TutToaster » Inspiration

Well Designed Interfaces From Financial Businesses

Hein — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 09:52:53 +0000

Financial businesses that provides services like Online Banking, Insurances, Savings, Investments, Online trading etc. have been hit hard the last few years, some of them didn’t make it through the crisis and the ones that did make it had a difficult time, Yeah i know, it’s their own fault but that doesn’t mean they’re all the blame of this.

To have a website with a trustworthy, user friendly interface and appealing design is now a days more important then ever. While more people are getting known on the world wide web they need to know what the company stands for, when they visit there site. A potential customer also needs to see the most important things in a easy and understandable way without any distractions.

It was a tough job finding great and usable designs in the financial industry, 80% of the financial related services which have a website should think twice before they continue with there outdated, not-usable and terrible looking designs.

Today we’ve selected a few of these interfaces from financial related businesses. You will notice that a lot of Dutch businesses are shown, this is because they’re some of the best in this field.

AEGON

Amsterdam Trade Bank

Insinger de Beaufort

Bank of Ireland

National Australia Bank

US Bank

Xero

Dexia

Santander

Robein

Nationale Nederlanden

MoneYou

Centraal Beheer Achmea

Mint

oanda

GFT Forex

Unbelievable don’t you think. Just a few worth mentioning in this showcase, they make so much money out of us and they simply just can’t give a better and more usable web in return. Do you think I’m wrong and you’ve seen more great designs in this line of business then feel free to either send me the link or post it in here. Thanks.

28 Beautiful and Modern Logotypes to Get Inspired From

Stelian — Thu, 25 Nov 2010 14:48:17 +0000

A logo (also logotype) is a graphical representation that aims to show an identity or brand of a company, website, product, location, event or organization. It is usually made of shapes, numbers, different images, charachters, illustrations and much more! The main necessity of a logo is to be representative, unique, and easy recognizable. Below are listed 25+ beautiful, elegant, modern and vibrant logotypes that respect all of the nomitations listed above, and can also be a great source of inspiration.

Stellar Quotes

What the Duck?

What is Love?

Thumbs Up

JobQuote

QuoteBuilder

Fuel Quoter

planB Holdings

StelMM

Brand Events

Albatros

Full Time

Blooming Lens

Particular

Reforger Films

Strada Film

Art Film

Bananas Films

FilmLab

Posh My Pup

Dog Click Training

Devil Dogg

Lucky

Shirt Pepper

Chill

Mexican Grill

Chil Up

La Cazuelita

Hopefully, after reading this article where 25+ beautiful vibrant and modern logotypes were showcased, you’ve gain another great source of inspiration, by this, you may keep your designs (not only logotype ones) fresh, and up-to-date!

Other Resources:

33 Kick-Ass Websites for Your Inspiration

Stelian — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 09:13:15 +0000

Websites are the most powerful sources of getting inspired from. They are such great sources because they contain a lot of space. This space is usually filled with tehniques, skills and knowledge that the designer knows. Below are gathered 33 beautiful, modern, elegant, kick-ass and hand-picked websites that will be a great source to boost your inspiration. The websites collected below contain different styles in it, so if you’re looking for some inspiration to keep your fresh and adapt to current web trends – you’re at the right place.

Biltmore

Bokche

Board

Hey Indy

Premium Pixels

Lassez

Icon Moon

Need Style

Beavory

Comwerks

Tvl Corp

Logic Design

Key Fruit

Shuzzle App

DRK Rush

Aaron Rudd

Camp Craze

Paramount (Themeforest Template)

Creative Mints

Design Zoom

Umpquaoats

Rockstar New Media

Courier

Denis Echandler

Mitch Designs

Green Planet Solutions

Panoetic

Cloud Networks

Latte Sole

The Monk

National Money Help Line

Allison Nold

Captovate

After you took a look at this numerous number of beautiful websites compiled above, you’re inspiration should be already enhaced. For more great websites inspiration you may take a look at other articles listed below:

Other Resources

Showcase of 60 Brilliant Call to Action Usage

Swat Chap — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 05:27:34 +0000

In this new web 2.0, it has become essential for website to implement certain tactics that makes the user to click their designated spot. One of the newest trend of web design is call to action. Call to action is where the user is attracted to a certain part of the page or a button and makes them want to do something.

