It’s that time of the year again when we kick off our shoes from work and enjoy the festive season. As we welcome the year ahead, I’m sure most of us have made some kind of resolutions for ourselves. Needless to say, many of us have been unable to stick to our previous resolutions to go on a diet or keep to an exercise regime, perhaps due our hectic schedules. What then, is more important than a calendar in order to manage time well and stay organized?
Unless you switch one, you will be looking at your new calendar for the new year for the next 365 days. Why not get a thought-provoking, creatively designed or aesthetic calendar that you can appreciate each and every day? Here, we have compiled some of the best designed calendars over the recent years to let each of you have an idea on the variety of calendars that designers have came up with. Enjoy!
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Even the most unique blog designs usually follow, at least in part, some sort of predefined or established style. And there are plenty of design styles to choose from if you’re looking for inspiration. Whatever your personal style, there are design patterns out there that can be adapted to suit your own aesthetic ideal and the needs of your site. And often working within a predefined pattern can enhance your creativity by helping you focus.
Below we’ve rounded up eleven common design patterns seen throughout blog designs on the web. But just because they’re commonly seen doesn’t mean they aren’t unique and filled with plenty of individuality and creativity. Figuring out how to make your own unique mark on a widely-recognized style can prove to be a creative challenge for nearly any designer. Read on for inspiration and ideas for your next design projects.
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Here is our first batch of winners drawn in 2010 for the last giveaway contest held in 2009 – the Grafpedia Designer Goodies Contest. We’d like to thank you guys for the participations, you are guys are great! Unfortunately, we can only choose as much as 10 winners.
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We tend to rely heavily on our favorite desktop applications like Photoshop, GIMP, Audacity, Adobe Premier and so on when it comes to dealing with multimedia files. What if we are on a public machine that doesn’t have the software we need, or worst, what if these public machines prevent users from installing applications? That is where web applications come in handy.
Web applications have gained much attention and popularity over the pass few years. The reasons are simple – ubiquity, convenience and light. As long as you have a web browser that connects to the Internet, you can get your photo, audio or even video edited on the fly.
Here’s a list of free web services that allows you to edit multimedia files (photo, audio and video) online. Full list after jump.
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Here’s another round of freebies giveaway and it’s probably something you should not miss if you are a designer. Today we are giving away 10 VIP accounts of Grafpedia.com to Hongkiat readers. These accounts will give you access to more than 70,000 design goodies that will come in handy for your next design job.
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Snow, ice, and the crispness that comes with freezing temperatures can add a new dimension to your photos. And with winter just around the corner for much of the northern hemisphere, it’s a great time to find some inspiration in winter photos.
From the first snowflakes in late fall to the dripping icicles that come with a spring thaw, winter photography can provide you with ideas for any kind of design. A muted color palette peppered with bright accents made even more striking by their backdrop can be adapted to your web and graphic designs.
Below are 70 excellent winter photos to help inspire you, everything from snow-filled landscapes to macro photos and close-ups.
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Here’s another round of icon freebies for you guys and perhaps the last for the year 2009. Folks at Iconshock designed 8 cute political characters for us and you can download them absolutely free here at hongkiat.com
![political icons [Freebie] 8 Political Characters Icon Set](http://media02.hongkiat.com/politician-icons/political-icons.jpg "[Freebie] 8 Political Characters Icon Set")
These 8 character icons are made up of these following politicians:
- Barack Obama (United States of America)
- Hugo Chavez (Venezuela)
- Silvio Berlusconi (Italy)
- Kim Jong-il (North Korea)
- Alvaro Uribe (Columbia)
- Evo Morales (Bolivia)
- Ali Khamenei (Iran)
- Angela Merkel (Germany)
To give you a better idea of who these politicians are, we’ve put a real photo side by side with the icon. Photos are taken from Wikipedia.
