All modern browsers now support web fonts, in some form. Microsoft Internet Explorer has supported @font-face since 1997 in version 4, Apple Safari implemented support in 2008 in version 3.1, Mozilla Firefox added support in 2009 in version 3.5, and Google Chrome added support in 2010 in version 6.

When using @font-face you need to be aware of supported font formats and browser specific syntax.  There is currently no universally supported web font format. Failing to provide proper font formats and browser supported CSS will result in your page rendering inconsistently across browsers.  If done incorrectly, visitors will see the browser’s default font instead of the specified font.

There are some great font services that take care of cross browser support by dynamically generating the appropriate CSS for each browser.

Typekit, Webtype, WebINK, and Fonts.com are some of the services available, and all of them generally take care of hosting and licensing. Using one of these services allows the quickest path to implementation without having to know too much about the underlying technology.

Typekit provides many fonts created by Adobe, and we are working together to offer more Adobe fonts in the future.

Then there's Google fonts. The fonts will be generated by Google by accessing their servers, it will just take a couple of niffy jiffy on the doctype to use it, and its all for free.

If you find yourself needing to roll your own web fonts, there are a few basics that are required to ensure your intended fonts show up on all browsers:

Know your font formats. There are a few different versions of web fonts in use today.

Embedded OpenType (.eot) – Supported by Internet Explorer only.TrueType/OpenType (.ttf/.otf) – Supported by the widest range of browsers, but, not supported in Internet Explorer. (this may change in IE9)Web Open Font Format  (.woff) – Supported in recent versions of Chrome, Firefox and Internet Explorer, but not yet supported in Safari.In addition to needing to worry about licenses and multiple font formats, browsers interpret CSS code differently, so writing a rule to include your fonts is less than straightforward. “Bulletproof” syntax for @font-face has evolved over the years to work around browser inconsistencies. Much of the syntax seems repetitive and counter intuitive. For a good history of @font-face and a clear explanation of the CSS syntax read the ”The New Bulletproof @Font-Face Syntax” blog post at Fontspring. Learning how the syntax has evolved gives a clearer picture of how each browser handles @font-face.

FontSquirrel is a web service that will convert fonts for you and generate CSS code.  After uploading your fonts, FontSquirrel will convert your fonts for cross browser usage and generate CSS for you. The CSS code generated by FontSquirrel also happens to work just about everywhere, including mobile devices. If you use FontSquirrel to generate web fonts, make sure you have the proper license to do so.

Now, websites will be magazine-likes, having the best and nicest fonts out there and having the liberty to use all existing fonts for the web is truly outstanding and great news for designers as well.

1. IT'S NOT A RACE - If you have a business or a web idea that you want to promote online . . . DO NOT HURRY to develop it. The most effective and useful websites on the internet have taken weeks, months, even years to develop and perfect!

If you rush, you will miss things! - Take the extra week, research your competitors, see how you can beat them with your website, come up with new ideas, do something differnt!

By taking the extra time, you can ensure that you have covered all aspects of your business and how you are going to promote it on the web successfully.


2. WHERE ON EARTH DO I GO? - There is NOTHING WORSE than visiting a website and you can't find the menu. It's hidden, it's flash animated, it doesn't work properly or it's even written in another language to be arty!

If you create a website with poor navigation, you can bet that users will spend an average 2 seconds on your website - and they will be spending that time trying to locate the back button on their browser!

Make your navigation clear, crisp and precise so that users can easily navigate around and find the info they need. By doing this they will stay on your website longer which can lead to future enquires for you business.

Try it out! What you think might be a good idea for navigation could be horrible for someone else. Why? Because you know how the menu will work in your head and other people would have no clue.


3. IT IS A MESS! - So you have 6 different columns, 5 different images, moving pictures and a nice big pop up banner and it's all on the one page. . . where do you want me to look?

LOSE THE CLUTTER PEOPLE!!

