80 Inspirational Design Portfolios to Bump Up Your Creativity

Posted by Harshad

Posted: 24 Apr 2013 08:01 AM PDT

The age of information remains fiercely competitive. You have to raise the bar over and over again to keep visitors interested to come back your website. In these efforts, a few designers stood out of the crowd. Some are impressive, others unusual, and a handful have a splot of humor in the designs, these 80 incredible design portfolios gathered from all over the Web showcase the unspoken talents and technical skills of these amazing designers.

creative portfolios

The portfolio not only displays the remarkable talents up for hire, it is also there to impress non-believers and engage visitors. A lot of time and effort is poured into the first sketches, to turn these designs into fruition. With every final result you see here, remember that they did not come about overnight. We hope this collection will inspire you to push forward and bring your own designs to life.

Let’s be inspired.

Recommended Reading: 30 Responsive Portfolios For Your Inspiration

Portfolio of Dutch Designer Evout

Brian Rhinehart's Portfolio Kineticshadows

Graphic Designer & Illustrator David Arazim's Portfolio

Ukrainian Creative Studio Piezo Design

Russian Web Studio Iji Digital

Blackpool Web Studio Friendly Duck

Digital Agency Pixelslave

Joey Lomanto's Portfolio

Robin Morris' Portfolio Digitalmash

Richard Evans' Portfolio Edpeixoto

Portuguese Web Studio Cafundo

Art & Design Studio Racket

Australian Web Studio IceLab

Russian Creative Studio Creative People

Nemanja Ivanovic's Portfolio

Thibaud's Portfolio

Web Development Studio XHTML Kitchen

Fred Maya's Portfolio

Meagan Fisher's Website

Russian Web Studio ONY

Russian Creative Agency NILE

Italian PR Studio Moovents

French Web Studio Adncom

Web Design Agency Just Be Nice

Elliot Lepers' Portfolio

Czech Designer Tomas Pojeta's Portfolio

Advertising Agency Instinct

Collaborative of Freelancers Cassius

Web Designer Simon Reynolds' Site Sr28

Ukrainian Web Agency 73dpi

Marco Rotoli's Portfolio

Justin Bird's Portfolio

Liechtenecker Austrian Web Agency

Paul Noble's Portfolio

SiteSoft Design Studio

Rob Palmer's Portfolio

Great Britain Design Agency Toasted Digital

Creative Agency SmallStudio

Designer & Developer Nick Coates' Portfolio

Brazilian Creative Agency Cappen

Design & Web Studio Breakfast

Canadian Studio N.Design Studio

UK Based Marketing Agency Visual Republic

Florian Bernard's Portfolio 13flo

Creative Digital Agency Pixillion

Design Studio 2Advenced

Third Culture Studios

Ukrainian Web Design Studio Kavoon

French Design Agency Blanc Fonce

Aleksandar Bozic’s Portfolio

Creative Agency EPIC

Amsterdam Interactive Studio Cartelle

Luc's Blog Octwelve

Chris Thurman's Portfolio

Dave Werner's Portfolio

Swedish Studio Pretty Production

Darjan Panic's Portfolio

Creative Agency Hello Monday

Gisele Jaquenod's Portfolio

Australian Web Studio Caramel Ink

Great Britain Design Studio

Matthew Smith's Website

Web Studio Pointless Corp.

German-Swiss Design Studio

Creative Design Studio of Tracy Stone Spout Creative

Juan Diego Velasco's Portfolio

Designer Nick Jones' Website

Emiliano Rodriguez's Portfolio

Andrew Tebbott's Portfolio

Japanese Art Director's Website Unouplus

Kathryn Cornelius’s Portfolio

Online Designer Yodabaz

Jesse Willmon's Portfolio

Russian Brand Studio

Francesco Bertelli’s Portfolio

Artem Gorbunov's Design Bureau

Ukrainian Studio 908vc Ink

Russian Agency ATELIER

Knock Knock Design Bureau

Workplace & Playground

As you see every site is a good workplace for experiments and a favorite playground for its owner. Don't be afraid to show off true freedom of imagination and put your personality into your future website. Lots of websites won awards as a symbol that the efforts invested in were well spent. What site do you like the most and why? Do you have any ideas on how to create your own web portfolio? Feel free to share you thoughts in the comment section.

Web Design: A Guide to CSS3 pseudo-classes

Posted: 24 Apr 2013 06:01 AM PDT

This article is part of our "HTML5/CSS3 Tutorials series" - dedicated to help make you a better designer and/or developer. Click here to see more articles from the same series.

The pseudo-classes are used to target elements without having to add extra classes, attributes or ID; that is why it is called in that way, pseudo-class. Throughout our previous posts, we have covered a few new CSS3 pseudo-classes, including :not, :before and :after, :first-of-type and we also use pseudo-classes in some of our tutorials.

And in this post we are going to walk through the other new CSS3 pseudo-classes that have not been covered yet. Let’s take a look.

:nth-child

:nth-child is used to target elements in a particular order of their parent. This pseudo-class is used in conjunction with the following parameters: a number (1, 2, 3, etc), a keyword (odd / even) or an equation (an, an+b, an-b, etc). In the following example, we have three paragraphs inside a <div>.

