Unlock The Online World » Design

Five Places To Get Website Design Inspiration

EmmaB — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 08:03:24 +0000

Finding ideas for a website design can be difficult, but galleries are great places to reap some ideas. The following post will list five places to get inspiration for any type of design.

Design Bombs- This gallery allows comments, and rating so that you can see how people react to the designs. This would give you a better outlook on which designs to think up. They also have a Twitter account so that you can connect with them as well as resources for designers.
CSS Heroes- Pretty much the same as the above site but they don’t have twitter or resources but they do have a great categorization system!
CSS-Website- This gallery doesn’t appear to have any kind of search function but designs are browseable by color, date, and category.
CSS Impress-This gallery is pretty much the same as CSS Heroes-they allow ratings and comments by users. I have come across some great design concepts via this gallery.
CSS Drive-This gallery is one of my personal favorites because not only do they have a great collection, but they also have resources, and other nifty tools.

Know of other great web galleries? Let me know in the comments below Similar Posts:

Colors, Outlines-Oh My!

EmmaB — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 01:32:33 +0000

Finding a good color combination can be frustrating as there are so many beautiful colors to choose from!

As you can probably tell, I skipped the outline step in my design process as it just wouldn’t work. I am simply not artistic enough to be able to do it offline. Besides, I soon realized that Step 4 could easily replace step 2.

How did I decide on my colors? I went to Color Lovers and searched through the palettes until I found something that I liked. This palette is called “A Careworn Heart,” and was created by SkyBlue2u.

A Careworn Heart by Skyblue2u

What do you think of my choice? What do you use to find a color scheme that you would like?

I also created a rough outline in PhotoShop. It doesn’t have any graphical work done yet and is just a rough prototype of where I went things to be placed.

Rough Outline

So what do you think so far? I know the colors are pretty feminine but I’m a girly-girl at heart so I like it. Similar Posts:

What’s a Theme Without Features?

What’s a Theme Without Features?

EmmaB — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 18:51:59 +0000

I have just finished my first step as mentioned in my “What’s Your Design Process?” post.

In my opinion a theme is only as good as the features that it provides. So without further ado, here is my list of desired features.

Tabbed sidebars
featured posts slider
prominent content
sidebar ads
468×60 banner ad in header
Subscription by email form in sidebar, RSS options on prominent display
2.7 compatible comments
Integrated subscribe to comments, recent comments
DropDown categories in horizontal menu style
Page menu in horizontal menu style
integrated breadcrumb navigation
Post thumbnails. and featured post thumbnails
automatic image resizer
Custom Archive and Sitemap templates
Little Image indicating what categories the post is in.
single2double sidebar

Of course, some of them will be removed if there is no place for them to fit in with the design, but this is a list of things that would attract me to a theme. I just hope that I will be able to do each and every one of them without cluttering up the design.

What are some features that you look for in a theme? (Hint: If I’m successful in creating my theme, I may begin creating themes based on the features and suggestions that YOU-the reader has!)

Unfortunately I won’t be able to show you my second step results because I don’t have a scanner so my next post will be about my results from the third step.

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