What exactly are line icons?

What’s in fact a line? The shortest definition is the following: line is a form that contain both width and length but eliminating depth. The line is not only straight but more often curved. The lines can provide some appropriate mood or feeling of a movement. Staying static shapes, Line icons can create a sort of illusion of the dynamic objects. The mood is usually being conditioned by the lines direction. Horizontal lines in Line web icons embody calmness, peace and also stability while the vertical ones strive for the light movement. Energy and more powerful dynamic feeling pertain to the diagonal lines. If you’d like to create refine and ultra-modern line icons designs you should use combination of straight lines and curves.

Line art – Line Icons

Curve stitching may be the first kind of line art known to the artists. It’s carried out with threads of different colors and needle. Initially the canvas was a cardboard. This movement is also well known as “String Art”. Its creator was a Mary Boole. He developed it as the accessory material for kids to assist them to study geometry of angles and spaces. Spirelli is a type of string art that’s been usually applied to scrap-booking and making cards. Line art existed also like illustrations for print sources before the photography was invented. At that time line art included only black and white colors. A few shades of gray were also acceptable and imitated.Appealing to both technical and creative sides of human nature, line art combines geometry and art. If you desire to become a Line web icons designer keep in mind that this process may develop imagination and creativity as well as calculation skills.Line art has an ability to be printed to the halftone pic without extra conversion. Thus it’s different from photography or multi-color painting. This type of art is named line drawing and line copy as well.

Information about background of realistic icons

]]> http://magentotheme.wordpress.com/2011/03/01/realistic-icons-information/feed/ 0 buggerman http://magentotheme.wordpress.com/2011/02/28/simple-icons-and-web-design/ http://magentotheme.wordpress.com/2011/02/28/simple-icons-and-web-design/#comments Mon, 28 Feb 2011 06:10:06 +0000 buggerman http://magentotheme.wordpress.com/?p=341 ]]> Simple web icons are among the principal features of minimalistic design. In addition, simple icons along with other elements of design should be used moderately. Among the tips is minimizing icons use in general. Reduce the amount of simple icons. Use them only where it is absolutely necessary. Refrain the optional simple web icons. They may serve multiple functions.

Simple web icons design consists of limited amount of color, reserved shades, clear elements, soft lighting. One of the best benefits of Simple icons is that they don’t distract website visitors from the main idea of your website.

These rules for simple icons design can be outlined:

• minimal usage of duplication
• less amount of graphical elements
• maximum intuitive clarity
• clear typography in simple web icons
• less icons

How to produce minimalistic design with simple web icons

Do not forget about lightweight background textures and patterns. They are also important for the design and content perception as well as simple icons. The background pattern or images should not catch all the attention of your visitors. The eyes should focus on the web site content or some main blocks. So the background needs to be of a light simple shade making it secondary compared with the foreground items like simple web icons.

Another outstanding feature of the lightweight and clear design is definitely clear typography. Simple icons names (if there’re any) should be precise, meaningful and equivalent to their function. Also use readable and enough large font for headings on simple web icons.

Also for creating a great clean simple icons design you can use enough white or empty space. Extra spaces keep elements separate and for that reason more readable and easier to work with. Some extra space between simple web icons will do your design no harm at all.

Usually the minimalistic trend isn’t entirely minimal. In spite of its great amount of white space there are still some simple icons, light textures, neat styles and bold fonts. Minimal is not exactly the same as simple. From the very begining minimal meant plain typographic eliminating images and styling. Today there is a great amount of various web-sites over the Internet. That’s why modern design requires something more than black text on white background. Add more zest to your web-site layout with a help of some unusual coloring, catchy simple icons, half-transparent and lightweight textures and patterns. Also reduce elements of design to the most essential items.

Simple = smart. While creating the modern web site design you should bear in mind the eternal truth stating that genius lies in simplicity. Simple web icons is the best solution if you’d like your site look fantastic and professional.

