Monday, February 28, 2011

Simple Icons Facts

We can easily claim that among the main features of minimalistic design are Simple icons. Furthermore, simple icons and other elements of design should be used moderately. Simple icons are supposed to be used where they're absolutely important and eliminated where it's possible. Refrain the optional simple web icons. They may serve several functions.

Simple web icons design contains limited amount of color, reserved shades, clear elements, soft lighting. Simple web icons are produced out of elegant and simple elements which really don't distract website visitors from the main navigation and internet site idea.

The following rules for simple icons design can be outlined:

  • minimal usage of duplication
  • less amount of graphical elements
  • maximum intuitive clarity
  • clear typography in simple web icons
  • less icons

Some useful ideas for developing a minimalistic design with simple web icons

Additionally to simple icons themselves lightweight background textures and patterns are important for the design and content perception. The background pattern or images shouldn't grab all the attention of your visitors. The eyes should focus on the web page content or some main blocks. Building the background use a light simple shade. This makes it secondary compared with the foreground items like simple web icons.

Clear typography is another prominent feature of the lightweight and clear design. Simple icons names (if there're any) should be precise, meaningful and equivalent to their function. Also use readable as well as enough large font for headings on simple web icons. 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 individual and thus more readable and simpler to work with. Some extra space between simple web icons will do your design no harm at all.

In general the minimalistic trend is not entirely minimal. Nevertheless the dominance of white space there are still some simple icons, light textures, neat styles and bold fonts. Please remember minimal is not exactly the same as simple. Initially minimal meant plain typographic excluding images and styling. Nowadays there's a great amount of various web pages over the Internet. Thats why modern design demands something more than black text on white background. Add more zest to your web page layout with a help of some unusual coloring, catchy simple icons, half-transparent and lightweight textures and patterns. Also reduce design elements to the most essential items.

Simple is often used as a synonym of smart. Simple web icons is the best solution if you would like your website look fantastic and professional.

The Essence Of 2d Icons And Models On The Whole

2D icons are really well known for their flexibility. This versatility is achieved by rendering them at various resolutions ideal for various output devices.

2D Icons may include the next items:

  • raster pictures (digital graphics);
  • styled text as a typeset for 2D Icons;
  • vector models (geometric graphics).

All these items can be managed by 2D transformations such as rotation, scaling or angular position etc. Meshing basic models you may get more advanced ones.

As a result of layers technique 2D icons can create the illusion of all 3D characteristics like shadow, reflection or highlighting. The layers should keep the certain hierarchy and order carefully.

2.5D Icons

The layered 2Dicons are also known as 2.5D models. This technology offers web site designers ability to work with any layer without touching the others. This kind of 2D object creation is liked by the most of the leading graphics editors.

2.5D is a synonym to pseudo 3D. This means "two-and-a-half-dimensional" graphics. Models created with 2.5D technology appear to be tridimensional while in fact they are not. The featured projection represents both front and side views.

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

Line Icons - Get More Scores In Web Design

Lines are more frequently used for outlining the contours of objects and emphasizing edges. If located and designed reasonably, line icons can be the great decoration of any minimalistic or clear web design.

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

Let's discover what line actually is. This is a form containing both width and length but eliminating depth.The line is not only straight but more often curved. The lines can render some appropriate mood or feeling of a movement. Being static shapes, Line icons can create a sort of illusion of the dynamic objects. The mood depends on the lines direction. Horizontal lines in Line icons express calmness, harmony and stability while the vertical ones strive for the light movement. Energy and more powerful dynamic feeling pertain to the diagonal lines. If you need to develop refine and ultra-modern line icons designs you should use combination of straight lines and curves.

Line art - Line Icons

For sure the earliest kind of line art that familiar to a large amount of artists is curve stitching. It was carried out with threads of different colours and needle. Initially the canvas was a cardboard. String Art is another name for this movement. Originally it was found out by Mary Boole as the accessory material for kids to help them study geometry of angles and spaces. Before the photography appeared line art lived also in the form of illustrations for print sources and included only black and white colours. Some shades of gray were also acceptable and imitated.Appealing to both technical and creative sides of human nature, line art combines geometry and art. Creating Line icons may develop special imagination and creativity as well as calculation skills.Line art is different from photography or multi-color painting by its ability to be printed to the halftone picture with no extra conversion.

