Webby freebies » Graphics

Stone textures in modern web design: Examples and Resources

admin — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 14:00:45 +0000

As I have said in my previous articles in this series, it is very common nowadays that websites use textures. This post is about how modern websites use stone textures as backgrounds and also where to download these textures. Just download some stone textures and read tutorials that can help you to use them in your next project.

Examples of websites

Textures to Download

Feel free to choose a stone texture package to download and use for free. Read photoshop tutorials to know how to use them well.

Stone Texture Pack

This package from PSD-fan contains 10 hi-res textures. Download them from here.

Brick & Stone: Texture Pack

Devisefunction have made these 24 really high-resolution textures to download for free.

7 High Resolution Stone Textures

These beautiful hi-res stone textures can be downloaded at MyInkBlog.

Jeans textures in modern web design: Examples and Resources

admin — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 21:05:08 +0000

Since my post on the Wood texture in modern web design became quite popular, I do not want to disappoint you. Here comes the sequel. Take a look at these stunning examples of websites with Jeans textures. But even more importantly, check out these beautiful jeans textures which you can download for free and edit.

Examples of websites

Textures to Download

9 beautiful denim texures for your work

I made this post a while ago and as the title says, it contains 9 really flexible and hi-res jeans textures that can be modified for almost everything. You need to check it out!

20 High-Resolution Denim Textures

Six Revisions says: “Denim is a wonderful material that can be used in many designs. In this collection, you’ll find 20 free high resolution denim textures. Each one was professionally taken using a DSLR camera in RAW format, then converted to uncompressed JPG for ease of use.”

10 Free High-Quality Jeans Textures

This post at Naldz Graphics and contains 10 really nice jeans textures that you can download from flickr for free. These have no strange pattern and are therefore highly flexible.

Denim Textures

These beautiful denim textures are made by the DeviantArt user, messa. The size of the package is about 28 megabyte and that means that these textures got really high resolutions. Check it out!

Paper textures in modern web design: Examples and Resources

admin — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 23:34:41 +0000

Since my post on the Wood texture in modern web design became quite popular, I do not want to disappoint you. Here comes the sequel. Take a look at these stunning examples of websites that uses Paper textures. But even more importantly, check out these beautiful paper textures which you can download for free and edit.

Examples of websites

Textures to Download

Paper pack

This wonderful package of paper textures made by Yaolin Yaolin contains 12 high-resolution textures that you can preview and download here.

6 Old sheets of paper textures

This package of great textures is also made by a DeviantArt user named env1ro. You can preview and download these 6 textures from here.

8 Free High-Res Card and Paper Textures

These textures are great, and can be used for a lot of things related to graphic design. Preview and Download here.

10 Free and Exclusive Paper Textures

This is also a texture package that has a lot of possible use. And you can also download this package that contains 10 paper textures from PSDfan.

Free High Resolution Plain and Grunge Paper Textures

Well, you can not miss this paper textures package from Fudge Graphics that contains 12 high resolution textures. Preview and download here.

Wood textures in modern web design: Examples and Resources

admin — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 18:19:42 +0000

It is very common nowadays that websites/blogs uses a textured background. This article will only focus on wood textures, how they can be used and where to find them. Read some tutorials on how you can change the look of your textures with a couple few effects in Photoshop, and you will get a very nice background for your next web design project.

Examples of websites

Textures to Download

17 high resolution wood textures for free

I made this post a few months ago. It contains 17 really beautiful high resolution wood textures that you can use for almost everything.

High Res Wood Texture Pack

This wood textures package contains 8 high resolution textures. You can preview and Download it here.

9 Free Hi-Res Wood Panels Textures

This package contains 9 high resolution wood textures. Preview and Download it from the post on Fudge Graphics.

Woodwork texture pack

This package called Woodwork texture pack also contains 9 hi-res textures. Preview and Download here.

Free Hi Resolution Wood Textures

We can not forget these beautiful woody textures from Bittbox. You can preview and download them here.

StumbleUpon and its incredible power

admin — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 16:58:54 +0000

There are a lot of different social networks out there, and some of them have a huge impact on blogs and their traffic. Some of these are Delicious, Twitter, Digg and StumbleUpon. But this article will only be about StumbleUpon and its great power. These listed items describes what will be discussed in the article.

How StumbleUpon works
How to get huge traffic
Graphics and icons
Further reading

Let us begin to describe how StumbleUpon works and why you should use this social network if you blog. But do not forget to subscribe to me and I will subscribe to you too.

How StumbleUpon works

StumbleUpon is like many other similar social networking, a place to meet other like-minded people, people with same interests as you. What is special about StumbleUpon, and why I named the title as I did, is that this social networking lets you meet people who have the exact interest as you, and it’s pretty easy to get people to visit your blog / website.

StumbleUpon allows each member to choose one or more categories that he / she is interested in. In my case, I only chose Graphic Design. That way I can use my “Stumble!”-Button to see blogs, blog articles, images, movies and so on which I am interested in.

Once you become a member of StumbleUpon, you can download a toolbar, which you use when you surf the Internet. It looks like this:

If I press the “Stumble!” button I will be redirected to a website that someone else has thumbed up and which is in my category, Graphic Design. In this way, I will come to a web site that someone else surely want me to visit. This gives the publisher more traffic to their website / blog, and I get something interesting to read.

The more people that thumbs up your item, the more Stumblers will see your article. If you press the “I like it!” button, you will save the page you thumbed up on your StumbleUpon profile. If you press the “I like it!” button on your own article and have no friends in your network, no one will probably stumble your article, because no one will notice that you have made a discovery.

My profile

When I started Webby freebies I made a new profile on StumbleUpon, just to have friends who have exactly the same interests as me. So I show you, therefore, how a relatively new profile looks like. Please subscribe to me and I’ll subscribe to you too, and we can share our favorites to each other. In this way, both you and I will grow our social networks on StumbleUpon.

How to get huge traffic

As promised I will now give you my top 10 list on how to do to get extremely high traffic to your blog. Here I list my own experiences from my blog that I run alongside, and other bloggers tips.

Start by using StumbleUpon’s service to search through your IM buddies to see if any of them are using StumbleUpon. That way you get easy a lot friends who are probably happy to help you thumb up your articles.
Try to find people who like your articles, or perhaps have discovered them. Try then to find profiles that have the same interests as you. Subscribe to them and send a private message to them which tells them that you like their favorites and that you would like to be friends with them. By the way, you are now “friend” with a person on StumbleUpon that you subscribe to and which also subscribes to you.
Make sure that the articles you publish has an interesting title. As “The Secret of How to get huge traffic.”
Also, make sure you have a button on your blog that remind people that press the “I like it!” button.
Thumb up your friends’ items so they do not believe you just use them. Finally, they will only thumb down your articles.
Reduce the time it takes to load your blog. Otherwise, users will simply press the “Stumble!” button again.
Tag your articles right. Make sure that your articles do not fall under the category of books, if it belongs in Graphic Design.
Be an active stumbler. Make sure that no man ever miss you. Stumble as much as possible and as soon as you have time.
Use the share function, and the most active stumblers will see that you want your articles stumbled.
Use services such as StumbleXchange to get your articles thumbed up.

Graphics and icons

It is important that you also optimize your blog using nice buttons or other graphics so that people can more easily share your articles. And since this is a blog for freebies, this part is one of the most important parts of this article.

I do not know if you have seen it but I did an article a while ago that is totally focused on icons for social networking. That post includes those really cool icon sets and many other: