50 Extremely Useful PSD Files From Dribbble

Another beautiful collection of free and useful PSD files for you is presented here. As a designer, you know that PSD file is the best and easiest way to learn and then fulfill your work expectations. Here we have put together 50 useful PSD files from Dribble that definitely is one of the main resources for PSD files.

Full post: 50 Extremely Useful PSD Files From Dribbble

Breathtaking Examples of Seascape Photography

Nature can be a great source of inspiration for any photographer. Seascape photography focuses on one of the most beautiful elements in nature, which is the sea. Shores and sea scenes can provide a great opportunity for photographers to take impressive seascape shots.

Full post: Breathtaking Examples of Seascape Photography

13 Best Pinterest Tools And Apps

Pinterest is a pinboard-style social photo sharing website that allows users to create and manage theme-based image collections such as events, interests, hobbies and more. Users can browse other pinboards for inspiration, ‘re-pin’ images to their own collections and/or ‘like’ photos. It’s pretty amazing, but there’s some great tools and apps available that can add even more to the experience, across desktop and mobile. Below is a collection of some best pinterest tools and apps.

Full post: 13 Best Pinterest Tools And Apps

36 Brilliant Icon Shots From Dribbble

Today we have 36 brilliant icon shots from dribbble.

Full post: 36 Brilliant Icon Shots From Dribbble

15 great HTML5 and CSS3 generators

HTML5 and CSS3 are great languages to start off learning with, and I’ve always thought that one of the best ways to start learning is to just dive in and manipulate the code. As you could probably tell, this is where generators step in. They are a great way to generate some code, play with it, and learn.

Full post: 15 great HTML5 and CSS3 generators

Building an E-mail Request Invite Form with jQuery

Using jQuery we can build some incredible web-based applications. The animations and manipulation of DOM elements using jQuery are much more intuitive than coding regular JavaScript. Because the syntax is so minimalist it’s possible to scale a very complex idea within a few hours time.

In this tutorial I’ll demonstrate how we can build an HTML5 invite form and check the results through jQuery. I haven’t gone into any backend PHP as this isn’t always the best solution for an invitation system. You may want to tie into another e-mail campaign such as MailChimp or Campaign Monitor. But with this technique running the frontend you can quickly implement a backend language to manage the e-mail submissions.

Full post: Building an E-mail Request Invite Form with jQuery

A Comprehensive Guide to the New Facebook Timeline for Pages

Just as businesses were mastering Facebook Pages, Facebook pulled out the rug from underneath them and changed the game plan.

On March 30th, Facebook launched the new Timeline for Pages and no business was immune to the changes.

The new platform is a stark difference from the previous, and learning the ropes may require a little effort. Below is a comprehensive summary that highlights the major changes and how you need to adjust your marketing to run a successful Facebook campaign.

Full post: A Comprehensive Guide to the New Facebook Timeline for Pages

Inspiring Digital Art Featuring Hands

Today we're going to have a look at some inspiring pieces of digital art that all feature hands in some form. All of these great pieces are made by users over at deviantart.com, and we hope you'll find these as inspiring as we do! They represent different styles and moods and show a great range of creativity.

Full post: Inspiring Digital Art Featuring Hands

How to Turn Any Site Into a Responsive Site

I remember the time when our biggest worry was about making stuff work in IE6. And sometimes I think that it was far easier then. Now we have not only to worry about IE crazy stuff (though now it’s much better) but also with a lot of new browsers /OS combinations and also a lot of screen sizes.

Full post: How to Turn Any Site Into a Responsive Site

25 Free Sets of Attractive Flag Icons

Country flag icons nowadays are of great use in a website. These types of icons are multipurpose and are convenient for just about any kind of a internet site. A flag icon could be used for a bunch of reasons, but the most popular method would be on a web site which allows your client to use them as buttons to switch between languages or to navigate through the pages, dedicated to different countries. You can also use them for widget designing when, for instance, you need to create a visitor’s counter, based on their geographical position. So whatever your purpose is, flag icons always catch the attention and make your site more attractive and easy to navigate. Flag icons are widespread in the internet but most of these are pretty dull as well as simple and do not really provide the visual or graphical standards of contemporary web design. The difficulty you will face would be finding nice examples of flag icons for your stash. Icons present on every flag symbolize some unique things either about the country or about the people of that country.