 <div> <p><strong>Paragraph 1:</strong>Tiramisu gummi bears faworki dragee. Faworki faworki dessert sweet. Souffle powder biscuit lemon drops topping wypas.</p> <p><strong>Paragraph 2:</strong>Sweet icing applicake. Apple pie applicake bonbon cake danish cookie jujubes. Topping croissant tiramisu pie jelly-o pudding.</p> <p><strong>Paragraph 3:</strong> Oat cake pastry chocolate dessert brownie wafer candy. Caramels chocolate cake marzipan. Biscuit candy pudding dessert brownie dragee halvah donut gummi bears.</p> <div>

Let’s say, we want to add styles to the second paragraph, we can write the style rules as follows.

 p:nth-child(2) { padding: 15px; background-color: #333; color: #fff; }

We can also use an equation to select, let’s say, for paragraph number 2, 4, 6, and the following numbers in that sequence. We can write the styles rule this way.

 li:nth-child(2n) { padding: 5px; background-color: #333; color: #fff;s margin: 10px 0; }

The n notation in the equation above represents the sequence number (0, 1, 2, 3, etc). In the above example, 2 will be multiplied by n, which turns out the following results:

2(0) = 0 (select nothing)
2(1) = 2 (select 2nd child element)
2(2) = 4 (select 4th child element)
2(3) = 6 (select 6th child element)
… etc

To see how it works in a different equation, you can use this tool, called the nth tester.

However, in order this for this pseudo-class to select the child elements accurately, the elements order should not be preceded with other element types. Given the following HTML markup as the example, we have three paragraphs. We insert <blockquote> element after the first paragraph:

 <div> <p><strong>Paragraph 1:</strong>Tiramisu gummi bears faworki dragee. Faworki faworki dessert sweet. Souffle powder biscuit lemon drops topping wypas.</p> <blockquote> <p><strong>Blockquote</strong> Oat cake sugar plum tiramisu jelly cupcake dragee powder. Caramels pastry pie danish fruitcake bonbon chocolate cake bear claw.</p> </blockquote> <p><strong>Paragraph 2:</strong>Sweet icing applicake. Apple pie applicake bonbon cake danish cookie jujubes. Topping croissant tiramisu pie jelly-o pudding.</p> <p><strong>Paragraph 3:</strong> Oat cake pastry chocolate dessert brownie wafer candy. Caramels chocolate cake marzipan. Biscuit candy pudding dessert brownie dragee halvah donut gummi bears.</p> </div>

Now, if we select the second paragraph with the following styles rule.

 p:nth-child(2) { padding: 15px; background-color: #333; color: #fff; }

Nothing will not be applied, as the second child element is now replaced with <blockquote>.

View Demo

:nth-last-child

The :nth-last-child pseudo-class works the same as :nth-child, only now, the sequence starts from the last child.

So, when we apply this style below:

 p:nth-last-child(1) { padding: 15px; background-color: #333; color: #fff; }

The element that is applied is the very last paragraph element of its parent.

View the demo below.

View Demo

:nth-last-of-type

:nth-last-of-type works in a similar way as :first-of-type which we have discussed in our previous post.

It selects the specified child element regardless of even when the sequence is interrupted by other element types. And similar to :nth-last-child the sequence will start from the very last element. In the example below, we have paragraph, blockquote and under-ordered list wrapped within a <div>.

 <div> <p><strong>Paragraph 1:</strong>Tiramisu gummi bears faworki dragee. Faworki faworki dessert sweet. Souffle powder biscuit lemon drops topping wypas.</p> <blockquote> <p><strong>Blockquote</strong> Oat cake sugar plum tiramisu jelly cupcake dragee powder. Caramels pastry pie danish fruitcake bonbon chocolate cake bear claw.</p> </blockquote> <p><strong>Paragraph 2:</strong>Sweet icing applicake. Apple pie applicake bonbon cake danish cookie jujubes. Topping croissant tiramisu pie jelly-o pudding.</p> <p><strong>Paragraph 3:</strong> Oat cake pastry chocolate dessert brownie wafer candy. Caramels chocolate cake marzipan. Biscuit candy pudding dessert brownie dragee halvah donut gummi bears.</p> <ul> <li><strong>List 1:</strong> Cotton candy apple pie topping.</li> <li><strong>List 2:</strong> Biscuit gummi bears sweet</li> <li><strong>List 3:</strong> Jujubes fruitcake bear claw chocolate bar.</li> <li><strong>List 4:</strong> Tart carrot cake cookie marzipan pastry toffee.</li> <li><strong>List 5:</strong> Wafer tiramisu marzipan tart.</li> <li><strong>List 6:</strong> Halvah chocolate bar.</li> <li><strong>List 7:</strong> Toffee sugar plum.</li> <li><strong>List 8:</strong> Caramels pastry pie.</li> </ul> </div>

To select the last second paragraph from the above HTML structure, we can write the rules in this way.

 p:nth-last-of-type(2) { padding: 15px; background-color: #333; color: #fff; }

Unlike:nth-child or :nth-last-child which selects the element strictly on their sequence, the -of-type pseudo-class will also find the element upon their specified type. See the demo from the link below to see our example above in action.