Retro trend is all about the styles of the70s and 80s. Retro advertising art from the 1950s is bold and striking. Presently with a help of computer technologies it is possible to put a new face on this type of art and easily use its characters in website design and printing. Often such faces in the vintage web icons are retro cars, pin-up girls, soldiers and politicians of the former times as well.Most frequently used retro cars are Fiat 500, the 1970 Dodge Challenger, the 1969 Chevrolet Samara, the 1964 Ford Mustang etc. You can effortlessly find Vintage web icons that contain hints to retro cars concepts. This will help to attract more attention to your site layout. This is the great idea for websites that have a deal with auto sales, transporting services, tour sites etc. Also you can face a such common character as a pin-up model that is used in vintage icons design as well as other web site graphics styling. Often it presents images of how the really sexy and beautiful woman should look like. Pin-up images are great for vintage web icons or clip-art designed for the model agencies, websites regarding health and beauty areas.

Military and security guard web pages may successfully use soldiers and officers with an outdated appearance to win the site visitors favour and trust.

There is no limit in usage of specific characters. You may apply creativity and use them unconventionally. Thus you will surprise your visitors. So far as you know it is a great way to turn your potentional clients minds to your website.

Patterns and Typography for vintage icons and other graphics

Vintage patterns recommended for usage in vintage icons design is the following:

• patterns containing vintage papers;
• with vintage frames;
• with outmoded florals;
• paper and bagging, gold-cloth as the texture fabric;
• wooden or bronze textures for vintage icons.

Authentic fonts to be used for creating vintage icons titles, content headings and texts are Matchbook, Bazar Medium, Embossed, Hill House,-Fontleroy Brown, Fusty Saddle, Just Old Fashion, Goudy Bookletter 1911, Rocket Script, Parisian, Star Avenue etc. Feel free to discover and purchase on the web the best suitable fonts that will ideal match your design.

If being relevant to the topic, general style and idea of your webpage vintage-inspired design is supposed to look fashionable and appropriate, but no old-fashioned. If you create the warm and noble, antique feel with a help of Vintage icons, images and styled blocks for the internet site layout, your visitors will come to your site with a grateful smile over and over again.

But try not to make your vintage design look too stuffy, it is best to be aware that professional layout is formal-looking and the major emphasis should be made on the goods, services or content your site provides.

Minimalistic website design

Let’s discover what minimalistic internet site design indicates. Certainly the first characteristics are simplicity and lightweight elements. Simple web icons involve all of this. It eliminates complex wordings, figures, textures and patterns. Less even implies more in some areas and to some degree. Web page design is just that area.

Today minimalistic web design is something unusual. So far as you know high present day technologies have one big disadvantage – usually they lead to the loss of simplicity. Today the modern trend is to combine minimalistic website design with CSS3 and HTML5. Web-site with simple design often contain brave and off-color effects and actively use CSS and Ajax.

The most significant features of the modern simple web design:

• grid based design;
• simple icons;
• light shading and reserved color transition;
• light texture of patterns and backgrounds (often transparent like);
• more empty or white space;
• simple shapes and figures, clear lines;
• less amount of various bright colors;
• clear and readable typography;

One more way is adding some halftones and shades to the object. It can be done with the help of short lines and crosshatching. Please don’t afraid to vary their frequency and also pencil pressure. This variety creates more three-dimensional look to the object. This particular trick is widely used in world wide web design as well. It helps to develop great Line web icons, logos and buttons.Also lets get info regarding open lines. It is such kind of the lines where the dots not combining the singular elements. It may look really striking when being applied to line icons design. The lines can be also parallel, gesture-like, contour etc. Contour drawing includes fantastic simplicity and refinement of line design. You may be surprise what’s bezier curves in computer graphics? It is such type of the curves that are essential for creating complex line shapes. These curves are real helpers in creation of the vector shapes such as line icons, unusual buttons etc. Computer technologies have the ability to reproduce the same designs or build new shapes based on some older ones without extra efforts and time. Furthermore, you can return to the previous adjustments due to the history panel. As a result there is no need to design Line web icons from scratch in case you have made some mistakes.

What is retro and how it is realized in the contemporary web page design industry

Speaking about retro in simple terms we should outline an aged or culturally outdated trend that has become some conscious norm in the modern art. Having emerged in the post-modern art, it penetrates into the modern webpage design in the form of vintage icons, old-styled backgrounds, aged photography etc. It is obvious it gives some zest to the feel and look of the ordinary sites.

The new retro style quite often incorporates the Web 2.0 look with a vintage twist. It needs to mix the present day clean blocks and the outdated ones. Also there’s a necessity to mix aged design elements like Vintage icons, styles and color palettes.

