Thursday, February 24, 2011

2d Web Icons Details

2D web icons are really famous for their flexibility. This versatility is reached by rendering them at various resolutions suitable for various output devices.

2D Icons may embody the next 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 for example rotation, scaling or angular position and many others. Meshing basic models you may get more complex ones.

2D web icons usually are not like the real three-dimensional objects but because of the layers technique they can create the illusion of all 3D characteristics like shadow, reflection or highlighting. The layers should maintain the certain hierarchy and order carefully.

2.5D Icons

2Dicons also are well-known as 2.5D models. This technology allows web developers to work with any layer without the need of touching the others. The best of the prominent graphics editors prefer this type of 2D object development.

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

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

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Simple Web Icons Major Features

We can easily claim that among the principal features of minimalistic design are Simple web icons. Furthermore, simple icons as well as other elements of design should be used moderately. Reduce the amount of simple icons. Use them only where it is essential. Refrain the optional simple web icons. They may serve multiple functions.

Limited amount of color, reserved tones, clear elements, soft lighting are being used for simple web icons design. One of the greatest advantages of Simple web icons is that they do not distract website visitors from the main idea of your site.

Rules for simple icons design:

  • 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

Do not forget about lightweight background textures and patterns. They're also essential for the design and content perception as well as simple icons. The background pattern or images shouldn't 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.

One more prominent feature of the lightweight and clear design is for sure clear typography. Select simple icons names according to their function and bear in mind such names ought to be precise, as well as meaningful. Headings placed on simple web icons should be of readable font and large enough for easy reading.

Enough white or empty space is effective for developing a great clean simple icons design. Extra spaces keep elements individual and for that reason more readable and simpler to work with. Even if you use some extra space between simple web icons this don't harm to the design of your site at all.

Generally the minimalistic trend is not entirely minimal. In spite of its large amount of white space there are still some simple icons, light textures, neat styles and bold fonts. Don't forget that minimal isn't exactly the same as simple. Initially minimal meant plain typographic excluding images and styling. But present day design requires something much more than black text on white background to make the website distinguish among thousands of other plain webpages. Reducing elements of design to the most important items you can add much more zest to your webpage layout with some uncommon coloring, catchy simple icons, half-transparent and lightweight textures and patterns.

Simple = smart. Simple icons look great and professional especially for a clean business style design.

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Vintage Icons Respectable Style

Retro continuously gains its right place in the present day web site design field. No doubt the best representatives of traditional beauty and noble taste are Vintage icons. Modern website style receives some vintage twist. Retro and Vintage are the most well-known and also widely used trends in the modern digital art. Vintage icons, textures, patterns as well as clip-art bring mystery to your webpage design. They make you plunge into the atmosphere of the old happy times, when everything seemed to be so simple, harmless and noble. People think the good times are over associating them with their period of childhood or sweet youth. Hence vintage style revives due to this psychological peculiarity of the human nature.

What's retro and how it is realized in the contemporary webpage design industry

Speaking about retro in simple terms we'd outline an aged or culturally out-of-date trend that has become some conscious norm in today's art. Having emerged in the post-modern art, it penetrates into the modern website design in the form of vintage icons, old-styled backgrounds, aged photography etc. It is obvious it gives some zest to the feel and look of the ordinary web-sites.

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

Monday, February 21, 2011

Line Is Refine: Line Icons As An Evidence

We generally use lines for emphasizing edges as well as outlining the contours of objects. If located and developed reasonably, line icons can be the excellent decoration of any minimalistic or clear web design.

Line Icons - what do you know about them?

Lets discover what line actually is. The shortest definition is the following: 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. Staying static shapes, Line web icons can make a sort of illusion of the dynamic objects. The mood depends on the lines direction. As an example horizontal lines in Line icons bring the feeling of calmness, harmony and stability. Speaking about the vertical lines - they strive for the light movement. Energy and more powerful dynamic feeling pertain to the diagonal lines. If you would like create refine and ultra-modern line icons designs you should use combination of straight lines and curves.

