What is skeuomorphism?

In general terms, a skeuomorph is a design feature that is brought from the original, known version of a product and incorporated directly into the design of a new product. If you pay attention, there are examples of this everywhere. From decorative buttons or fake pockets on your clothing to the way the calculator on your computer mimics the real-life version. Normally, a skeuomorphic design feature doesn’t actually serve the same functional purpose as it did in the original product. So why should you even consider including skeuomorphs in your designs at all?

Why Use skeuomorphism in web design?

The simple reason to use skeuomorphism in web design relates directly to the experience of the user. Though some might argue that this type of design can be counterproductive, it’s hard to overstate how much providing familiarity can benefit your business when trying to draw in and keep consumers. Simply put, most people are attracted to the things they are familiar with.

Change can be scary, but the proper use of skeuomorphism in web design can act to allow users a way to experience something new, but with a certain familiarity that keeps them moving forward. However, you must be careful not to oversimplify everything in a way that makes your users feel talked down to. That’s why the introduction of skeuomorphism must be carefully calculated before you decide to implement it into any web design.

What are some famous examples of skeuomorphism in web design?

Most people would say that the leader in skeuomorphic design is Apple. Many of their software applications, such as their calendars and maps, have incorporated this type of real-life look and feel. The same goes for their note functions, which can look and act like a legal pad. While these design elements don’t necessarily affect the functionality of the applications, they do go a long way towards improving the actual user experience, which is often what separates Apple from the rest of the pack as true pioneers.

Another famous example of modern skeuomorphism is found on many eBook readers.

When these were being designed, there was a fear that consumers would miss some of the more familiar elements of reading a book. The main one of these elements was the actual act of finishing a page and physically turning to the next one. This led eBook reader developers to create a skeuomorphic design that actually imitated the feeling of turning your book to the next page.

All in all, the use of skeuomorphism in web design must be considered on a project-by-project basis. It is not the right way to go in every instance, but it is certainly something that all web designers should be familiar with and willing to employ when the time is right.

Aileen Galsim is a blogger for Showcase Creative a UK printing company, based in Camberley, that provides bespoke presentation folders, calendars, and other printed presentation products.

So start picking your favorite photos from your hard drive and start uploading to Flickr to fill up the 1 terabyte space, and when you need a break and have your daily dose of caffeine, why not try also to have it on this camera lens mug.

In the beginning, Flickr innovated the way people share and discover photos. Today, we are shifting the photo-sharing landscape again. We’re releasing a Flickr that’s more spectacular, much bigger, and one you can take anywhere. – source Flickr blog

These are the 3 main feature that Flickr is offering today.

Biggr. That’s right, a terabyte.

Spectaculr. Share in full resolution.

Wherevr. Available anywhere you go.

Now let’s get down to a more specific and detail update that they had. The avatars.

Flickr has decided to replace the default avatar used for new accounts. The old avatar (aka “Howdy”) is retiring, and will be replaced with more vibrant options. As part of the upgrade Flickr will be displaying avatars at larger sizes throughout the Flickr product. - Charis Tsevis

The new avatars had to reflect several key aspects of the Flickr products and community:

• Flickr is photo / photography centric
• Colorful – include the use of our brand colors
• Individual / personal

Check out the new avatars below crafted by Charis Tsevis

A retro camera

A twin-lens reflex camera

A DSLR camera with a more classic body design from Olympus

A smart phone like the iPhone

The good old Polaroid

If you wish to see the other avatar designs, head to  Charis Tsevis’ gallery on Behance

Today, one of their free goodies is the 15 Grunge Textures Pack.

This is a set of 15 textures perfect to be used as overlay textures on your photos. For best results set the texture layer to Soft Light, Overlay, Multiply or Screen, depending on the look you want to get. You may also mask some parts of the texture where you don’t want it to take effect.