Various Techniques For Line Icons Design

The objects with the outlined contours is the one other kind of Line icons. Such design elements are known as contour drawings. It's also possible to find another kind of icons: the items are without some strict outlines. They are called gesture drawings. Experienced designers often use such kind of drawings because they are able to repeat the outlines of the object just after seeing it.

One additional way is adding some halftones and shades to the object. You can do it with the help of short lines and crosshatching. Their frequency and pencil pressure can be different. This variety creates more three-dimensional look to the object. This trick is widely used in world wide web design as well. So this method is really helping in designing of amazing Line icons, logos and buttons.The lines with the dots not combining the singular elements are classified as open lines. It may look very striking when being applied to line icons design. The lines can be gesture-like, parallel, contour etc. as well. Contour drawing consists of superb simplicity and refinement of line design. You may be want to know what is bezier curves in computer graphics? It is such kind of the curves that are essential for creating complex line shapes. These curves are real helpers in creation of the vector shapes such as line icons, different buttons etc. Computer technologies have the ability to reproduce the identical designs or build new shapes based on some older ones without extra efforts and time. Another advantage is that it is possible to go back to the previous adjustments with a help of the history panel. As a result there's no need to create Line icons from scratch in case you have made some faults.

Saturday, February 26, 2011

Vintage Icons Design And Style

Retro takes over the present day web page design industry. Vintage web icons representing the old-time styling are the message of classic beauty and noble taste, Vintage design trend arouses gentle feeling in the visitors hearts.In the present day modern day internet site style generally contains some vintage twist. Retro and Vintage are the most well-known and widespread trends in the modern-day digital art. Vintage web icons, textures, patterns and clip-art are so fascinating and mysterious. They make you dive into the atmosphere of the old happy times, when everything appeared to be so simple, harmless and noble. People believe the good times are over associating them with their period of childhood or sweet youth. Due to this psychological peculiarity of people vintage style is so well-known.

Find out all about retro style in the present day web design industry

Speaking about retro in simple terms we should outline an aged or culturally out-of-date trend that has become some conscious norm in today's art. It is simple to find sights of retro style in the modern web site 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 combining today's clean blocks and the outdated, aged design elements like Vintage icons, styles and color palettes.

Realistic Icons Details

Realism traces back to the 1850s when this movement spread in French art. It is carried over the centuries and penetrated into all types of art and design. Speaking about realism in web design we can easily say that it's represented here by Realistic web icons.

Exactly what do you know about background of realistic icons?

Learn All Benefits Of Realistic Icons.

Realistic web icons are essential elements of the present day web design. It's also possible to meet them in softwares, applications and add-ons, etc.

Internet sites are a special niche requiring special ways of representation as well as promotion. One of these methods is including realistic icons into your web 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 web-site homepage to be noticeable at once.

You may hire the skilled designer to create some unique set of icons meeting your internet site personal requirements and products. But remember that such way of creating of realistic icons is quite expensive and takes a great deal of time. The custom order result still remains indefinite Even professional web site designers fall short of the mark called non-uniqueness. In order to save time and smoothen things down they take icons designed earlier and simply play with the colors and shades, use some other effects and sell realistic icons as unique items.

Finding authoritative icons resources it is another way of getting pleasant web icons. You can simply find a great amount of numerous Realistic web icons stocks and providers on the internet. You see what you buy and the price may occur essentially lower than in case with custom orders. Moreover, you save much valuable time. So as far as you see now - stocks are much more preferable for finding well designed and inexpensive realistic icons . All these positive aspects make icon stocks the great deal.

Some helpful tips for utilizing realistic icons

If you decide to make a realistic icon first of all you have to build the basic pictograms. Also it should look vivid enough if being displayed at worse resolution. The icon must be recognizable at first sight. How to check your icons? If it's possible to discern the icon within less than a second - it is well done.<\p>

The next step is to make realistic icons more eye-catching with the addition of decorative elements. Do not overload icons with the details and color tints. Icons should look well design and reserved. You can make the edges anti-aliased. The decoration should not detract from the icons essence and functions.

The icons are usually stored in vector format that makes it pretty simple to edit. It enables you to resize, rotate, adjust the edges and modify outlines. You can also change the color scheme and add more details and so on. And do not be afraid - there's no need to have extra knowlages in web design.

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