of the same shot.

I’m sure everyone has seen examples of HDR images around the web or used in adverts and movie posters. Why is HDR so desirable? A composite image can retain the interesting details from all exposure settings within one image.

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Social Network Design

With social networks popping up left right and centre at the moment, and every mogul in the industry saying that social media and social networks are the way forward, what makes a social network unique? When Myspace first launched back in August 2003 it was pretty much the only social network available, and it had a monopoly on the market up until September 2006 when FaceBook opened it’s doors to the general public. Many people said that it would never catch on the way that Myspace did, but in April 2008 FaceBook overtook Myspace to claim the Social Network crown. read more

Movie Posters of Film Remakes

With the Oscars out of the way with for another year and the Hollywood Glitterati having suitably patted each other on the back for a job well done, this week I thought I’d look at Movie Poster design. I’ve always been a big fan of the Japanese Film industry, and have been irked for many years about the poor quality remakes that have been released. (not really poor quality, just dumbed down for the mass market and not as good as the originals!)

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Design Your Own Twitter Theme

I’ve finally been dragged into the world of microblogging and signed up to Twitter. It seems to be the buzz word on everyone’s lips at the moment, crashing sites left right and centre with recommendations from Stephen Fry and Pete Cashmore the power of Twitter as a marketing tool is clear.

But so many companies aren’t using it to their full advantage. Whilst searching for people to stalk… I mean follow… I was amazed by the amount of businesses not capitalising on their twitter presence.

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Web design trends for 2009

Over the past few months we have looked at a number of web site designs. But which of the developments and trends that we’ve seen will continue, which will go mainstream and become a classic approach? Here are some of the web design trends that DDA think designers are beginning to accept as standard approaches.

Single Page Layouts

We visited single page portfolio designs in a previous DDA post on showcase and showreel sites but I felt it was important enough to include as a prediction for 2009 too, as I believe we will be seeing a lot more of these types of designs – not just restricted to portfolio sites.

Pikaboo.be


Paolo Boccardi – Photographer

Modal Boxes / Lightboxes

This method of displaying media or capturing data is fast becoming the norm for web sites. Modal Boxes enable the user to input information, make selections or view images and videos without having to navigate away from the page they are viewing.

The Typographic Desk Reference

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Amazing Interactive Design Portfolios

Hello everybody. Well we’ve all had a week now to recover from the New Year celebrations and here at DDA we are back into the swing of things with a renewed vigour. As you may have noticed we have the addition of a design resources page which will be updated on a regular basis bringing you the best in free and paid design resources from around the web.

For this weeks posts I’ve found a few unique design portfolios from talented web designers. Both of which are not only beautifully designed in each individuals style, but also highly interactive showcasing not only their artistic and creative skills but also their design usability. With the ever increasing use of widgets, and rising client expectations, designers are going to have to become much more flexible in their approach, not only having to show how it will look but also, and more importantly, how their designs work to fulfill their clients brief.

Firstly we have Miki Mottes a self taught Israli artist who works creating custom animations and illustrations.

Subscribe to Miki Mottes Picture feed on Flickr

Secondly I discovered the hilarious, if not slightly mental, portfolio of Dutch artist Coen Grift. It’s fully interactive and packed with bits of animations, sound effects and puzzles. I spent at least half and hour at home when I found it playing around and fully enjoyed every minute of it.

I hope you enjoy playing around with these sites and take away some inspiration for any redesigns you were planning for your own portfolio. And don’t forget to check out the Resources page for any updates.

It’s Christmas! (well nearly)

Well it’s two sleeps till Santa so I thought we’d take a look at some of the festive design work from around the net to get us all in the festive spirit.

This year Cre:Source ran it’s 3rd annual photoshop design contest and as usual had hundreds of entries. With a pretty depressing brief “Apocalyptic Christmas – The cost of living is up, our savings are gone, our jobs are at risk and the economy is in free-fall. Now all we need is a seasonal greeting card to match!” here are some of the winners and the best runners up.

There has also been some really good design work in the Christmas Ad campaigns this year a few of which I have included below.

Finally, if you’ve left it till the last minute to get your loved ones a gift and don’t want to brave the shops, why not do your bit for those less fortunate and have a last minute look at the charity sites. Oxfam as usual has an excellent array of cyber gifts with real world applications, and they have joined forces with one of my favorite quirky artists, Edward Monkton, to help promote their cause.

So from everyone at DDA, we would like to wish all our readers a very merry Christmas and hope that Santa brings you everything you asked for.