Full post: 25 Free Sets of Attractive Flag Icons

Optimizing WordPress Loading Speed With header.php & .htaccess

Website loading speed matters a lot for every blog/website, especially for people with shared hosting – which is the cheapest available hosting service. Here are a few .htaccess and header.php tricks to increase your website loading speed by 50-70%

Full post: Optimizing WordPress Loading Speed With header.php & .htaccess

Fluid CSS3 Slideshow with Parallax Effect

In this tutorial we will create a slideshow with a parallax effect using several CSS3 properties. The idea is to move the background positions of two backgrounds while sliding the container of the slides.

Full post: Fluid CSS3 Slideshow with Parallax Effect

Stunning Typography by Steven Bonner

 This post is part of the For Your Inspiration Monday series showcasing the most inspiring designs out there. Each week a new artist or design style will be presented in order to get your creative juices flowing for the upcoming week. I hope you enjoy the series.

Full post: Stunning Typography by Steven Bonner

Real Shadow: Mouse-Sensitive & Realistic Shadows With jQuery

Real Shadow is a simple-yet-effective jQuery plugin for creating realistic shadow effects for any HTML element.

With a simple function, it works by targeting any number of elements and manipulating the value of box-shadow CSS property for the elements in accordance with the mouse position.

Full post: Real Shadow: Mouse-Sensitive & Realistic Shadows With jQuery

WordPress CMS Features: Custom Post Types Tutorial

Exactly what makes WordPress a powerful CMS? What are the features that make it more than just a blogging software? The most powerful feature of WordPress is that it is highly customizable. In this post and a few upcoming posts, I will be discussing these features with you. So if you are not already an expert level WordPress user you might want to follow @WPlift to learn about these features.

Full post: WordPress CMS Features: Custom Post Types Tutorial

A JavaScript Data Transformation & Management Library

Miso is an open source toolkit designed to expedite the creation of high-quality interactive storytelling and data visualisation content. The first release under the Miso Project is Miso Dataset, a JavaScript client-side data management and transformation library.

Full post: A JavaScript Data Transformation & Management Library

7 Webmaster Tools That Will Make Your Job Easier

After we deliver a complete web design solution to clients, they might ask us to continue working for them for a few hours a week as a webmaster. While this job can be quite bumpy at times, its difficulty can be minimized with the help of different webmaster tools available on the Internet. If you are involved with such a client, this article is out here to help you speed up your workflow.

Full post: 7 Webmaster Tools That Will Make Your Job Easier

15+ Free High Quality Icon Sets

Icons are most important in a website. Designers are always looking for appropriate icons for their website design. In this post, I’ve showcased some beautiful free icon sets.

Full post: 15+ Free High Quality Icon Sets

Our favorite tweets of the week Apr 23 – Apr 29, 2012

Every week we tweet a lot of interesting stuff highlighting great content that we find on the web that can be of interest to web designers.

The best way to keep track of our tweets is simply to follow us on Twitter, however, in case you missed some here’s a quick and useful compilation of the best tweets that we sent out this past week.

Full post: Our favorite tweets of the week  Apr 23 – Apr 29, 2012

WordPress Custom Fields usage for Customers website and Multisite users

For Multisite user website and for the customization for your client website, you have to make some modification in the WordPress core file, especiaaly modification and customization with Custom fields. Today we are comling a list of excellent resources for the utilization of custom field along with a list of  tips and trick for its usages, so you can extend the features of WordPress powered websites for your clients and users.

Full post: WordPress Custom Fields usage for Customers website and Multisite users

44 Websites to Help You Improve Your Knowledge of WordPress

We recently did a round-up of some of the leading design blogs that you need to follow in order to stay up to date with the latest trends in the design world. In this article we take a look at some blogs and websites that cover WordPress.

