Showing posts with label design. Show all posts
Showing posts with label design. Show all posts

Top 11 Premium WordPress Themes for Photographers

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Lots of word press themes are in existence today. The use of low-quality themes makes your business fails online. So, use high quality themes and make your business profitability.

Responsive design is one of the major features of a good theme. The design makes your site to be automatically adjusted to the tablets and Smartphone’s the visitor is using to access your site.

1. One Touch Stylish Theme:
It is one of the best word press theme because of its features. It has good graphics which makes your site to look very attractive on any type of screen. In addition to the Drag Drop page Builder and XML Demo content for foot and simple setup. Once you get this theme, you will enjoy unlimited sidebars.

One Touch - Multifunctional Metro Stylish Theme

Demo Link: 
http://theme.crumina.net/index.php?theme=onetouch

2. U Design WordPress Theme:
If you really want to succeed online, you need to use this theme. It contains 7 homepage sliders of different designs and functions.

There are unlimited portfolio pages where there is a choice for you to choose from four layouts and generate portfolio thumbnails.

U-Design WordPress Theme

Demo Link:
http://themeforest.net/item/udesign-wordpress-theme/full_screen_preview/253220?ref=lamdang

3. Aqua WordPress theme:
This theme will be loved by many of them because; it has a good responsive design and a valid HTML5 and CSS3 code. It is fully customizable with the 2 premium sliders included. In this theme you can enjoy 100’s of Google fonts and the CSS framework.
The theme comes with XML file; slider Revolution WP plug-in; Flex slider.


Aqua - Responsive Multi-Purpose Wordpress Template

Demo Link:
http://themeforest.net/item/aqua-responsive-multipurpose-wordpress-template/3649588?ref=lamdang

4. Avada Multipurpose theme:
The unique thing of this theme is, it enables you to get more traffic from those who use mobile devices. It is incredibly responsive, with a refreshingly clean design.


Avada | Responsive Multi-Purpose Theme

Demo Link:
http://themeforest.net/item/avada-responsive-multipurpose-theme/full_screen_preview/2833226?ref=lamdang

Features:

Unlimited colors
Backend color pickers
Revolution slider plug in
Awesome Layer Slider Plug in
Popular Flex slider 2 plug in


5. Clubber Word press Theme:
It is an ideal theme for those who run events and music websites. You can use any of the 8 custom widgets supported. They include Audio player, Upcoming events, recent posts, latest videos, sound cloud, Twitter and Flicker. The theme will display all your upcoming events along with the maps indicating the events along with the maps indicating the venues.


Clubber - Events & Music WordPress Theme

Demo Link:
http://themeforest.net/item/clubber-events-music-wordpress-theme/full_screen_preview/3427687?ref=lamdang

6. Kaika Business Corporate theme:

It is very good theme, because it has skin manager and 10 default skins which enabled you to determine the way your site looks.

Features:

Supports for 2D and 3D CUTE slider
Layer/ Revolution slider
Content Builder Module
Drag and Drop

Kakia Multi-Purpose Business Corporate Theme


Demo Link:

http://themes.themegoods.com/?theme=Kakia

7.  Risen church Word press theme:

This is a theme for creating beautiful church websites. It can be customized to show some important things about the latest events and also about your church. It has lot of features for posting staff profiles, church News (blog). It displays multiple locations and adds a contact for visitors to send feedback.


Risen - Church WordPress Theme (Responsive)

Demo Link:
http://www.themeforest.net/item/risen-church-wordpress-theme-responsive/full_screen_preview/2632774?ref=lamdang

8. Office Responsive Business theme:

Office is the perfect solution for your business and portfolio website. The name itself indicates that it is a responsive word press theme for any business.

Features:

Homepage slider
Inbuilt post types
Background

Office Responsive Business Theme

Demo Link:
http://themeforest.net/item/office-responsive-business-theme/full_screen_preview/1718861?ref=lamdang

9. Grand college for education:
If you have an educational institution you no longer need to spend hundreds of dollars for creating a school website. This theme provides all the necessary features you need.


Grand College - Wordpress Theme For Education

Demo Link:
http://themes.goodlayers.com/?theme=grandcollege

10. Linguini: Restaurant theme:
Do you want to be successful with your restaurant business? Then this theme best serves your purpose because of its unlimited features. You can customize your site by uploading your logo.

Features:

Unlimited color options
Color picker
Localization supports through    .PO/.mo files

Linguini: Restaurant Responsive WordPress Theme

Demo Link:
http://demo.grandpixels.com/?theme=linguini

11. Nollie Premium WordPress theme:

It has a content builder and in-built translator. These two features make this theme to be a good one for creating beautiful websites.

