Best of 2011

As in years past, I've been collecting the best of years posts from design and development related blogs. Below you'll find links to the best of 2011 in design and development. I will trying to keep the list updated as I find more links, but please feel free to add any posts I miss in the comments.
  • 38 Brilliant Logo Designs Of 2011 For Your Inspiration

    This year, the design world has seen some amazing logos and we wanted to display some of the best for you as a source of inspiration. They show some great creativity with the use of negative space and what you can do with type to make a real impact.

  • Website Design Ideas and Trends of 2011

    Today, we will give you web design ideas and trends used this year in creating most websites. For sure, most of these could be seen in existing websites and web designers out there are also thinking of using them in their future designs.

  • Quick look at some of the Popular Web Design Trends from 2011

    Looking back over the past year we can pick up a lot of fresh emerging trends. Web designers around the world are connected like never before through a seemingly endless supply of social networks (big thums up to Dribble). Thus it’s much easier for new and innovative trends to build a head-of-steam and snowball into the main-stream.

  • 25 Stunningly Helpful Infographics from 2011

    Information has become easier to digest than ever before. Web and graphics designers have jumped onto the growing trend of infographics, where particular information is portrayed in charts and diagrams for easy consumption. The year 2011 has seen some impressive collections of data and information. The transparency(or non-transparency) of government, energy usage, Internet connectivity, worldwide hunger, and a slew of other statistics should give you an idea behind how infographics are put together. Below are 25 of my personal favorites from 2011 focusing on a range of datasets. If you know of other graphics or just want to share your thoughts you can post in the comments area below.

  • The 50 Most Useful jQuery Plugins from 2011

    With this post we have highlighted the 50 plugins that, we feel, are not only the most useful and popular from the this year, but also the most ground-breaking. To help you find a specific solution, we have split all of the plugins into the following categories: Form & Validation Plugins, Plugins for Responsive Layouts, Sliders, Galleries & Carousels, Modal Window Plugins, Mobile Specific Plugins, Web Typography Plugins, Animation Plugins and finally everything in-between.

  • 60 Most Wanted Design Freebies Of The Year 2011

    Over the past year we’ve seen a tremendous increase in the number of design blogs and PSD galleries. The great part here is web designers and graphic designers are becoming more interested in sharing their ideas and works with the Internet, and this great attitude gave birth to several premium quality design freebies from all around the world!

  • Popular Web Design Trends in 2011: Over 50 Inspiring Examples

    To end the year with an informative retrospective, we’ve scoured the web in search of patterns and trends that emerged or became increasingly popular throughout 2011. Follow along as we examine over fifty websites in an attempt to spot similar tricks and themes. I guarantee it’ll be difficult to read without spotting a few trends that you jumped on in your own projects this year!

  • Best Free UI PSDs of 2011

    So far in our Best of 2011 series, we’ve shown you our picks for the best free fonts and the best jQuery plugins. For this week, we’ve went back through all the UI PSDs that’s been released over the past year and picked our favorites. We saw plenty of these types of UI files being released in 2011, so it was very difficult to sift through them and find the ones that really stood out.

  • Top 50 Web Development, Design and Application Icon Sets from 2011

    This is now our fourth year rounding up the the best icon sets for web designers and developers. And what another fantastic year 2011 it has been! You’ll love this selection.

  • What I Learned About the Web in 2011

  • Best Of 2011: Ultimate Collection Of High Quality Photoshop Tutorials

    Every so often, you may discover it complicated to search for some of the highest quality Photoshop tutorials by means of search engines. Seeing that most of time, approximately all tutorials would tag themselves to be excellent, high quality or even the best Photoshop tutorial you can get. When exploring all the way through all these tutorials, your time is wasted. With the intention of saving your time, we have been spending more or less a whole year to seek out the best Photoshop tutorials for you. Finally, we come up with this massive collection of best Photoshop tutorials from 2011.

  • 45 Best Free Fonts of 2011

    We continue to showcase the best of freebies of 2011 in design industry.This year,many free fonts have been released and some of them really deserve to be in the best of list.Below fonts are all free for personal use,however please check for the commercial usage rights.

