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we smash you with the information that will make your life easier. really.This is the most recent feed available as of 05/12/2008 at 10:44 AM
Sometimes typography is all you need to communicate your ideas effectively. Graphics can support the type or type can support the graphics, but to deliver the message precisely, you need to make sure your type is expressive enough, your design is distinctive enough and the composition is strong enough. The results are sometimes crazy, sometimes artsy, sometimes beautiful, but often just different from things we're used to. Thus designers explore new horizons and we explore new viewing perspectives which is what inspiration is all about.
This post showcases over 70 examples of sexy, bold and experimental typography. Some examples are typographic posters, some are typographic illustrations and some are just sketches with type. In any case, you will hopefully find some inspiration for your future works.
Feel free to check out our previous typography-related posts:
- Breathtaking Typographic Posters with over 50 typographic posters designed by artists across the globe. We feature Oriental, Iranian, Hebrew, Japanese, Chinese and Russian typographic posters as well as a number of further references,
- Typography In Motion presents some excellent examples of typography embedded into movies and videos,
- The Showcase of BIG Typography with over 35 examples of big, “loud” and yet elegant typography in web design.
So what can be achieved out of simple letters and symbols? Please be patient, some screenshots are huge.
Where Do You Draw Inspiration From?
Getting creative is part of our job. Whatever project we are working on, at some point we need to come up with some nice starting point — some fresh idea which we could explore further, build upon and refine until we have a polished, perfect result. Although having an idea is at least as important as implementing it properly, without inspiration and innovation you just can't get anything done.
And this is where it sometimes gets messy. In fact, drawing inspiration is not as easy as we used to think of it. Inspiration is not just observing something, analyze it and implement it in one or another way in your work. Inspiration is much more: there is a fine line between inspiration and imitation which is easy to cross and as easy to mix up.
Inspiration means captivate an idea and develop it further. Imitation means identify an idea and use it. As a professional when getting creative, you need to make sure that you pick the right path to follow.
Noell Hyman draws inspiration from magazines; stick-it-notes contain some ideas she might want to work upon later.
So how do you actually come up with new ideas (apart from reading Smashing Magazine, of course)? Where do you draw inspiration from? Do you have some bulletproof approaches against creativity blocks?
We would like to hear your opinion. Let us know in the comments!
Smashing Textures Contest
Take a shot, send us the image and win a Canon Digital Rebel camera. In web design textures are needed in background-images and header graphics. Graphic designers use textures to transport some concrete aspects of real-life into the digital presentation. Textures are also used to create an atmosphere which fits to the main topic or idea of the site.
Such textures are usually extracted from photos. In fact, everybody can create them — apart from a camera no special devices or tools are necessary. You just need to find a texture and you make a shot of it. And here is where our readers come in. With this contest we want to encourage you to go out, take a camera with you, shot textures and send them to us.
Reward: one of participants of Smashing Texture contest will win the Canon Digital Rebel XT 8MP Digital SLR Camera with EF-S 18-55mm f3.5-5.6 Lens. The winner will be determined randomly.
Now More Than Ever: 50 More Excellent Blog Designs
Designing blogs is easy. Designing blogs in a unique way is hard. Whatever blog engine you are using, there are literally thousands of templates available which you can apply directly, without any significant code modifications. That's efficient, but it's not creative, because using a default blog-template you risk to end up with some wide-spread look which has actually nothing to do with you. To convey your personality effectively, you need a design which reflects who you are and what you are doing. That's why important is not just what you post, but also how you post it.
In fact, beyond the template-design-culture exists a field of creative, individual and impressive blog designs. And the good thing about it is that this field has been rapidly growing over the last years. To celebrate the creativity of blog designers we regularly present reviews of excellent blog designs we have stumbled upon recently. This post is no exception. Below you'll find 50 further examples of excellent, unique and impressive blog designs.
Apart from "usual" minimal designs, one can observe more rather complex graphic works. If earlier only blog headers had striking visual elements, now whole web-layouts seem to have become more vibrant: paper clips, mp3-players, coffee cups and further objects are used extensively. Apparently, they are used as metaphors for the environment of site designers. Such designs are just impossible to copy and they unite the visual design with the author's content in a unique and very personal layout.
You can also have a look at our previous showcases:
- 45 More Excellent Blog Designs (February 2008)
- 30 More Excellent Blog Designs (November 2007)
- 45 Excellent Blog Designs (August 2007)
35 Useful Source Code Editors Reviewed
To edit HTML- and CSS-code you only need a simple plaintext-editor — the rest depends on your skills and your creativity. However, to make your life a little bit easier, you can use some more comfortable source-code editors with advanced editing features. These features can effectively support you during coding, debugging and testing. Powerful modern editors provide developers with syntax highlighting, diff, macros, plugins, code-snippets, preview-option and an integrated FTP-management tool. Some editors go even further and offer a complete integrated development environment with numerous features and functions.
In the list below we present an overview of 35 established or rather unknown — but useful source code-editors; you'll probably find "usual suspects" — your favourite editor or the editor you've once been working with. But you'll also find some rather unknown alternatives which are definitely worth considering when choosing an optimal source code editor.
Some of the "ancient" text-editors such as EMacs or Vi are still alive and have achieved a remarkable level of quality over years. We've presented them below proving that sometimes it is really better to consider preferring a rather old editor to a "fresh" one. The position of the editors in the list is rather random and doesn't necessarily correspond to our personal evaluation of the editors. Please notice: even although this overview presents quite many editors, it doesn't mention all of them.
Yesterday we've published a review of 25 WYSIWYG-editors. Now, what about useful source code editors? What is your favourite?
25 Useful WYSIWYG Editors Reviewed
When it comes to coding editors, it's damn hard to a get a clear overview of all the benefits and functionalities different editors have to offer. However, in the end everybody needs one, so it's important to know which editor is best tailored to your personal needs.
WYSIWYG-editors are often criticized by real coding ninjas for bloated, dirty and not standards-complaint source code they've been producing over the last years. However, WYSIWYG-editors have become much better recently. Some of them even produce valid and elegant code.
Sometimes you need to provide your clients with some simple tools to edit or update their web-sites. And this is where the utility of WYSIWYG-editors comes in. As a web-professional you need to provide your clients with some sophisticated advice and offer a simple yet effective tool — e.g. a WYSIWYG-editor. In this article we've tried to give you an overview of both useful and deprecated WYSIWYG-editors.
