Today designing a unique, compelling portfolio has become a crucial task for designers, studios, companies and everyone whose business is on the Web. Not only does it help one stand out among the numerous competitors, but it is also a great tool for self-expression and demonstration of skills.
Now designers face new challenges in attracting the capricious web audience – a plain web page with a project list on it is out of date and boring, while fancy Flash websites with intricate navigation are annoying. Fortunately, despite all difficulties beautiful and artistic designs are appearing in an endless stream. Designers skillfully use all the benefits of the digital age and create websites that are rich in effects and eye-popping yet simple and accessible.
In this post you can see a collection of 69 new, ingenious and beautiful portfolio designs that will hopefully become a decent inspiration source for you. The collection includes both Flash and HTML websites, however all the designs are stuck to the balance of visual attractiveness and usability. Notice that every screenshot is clickable and leads to the website itself.
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T-shirts, as you’ll surely agree, play a big part in the design world. Sometimes, we designers don’t get the kinds of projects we want, and so we are left to apply our creativity in some other way, many of us opting to submit graphics in t-shirt competitions or printing them ourselves and selling them through shopping cart systems such as BigCartel.
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We all have our favorite designers. One of my favorite designers happens to be Michael Heald, the founder of Fully Illustrated. Michael Heald is an award winning graphic and web designer. He has won multiple awards, as well as being featured in some top web and graphic design magazines.
Heald’s work is spectacular. The thing that impresses me about his work is the variety of different styles that he has mastered. Not only is he a master of illustrations, he is a great web designer as well. His web designs are beautiful. That is why he has had the opportunity to design websites for the biggest games out there, including the top iPhone game, Fieldrunners.
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From time to time, designers struggle with inspiration. What we need to realize as designers is that inspiration can be found all around us. One great place to find inspiration is nature. If your creativity needs a jolt, go outside, take a walk at a park or beach, and just observe the beauty of nature. Claude Monet, the world renowned painter, said this;
> “The richness I achieve comes from Nature, the source of my inspiration.”
Today’s showcase is all about nature. These designers have used nature as their inspiration. So I present to you, the ultimate collection of nature-inspired typography. There are a lot of these that are new, so make sure to look at all of them.
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While there are a lot of beautiful and well-designed blogs out there, most of them use a single template for each of their blog posts. Today, I would like to showcase 20 extraordinary blogs with unique post designs.
> “While, yes, this is a redesign of sorts, I’m considering much more a rethinking. You see, what you’re looking at isn’t the design so much as the plan for design.” - Jason Santa Maria
Looking at the designs of these sites will make us all rethink the way we design our blogs. These designers have all managed to think outside the box in their designs. Let’s take a look at these 20 extraordinary blogs with unique post designs.
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Deciding what to do once you’ve purchased a domain but haven’t yet launched the website is always a bit of a conundrum. Leaving up your domain registrar or Web host’s generic page seems unprofessional, especially if you’re trying to drum up advance press for your new project. At the same time, you don’t want to spend too much time on a temporary page when you really should be working on the website itself.
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I recently ran into a site called Prom Night Fist Fight,which is the illustration, color, & typography experimentation playground of Joshua Blankenship. I was amazed at the awesome typography that I saw. For the next 30 minutes, I browsed his site, 1 awesome typography work after the other. If you need some typography inspiration, then you definitely need to check his site. He has over 200 pieces of awesomeness in his website. Not only does he have a lot, but each of them has its own unique style.
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Once in a while, I’ll be browsing the internet and would run into an artist that would just make me say, “WOW!” Well, Anthony Hare is one of them. This man has mastered the art of black and white illustrations. You absolutely need to see his work. I like his work very much. It is very clean, and the lines are sharp and crisp. Another thing that amazes me is not only the quality of his work, but the quantity of it as well. Anthony has tons of pieces in his portfolio and they are all really nice. You need to check out his portfolio site here.
Anyways, enough of me talking and more of you viewing. Go ahead and check out 20 of his illustrations that I have included here.
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“There is no specific London style.” At least that’s what the ‘Super Contemporary’ show at London’s Design Museum proclaims. During an exploration of London’s art and design scene in September 2009, what did emerge was a city with a unique sense of its own personality and history, a fertile hub of international thinkers, and a community working towards a future that is designed to be interactive, environmentally responsible, and prosperous.
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Your invoice should be prim and proper, so that you can get paid by your clients efficiently. While invoicing is not a fun task, it’s a necessary one: by keeping clients informed of your expectations, you will get paid punctually and reinforce your professionalism. After going over some best practices for creating invoices, we’ll review some great (and not so great) online invoicing tools, so that you can spend less time creating invoices and more time doing the things you love!
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