Simple web icons are created not to make the design delightful but instead minimal and modern. Amazing and lightweight Simple icons are aimed to improve web page user interaction.

Minimalistic web design as a prevalent trend

Lets find out what minimalistic webpage design means. Of course the first characteristics are simplicity and light-weight elements. Simple icons contain all this. It minimizes complex wordings, figures, textures and patterns. Sometimes less even means more. It depends on areas and extent. Web site design is exactly such area.

Minimalistic design is rather an unexpected trend nowadays. As far as you know high modern technologies have one big weakness – often they resulted in the loss of simplicity. Blending minimalistic web design with CSS3 and HTML5 is becoming more popular and makes you believe that combining simple elegance and usability is the method for your online business success. Internet site which uses simple design often has off-color effects and also actively use CSS and Ajax.

The most important features of the modern simple web page design:

  • grid based design;
  • simple icons;
  • light shading and reserved color transition;
  • light texture of patterns and backgrounds (often transparent like);
  • more empty or white space;
  • simple shapes and figures, clear lines;
  • less amount of various bright colors;
  • readable and clear typography;

If your want your internet site looks archaic – use Vintage icons. They are one of the most noticeable and easy-to-apply graphical elements. Vintage web icons suppose authentic use of vintage typography, less-saturated colors and retro textures to help creating the vintage air emanating from the web site. Antique air is going to charm and brings unconscious smiles to the faces of your website visitors.

Retro came from the70s and 80s. Speaking about retro advertising art it appeared in 1950. Computer technologies enable to put a new face on this type of art using its characters in internet site design and printing. These faces outlined in the vintage web icons are more often retro cars, pin-up girls, soldiers and politicians of the former times.Undoubtedly among the most frequently used retro cars are Fiat 500, the 1970 Dodge Challenger, the 1969 Chevrolet Samara, the 1964 Ford Mustang etc. You can easily find Vintage icons that contain hints to retro cars concepts. This will help to attract more attention to your site layout. This is the fantastic idea for websites that have a deal with auto sales, transporting services, tour sites etc. A pin-up model is another popular character used in vintage icons design and other web-site graphics styling. Often it presents images of how the really sexy and attractive woman should look like. Pin-up images are great for vintage web icons or clip-art designed for the model agencies, websites regarding health and beauty areas.

In case you have a web page that is connected with military and security guard you may effectively use images of soldiers and officers with outdated appearance to attract much more attention and win the visitors trust.

Usage of specific characters is not limited to the above-mentioned ones. You may apply creativity and use them unconventionally. Thus you will surprise your visitors. So far as you know it is a great way to turn your potentional clients minds to your online business.

Vintage Icons Patterns

Highly recommended Vintage patterns in vintage icons design:

  • patterns containing vintage papers;
  • with vintage frames;
  • with outmoded florals;
  • paper and bagging, gold-cloth as the texture fabric;
  • wooden or bronze textures for vintage icons.

Authentic fonts to be used for developing vintage icons titles, content headings and texts are Matchbook, Bazar Medium, Embossed, Hill House,-Fontleroy Brown, Fusty Saddle, Just Old Fashion, Goudy Bookletter 1911, Rocket Script, Parisian, Star Avenue etc. You are absolutely free to find and purchase the fonts to match your design on the net.

Try to get a such vintage-inspired design that looks fashionable and suitable, but no old-fashioned. The goal is to create the cozy and noble, antique feel with a help of Vintage icons as well as images and styled blocks for the web page design. Certainly your visitors will return to your web site with a thankful smile again and again.

But try to avoid stuffiness in your vintage design look. Please don’t forget that the main focus should be made on the products, services or content of your internet site not on the website design.

Simple Icons Characteristics

February 27, 2011

We can easily claim that among the most important features of minimalistic design are Simple web icons. Don’t forget that simple icons and also other design elements should be used moderately. Among the secrets is minimizing icons use in general. Reduce the amount of simple icons. Use them only where it is essential. Refrain the optional simple web icons. They may serve multiple functions.

Simple web icons design consists of limited amount of color, reserved shades, clear elements, soft lighting. Simple web icons are built out of elegant and simple elements which don’t distract website visitors from the main navigation and web page 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

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 should not grab all the attention of your visitors. The eyes should focus on the web site content or some main blocks. Producing the background use a light simple shade. This makes it secondary compared with the foreground items like simple web icons.

