Archive for October, 2009

Minimalism has been a popular website design style for years. It has so many benefits; minimalist sites load faster, take fewer server resources, and are often faster to develop than more graphically complicated designs. Plus, they give a professional, clean impression to visitors.

Many people still view minimalist designs as boring. But there’s a real art to effective minimal website designs, something not all designers can effectively master. When you limit the number of graphic elements you use and put the focus on negative space and typography, a good eye for spacing and proportion becomes crucial.

Below are more than 100 excellent examples of clean, simple and minimalist website designs. They run the gamut from simple brochure-style sites to ecommerce and portfolio sites. What they all have in common is a design aesthetic where less is more.

Rainfall Daffinson
A white background with red accents.

Ben Hulse Design
Dark gray background with white and gray lettering.

Amy Levy PR
White background with gray and red lettering.

Brand Spanking New
A black and white color scheme with gray, orange, and pale blue accents.

Frieze Magazine
A minimalist grid design.

Indie Labs
A dark gray, white and sky blue grid-based design.

Rikcat Industries
An entirely black and white design.

The Morning News
A minimalist magazine-style site.

Mark Boulton Design
A mostly black and white site with colored accents.

Jonnotie
A gray and maroon design.

Finch
A mostly black, white and gray design.

Maqina
A single column portfolio site.

Chama Inc.
A simple black and white design with an emphasis on typography.

Jon Tan
Another simple black and white design with orange accents and great typography.

Mark Wieman
Gray and White with mustard-yellow accents.

Cameron.io
A simple dove gray and white design with red accents.

Postmachina
Black background with gray and white text.

Concentric Studio
A simple design with a lot of white space.

DS.Emotion
A simple design that makes good use of drop shadows and red accents.

Kyle Sollenberger Design
Uses a soft color palette and slightly oversized text.

David Sutoyo
A soft gray, white and dark blue design.

Brad Young Photography
A dark background with soft gray and blue typography.

The DECK
A black and white design with strong typographical elements.

Hot Meteor
A simple design with retro elements.

The Portfolio of Matt Bango
Another simple design with blue accents and an emphasis on typography.

Vesess
Another black and white design with gray and red accents.

Design Intellection
A grid-based design with excellent typography.

Surfstation
A soft color palette and a two-column design with lots of white space.

The Old Fashioned
A black and white grid-based design.

CRW / Corporate Risk Watch
Uses a textured background and some hand-drawn elements.

Being Wicked
A mostly black and white design with oversized typography.

Eduardo de La Rocque
A dark gray and white, single column design.

Pixelumbrella
A rarely-seen minimalist grunge design.

NineZero
A narrow, single-column design with a lot of white space.

SimpleBits
A simple design with a textured header and a focus on typography.

Poccuo
A grid-based design with blue, gray and black text.

Davroc Interiors
A design composed entirely of shades of bluish-gray.

Sascha Eggenberger
Hand-drawn elements in black and white with blue accents set this design apart.

Nathan Carnes
A subtle color scheme and textures with black and gray typography.

Nathan Borror
Makes use of colored and geometric accents while still retaining plenty of white space and a simple design.

Beseku
A black and white design with an emphasis on typography.

NZ Venues
A subtle dark gray and white design with small, multi-colored accents.

Chris Garrett Media Ltd
A dark design with subtle gradients in the typography and blue accents.

DesigningTheNews.com
A black and gray design with a focus on typography.

3by9
A multi-colored minimal design with colorful accents and lots of white space.

Typographica
A black, white, and gray design that places emphasis on the images it displays and uses a grid-based design.

Theme
A magazine/grid-style design with orange accents.

Monty Lounge Industries
A blue and gray design with an emphasis on typography.

Berit Somme
A black, white and gray design that places the emphasis on the portfolio pieces.

el Candor
A black and white grid-based portfolio site.

Design by Silnt
A grid-based design in shades of gray.

Pixelcraft
A cream-colored background and black typography keep things simple.

Klipp og Lim
A grid-based design with a portfolio slideshow in the header.

Ole Martin Kristiansen
A dark background with subtly-colored typography.

SiteInspire
A gray site with bright red accents.

MediaFlex
A dark background with white typography that leaves the emphasis on the images.

Vudumedia
A black, gray and white grid-based design.

AREA 17
A black, white and gray design with some dark blue typography.

just.dot
A grayish-brown background and a grid-based design.

LegiStyles
A dark background with an emphasis on typography and tomato-red accents.

Visualbox
A subtly-patterned dark-gray background with bold white and gray typography.

Flush
A dark gray, slightly-grungy design.

Designme
A dark background with gray and white typography.