Features:

Lots of sidebars
Support for WPML
Presence of 200 vector icons
More than 80 short codes
Hundreds of Google fonts


Nollie Premium WordPress Theme

Demo Link:
http://themes.muffingroup.com/?theme=nollie

If we miss any of the theme you like fire away through comments. Your feedback is most important to us.

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How to Use 3D Modelling Software in Game Design

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3D Modelling Software


Although today's video and computer games have become increasingly complex, the software used to design them is more accessible than ever. To create a believable, engaging game you need to be able to create memorable characters and an interactive, 3-dimensional environment. This requires a storyline, original artwork, and the right technology to get the job done. With the help of 3D modelling software, you can start putting together these pieces of the puzzle to create your own games. It's helpful to take a closer look at how to use this complex software to start putting together your own virtual world on screen.

Getting Started
Before you choose the right software package to work with, you'll first want to do some basic brainstorming. How many characters will you need to create? Will they be similar in appearance or will you need to be able to create a wide range of creatures? Drafting a basic storyline and having some idea of what type of environments you will be creating can point you in the right direction towards choosing an animation program to suit your needs. More complex characters and storylines may require a professional set of tools like 3D studio max, while a basic game can be constructed with programs like DX Studio or 3D Rad. The best programs will offer you a variety of special effects, templates for creating characters, and adequate tutorials and support to get started. 

Creating Characters
One of the primary features of computer modelling software is its ability to create characters in a three-dimensional space onscreen. This allows you to create more lifelike creatures than you would with traditional animation techniques. Some programs will give you templates to work with, as well as wireframes that can be built on with anatomical features and realistic muscular materials. Shading and layering tools will help bring these features to life.

Special Effects and 3D Rendering
One of the most complex yet important aspects of 3D video game production is rendering. This refers to the process of translating the various mathematical codes that make up a 3D design into a final 2D image that still looks three-dimensional. For rendering to be successful, the whole scene has to have the right lighting, colour valuation, and texture in each pixel of the final 2D image. This can be incredibly time-consuming without the right 3D software, which speeds up the process by pre-storing lighting and texture information for greater accuracy. Many computer programs will automatically render as you are designing your game, but you may have to follow this step after your animation designs are complete.

Special effects and tools are also an important part of finalizing your images for the screen. Software toolkits let you work on specific textures, such as hair, fur, or cloth. You can then start building the environment around your characters with interactive objects and individual blades of grass. It's your work, so you can use these effects to your advantage. Particle effects allow you to control the movement of substances like snow or fire according to scripts or direct manipulators, which can also add to the realism of your scene.
With a combination of preliminary brainstorming, character development and shading, and final rendering, you can use today's animation software to bring your unique vision to life. 

Author Bio:
Martina writes for AutoDesk, a marketplace of 3D studio max experts and 3D Software that helps connect users .
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3 Web Design Tricks to Boost Your SEO

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SEO

The way websites are designed has changed significantly. Web designers have become more aware of the different web design tricks that will boost search engine rankings. Designing the perfect website now also taps the SEO potential of the back-end structure. This is to accommodate the dynamic changes in search engine optimization. If you are not familiar with the back-end SEO top secrets yet, then this article is for you. Below is a short and easy guide for SEO-friendly web design tricks.

Code Your Way In

- You need to work hard on your code with the aim of making it as clean as possible, mainly for crawling purposes. The more streamlined your code is, the easier for web spiders to crawl your website quickly. A great understanding of HTML will help you identify unnecessary tags when designing and developing your website. With this, you can avoid code bloat and simplify your back-end as much as you can without hurting the front-end. And if you are trying to beat a tight deadline, you can use Adobe Dreamweaver for a faster clean up.

- Another quick way to ensure that your code is neat, try validation using World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standards. This validator tells you if web pages are W3C compliant and are healthy and search engine spider-friendly. W3C validator also comes with many tools that can detect design elements that are causing SEO issues.

- The loading time of your pages is also key in boosting your SEO. To achieve this, you have to externalize your JavaScript and CSS to reduce your file significantly. Smaller file size makes your pages load faster and increases your content-to-ratio score that is helpful in optimization.

- For beginners, it is possible to achieve a clean code just like the pros. Use HTML5. It is more SEO- friendly than Adobe Flash and is much easy to work on for newbies who are trying to create their first website.

Content Structure Makes A Difference

- The architecture of your web content is crucial in SEO. Experts even call it the "heart of SEO efforts." Structure the website by categorizing content in themes. This technique is equivalent to a user-friendly navigation that makes browsing more intuitive. Set up your content in a way that it is meant to be found by relevant search engine queries. Think of your target audience on how they can benefit from your navigation features and apply it in your web design.

- In your efforts to make your content search-engine friendly and user-friendly at the same time, don't forget that you can make your navigation elements more SEO-friendly by using keyword texts instead of images.

