Brian Hoff

Kyle Steed

Spoon Graphics

Sushi and Robots

New To York

Adrian Pelletier

Ribbons of Red

Purple Rain Cloud

Snook

Tobias Ahlin

Srburns

8 Interactive

Stuff and Nonsense

Lift Interactive

Jason Reynolds

Marten dejongh

Mutt Ink

Rainbeau Mars

Mark Boulton

Simple Bits

Ainsworth Studio

The Darling Tree

Pixel Craft

z8

Glue

Comments

Have your seen any well designed web sites on your travels around the web, if so feel free to post a link in the comments?

You might also enjoy: 25 Examples of Light and Space Effects In Web Design

Trent Cruising

Squarespace

Theater Website Services

Serj

Mediocore

Macalicious

Yourt Web Job

Jamison Banham

Alcomi

Us trendy

Poolie Studios

Pixel-House

Twiistup

Source Bits

Sergey Stanchev

Icon Dock

Graphik

Future Tap

Fernando Sergio

Feels TV

Digimurai

Design Disease

Causecast

Box Wish

Code Art Media

Comments

Seen any more light effects in designs any where feel free to leave a link in the comments.

If your interested in creating space effects you might want to check out the space and planet Photoshop tutorials post I put together.

45 Royale

The Beatles Rock Band

Studio 7 Designs

Sourcebits Nerve

Revyver

Radiiate

Pure Dezigner

Klick Studios

Kavoon

Satellite Dev

RJ Designz

Larva Labs

Jan Pivonka

Noe Design

Monofactor

Ligne 13

Honey Design

Gummisig

Evan Ekard

Brain Fart

Australia 2018

Amber Miro

Albert Lo

365 Days Of Astronomy

Votaw

Comments

Do you like this style of web design or do you find it too over powering. Your thoughts are apreciated please leave a comment below.

Dekay Clothing

The store is just as dark as the characters and themes being printed on the shirts.

Word Apparel!

There are certain features on this one worth noting like the torn edges and the illusion of depth from the top layer to the background. The layout flows well.

I Came From Nothing

I guess those tentacles on the sides “Came From Nothing” because I don’t recognize them from anything I’ve ever seen. Whatever they are, they perfectly match with the style of design on the shirts.

410 B.C.

I threw you a cureve on this one because it looks so different than all the others. The point with including 410 B.C. is showing that you don’t have to go nuts with graphics and can still look good. Models are a great way to personify the brand.

Arkaik

I am a fan of the background being used and the title going beyond the main body. Arkaik kept with the theme by customizing the navigation in an appropriate font.

This Noise

If you tried to create text that is loud enough to make a sound….this title is what it would look like. The store’s look and feel completely agrees with the t-shirts and their designs.

A Burning Hollywood Romance Clothing

There is a lot of action going on here. Sometimes that is a bit much, but AHBR showed that excess can look good too.

Funk Rush

SImple, clean, minimal. Enough said.

Linty Fresh

How do you get Linty Fresh? By washing your tees with too much detergent inside your animated washing machine. Great color selection.

Zombie Liquorice

Zombie Liquorice scares the hell out of me. ANd that is exactly what they were going for with this design.

Regal Clothing

This is an awesome background. The lighting on the imagery makes it look real. This is a very cool touch for a t-shirt line that covers quite a few subjects.

Hands On Clothing

Couldn’t you just eat it? Everything comes together on this one.

I know there are many more and I want to see them! Please let me know the ones I left out in the comments section…

This style can be incorporated in to Logos, T-Shirts, Posters, Type … Anything

You may also want to check out this recent post on Floral typography

Shiny Binary

I had to add shiny binaries “Perfect porftolio” piece for Digital Arts Magazine and “Mystic” that was inspired by Eastern style statues and carvings, you can clearly see the statue within the image and the ornate flourishes.

Shaeriff

This pencilled etching is great way to see how the shadows and the darker crevices give the ornamental style its three dimensions

Opera78

An Amsterdam based illustrator that goes by the studio mane of opera78 has a great drawing style so checking out some of his personal and commercial work is a good idea.

