sketches

30 Outstanding Progress Illustrations for Icon & Logo Designs

May 28, 2014 By Devlounge

In the past I’ve seen hundreds of progress illustrations related to logos and icons posted onto Dribbble. These are often shared by designers who wish to give some insight towards their creative process. These shots allow us to peek behind the curtain and see how a typical icon is designed from pencil and paper into Photoshop.

I’ve organized a set of 30 brilliant progress illustrations shared by very talented Dribbble members. Each shot may include the finished design or could focus primarily on the illustration work. Drawing out each idea would typically be essential when brainstorming and planning how to move forward on a creative project. Take a peek at these designs to see how much work truly goes into conceptual drafting.

Raspberry Leaf

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Friday Focus 12/02/11: Like A Modern Day Leonardo

December 2, 2011 By Sophia Lucero

Happy December Friday Focus! This week’s featured designs contain sketches and diagrams with a scientific slant, quite reminiscent of the drawings that Leonardo Da Vinci was renowned for.

Designs of the Week

Nice icon-based navigation although I wish the whole circle were clickable. I also wish the up/down arrows scrolling from one screen to another were in the same place, but I see how the layout affected the positioning.

This design looks swell, there are so many nifty details that went to it, especially how the social media icons were fashioned at the footer—as part of an atom! probably the best idea I’ve seen—but there seems to be too much uppercase styling here.

Every page uses an ivory-colored foreground on a very strong colored background—orange, green, purple, you name it—and remains highly readable while gunning for maximum impact. The key to this design is definitely great illustrations and typography.

There’s a section that runs text a little too long but I really appreciate the use of old style fonts and graphics. There’s no horizontal menu, just the vertical one opposite the head diagram. Looks straight out of an old anatomy textbook.

Beautiful grid-based, black and white design with a pop of red here and there. The one thing about anchors and one-page sites is that if a section isn’t tall enough, it won’t be apparent that you’ve skipped to that place once you click on the link. Here, when you click on the Contact link, it doesn’t place that section in focus because there’s no more space to scroll down.

Social Media Weekly

HTML, JavaScript – The Script Tag
“I’ve noticed that on a <script> tag, there are all kinds of variations that all seem to work cross-browser. What is necessary and what isn’t?”

Web Standards – Move the Web Forward
“You love web standards. You want to give back to the community. Curious about where to start? We’re here to help.”

Design – Stitches – An HTML5 sprite generator
“Drag and drop image files into the space below and click “Generate” to create a sprite and stylesheet.”

Mobile Web Design – A Look Inside Mobile Design Patterns
“Although these patterns are based on best practices in mobile application design, they may also be inspiring for mobile web design.”

Friday Focus 06/04/10: Workspaces

June 4, 2010 By Sophia Lucero

This week on Friday Focus: websites that mimic a typical designer’s workspace, beverage, gadgets, litter, and all.

Designs of the Week

I love how in the inner pages the big graphic moves up and out of focus, while the scrolling text hides under the table.

The shadows in the sketches are off, and I would have liked more of that look to bleed into the rest of the design, but I like me a clean design.

A collage-style design is always fun, and the variety of textures here keep things interesting.

I love the view from the ceiling; you don’t get that very often. Even better is that as you reach the end of the page you get the other end of the room. Great idea! Tiny nitpick: the justified text, which always looks stiff.

I find it interesting that they chose to emphasize the word design in the heading rather than the name of the studio itself. I quite like the shading style on the illustrated graphics too.

Social Media Weekly

Design – Complete Beginner’s Guide to Design Research
“Research actually begins the moment we learn about a project, whether we acknowledge it or not. As user experience designers we aren’t content simply designing to specification.”

Design – Perception and the design of forms – Part 1: Shape
“How is it that we can know, without thinking, that the computer monitor is closer to us than the window, which is closer again than the car parked on the street outside?”

Semantics – HTML and Semantics – Conjoined twins of the Future Web!
“Yes, that is where the web is heading towards, and that day will be called – ‘The day of Semantic Web’, and the most important players in that era will be none other than our old kid ‘HTML’ and the relatively sophisticated kid ‘Semantics’.”

Accessibility – How do Web browsers perform when copying and pasting alternate text?
“In HTML, an image is made up of visual and textual data (alternate text). Most Web browsers attempt to render alternate text when visual data is not available. However, only one browser currently uses alternate text when pasting images into other applications.”