Full post: 44 Websites to Help You Improve Your Knowledge of WordPress

40+ New Collection of Dirty Wall Textures

A couple of years ago, we have featured our own collection of Dirty Wall Textures and we just feel so greatful for the favor we have extended. This time, we’d like to share with you a new collection of Dirty Wall Textures coming from different talented designers’ eyes from all over the web. It would always be our pleasure to inspire you more with freebies also deserving to be applauded for its quality and usefullness in the world of Web and Graphics Design.

Full post: 40+ New Collection of Dirty Wall Textures

30 Minute Redesign #90: SemiDoppel

 Today I’m going to be redesigning SemiDoppel, a blog about web design and programming.

It’s awesome to see such a unique, creative logo being used. Many blogs use generic, unmemorable and this logo definitely helps establish a strong brand for the site.

Full post: 30 Minute Redesign #90: SemiDoppel

16 Fresh CSS3 tutorials

The CSS3 Tutorials and techniques can be functioned using markup, HTML, and some properties of CSS3. Different values and units are added to CSS properties at different times, the current batch module for CSS is 3. This post rounds up some best tutorials on CSS3. Hope you’ll find these useful.

Full post: 16 Fresh CSS3 tutorials

An Interview With Devesh Sharma From WPKube

 Davesh from WPKube kindly took some time out of his schedule to answer some questions about himself, his blog and the WordPress platform. It’s always interesting to hear the views of another blogger who focuses on WordPress so I hope you enjoy the interview.

Full post: An Interview With Devesh Sharma From WPKube

30 Free eBooks and Whitepapers For Web Designers

As a web designer you have distinct advantages over many other career choices. Your have the added opportunity to work from home; your hiring potential is more flexible; you can freelance; and best of all, you are working largely, online. Apart from the most prevalent benefit to working online (to procrastinate on sites such as YouTube and Facebook) the biggest benefit is your access to information and useful tools, which can be utilized to better your job.

Full post: 30 Free eBooks and Whitepapers For Web Designers

Using WordPress as an Intranet

When we talk about WordPress we usually associate it with either being a blogging platform or just another content management system, but what about as an Intranet? This tutorial will show you how you can turn your basic installation of WordPress into a robust Intranet for your business.

Full post: Using WordPress as an Intranet

30 Powerful Designs of Horse Logo

Logo designs are an interesting option to speak about the feelings and concepts linked to any company. Among the very popular symbols is the horse. These warm-blooded animals are not just blessed with cleverness yet they also possess a strong image signifying energy, speed, strength and manhood. It is ideal to hold such impressive qualities stimulated by a business logo to attract potential clients. In today’s post, we are featuring some really nice horse logo designs. While browsing on this list, you will notice that a horse image is not just being used on horse related businesses. They are also being popularly used in the car, sports, toy, insurance and various other businesses which are aiming to show strength to their brands.

Full post: 30 Powerful Designs of Horse Logo

Beginner’s Guide to Wireframes and Tools to Create Them

Wireframing, or prototyping, while designing, costs almost nothing, but can give back so much. While many designers start with a sketch in their mind and then just put it into Photoshop or even code it right away, some others start on paper. Yes, paper, that (most of the time) white thing we write on with our hands. Sounds very 2000-ish, but even today the best designers out there use this technique to their advantage. Web prototyping saves lots of frustrations later on during the project development phase, as it makes sure there are no things to undo or redesign. If you prototype correctly, you can be sure about the fact that redesigning will never be something you will have to think of.

Full post: Beginner’s Guide to Wireframes and Tools to Create Them

Design Your Complete Clean, Elegant and Colorful Portfolio Pt. 1

Hello all friends, another day and another tutorial here on HV-Designs! Today you will be learning how to create your personal elegant portfolio depending on only Photoshop amazing tricks and techniques. I’m proud to share this very detailed, step by step tutorial which will be divided into two parts with you exclusively on HV-Designs! This tutorial will let you practice on the basics of Photoshop through covering almost more than 25 amazing PS techniques! A lot of colors will be used to creating this portfolio with complete pages design as well, so I suggest you to don’t waste time and start designing with me now!

