Just a short post, more of an announcement to let you all know of a great interview & contest over at Fuel Your Creativity. The post discovers a little more about what goes on behind closed doors at WooThemes, and also gives away 3 copies of the New Theme, be sure to read the rules regarding how to enter, and the contest is only running until Wednesday the 27th August 2008.

1. Design Shard

From what I can see, this site only went live on July 25th, and it’s already had some popular content. I suggest you check out the 300+ Free Hi-Res Grunge Textures, as it’s my favourite at the moment.

2. My Ink Blog

A very well organized and well focused blog with some brilliant tutorials, links, resources and articles. So far there has been a lot of great posts, and I don’t see any signs of this changing. I was really impressed with the tutorial on Designing with Swirls & Flourishes, really top notch tutorial.

3. PSD Fan

Quickly becoming one of my favourite tutorial sites. The site offers not only tutorials, but resources, which are both of very high quality. Looking at the amount of content it’s hard to remember that it’s only 2 months old. My top pick: Design a Unique Grungy Website Layout, a tutorial on a whole new level of great!

4. Kreativeuse

This site is probably the most useful in terms of keeping up to date. It’s sort of beginning to replace my RSS feeds, I now always check this site first as it’s always got regularly updated web/graphic design news. Launched on the 5th of July it’s quickly become one of my favourite places to browse, and our Icon set was their first ever post. Highly recommended!

5. ShareBrain

Another regularly updated blog, which is brilliant! Especially when you consider how good the content is, I particularly enjoy their interviews. The ones with Jon Phillips & Steven Snell were my favourites. Keep your eye on this blog for sure.

6. Design Blurb

This site was recommended to me by Andrew Houle and after browsing through the content I was impressed. And they even have their own collection of “New Design Blogs,” which was a bit of a bummer as I thought I was onto something which I hadn’t seen before. Anyway, great blog & content, check it out.

7. HongKiat

Now I know for a fact this one is not new, but it’s new to me, so I felt it deserved a feature. It is a brilliant site bringing you the best Tech Design & Blogging related content which I’m very new to. The thing I like most on this site is the wide range of content topics, there’s always something new and different. I really love their 50+ Nice Clean CSS Tab-Based Navigation Scripts - Be sure to have a look.

8. Graphic Design Blog

There’s a good number of posts on this blog, and I like each and every one of them. I’m looking forward to seeing more!

9. Observin

I couldn’t include this one for the design alone (as much as I wanted to), fortunately the blog posts & resources that I’ve seen so far made me want to include it for another reason, the content. To see what I mean just have a gander at the free Old News Theme.  I predict great things for this blog, its one of my favourites at the moment.

10. Digital Artists Toolbox

I stumbled upon this website through the brilliant 41 Amazing Tilt-shift miniature faking photographs post and I’ve been checking back ever since. A wide range of content topics, from resources and freebies, to interviews and amazing  collections. One to watch for sure.

11. DesignO’Blog

Niki runs a blog which again has a wide variety of content, although being focused around design and the internet I love blogs like this, she clearly has a great eye for interesting stuff and a good sense of humour, also offers some very useful content. Great blog to follow.

12. Brush King

I’ve always gone for Quality over anything else, which is why I’m really liking Brush King. The collection of Photoshop brushes they’ve got at the moment are truly impressive,  it’s clearly being run by someone who can spot quality brushes. My top pick, Flowers First.

13. Script & Style

This new website put together by Chris Coyier which aims to bring you the best user submitted community news. So far so good, I’ve read a lot of interesting stuff which I found via the site. So be sure to give it a good old rummage though.

14. Dev Snippets

I love it when sites like this come along, I’m not really huge on web development, but I realise how useful these are and I like to browse demos of things like this to find things that would be useful for future projects.  They’re also running a great contest too.

15. Pattern Tap

Pattern tap is a great idea, its a new site which allows you to find specific collections on certain web elements. I think it makes finding inspiration that little more effective, as usually it’s certain elements that I get stuck for inspiration on, rather than the overall concept.

16. We Are not Freelancers

These guys have got a really nice blog up and running, and its showing no signs of slowing down. The design (although this post is not about the design) is just absolutely amazing, I love every aspect of it. The posts that I’ve read have been very well written and informative, so all in all a welcomed addition to my RSS reader.