Your website needs to have the MOST IMPORTANT information CLEARLY made available to maximise your potential business.

If I visit a website and there are 10 different calls to action, I leave straight away due to sheer confusion.

This is a massive flaw that people have with their websites. They think that the more information they have on the page the better - yes i'll give you credit that a lot of information can help, just not all on one page . . . spread it out.

And obviously people leaving your website is a bad thing. Not only will you have a high bounce rate, but you will more than likely find your website ranking will head down the google chain and struggle to boost itself up because no one is visiting it!

Just remember:

Put the most important and relative information on the page. Put yourself in your potential visitor's shoes. They know NOTHING about you or your services. If they were to visit your site, would they be able to pick up the services you offer nice and quick? This is imperative- Use images to illustrate a certain point and not just for decoration. Images form a large part of clutter so make sure they are only there if you need them!


4. It don't matter if it's Black or White . . . or red or yellow or green with a little purple . . .

Stop overdoing it on the colour . . . . The other day I visited a children's website and I swear it had every possible colour in the world on the one page. This is not good, not good at all.

When people think of colours, they think "I need to make it look pretty", but what you should be thinking is "how can I use colours to direct my users' attention".

By this, I mean that if you have a tagline, header, or something important you want to point out to the user, colour should be your first port of call as it's where people's attention is drawn to.

When it comes to colour also, you need to make sure your colours match and complement each other - and please MAKE SURE it matches your logo . . . I can't tell you how many times I have seen a website with a Logo that does not even match the website colours and it looks horrible. 

If you are stuck on colours, Google colour charts or colour themes make sure the colours you are using match, otherwise you will lose a visitor's attention.


There are many other small things that people do wrong on websites, what you need to do is plan it properly, use common sense and most of all make sure that the website is user friendly!

If you need some advice on optimising your website to ensure it reaches is maximum possibilities with your target market, please give KAYWEB a call on 1300 794 636 and we will be able to provide you with some advice.

Now go get planning!

We are all hooked onto this social networking phenomenon, especially with Facebook and I guess you are all wondering how some of your friends are posting icons along with their comments.

The answer is easy: they use HTML symbol entities.

Some characters (e.g. the less than and greater than signs) are reserved for HTML markup. In order to display these characters as text, you must enter the HTML entities in the source code.

For example, to display the less than sign (<), you need to enter < (entity name) or < (entity number).

Among the entity list, there are quite a lot of symbol entities that we can use in layout design. For examples: → ♥ • “ ⊕.

Continue reading this post to find more surprises.

The Advantages of Using Entities Rather Than Images

• It loads fast because it is text base.
• Scalable according to font size.
• Easy to change color and sizing.

Apostrophe & Quotation Marks

Most common typography mistakes found on the internet are probably the mis-uses of apostrophe and quotation marks. We often misuse the prime symbol ( ‘ ) as the apostrophe ( ’ ) and the double prime ( " ) as the quotation marks ( “ ” ).

To correct this, you can use the right single quote entity (’) as the apostrophe. Use the left double quote (“) and right double quote (”) for the quotation marks.

Arrows

I particularly find the arrow symbols useful because they can be used as direction arrows or breadcrumb separators.

 

Link Separators

My favourite entities for separating links are bullet • ( • ) and dot operators ⋅ ( ⋅ ).

 

Trademark, Copyright, Degree, and Currency

The other commonly used entities are probably the trademark, copyright, degree, and currency symbols.

Trademark ™ | © Copyright | Registered Trademark ®
Currency: ¢ Cent | £ Pound | ¥ Yen | € Euro

 

Symbols For Web Design

Here some entities that you can perhaps use for design layout:

⊕ ⊗ ∞ ♥

 

Miscellaneous Symbols

Here are some miscellaneous symbols that you will most likely never going to use (but they are cool):

♠ ♣ ♥ ♦

 

So there you have it, all of the HTML symbol entities I can think of and with this post I hope to help people put new and exciting icons across the web.