You can see that call to action makes a lot of difference in the user’s decision.

If you want to use some of the best CSS3 call to action buttons, my favorite one is BonBon buttons. They are probably the best buttons I have seen. It is free to use them on your site. So, if you are interested, check them out. The preview of some of the possibilities with the BonBon buttons are shown below.

Call to action can be achieved by different methods such as bigger size, contrast, color, shape etc. The main goal of the designer is to grab the attention of the user. They are very important in making sure that the user knows their button or section and impresses the audience to click. Here, I have collected websites with some of the best usage of call to action.

TheCommentor

Clover

QuoteRobot

WPCoder

PSD2HTML

EmailCraft

PixelCrayons

Elegant Themes

WooThemes

Think Vitamin Membership

Honey Grove Design

John Shammas

Go Freelance Jobs

FluentBox

fatih tanrverdi

Who is Leon

Grzegorz Kozak

Curio Productions

Maksimer din konverteringsrate

VPS

charity: water

Sensational Jobs

Boxed Art

xhtmlCafe

RIPIE6

Miro

HappyTapper

Orlando Web Design

Quodis

Carbonmade

Tucson Web Design

FINCH

Alexarts

Flavors.me

IconEden

Wistia

Ruler

Ashraf Khattab

m3mi

10 Buck Tuesday

iBrainstorm

Weather Maps

Sonny T.

SmartCube

Aviary

DIYthemes

Basecamp

Tender Support

Appcelerator

Pictage

Get Satisfaction

SpiderOak

Hoptoad

Page.ly

Tweetment

Realmac Software

Zendesk

Denote App

Notebox

CloudFlare

Conclusion

As you can see, the buttons and sections are very enchanting and pressures you to click. Some of the website have added extra elements to make it even more tempting. The call to action is very clear and I hope this has motivated you to create your own call to action buttons or sections.

A Humble Collection of Amazing Icon Inspiration

Hein — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 06:57:44 +0000

We all use icons in our designs, some create there own and some browse for stock icons or free icons. Creating your own icons is very time consuming and not all web designer have the time or the knowhow to create them.

Another point could be that the project budget isn’t that high or the client simply doesn’t want to pay you for creating custom icons and is happy with you using stock icons or free icons. And not to be disrespectful but we all know that many web designers aren’t capable of creating these pixel perfect icons, it’s a profession on it’s own. And therefore we all should be very thankful that they share them with us.

And here’s a nice collection of free, amazing and ready to use icons for your next project. Before using any of these icons please read the license agreements, just to be sure.

Project Icons by Mihaiciuc Bogdan

Mini Icon Set by Mahmoud Saleh

Sando set by Salvador Lopez

Pixlephilia 2 by Ömer ÇETİN

Random Icons by Rskys

111 Free Ecommerce Icons by Sketchdock

Spirit20 by 19eighty7

WooCons by WooThemes

Comfi Telecom icons by Andrey Kem

Danish Royalty Free by Jonas Rask

Dusseldorf by PC

Boolean 1.1 by Prax-08

Designer Icon Set by Parthiban Mohanraj

Free icons by Emil Baehr

Tabs free by Kevin Anderson

Plenty more where that came from but i’ve selected the ones i like and the ones you’ll can use. Looking for more or want to create your own then read on to find a list of tutorials resources and inspiration.

Icon Inspiration at Dribbble
Icon Inspiration at DeviantArt
Icon Inspiration at Behance Network

Thanks for reading and let us know if we missed any good ones or just say Hi!

Move aside Flash, here comes HTML5

Liam McCabe — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 18:30:33 +0000

So there has been a lot of talk about HTML5 recently. Many people even started comparing it to Adobe’s Flash. Although Flash can be rather extensive it is not without it’s bugs and does tend to crash computers a fair bit when it’s not developed the way it should be.

With Apple supporting HTML5, the markup language has definitely got a great deal of support with some beautiful work being demonstrated. Here for you today, I have collected the finest demos from around the web, enjoy.