View Demo

Recommended Reading: Understanding nth-child Pseudo-class Expression

:only-child

The :only-child is used to select the specified element that is the only child of its parent. Imagine, a parent who only has one child in the family. Similarly, in the following example, we only have one paragraph within a <div>.

 <div> <p>Tiramisu gummi bears faworki dragee. Faworki faworki dessert sweet. Souffle powder biscuit lemon drops topping wypas.</p> </div>

To target and add styles to this paragraph, we can write:

 p:only-child { padding: 15px; background-color: #333; color: #fff; }

However, when we have more child elements of any type within, this pseudo-class will not work, as the specified element is no longer the only child under its parent.

View Demo

:only-of-type

:only-of-type pseudo-class works similarly to :only-child. But apart from the sequence, it will also find the element from their type. The :only-of-type will target and add styles. Imagine a parent with 3 children consisting of two girls and one boy. We can target the boy with this pseudo-class, as he is the only boy in his family.

In the following example, we have two paragraph and one blockquote.

 <p><strong>Paragraph 1:</strong>Sweet icing applicake. Apple pie applicake bonbon cake danish cookie jujubes. Topping croissant tiramisu pie jelly-o pudding.</p> <blockquote><strong>Blockquote:</strong> Oat cake pastry chocolate dessert brownie wafer candy.</p></blockquote> <p><strong>Paragraph 2:</strong>Sweet icing applicake. Apple pie applicake bonbon cake danish cookie jujubes. Topping croissant tiramisu pie jelly-o pudding.</p>

To select the <blockquote> element among these paragraphs, we can write it in this way:

 blockquote:only-of-type { padding: 15px; background-color: #333; color: #fff; }

Click the demo below to see it in action.

View Demo

:empty

:empty specified element targets that are empty. In other words, this element has no content or child element, it has nothing, not even a space. In the following example, we have an empty paragraph within a <div>.

 <div> <p></p> </div>

To target the paragraph element upon this condition, we can write:

 p:empty { padding: 15px; background-color: #333; color: #fff; }

View Demo

:target

The :target pseudo-class is used to add styles to elements with fragment identifier. Fragment identifier is an extra string in the last part of URL that is started with a hash (#). It looks like the following http://www.domain.com/#fragmentid.

To apply styles with :target, we first need to assign a unique id or name attribute to the element, as follows.

 <div> <p id="target"><strong>Paragraph 1:</strong>Sweet icing applicake. Apple pie applicake bonbon cake danish cookie jujubes. Topping croissant tiramisu pie jelly-o pudding.</p> </div>

To select and apply styles when this paragraph is being targeted with a fragment identifier, probably with something like http://www.domain.com/#target, we can write the styles rule in this way.

 p:target { padding: 15px; background-color: #333; color: #fff; }

Paul Underwood has showed how to use this :target pseudo-class in real case in this post How To Create CSS-Based Content Accordion.

View Demo

:enabled & :disabled

:disabled is used to target elements that do not accept data input and, contrastly :enabled is used to target elements that accept data input. In the following example, we have two text input type, with one assigned with a disabled attribute.

 <input type="text" disabled="disabled" placeholder="disabled"> <input type="text" placeholder="enabled">

Then, we would like to turn the disabled input border color into red and green for another input.

 input:enabled { background-color: #fff; border: 2px solid #79be6a; } input:disabled { background-color: #f3f3f3; border: 2px solid #c33a36; }

Visit the demo page below to see this example in action.

View Demo

:checked

The last pseudo-class we will discuss is :checked. This pseudo-class will target <input> element when it is selected or checked. Thus, this pseudo-class only applies to radio input type and checkbox input type.

View Demo

Final Thought

We have covered a lot in this post. We hope that this would be a good reference for you to work with pseudo-classes. Lastly, you can download the demo source from the following link.

Download Source

60 Beautiful Flowers Wallpapers [Wallpaper Wednesday]

Posted: 24 Apr 2013 03:01 AM PDT

Editor’s note: This is a contributed post by John Zenkert who has a huge passion for design and the Internet. Currently he maintains a website called MinePick, a Minecraft server list.

The urban lifestyle is everywhere. Those who don’t have it, want it; and those who have it would rather die than give it up. Surrounded by people’s constant pursuit of a city life, on television and in media as well as in real life, it’s easy to forget that not long ago, a majority of people were living outside of cities.

Hopefully, this collection of wallpapers of flowers will take you back to the pre-industrialization era. While flowers most certainly still exist, few take the time to experience the many senses they can pleasure.

They are not only a visual feast for the eyes, but also have thousands of indescribable scents. The latter is obviously not possible to experience through a computer screen, but we hope that the beauty of the flowers in the collection is enough to at least put a smile on your face.

Wet Drops Blue Rose. Available in the following size(s): 1280×720, 1366×768, 1600×900, 1920×1080, 2560×1440

blue rose wallpaper