Designjunction.in
A dark background with lighter typography.

deCode
A dark, textured background with hand-drawn elements and a bit of a retro vibe.

72 Rivington Street
A bold, black and white grid design.

Analogue Motion
A grid-based design with a subtle color palette and typography.

Astheria
A subtle blue, gray and white design with plenty of negative space.

Cade Martin Photography
A white and gray design with the emphasis on the typography.

Daniel Howells
A subtle design that focuses on the typography.

Eightface.com
A black and white design with red highlights.

Fever
A gray background with gray and red text.

Fell Swoop
A white background with black and red typography and tons of negative space.

FRKT
A black and white design with subtle textures.

Jamie Gregory
A grid-based deisgn that focuses on typography.

Joni Korpi
A gray and black design with an emphasis on typography.

Matt Hinchliffe
A black and white design with light blue accents.

Martin Hipp
White background and green accents.

Stefan Persson
A grid-based design with orange accents.

Strange/Beautiful
A gray and white grid-based design.

Voce antica
A white and gray two-column design.

Inkcover Blog
A black and white design with oversized typography.

Allday.cc
A very simple black and white design with minimalist navigation.

Final Eyes
A black, white and gray single-column design.

80/20
A gray color scheme with green accents.

Craig Wilson
A very simple black and white design with hand-drawn elements.

Pomade
An extremely minimalist design with black text and red accents.

SOFA
A grid-based design that emphasizes typography.

The Typographic Desk Reference (TDR)
A minimalist sales page that utilizes modal windows.

I love Typography
A simple design with olive green typography accents.

Artypapers
A white background and subtle gray and pink color scheme.

Sisson Studio
A brown and tan grid-based design with a white background.

We Love Typography
A grid-based design with a white background.

Gordymac
A blue and gray design with plenty of white space.

National College of Art & Design: Postgraduate Study
A gray design with circular images and white text.

Minimalissimo
Black and gray typography with plenty of white space.

Wide Angled
A grid-based site that puts the emphasis on the images it features.

Hair Ott
A gray, black and white design with a Flash slideshow in the header.

Tim Parkin
A grid-based design with a white background.

Selldorf Architects
A simple black and white design.

LUXUX
A grid-based portfolio site.

Fluid
A grid-based design with a white background and simple typography.

Saturday
A simple design with a Flash slideshow.

The May Blog
A simple gray and green color scheme on a white background./p>

quadrifolia
A very bold green and white design.

Dhyr.Hagen
A bold gray and white design.

Nonesuch Records
A simple black and white design with an emphasis on imagery.

We love freebies, and we love them more if they are high quality freebie. We occasionally search the Internet high and low to dig out these hidden gems to make designers’ life easier and better. This week, with the help from our friend Iconshock, we are releasing a free high quality Twitter icon set, named Blitter.

Blitter Twitter icon set comes in two sets of sizes, respectively 215×215 pixels and 512×512 pixels in transparent .PNG 24-bit format. We’ve also included the Adobe Illustrator .AI source file just in case you want a bigger version of any icon. Feel free to use, edit for any type of individual and commercial projects. However you should not re-sell or take advantage of the freebie to generate any revenue of any format.

Help us spread a word if you like what you’ve downloaded.

The Designer – Iconshock

“As one of the new projects, we are going to give a free Icon set monthly especially design for all the readers of Hongkiat, because we really like to be part of this amazing blog, and show you where the love comes from. Enjoy it! – Iconshock“

Iconshock is renown in the icon design industry for being the only one to release the massive sum of 5000 new icons each week. We have also built a huge and active community around icon design with more than 60,000 members, plus a blog and a forum where the public can reunite to discuss about design and programming issues, and also download design related resources.

Despite all of us being under 40, throughout these 5 years our company has built a valuable experience and know how in the market. We have a solid structure and we are 100% proudly Colombian. We offer almost thirty different icon styles, organized in more than 40 categories building up an astonishing collection of more than 750,000 individual icons.

WordPress has pretty decent typography features in the core installation. But there are plenty of areas ripe for improvement. That’s where the plugins below come in.

Credit: Image background by fabianohikaru

Whether you just want more control over how the basic text on your site shows up or you want to do something a bit more advanced, there’s surely a plugin available to help. There are plugins to better handle things like hyphens and long URLS, plugins to replace text with images (whether in headlines or to avoid censorship), and plugins to let you add print-centric elements, like drop caps and pull quotes, to your posts.

WordPress Plugins For Better Readability

• TTFTitles

  The TTFTitles plugin is another dynamic text replacement plugin that lets you replace your headers with images using any TrueType font you choose. It’s mostly a rework of the Image Headlines plugin. It has been tested with WP 1.5.2 up through 2.7.

  

• DRF2WP EN

  DRF2WP EN is a font replacement plugin that allows you to replace any font on your WP site with a dynamically generated image that uses any TrueType or OpenType font you want. The source code remains in-tact, which means your site won’t take a hit with search engines. The plugin works with WP 2.5 up to 2.8.4.

• Drop Caps

  The Drop Caps plugin lets you add a customized drop cap to each of your posts and pages (or even comments and other excerpts), similar to what’s commonly done in print publications. It can also be used to create other types of initials. The plugin has been tested with WP 2.3 up through 2.7.1.

  

• WP Typography

  The WP Typography plugin adds a number of typography features to your blog. It includes hyphenation, spacing control, forced internal wrapping of long URLs, intelligent character placement, smart handling of quotes and other characters, and CSS hooks for styling ampersands, acronyms, and other special characters. It works with WP 2.7 up through 2.8.4.

  

• Simple Pull Quote

  The Simple Pull Quote plugin lets you insert pull quotes into your blog posts to emphasize certain sentences or phrases using custom fields. Pull quotes can be styled by editing the included CSS file. It works with WP 2.7 or 2.8.

  

• jQuery Font Resizer

  jQuery Font Resizer is a plugin that improves the usability and accessibility of your blog. It adds three links to each page to allow visitors to resize the type on that particular page. It’s a great option to make your site more user-friendly to visitors who want a larger or smaller type than standard. It’s known to work with WP version 2.0.2 up through 2.7.

• WP-Syntax

  WP-Syntax is another syntax highlighter that uses GeSHi. It gives you the option to highlight with or without line numbers and maintains formatting when you copy snippets. WP-Syntax is compatible with WP 2.0 up through 2.8.

  

• Google Syntax Highlighter for WordPress

  The Google Syntax Highlighter for WordPress lets the original Google Syntax Highlighter that was developed by Alex Gorbatchev work within WP. It’s a completely client-side highlighter, supports multiple languages (including Ruby, Python, PHP, JavaScript, XML, HTML, Delphi, CSS, C++ and more), and is very lightweight. It’s known to be compatible with version 2.0.0 through 2.2.2.

  

• WP-Syntax Colorizer

  WP-Syntax Colorizer is a simple plugin for colorizing code snippets within your blog posts when run alongside WP-Syntax. WP-Syntax Colorizer has been tested with WP 2.0 up through 2.5.

  

• CodeColorer

  CodeColorer adds syntax highlighting to code snippets placed on your blog. It’s a great plugin to use if you frequently post code snippets, such as on a web design or development blog. It works with version 2.7 up through 2.8.4.

  

• TextImage

  The TextImage plugin replaces all the text in a post with a PNG image. It’s a good plugin to use if you wnat to block search engines from seeing your content or otherwise fly under the radar. It also gets around most automated filtering that certain countries use to censor internet content. It’s been tested with WP 2.1 up through 2.7.1.

• Censortive

  Censortive helps you get around automated censorship by replacing certain words with images of the word instead of text. You define which words you want to be replaced and Censortive does the rest. It’s a great plugin for getting around a lot of censorship without blocking your content from search engines. It’s been tested with WP 2.0.2 up through 2.3.

• Title Style

  Title Style gives you additional formatting options for your post titles. It can be used to wrap lowercase words or words like “the”, “a”, or “of” in em, span, or other elements. It’s compatible with WP 2.0.0 up through 2.8.4.

• PS Disable Auto Formatting

  PS Disable Auto Formatting prevents WordPress from applying its own auto formatting functions to your posts and pages. It prevents WP from stripping out tags when you’re editing in the HTML editor and has a positive impact on the way the visual editor formats your posts, too. It’s known to be compatible with WP 2.5 up through 2.8.3.

  

• Post Typographer

  Post Typographer plugin adds a number of typography improvements to your posts automatically. It changes dashes with spaces around them to em-dashes, transforms hyphens without spaces to n-dashes, and turns spaces after particular words into non-breaking spaces, among other features. It’s been tested with WP 2.5 up through 2.8.3.

• Author Intro for Post

  Author Intro for Post plugin adds an author intro to the beginning of each post based on the author’s name and bio information. It’s been tested with WP versions 2.0.2 through 2.7.

• WP-Footnotes

  WP-Footnotes makes it simple to add footnotes to your posts. Usage is incredibly easy and only requires you to use double-parentheses around your footnote. It does the rest. It’s compatible with WP versions 2.0 through 2.6.

  

Plugins for Admins

Here are a couple of admin plugins that can help you improve your site’s typography by giving you more editing options in the backend of your site.

• WP Super Edit

  WP Super Edit adds a host of WYSIWYG options to the standard WP visual editor. It adds two full rows of additional features to your visual editor toolbar, including options for applying specific styles and for adding and formatting tables. It’s known to work with version 2.8 and 2.8.1.

  

• Real WYSIWYG Plugin

  The Real WYSIWYG Plugin adds a WYSIWYG editor that actually shows you the page layout of your post within the visual editor. It makes it easier to see how your line breaks, images, and other elements will actually fit on your page.

  

• Text Control

  Text Control gives you additional options for formatting posts on your WP site according to a variety of different syntaxes and encoding options, including Textile 1, Textile 2, and Markdown. It’s compatible with WP 1.5 and higher.

  

A great wave of excitement is sweeping across all Apple fans as they await for the official launch of the latest amazing Apple product by year end. Yes, it is the eagerly anticipated Apple Tablet, which was reported to be commercially available this coming November. Some of us may have seen the prototype online, and few will disagree that it is yet another beautiful creation by Apple.

In terms of the design and the aesthetic value of IT wares, there is little dispute that Apple create some of the finest and most creative design for their products that few or no other competitors can match. Over the years, product concept designs by hardcore Apple fans began to surface as Apple started to stand out among its competitors. Although these designs are not going to be marketed as actual products, it reflects the deepest wishes of die-hard Apple fans.

Here is a fine compilation of some of the best, coolest and most creative Apple concept designs created by fans. Don’t you just wish these are available in the market?

Desktops and Laptops

Mac Mini (Slim)

Mac Mini is super-slim concept design of the actual Apple Mac Mini. It has all the features of the original machine but is a lot slimmer. Connect the Mac Mini to a Apple LED displays and you will have a powerful Multimedia computer in-front of you. By Isamu Sanada.

Apple iView

iView is concept Mac design with curved display that is made for best orientation with the curvature of a human eye. It has a dual-sided display and 2 web-cams on both sides of the display. By Nuno Teixeira.

Apple Tribook

The tribook has exactly what the name and the picture suggest, it has three screens. One is the regular laptop-style screen and the other two can be folded to save the space when they are not in use. It is possible that the fordable screens use the Apple’s patented transparent screen technology, that way when they are folded – it can still be used a simple Macbook too. By Adam Benton.

Transparent iMac

A truly futuristic iMac concept design with a transparent display. Equipped with a transparent 30-inch display and a wireless keyboard with light-sensitive illuminated keys, this Concept design can also be set to various levels of translucency and can fade during sleep modes. By Adam Benton.

MacBook Mini

MacBook mini is a smart concept design goes one further to make MacBooks smaller. It features a foldable trackpad which saves up the space when you are not using the keyboard. One other mockup of the MacBook mini by the same designer is a sliding trackpad, which sounds like a better idea than the foldable one. By Isamu Sanada.

Mac Air

Now this is something purely innovative. An Apple Tablet concept that doubles as a desktop, just awesome. It Sports a 5.2-inch LED-backlit glossy widescreen TFT display and can be hooked to a wireless Keyboard, a mouse, a super drive and a Time Machine to turn it into a fully functional wireless Desktop. By Isamu Sanada.

Mac Mini

Concept is to discard the drawbacks which a iMac mini user would nark about the owned machine. And the mark about the Mac Mini is the I/O ports. This concept design makes the ports reachable easily and the V-shape design makes sure that it will remain cool while you are using it. That’s because the hot air will pass through the legs instead respiring from back lying on the top. By Sait Alanyali.

Mac Tab

MacTab can be used as a standalone tablet as well as a laptop with a physical keyboard. It boasts a very thin wireless keyboard that can be easily removed from the tablet and put back to cover the screen when transporting it. The hinges on the back side can be used to support the tablet while in ’standing’ position and it can be used for placing the keyboard too. By Yann Le Corroler.

Tablets

Mac Tablet

This Mac Tablet concept has an optical drive and a slider-style Physical keyboard. It comes sports a physical keyboard which can hide inside the device itself. By Isamu Sanada.

Macbook Touch

Yet another concept design by Isamu Sanada. The MacBook Touch is actually an iPhone concept design with a bigger screen and I/O ports. By Isamu Sanada.

Foldable Macbook Touch

This concept has a foldable design that makes it a Tablet-cum-Macbook. It features Flexible OLED technology which makes the foldable, full-size display possible. When in notebook mode, one half of the screen is converted to a touch screen keyboard and trackpad. By Tommaso Gecchelin.

