5 Cool Spring Break Photos

 Design  No Responses »
Jan 232013
 

Hello again designers, bloggers, and image searchers!

If you live in the northern latitudes, it is probably pretty cold where you are right now. Coming soon to a beach not so far away, is a little thing called Spring Break. Whether we are referring to college students migrating south for a week of fun in the sun, or families hitting the beach during Easter vacation, it is big business for the travel industry.

So as you put together your articles and layouts, you will probably be in need of Spring Break Photos. That’s what we are looking at today. We’ve put together a list of 5 excellent royalty-free, high quality stock images focusing on the Spring Break phenomena that you can easily drop into your layouts.

All of these images are Fair Trade Images, which come from the Warmpicture Images project. Warmpicture is the only stock images agency founded by, and run by the artists themselves. Fair Trade refers to the artists receiving a minimum 50% commission each sale (iStockphoto gives their artists as little as 15%). Because Warmpicture does not have shareholders, and a large amount of company overhead, Warmpicture is able to offer images at significant discounts to large stock agencies.

Let’s get right to it. Here are our 5 favorite Spring Break Photos, ready for any article, advertisement, or graphic design layout dealing with warm weather vacations and Spring Break.

teens-on-beach

Teens on the Beach – by Mandy Godbehear. This image depicts two pretty, natural teens on a tropical beach enjoying the sun while listening to their mp3 players.

lone palm tree

The perfect tropical beach photo. This image by Katrina Brown shows a pristine beach, with clear blue waters, and a lone palm for impact and interest. The beach photo has plenty of copy space.

Child at Ocean

Here’s a fantastic beach vacation image! Luis Santos brings us this excellent photograph, depicting a boy with snorkeling gear getting ready to enter the beautiful blue waters of a tropical beach. Lots of copy space here to get your message across.

Sunrise Silhouette of Palm Trees

Here is an image which you can melt into. This photo captures the silhouette of a grove of palm trees against the setting sun over the ocean waters off Hawaii. This spring break photo will make you feel the warmth of the tropics.

surf boards on spring break

Surf’s Up! Steve Cukrov captured these colorful surf boards at the beach. The colors are very complimentary, and the blue background waters and puffy cumulus clouds tell a great story about the fun that awaits.

These are our personal favorites, but there are plenty more where that came from. The Warmpicture Images Project has an entire category’s worth of travel images. We recommend you also check out the Fun and Leisure category, or simply use the Search Box to zero in on exactly what you are looking for.

That’s all for today. Remember to support Fair Trade when searching for stock images. See you at the beach!

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Paul Simonon of The Clash – Redefining Music, Design, and Art

 Design, Guest Articles  1 Response »
Nov 072012
 

Early Years

Paul Simonon, best known as bass guitarist with punk band the Clash, was born in Croydon 15th December 1955 and grew up in Brixton, South London. He attended schools where his contemporaries were mainly African American and so developed a love of soul and Caribbean music. He also had a passion for art and showed talent as a painter winning a scholarship to the Byam Shaw School of Art.

Moving into Music

Paul Simonon

Paul Simonon of The Clash. Photo by Rama

Whilst still at art school Simonon became interested in music and decided to audition as a singer for local band London SS. He failed to get the position but struck up a friendship with the band’s guitarist Mick Jones who taught Simonon to play the guitar.

Paul was not a natural musician and initially struggled to learn the instrument prompting Jones to teach him bass guitar instead. The pair then recruited guitarist and singer Joe Strummer and formed the Clash, a name conjured up by Simonon after reading an article in a newspaper. Paul dropped out of Art school in his second year to pursue his music career.

The Clash

Unable to properly play Bass at the inception of the Clash, Simonon was mainly responsible for the artistic aspects of the bands efforts, the clothing, staging and promotional material.

The band’s image was an important part of their appeal and Simonon was to become punk’s pin-up boy. The group quickly developed a following on the growing punk scene with their distinctive sound underpinned by Simonon’s reggae influenced bass lines.

They were signed by Epic in 1977 finding immediate success with their first two albums, “The Clash” and “Give ‘Em Enough Rope”. The third album “London Calling” established the outfit as one of the world’s premier punk bands and the cover, featuring Simonon smashing his guitar, is one of the punk era’s most enduring images.

