There are no individual patterns in this post, only complete sets, with each set containing anything from 3 patterns all the way up to 100, and are available in a variety of popular formats: .eps, .ai, .png, .pat, .psd and .jpg. You will find all kinds of varied patterns, such as fabrics, geometric shapes, flowery, retro, vintage, grunge, swirls, paper, dots, lines… and much more. And if all that is not enough we have also collected a selection of the [...]

Whether you download and dissect pre-built CSS templates to learn new layout techniques or if you download them to be used as easy-to-edit ready made and standalone web sites, you shouldn’t be limited to using one of the many cloned, dated and often dull templates that are freely available. Popular trends and techniques change very quickly within web design and as such your choice of template should reflect that. In this CSS and XHTML template round-up we have selected templates [...]

Last week we published the Christmas competition to win Three Membership Packs (worth $99) from IconDemon. The competition has now ended, and it is now time to announce the winners. Thanks to Icondemon.com for allowing us to publish this competition, and an evener bigger thank you to all of our readers who took the time to enter and comment. Sadly, we could only pick (at random) only three winners. And to everyone that hasn’t won, better luck next time with [...]

The recent web design trend of not using web safe fonts for headlines and titles has opened up a whole new resource category for designers: The search for the perfect headline grabbing font. In this post we have collected 25 of the best completely FREE headline fonts that could be easily used with @fontface property and all packaged with a web-font license. Throughout this Christmas week we are taking a look at the most popular and most resourceful articles that [...]

A couple of weeks ago we published the Christmas competition to win 1000 satin business cards from Inkd. split between four lucky entrants. The competition has now ended (sorry about the delay, I had a really good Christmas), and it is now time to announce the winners. Thanks to Inkd for allowing us to publish this awesome competition, and an evener bigger thank you to all of our readers who took the time to enter. Sadly, we could only pick [...]

To help streamline your iPhone app design and development, we have put together a fairly comprehensive collection of iPhone & iPad GUI kits that will allow you to focus on developing rather than having to design everything from scratch. Within this post you will find complete GUI kits and stencils, iPhone GUI elements and PSDs and finally a collection of the best icon-sets perfectly suited for the iPhone. (Some of the preview images are intentionally to large to show the [...]

Once upon a time when a web design required a nice, functional and scalable button it would have had to have been firstly designed in Photoshop, implemented with the sliding doors technique, and you may have had to spice things up with a little Javascript. With CSS3 everything is changing – everything is easier and certainly better. As well as button tutorials and techniques we have also showcased some CSS3 tools and generators, you will find these at the bottom [...]

The grid is not just a cool-sounding word (why sci-fi loves it), but it’s also an incredibly simple and effective principle for website design. By sticking to a grid, you can make your website look sexy and clean, have it be highly readable, scannable, and navigate-able for your visitors (increasing their chances of returning), and make it easier on yourself since you’re following an existing framework when designing your website. To help with design inspiration, you’ll even get 10 shining [...]

Let’s face it, WordPress is the demi-god of blogging and (arguably) Content Management. From Syria to Korea, WordPress powers them all. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t other fish in the sea. Even if you are in love with WordPress (just as we are), trying out a taste of variety won’t harm you a bit. So lets check out some awesome alternatives to WordPress. CMS/Publishing Tools Bluntly put, WordPress isn’t a CMS in its own right. But its heavy duty [...]

This article focuses on the use of typography to create “impact” and “drama” when designing posters. Poster design almost certainly requires text to be effective, this text will often include key information – dates, names, locations, times. It follows that typography can be an extremely useful (and critical) tool in poster design. Below are 50 posters that rely heavily on typography or use typography creatively. The graphic designers have used bold typefaces, contrasting and bright colors. The posters show once [...]

For this weeks Christmas competition we have three 1 Year Membership Packs from Icondemon.com, valued at $99 for each. The membership pack allows for unlimited downloads of 5,300+ icons, covering 20 categories and in 10 varied styles. All you have to do for the chance of winning one of the membership packs is leave a comment below telling us what you would like to do with the icons. The competition will run for the next 7 days (ending on Monday [...]

Since starting work as a web designer I have always, and will always obsess over improving my project workflow, my own design pattern if you will. Never afraid to make a couple of wrong turns along the way, my intellectual pursuit has seen me produce wireframes in Photoshop, sketch them out in meticulous detail, and not so meticulous detail, test-drive prototyping software Axure and Omnigraffle and even…gulp… completely bypassed any formal ‘pre-production’ process. As you can imagine, the results were [...]

CouchCMS is a self-hosted simple CMS that has been created specifically with web designers in mind. It allows a designer to take any HTML/CSS templates and convert it into a fully content managed site, quite literally in minutes. Unlike most other CMSs out there, Couch works by being retrofitted within an existing design or static site and not vice versa. This gives unparalleled creative freedom to designers who will no longer need to design their layouts around the limitations of [...]