Another outstanding feature of the lightweight and clear design is no doubt clear typography. Simple icons names (if there are 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.

Enough white or empty space is useful for creating a wonderful clean simple icons design. Extra spaces keep elements separate and thus more readable and easier to work with. In case you use some extra space between simple web icons this dont harm to the design of your site at all.

Speaking about the minimalistic trend in most cases it isn’t entirely minimal. Nevertheless the dominance of white space there are still some simple icons, light textures, neat styles and bold fonts. Bear in mind that minimal just isn’t exactly the same as simple. From the very begining minimal meant plain typographic eliminating images and styling. Nowadays there’s a great number of various web sites over the Internet. That’s why modern design requires something more than black text on white background. Add more zest to your web-site layout with a help of some unusual coloring, catchy simple icons, half-transparent and lightweight textures and patterns. Also reduce elements of design to the most essential items.

Simple = smart. While creating the modern website design you should bear in mind the eternal truth stating that genius is based on simplicity. Simple icons look fantastic and professional especially for a clean business style design.

Realistic web icons are important elements of the present day web design. Also you can meet them in softwares, applications and add-ons, etc.

Internet sites are a special niche demanding special methods for representation and promotion. One of these methods is including realistic icons into your web page design. Certainly icons will help users of your web site to get a quick initial impression of your online business and also products that you offer. If you want to make icons noticeable – place them on the web-site’s home page.

Surely if you would like have icons that fulfil all your requirements you need to hire the experienced designer who can make some unique set of icons. But take into account that such way of creating of realistic icons is very expensive and takes a lot of time. The custom order result still remains indefinite Even professional web-designers fall short of the mark known as non-uniqueness. Sometimes many of site designers simply take icons that were created earlier and vary colors and shades, use some other effects and sell realistic icons as unique items.

Finding authoritative icons resources it is one other way of getting wonderful web icons. They’re numerous Realistic web icons stocks and providers on the internet. You see what you buy and the cost may occur essentially lower than in case with custom orders. Additionally you save your valuable time. So as far as you see now – stocks are much more preferable for finding properly designed and low-priced realistic icons . All these benefits make icon stocks the great deal.

Methods for utilizing realistic icons

Designing realistic icons you have to build the basic pictograms first. It should look vivid enough if being displayed at worse resolution, resized, discolored or blurred. The icon must be recognizable at first sight. You may make a test and see if it is possible to discern the icon within just one second.

After you find the formula of the basic silhouette and it is stable you possibly can make realistic icons more eye-catching by adding decorative elements. Icons really should not be overloaded with the details and color tints. Design should look integral and reserved. You can also 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 easy to edit. You’re free to resize, rotate, adjust the edges and edit outlines, change the color scheme and add more details etc. And do not be afraid – you don’t need to have extra knowlages in website design.

If you wish to design the interface layout of the new software or IT services – Realistic web icons may be very helpful in this task. Creating top quality, eye-catching and good-looking realistic icons is not an easy task. Generally you need to modify the high-resolution photos to get truly realistic images.

2d Icons

February 26, 2011

2D icons and other objects are well known for their flexibility. This is achieved by the peculiarity of rendering them at different resolutions ideal for various output devices.

2D Icons may embody the below items:

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

The above-mentioned items can be managed by 2D transformations such as rotation, scaling or angular position etc. Meshing simple models you may get more advanced ones.

Due to the layers technique 2D icons can create the illusion of all 3D characteristics like shadow, reflection or highlighting. The layers should maintain the definite hierarchy and order carefully.

2.5D Icons

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

2.5D is a synonym to pseudo 3D and is interpreted as “two-and-a-half-dimensional” graphics. Models that were created with a help of with 2.5D technology appear to be tridimensional while in fact they are not.

This technology used for designing 2D web icons is often attained by the special lighting effect. 3D illusion can be reached due to the virtual light source to the left or to the right side and above the users monitor.

Lines are more often used for outlining the contours of objects and emphasizing edges. Line icons can be the great decoration of any web design, of course if you have a talent to design them thoroughly.

What exactly are line icons?

Let us discover what line actually is. The shortest definition is the next: line is a form that contain both width and length but eliminating depth. We are accustomed to the fact that the line is usually straight. Newertheless the line is more often curved. The lines can render some appropriate mood or feeling of a movement. Staying static shapes, Line icons can make a kind of illusion of the dynamic objects. The mood is usually being conditioned by the lines direction. For example horizontal lines in Line web icons bring the feeling of calmness, harmony and stability. Speaking about the vertical lines – they strive for the light movement. Energy and stronger dynamic feeling pertain to the diagonal lines. If you would like develop refine and ultra-modern line icons designs you should use combination of straight lines and curves.