17. Design Feedr

Design Feedr is a blog which aims to showcase collections of top quality inspiration and resources. They have a great eye for what looks good and similar tastes to my own. One of my favourite posts of theirs is the Masters of Digital Paintings collection which I really love!

18.  Inspiration Up

There’s that word again; Quality. I really like this site because they seem to think a little more than certain CSS galleries about their entries, so overall I’d say there is a better quality of sites on display.

19. The Dieline

Here is another site which I know is not new at all, but I’ve only recently been introduced to the amazing collection of packaging design inspirations that they offer. If you have not yet come across this site, prepare to be amazed.

20. Color Burned

A talented designer sharing various sources of inspiration and freebies. It’s always reassuring to receive resources off a guy who you know, knows what he is talking about. I really love the guy’s work just as much as the posts he shares, so a great experience all round.

21. Booooooom

Probably not the easiest domain name to remember in the world, but thankfully the posts and quality of the work is a lot more memorable, the post on Ian Francis‘ work for example is amazing! The site is based around art, design, photography & culture etc. This is a great site to spend some time exploring.

22. Apps Mania

The basic concept of the site is a gallery of web applications, it has a small ammount of information, ratings and tags. Making it a great place to browse if you’re on the look out, or need some inspiration for, a cool new web app.

23.  Doodlage

I can’t remember how I came across this site, but its been in my favourites for a few weeks and I’m really impressed with the postings. Its quite a fun little site, sharing lots of doodles/sketches/drawings and is a great source of inspiration.

24. Vi.sualize

Social Bookmarking for images. It’s that easy. A simple great idea.

25. Coded Preview

For a better way of presenting your design mock-ups you can use Coded Preview, it allows you to modify the settings such as a background image, alignment margins etc. To give you an idea of how this can help, take a look at this example; Single Image compared to Image on Coded Preview. I think its a great idea, probably the best place you could upload your designs for presenting mock-ups.

26. High Resolution Textures

Textures, a vital ingredient in so many forms of design. Textures are becoming more and more popular in web design, so that makes this an ideal website for you to add to your RSS reader. There really are some great textures on display here, and regular updates mean you’ll never be short of textures.

27. Lines and Colours

Another art and design blog. This one again has been around for a long time, since 2005 in fact. But its another of those which is fairly new to me, and I’m hoping will be new to a lot of you guys. A wide range of art is covered and as with all of these blogs I’m posting, the quality of the content is spot on.

28. Beeex

I’ve not strictly been following this site, but it keeps popping up here and there and each time I visit I am impressed, so It’s long overdue but I’ve added it to my RSS reader now.  I particularly love their Ultimate Collection of Free Textures on the Web.

29. Skout

A user submitted list of design/web related resources. A wide range of categories, resources and inspirations. One of those sites where you can lose a good couple of hours and not realise.

30. Usability Post

So far the posts on this site have impressed me, the blog talks about aspects of interface design, which means not only the way things look but how they work and how the function. I’m looking forward to reading more here.

31. Knowtebook

Knowtebook brings you the best news about design, ideas, web trends, technology & more. The usefulness of each post cannot be questioned, each and every post I find very useful, so that’s why it had to make the list, this web-based business collaboration tools post is a great example of that.

32. Designm.ag

This latest project by Steven Snell is already off to a great start. A very community focused design blog with community feeds, links, a gallery and of course some amazing posts, this blog really does look set to grow bigger and bigger, and with posts like this: Favorite Design-Related Sites of 21 Designers, its not hard to see why.

33. Fudge Graphics

Since April 2008 Fudge graphics has been making some amazing posts, and I’ve been completely oblivious. It’s strange how sites like this go on with such great content without me realising. This is just another one of those sites that I love, there is a good mix of links, resources, inspirations featured artists, that sort of thing. Good times!

Get the RSS Feeds

If you are using a RSS reader you can easily subscribe to all of the above RSS feeds (where possible) by downloading the .xml file. All you need to do is then import it into your reader. I use netvibes as my reader.

Download RSS Feeds XML file

Share your Suggestions

If you know of a design blog that has great content please share it with us. To avoid your post being deleted for spam please only list one link per comment and give a brief description of the site first.