Full post: Design Your Complete Clean, Elegant and Colorful Portfolio Pt. 1

11 Useful And FREE Script Fonts For Your Design

Typography is the most important aspect of any design project that cannot be overlooked. There are different types of fonts and typefaces that are available on the net and majority of the designers are using them. Among them one is Script fonts that are gaining huge popularity among the designers as well as in the general public. The reason of its popularity is that it simulates handwriting and gives your design a human touch.

Full post: 11 Useful And FREE Script Fonts For Your Design

Quick Tip: Create a Steel Text Effect in Photoshop

In this quick tip tutorial we will explain how to create a steel text effect using layer styles in Photoshop. Let’s get started!

Full post: Quick Tip: Create a Steel Text Effect in Photoshop

Efficient Communication in a Freelance Design Team

Working as a digital professional in any field is tough. You have to constantly push towards gratifying clients and rushing through deadlines. Managing tasks in a team allows you to divide up the work much more evenly. However this also means it can be difficult getting everybody on the same page.

Full post: Efficient Communication in a Freelance Design Team

Collection of 33 Purposive Plaster Textures

Imagine how science and creativity has made it all possible. Look at powders turning into hard concretes and notice that they hold the framework of buildings pretty well. One perfect example for this is the Plaster. Plasters are used as wall or ceiling coating that starts from a powder which is most likely mixed with water and the mixing makes the material paste-like and hardens in a couple of hours. This becomes another addition to your collection of Textures. Plaster Textures are just natural even when it’s processed. These textures vary in appearance according to its color, its style and its naturality.

Full post: Collection of 33 Purposive Plaster Textures

Closures: Front to Back

Closures are often viewed as an arcane art in the land of JavaScript. Once mastered, they allow you to write some truly amazing JavaScript. This article will get you up to speed on the magic of JavaScript closures.

Full post: Closures: Front to Back

Open Source File Manager for Web using jQuery UI

elFinder is an open-source file manager for web, written in JavaScript using jQuery UI. Creation is inspired by simplicity and convenience of Finder program used in Mac OS X operating system. It supports all operations with files and folders on a remote server (copy, move, upload, create folder/file, rename). Background file upload with Drag & Drop HTML5 support.

Full post: Open Source File Manager for Web using jQuery UI

10 Effective Brainstorming Tips for Better Designs

When dealing with a certain problem with a particular subject, it can be done with either a team or just by yourself but still, there is a big possibility of asking somebody else’s ideas and thoughts because it will make better results if there are more than one person working for that certain problem. Also, there are situations that teamwork is needed such as when making software and designing clothes to come up with the best outcome and this can be called as brainstorming. On the other hand, there are also some situations where brainstorming can make things worse if it is not done and managed properly. Here are some ways to manage brainstorming for a better outcome.

Full post: 10 Effective Brainstorming Tips for Better Designs

Joost de Valk, Founder of Yoast, Shares His Success Story

Joost de Valk is the founder and CEO of Yoast.com. He’s one of the top SEO and WordPress experts in the world, best known for his great WordPress plug-ins.  Joost also runs a WordPress Podcast and speaks at a variety of conferences.

Full post: Joost de Valk, Founder of Yoast, Shares His Success Story

50 Remarkable Examples Of Inspiring Typography

 Knowing how much of a hot commodity typography is for the designers and the design community; we decided to showcase a huge collection of innovative and creative typography examples for our readers. Today, typography is not only the art of rearranging the typefaces rather it has become a broad medium to communicate with your visitors in a more appealing and visually engaging manner while providing your design a beautiful and stunning look.

Full post: 50 Remarkable Examples Of Inspiring Typography

Design A Back Office Using Photoshop CS5

On Grafpedia we usually teach you to create the design of your website, but it is always regarding de Front part, the one part visible by your visitors. We never made a subject regarding the back office, it is why we propose to you a tutorial about this subject today.

