Although we are now near to the end of February it is still time to get yourself a brand new business card design for 2012. I have searched around the web and found some great FREE templates for you to use and customise from Own Business Cards and Fresh Business Cards. Whether you are a designer, hairdresser or sales representative there is a neat collection to choose from. Get downloading today! I hope you...

Macrophotography is close-up photography, usually of very small subjects. Classically a macrophotograph is one in which the size of the subject on the negative is greater than life size. However in modern use it refers to a finished photograph of a subject at greater than life size. Source   Source The ratio of the subject size on the film plane (or image sensor plane) to the actual...

Capturing star trails can be a lengthy process but the end result is definitely worth it. How is it done? Well, it's done when the line of light which is recorded on a photographic medium and a time exposure is made of a star in the night time sky and using a camera on a fixed mount, and the trails are caused by the rotation of the earth during the period of time when the camera's shutter is held...

A logo is a small graphical element that has as main scope the representation of someone/something. This attempt of definition is preferable to the one provided by the Oxford Dictionary or Wikipedia because the main essence is synthesized. It’s simple: you instantly recognize an Apple product after the worldwide notorious logo. In the beginning, nobody figured out the importance of logo and many people consider i...

I've often visited my family and friends homes and admired the many galleries of children's artwork that get pinned on the fridge or kitchen notice boards. I know that when I was younger I was really proud that my mum had pinned my drawings on the fridge door and my dad even took them to work. Art is one of my many passions. Today I am still always sketching or doodling ideas on my notepad, iPad and even post-it...

My latest iPhone app addiction at the moment is the social drawing game Draw Something. When I have a spare 5 mins I have a quick blast against numerous friends and family no matter where they are in the world. If you've never played Draw Something then it's like having a mini game of Pictionary where you can draw on your mobile touchscreen devices and the other person has to guess the word from your drawings....

You may be mistaken for thinking that these are photos taken from the set of one the Lord of the Rings movies but in actual fact these are real examples of living architecture. The bridges you see are from Cherrapunji, India which is one of the wettest places on Earth and are actually made by tree roots. These bridges are very much alive! The amazing War-Khasis tribe in Meghalaya have been harnessing the...

8th December 2010 - I love animation and I have a vast collection of animation on display on my media shelves at home but on there you won’t find the sugary sweet world of Disney Cinema (apart from Pixar collaborations!) but a huge collection of Japanese anime. I’ve been hooked on anime since I was very young. I think the first experience of anime was Castle in the Sky and Akira. In this post I wanted to show ...

Japan 日本 is one of my favourite countries. I love the culture, the food and technology. Located in the Pacific Ocean, Japan is an archipelago that comprises 6,852 islands and has the world’s tenth largest population with over 127 million people. The Greater Tokyo Area is the largest metropolitan area in the world with over 30 million residents. The characters that make up Japan’s name mean “sun origin” and is ...

21 November 2010 - Liu Bolin a.k.a the 'Invisible Man' is an exceptional artist from Beijing who has the ability to blend in with his surroundings by painting himself to appear almost chameleon-like in his series of work "Hiding in the City". Liu Bolin says that his work his inspired by feeling uncared for and a sense of unnecessary in the world and also as a protest against the Chinese government who shut his ...

Welcome to our new Awesome Interior Design series where each month we bring you a collection of stunning designs created for the home or office. In this first instalment we present a gallery of stunning wallpaper designs which would look absolutely brilliant hanging on your living room or office wall. Wallpaper has been around for many centuries and is a kind of material used to cover and decorate the...

If you have been fortunate enough to be using Google+ recently you may have seen one of Trey Ratcliff's stunning photographs being shared in your streams. Trey is best known for his blog StuckinCustoms.com which is the No.1 Travel Photography Blog on the web and had the honour of having the first HDR photo ever to hang in the Smithsonian. Trey's background is in computer science and math, so he brings an...

I saw these photos the other day and was totally blown away. I have seen light painting before but these eerie skeletons by the fantastic Helsinki photographer Janne Parviainen are the best I have ever seen. Light painting is a special technique in photography when exposures are made at night or a dark room by moving the camera or a form of hand held light.  In many cases the light source itself does not ...

Throughout the ages, artists found ways to express their creativity and more importantly, themselves through different forms of art… now that we are in an era of digital revolution is no exception.  Photo manipulation is a technique where an artist (graphic designer) uses different photos or images to create a whole new scenario using a graphic manipulation application (e.g. Photoshop). It can also be a single ph...

I love art, I love photography and I love food. What if all these were combined? What are the chances? Well I need look no further because having checked out these truly delicious food landscapes created by the very creative Carl Warner then all my dreams have come true. Carl says that the food landscapes are taken in stages because this is to stop the food from wilting during the process and then put...

