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Frequent readers know. Starting from January cartoons have found their place here at Noupe, too. Our series “If Web Designers Were …” has become popular quite quickly, and our readers keep submitting their favorite client situations. Thanks and keep going. Some of the submissions, while funny, cannot adequately be described in the format of “If Web Designers Were …”. That’s why we decided to add another series named “The Book Of Web Design: Clients’ Standard Quotes”. You are about to see the second cartoon of it. The following quote is another short and crisp one. Designer Dario Volaric sent it to us. It describes one of his most frequent openers into a conversation (and the most frequent ending ;-)) (Image of the Notebook: PlaceIt, Illustration: Petereit, Composition: Canva) Clients always tend to stretch their orders to ultimately get more out than they put in. Paying little, getting lots is a wide-spread philosophy these days. Designers have to cope with that. The only way to actually secure yourself from delivering too much work for too little money is having everything fixed in a written contract with added written extension orders for every piece of work not initially having been part of […]

Once again we have browsed the plugin directory of WordPress to find the best new WordPress tools for you. Plugins round WordPress off and without them you would have an extremely limited CMS. You won’t find well-known extensions in this list, but a potpourri of really fresh, new and unspent plugins that give you the best benefit. There should be something for most WordPress website operators. 1. Twitter SLM This plugin automatically creates Tweets for new posts, which will most likely increase your traffic. In addition, it eases your workload because you don’t have to write the tweet by yourself. It’s a really easy-to-use and useful tool. The settings: All tweets will be logged: Developer: drmaxim Continuous development: Yes Latest version: 03/17/2015 Price: Free on WordPress.org License: GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE Incompatibilities with other plugins: Not known Developer’s homepage: None Download from WordPress.org 2. Media Files This plugin adds new columns to the media library. The new columns are “File Size” and “MIME Type”. The file size column can be sorted, so you can quickly find large files. Additionally, you can add featured images to the the posts and pages lists. Some screenshots: Developer: José Conti Continuous development: Yes Latest […]

Easter bunny is in sight. If you want to give your site a quick rebrush before the holidays, there’s no time to lose. Good that you got the nice folks here at Noupe. We dug up the hidden easter eggs in terms of WordPress themes and curated them into the following article. So before you smash your eggs trying to create a nice site from scratch simply take one of these freshly bred specimen. These are fit for pretty much any website category, whether it’s a photo blog, tumblelog, magazine, sports site, whatever. Thank us later… All these themes are free though some may have commercial variants available. We noted that where applicable… Full Frame Created by: Catch Themes Features: Simple and spacious, easy to customize, translation-ready License: free for personal and commercial use | GNU General Public License Knowledge Base Created by: iPanel Themes Features: Made for information bases, images and icons, support forum links License: free for personal and commercial use | GNU General Public License Asteria Lite Created by: Towfiq I. Features: Gorgeous responsive slider, custom fonts and logo, various layouts and social icons License: free for personal and commercial use | GNU General Public License Sottball Created […]

Welcome back to our fourth iteration of 2015’s collections of free HTML, CSS and PSD templates. We have a pretty awesome bundle of GUI packs and HTML templates that will not only simplify your developments, but also give you new ideas to create the next big thing for your customers or personal projects, no matter the device you’re working on. There are some extra surprises in there for you, but let’s not spoil the party and jump right in. Are you ready? One important information before you read on: All the following elements are freely usable, though some will require a registration to download and not all are suitable for commercial use. More detailed license information is provided individually, but keep in mind that it’s always best to double-check licensing before you actually use a resource, at least commercially. iOS 8 GUI Pack Created by: Proto.io and ByPeople Features: Huge variety of elements for any kind of apps, all vector shapes, Illustrator format License: free for personal and commercial use UI Elements for Sketch Created by: Piotr Kwiatkowski Features: Multiple components for web and mobile License: Unspecified Corporate UI Kit Created by: Mehmet Ç?nar Features: Simple layout with header image, tags, calendar and other […]

Transparency has become a big hit in web design since most browsers can display it. Transparent elements are used to either set accents or draw attention to a certain area like images or text passages. But there are a few things that can go wrong while developing websites with transparent effects. Today we’ll show you what you should pay attention to. Let’s create a harmonious website with transparent elements, shall we? Transparency in Web Design There are two different ways to get transparency: by using transparent PNG files or pure CSS. The latter becomes more and more popular since all modern browsers can display transparency via CSS. Such effects help display certain areas clearer and add contrast, which draws your visitors’ attention to specific content. Using alpha transparent PNGs might be the easier way; however, most of the time CSS delivers better results. But it’s up to you which way you want to go. Especially in the developing stage, CSS3 is the faster and better option as you only need to adjust one line of code to get a quick result. This makes it easier to quickly change the transparency. Apply Transparency Using CSS3 Transparency becomes more and more popular […]