Rock The Casbah

The band released three further albums, “Sandanista!” “Combat Rock” and “Cut the Crap”, the latter after the departure of Mick Jones whose relationship with the other band members fell apart. Simonon played bass on the majority of the Clash’s tracks but notably not on “Rock the Casbah” one of the group’s most successful recordings. He was known for playing white Fender Precision basses and used his artistic talent to decorate these, but was once given a Black Rickenbacher by Patti Smith, which he also decorated but did not much like.

Demise of the Clash

The Clash parted company in 1986. Simonon went on to form the short lived Havana 3am before joining Damon Albarn’s project The Good, The Bad and The Queen. He collaborated with Albarn and Mick Jones on the Gorillaz album “Plastic Beach” and was the bass player on the live tour to promote the album.

Return to Art

Paul Simonon has now returned to his first love, Art and painting for a living. He admits to not having made a fortune with The Clash, “People think if you’ve got a number one single you’re loaded. But I have to make a living. This is not some sort of feet-up, chuck paint around thing”. He has designed album covers and has had several gallery exhibitions, with one of his works being bought by Lily Allen for £23,500.

Much of his work portrays his home city, London, and is painted outside from rooftops. He also produced a series of pieces inspired by bull fighting following a trip to Madrid. It is doubtful that he will return to music and has said “To be honest I’ve got to the stage now where I just want to paint – I’ve done my time with the music”.

Activist

In 2011 Paul joined a Greenpeace mission aboard the MV Esperanza. The mission was in protest at Cairn Oil’s drilling in the Arctic. He joined the ship’s crew undercover as an assistant cook and joined other activists in illegally boarding one of Cairn’s rigs. He was arrested and spent two weeks in prison. Only after this was his true identity revealed to the rest of the crew who declared him to be hard working and an excellent cook !

About the Author

Peterborough Music offer a great range of bass guitars  if you want to ‘rock the casbah!’

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The Perfect Colors For Your Website

 Design, Guest Articles  No Responses »
Oct 082012
 

Success or failure of your website depends on a few factors. It is clear that the primary role belongs to the building of a website and its content. But what can be even more important – the colors used in the design of your site.
Designing a site is more about wise selection of colors, because they are the first thing that users respond to. Color has a strong psychological impact, subconsciously affects our choice, and in the case of the proper choice may cause the desire to return to the resource and use a suggested service or a product.

The importance of a competent selection of color scheme for a website escapes the attention of a vast number of designers. Color scheme is one of the main components of a website and it is simply obliged to reflect the features of your brand. Colors may keep your visitors on the website as well as make them leave. There are a lot of websites with excellent design and perfectly chosen content, but even an average user immediately feels that something is wrong when he sees a site with the wrong color scheme.

That’s why a designer should always be very attentive to the color scheme. The first impression which your web site will create depends on it. If you feel that the color scheme is not entirely successful, you need to reconsider it as soon as possible. If you do not like it, so your visitors will not like it too. Different colors have different effects on our emotional and physical conditions. They can cause both positive and negative emotions.

It’s obvious that the final decision to buy a product or a service is made under the influence of the properly chosen color as well as of other site features. So every website development company should put its eyes to the implementation of design with understanding that color is a powerful marketing tool. A designer who can manage colors and understands how color affects the emotions and feelings of a person, is able to develop a truly successful website design, which will make the right impression on the user even in his first visit.

To help you correctly navigate in the world of colors, we want to recall the values and properties of the primary colors:

Red is the most eye-catching and attention attracting color. It is active, energetic and aggressive, associated with fire, passion, life and activity. It can be frustrating as well as exciting; it can give strength, but may cause concern. Everyone sees a different red. It is better to use the red color with cool shades (blue, green, etc.) in the website design.

Red color urges people to make a quick decision. So if you need quick results, it’s good to use red. This color will be great for male site.

design color example

Orange color helps to get rid of unpleasant emotions, helps in communication, and gives buoyancy. Orange has some properties of red and yellow as it is located between these two colors.

This color is usually used on websites for young people and teenagers. Orange also fueling the appetite of the person, so it is perfect for cooking resources or website that promotes a restaurant. Slout people do not like this color, so better don’t use it for portal about diets, weight-loss etc.

Yellow is the color of the sun, fun, ease and freedom. It improves mood, helps to generate new ideas. The site with the yellow color creates an ease and lightness in the visitor’s mood.

Yellow motivates to communicate, meet new people and journey. It is best to use on portals about dating. Married and pregnant women like this color so it will be great choice for female website.

Dark blue – is a calm and wise color. It creates the feeling of security and stability. It helps to focus and realize the ideas. Do not tire your eyes. In the site’s design it is recommended to combine the blue color with other colors and more neutral shades.

The blue color of any shade is perfect for informational, educational, financial and legal sites. Dark shades of it can be used in the sports and political projects.

Blue – is the color of sincerity and peace. It gives creativity and helps you to get used to the changes.

Light shades of blue will be the great choice for sites about health or leisure (as this color symbolizes the sky, air, water and cleanliness).

Green – is the color of nature. It embodies harmony, goodness and naturalness. It has a relaxing effect.

Green color is often associated with money and power. So, it is used on corporate sites and sites related to the financial sector.

Gray – is a neutral color. It causes no strong emotional reactions. It is respectable, cold and formal. Usually gray is used for information portals and social networks.

Black – is associated with some mystery and conservatism. It commands respect and gives you a feeling of dignity and authority.

If you decide to use in site design this rigorous, conservative color, it will emphasize the seriousness of this resource, which is recommended for the so-called business sites.

 

A few tips on color mixing:

The main requirement for a pair of colors for text and background is enough contrast between colors for comfortable, fatigue-free reading.

Usually colored web-pages can be divided into two groups: those with a dark text on a light background and a light text on the dark background. The latter is much more popular than the first (if we ignore the traditional black and white pages that have a significant majority).

An example of a typical solution is dark text on light background.


The second type of colors refers to the light text on a dark background. In this case, it will be advantageous to choose a bright and rich tone of the text, which, of course, requires a dark background. An example:

And a site that compiles both approaches at once:


Colors in web design is an extensive, multifaceted and even paradoxical theme. Any talented web designer has a distinctive, recognizable “color style”. It is shown up not in a commitment to certain tones, but in the relation to colors, individual manner of contrast and harmonization of similar colors. That is why it is very important to be ensured that website development company that is working on your site is highly professional and has a number of skilled designers.

Any website development company should take into account all the nuances to provide the visitors of their websites with the most magnificent, stunning and memorable design. Properly chosen color scheme will create a favorable atmosphere, encourage visitors to certain actions, or will create the necessary feeling and impression.

About the Author

Zfort Group is an exclusive software outsourcing company based in Ukraine, Eastern Europe. Zfort Group delivers premium IT outsourcing services for clients from all over the worlds since 2000. All kinds of web development, consulting and B2B solutions were implemented in numerous successfully developed projects. Zfort Group is an excellent IT outsourcing service provider for the businesses of any kind and size.

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The Future of Advertising

 Blogging, Design  No Responses »
Aug 142012
 

When the television first came on the scene, it was arguably one of the greatest advertising mediums ever conceived. With more people watching television each passing year, advertisers and businesses jumped on the opportunity to market to the ever-growing number of new viewers.

old television

Image artistry by USB

Since then, the average consumer’s relationship with television commercials has been one of mixed feelings, ranging anywhere from annoyance to surprise. For the most part though, they’re still considered to be an inconvenience.

The Viewers Fight Back

When TiVo came around in the late 1990s, the game began to change slightly: Viewers had control over commercials, and could conveniently skip over them with the click of a button. While it helped make their lives a little more enjoyable, the caveat was that it resulted in greatly reduced revenues for television networks that relied on advertising to make money.

Over the next decade, numerous other Personal Video Recorder (PVR) devices and on-demand services such as Netflix, Hulu, and YouTube, began to pop up. Although this hasn’t reduced advertising completely, there’s no doubt that it’s not only led to a decrease in television viewership, but also a decrease in advertising revenues as more and more people seek ad-free viewing mediums.

So Why Do Users Hate Commercials in the First Place?

Actually, they don’t! Although commercials can be an inconvenience, it’s safe to say that a good majority of television viewers and Internet users harbor no particular grudge against advertising as a whole. In fact, there are some occasions where a commercial will not only be relevant to its viewer’s interest, but will entertain them as well. To the viewer, these commercials seem less like pushy advertising and more like entertainment.

For example, consider Super Bowl commercials: During one of America’s most-watched television events, grabbing and keeping the attention of the audience is of incredible importance. Advertisers and marketers will go out of their way to ensure that their commercials are as entertaining and interesting as possible. Because of this, they’re not only incredibly effective, but are also half the reason why so many people watch the Super Bowl in the first place!

Making a commercial entertaining, however, isn’t the only way to make it effective. Another method growing in popularity is custom-tailored advertisements, which exist primarily through mediums such as Hulu and YouTube. By keeping track of what users are watching, publishers are able to display ads that are relevant to the user’s interest and viewing patterns. Many online ads are also interactive, allowing the user to have some role in how they’re displayed.