- The way you structure your individual web pages matters too. Make sure to use Meta tags (Title, descriptions, keywords) in your Head section. Be concise and help the spiders understand what the page is about.

Stable Back-end Support

- Evaluate if your server is delivering your website to the user quickly. Google's algorithm considers site speed a legitimate factor in search engine rankings. Lastly, make sure that you are using a top-notch content management system (CMS) that is SEO-friendly and generates clean code. Choose a CMS that has the ability to manipulate the directory, offers easy web page customizations, and the power to externalize CSS and JavaScript.

Remember that every website has its own goals, and it is up to the designer on how to incorporate these web design tips to boost SEO. The results will not appear overnight but rest assured that they are long-term. Apply these and start making huge changes in your search engine rankings.

Erik Gaandt is a freelance tech writer and SEO enthusiast. He enjoys sharing his insights on various blogs. More than 90% of webmasters read reviews when deciding on webhost. WhoIsHostingThis.com is home to hundreds of reviews on the most popular webhosts such as Dotster, iPage.com and BlueHost.
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BEST DESIGN TIPS TO START A MAGAZINE

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BE CONSISTENT
Even if your choice is to break every rule, there has to be a logic behind your choices as a designer. Consistency is not about using similar fonts or layouts throughout the publication; it is all about creating your own personal logic and following it.

In fact, today´s designer´s are creating their own fonts to match the tone, look or topic of a page, so, as long as you have a clue, the magazine´s readers will do as well.

MIND YOUR AUDIENCE
The look of a magazine will make it appealing to a certain audience and unappealing to another. When people often think that it is the content that defines the audience and the design not so much, but people see before they stop to read. If your magazine looks like something that wouldn´t interest them, people will look the other way. It is ALL about first impressions, which brings us to the cover.

DOMINATE THE COVER

The cover is the key element of magazine marketing. This is where most of your designing efforts should go. Your cover design has to be aligned with the magazine´s vision, and it has to use a combination of (short) text and images that is striking, smashing, beautiful, modern, shocking, groundbreaking; in short, it has to be DRAMATIC.

Here is a good example of using a combination of text and images that create great drama. Of course, you don´t need war or danger to create drama. Drama can be in a face and a title, drama can be in a combination of a texture and a font and a certain topic. 

Your goal is to have people not being able to look away from your magazine cover. In terms of photography, you should always go for photos that don´t only look good but also tell a story. If it tells only part of an exciting story, people will be compelled to pick up the magazine, in order to get the rest of that story.

MASTER THE CONTENT-DESIGN DYNAMIC
If you get an article of a million words, and you are asked to create a layout, without any chance of reducing the text, chances are, the text will look crammed into the page. Working closely with the editors means negotiating word counts and spaces as you go. Today, the trend is to leave a lot of white space around text; it creates a cleaner look, and it makes articles easier to read.
In order to make the design of the inside pages of your startup magazine flow, you need to master the dynamic between design and content.

DON¨T UNDERESTIMATE PRINTING
Your most fabulous design efforts will be lost, unless the people at there choice knows what they are doing. When you design professionally, every nuance in color shades, every variation in paper counts.

Your safest bet is to advice your employer to hire only the best printing company and then work closely with them during the mockup and proofing phase to ensure optimum quality.

MIND YOUR COLOR SCHEME

The trend today is to use basic colors from the spectrum of light. Basic colors can make a bold statement. 

I love this grayscale example from CHROMATIC magazine. Simple fonts, simple and perfect composition, text that combines with photo to tell a story, some headlines that create mystery and might excite your curiosity, i.e. Lowercase People; all of this elements combine to make a simple yet powerful cover. 

BE CREATIVE

Thinking outside the box always pays. In the example I am showing you, Hungarian designer Miklos Kiss thought more like “inside the bag.” This totally reminded me of Kramer´s idea about a coffee table book that turned into a coffe table on the TV show Seinfeld. In the case of LACK magazine, the concept was executed beautifully. The magazine becomes both an objet d´art with a sleek modern design, and a practical handbag. As a woman, I can totally appreciate this one.

I´m not saying that you have to create magazines that transform into something else; I am only saying that the more you let your imagination fly, the better.

USE FONTS CREATIVELY

To finish up,  an examples of using fonts to your best advantage, also from LACK magazine.

TAKE ADVANTAGE OF GREAT ILLUSTRATION

This is my last example, also from LACK. The composition, the illustration and the creative use of fonts make for one of the coolest index pages I have ever seen.

As you can see, starting a magazine is no piece of cake, but it can also be one of the most challenging and fulfilling projects a designer can take on. 


Author Bio:
Veronica is a filmmaker and rather eclectic writer living in Montevideo, Uruguay.
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