Anyone from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe can access your page, which means you need to design with the world in mind. Of course, you can’t please everyone. But you can design your website so it’s easy to adapt for other languages, other cultures. By thinking global from the start, the act of localising your website later on becomes a whole lot easier.

Content Is King

Visitors won’t keep coming back to you website for a nice layout and appealing colour scheme alone. The old adage that ‘content is king’ shouldn’t be forgotten amongst all the bells and whistles of an aesthetically pleasing design.

Having a website in English means that around a quarter of the Earth’s population can read your website (and the vast majority of them will have English only as  a second language). So if you’re serious about making international inroads online, the time will probably come when you need to start thinking about converting your content for the global masses.

The world has many different writing systems and scripts, with the likes of Arabic, Greek, Russians and Chinese having quite distinct characters in their respective alphabets. With that mind, the need to use Unicode is imperative if you’re planning to develop your website for other markets.

Unicode is a standard numeric representation of characters that can currently be used for over 90 scripts, and has a repertoire of over 100,000 characters. More specifically, UTF-8 is a variable-length character encoding for Unicode that most programmers will be familiar with.

It is the best option when creating websites for international markets, as it allows you to use characters from countless writing systems. All the standard web design applications facilitate Unicode documents, allowing you to choose the language of your pages and insert appropriate HTML tags within the code.

Colour Mix-up

The colour scheme is a key consideration on any website – in fact it may be one of the first things many web designers think about.

But whilst colour preference is subjective and you can’t please everyone, colours also have cultural significance and it’s perhaps worth thinking about this before settling on a scheme.

For example, black denotes ‘death’ in many western cultures, but not so in eastern cultures, where white is the signifying colour for this. Similarly, red represents ‘danger’ or ‘passion’ in North America and Western Europe, but it can mean ‘purity’ in India. Furthermore, Orange is often used to represent autumn (fall) or Halloween in many regions around the world, but in Northern Ireland, it holds religious connotations for Protestants.

This doesn’t mean you should build a different website for each of your target markets, it just means it pays to be wary of culture and colour.

Graphics & Imagery

This depends on how you would like your website to look. A liberally-clothed lady on a website isn’t all that offensive to western audiences, but it may be a major letdown if you’re targeting more conservative cultures. So you may want to reconsider having such imagery on your website.

The same applies to any potentially divisive graphics, whether it relates to gender, religion, age…anything.

But there is a more practical consideration to be made when thinking about your graphics. Believe it or not, there are still many countries across the world without high-speed internet access, which means fancy Flash animations or other bandwidth-sapping graphics may preclude millions of potential visitors from accessing your pages. To circumvent this, one option is to have a simple HTML version for those on slower connections, and another version for those lucky enough to have superfast web access on tap.

Design & Layout

It’s not the end of the world if you have to develop separate templates to cater for other languages, but it will save you a little hassle if your navigation bar is in the same place across all your websites. A horizontal navigation bar will go some way towards aiding this consistency process.

These are just the very basics of creating a cross-cultural website.

The key point to remember when designing a website is that it is for international audiences and adopting a global mindset from the outset will stand you in good stead.

Happy designing and good luck!

In my past blog predicting web design trends for 2010 I covered the strong influence of print design techniques, keypress navigation, horizontal layouts, rich typography and aesthetically pleasing designs.

Web design today is developing rapidly, breaking the limits of conventional approaches and exploring the possibilites of upcoming technologies. Website designers are not only experimenting with new techniques and design approaches, but we are improving the quality of our designs in both technical and conceptual aspects.

Modern websites have flexibility, cross-browser compatibility and personalisation, but they are also becoming increasingly simple and intuitive. This is being done through the application of subtle usability enhancements, drawn either from the web itself or from offline interactive systems.

The web today is increasingly complex, while usage of the web is becoming increasingly simple.

The term is simple: usability.

I will enumerate new design approaches and techniques that are well-used today. Real-life buttons, great usability, subtle interactivity and the rapid adaptation of CSS3 that are applied to the web today.

Real-Life Buttons

One of the most striking features of modern web design and applications is that they provide rich user experiences. User interaction in such systems is becoming very straightforward and intuitive, even “native”.

I have seen more website designs in which design elements either imitate real-life imagery or hide the complexity of choice by letting users make more limited and simpler decisions.

Buttons are good example of the first advanced development. In web design today, buttons look and interact with users just like buttons in the real world. Buttons often look very realistic. They stand out, have vibrant colours and are very responsive. When the user hovers over or clicks on a button, they are often given visual feedback.

This approach doesn’t relate only to call-to-action buttons. It’s about using real-life imagery to convey the meaning and purpose of certain design elements in general. This approach reduces the complexity of user interaction.

Great Usability

Slideshows to showcase services and products is by nature a nice way to hide complexity because they reorganise plenty of information into a compact interactive area.

Slideshows are a good example of design solution that integrates both horizontal and vertical sliding navigation into one element. The layout is clean and provides a good overview of available features.

Pricing plan tables are also a good idea, because it helps users make a decision without having to inspect the whole table. Why display dozens of plans with dozens of features and not let the user make their own decision based on the most important feature of the application?

All pricing plans are summarized, so that users of the site wont have a difficult time to come up with a decision.

Single Log-In and Sign-Up is a great solution for reducing complexity for it combines multiple related features into one single feature.

For instance, instead of having two separate links and pages for logging in and signing up, you could offer users a single “Log in or sign up” button all at once.

The form would update via JavaScript after the user has selected a radio button. For this log-in form, notice that the “Submit” button says “Log in,” and there is a link to retrieve lost passwords. For the sign-up form, the label for the password field prompts users to “Choose a password” and “Sign up” and to accept the terms of service.

An alternative method would be to provide two input fields, labelled “Email” and “Password,” and then put a “Don’t have an account yet? Sign up!” link next to it. Both approaches would work fine for new and returning visitors.

Subtle Interactivity

Why subtle? Because it uses simple and almost traditional way to interact and woo-in would be regular visitors of a certain website.

They use navigation sprites, and simple Javascript popups, and fancy animation which they achieve without the aid of flash. They also use image navigation that disappears as users hover to a certain element.

Rapid adaptation of CSS3

With improving support of CSS3 features in major modern browsers, the design community seems very excited about the new advancements and out of the box possibilities. Everyone seems to be experimenting with CSS3; whether on RGBa transparency, advanced CSS3 selectors, CSS3 transforms, animations or other attributes.

The result is truly remarkable. We’re seeing many designs that are more beautiful, advanced, versatile and robust than before.

The most popular CSS3 features so far seem to be border-radius, animations, multiple backgrounds and box-shadow. This is understandable because these can easily be used to replace quirky earlier solutions that required workarounds and third-party tools to perform the task.

Also, @font-face is rapidly gaining popularity, but keep in mind that it is not a CSS3 feature because it was proposed for CSS2 and was luckily implemented in early versions of Internet Explorer. That's why it’s actually safe to use @font-face in designs today.

The drawback with CSS3 is that in order for the features to be easily applied to all major browsers, we will have to wait for Internet Explorer 8 to expire. And it remains to be seen how well the actual Internet Explorer 9 will support the new standard.

In the meantime, we will have to use CSS3 for modern browsers and integrate workarounds for IE, and there are plenty of them.

Web design progress has been astounding over the past months. Impossible designs are being implemented with pure CSS3, fuelled by the creative minds of the design community.

We may have entered another golden era of Web design, when crucial CSS techniques are being born, similar to that of 2003 to 2005 period when CSS Sprites and CSS Sliding Doors were developed. We have a couple of exciting creative years to look forward to and enhance our design capabilities and outside the box thinking.

