50 Adorable Photos of Danbo That Make you go Awww!

So in this showcase, we are gonna show you 50 lovely cardboard sets. What? Yes, to be exact, 50 photos of different scenes with a lovely combined set of cardboards named Danbo.

danbo cardboard robot 50 Adorable Photos of Danbo That Make you go Awww!
(Image Source: antty)

Originally created by Japanese artist Kiyohiko Azuma in his manga “Yotsuba&!“, Danbo was originally intended to be a fake and funny robot which a human wears a combined set of cardboards, and interacts only when other puts coin into the slot located on its body. Amazon Japan spotted the idea, and used it for marketing, and it was a tremendous success.

Since then, photographers everywhere were inspired to make something really fun and even artistic with the Danbo, and this post serves to be a collection of awesome Danbo photos for you to enjoy and even experience some of the most beautiful moments of mini Danbo’s life!

Spend a moment with this post if you didn’t smile for some days, it’ll be interesting – we promise :-)

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Bloggers: 23 Ways to Counter Writer’s Block

All of a sudden, your blog seems like a dog biting your heel cap and refusing to let go. You do not have time for yourself, all your research zeal has been exhausted and the topics you want to write on are all water down. They have no juice anymore. You have no juice anymore. Welcome to the world of writer’s block!

counter writers block Bloggers: 23 Ways to Counter Writers Block
(Image source: Fotolia)

All bloggers reach their writing limits at one time or the other. After blogging for some time, ideas just seem to vanish into thin air. All the great topics on your blogging pad have either been flawlessly covered in another blog or you simply have the title, but no content the write.

When this happens, do not tear your short point notebook. Yes, you can change the color of your pen, but hanging the gloves is not an option. You need to bring your sexy back. Below are some ways that will bring the juice flowing and help you come up with great topics for your blog.

Related: Designers: 5 Tips to Get Back Your Creativity

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15 Web Design Trends to Watch Out For in 2012

So far the year 2011 has brought upon some amazing changes in design and Internet technology. Web development has become a much smoother subject to jump into learning, not to mention the countless open source libraries useful in streamlining the process. And yet it seems the global design community is far from throwing in the towel.

web design trend 2012 15 Web Design Trends to Watch Out For in 2012

I want to introduce 15 ideas which have grown very rapidly over the past year. These trends encompass web and graphics design techniques which will likely play a big role moving into 2012. You have probably seen a few of these represented throughout many of your favorite sites online.

Thankfully the methods to implement these features are becoming easier to understand and much slimmer in code.

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Happy New Year + 2012 Desktop Wallpaper

What a year! As we are closing in to the end of 2011, we – everyone here at hongkiat.com – would like to thank you guys for all the supports throughout the entire year.

We’ll be back next year with more useful tips and exciting stuff!

2012 wallpaper preview Happy New Year + 2012 Desktop Wallpaper

Have a fun-filled celebration and a prosperous, healthy, productive, challenging, and exciting 2012!

Before we call it a year, we’d like to throw in one last freebie, as you already know from the title – a minimalist 2012 desktop wallpaper.

Have a great year ahead, peeps!

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New Year Celebration: 15 Breathtaking Firework Photos

First comes Christmas, next comes the New Year. Time flies and now we’re just a few more days to welcoming 2012. The Mayan prophecy may have predicted that the end of the world would occur soon, but that doesn’t stop us from taking this chance to celebrate the time of renewal.

new year fireworks New Year Celebration: 15 Breathtaking Firework Photos
(Photo by: Blacksky200)

New resolutions await for us to pursue despite what people often say about not fulfilling them. It is a time of hope for better days in the next 365 days.

What better ways to than to start a new year than to start with a bang? I meant it both literally and metaphorically. Watch out for stunning fireworks in your city or town and get blown away with the sight and sound! While you count down to a new beginning, take a look at some awesome fireworks from previous New Year’s Day in various places around the world.

Full list after jump.

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Source Code Comment Styling: Tips and Best Practices

Developers who have spent any time on large projects understand the importance of code comments. When you’re building many features into the same application, things tend to get complicated. There are so many data bits including functions, variable references, return values, parameters… how are you expected to keep up?

code commenting Source Code Comment Styling: Tips and Best Practices
(Image Source: Fotolia)

It should come as no surprise that commenting your code is essential, both solo and team projects. But many developers are unaware of how to go about this process. I’ve outlined some of my own personal tricks to creating neat, formatted code comments. Standards and comment templates will vary between developers – but ultimately you should strive towards clean and readable comments to further explain confusing areas in your code.

We should begin discussing some of the differences in comment formatting. This will give you a better idea of just how detailed you can become with project code. Afterwards I’ll offer some specific tips and examples which you can start using right away!

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Merry Christmas, Folks!

merry christmas 2011 Merry Christmas, Folks!

(Image credit: Fotolia)

20 Beautiful Children’s Book Cover Illustrations

We all have a special place in our hearts for children’s books. When we were young, they stirred our imagination and calmed us before we slept. Most of us can still remember many of the books from our childhood, and, if you’re like me, the front cover of most of them as well.

childrens book cover design 20 Beautiful Childrens Book Cover Illustrations

This is the difficulty of designing a book cover: the illustration needs to be a preview of the story and also appealing enough to entice readers to open the book. The style of the illustration, the colors, the font, all have to be carefully chosen and laid out. Illustrators of children’s books also have to keep in mind what designs will appeal to a young audience.