We were recently contacted by Adii of WooThemes for an exciting new project. Adii and his team, including Magnus Jepson, Mark Forrester and Elliot Jay Stocks, who have recently launched their new site, wanted to bring some grunge to their themes, so got in touch with us and gave us a great project to get our teeth into.

Download & Demo

Download & Details |  Demo |  Blog Post

We were given a lot of creative freedom and some excellent feedback to get the theme looking how it is. We also wanted you guys to be able to choose a few different backgrounds & styles so we worked on a number of variations for the theme which come as part of the download, giving you a lot of freedom and flexibility. As it is released as part of WooThemes it comes on their custom built back end which gives you even more control over the design & functionality.

Details & Information

I don’t want to say too much as I think it’s all been said over at the blog post on WooThemes, but basically we’re very pleased to have had the opportunity to work with such a great bunch of guys and we’re glad that we were able to create something which they were proud to add to their collection.

If you like what you see here, and from the other themes on the site it’s well subscribing to the themes club, that way you get access to all of the themes already available, and all future theme releases.

1. Design Disease

Yeah we’ve all seen blue before, but this is beautiful.

2. Macalicious

The deep purple/blue work so well together.

3. Breeze

Chocolate, mint and vibrant blue, sounds odd but looks stunning.

4. Radu Ceuca

A wide variety of some very vibrant colours and some dark elements.

5. Nimbupani Designs

Very vibrant colours, but they go together amazingly well.

6. Catch

This uses dark boxes to overlay some striking colours. *Video Background

7. Edmonton Recycles

Using only a few colours can be used to great effect.

8. Light CMS

Another great example of using strong colours in the background

9. Drew Wilson

Dark background with some colour blended in, to highlight the name, smart.

10. ADCapital Industries

Another great example of blending in some background colour to draw focus

11. Sarah Hyland

That’s right, I’m a bloke, and I think this pink background is “cool”

12. DarkMotion

Vibrant and playful colours, to match a vibrant and playful artist

13. Dominum

Great background and the brave blue & orange details are sweet

14. Refresh the Triangle

I think the colours and theme fit the name so well, they are refreshing colours

15. OKB Studio

A very bold colour choice, and I love the way it fades into black

16. Boxwish

I love everything about this design, but the colours are my favourite part

17. Superawesome

Very distinct colours in play here, all work brilliant together

18. Adaptd

These bands are a great choice of colour, really adds to the design

19. Antiphrasis

Great use of colours site-wide, but I particularly love the blue to yellow background!

20. Brunet Garcia

Just look at those lovely coloured boxes!

21. myNiteLife

Great deep colours, one of the most inviting holding pages I’ve seen

22. Dale Harris

Interesting colour combination, go really great together

23. Matt Mullenweg

Probably one of the most unique use of colour I’ve seen, great style.

24. Studio7Designs

Combining colour with some brilliant light effects = beautiful.

25. Color Charge

A wide range of colours, but they are done very well

26. Ploc Media

Excellent contrast between the dark and very vibrant blue

27. George Li

Bright pink & yellow never looked so good!

28. WebbliWorld

I’m sure this isn’t going to be for everyone, but remember it is for kids

29. Sygnus Digita

Another great example of blending some colour into a dark background

30. Volll

More great colours used on an illustrated background

31. Grafikas

Rich, deep and very elegant feel to this site

32. Alisa MTV

Contrast of hot and cold here, and it looks great!

My Thoughts

I think the main reason behind the post was to show people (and myself) that you can use colour in a more striking way. Far too often I only use colour on certain elements and for things such as links etc. But as you can see from this collection you can get away with using a lot of colour, as long that you give your colour scheme some real thought.

More freebies, yes I know! This time we’ve put together a free Illustration, beautifully made by Pasquale D’Silva, and a couple of Icons which you can use for your twitter status sections of your site. The file is a transparent background PNG, so can easily be imported and scaled into any design.

We had to remove the old twitter icons in the set because of a mix up over copyright. But we’ve now got a custom icon and illustration which we’re willing to share with you.