Victory of line art.

Curve stitching is the first type of line art known to the artists. Such type of line art was developed with a help of threads of different colours and needle. The canvas was a cardboard first. String Art is another name for this particular movement. Its founder was a Mary Boole. He created it as the accessory material for children 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. Also some tones of gray were also acceptable.Appealing to both technical and creative sides of human nature, line art includes geometry and art. Designing Line web icons may develop special imagination and creativity along with calculation skills.Line art has an ability to be printed to the halftone picture without extra conversion. Thus it is different from photography or multi-color painting.

Line Web Icons Design

February 25, 2011

The objects with the outlined contours is another kind of Line web icons. Such design elements are called contour drawings. It’s also possible to find another kind of icons: the items are without some strict outlines. They’re named gesture drawings. These kinds of drawings are being widely used by skilled artists who are able to repeat the outlines of the object right after seeing it. It is not a complete piece of art but rather a sketch which needs 20-30 seconds to be drawn.

One additional way is adding some halftones and shades to the object. You can do it with the help of short lines and crosshatching. Dont afraid to alter their frequency and pencil pressure. And this variety impart more three-dimensional look to the object. So this method is extremely helping in creation of awesome Line web icons, logos and buttons.The lines with the dots not combining the singular elements are classified as open lines. It may look really striking when being applied to line icons design. The lines can be gesture-like, parallel, contour etc. as well. Contour drawing includes fantastic simplicity and refinement of line design. The curves which are important for creating complex line shapes are called Bezier curves in computer graphics. These curves are real helpers in creation of the vector shapes such as line icons, different buttons etc. Today computer technologies reached such a level when it becomes possible to reproduce the same designs or just build new shapes that based on some older ones. The wonderful thing – you can do it without extra efforts and time. Another advantage is that it is simple to return to the previous adjustments with a help of the history panel. As a result there’s no need to make Line icons from scratch in case you have made some faults.

Realistic Icons Details

February 24, 2011

The very first mention about realism took place in 1850 when it was spread over French art. It’s carried over the centuries and penetrated right into all types of art as well as design. Realism in website design is effectively represented by Realistic icons.

Realistic icons historical past

Vintage Icons Noble Style

February 24, 2011

Retro takes over the present day internet page design industry. Vintage icons representing the old-time styling are the message of classic beauty and noble taste, Vintage design trend evoke gentle feeling in the visitors hearts.In the present day contemporary webpage style usually includes some vintage twist. Retro and Vintage are becoming the common trends in the contemporary digital art. Vintage icons, textures, patterns and clip-art are so fascinating and mysterious. They assist you to create the atmosphere of the old good times, with feelings of simplicity, innocence and nobility. People believe the good times are over associating them with their period of childhood or sweet youth. For this reason psychological peculiarity of people vintage style is so well-known.

What is retro and how it is realized in the present day website design industry

In present day art retro becomes some conscious norm. You can certainly find sights of retro style in the present day webpage design in the form of vintage icons, old-styled backgrounds, aged photography etc. There is no doubt it gives some zest to the look and feel of the ordinary web pages.

The new retro style quite often incorporates the Web 2.0 look with a vintage twist. It needs to combine the present day clean blocks and the outdated ones. Also there is a necessity to mix aged design elements like Vintage web icons, styles and color palettes.

2d Icons Facts

February 22, 2011

2D web icons is a wide spread trend in the web site design of nowadays. These two-dimensional icons are well known for their flexibility and comparative simplicity. 2.5D Icons is the type of 2D Icons that is closer to pseudo 3D representation.

Being originally based on vector graphics devices 2D computer graphics traces back to the 50s. Nowadays2D web icons are one of the most significant two-dimensional digital design items.

Today I want to find out what in fact 2D is.Usually it is being connected with computer graphics and determined as the two-dimensional way of digital images generation. Two-dimensional models are mainly 2D geometric ones, digital images and texts. The term 2D usually means as models themselves as the techniques and tricks specific to them either.

2D icons and objects are independent objects with their own semantic value. 2D graphics enables us to get much more direct control of the image than 3D technology. This one of the main reasons why they are so preferred in the world of modern website design.