4 Changes You Can Implement Today to Simplify Your Website Design and Make It Better
You will lose clients faster than the speed of light with a terribly cluttered website design.
I mean, just take a look at the next two examples I’m gonna show you.
So here we have a busy website, with no specific focal point, and you
don’t really know where to look, and it immediately stresses you out.
You lose the client because he clicks off your site.
When I look at this minimalist website design, especially compared to
the other, my eyes are immediately set to ease. It’s literally like the
inner designer in me just had the most amazing glass of wine and I’m
just enjoying myself, admiring the design.
Alright, enough comparisons. Let’s just get things rolling over here.
A good color scheme always warms my heart, like grandma’s homemade apple pie on a summer’s day.
Maintaining a color scheme amongst your text, background elements, and images will automatically make you look more organized.
By using a color scheme, you can also bring focus to certain elements and manipulate the eye to go where you want it to.
By no means do you ever want a green font on a bright red background
with orange and silver elements floating around the background. Unless
you want you website to look like Christmas got a little wild at the
Christmas staff party and vomited all over your website.
Go online or on any design inspiration website and type in popular
color schemes on 2020, or color palettes, and save time and effort by
finding beautiful palettes!
Photography has been and will always
be a key piece of design. Stock photos are no longer what they used to
be, luckily. No longer will you be seeing just those awkward group
photos of people laughing or two businessmen shaking hands.
No, there are so many stock photo sites for you to choose from with quality work from real photographers. Check out these 10 awesome free stock images websites!
I want to start this list off with a bang. Unsplash
is my personal favorite free stock image website. I use it for
everything from article writing to making designs. Unsplash has a huge
collection of images, consisting of over 110,000 high-quality free stock
images. Just type in a keyword and see hundreds of images that can suit
your needs. All images are released under Unsplash’s copyright policy.
Stocksnap
Stocksnap
has hundreds of new high-quality free stock images added to their
library every week. They have stock images to fit just about any
occasion you can think of. From website building to brochure making,
they having everything you need. You can find any image you need by
typing in tag words, and you’ll be presented with hundreds of images
that will be perfect for you. All images are free for you to use!
Pexels
Pexels
has one of the most beautiful stock images website interfaces I’ve ever
seen. Pexels provides tons of high-quality stock images that are free
for you to use under their license. With hundreds of thousands of
beautiful free images of you to choose from, surely you’ll find what you
need here.
Reshot
“Reshot.
Uniquely free photos. Handpicked, non-stocky images. Yours to use as
you wish”. That’s a pretty self-explanatory and sweet tagline. They work
hand-in-hand with amazing professional photographers and give them a
great place to display their work and be discovered. Find amazing free
stock images on Reshot!
Pixabay
Pixabay
has loads of free photos, but not only. They also have art
illustrations and vectors. All images, art illustrations vectors, etc
are released under Creative Commons CC0.
Life of Pix
Next up, we have Life of Pix.
Free high-resolution photography for everyone. Besides having loads of
amazing photos to choose from, they also feature a new photographer of
the week. Find new photographers whose work you love every week and in
turn, have tons of stock photos to choose from!
Foodiesfeed
Foodiesfeed
is for the foodie at heart. Which gorgeous, appetizing stock images
that look so delicious that you can almost smell them just by looking at
them. If you have a food blog or just need some inspiration, check out
this awesome stock image site.
Gratisography
Gratisography
is for the non-mainstream person. If you’re looking for the complete
opposite of the classic boring stock photo, this website is for you. You
truly won’t find photos like these anywhere else.
Foca
FOCA
is a great stock website if you’re looking for a little more than just
some stock images. They have everything from free photos to videos and
templates!
Kaboompics
Kaboompics
is so aesthetically pleasing, it hurts. The amazing blog pictures are
everything. According to their about page, Kaboompics is one of the most
popular sources of free images for lifestyle, interior design and
specialized bloggers in the world.
