If the contacts and connections aren’t there, doing business for yourself as a freelance graphic designer won’t be easy. You’ll have the talent, the tools, and the drive. But getting yourself out there is another story. It doesn’t happen overnight. You’ll need to build up your network and connect with others. A tip? Probably the most efficient way to do so is to use popular social networking sites online. While, you may think that social networking sites are a huge [...]

It has been a long time since we last took a look at what GUI kits were freely available. So, in this round-up we thought we would bring you right up to date by taking a look at some of the best and freshest that are freely available. Every designer who has spent many hours mocking up web pages or mobile apps will tell you how important it is to have a reliable set of re-usable, editable and uniform GUI [...]

The most popular topic of discussion at the moment is undoubtedly responsive layouts in web design. Without going discussing too much what you will already know, a responsive layout allows you to offer a specific and optimised screen size based on whatever device (mobile, tablet…) the visitor uses. You would typically use Media Queries to resize the overall layout, but what about all of those individual elements and features that make your page unique? Navigation, forms, images, sliders, carousels… they [...]

Today, I’d like to cover some really crucial tips to constructing a great template for your company. Design labs and agencies either work with set clients or tend to release a few products and maintain support from customers. Thus your website is intended to sell the skills your team can offer designing pixels for the world to use. Let Your Purpose be Known Prospective clients or even visitors browsing your website would like to know what you do right away. [...]

In this tutorial, I will show you how to create an interesting jQuery-powered one-page site. One page sites are usually a great way to show your prospective clients how good you are at what you do. This one is no exception. Demo & Source Files View the DemoDownload the Source Files Screenshot The HTML We’ll start off with some simple HTML. Each section represents a part of all the colored squares. Each one has a different ID so that we [...]

Minimal is the timeless web design trend of basic styling a web page and stripping out all non-essential elements allowing the reader to focus solely on the content with absolutely no distractions. Achieving the balance between content and minimal design is not easy, but in the hands of a skilled designer or a competent writer, the minimal style can truly accentuate your web page. This post is our third year featuring minimal WordPress themes and by far and away our [...]

As regular visitors to this site will know, we love Lego. We really, really do. We love its creativity, its originality, its endless possibilities and most of all, we love it because it is darn good fun. As we mention with our with our previous Lego ads article (39 Creative Lego Advertisements), its creativity is not only limited to plastic building bricks. It even extends to their impressive advertising campaigns as well. They have taken the simplest of ideas and [...]

Every six months or we do like to take a look at some of the greatest and freshest jQuery plugins from within that time. Each time we do this the jQuery community never ever fails to let you down. Constantly releasing plugins that are not only useful and problem solving, but also releasing plugins that can aid you with new technologies like HTML5 and CSS3. Hope you enjoy this selection. You might also like: 50 jQuery Plugins for Form Functionality, [...]

Using seamless/tileable patterns are a fantastic method for giving your design some added depth and character by either subtly highlighting key areas or for creating a background that will push your layout design to the forefront. The seamless patterns sets in this post range in format from .eps, .ai, .png, .pat, .psd and .jpg, with each set containing anything at least 3 patterns rising all the way up to 300. They vary from fabrics, geometric shapes, flowery, retro, vintage, grunge, [...]

There’s a lot to be learned by looking at before and after shots of a website’s redesign. You get to see what the designer or design team has learned about design since the last rendition, where they’ve identified problems and areas of the design that could be improved. The site’s look and feel is brought up to date with trends, and often more timeless improvements are made, such as base typography enhancements. Examining these changes can help you take advantage [...]

I do, and throughout this post I’ll try to explain why you do too. So what exactly are wireframes? Wireframes are visual representations of your websites structure, a blueprint to help establish hierarchy. They are usually limited to shapes, forms and text, and they rarely use any colour. The primary function of any wireframe is to show your client how their site will be structured. Pure information, no bells, and no whistles… a blueprint. When I started designing websites, I [...]

In this article we have highlighted the best Photoshop brush packs that have been released recently. With a total of 50 packs and well over 500 brushes, covering almost all categories (grunge, light effects, ornamental, abstract, paint strokes, paper, splatters…) and all of the highest quality, you are guaranteed to find the brush pack that is needed for your next project here. You may also like: 38 Watercolor Photoshop Brush Sets (950 Brushes) → 1000 Grunge Photoshop Brushes (40 Sets) [...]

Today’s round-up highlights 20 new(ish) elegant and free fonts that would be perfect for the headlines or titles of either a webpage or a print publication. We have previously published a post entitled 20 Free Fonts for Distinctive Headlines and Titles, you may want to check out as well. For the most part all of the fonts below can be used in both personal and commercial projects, but please do check the licenses of each before usage. You might also [...]