Inspiration & Genius Behind the Bird

I decided rather than just making a Icon that we could have a character that people could use on their own sites however they wish, this gave me a great excuse to use the services of Pasquale D’Silva from Darkmotion.com - The guy’s work has amazed me for a while so as soon as my pen broke I knew who I wanted working on the project.

I wanted to offer an alternative to the “Twitterific Bird” that people tend to use a lot in their sites, I think Pasquale’s Illustration is a lot softer, friendlier and more inviting, and after scaling it down and adding a few tweaks on the Icons, I’m happy at how it now looks in Icon size.

He’s also got a good sense of humour and is very easy to talk to, I’d more than recommend him to anybody, and it might be worth you getting your own custom made twitter illustration from him, take a look at this one he made.

Share these Icons & Illustrations

If you find these useful we’d like you to pass them on to other who you think might appreciate the set. You can do this easily by clicking one of the share links at the bottom of this article, or using the URL in the address bar and give the link to this article Page to anyone who needs ‘em. The URL to share is: http://wefunction.com/2008/07/freebie-twitter-icons-illustration

Important, you must link to this article when sharing the Icons or illustration, you must not upload these files anywhere else.

Download The Character & Icons

Download The Set | .zip Format | 65.9 KB

Get The Rest of The Icons in the Set

Most of you will already have or be aware that we have 126 other icons in the set of these twitter icons. Which you can view on the link below.

Go to The Function Free Icon Set | 128 Icons

The basic point of this post is to show you that you don’t have to rely on the CSS Galleries to inspire you, there is a lot of creative work out there in various other mediums that will help get you in a creative mood.

This post has quite a lot of images so please be patient while the images load, I assure you they are worth the wait.

Amazing Matte Paintings

Matte paintings are used to enhance movie sets, by either adding to, or creating an extensive backdrop. Nowadays all of this work is made digitally using a Graphics Tablet, and such work can be loaded into a 3D program to create a 3D environment. The level of detail here is amazing, some very realistic work and very visually appealing.

David Edwards Matte Painter & Visual Effects artist

Hatch Designs: Visual Effects

Andreas Rocha Digital Matte Painter

Tiberius Viris: Matte Painter & Concept Artist

Digital Paintings

Digital painting is becoming a hugely popular art form, and some of the work out there is of a very high standard. Digital Painting is similar to traditional painting in many ways, the main difference being (obviously) that the painting is done on a computer using a graphics tablet and a computer software, this means the artist has the advantage of using effects, filters and layers to enhance the artwork. For more work like this check out 46 Inspiring Digital Paintings from Outlaw Design Blog.

Hethe Srodawa

This concept artist works for Rockstar games, he has a lot of interesting pieces of work in his portfolio, I particularly like the digital concept paintings the most. Check out the portfolio.

Death Blow (Transformers Fan art)

This piece I find really captures the action of the movie, and the scene. There is a full article written by the creator of this art about the concept & progression. It’s an interesting read.

Radojavor

I Some really stunning work from Radojavor, Be sure to check the DeviantArt profile.

Motion Graphics / Visual Effects

In today’s world of Television, films and online video the need for impressive visual effects has become important for any video production, here are a few examples of some truly inspirational motion graphics/visual effects work. You can see how a great effects and talent can really help improve a video and make it have much more of a lasting impression.

Inspirational Graphic Design

Graphic design is probably the closest link to Web design that I have featured, it’s not uncommon for Web Designers to also do Graphic Design work. So although this wouldn’t really class as an “unconventional” source of Web Design inspiration, it is a little different from the CSS Web Galleries we’re all becoming used to these days. There’s so many great graphic designers out there that I’ve barely touched the surface, but hopefully in the near future I’ll being you more and more examples like these.

Maciej Mizer aka *m0sk

This guy’s work is extremely nice to look at, love the colours, effects and the overall mood, you can check out his portfolio for more; http://www.mosk.pl - Or you can click the images below to get to his DeviantArt Page.

Williams Design Studios

This amazing digital artist has a lot of very high grade work. The attention to detail is amazing and really adds to the work. Some very strong stuff in his portfolio, very much worth exploring.

Alex Cherry

I really like to see a grunge/dirty styles pulled off digitally very nicely. These are some great examples of organic looking digital graphic design from Alex Cherry from Of Sound and Vision.