One Twenty Six

Based in New York One Twenty Six produces some great packaging and branding, you can also see some of the ornate designs in there logo designs.

Shepard Fairy

This guy has a real eye for poster design and you can check out his fine art collection for some more inspiring examples of his work. i also found this image via abduzeedos a mixed inspiration post to look through.

J R Velasco

a great example of these ornate finishes is on this website header, wrapping around other illustrations and hand drawn elements. The old vintage look gives it even more character and era.

Irish Wind

Great baroque style technical pen drawing in the making just goes to show how much time and effort goes in to such a piece like this.

Igraver

This website has a great visual tutorial on how to recreate this style from start to finish

I Cant Hear

I Cant Hear design studio with some great work and sketches of work in progress gives a good understanding of work flow to final piece, as seen below a sketch and final piece in vector form is mind blowing.

Guarniero

Has some great collections of old scans on his flickr

Eduardo Cife

Eduardo Cife of Misprinted Type has some awesome illustration work from book covers to posters. a true vintage style that you can see throughout his work.

Ansel Olson

Ansel has some inspiring sets on flickr from photos to scans like the one shown below, decorated type is another great way to incorporate this style.

Anouther Great decorated alphabet.

Bibliodyssey

Very detailed breath taking ornate typography incorporating cherubs, birds and statues.

86era

A designer from Russia known a 86era due to being born in 1986, also found via ilovetypography inspiring type

Comments

I would put this style high up in my favourites and i find it very inspiring to look at others work and how they can incorporate it in to designs such as web sites, Typography and posters you name it and it can be done, adding extra flair and interest.

Do you get inspired by this style or know some great pieces of work to share? Please leave a comment.

Embellishment

Lettering that had been modified with such decoration is usually referred to as embellishment, this means that the decoration appears on top of the letterform, this type of decoration was copied and experimented with in the 19th century by foundries adding patterns, pictures shadows and 3D effects to there lettering.

Encompassing

The other type of lettering is refereed to as Encompassing this is when the letterform itself is decorative and is not derived from an existing letterform

Ref Book: Type and Typography

Below are a few examples from around the web to gain some inspiration in this style of design and typography that has taken form over the years.

Fourooms

Created by Fourooms a design studio in Hamburg as a Christmas gift to Si Scott, another designer who also produces similar floral and flourish type designs.

This design looks overgrown and wild with an upward movement that makes it feel like its growing.

The hand drawn version coloured with ink.

Shaz Madani

An elegant hand made design by Shaz Madani made from paper for a campaign for Artic Paper to bridge the gap between creativity and environmental thinking, such as using recycled paper.

Quinto hache

These flourishes originate from the numbers and grow upwards, there are lines in the background and also balloons floating, the space and stars on the numbers gives the design a bright vivid aura.

Yulia Brodskaya

Yulia Brodskaya originally from Russia has achived numerous awards for typographic style and design, these designs look like icing on a cake, delicate flourishes with contrasting colours.

Ginger Monkey Design

Ginger Monkey Design have had numerous features in magazines including computer arts, there designs incorporate many swirls and flourishes, This personal collection is part of there inspiring word series here can be seen compassion and selfless.

This set has great composition and simple decoration yet has a massive impact on the type as well as the though provoking colours.

Words are Pictures

Words are Pictures is a London, UK based designer that has some familiar designs, playing with typography and words is how this designers progresses his designs, as you can see the design below looks almost 3D with hidden words behind the foliage.

Inksurge

Inksurge a design company from Manila, Philippines specialising in visual arts and communication

Prouced this design for the hosting company Media Temple, a shirt design for a premium give-away for their clients and partners.

Covers the letterforms with a bouquet of ornaments and floral patterns making the it still legible to read.

Nathan Walker

Nathan Walker from Dallas, TX, United States is a freelance designer specialising in digital art.

A sketch taken in to Photoshop inspired by a quote from the bible “And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.” 1 Corinthians 13:13

Narani Kannan

Narani Kannan is a graphic design student in Toronto, Ontario, Canada

The design below is inspired by the Victorian architecture know as baroque.