3D Tiler

Sinuous

Keylight

Magnetic

Earth Night Lights

Color Blendy

Defend yourself

3D Chess

Cloth Simulation

Particle generator

Sandbox

Particle fun

Blowup video

Spread

Fireworks

Bonomo

Ball pool

Arcade Fire

I hope these demos have inspired you to at least check out HTML5. It is definitely the ‘thing’ of the future so the earlier you can get on the bandwagon the better

HTML5 References and tutorials

Showcase of 62 Superb Game Websites

Swat Chap — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 10:45:24 +0000

Game websites are often under looked and not seen as good source of web design. Game websites combine all the different aspects of designing websites to induce interest to visitors. Gaming has matured as one of the biggest industry in the world and it has become essential for game publishers to use of the greatest medium, the Internet, to get as many gamers to buy their games or consoles as they can.

So, they have to make exceptionally appealing websites to give information about the game and draw attention. Most of the websites are composed using Flash because of all the vast and flashy effects that it can create. Some publishers use their website to show trailer or show a glimpse of what the game is like so that the visitor feels for connected to the game. Hence, I have compiled a list of some of the most superb looking game websites.

Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood

TellTale Games – Sam and Max

DISSIDIA FINAL FANTASY

Blizzard Entertainment: World of Warcraft

Diablo III

Halo Official Site

Blizzard Entertainment

Ubisoft

CastleHero

Inferna

Prepare for the Storm

Bottle Rocket Apps

Section 8 The Witcher

Company of Heroes Online

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War

DC Universe Online

TERA – The Next Generation MMO

DiRT2

BEN 10

The Maw

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

Top Spin 3

Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box

EverQuest Universe

WALL-E

Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbados’ Treasure

Wii Sports Resort

deBlob

Nintendo Wii

Super Mario Galaxy 2

XBox

Ghostbusters

Crytek

Rockstar Games

LOTRO

Need for Speed World

FIFA 11

BioWare

Unreal Tournament 3

Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising

The Orange Box

NINJA GAIDEN SIGMA 2

F9E

SEGA

LEGO Indiana Jones

Ratatouille

Pokemon

Gusto Games

Codemasters Ashes 2009

Take-Two Interactive

Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Conviction

2K

Atari

SQUARE ENIX

Nancy Drew Games

Spore

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Olympic Video Games

Prey

LocoRoco2

CIVILIZATION V

Conclusion

I hope you have been amazed by all these superb designs. More of such beautiful websites will be created in the near future as ne game titles and consoles are released. I hope you see all the different possibilities of designing websites and this provides a source of inspiration. Please feel free to share your favorite ones in the comments below.

20 Travel Related Websites for your Inspiration

Matthew Leak — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 12:44:09 +0000

I don’t know about others, but when I go travelling I judge the place I’m going to on the quality of the website as well as the pictures and information. Why? Well, I feel that if a certain place has taken the time and money to invest in a decent website to attract tourists, then they’re serious about that destination/attraction. (this is just one of many weird theories I have )

I have been looking at loads of travel related websites recently while I plan my next adventure and these are a few of the nifty bookmarked websites that caught my attention.

Airportbags Plus

Australia Day

Brookside Resort

Clover Cottage

Cool and the Guide

Definitely Dubai

Discover Tennessee

Experience Washington

Hotel Reviews

Inspired by Iceland

Philadelphia & the Countryside

Places We Go

Story Hotel

TriOutNC

Utah Travel

Vacation in Supetarska Draga

Visit Manchester

Wasabi

Windrock Lodge

Winter in Tennessee

Conclusion

I think there’s a nice collection here, which is your favourite? I’ve gotta admit that I am a fan of the ‘Discover Tennesse’ website – which site listed is your favourite?

Also, if you want to recommend me your favourite destinations for my next big adventure then please do!

30 Inspirational Email Newsletters

Matthew Leak — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 08:45:33 +0000

Email newsletters are becoming more and more popular on the internet as businesses begin to use them as a viral way of communicating with their audiences/customers. They are, without doubt, great marketing and communication tools. It allows your site visitors to be constantly kept ‘in the loop’ with what’s new and what’s to come in the future. The whole point of owning a website that operates as a business is to drive traffic to the website. Email Newsletters are a great tactic to achieve those repeat visits.

Email Newsletters Designs can be much like Website Designs. After all, they exist to serve similar purposes. So a well designed, clean Email Newsletter/Website is a must for any successful business. Here’s a collection of 30 beautiful inspirational email newsletters for your inspiration.