Atheneum

A friend of mine on flickr. Atheneum’s own flickr page only has a few pieces, but I think she has a great style and a lot of potential, I predict great things from her.

Andrew Greig

A very interesting and varied portfolio, very nice style.

Jonathan Wong

Here is some amazing artwork from Jonathan Wong. Some truly beautiful work to feast your eyes on.

Kjegwan Leihitu

Kjegwan Leihitu has a very clean crisp style, his work looks amazing & the added effects look very well polished.

Exceptional 3D Art

Here is some more excellent 3D work, in this collection you get to see 22 of the Most Striking 3D Robots ever. It’s a great collection, and the level of work & detail is something to aspire to, enough to inspire anyone interested in design. The best places to find the best 3D Work/Articles would have to be CGSociety and Highend3D. 3D is an art form which takes a lot of talent and patience, the ability

Clever Advertising

It’s refreshing to find that there is some creativity in the world of advertising. Far too often ads are made cheaply and to a poor standard, here are a few examples of advertising done correctly.

Creative Typography

An important part of web design is Typography, so again not really “unconventional” however, here are a few of my favourite examples of type. I love seeing creative ways of making text look more interesting, and I continue to be amazed by the open-mindedness that now surrounds typography, allowing a much more creative attitude to be taken when dealing with type.

Motion Typography

Generally speech taken from movies or famous speeches, and the text transformed into motion graphics. There is some strong language in most of these. I had to include these as I think they’re a great way of visualising spoken words.

Nature

My original idea was to have a Photography section, but then I thought no… You should be out there yourself seeing the world rather than seeing pictures of it. So my advice to you is to go outside right now and find some inspiration. Until then, here’s some pictures of nature, she’s beautiful isn’t she?

Architecture

Art on a grand scale, architecture really is (in my opinion) one of the most creative forms of art out there. You not only have to think of something which looks nice, but functional and has a purpose. These are a few examples of some excellent designs.

Vinyl / CD Covers

Vinyl covers are a great way to further extend the feelings of the music and can be a great addition to the experience of listening to music. In a digital age, artwork remains one of the few reasons I would choose a CD album over a mp3 download.

Detailed Vector & Vexel Art

Many of you will probably be aware of the term Vector, but Vexel is not so commonly known. It is a similar art technique, and the name in fact comes from the words Vector and Pixel. To find out more about the difference try Vexel.net.

Vexel Art

Vector Art

Remember that these images are not Photographs but are in fact just a collection of shapes and colours. The realism here is immense, it’s hard to get your head around on some of these. There are some more creative examples of vector art over at Smashing Magazine.

Graffiti Art

Graffiti, socially unacceptable, but visually amazing. Although its illegal, there is some graffiti out there which does look amazing, here are some exceptional pieces of work, not all of which are painted on the street, some are painted in galleries or exhibitions, some are even digitally painted, but the style & the talent is still there there. I must admit that this is one of my favourite art styles ever.

Banksy - Amazing UK Graffiti artist, clever work

Skelewags Cartoon Graffiti

What I like most about this collection is how the artist has used the natural decay of the surrounding area and placed the characters around them.

Other Cool Graffiti

Chalk Drawings

I personally think that these street chalk drawings are some of the best things I’ve ever seen, there’s so much creativity involved here and some of the ideas are just genius. The drawings are done in a way so that from a certain angle (where the camera is) the images appear to be part of the floor, its a very clever use of perspective. From any other angle though the drawings wouldn’t be recognisable, even to the artist from where he is drawing it.

Julian Beever - Street Chalk Artist UK

Hopefully this has shown you that there are other ways of inspiring yourself, both on the web and offline. If you have any suggestions of other things which could be included, be sure to share them.

The web’s been around for quite some time if you really think about it, the first domain name Symbolics.com was registered on 15th March 1985, yes, some 23 Years ago! That means that any idea you have for a domain name today has been through someone else mind up to 23 years before you. Part of any brand these days is a good domain name, and if you have the money to spend on a one word domain then by all means go for it.

But not everybody has a huge pile of cash then can spend on buying a domain name. There are no doubt huge advantages of having a simple easy one word “.com” domain. There’s a lot of generic traffic from people just typing in your domain name rather than searching Google for example, and Search engines prefer a one word TLD in most cases. The rest of us however need to find a way of making our domain stand out without throwing loads of cash at it. There are a few ways around this.

