Web Design Blog | Web Design Fan | Resources for Web Designers and Graphic Designers

Thanksgiving is coming up this week and with that being the case I know a lot of people are looking to add festive elements to their designs, be it for websites, invitations, photo editing, or something else. Well, Web Design Fan is always looking out for you and today we gathered up over 100 icons,vectors, and other graphics that celebrate Turkey Day.

This is not exactly web design related, but it is surely an issue that will affect us all if passed. As many of you will know, Congress is considering two bills regarding online censorship, the PROTECT-IP Act and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA).

As Tumblr tells us, “As written, they would betray more than a decade of US policy and advocacy of Internet freedom by establishing a censorship system using the same domain blacklisting technologies pioneered by China and Iran.”

Well, now you can easily act and directly tell your representative what you think with this new service offered by Tumblr.

With the recent news that Flash is dead, at least for all mobile devices, designers and developers have been looking toward HTML5 for the solutions to their animation problems.

If you are part of this ever-growing group, check out Swiffy by Google.

The latest statistic by Forrester Research indicates that an average 71% of shopping carts are abandoned before finishing checkout. That is over 7 in 10 users and the result is an estimated 18 billion in losses. The numbers should not be taken lightly, but shockingly few are doing anything about it. According to Listrak only 13% of the top 500 online retails are attempting to recover abandoned shopping carts. Listrak claims it has helped its customers gain 20-35% back from decreases in abandoned shopping carts. What steps can your business take right now to see increases like that?

Today we are looking at CampaignMonitor, an email marketing tool built for web designers. CampaignMonitor is beautiful, comes with some great features, and makes it easier than ever for freelancers to resell email marketing services to their clients. In other words: go try it.

These icons are available in large formats: 512×512 px, 256×256 px and 128×128 px. You can dowload and use them for free if you give the creators credit. Solid work and a great concept. Not all Twitter feeds are equal, and now you can link to your account with something others will remember you by.

As the creators tell us, “these birds have names and characters and you should find one that reflects yours in some way. They are ugly but cute and your visitors will definitely love them. They are not just icons or illustrations, but real mascots for you Twitter!”

If you have spent any amount of time in the website design game, you know that CSS is a staple you can’t ignore. As Flash takes a back seat more and more, this method of coding is becoming more necessary by the day. It is also becoming a basic for graphic forms, one example being typography.

More than just a font, typographic art has become a movement on the online world. From creation of new lettering to the use of those fonts on website design to more clearly altered context or providing visual appeal, you can’t get away from it. CSS makes it easier than ever to manipulate and utilize typography for your web designs.

There are some incredible things happening with CSS these days, and I think I found my favorite.

Cool things are happening over at ECSSpert. So far they have reproduced pure CSS logos for Twitter, Adidas, Adobe, an awesome animated Atari, and well… just go look for yourselves. More after the jump.

Today we are looking at Balsamiq Mockups, a spectacular wireframing tool from Balsamiq Studios. Balsamiq helps you brainstorm, present, and iterate on your designs with ease.

Check out the video review after the jump.

Blue is a mysterious colour with a wide range of positive and negative connotations. In English, the word blue is synonymous with sadness while in German blue means drunk. On the other hand, blue skies are associated with happiness and good times, and people pay thousands of dollars each year in search of a bright, blue seas in which to frolic. Below, you’ll find 30 spectacular blue images capturing what you might expect, like the sky and the ocean, and what you might not, like eggs, sneakers and wildlife.