Arthur Dam

Arthur Dam is a designer from Hilversum, Netherlands and has created atmospheric digital designs

The design below shows an intriquet blend of curls around a light font making the whole word eye catching even though the colours are quite dull.

Burlesque Design

Burlesque Design an array of music oriented prints and posters, the example below shows how the design is progressing from a sketch.

Nikki Farquharson

Nikki Farquharson a freelance designer from London, UK has an eye for patterns, lines, shapes and colours.

Si Scott

Si Scott is maybe one of the more well know dseigners for this style

Sumeco

sumeco is a Dutch designer who has a huge and inspiring portfolio of digital work the examples shown take on a natural typography theme with roots, vines, and branches, giving the designs a fresh feel.

Colin Lee

Colin Lee is a passionate designer from London, UK creating complex typographic treatments as well as other forms of graphic design.

Shiny Binary

Nik Ainley of Shiny Binary is an Oxford, UK based illustrator and has had some great accomplishments with publications in magazines and books, he strives to master his tools to realise his ideas.

Comments

Id have to say that this style of typography catchs my imagination more over than allot of other styles. just because of the detail and time spent on each piece, What do yo like and think about this style ?

Group Stats:

• Group opened: 16 Nov 2008 – Just under 2 months been active
• Group Creatives: 203 members joined during that time
• Art Added: 221 pieces of awesome art work

Other Networks

Ill take this opportunity to say that im now signed up to Facebook so id be more than happy to have you all as friends on there and you can also join the facebook design shard group to post useful design links or work, so ill see you around

The Showcase

Every thime i come to design shard i take a look in the footer to see the latest entries are in th flickr group and im always surprised to see such talent, so ive listed a few examples of work that ive been looking at in the group.

In the Eye of the Beholder

Created by: Wicked Mantis

Michael Phelps: No words. Just water…

Created by: tsevis

IKEA Sweden: Mosaic Guy II

Created by: tsevis

Fish Face

Created by: trondus

Vector Karma – Nebulae color variation

Created by: tanaka13

Wise

Created by: SeraphimCollective

Silences Pale

Created by: Lukes Beard

Silences

Created by: Lukes Beard

Burton Snowboars Wallpaper

Created by: ironbondio

Logo Inerxia

Created by: inerxia

Miniature Basketball

Created by: hferris92

Ysbryda

Created by: heymeca

Master

Created by: heymeca

Ilustra Hot pocket

Created by: foma.am

May Your 2009 Rock

Created by: cresk

Colorcubic 2009 Print

Created by: colorcubic

Rain by brades

Created by: buud

Target

Created by: breakerr.deviantart.com

Abcox

Created by: breakerr.deviantart.com

View From the Empire State Building NYC, Tiltshift

Created by: blakelyons

Find Hope

Created by: biancayvonne

Three inspirations

Created by: biancayvonne

Abduzeedo 2 Years Anniversary

Created by: abduzeedo

Dont worry if your design isnt in the showcase, im sure one will be in it next round up! keep going!

Now we’ve got the Photoshop basics which enable us to use any type of tutorial in the most friendly manner.

It’s time to pull out the creativity and realize our own creations. Where does inspiration come from?, Anywhere: a film, a videogame, a skateboard, a site… Having said that I will propose 10 amazing sites that will certainly provide good ideas where you can start from.

1) FFFFOUND!

It’s one of mine most preferred sources, FFFFound! is a web service that allows the users to post & share their favourite images found on the web.

2) COOL SHOWCASE

It’s the marriage of Sergio Milardovich (web programmer) & Leonardo Correa (designer) ideas. CoolShowcase is a cyberspace gallery for the work of freelance digital artists, graphic designers and photographers.

3) GRAPHIC-EXCHANGE

It’s a nice site where Fabien Barrall (graphic designer/photographer/art director) shows the works of his favourite graphic designers, photographers, artists and designers.

4) PSDTUTS FLICKR GROUP

Another talent den is Flickr. For my point of view PSDTUTS is the best photoshop blog focusing on photoshop, and its Flickr group is made of 4500+ members.