Friday Focus 05/27/10: In Your Face Illustrations

May 28, 2010 By Sophia Lucero

This week on Friday Focus: illustrations that appear front and center in these websites, because we want them big, bright, and beautiful.

Designs of the Week

Highly detailed and scrumptious “pie chart”! The colorful illustration style and metaphors all the way into the footer not only adds interest but are artfully done.

I just love a design that breaks out of the box. Once again this is a lovely work of art, with touches of calligraphy and fascinating shapes growing out of the swirls. The inside page design is more organized but keeps this look in the header.

It’s great that you can find lots of clickable elements in the illustration itself, and the metaphor really works. The hand-drawn, watercolor style carries over to the other page elements like the icons. I wish the form fields and buttons joined in the fun too.

The center-focused layout works well, as does the bold black text and buttons, greens, and oranges.

Showcasing your work in the biggest, widest way possible is a surefire way to set the look and feel of your site. In this case it’s spilling with bright pinks and trendy type.

Some quieter shades of pink in here but still striking. Notice the recycling of the hearts, stars, roses, and leaves in the rest of this one page site.

Super-wide layout with a sprinkle of parallax, -webkit-transform, and subtle jQuery hover effects. The most exciting portion is the contact form at the footer.

I love this sketchy look accompanied by a pattern of ocean waves. (You can actually download it as a wallpaper if you want.)

This isn’t a groundbreaking layout or look but it somehow feels different. A case of letting the picture speak a thousand works, perhaps?

Topnotch icon work and typography. Just look at it. The vignettes in the corners are a bonus.

Fantastic illustrations, but other design details fall a little short of its elegance and whimsy.

This one, on the other hand, overflows with whimsy! Nothing says it like a unicorn and a mustache sign in icon.

I like that the rabbit and its hole is a mini power line leading in to the next section’s boxes. The slanting boxes and buttons are great too.

Social Media Weekly

CSS – Efficiently Rendering CSS
“I admittedly don’t think about this idea very often… how efficient is the CSS that we write, in terms of how quickly the browser can render it?”

CSS – Using CSS3 Transitions, Transforms and Animation
“These demos are showing of CSS transitions, transforms (2D and 3D) and animations”

JavaScript – Javascript shorthand for cleaner code
“A few ways to save on some bytes in your Javascript code, as well as making it more readable and quicker to write”

Optimization – 46 CRO/Conversion Rate Optimization Resources for Web Design, SEO & Social Media Experts

Friday Focus 01/01/10: Let the adventures begin!

January 1, 2010 By Sophia Lucero

Welcome to the first Friday Focus of the year and the new decade! Here are some fantastically designed websites that should inspire you to be more daring and adventurous than ever starting right now. Ready?

Designs of the Week

I just love it when a site creates animations without the use of Flash. I like the idea of a rooftop view too—a nice change from the skies and skyscraper views we see so much. There only needs to be a bit of refining in the inside blocks of text, but other than that, I enjoyed the overall vibe of this site.

The hover effects on the side are all such fun. And the splatter shapes used as masks for the different image thumbnails in the gallery? Great idea.

This is what we call the full experience. From top to bottom you get immersed into the world created by the design. It’s probably the most enjoyable type of site. Using the branches as separators is brilliant, and all the little icons maintain that quirky, storybook look.

Social Media Weekly

Design – 10 Beautiful Sketches for Website Prototypes
“In this post I want to suggest you some interesting examples of beautiful sketches for website prototypes for your daily inspiration.”

Programming – Don’t Miss Out Latest 10 jQuery Plugins Before Closing The Year 2009
“This entry is in jQuery Plugins series that I love to give my readers fresh and useful plugins for inspiration.”

30 Outstanding Progress Illustrations for Icon & Logo Designs

Raspberry Leaf

Friday Focus 12/02/11: Like A Modern Day Leonardo

Designs of the Week

Social Media Weekly

Friday Focus 06/04/10: Workspaces

Designs of the Week

Social Media Weekly

Friday Focus 05/27/10: In Your Face Illustrations

Designs of the Week

Social Media Weekly

Friday Focus 01/01/10: Let the adventures begin!

Designs of the Week

Social Media Weekly

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