Domain Hacks

A method made hugely popular by del.icio.us, which made great use of the .us domain extension. This method basically means using a domain extension which could be included in a domain name. You could even use sub domains. This give you a lot of freedom in many ways. There are a lot of combinations of ways you could mix sub domains and domain extensions to get a desired word, this is one of the reasons this method is growing in popularity.

Here are a few of my favourite Domain Hacks:

01. blo.gs
02. sear.ch
03. b.uy
04. tel.ly
05. beach.es
06. justcurio.us
07. designm.ag
08. podca.st
09. foot.ie ( Footie is a slang word for football in the UK)
10. ta.gs
11. lu.st
12. ma.tt
13. sco.tt
14. win.gs
15. mov.ie

Slogan Domains

Now this one is not recommended as a method for choosing a domain for your company, but if you have a special event or product to promote this could prove a valuable addition to your existing website & domain. It’s becoming more popular today for large companies to set up Mini-Sites to promote a product or special offer. Companies will register their own domain based around this promotion to help generate interest. Usually the domains registered will be the slogan / tagline of the product, because in a lot of cases thats what people will remember, especially if you’re watching it on a TV advert.

Slogan Domain Examples:

01. impossibleisnothing.com (Adidas)
02. wheredoyouwanttogotoday.com (Microsoft)
03. oceanicflight815.com (Lost TV series)
04. maxyourlife.co.uk (Pepsi Max UK)
05. spreadfirefox.com (FireFox)
06. justdoit.com (Nike)
07. wemakeitgood.com (Shilo Motion Graphics)
08. haveityourway.com (Burger King)
09. powerofdreams.co.uk (Honda UK)
10. obeyyourthirst.co.uk (Sprite UK)

Making up a Word

Sometimes it’s easier to think up a domain name before you think of a brand name, this certainly avoids disappointment when you come to registering your genius brand name, only to find out that all possible domains have been taken for this word. I think I read somewhere that pretty much all one word domains have been registered, this is where made up words come in handy and can sometimes be more catchy and memorable than a proper word.

Good examples of made up words:

01. flickr.com
02. digg.com
03. noovo.com
04. xoom.com
05. Pipl.com
06. Piczo.com
07. frengo.com
08. Zopa.com
09. Qloud.com
10. flixya.com

Do you know of any other clever domain names that you think are worth a mention?

We’ve put together a great set of free Grunge & Textured brushes for you to use. The idea with these brushes is that they are to be used to create subtle grunge effects within your designs. We’ve made them from various dirty textures, surfaces and fabrics from images taken ourselves.

Details of the Pack

All of the brushes have faded edges, so they are perfect for creating edges, masking, and and organic patterns & backgrounds without any straight lines in them. There are 33 in this set, but we hope to be bring you more quite soon. But these should keep you busy for a while.

Examples of Use

Here are two of a possible millions of ways to use these brushes effectively. The set was specifically made for web design projects and work at a similar DPI, but I think they’d be too small for print work.

As you can see they are perfect for being used to add some faint grunge effects to anything.  Great for being used as eraser brushes too, that’s how the text was made, I used the brushes to erase some of the areas of the text to give a really simple but effective grunge/worn look. I’d love to see some examples of what you have used them for if you do use them, feel free to link to some of your works in the comments.

Share These Brushes

If you find this set useful we’d like you to pass them on to other who you think might appreciate it. You can do this easily by clicking one of the share links at the bottom of this article, or using the URL in the address bar and give the link to this article Page to anyone who needs it. The URL to share is: http://wefunction.com/2008/07/function-brushes-subtle-grunge-textures

Important, you must link to this article when sharing the set, you must not upload these files anywhere else.

Download The Set

Download Free Brushes | .zip Format |  1.2 mb

We’re finally ready to present our free wordpress theme to you. The theme is called “outdoorsy” and it’s perfect for the individual who wants something “slightly” different from your usual standard free theme. This theme is very unique, and quite graphics heavy, which we are aware of. But if you are after something unique you sometimes have to expect longer load times.

Update: We’ve reduced the file size dramatically! It’s now 1mb lighter

Theme Demo