5) ALL CAPS PROJECT

Graffiti represents a fascinating creativity source and, on the following site, there are several really unique.

6) SKATEBOARDS

Skateboards.com is an unusual resource. It treats e-commerce of products that are examples of creativity and originality.

7) CLICK FOR ART

ClickForArt is an online store of art prints, printed boxed canvasses, art prints mounted in chunky contemporary frames or in our ornate stately frames.

8) STATION

It’s a videogames gallery. Videogames covers are graphic works as good as film covers.

9) CG SOCIETY

The CG SOCIETY is the most respected and accessible global organization for creative digital artists.

10) BEHANCE

It’s a network that provides visibility to the works of creative professionals. Behance is a free platform for the world’s leading creative professionals.

Comments

When I’m looking for inspiration, the above mentioned sites are those I surf first. What are yours?

Angry Blue

About: Under the Angryblue moniker, I design posters, art prints, album art and do way too many shirt designs full of strange imagery. Though I’ve mainly done more aggressive work for metal bands, I’ve managed to do successful merchandise design for Genesis and Ashlee Simpson as well.

Skulls and bones the perfect recipe for vector art and posters this artist uses the vector lines and solid colours to his advantage producing some great poster art

Poked Studio

About: This studio produces some amazing 3d illustrations often incorporating big eyes and psychedelic colours to amaze any one who looks at them. using blender and photoshop

Destill

About: Mike is a 23 year old designer and illustrator from Torquay UK, and has gained lots of recognition world wide and is always looking to expand his skills in various fields of design

Illustration mixed with photomanipulation mike brings hisdesigns to life with movement and flow, his designs look cluttered nit are far from that as each illustation is stregically positioned for hte viewrs pleasure, he alos has some really nice typography work in his portfolio.

Birdy and Me

About: Kelly smith lives in Tasmania Australia, in 20006 she graduated with a bachelor of fine arts from Tasmanian school of art and has since gone on to pursue a freelance career in both portrait and fashion illustration

Like it says in her bio her art is like stepping in to a modern fairly tale with faint pencil lines and the odd splash of abstract colour to distract the eye using water colours and vintage colours to support her illustrations.

Dan May

Dan May was born and raised in the suburbs of Rochester, NY, Dan spends his days (and nights) painting dreamlike environments that transcend space and time. These delightful yet haunting images are often based in personal observations of both human’s and nature’s relationships with each other, blended with a healthy dose of whimsy, fantasy and cautious relevance.

The paintings and characters that Dan produces almost give you a sense of sadness due to the dark colours and mournful looks of lonely characters that he paints with such detail and texture, i think i can call myself a fan! he also has a really cool Flickr gallery

Camilla d’Errico

About: After a few years in the comic industry Camilla realized she could expand her style into a variety of other industries; snowboards, magazine covers, toys, clothes. Camilla has also begun to carve out a niche for herself in the fine art field thanks to her fiery nature, high level of ambition and persistence in following her dream

Camilla has a few social profiles in her bio including Deviantart and Behance she paints eerie characters showing different emotions on different kinds of media from pieces of wood to canvas giving each illustration a unique feel and texture.

Digital Delight

About: Niel Quisaba’s Based in tropical Philippines, produces designs for snowboards, tshirts and even web designs his style of squid like tenticles and bubbly illustrations sets his unique style apart from most illustrators.

Imaginary Design

About: Adam Koniuszewski his main passion is graphic design and illustration the tools he uses include Pencil, brush, acrylic, cut-outs, Photoshop, Illustrator.

Looking through Adams designs they are all quite abstract and almost experimental some may look unfinished or cluttered these designs ad the most interest to who is looking at them, he uses his line drawings to great effect with textured backgrounds. he also has a flickr profile and a deviant art profile

J Three Concepts

About: True vector illustration with his bright colours schemes and solid colours, his illustrations are mostly made up of smaller doodles and illustration to create a bigger picture, often looking complex to the viewer yet interesting.