  • Our 50 Favorite Web Developers Resources and Tools from 2011

    As a developer, anything that can save you just a little bit of time is well worth its weight in gold. If you agree with that statement, you will love this. What we have for you is our selection of the best, the most useful and the most innovative tools and resources from 2011. That includes frameworks, boilerplates, apps, Javascript resources, CSS3 animations tools…and on…and on. So, no matter what, you are guaranteed to discover something completely new and really, really useful.

  • Awesome Free Texture Packs from 2011

    So get your virtual web design toolboxes ready for an extra healthy heaping of these awesome resources to be piled into the mix. Some of these you may have seen throughout 2011, and some may have slid under your radar and you are seeing them for the first time. Either way, we hope that they not only provide you with new resources, but also get you inspired to start a new project or implement them into an existing one.

  • Awesome Free Texture Packs from 2011

    As the year draws to a close, we tend to take a look back over the year and take stock. This post is here to not only sort of serve that purpose, but to also stock up on some of the year’s top free texture packs from around the web. Knowing how much use the web design community gets from resources like these, we felt like it would close the year in style to showcase some of 2011′s freshest and most useful textures that were released throughout the year.

  • 35 Amazing Book Covers From 2011

    “Don’t judge a book by its cover” is one of the earliest adages we learn as children. Looking at these covers, however, is enough to make us change our minds. Feast your eyes on some of the best offerings of book cover artists in 2011!

  • 30+ Inspirational Designs of the Year

    As we move into the New Year, it is a important to review what happened in the design community in 2011. However, unlike usual surveys, I will do so by reviewing the notable designs of the year. Although it’s impossible to review all the designs from 2012—I don’t claim to do so either—I’ve tried to select the best from deeply reviewed designs (approximately 2,000 designs) by considering different factors, include beauty, functionality, usability, and so forth. As these selected websites are from different categories and types, this survey could be regarded as a comprehensive overview.

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A Collection of Beautiful Web App Interfaces

When creating a web app, especially one that’s full of features, it’s often extremely difficult to create an interface where it’s immediately obvious (for someone who has yet to use the app) what everything does. Designing an interface that’s elegant, useful and simple is significantly harder than it looks – which is why we’ve chosen to showcase web apps that do an outstanding job of being easy to use, despite being (in many cases) extremely high performance. Hopefully they’ll inspire you for your next web app design.

Skimmer by The New York Times

The New York Times Skimmer web app displays the latest news in an easy to browse format, optimised mainly for touch-screen tablets. Content is dynamically resized to perfectly suit the window or screen size, and the entire reading experience revolves around ease of reading.

TeuxDeux

TeuxDeux is a brilliant, minimalist task management app which looks great and aims to have an interface that’s simple, elegant and uncluttered. Unlike many task management apps that aim to have a whole range of features, TeuxDeux keeps things simple and user-friendly.

Grooveshark

Grooveshark, the Pandora-like streaming music app, has to be used to be believed. It’s interface makes finding a track painless, and it’s so quick and responsive that it’s hard to believe that it’s streaming the music from it’s servers, instead of just playing music that’s on your computer.

Flow

Flow is a task management app that’s the polar opposite of TeuxDeux. It’s packed with features and is designed to let you collaborate easily with a team. The user interface, however, has been designed to be elegant, easy and intuitive. The app has been cleverly put together in a way that lets you work efficiently without having to spend hours learning how to use it.

Codecademy

Codecademy tries to make something that’s extremely complicated into something easy and accessible to all. By teaching you how to code directly in the browser, you can learn how to develop things straight away – you can learn by doing. It’s interface is beautifully designed – everything about it has been developed in a way that makes it fun, easy and simple.

Mint

Mint is a personal finance app that lets you track how much you spend and save. While it gives you a lot of data to look through, it never makes you feel overwhelemed – which is a testament to the clever and simplified user interface that you’re presented with. Instead of all the data in an unfriendly format, different bits of data are spread out throughout the app, and your information is presented visually with graphs and charts in a way that’s understandable and uncomplicated.