37 Signals

ADC Young Guns

Apple

Bing

Brandtalk

Bumble and Bumble

Busted Tees

Carhartt

Chanel

Digital Consortium

Paul Frank Earth Day

Email Direct

eRoi

Fusion Monarch

Jon Burgerman

Kate Spade

Life Fitness

Made.com

MapMyRide.com

Nike Store

Nike+

Paul Frank Industries

The Publishers Club

Sephora

StarbucksStore.com

Steve & Co

Tourist

Vexio

Conclusion

We can see that many of these Email Newsletters do actually look like Websites. There’s a great collection of well designed email newsletters above, which one was your favourite?

If you want to know how you can go about designing and developing your very own Email Newsletter then I have wrote two tutorials on how you can do just that, check ‘em out.

Design an Email Newsletter in Photoshop
Code an Email Newsletter from PSD to HTML

Our professional testking mcdba web designing course includes useful tips and tricks to help you become master in web designing. Download testking mcdst Web designing tutorials and step by step testking mcp guide to learn create inspirational email newsletters for your website .

Web and Graphic Designers from the Netherlands

Callum Chapman — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 10:17:47 +0000

In this first post of the series, we’re featuring eight web and graphic designers (as well as studios) from the Netherlands: Yummy Gum, Erika van der Bent, The Olifants, Mark Dijkstra, Illutic Web Design, Rutger Ontwerp, Whoooz, and Jonnotie. The post in total features 40 great pieces of work.

In the next post of the series, we’ll be featuring a selection of Australian web and graphic designers/studios, so stay tuned!

Yummy Gum

Visit their website
Yummygum is a design studio from Amsterdam that is all about tasty designs and refreshing ideas. They create websites and web applications, and also design logos.

Fit & Frutig

iconSweets

Willem van Schendel

BTI Foundation

Colorlab

Erika van der Bent

Visit their website
Erika van der Bent is a freelance multimedia designer from Rotterdam. She produces designs and develops websites, corporate identities and various other designs.

Enixé

Icentials

Ukkies

ComfortCube

Ampersandlove

The Olifants

Visit their website
The Olifants are a creative agency focusing on illustration with a strong graffiti and street art influence. They produce wall paintings and canvases, and also run live painting sessions and exhibitions.

Wallpainting

Hand Bones

The Olifants

Brain Canvas

The Olifants

Mark Dijkstra

Visit their website
Mark Dijkstra is based in the east of Holland and designs and builds beautiful websites and identities. Mark is skilled in Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, xHTML/CSS, XML, PHP and WordPress.

MD vCard

Xtra Solutions

YourSurvey

404 Error Page

OpenSourceHunter

Illutic Web Design

Visit their website
Illutic Web Design is an ambitious and dynamic design agency from Enschede, Overijssel. The company name, “Illutic”, was a combination of the two English words “illusion” and “fantastic”.

Bal Rashmi

Mercuri

Hiranthi’s Weblog

Famire

Bureau Blik

Rutger Ontwerp

Visit their website
Rutger Ontwerp is a one man design studio from Zwolle, offering complete dynamic websites, redesigns, online art direction, logos and identities, and print design.

Kjenning

Ingeborg Lukkien

Versteeg Ermelo

Libra Bedrijfsadviseurs

Blitzkrieg Ballroom

Whoooz

Visit their website
Whoooz are a company dedicated to web media, helping their clients to develop a strong online identity, using beautiful and powerful designs.

Vind Carlo

Wernink

It’s A Go

Handig In De Baan

Andarr

Jonnotie

Visit their website
Jonnotie is the portfolio of Jonno Riekwel, a self-taught web designer from Rotterdam. He loves and is very passionate about what he does.

Vertrektijden

Bohemion Coding

365psd

Jonno Riekwel

Web Application

We really hope you enjoyed this post. This is of course just a very small selection of talented designers from the Netherlands, there are hundreds more, and we will revisit this country in the future. Please do discuss there designers in the comments section! Who is your favorite and why?

Do you have a favorite piece featured here? Let us know! Next time in this series we will be scouting Australia for some the best creative talent – keep your eyes peeled!