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What makes a design RETRO?

Roxanne Peterson — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 15:54:32 +0000

Using retro themed web designing templates is the latest trend in web designing. Retro templates are characterized by period icons, vivid graphics and pale colors. This popular theme is not only showing its presence in websites but also in paintings, ads and fashion designing. Let us find out the reasons behind this growing popularity of retro web designing.

Reasons of popularity

Retro designing transcends time, styles, tastes and ages. Web designing templates having retro style are well accepted by customers from different countries. Retro designing usually focuses on certain eras or pop cultures but enjoys a loyal group of followers across several countries. Color schemes and graphics are neither too dull nor too colorful.

Interweaving of modern graphics with old designs helps in creating a vintage appeal. People have a tendency to associate “value” with old things. Retro designing aims to reap this normal tendency. While value element helps in drawing visitors, modern designing elements keep them hooked. As such, retro designing offers the site owners best of both worlds – vintage looks with modern designing.

Retro designing has brought a touch of romanticism in web designing. Most web surfers are guilty of romanticizing old things. Most of us have a feeling “how green was my valley”. They feel life was much simpler, less stressful and relaxed when they were in schools and colleges. This is probably where a retro design takes us. It takes us to those sweet and memorable days when life was more relaxed.

Elements of retro designing

Retro web designing has several approaches to theme and certain elements are often repeated. Handwritten scripts are very popular. Some designers use old cars, retro product models, old fashioned photographs, early electronic devices and other such old images for creating retro look. Some web pages reflect the celebration of sixties to space travel while others prefer to highlight post-war optimism and ad campaigns of ‘50s. Some web designers use the military themes like old war planes and badges and some like to use images of pin-up girls of that era. There are several crucial elements that contribute in making a design retro. Let us explore some of them.

1. Using shapes and illustrations

Simple shapes works wonder in creating a retro look. Circles of different sizes are commonly used for this purpose. Going through designs of different famous eras revels how simple shapes were used by designers to create maximum impact. In addition to simple shapes, some of them also opted for a floral background. Bright colors were used in such cases for drawing attention. These techniques are widely adapted by many designers for creating separate space of different content within same area.

2. Color schemes

Limited use of colors is the prominent trait of retro designs. Full color printing was very expensive in the past. This prompted many designers to limit the use of colors in their designs. Two toned coloring was predominantly used by retro designers. Sometimes designers selected a focal color and blended it with few selected colors to create a unique theme.

3. Typography

Typography has always played a vital role in designing a retro site. Designers of the retro eras used simple techniques like repositioning of fonts, duplicating and pixel strokes for adding unique flavor to a design.

4. Borders

Use of borders is a fascinating part of retro designing. Borders can be used for framing a picture, highlighting content or creating focus areas. They can have ornamental designs or matching solid colors.

5. Textures and noises

Subtle use of texture and noise in the background helps in creating a visually appealing retro design. While some offer a canvas type background having worn out look, others love to use poster artwork with subtle colors. From blending of brush works to stained structures vintage designs are a treat to watch. Drop shadows and pattern overlays are used for creating retro look of a web page. Retro textures are usually simple to create with help of Photoshop.

6. Badges and logos

Badges and logos play a crucial role in creating a retro feel. Badges are usually round shaped with a fluttering slim banner over them. Subtle and contrasting colors are used on retro logos and badges. Most of them can be created with Photoshop.

Finally…

Using retro elements in web designing is an attempt to bring back the memories of past. When a designer purposely develops an old design and blends it with new services and technology we get true retro effect. Retro designs are void of older designing techniques, making them technologically compatible with modern site designing. There are several retro elements that may not fit with our modern web designing approach. Extensive use of Flash, horizontal rule lines, large rainbow fonts, hit counters are avoided by modern designers. Background images and music along with scrolling tickers used in earlier days of web designing may create problems in modern web designing. These elements should be avoided while designing and developing a retro website.

Vertical Parallax – A new trend in webdesign

Gopal Raju — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 14:18:30 +0000

Parallax based webdesign was already a trend for the past few years, but it looks like vertical parallax is going to be the next big thing. Unlike the typical horizontal parallax, the movement happens as you scroll the page. The following is a list of creative websites that has marked the beginning of this trend. I’m expecting to see more of this in 2011.

Ben the bodyguard This is almost like watching a short film

Nike better world You’d be already familiar with this.

TEDx Portland A unique use of the parallax effect.

ResolutionIM Don’t take your eyes off the rocket as you scroll.

David Beckham

Manufacturedessai

APO

Tutorial to create a vertical parallax using CSS and jQuery

And finally, an awesome detailed tutorial explaining how to create a vertical parallax using jQuery and CSS.

Trend Review: Web2.0 Rockets and Gliders in Webdesign!

Gopal Raju — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 15:54:41 +0000

Web2.0 rockets and gliders

are visually appealing elements, normally used to indicate speed. Here goes a list of sites that follow this

trend

1. A Pilot

2. Div Voted

3. Drupal Con

4. Get Me Fast

5. iSlayer

6. Jeff Sarmiento

7. Little Kids Bedrooms

8. Rawkes

9. Sopa

10. Mix Online

Third Dimension/Depth in Web design

Gopal Raju — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 19:46:23 +0000

Do you remember those folded 3d menus or elements with shadows, coming from behind the web page? If you can’t, here goes a hand picked set of websites with those clean 3d elements.