Full post: Design A Back Office Using Photoshop CS5

Leave a Lasting Impression on Your Visitors

The art of web design takes years of practice to really understand how it works. There are so many ideas and UI elements which can build a solid impression on your audience. Designers are always striving to please the visitor and make their experience fun and easy.

Full post: Leave a Lasting Impression on Your Visitors

How to Design a Sleek Downloader Interface Using Photoshop

I'm back once again with another cool web interface tutorial. Today we’ll be making this sexy file downloader with crisp and clean details. This can be used for web and mobile applications, perfectly cool for smartphones and tablets too!

Full post: How to Design a Sleek Downloader Interface Using Photoshop

Taking WordPress Custom Taxonomies to the Next Level

WordPress custom taxonomies are a great way to organise your website’s content, but what are they exactly? How can they be implemented effectively? More importantly though, how can they benefit your website? Fear not, what you’re about to read in the following is the most comprehensive guide to WordPress custom taxonomies you’ll find on the internet today.

Full post: Taking WordPress Custom Taxonomies to the Next Level

30 Excellent Sans Serif Fonts

Setting the appropriate design used for your website might give you a headache because you need to consider some points such as the colors, styles, images and the thought of choosing the correct and readable fonts. Using the right font is important to maintain the look of your website and also to ensure better readability, though there are no specific rules for using a font, it must complement the design perfectly without any flaw in order for your site to make an impression towards the readers. San-serif fonts are usually used in our modern living, because they are perfect for brief blocks of information and they are perfect for getting attention. These fonts are used most often for short text components such as headlines or captions. This font style has become the standard for body text on-screen, particularly on the web.

Full post: 30 Excellent Sans Serif Fonts

20+ Chrome Apps for Google Drive

This is an exciting week for personal cloud storage. We saw the official release of Microsoft SkyDrive, an update from Dropbox and the long awaited Google Drive.

Google Drive was a bit disappointing. Only 5GB space for free users (we expected more) and functionality wise only little more than Google Docs. In any case, third party apps for Google Drive are coming hard and fast. Here are some of the most interesting ones available for Google Chrome right now.

Full post: 20+ Chrome Apps for Google Drive

40 Unique and Beautiful Examples of Brochure Design

Here we are presenting a showcase of 40 excellent examples of brochure design to spark your creativity. Brochures are an extremely powerful offline promotional tool that can furnish an enormous boost to a marketing campaign if it is applied appropriately. Since it represents the brand image of an organization, you want to make it appear as striking as possible.

Full post: 40 Unique and Beautiful Examples of Brochure Design

A Pure CSS3 Cycling Slideshow

Thanks to CSS3, we can create effects and animations without using JavaScript, which will facilitate the work of many designers.

But we must be careful to avoid abusing CSS3, not only because old browsers do not support all of its properties. In any case, we all see the potential of CSS3, and in this article we’ll discuss how to create an infinitely looping slider of images using only CSS3 animation.

Full post: A Pure CSS3 Cycling Slideshow

Websites of the Deep: A Showcase of Underwater Web Design

Developing a website can sometimes be a dry process, but that doesn’t mean the finished site can’t make a splash. As the lead designer at a studio called “The Deep End”, it’s always interesting to see what others have done with the underwater web design theme, and it turns out there are quite a few sites out there. Pay close attention to the different styles that are utilized, as there are many different ways to bring the allure of the sea to the web.

Full post: Websites of the Deep: A Showcase of Underwater Web Design

Tools and methodologies for better coding

Optimization and organization can mean many things, but what does it mean to you? Doing things faster, better, or more efficient? Does it mean doing things more programmatically, simplistically, or using tools that are more suited to the job?

Full post: Tools and methodologies for better coding

Highly Customizable Social Counter jQuery Plugin

Koottam Social jQuery Plugin is a simple, powerful and elegant Social jQuery Plugin to display your social links. The plugin can be highly customized through 10+ options. There are 7 themes available, and it’s very easy to add more themes in css. One of the best things is that you can make the count display animated easily.

Full post: Highly Customizable Social Counter jQuery Plugin