The following collection of up-and-coming children’s books showcases some of the best and newest book illustrations available. All are brilliantly designed with the audience and story in mind. Some are quite colorful, others are cute, a few are elegant, but all are awesome regardless of the style.

So take a peek on what children could like, get inspired, and maybe visit the websites to see more about these new releases of children’s books.

Related: Beautiful & Creative Book Cover Design

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Showcase of Beautiful Search Box UI Designs

It’s kind of common on the Internet where – if we fail to get what we are looking for on a website, we resort to searching. Search box has always been an essential part of a website. If you run a content-intensive website, it’s even more inevitable. They are usually placed in the following areas: header, top navigation menu or sidebar (upper-fold). Sometimes we may also throw in another one in footer to make searching more convenient for the users.

search box design Showcase of Beautiful Search Box UI Designs
(Image credit: Shutterstock)

We came a long way since Web 1.0; searching on the web is no longer limited to enter keyword and hit search. Developers strive to make searching a better experience for their visitors by revamping and adding more functions, says, search filtering to get more targeted results, providing search keywords or search histories as you type.

In today’s post, we showcase some beautiful search boxes with promising features we’ve come to know. Whether you are looking to revamp your website or simply seeking inspiration for a better search box, this post is for you. Full list after jump!

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Software for Web Designers on Budget – Ultimate Guide

Web design can be costly for designers; not only its process is time consuming, its tools involve hefty monetary investment too. Designers on budget are often hit with the same dilemma – powerful machine and lesser software, or settle with an average machine so you can purchase more design-related software, but in trade you suffer for the epic system lagging.

designers on budget Software for Web Designers on Budget   Ultimate Guide
(Image source: Fotolia)

Graphics editors, code editors, file sharing and transferring tools, document and spreadsheet editors all cost money. These are future expenditures hard to anticipate. If you’ve went all-in into getting the best laptop, chances are it leaves you pretty limited in terms of budget for software. To give you an idea – Adobe Design Standard (comes with Photoshop, Illustrator and inDesign) costs about USD $1299; Adobe Photoshop alone costs about USD $699.00.

Way out of budget? No worries, good news is, you still can get projects kick-off without spending a dime. Sounds familiar somewhere? No we are not talking about download pirated software.

In today’s post, we are going to give you a guide of all Windows software you may need on your laptop or desktop, and all of them are free. We’ll also throw in our recommendation as well as more free alternatives to give you more options, so let’s dive into the heaven of free software and see what they have in stock for you!

Also, check out our lists for more useful tools and applications!

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[Freebie] “BiZ” Business Website PSD Templates

This exclusive freebie is a pack of 5-page business website templates in Photoshop format. The design uses a clean, slick and professional look throughout the templates especially designed for website selling products/services. The design is also ideal for your business or corporate needs.

biz business website psd template [Freebie] BiZ Business Website PSD Templates

The design comes in 5 templates: Home Page, About Us page, Services page, Portfolio page, Image Pop-up page and Contact page. All the pages are fully-layered PSD files, and are neatly organized in folders for easy identification and necessary editing of logo, text and graphics.

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Data Visualization: 20+ Useful Tools and Resources

There are plenty of cool technologies available to collect and examine data. Both web and desktop applications have provided some really great interfaces to fall in love with data mining, and with the rise in popularity we have noticed an increased number of infographics created over the past few years.

resources for data visualization Data Visualization: 20+ Useful Tools and Resources

Today we’ll be looking into some really cool and popular online resources for data visualization. You can see all kinds of data like human population, world condition and even human emotion presented via the visualization. While some of the visualization might be experimental, all of them have one similarity: they help you understand the data better, and this is exactly what visualization is for.

If you’ve designed your own infographic or visualization tool we’d love to check it out. In addition to the examples highlighted please offer your ideas or thoughts in the discussion area below!

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[Christmas Freebie] More Christmas Wallpapers

As we are getting near to Christmas and the end of 2011, we would like to express our grateful thanks to our readers and design community with yet another exclusive freebie release – 2 more Christmas wallpapers.

freebie christmas wallpapers [Christmas Freebie] More Christmas Wallpapers

These Christmas wallpapers come in .JPG format various dimensions, including sizes for iPhone and iPad. You can even download all sizes in a single compressed zip file and they brought to you exclusively by GraphicsFuel and Hongkiat.

Merry Christmas and a happy new year everyone!

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A Look Into: Evolution Of Greeting Card Designs

(Guest contribution by: Rahul Mistry)

Greeting cards have been around for hundreds of years dating back to ancient China and Egypt. It’s how human express their sense of thankfulness and appreciation, even until this era of technology when people are still sending the greeting cards, just with more options like sending what’s so called “electronic cards”. Yes, sending greeting cards is one of the cultures that survived through the last century.

evolution of greeting cards A Look Into: Evolution Of Greeting Card Designs

The following article looks at how card designs have changed over the decades starting from the 1900s to the current day. You can observe how the greeting card designs change with the major events of our world, and essentially getting that how politics, fashions, war and other elements influence the card designs.

Besides, here are posts about different cards for you to enjoy!

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