MailChimp

MailChimp allows businesses to email out newsletters and marketing emails to large groups of subscribers, and the interface is easy to navigate, intuitive and designed with an equal mix of beauty and personality. While the app packs in a ton of features, it doesn’t overcomplicate the interface and is perfect for power users.

TinyLetter

And in a stark contrast to MailChimp, in terms of number of features, is TinyLetter (which has, coincidentally, just been acquired by MailChimp). TinyLetter allows anyone to publish their own email newsletter and allow others to subscribe, all for free. There aren’t many features – the app just focuses on one thing and does it really well – which allows it to have an easy to use and beautifully simple interface.

Daytum

Daytum is an app that allows you to record anything you want – the types of food you’ve eaten, the number of miles you’ve run, how much money you’ve spent each week – literally anything you want. Once you’ve put some data in, Daytum presents you with your data in the form of beautiful graphs and charts to help you visualise your information. For an app that’s so broad and can accept any kind of data at all, it’s impressive that they’ve been able to keep it so simple and easy to use – and this is largely the result of the effort they’ve clearly put in to making their UI intuitive and uncluttered.

Basecamp

The interface for Basecamp has changed constantly as time has gone on, but not all of the changes have been immediately noticeable. Basecamp has had lots of small improvements made to it over time, so despite being packed with features, the system is lightweight, friendly and very easy to use. The result of all of their hard work is an app that helps you to get work done without getting in the way, all thanks to it’s user-friendly interface.

About the author

Dave writes on behalf of Christmas gift ideas experts The Handpicked Collection, who offer luxury gifts for her & him.
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20 Creative Facebook Fan Pages

Facebook fan pages are a great way to connect with the people who like what you do, whether it’s a musician trying to build up their fan base or a company wanting to connect with its customers. Because the pages are so important, many companies and individuals are looking to make their fan pages stand out by pushing the format of the page in various creative ways. The various examples below show just how far some companies, individuals and even television shows are going to attract the attention and involvement of their followers. All the examples below have certain things in common. They all have large graphics (or even video) to catch the potential follower’s eye. They all have clear, strong calls to action that urge people who have not followed them yet to do so. They also give followers many ways to engage with the brand through games, discussions and other activities. This illustrates how these companies and individuals view their followers: not as passive receivers of on-brand messages but as active participants in the brand’s culture. It is also important to note that these are not all international brands with unlimited budgets. Some of the examples are small companies with only 4,000 or so followers, but they still treat their followers like a community with value.

Dunkin’ Donuts

McDonalds

Red Bull

Starbucks

Windows

Coca Cola

Skittles

Realising Designs

Gary Vaynerchuk

Oxfam

Nokia

Elvis Presley

Disney Pixar

Zappos.com

The Vampire Diaries

Tiffany

Bob Marley

Dell

Heinz Ketchup

About the Author

Melissa writes for printing experts Print Express, who specialise in business cards, posters and outdoor banners. She enjoys studying marketing & graphic design in her spare time.
Posted in Niche Nuggets | Tagged | 3 Comments

Niche Nuggets: Get Your Spook On – Halloween Themed Sites

In honor of Halloween I hunted down some great websites to get you in the mood for this spooky holiday.

KC Creep Fest

Festival of the Dead

Village Halloween Parade

Please feel free to share any other spooktacular sites it he comments.

Haunted Happenings

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Site of the Week #29

This week I had 84 sites to choose from, and I've selected the website of Method & Craft. Method & Craft You'd expect a website for an by web designer to be top notch, and it doesn't disappoint!
We like to think of Method and Craft as the DVD extras of design: the stories behind the work, who made it, how they did it, and the techniques people have developed throughout their professional career. We all use the same tools, but we use them differently. We strive to educate you on more efficient, creative, and engaging ways to create your design. This site will not only be valuable to creative veterans, but also educational to those new to the design field. It's like looking over the shoulder of your favorite designer.
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Site of the Week #28