WHAT YOU WILL RECEIVE:
One archive (.zip file) with all the textures in .jpg format at 3600px X 3600px @ 300DPI.
The textures are compatible with all photo editors that support layers (Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, GIMP, Pixelmator etc.) both PC and Mac.

So now, I want to call the attention of all graphic designers out there as the files I will showcase below will be the most brilliant freebies that you can ever have. Cheers!

Coming Soon Page PSD Set

Chart PSD Template Set

Business Card Mockup PSD

iPhone PSD Graphics

Metro UI PSD Set

Restaurant Menu PSD Template

App Showcase PSD Mockups

Email Guys Icon Set – Fully Layered PSD

Free PSD Business Card Template in Blue Colors

Corporate Identity PSD Pack 4

Navigation PSD Templates

Creative Business Card PSD Template

Free Label PSD Set

Leaflet PSD Template

Complete Identity PSD Pack 3

Flask PSD Icons

Web Icons PSD Set

Shelf PSD Mockups

Notebook PSD Graphic

Papyrus PSD Graphics

Chalkboard PSD Template

Responsive Devices PSD Mockup

Free UI PSD Set

Music Player PSD Mockup

How to create a banner design that no one will hate

To put it succinctly: the aim here should be surprising the viewer, rather than trying to sell something. You’ll notice in the selection below that most of these ads get the message across rather subtly, without using classical keywords such as “buy”, “try this”, or “get it now”. It may sound counter-intuitive, but the modern consumer has grown SO tired of being pushed to buy something – smart advertisers now realize that trying to do so often has the opposite effect.
Since in this panorama you should actually avoid trying to bluntly push a sale, what are the best practices for creating outdoor ads that stand out from the crowd?
That is often achieved by conceiving of clever designs that break the fourth wall and integrate with their surroundings in quite original, sometimes outright artistic fashion. The present article compiles a selection of some of the best such outdoor ads we’ve seen recently. Scroll down the following section, and prepared to be amazed, entertained and inspired – all at once.

Clever outdoor ads that pop out… and lure you in

The take-away message for clever designers

There is a great lesson here for anyone working in the design industries – regardless of whether they actually create outdoor ad designs. The main take away is that you should focus on creating something that stands out from the industry’s established norms.
Whether you do that by breaking the fourth wall, by adopting unusual communication or by outright shocking the viewers’ assumptions is up to you: but keep in mind that unless you aim for attention-gripping designs… at very best your message will be ignored, and at worst it may negatively impact the brand you represent.

Harry Evans works for Discount Sticker Printing, and he wrote this article aiming to inform advertisers on how to get the most of their outdoor media investments.

This process is somewhat we are used to where we use text editors and lately there have been a lot of automations that are available via web designing software and online services. There are also free online services where in it is a great help to cut down time in coding, just a click of a button, a little adjustment on the sliders, pick your color or even you can simple pick from the predefined gradients, frames, drop shadows and textures .

CSSmatic is a non-profit project, made by developers for developers. It is a new, simple and intuitive way of editing and tunning CSS properties. It’s a new tool to save ourselves some tedious and repetitive work. This project builds on the shoulders of giants, Freepik and Tumblr.it

Let us have a look on what they have for us to automate things up.

Gradient Generator

Use multiple colors and opacity stops to get amazing gradients. By using the gradient tool you can create gradients with smooth color changing effects and subtle transparencies.

Such images can be used as background images of banners, wallpapers, buttons or tables and in many other applications.

Border Radius

Super easy to use and a super time saver. Change all the borders selected at the same time.

Noise Texture

Create subtle background patterns with dirty pixels and noise, changing the color and values and previewing the results in real time.

Box Shadow

Blur radius changes, color changes, shadow size… Everything that you need to create great drop shadows in a single place.