Line art - Line Icons

Definitely the 1st type of line art that familiar to a large amount of artists is curve stitching. This kind of line art was made 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. Generally it was found out by Mary Boole as the accessory material for children to help them study geometry of angles and spaces. Line art existed also in the form of illustrations for print sources before the photography was invented. At that time line art included only black and white colors. A few shades of gray were also acceptable and imitated.Appealing to both technical and creative sides of human nature, line art includes geometry and art. If you want to become a Line icons designer remember that this process may develop imagination and creativity and also calculation skills.Line art differs from photography or multi-color painting by its ability to be printed to the halftone picture free of extra conversion. This kind of art is named line drawing and line copy too.

Realistic Icons Help And Advice

Realism traces back to the 1850s when this movement spread in French art. It is carried over the hundreds of years and penetrated into all kinds of art along with design. Speaking about realism in website design we can say that it is represented here by Realistic icons.

Realistic icons background

Sunday, February 20, 2011

Realistic Icons Benefits.

Realistic icons are necessary elements of the modern website design. You may also meet them in softwares, applications and add-ons, etc.

Web-sites are a special niche demanding special methods for representation as well as promotion. The most successful way is of course including realistic icons into the web page design. They help users to get a quick initial impression of what business area and what products he/she is going to have to do with. If you need to make icons noticeable - place them on the web-site's home page.

You may hire the skilled designer to create some unique set of icons meeting your internet site individual requirements and products. But keep in mind that such way of designing of realistic icons is very expensive and takes a lot of time. The custom order result still remains indefinite Often even professional web designers create not exactly that you want. Sometimes many of web site designers simply take icons that were created earlier and vary colors and shades, use some other effects and then sell realistic icons as unique items.

Finding authoritative icons resources it's one other way of getting pleasant web icons. There are different Realistic web icons stocks and providers on the net. 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 affordable realistic icons . All these positive aspects make icon stocks the great deal.

Realistic Icons Useful Information

Creating realistic icons you have to build the basic pictograms first. It should look simple and motivated enough to produce one icon significantly differ from another. It should look vivid enough if being displayed at worse resolution, resized, discolored or blurred. The icon should be recognizable at first sight. How to test your icons? If it is possible to discern the icon within just one second - it is well done.<\p>

The next task is to make realistic icons more eye-catching with the addition of decorative elements. Icons shouldn't be overloaded with the details and color tints. Icons should look well design and also reserved. You can also make the edges anti-aliased. The decoration shouldn't detract from the icons essence and functions.

Vector format in which the icons are stored makes them pretty easy to modify. You are free to resize, rotate, adjust the edges and modify outlines, change the color scheme and add more details etc. And do not be worried - you don't need to have extra knowlages in web design.

If you want to design the interface layout of the new software or IT services - Realistic web icons may be very helpful in this task. Producing high quality, eye-catching and good-looking realistic icons is not an easy task. Truly realistic pictures may be created only if you take and edit the high-resolution photos. So keep this in mind.

Methods Of Creation Of Line Web Icons

The objects with the outlined contours is the one other kind of Line icons. Such design elements are called contour drawings. You can also find another type of icons: the items are without some strict outlines. They're named gesture drawings. Such drawings are being widely used by experienced designers 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 usually needs 20-30 seconds to be drawn.

One more technique is adding some halftones and shades to the object with the help of short lines and crosshatching. Their frequency and pencil pressure can be different. And this variety creates more three-dimensional look to the object. It helps to create awesome Line web icons, logos and buttons.Also lets get info regarding open lines. It's such type of the lines where the dots not combining the singular elements. The lines can be gesture-like, parallel, contour etc. as well. Contour drawing includes fantastic simplicity and refinement of line design. You may be wonder what's bezier curves in computer graphics? It's such sort of the curves which are essential for creating complex line shapes. These curves are useful small features important for developing the vector shapes like line icons, different buttons etc.Nowadays 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 - it can be done without extra efforts and time. Another advantage is that it is simple to go back to the previous adjustments with a help of the history panel. So you don't have to design Line web icons from scratch after you've made some errors.