2D Icons may embody the following items:

• raster pictures (digital graphics);
• styled text as a typeset for 2D Icons;
• vector models (geometric graphics).

The above-mentioned items can be managed by 2D transformations such as rotation, scaling or angular position and so on. Meshing basic models you may get more complex ones.

As a result of layers technique 2D web icons can create the illusion of all 3D characteristics such as shadow, reflection or highlighting. The layers should maintain the definite hierarchy and order carefully. This makes editing 2D icons and related objects easier.

2.5D Icons versus 3D and 2D Icons

2Dicons also are known as 2.5D models. This technology enables web designers to work with any layer with no need of touching the others. The most of the prominent graphics editors choose this kind of 2D object creation.

2.5D is a synonym to pseudo 3D and is interpreted as “two-and-a-half-dimensional” graphics. Models which were developed with a help of with 2.5D technology appear to be tridimensional while in fact they’re not. The featured projection represents both front and side views.

This technology used for designing 2D icons is usually attained by the special lighting effect. 3D illusion is reached due to the virtual source of light to the left or to the right side and above the users monitor.

]]> http://magentotheme.wordpress.com/2011/02/25/2d-icons-and-models-details/feed/ 0 buggerman http://magentotheme.wordpress.com/2011/02/23/find-out-all-advantages-of-using-and-sources-of-getting-realistic-web-icons/ http://magentotheme.wordpress.com/2011/02/23/find-out-all-advantages-of-using-and-sources-of-getting-realistic-web-icons/#comments Wed, 23 Feb 2011 09:05:16 +0000 buggerman http://magentotheme.wordpress.com/?p=337 ]]> Realistic web icons are necessary elements of the present day web design. Also you can meet them in softwares, applications and add-ons, etc.

As far as you know internet websites require special means of representation and promotion. The most powerful way is of course including realistic icons into the web page design. They help users to get a quick initial impression of what business area and what products he/she is going to have to do with. The icons should be placed on website homepage to be noticeable at once.

You may hire the experienced designer to create some unique set of icons meeting your site individual needs and products. But take into account that such method of creating of realistic icons is quite expensive and takes a lot of time. The custom order result still remains indefinite Sometimes even professional site designers create not exactly that you want. Often many of web designers simply take icons that were created earlier and vary colors and shades, use some other effects and then sell realistic icons as unique items. Though in fact they aren’t.

Finding authoritative icons resources it’s another way of getting nice web icons. You can certainly find a great amount of numerous Realistic web icons stocks and providers over the internet. You see what you pay for and the cost may occur essentially lower than in case with custom orders. In addition you save your valuable time. Thus for finding nice and low-cost realistic icons stocks are much more preferable.

Some helpful tips for utilizing realistic icons

Designing realistic icons you have to build the basic pictograms first. Also it should look vivid enough if being shown at worse resolution. The person should be able to recognize the icon meaning just by looking at its outlines for a short time period. You may conduct a test and see if it is possible to discern the icon within less than a second.

When you find the formula of the basic silhouette and it is stable you may make realistic icons more eye-catching by adding decorative elements. Icons really should not be overloaded with the details and color tints. Icons should look well design and also reserved. You can also make the edges anti-aliased. The decoration shouldn’t detract from the icons essence and functions.

Vector format in which the icons are stored makes them pretty simple to modify. You’re free to resize, rotate, adjust the edges and modify outlines, change the color scheme and add more details etc. And do not be worried – you don’t need to have extra knowlages in web site design.

If you wish to design the interface layout of the new software or IT services – Realistic icons may be very helpful in this task. Creating top quality, eye-catching and good-looking realistic icons is not an easy task. Generally you should modify the high-resolution photos in order to get truly realistic images.

2D computer graphics was initially based on vector graphics devices. 2D icons are one of the most essential two-dimensional digital design items.

Let’s find out what in fact 2D is.Generally it is being connected with computer graphics and determined as the two-dimensional way of digital images generation. Two-dimensional models are mainly 2D geometric ones, digital images and texts. The term 2D means as models themselves as the techniques and tricks specific to them either.

2D web icons and objects don’t simply depict the real world items but they are independent objects with their own semantic value. 2D graphics means that we can get more direct control of the image than 3D technology. This one of the reasons why they are so preferred in the world of modern internet site design. 3D graphics is much better realized in animation or photography than typography or even web page design.