Welcome to the new decade in web design!

 

In the last decade we witnessed new emergences in the world wide web. This new emergence not only marked newer and more innovative applications of the internet and its contents, it also opened up a whole new galaxy of trendy, stylish and useful designs.

 

And as the decade turns, I see the web design community predicting newer trends in the beginning of 'the teens'.

 

I have assessed other opinions and am happy to present my predictions for popular design trends for 2010 and beyond:

 

Oversized logo and header

This is an essential replacement of splash pages. Over-sized logos and headers will deliver key messages to visitors without requiring them to click on anything. It will necessarily target to create a visual impact easily recognised and remembered, especially considering bandwidth speeds have greatly improved.

 

I have been pushing for this one to take effect in some of my design studies way back in 2005 at another company, but it was not accepted at that point. I'm glad that the web is opening its doors to achieve it now.

 

Illustrations or hand-drawn designs

We have seen this trend in existence for a while, but not on a mass scale. Web designers across the globe are sure that this trend will become an integral part in web designs for years to come.

 

Typography

This still has issues. Using different typography in designs and mixing them up is quite experimental so far, and at times very confusing. I can still remember what my design mentor told me back in College to limit my typography to only two types, to maintain the unity and harmony of the design. It will remain a primary experimental part of web design in the years immediately ahead.

 

Single Page Layouts and Minimalism

With busier schedules, people have less time to surf a website. One page layouts would be one of the main trends in 2010 and beyond. The advent of modal javascripts - either mootools or jquery - has made it easier for developers to create it.

 

Internal pages can be shown at a one-page glance. However, this trend will largely be effective for personal sites and not for corporate designs.

 

Box and Magazine Type of Layouts

Brief, precise and consice. No more lengthy about us pages in 2010, but simply a few lines of condensed information about who you are. That's intro boxes and though we'll probably still see a lot of about pages along with it. Magazine style though is predicted largely due to the increase in the migration of more people from orthodox traditional media to online media.

 

This layout offers familiarity for all those people and also offers contents in a more organised pattern.

 

Oversized Footers

Footers have definitely changed over the years. It's now yet another zone in web design where contents show up. It will be good for SEO and usability as well. Oversized footers with useful display of contents and designs mixed should also become a trend in 2010.

 

Icons

This is not a new trend, though stylish icons have been there for quite a while and we all hope they will stay there.

 

Navigations will be composed mostly of icons and hints.

 

That sums it up. These are the trends that consensus believes will keep us busy for the coming year.

It has long been said that it takes two to tango. Web development is exactly like that. Web design cannot do it alone without backend support. But to a majority of users, website design has a big space in their consciousness; for them it is dependent on whether a certain site will be a success or a failure.

 

There is a sudden surge in demand for a beautifully made websites. Users don't want poor presentations anymore; they all like something else, something new to their eyes because they have become web-sophisticated. With the advent of css 3, almost any kind of design is now possible in web. It's like photoshopping your way to the world wide web.

 

True Beauty Comes From The Inside

Informed web designers and business owners alike know that design is vital to a successful website, and its beauty must go far beyond looks. While design needs to support a company's brand positioning, it must also effectively inform, communicate and provide positive experiences.

 

A winning website is one that delivers useful, relevant content that allows people to accomplish their goals quickly and easily. In today's hectic society, that's what makes a great and lasting impression on the Web.

 

Good design achieves simplicity through a range of elements - from a single point of focus to intuitive information flow to plain, familiar menu names. And as more people flock to the Web for everything from casual encounters to green homes, more businesses will likely lean on web specialists who can contribute to effective design.

 

Web professionals who specialise in select services, technologies and industries will increasingly thrive with higher client list and get paid accordingly. In contrast, jack-of-all-trade web types can't keep up with every emerging tactic and tool, and they'll eventually only appeal to and serve clients who are purely price-driven. These clients generally don't value expertise, nor are they willing to pay for it.