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How time files, Christmas is round the corner again! You know that the wonderful season is here when you hear all your favorite Christmas tunes everywhere you go. While most of us are frantically shopping for gifts and preparing to throw the most joyous party of the year, don’t forget to take time off to chill out and enjoy the festive season with your family and friends.
With no exception this year, in the spirit of Christmas, we are sharing with you a showcase of some of the best designed Christmas theme wallpapers to lighten and spice up your desktop.
More Christmas wallpapers – Here are more Christmas wallpapers we’ve previously published:
Merry Christmas and a happy new year.
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Taking amazing photos is something many aspiring amateur photographers strive for. And HDR effects can really make your images pop.
Below is a complete toolbox to get you started with HDR photography on your own. Whether you want to go all out and learn how to take real HDR composite images or if you just want to learn to fake it in Photoshop, the information below can get you started. And, to really inspire you, we’ve also included a showcase of fifty phenomenal HDR images.
Image credit – Winter Wonderland II by Philipp Klinger
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From the dreadful art work created for Nosferatu in 1922 till the present, horror movie posters has evolved with time, immensely. Having celebrated the twisted, the sick, the ghastly, the disgusting and the terrifying, this genre of art is highly evocative. It may be just another creepy photograph conveying malicious promises, or an abstract interpretations rendered by an elaborate painting, designers are experimenting with their creative juices from time immemorial to bring out the ghastly effect in their posters.
Creepy typography, high contrast illustrations, horrific creatures and ominous taglines are trademarks of effective horror movie posters. Creating an aura of mysteriousness while freaking out your audience simultaneously, works best for these posters. Raw terror, suspense and a hint of fright-fest are the things that your poster needs to convey to stimulate the nightmares and excite the curiosity of your potential moviegoers, so that they cannot help but check out for themselves what the movie has in store.
However, it isn’t easy to create a spine-chilling poster, which looks both brutal and spectacular at the same time. Like, blood smearing across the poster may make it look like a finger painting by a kid. The potential of a true designer is revealed in subtly arousing terror in viewer’s imagination by making this ordinary blood look extraordinarily ghastly.
To draw inspiration from some of the best horror movie posters of all time, you can check out our collection of 50+ horror movie poster designs in this article.
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The moment some of you who’ve commented and tweeted in the previous free icons, vector and brush packs contest have been waiting for. We’ve got our winners – 11 of them. 10 winners will walk away each with a vector, icon and brush pack of your choice; 1 winner with a complete designer set with more than 447 packs of 6000+ design elements. Courtesy of Artbox7.com
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Comment styling is an often-overlooked part of blog design. After all, they’re at the bottom of the page, not seen until visitors already have an impression of your site, and they’re really there for function more than anything else. Why invest a lot of time in styling them and making them really stand out?
But good comment styling can set your designs apart from your competition. Taking the time to design your comments, and your comment form, can make a huge impression on your regular visitors. It subconsciously implies you care about their opinion and want them to engage in discussion on your site. Below you’ll find some best practices and examples of creating a beautiful commenting system on your next blog design.
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Today for the very first time in hongkiat.com, we are releasing stock photos. The collection is made up of 45 high quality fruit photos and they are all free to download with no strings attached.
You can use these photos in all sorts of individual or commercial project without any restriction. However, you may not be able to resell, hotlink, re-distribute or make profit out of these photos. Please link to this article if you find these photos useful and would like to help spread a word.
![fruits stock photos [Freebie] High Quality Fruits Stock Photos](http://media02.hongkiat.com/fruits-vege-stock-photos/fruits-stock-photos.jpg "[Freebie] High Quality Fruits Stock Photos")
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Good news for designers. Our friend Stefan from Artbox7.com is feeling extremely generous today and has decided to play a small Santa role on hongkiat.com this December.
Artbox7 is a site with lots of designers’ collectibles – icons, vectors and Photoshop brushes. Winners of today’s contest will be able to access Artbox7 and get the things needed for your design, absolutely free.
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