All of these different methods have resulted in far better advertising, as well as commercials many viewers actually want to watch! Looking at this trend, we’re able to accurately predict what may very well be the not-so-bleak future of advertising.

Relevant, Interactive, Entertaining, and Customized Advertising

It’s safe to say that people don’t necessarily dislike commercials, they just dislike uncreative, boring, and “bad” advertising. As online viewership steadily grows, there’s a good chance that televisions will either change entirely or simply develop a way that advertisements are shown to users based on the channels they’ve watched, similar to how online advertising works at the moment. Television advertising may also start to shift more towards non-invasive product and ad placement, such as having brands show up in episodes of shows or occasionally placing small ad banners along the bottom edges of the screen.

With more people online, it’ll be far easier for marketers to create specially-tailored ads that are not only relevant, but are also entertaining and interactive to a certain extent. With such a system in place, commercials and advertisements may not be so annoying anymore!

About the Author

Jennifer Carrigan wrote this article on behalf of 522 Digital, a creative agency that can help with your company’s advertising.

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Do Premium Images and Stock Photos Make Websites Better?

 Blogging, Design, Stock Photography  No Responses »
Jul 212012
 

A common question asked by bloggers and website designers is whether or not premium stock images make their websites “better.” In this article we will attempt to answer this question, and provide examples of how stock photos improve website design. And we will also outline situations where stock photos should never be used.

First Impressions

It is common for visitors to drift their eyes over images before they read the first word of text on your page. We are naturally attracted to vibrant images, and we tend to form opinions about the quality of the webpage very quickly. These first impressions greatly influence whether visitors bounce away from the page and never return, or stay and read the entire article.

City Sunrise and Road

Attention Grabbing Stock Photos Make a Big Difference

It is paramount that any images chosen for inclusion on a webpage be of sufficient quality. While it might be “free” to throw up a photo you took with your own camera, you are taking a great risk if your photographs are not high quality.

To quote Google:

“Good-quality photos appeal to users more than blurry, unclear images. In addition, other webmasters are much more likely to link to a good-quality image, which can increase visits to your site. Crisp, sharp images will also appear better in the thumbnail versions we display in our search results, and may therefore be more likely to be clicked on by users.”

For this reason, spending a few dollars on a professionally photographed stock image is a cheap investment with a large payback. A well composed, attention grabbing image properly represents your blog post, or webpage, and keeps your visitors engaged.

Image Indexing = Traffic

Another reason to have high quality images on your webpage is because they get indexed by search engines. When your image gets picked up by a search engine, it gives you another source of traffic. For instance if you have a webpage about the benefits of fish oil, and you have an image of fish oil capsules on your webpage, the image will get indexed.

When someone searches for an image of fish oil capsules, chances are they will find the image which was indexed from your webpage. Clicking on it will send them to your webpage, thus giving you free traffic.

This is where having chosen a high quality image pays off. A low quality image is not likely to be clicked on, but a very nice stock photo will stand out in a lineup of indexed images.

How to Choose the Right Stock Image

Every stock photo agency should provide a search function which allows you to type in keywords based on your article or webpage topic. Once you enter your search, you will likely have many images to choose from. A second way to find image ideas is to browse an agency’s most popular photos section.

When narrowing down the search, concentrate on images which are well composed and “popping” with vibrant color. Give even more weight to images which tell their story very succinctly. Your visitors shouldn’t have to look at an image for very long to figure out the message it is conveying.

Once you find the image you want, you only have to choose the resolution you require. To be on the safe side, always choose a resolution which is slightly more than you need for your current project. You may want to crop the image after the fact for your design, or perhaps use the image in a future design where a larger size is required.

When NOT to Use Stock Images

It should go without saying that you should never use stock images to replace your company employee directory. Nor should you utilize stock images of people to suggest that they are part of your company.

While this may seem like common sense, we still see many companies using stock photos of people to suggest they are company representatives. And despite being lampooned for doing so, political campaigns routinely use stock photos to suggest the people in the photos are supporting their campaign or cause. Not only is this extremely misleading, it can lead to legal disputes by the models in the photographs.

Conclusion

Premium, high quality stock images clearly improve website and blog designs. They lead to better visitor engagement, and create positive first impressions. Stock images create a new source of traffic once they are indexed by search engines. Provided images are used to convey a proper story, and are never used as the face of your company or campaign, they are an important part of many web designs and blog posts.

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