Free Vectors
Creating your own vectors can take up
so much of your precious time, and that’s why finding perfect vector
art or vector icons can be a major time-saver, but finding them for free
is like finding treasure. That’s why I picked out my 10 favorite free
vector websites. Check ‘em out.
Vexels
Vexels
has great free vectors for you to use for personal and commercial use.
What I really like about their vectors is that many of them are
editable. You can get everything from icons to backgrounds and designs
that are ready for print. Give them a try!
Vector Stock
Vector stock
has over 300,000 vectors for you to choose from. With such a wide
variety of vectors, surely you’ll find something that’ll suit your
project and save you loads of time.
The Noun Project
The Noun Project can be summed up in icons, icons, icons! They have over 2 million royalty-free
vector icons for you to use. And what’s better? You can edit them. That
is insane, people. Don’t sleep on the noun-project. They have all those
quality things you’re looking for.
Vector 4 Free
Vector 4 Free has
vector art for everyone. Their goal is to share vector art created by
professional designers with everyone. They have all sorts of formats,
such as .ai format, but also .eps, .pdf, .svg, and even .cdr. All of
their vectors are free for personal use, but for commercial use, you
have to check each artist’s terms of use, as they all differ.
Freepik
Freepik
has over 708,000 free vectors for you to use for personal use and also
for commercial use. The styles vary as far as feminine and
elegant-looking invitations to vectors that are perfect for backend
technology promotion. You’ll find every style you could need here, and
you can download everything in .Ai and .EPS formats.
Free Vector
Free Vector
is full of fun and colorful cartoonish vectors. They are basically a
world full of free vector art that is simply at your fingertips. Type in
your keywords in the search bar to find vectors that suit your style,
or scroll to the end of the page and find tons of categories to browse
through.
Vecteezy
Vecteezy
has thousands of gorgeous vector art for you to use. Everything is
copyright free, so you never have to worry about that. There are tons of
free vectors for you to use, or you can upgrade your account to a pro
account and have access to everything at your fingertips.
Flat Icon
Flat Icon
is the largest database of free icons that are available in PNG, SVG,
EPS, PSD, and BASE 64 formats to date! With a free account, you can
access thousands of free icons, or you can upgrade your account and get
millions of icons for free.
Pngtree
Pngtree
has wonderful vectors for you to choose from, and with a free account,
you have access to 2 daily downloads. Get royalty-free PNG images,
vectors, backgrounds, templates, and text effects from Pngtree.
Free Mockups
Showing real-life visuals of your
work to your client is a vital selling point, and that’s one of the huge
reasons that mockups are so crucially important. Here are 10 free
amazing mockup websites for you to use for your next project.
Placeit
Placeit
is a site where you can visualize all of your designs on products
within seconds. Not only can you just upload your images, but you can
also make designs on the platform, and create videos. Create your own
design, or try out one of their 32,938 smart templates!
Smart Mockups
Smart Mockups
is the fastest web-based mockup tool out there right now. It’s
user-friendly in the manner that advanced designers and beginners alike
can use and understand their product. You can use a free account and
create 200 mockups and use basic features, or you can upgrade your
account and have access to all mockups and features.
Mockuuups
Mockuuups
will generate tour product mockups in literally a second. The tool is
easy to use, as it is drag-and-drop based. Download the app to your
computer to start using. You can use a free account and still have
access to lots of features and mockups, or you can upgrade your account
to have access to everything!
Mckups
Mckups
has a beautiful, minimalist interface and beautiful, free mockups for
you to use. The mockups are hand-crafted by professional designers and
are just waiting for you to use them.
The Mockup Club
The Mockup Club
is absolutely free and that might just be my favorite part. It’s a
one-stop shop with loads of free mockups for you to use to showcase your
lovely designs.
Psd Repo
Psd Repo
has every mockup imaginable. From key-chains to shorts, to t-shirts, to
protein powder packaging, I think I can safely say they have it all.
The mockups are made by talented designers who want to share their work
with you for free. Download your favorite mockup as a PSD file and get
to designing!
