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Both web and print designs built around a water theme have become a popular trend in recent years, and such a theme can be found in everything from websites to business cards to designs for postcard printing. Generally speaking, the color blue is associated with depth and stability and has a calming effect, which may be why blue is a popular color for design. Many businesses incorporate some shade of blue into their brand colors, and water is a popular image for companies in many industries, not just the obvious ones. For example, some graphic designers, fashion companies, and even technology companies incorporate water into their websites.

In this collection, we focused on finding websites that were built around a water theme. These examples span the simple to complex references to water themes from splashing rivers to calm bodies of water. As you check these samples out, see how each affect you. Do they create a calming or exciting response? Which are your favorites?

When thinking of Helvetica, it is fair to assume that many of your minds will go immediately to printed medium. Posters, fliers and calendars all frequently use the font for their main design, usually to use an attractive typeface that isn’t as overabused as the old standard, Arial.

But there are plenty of places where typography lovers can apply Helvetica. In this case, we are going to look at some of the small movies that have been made featuring the font prominently, sometimes as the main focus.

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.

With the release of Google+ this month, designers everywhere are getting their perspectives of the logo on the canvas. Here are 14 gorgeous examples of custom Google+ icons.

A lot of people like the look of a handwriting font because it can make their website look more casual and inviting, and their documents unique – especially when crafting things like stationary or gift cards. There are hundreds of handwriting script typefaces available – many for free on the Internet – but there’s a fine line between a font that looks like handwriting and one that is legible enough to read.

If you haven’t heard about Dribbble yet, I won’t make fun of you, but I will tell you this: you are missing out. As they say on their about page:

Dribbble is show and tell for creatives. Designers, developers and other creatives shareshots—small screenshots of the designs and applications they are working on.

What comes out of the site is nothing less than creative awesomeness. Sneak peaks into the latest and ongoing works of your favorite designers: what could be better? So to celebrate Dribbble’s noble existence, I am bringing you 15 of my favorite shots on the site. Enjoy.

The term “grunge” within graphic design is often mistaken to mean dirty; however, a grunge look is simply one that is achieved by including natural elements into your design. For instance, you may create typography from vine images or your background could be a photo of cement. Some websites even use every day items, such as paper towels, to create backgrounds and texture within the design. Incorporating grunge into your website can be obvious with lots of dirt and grime or subtle with only a fabric background. So, whatever level of grunge you intend to take your website, one of the following backgrounds may be exactly what you need to help you achieve the perfect amount of grunge in your project.

Today we have a cool treat for everyone. We’ve taken the theme you see here at Web Design Fan and packaged it up for the Web Design Fan Club. Now you too can enjoy our beautiful design, as well as build your own variations of it.

In the package comes the full Wordpress theme as well as 2 PSDs: the home page and a post page. Also included is documentation to help you through the process of installation and modification.

Planning a website for a client can sometimes be a frustrating exercise. You must be able to take your vision and translate it into something that everyone can understand and interact with. Last week we discussed having a sketch/idea book to perform tasks like this with, but sometimes it just isn’t enough. You need something more interactive, more professional, and less messy.

Luckily, there are dozens of fantastic mockup tools available on the web to help you do just that. Below we will outline 5 of the top choices.

An “idea book” is what I call the notebook that I carry around to flesh out my ideas. Its a simple concept that I think a lot of other designers and entrepreneurs use and it is something that I find invaluable.

I have found you can use an idea book in two distinct ways that can help web designers: (1) for planning actual designs (layouts, icons, vectors) via the aide of the pen and (2) for planning a client project in a business atmosphere. Read more to see how having one can help you.