DestinyBlue (a.k.a Alice de ste Croix) is a professional anime artist from London, England and she has exhibited for over 40 anime and comic events. Alice has also run courses with the BBC on how to draw manga and has a range of bath goodies, lip-balms and candles branded with her unique style. Alice states that Final Fantasy has been her biggest inspiration for her amazing artwork.  Take a look at some of ...

The album cover plays an important part in the world of music. It's used as a marketing tool and also an expression of artist intent and over the last 50 years or so the album covers just keep getting more and more creative. In this mixed collection of album covers ranging from The Beatles to Daft Punk you can see some amazing works of art and they clearly they do their job of getting peoples attention. Although...

While I was visiting London the other month I came across some truly amazing 3D street art. 3D street art although drawn in 2D gives a 3-dimensional illusion when viewed from a specific standpoint. Some of the artworks are visually stunning and you can almost believe that what you are viewing is real. A lot of the street art you may see is actually clever advertising commissioned from a variety of the big...

Geisha (芸者?), Geiko (芸子) or Geigi (芸妓) are traditional, female Japanese entertainers whose skills include performing various Japanese arts such as classical music and dance. The word consists of two kanji, 芸 (gei) meaning "art" and 者 (sha) meaning "person" or "doer". The most literal translation of geisha into English would be "artist" or "performing artist". Another name for geisha used in Japan is geiko (芸子)...

I've always loved fireworks. They paint the dark sky in bright neon colours and can make a huge bang that gets your heart racing. No doubt this year in November I will be standing in the cold on Guy Fawkes Night which is a celebration in my country. I will probably be holding a nice hot chocolate in one hand and a toffee apple in the other going "ooohh" and "ahhh" at the many fireworks being let off into the sky...

The concept of good design represents the sum of several elements, all of them realized in a professional manner and then blended together. The final result is beautiful and functional at the same time. From this perspective, it is simple to comprehend that the quality of a design depends on more than just the components on their own. A very important factor that contributes to the overall aspect of a website in...

Whether you’re interested in designing logos, building websites, or helping clients to create incredible PowerPoint presentations, you may find that working as a freelance graphic designer appeals to your professional sensibilities and your distaste for traditional job markets.  There certainly are a lot of benefits to working for yourself; no annoying bosses or coworkers to contend with, no frustrating commute, ...

Every business needs a website and every website needs a contact form. Contact page should be visible and accessible on websites; it should be eye cache and error free. It should be with possible fewer numbers of fields and security code enabled to stop spammers. You must have seen different contact forms online with titles ping me, awake me, stay in touch, get in touch, etc... Yes, designers showing...

Well unless you have been hiding under a rock for the last several years then there must be some time in your life you have heard of or come across the No.1 social networking juggernaut that is Facebook. Love it or hate it and with more than 800 million users (real and bogus!) on there and companies and brands favouring promoting their Facebook page over their own websites it is hard to avoid these days. I have...

Typeface and their history is obviously an unappreciated evolution. However, the typeface from the first days of print until now is an ever changing medium, with more to it than there could ever seem to be. Typography is the study of typefaces and the evolution of printed letters. Early printers, were also typographers and the first registered one was a man named Claude Garamond. Garamond didn't invent type,...

If you are a Photoshop fan then you must know about the importance of textures in Photoshop. Online Photoshop community is awesome enough to provide huge number of free textures and brushes to fellow Photoshoppers. Wood textures among those which bring awesome background look to any design instantly. Especially when you create any model portfolio then these textures helps you to create a really cool wooden...

Continuing on from our previous post Creative 80’s Music Videos here is a superb collection from the 90’s. A decade where I think the music video really came alive.   Aphex Twin – Window Licker Love it or hate it this video by Chris Cunningham and Richard James which mocks the bling of hip-hop videos of old. The video starts with a particular lengthy intro and features a very long limo. The ...

The 90's isn't the one of those decades that sticks out for memorable design but one thing I do remember from the early 90's is the bright, trippy, euphoric design of UK rave flyers. If you can remember dancing your ass off all night to trippy repetitive beats from DJs like Sasha, Carl Cox and Grooverider whether it be in a club or field then some of these flyers you might recognize from back in the day. Let's...

A soon as I clapped eyes on these cute little artisan food miniatures I fell in love. The painstaking work that the artists have put into creating these great tiny masterpieces is just amazing. An artisan if you didn't know or craftsperson is a skilled manual worker who makes items that may be functional or strictly decorative, including furniture, clothing, jewellery, household items, and tools. An artisan is...

Web design has become more hand tooled, organic and versatile. Classic retro and vintage typography with authentic textures and withered paper backgrounds have helped bring back the grunge web design trend. Grunge gives web design more style and less uniform, there is no structure only worn out and faded graphic elements, these look beautiful and creative. The trend is inspired by the vintage and retro design...