PSD2HTML® turned 10. Some might say it’s the end of an era, but for PSD2HTML®, it’s the beginning of a whole new adventure. To mark this special milestone they are offering an epic 50% discount on markup and an unusual giveaway. Don’t miss their parallax best practice and example and secure your chance to win the giveaway. How? Read on… About PSD2HTML® PSD2HTML® is a widely known web development company. Today, they are celebrating a decade in business. That’s over 1,346,688 hours of work, 1,065,289 messages, 85,527 web pages, and 75,091 projects. Oh, and, of course, an unbelievable amount of coffee, tea and midnight oil! They lived through 6 major website redesigns and an uncountable amount of various UI and UX tweaks. Make sure to take a look at their anniversary infographic to learn about their biggest achievements, some fun facts and numbers. As the infographic is an interactive parallax adventure, we cannot provide you with the experience here. A simple screenshot will have to do. Click on it, and we’ll bring you over to their place: Anniversary Discount As part of the anniversary celebration, PSD2HTML® has announced an exciting offer: 50% off HTML/CSS markup for desktop sites. This birthday […]

If you like yourself a good Hollywood blockbuster you know that nothing there happens without impressive lighting and effects. The fascination of thunder and lightning is in our genes. And whenever we want to show off something greater than this world, light will be involved. So why not use the psychological effect of blinding lights for your web and graphic design projects, too? That’s what this week’s Deal of the Week is all about… Amberlight is one of these rare apps for Mac and Windows. Escape Motions developed a kind of virtual explosion generator. Amberlight creates unique and stunning effects. It uses a unique math algorithm, which generates beautiful, complex patterns, such as exciting swirling patterns, glows and light trails that are ideal for anything from backgrounds to illustrations and even motion graphics. Scroll down to the bottom to learn how to buy this piece of software on a 70 percent discount. The following video gives a solid first impression: Amberlight in Short Words: Create computer-generated images with stunning swirling and lighting effects quickly and easily. Perfect for all artists, from beginners to advanced. Enhance your existing images and designs by adding Amberlight layers right on top of them for truly state-of-the-art […]

This March has been a fertile month in terms of WordPress theme creation. March even saw a few new magazine themes of great quality, which is not too common at least not in the free sector. Today’s Top 10 list carries two themes of this type. Both are fantastic in their own right and come fully customizable. That doesn’t mean that the other eight themes we collected would be bare stopgaps. On the contrary also these are worth the attention. We haven’t let any meat-and-potatoes theme enter this list. All the newcomers are free to use, though some have extended paid variants available, which we noted where applicable. All themes are fully responsible. The mixture is colorful and able to serve multiple purposes. There should definitely be something for everybody. 1. Fast News Magazine Theme The Fast News Magazine Theme is a highly customizable theme for magazine websites. It comes with a plethora of different homepages and blog layouts as well as a responsive design, unlimited sidebars, a few sliders and several widgets. Add to that your own logo, theme options and more. There is a paid variant available which enables the use of Google Fonts, lets you set a custom […]

Online shopping has gone mainstream. The local retail business fights for survival. Unsurprisingly, the number of online shops is increasing day by day. But beware, not all online shops are created equal. It’s not enough just taking a ready-made e-commerce software and waiting for some customers to come. You need to think about some success metrics first. Sure enough, you need to neatly arrange your products and to create a meaningful user experience and navigation. But most of all, you need to get the trust of your customers. It begins with offering safe payment methods to make the visitors feel comfortable. Considering that online shopping has increasingly turned into mobile shopping via smartphone or tablet, you need additional in-app payment tools. And some software providers need to handle subscription-based recurring payments. There are solutions from various regions in the world. Nevertheless, we decided to have a closer look at a tool made in Germany. This makes sense for everyone, not only for Germans operating German online shops. As is well known, the German e-commerce jurisdiction comes with a lot of duties and pitfalls. Thus, it is the safest way to go with a provider that is bullet-proof under these conditions […]

Symbols and pictograms have been used since the beginning of history, in every stage of the evolution of the many forms of human communication, from the use of visual signs and figures to convey the meaning of concepts, words and sounds, to the development of spoken language to writing. As a communication form, pictograms have maintained their varied functions which have now become more useful as the demand for quick communication has grown. (Image Source: Sascha Elmers | Composition: Canva) This article will try to focus on the fact that we have entered an era of more pictograph-based communication. That’s also the reason why we included some professional insights by Sergey Punchev, Game User Interface Artist from Bulgaria, and Jason Hill, who leads Jason Hill Design, a design and illustration studio located in Venice, California, to know about their thoughts on the icons and pictograms creation process. What do we mean when we say “pictograms” A pictogram or pictograph is a sign that represents a symbol, a real object or a figure in a schematic way. With this term we identify written symbols that belong to logo-graphic writing systems, which were originally based on ideograms. This kind of signs is […]