Zero 13

About: A freelance illustrator, living in Bucharest, Romania. he uses all kinds of tools ranging from rotring pencils, markers, spray paint to Wacom tablet, Photoshop, Illustrator to give birth to his dreams.

Some of these pieces of work are really great master pieces with huge canvases and so much detail to take in, there is often lots of visual shapes and lines to look at and spend minutes looking over each illustration carefully.

Zenvironments

About: Zachariah Johnsen, is a young artist concentrating in watercolour, pen & ink,
And mixed media works on paper. His medium of choice is the micron pen and he uses them exhaustively to describe a world of ghouls, monsters, and misfits – the shady characters in everyday life, but just hidden from normal view.

Join Design Shards Flickr group: Join Here

The 9 most recent flickr entries will be shown in the footer of this blog and from time to time there shall be showcases of excellent work from the group as i know a few other design blogs also do this including My Ink Blog and Fuel Your Creativity.

I also just want to highlight a few of the design blogs in the community that have a flickr group that you may want to join, if ive missed some please let me know and i will add them to the list.

Design Shard | Go To Flickr Group

About: This group is to showcase any images that you have created or found around the web, the 9 most recent submissions will be shown on Design Shard Design Blog in the footer area of the site ( Yes thats me ).

Arbenting | Go To Flickr Group

About: A place for the readers at Arbenting to showcase their creations. I’d love to see anything you’ve done with the Arbenting Freebies but feel free to submit anything.

High Resolution Textures | Go To Flickr Group

About: This group is about sharing high resolution textures of any kind. Wood, metal, rust, plants, fabric or anything else that can be considered a texture. Feel free to post your pictures and let the group discuss them.

Colorburned | Go To Flickr Group

About: This is the Colorburned Flickr Community. Feel free to add the designs that you created using Colorburned textures, vector resources and tutorials.

Fudgegraphics | Go To Flickr Group

About: This group is meant for all the designs created with fudgegraphics freebies such as photoshop brushes, textures or vectors. Feel free to post other designs as well. It’s always nice to have see creative artworks in one single group.

My Ink Blog | Go To Flickr Group

About: This group was created for the readers of My Ink Blog. So they can show off their work, or the results of stepping through one of the tutorials.

Fuel Your Creativity | Go To Flickr Group

About: What fuel’s your creativity? Design, Photography, Art…post what inspires you to create your next masterpiece. Anything is welcome, just keep it clean. Your work or the work that inspires you may be featured on my blog from time to time. Cheers!

Online-Photoshop Tutorials | Go To Flickr Group

About: An archive of pictures for the website www.online-photoshoptutorials.com including uploads from it’s users.

Loon Design | Go To Flickr Group

About: “It is all about design”

Gomedia | Go To Flickr Group

About: Post your art or designs created using stuff from Go Media’s Arsenal. Periodically, designs we like will be highlighted on our blog at www.gomediazine.com – so make sure it’s something you are proud of!

Inspiredology | Go To Flickr Group

About: Inspiredology is about the blog inspiredology.com. The blog showcases inspirational designs in different fields of inspiration. This group is created to have a compilation of images that might not be listed on inspiredology.

Bittbox | Go To Flickr Group

About: Anyone and everyone who would like to share their designs and what they have learned or used from BittBox Freebies/Tutorials. Heck, just show us what you got, doesn’t matter where you got it!

Booooooom | Go To Flickr Group

About: All you loyal readers of Booooooom.com out there can now upload your own photos here and they will be displayed on the site

Outlaw | Go To Flickr Group

About: A place for freelance designers, photographers, graphic artists, web designers, illustrators, and any other creative freelancer can share thier work.

Vector Tuts | Go To Flickr Group

About: Like vector graphics? Join the Vectortuts Community! Vectortuts is a vector Tutorial site with thousands of daily readers and a really cool group of active community members.

PSD Tuts | Go To Flickr Group

About: Like Photoshop? Join the PSDTUTS Community! PSDTUTS is a Photoshop Tutorial site with thousands of daily readers and a really cool group of active community members.

Abduzeedo | Go To Flickr Group