1. Alexandru Cohaniuc

2. Burger King Studio

3. Change in Command

4. Cognigen Corp

5. From the Couch

6. Sarah Longnecker

7. The Society of Publication Designers

8. The Autumn Film

9. Tmynus

10. Blue Dots Design

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Best ways to display twitter updates

Gopal Raju — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 15:53:51 +0000

Back to twitter Just thought of collecting sites with the best tweet display. Showing tweets on websites is of course a trend but the way these websites display is really awesome.

1. Athena Emily

2. Alexandre Pereira

3. CSS Globe

4. Dark Motion

5. Deziner Folio

6. Gabe Diaz

7. Indiqo

8. Komodomedia

9. Laptopical

10. Once Made

11. Ondrej Vertat

12. Pawnda

13. Pro Blog Design

14. Shannon Miller

15. Smart Cube

16. The JT Site

17. We are Not Freelancers

18. Nick Finck

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Trend Review: Coffee Cups in webdesign

Gopal Raju — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 12:15:26 +0000

Use of Coffee Cups is another interesting trend I noticed recently. Some of them are relevant to the websites’ services while others are not. However, coffee cups are visually appealing and are weaving path to another interesting design trend

1. Wild Zeitung

2. Art Flavours

3. BrandStorm

4. Cofee In Town

5. Design54

6. Ficod 2008

7. Haus Hoyer

8. Icon Icon

9. Jimmyoh

10. Kinoz

11. Lee Munroe

12. Rodney Edwards

13. teh C peng

14. The Piss Biscuit

15. Jwhanif

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Parachutes/Hot Air Balloons – An Emerging Trend in Webdesign

Gopal Raju — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 15:01:34 +0000

Using parachutes/hot air balloons in website designs has almost become a trend now. Even though this is not a common element, there are quite a few websites(which I have listed below) that might contribute to evolution of this new trend.

I have also included a FREE parachute graphics package(Fireworks png) at the bottom of this post.

1. Aurum3

2. Bootb

3. Andre Augusto

4. Dezignus

5. FOWA

6. Galaicofolia

7. Timothy Blake

8. Little Red

9. Pegadaecologica

10. Ryan Scherf

11. The Circumference

12. A2design

13. International Comedy Film Festival

As I’ve mentioned above, here goes the freebie. This would be helpful for those who would like to follow the “Parachute Trend”. Enjoy and Merry X’mas!!

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Trend Review: Clip ‘n’ Paper

Gopal Raju — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 19:55:36 +0000

When two people use the same style it’s copy, but when many use it’s called a trend. It’s too long since I reviewed a trend. So here it goes – ‘Clip n Paper’. This is another common element that I’ve noticed in many websites. Normally websites with this element look grungy, but there are a few clean sites as well, in the list.

1. Amuki

2. Auchtertool Kirk

3. Blurb

4. Brian Wilkins

5. Concept7

6. Deadfall Camoflage

7. Dreamling

8. DrSoft

9. Eko Udruga

10. Ethem Budak

11. Jeremy Thomas

12. Josh Buckley

13. Sako Karalekian

14. Marco Kuttkat

15. Medics Away

16. Membran Ventile

17. Onskelista

18. Plej

19. Prolong

20. PSD CSS Pro

21. Revolution Driving Tuition

22. Simply Fired

23. Spoon Graphics

24. Team Green Online

25. Totally Her

26. Eton Digital

27. Level9 Design

28. Olly Hite

29. Web Notes

30. Works4Sure

31. Black Wave Creative

32. Shawn Johnston

Trend Review: Price Tags (Part 2)

Gopal Raju — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 20:58:45 +0000

Thanks for supporting my previous post, on the same topic. I’ve collected another set of Price Tag based designs.

1. Art Flavours

2. Capture The Valley

3. Friml

4. Jayha Fling

5. Gpacheco

6. Planet Web Group

7. Stucel

8.Really Wild Travel

9. Nomiki

10. Hotel Paradiso

11. Piedi Costa

12. Hello

13. Belgrade Jazzfest

14. The CSS Gallery List

15. Bubblesoc

16. Josieg182

17. A Real Guitar

18. Mom Style

19. Naing Media Creation

20. CSS Tricks

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Trend Review: Price Tags (Part 1)

Gopal Raju — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 19:41:11 +0000

Price Tag, another common design element that I’ve seen in many websites. I’ve collected 20 great looking designs with price tags. Enjoy!

1. Adservizimpresa

2. Bcandullo

3. Bigsweaterdesign

4. Blkmtnstudio

5. Davidhellmann

6. Fabricadecaricaturas

7. Fortysevenmedia

8. Fseid

9. Iemai

10. Jameslaicreative

11. Ledzuc

12. Madebyabe

13. Meaganfisher

14. Mootygraphicdesign

15. Nataliejost

16. Seftontransmail

17. Swiths

18. Thecakewalkcary

19. Ushops

20. Wedomarkup

21. Mountain Side Guest House

22. El Rincon De Blablaton

Feel free to suggest any awesome design with price tags

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