 

Additionally, web professionals will benefit from the fact that businesses are pushing more of their marketing dollars online - even those businesses that have been hesitant to shift from traditional media such as TV, radio and newsprint.

 

Moving marketing online makes more sense than ever. Something's off when typical consumers might spend 25% of their media time on the Web and a company is investing only 5% or so of its marketing budgets on websites and other online promotions.

 

An investment in a website will get almost any business a better return on investment than an ad in a newspaper, magazine or print telephone directory. A website can provide greater reach and superior exposure, and it works for a business 24/7 for multiple years.

 

Great Web Copy

Other people indicate a weak web copy would most likely prompt them to abandon a website, businesses should continue to take their web writing seriously.

 

While there appears to be increasing awareness surrounding web writing in general, many businesses continue to fail to recognise what a professional web writer can bring to a website and a business's bottom line.

 

Web writers, website content writers, SEO copywriters - call them what you will - these web copy specialists are often not even being considered a part of the equation when it comes to building or overhauling a website.

 

A well-versed web writer can help a business with everything from attaining traffic via search engines, to differentiating a business from competitors and conveying key benefits effectively, to achieving higher conversion rates.

 

Fortunately, as of late, there are more web-related organisations and schools introducing copywriting courses specifically for the Web, which promises to increase the supply and qualifications of web writers.

 

An increase in writers who specialise in the Web will help decrease the ineffective, error-laden, self-centered copy that is so common on the Web.

 

Faster Is Better

Making people wait is a BIG mistake and it will make them hit a competitor's site. The main objective is not to make them leave and explore a site at longer rates.

 

Good web designers and developers respond by optimizing images, streamlining HTML and avoiding dated gimmicks like Flash intros. But some designers and business owners alike continue to fall into such traps.

 

Unfortunately, web designers and business owners sometimes let their egos get in the way. They fail to acknowledge that when a prospect visits a website looking for information or to complete a task, that Flash intro will only get in the way, and potentially frustrate visitors.

 

Flash intros were tolerated in the '90s when the Web was a novelty. People were excited about this new thing called the World Wide Web, and spent countless hours surfing it. Today, however, most people want to get information and complete tasks in as little time and with as few clicks as possible, so they can get on with their busy lives.

 

Give Users What They Want

Internet professionals would better serve Internet users by collaborating and delivering simple, fast, useful and convenient websites.

 

Give Internet users what they want and everyone wins: web users benefit from ease of use and efficiency; businesses enjoy increased leads and sales; and the web professionals maximise income and fill their portfolios with winning websites.

We have recently witnessed strong advancement in the field of website layout and design. Everything evolves. Flash movies, gigantic animations and other graphic media have become increasingly widespread over the years.

 

However, in the effort to have the ‘coolest' website layout design, website owners tend to forget to whom they are creating their website for: their target audience.

 

The target audience consists of the people you want to visit your website. And this is one of the crucial areas to consider. Moreover, the goal is to increase visitors, make them stay for an extended period of time, purchase items or select your business' service, return to your website in the future, become a regular visitor or customer, and even recommend you to others.

 

The success or failure of your website is significantly determined by your audience. Hence, when designing for your target audience, consider the demographics of the people who you want to visit your site. These demographics include gender, ethnicity, race, age, education level, and even fiscal siatuation.

 

This is where market research is of help, to identify your audience.

 

Then, there are tools to determine the exact numbers and statistics once the website is launched, allowing you to see if you are attracting your audience as expected. These are tools like Google Analytics, Alexa, Quantcast, Goingup and others that provide detailed reports of the types of people that cover your REAL audience.

 

This is a great way to make sure your target audience is actually the audience that is viewing your website. You cannot always make everyone who visits your website stay or return, but when your website is concentrated on the correct target audience, then you increase repeat visitor chances greatly.

The web has evolved a lot since its boom in the late 90s. Especially web typography. Web typography deals with the font usage among websites. The clearer the font, the better.