All these make the flash templates more demanded and valuable one. The main aim behind the introduction of readymade flash templates is to help the beginners with designing the websites. Many popular and well esteemed companies and well experienced and professional web designers are making use of the readymade flash templates. Here this list given for free flash templates is the ones that are used by such well branded companies and designers. Just try to go through each of the flash template and experience how they are going to help you in your website building process. You can come up with a challenging and creative website with the help of these flash templates and it can’t be anymore easier for a beginner to come up with his own website.

Free Templates

1. Lassure

2. Metamorph_flash105

3. Metamorph_flash104

4. Metamorph_flash101

5. Metamorph_flash100

6. Metamorph_flash97

7. Metamorph_flash91

8. Metamorph_flash92

9. Circular Pink

10. Theme

11. 3d Motion Flow

12. Hexagon

13. Motion Flow

Paid Templates

1. Succeed With Us

2. Idea

3. Maxi

4. Advance Your Business

5. Virtu

6. O-2

7. Big Ben

8. Vinao

9. Drive

10. Seco

11. Globex.Biz

12. Intellegent

Conclusion

Website designing is not an easy task, that too if it is for business purposes, then your website plays a main role in attracting more number of customers towards your business. So, you should be very careful and creative when it comes to designing a business related website. If you want to create a website at an affordable cost, but with an extraordinary look and feel, then these free flash templates will help you in the long way of designing a website. You may have varying business needs and one could be designing a perfect business website for betterment of your business. And, it can be well achieved when you prefer using any of the readymade available templates which makes you either feel satisfied. You will find the templates to be easy to use and make changes for any commercial or business purpose editing.

This is a guest post by Jane. She is a freelance web developer and an avid reader of DesignModo webdesign blog.

If you are looking for a flexible, robust theme with tons of options, then this theme is for you. Or you may know someone that is looking for a great theme for their site, tell them about Blaco and all it has to offer.

Theme Features

• Responsive Layout
• Tons of Shortcodes
• Full Multimedia Support
• Portfolio With Filters
• Post Format Support
• Custom Logo Upload

Framework Features

• Drag and Drop Page Builder
• Custom Widgets
• Advanced Theme Options
• Custom Page Templates
• Cross Browser Support
• Design Files Included

Promotional Deal

With the purchase of Blaco you will receive a free copy of Creativio, a portfolio WordPress theme. Email info@bestpsdfreebies.com with proof of purchase and they will gladly give you a theme for free. Not too shabby.

• Easy-to-use navigation toolkit;
• Wide management instrument for image and video content;
• LESS for preprocessing CSS;
• Responsive design and lots of other cool things

The latter is known to be the modern trend, and compatibility with it gives website owner lots of opportunities. Bootstrap supports fluid grid, it means that any website created with the framework will fit any possible handheld device.
Here are the basic tools that Bootstrap offers:

• Grids ñ sizes of columns that on the whole make the layout;
• Typography ñ descriptions of the font, the definition of certain classes of fonts (Code, Quote, etc);
• Forms ñ classes for processing shapes, and some of the events occurring to them;
• Navigation ñ classes for creating tabs, menu, pages, toolbar

Craving for more information about Bootstrap? Then have a look at an interactive guide created by TemplateMonster team. As you see, the guide resembles Windows 8 Metro interface. Probably, thatís because the brand-new start menu design is 100% intuitive to use. So if you havenít yet tried the new OS, then this guide will help you to know it a little bit better.

Via: TemplateMonster.com

Btw, you can either see the static version of the infographics featured above or check out the interactive guide to Bootstrap. If you like it, please feel free to share it with your friends across social medias (Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, StumbleUpon).

Katarina Klementi is a columnist now working at TemplateMonster. Through personal and professional experience she illuminates the latest news in the sphere of web design and brings them in the focus of your attention.

Imagine if one day capitalism reaches the point, where the big brands start to sponsor the superheroes. How would this influence their images? Based on this hypothesis, Roberto Vergati Santos decided to experiment with some characters, and see what would be the results of such idea.

What do you think of the idea? Will it be hit or hipster?