Mockups Design
Mockups Design
is an easy-to-use website where designers can find professional mockups
for free to use in their next design project. From DVDs and CD to
letterheads and brochures. They have lots to choose from.
Good Mockups
Good Mockups
can be summed up about something like this: High-quality, hand-picked,
premium mockups for all to use. They strive to have mockups to fit
everyone and every design. With an entire list for you to go through, I
believe that they are truly well worth your time.
Mr. Mockup
Last but not least, we have Mr. Mockup. They have a team of professional and creative designers working to mockups for everyone. With a vast experience in designing just about anything, you can count on them to find beautiful mockups for your next design project.
Using the IcoMoon App, you can build your own custom fonts that only contain the icons that you need.
Pixel Perfect Results
Unlike similar services, the IcoMoon app takes grid sizes of icons into account and generates crisp, pixel perfect results. With a proper alignment, the font size you set would directly translate to the size of the icons.
Free Icons, Free App
The IcoMoon app is free. You don’t need to pay anything or give back any credit for using it. IcoMoon’s Library features many high quality icon sets. All of these icons are designed on a grid and they are optimized to be used with the IcoMoon app. Add any set you wish to easily browse and search its icons.
Awesome Iconography Tool
The IcoMoon app is an advanced iconography tool. It lets you sort your icons, manage your icon collections, or make your icons searchable by adding tags to them. In addition to fonts, you can generate PNGs, SVGs and CSS sprites in any size and color you wish.
Import Your Own Vectors
In the IcoMoon app, you can import your own vectors (SVG images or SVG fonts). Importing icons happens locally, in your browser. Your vectors won’t get uploaded to our servers when you import them. Some basic editing options such as moving, mirroring and rotating are available too.
Works Offline
Once loaded in your browser, the IcoMoon app works offline. When you import an icon or generate a font, everything happens locally, in your own browser. Your icons/fonts won’t be uploaded to our servers. You can even load the IcoMoon app when you have no connection if you install it from the Chrome Web Store.
Multiple Ligatures Per Glyph
Instead of assigning single characters to your glyphs, you could assign different tags to them (ligatures). This feature is especially useful for fallbacks or desktop usage of the fonts. Learn More…
The golden rule of creating great web-based projects that provide online audiences with good user experiences is to not let them wait. It seems like a really simple task, however it just sounds so. Completely upload your content-intensive website that is populated with high-quality, heavy multimedia data in the blink of an eye is simply impossible due to imperfections inherent to modern technologies. All that remains to do is find a way of forcing people to stay while they are waiting. And making use of page-loading effects is an optimal solution here.
Spinners, loading bars, basic counters can do the job perfectly well. They give a notion that something happens in a pleasant, entertaining and enticing manner. With just a bit of imagination, you can transform a plain loading indicator into a real masterpiece that will amuse users by diverting their attention from idle process as well as enrich your website design aesthetics.
Page-loading effects are not just whimsy; they are a must-have for any complex, content-heavy or dynamic project. If your project falls into one of these categories then you should definitely take a look at our varied and fresh collection of free page-loading effects; we hope you will definitely find a perfect match for your website here.
Free Page-Loading Effects
Inspiration for Article Intro Effects
The team speculates about various intro animations that should accompany page appearance thereby enriching user experience. The collection includes:
Pushing techniques
Fade out effect
Slice effect
Grid-based solutions
Imitation of an effect seen on Jam3
You will be able to freely grab a source file; however it can only serve as a starting point.
Page Loading Effects
The team gives you hints how to transform a boring loading time into an enjoyable and visually-appealing pastime by equipping your website with some fantastic SVG animations based on Snap.svg. The article covers a bunch of different effects, namely:
Lazy stretching
Windscreen wiper
Tunnel vision
Basic effects such as tilt, wave, and curtain
Page Preloading Effect
Unlike the previous two examples, this team has concentrated on producing only one solution that should brighten up an appearance of the page with a help of a simple, small yet fancy animation based on an effective collaboration of CSS3 3D transforms and SVGs. You will be also able to insert your logo into it thereby showing off your trademark from the first second.