 

Web typography deals with the line-height, text-spacing and colour, which are all text properties. Font styles and usage will greatly affect the design of a website as a whole. It can be boring or exciting.

 

There are still advancements in web typography, including using the image replacement technique. Using css, some use images rather than web type fonts. It enhances someone's site significantly. Of course the negative of this option is that text within images are not readable by search engines.

 

Regardless, good old web type fonts are best for corporate websites after a clean look.

 

With fonts like Arial and Times New Roman considered "default" fonts for some, there are other alternative fonts that web designers should consider. Here are my Top 4 (in no particular order):

 

• Verdana - A good sans-serif font with good width and readability. It's pretty versatile, looking nice at small and big font sizes. It may have become too common though.
  
  
• Georgia - The 'New Age Times New Roman'. I think the mistake most web designers tend to make is they use this as their base content font. Georgia works well as headings, but it's too stylized in my opinion. Here's a tip: Use this font with high line-height properties in your CSS if you plan to make this your base font.
  
  
• Tahoma - Very similar to Verdana, but I think this is more effective in small sizes. The Windows feel to this font makes it good for footer text and comments.
  
  
• Lucida Sans Unicode - A relatively narrower sans serif font compared to Verdana and Tahoma. It relies too much on the smoothing of the system. This works well for modern-looking templates.

As web designers, I think we all have experienced the hard task of finding new ideas and inspiration. Read on to find out how my work habits and how the environment influence my design.

 

Working at home kills your creativity.

 

My work habits and environment have a big influence on my work. So I’m going to talk about my work environment first.

 

Being a full-time designer, I get to work at the office and surf the web for the next big thing. Personally, I find it very boring working at home. I can lose my focus and concentration on the design I'm doing. To think about it, how can you find new ideas if you are constantly facing your work and computer.

 

Yes, you can browse the web or CSS gallery sites such as Best Web Gallery to find inspiration. But since my work is web design, I also prefer to find inspiration offline (this way I can avoid being overly inspired by other websites).

 

Our Office.

 

To keep my creative juices flowing, I like to surf the net for web designs and print designs. That way I'm exposed to both the web and print design works of others and the trends that goes with it. I find it amazing that I manage to do design work for my boss while looking for inspiration for the next design I'll be doing.

 

For design feedback, I like to ask my non-designer friends because they often give me comments from a different perspective.

 

Book Stores

 

Book stores are like a massive inspirational depot filled with a wide range of books, magazines, gift products, posters, and print ads. Whenever I have a brain block, I like to walk around the book store and scan the magazines, book covers, and post cards.

 

I like to see fresh people and things around me, so I don’t go to the same location all the time. I hop around, trying to find the best food on the menu... metaphorically speaking.

 

Shopping Mall

 

Shopping centres are also inspirational depots. You can get inspired by so many things – from clothing to print ads, from window display to mall decoration, etc. By looking at the fashion design, you can tell what are the current trends. I look at the fashion trends and adapt it in my design.

 

Art Galleries

 

To find new art styles and trends, I visit contemporary art galleries. Sometimes I may even spot inspiring street art while walking on the street.

 

Inspired by Nature

 

Yes you can also get that from nature. The cloud formation, flowers, insects and birds. Even the flow of water can be an inspiration.

 

How to Avoid Copying

 

It happens sometimes: you get inspired by something, become too focused on it and end up creating something that is too similar to the original source. So, how can you avoid being a copycat? I have two techniques which work really well for me:

1. Zoom into the subject and pick up the details.
2. Mix and match different sources.

 

Conclusion

 

Next time you are outside, try to pay more attention to you environment, you may find a lot of interesting things that you can incorporate into your design. I don’t purposely go around to find inspiration. The places I mentioned in this article are part of my life and daily routine. Whenever I see something nice, I sketch to document it.

 

The best thing actually is enjoying life and designing beautiful things.