After a brief hiatus we're back! This past week, we had 92 new sites added to the gallery, from which I've chosen the website of Moment Skis. Moment Skis The website is an awesome blend of high impact photography, big bold typography and some great copy that all comes together to tell the story of a great brand.
While Moment is growing, it’s the constants that make us happy. We still design with the future of skiing in mind. We still use 95% domestically sourced ingredients and FSC-certified wood cores. We still party out of bounds. And we still make every single pair by hand, right here in Reno. While you might see more square tips around than you did a year ago, rest assured: every Moment customer has been pre-screened for radness, just like you. And just like you, we’re still in it for the stoke, not the scrilla. The big-hair babes, gold watches and movie deals? That’s just for decoration.
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Have we reached the end of original design layouts?

I'm a bit of a movie buff. When I was younger, it was common for me to watch 3-4 new movies at the theatre on a weekend. After a while started to regularly recognize plots from older movies in what I was watching. In some cases it didn't have a negative impact on my enjoyment of the movie, it's the journey not the destination that counts, after all there are only so many stories worth telling. Some are updated to use new technologies, but the basic outline remain the same. When I look at designs, I'm increasingly seeing older designs in them. It's no secret that "Good artists copy, great artists steal" (Picaso), but even when someone tries to create something original, I still end up seeing something I've seen before. Perhaps it's just my mind playing tricks on me, but maybe we've have arrived at a place of good design principles, that lead people independently to produce the same results. Yes logos changes, colors changes, but the overall design layout and interactions remain the same. For the same reason that many new cars look very similar, websites are starting to look very similar. Is this a bad thing? No. Non-technical people complain to me all the time that things on websites are so different, "Why can't the login link be in the same place for all websites?", is a common question. We all want a unique design to help us stand out from the millions of other websites, but is that desire hurting the user experience for your website and the web at large? I'd love to know the thoughts of other designers...
Posted in Design Services | 2 Comments

50+ Awesome Logos incorporating Animals

Just as a the color you use for a design can have a psychological impact on your users, incorporating an animal into your brand can do the same, helping to convey your identity quickly and easily. Perhaps you want to show users you are strong and powerful company, in this case you might want to use a strong and powerful animal, a Lion or a Bear perhaps? Want to be thought of as smart? Why not use an Owl in your design. Other times the choice is much simpler, perhaps the name of the company already contains an animal. Below you'll find over 50 awesome logos that feature an animal in their design.

Eagle Mountain Capital

Gold Business

HandyDog

Blackhawk

HJ Mews Cat Products

Mustang Marketing

Strolleroo

BuzzData

Hip Pups

Snakeye

Jumpinx

Shaggy Hair dog walking

Deerta

Lobo

The Church of the Hills

Owl Shot Group

River Kittens

Freedom Now

Tuff Boon

Red Lions

eagle song studio

Shoal Creek Beer and Bugs

Slice of Life

SmartAuction

Hmmbird

Mouse House

Casa Corral

Blackbearry

Boxer Show

Puddy Tat

Cultures East

Telezoo

Big Bird Publishing

Tapasitos

Blue Sheep

Lee Jackson

Archer Dairy Farms

The Beauty Society

Lionseek

Scherkhan

Hedgehog Solutions

Stingmaster

Moovers

Ugodno

White Rabbit

Three Bears Cafe

Chameleon Chili Sauce

Roadrunner

Primm Valley Resorts

Greefish

WhosAttending

ToadKing

Black Frog Industries

Toreto

Magical Jaguar

furgazm

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Site of the Week #27

From this week's list of 61 sites added to the gallery I've chosen the website of Jet Cooper. Jet Cooper Other than looking great, this website has some really nice interaction affects. Try mousing over the staff filters or pictures on the homepage for example.
Jet Cooper is a user experience agency in Toronto, Canada. We design smart, capable and beautiful applications for web, mobile and tablet.
I also wanted to give a nod to Jason Santa Maria, on the launch of the latest design for his site, great work as always! Jason Santa Maria
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Logo of the Week #9

This week I've selected a logo by Sergey Shapiro: A beautiful text only based logo for a Church in Flordia. I spotted the logo on LogoPond.
Posted in Logo of the Week | 1 Comment