Creative Loading Effects
The project is created in order to provide developers with a sheer inspiration, yet, you can still freely grab several valid code snippets that will enhance your page with some alluring loading effects. The range covers 13 solutions including popular YouTube loading bar, standard expanding box, circular indicators and others.
Display Animation While Page Loading Using jQuery
The tutorial regards a really simple but fundamental solution of how to properly implement a loading indicator in order to engage users. The author offers two ways of resolving this problem:
Using loading image in CSS and a HTML div element with jQuery bind function
Using loading image inline in HTML with jQuery load function
jQuery Full Page Loading Animation
The developer shows a simple and easy-to-reproduce solution for creating a full page loading animation. You can modify it according to your wishes without hustle and bustle thanks to a really clean code and intuitive technique.
CSS Load
This is a small yet really useful online generator that will assist you with creating visually-appealing preloaders based on new CSS3 features. Thanks to several basic customization options you will be able to:
Choose an animation template
Set colors
Set size
Specify animation speed
Turn on reverse animation
Page Loading Effects
Rik Roots gives you an opportunity to not only contemplate some interesting and original loading effects but also lets you use this piece of code. Here you will find enticing animations that include:
Fog
Rolling rectangle
Spinning star
“Chop from top” technique
“Clear with circles” approach
Preloaders
This is another helpful and feature-rich online generator that allows building your own preloading effect. The customization choices will surprise even a sophisticated user; the service offers plenty of categories, where you can find pre-made elements starting from standard loading bars and ending up with zodiac signs. Each category includes its own range of options, opening to you almost endless possibilities.
Display Loading Animation While an External Page is Loading in a RadPane
Those who adore ASP.Net Ajax will definitely recognize the real worth of this short yet useful tutorial that features a basic technique of creating and displaying a loading animation. It is based on several steps that involve working with RadSplitter control, global variables and JavaScript functions.
The script is connected to RadPane that is used for loading external pages, so take it into account.
Loading Overlay
This is a tiny, lightweight and pretty helpful jQuery plugin that lets you both add and remove a loading overlay to a selected element. You can use it with any component you like. Available options allow:
Adding icons
Specifying text
Altering appearance through CSS styling
jQuery Loading Animation
The author explains how to properly use jQuery in order to create a loading animation with your message. The technique is simple, the code is clean and styling is straight-forward, so you can easily adapt this code snippet to your needs as well as modify it. The solution looks good whether the user has disabled JavaScript or not.
Page Loading
Want to load your homepage gradually line by line or simply make the presentation of your images interesting? Then leverage this effect.
The animation was created by Pedro Ivo Hudson, who has implemented a CSS transitional changing effect based on Bezier Curve that allows controlling the timing function in order to set the required speed.
YouTube Page Load Effect
The developer has quite successfully imitated an elegant page load effect seen on YouTube. Though the solution is based on a quite complex linear interpolation function, yet it works like a Swiss watch: i.e., reliably and accurately. The code snippet is really clean and apprehensible, so even if you are only a newbie you will be able to put it to work.
Animation on “load”
The aim of this small project is demonstrate how to correctly initiate an animation when a page loads. Of course, you can add text, set a background color and change timing and duration.
CSS3 Spin Loader
Ricardo Zanutta created a subtle vibrant flat style CSS3 spin loader that will look wonderful on any web page whether it has dark or light coloring. The snippet includes a function for displaying a preload page as well.
Here, almost everything is done with a help of CSS, so you will be able to set your own parameters through the styles file.
PACE
Pace is a tiny, intelligent plugin that monitors various elements of your page including Ajax requests and event loop lag in order to decide the progress and switch on a nicely animated progress bar just in time.
It is easy to install with a help of Eager that sorts out all issues. As for modification, the development team has blessed you with dozens of neatly-crafted flat style themes.
Full CSS Ball Loader
This bouncing vibrant ball loader is well-suited for projects with an entertaining atmosphere. The effect is accomplished only with a help of CSS3, so it won’t work correctly on old browsers and on those that do not support new, advanced features.