MacBook Mini

This MacBook Mini is a tablet Concept that Apple is always asked to develop into a product that would be a perfect design. This concise tablet can be used to view pictures, listen to music and watch movies in High Resolution. Moreover, surfing the internet will delineate the great fun.

Apple Netbook Concept

This concept is a belief rather than a imaginary concept and the rumours all around gab about this product being the new Apple Tablet. By Adam Benton.

Mac Pad

MacTab is a concept Apple tablet design that is equipped with a QWERTY physical keyboard. The keyboard can be easily closed, thanks to the slider mechanism. By Maverick18x.

Apple TouchBook

This concept may be a reality soon as the rumours are that the two companies, Apple and Verizon, are looking forward to develop a wireless iPhone. The device is expected to be thinner, lighter and much affordable than the iPhone. The product may be launched by the end of this year and it will be the best to view pictures, listen music and watch HD videos.

iPhones

iPhone Elite

When Apple was to launch iPhone, a reporter asked Steve Ballmer what he though about it – He laughed and said, “A Phone without a Keyboard?”. If only he could see this concept design of iPhone. iPhone Elite has a dual slider mechanism. It has a bigger camera and a full QWERT physical keyboard too. By Mat Brady.

iPhone 4G

Mix iPhone with iPod Touch and through in some Macbook Air too. You get a slim iPhone 4G like this one. It has a front camera for video-conferencing and retains curves of a Macbook Air. By Rodolphe Desmare.

iPhone Video

This Photoshop creation is a concept about iPhone Video. This one won’t be much diverse from the iPhone, but some extra buttons on its left and some additional effects for the sleek screen and home button make this look better than the iPhone. By Chromatix.

iEye

The iEye is a concept mobile phone which boasts a shutter button onto the camera making it over iPhone constraints. The phone curbs a glut of features that take in 720p HD video, 5.1-megapixel stills, 12GB of flash memory, and a large-capacity lithium-ion battery hardwired inside. Moreover a 30 pin connector boosts its aptitude in connectivity for easy file transfers. By Adam Benton.

iPhone Nano

What can be a copulate when a iPhone and Nano are parents? The iPhone Nano. It’s a pretty good concept which can be abstracted from the image below. It’s a concept mated from a iPhone 3G and Nano G4. By FreshAndContent.

iPhone Pro

A unibody iPhone with pretty slick looks and flatter body. The iPhone 3.0 or iPhone Pro comes in two versions, aluminium and glass.

iPods

iPod Chimera

This concept is by far one of the best and most sophisticated iPod concept. Apart from the sleek and slim looks, it also has earpieces that are able to play wirelessly. Made up of entirely Titanium, iPod chimera has a scratch/smear resistant display that is able to play 720p HD videos.

iPod Nano 4G

Not much creative but a good idea about a iPod Nano 4G. This concept is splendid with some more sleek curves and great combination of colours. Indubitably, the design will come with many more features and as the image suggests, an accelerometer as well. By Chromatix.

iPod Shuffle

This concept is a portrayal of an iPod Shuffle wrist wrap dangling and would be found on all the joggers and runaway models on the roads, strapped on their arms. An iPod shuffle with a Mp3 bracelet and a wireless ear piece that might look prettier on arms of girls. By Isamu Sanada.

hiPod Concept

hiPod is a wrist watch style iPod that has a foldable display that becomes a digital watch when closed. It has the regular iPod dial-navigation and comes with a pair of wireless earpieces. By Isamu Sanada.

Miscellaneous Apple Concept Gadgets

Apple iRing

With this concept iRing design, you are able to control your iPod via bluetooth. You can control playback and volume on any of your Apple media devices using the touch-sensitive strip. It sports an OLED status display which can be use to toggle between ‘pause’ and ‘play’. By Victor Soto.

iVault

iVault concept entices you to own it in an affordable price of about $499 and will store hundreds of thousands of songs, videos and pictures. You are able to sync it with your Laptop/Desktop wirelessly just like Apple’s Time Capsule.

iCal Watch

The concept is a marvel of its own . It syns with iCal via Bluetooth so that you won’t miss and appointment or a meeting. Moreover the watch has a touch screen making it a snap to use.

iSticks

The set of iStick speakers are compatible with all Apple products and when compared to Harman Kardon speakers, it seems better to opt for and much reliable with iSub in a combo arrangement.

iLight

The iLight concept has a touch-sensitive panel which can be used to control the torch. Single tap to turn on, another to turn off, flick fingers forward and backward to control the luminosity, and double tap to lock the touch-panel. By Miyoshimasato.