There are many trends we see popping up in web design, but one that seems to really making a surge is a trend toward dark sites. I'm guessing it has something to do with everyone going "green" these days, and trying to do what they can to help the environment. I don't know if dark sites save much energy, but the sites listed here are stunning! They use the dark to create drama. Adding color to a dark design creates a rich and tasty contrast, and one of the most common features of these sites is the saturated imagery. If you're anything like me, you study amazing sites for inspiration, and hopefully, these won't let you down.

1. Sawyer Hollenshead

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From Vectortuts:

A kick-butt logo design is of great importance to any business. Often seen as the first impression of a company, its logo must be tailored to communicate specific values and ideals in an instant.

However, logos not only have the look good, they should also be thoughtfully designed and capable of taking on a variety of uses. This could include being scaled to a range of sizes, being reproduced in flat color and being printable on paper stock. In this post we look at 30 contemporary examples of great vector logo design and find out what makes them work.

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vectors, logos, design

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From woork:

Blogger it's a very powerful platform to publish your blog. It's free and with some features which you can customize how you prefer, without limits.

In this post I want to illustrate some tips which can help you to improve your Blogger template to design a professional layout for your blog.

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design, inspiration, blogger, tips, google

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From EliteByDesign:

Web design has become one of the largest online fields with thousands of people pitting their designs against those of others every day. While the field is still young and growing, there are few designers who are recognized by all and have stood the test of time as their designs prevail over all others. Today, I want to share fifty must-read resources if you want to get started on the path of creating incredible web designs. Remember, beautiful designs aren’t made overnight - this is a process that takes time and practice. Don’t give up - instead, read on and find either a website, article, tutorial, or just some inspiration to help you take yourself and your business to the next level.

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From Designm.ag:

Font selection for headlines on websites can be critical to achieving the right look and drawing the proper attention with the headlines. Here is a look at more than 50 fonts that will give you some options for creating strong headlines that communicate a message. Some of these fonts you probably already have, some of them can be downloaded for free, and others can be purchased. Each font is linked to a page where it can be downloaded or purchased.

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From Outlaw Design Blog:

There is certainly no shortage of Photoshop tutorial websites floating around in cyber space. As I’m sure many of you know, most of them are pure crap. They are filled with recycled and out dated tutorials, many of which look like they were written by a 6th grader. Instead of wasting your time scouring the web looking for good Photoshop tutorials, stick with this list of the 10 best. You will actually learn something on these!

In no particular order, the top 10 Photoshop tutorials are:

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One of the coolest features of the iPhone 2.0 software is the ability to save images from the web to your photos. Didn't realize you could? Just press and hold your finger on one of the following images, and you'll be given the option to save the photo. These wallpapers are from the iPhone Wallpapers group on Flickr, and are formatted to perfectly fit your iPhone.

Nature

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From Smashing Magazine:

When it comes to beauty nothing can beat the beauty of nature. Although we, designers, can derive inspiration from almost everywhere, nature often manages to provide us with beautiful eye-catching perspectives we would never have explored otherwise. We have collected hundreds of wallpapers already (see links below). In this post we would like to focus on wallpapers which emphasize the variety and beauty of nature.

This post showcases 50 remarkable nature desktop wallpapers. The cover various themes and subjects; we have included both photographic and artistic (photo-manipulated) wallpapers. Hopefully, everybody will find something from himself / herself.

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From Freshome:

Home audio speakers are designed to sound great, but many designers take it to the next level and create something so sexy that people can’t help but stare. They know what they do, because in these days a product that looks good has better chances to be sold. These creative speaker designs that you’re gonna see in this post combine both style and (hopefully) function, and we can say that they look better than they sound.

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From Creative Closeup:

One of the best free stuff Graphic Designers can find on the Web for free are high resolution backgrounds and textures. Long gone are the days when you had to buy very expensive CDs in order to obtain good quality backgrounds for your design projects.
By that time, marble and granite textures were all the rage. But now it seems that paper is becoming the new king. Lots of Web Designers are embracing the delicate look of a piece of paper with a subtle shadow. And if it is torn or folded, much better.
This gallery shows some paper backgrounds I collected from different sites. If you would like to add some nice effects to some of these textures, you can read a tutorial I wrote about creating paper folds and creases to paper textures in Photoshop.
Please, read about the usage rights: All of these textures should be free for commercial use, but to be absolutely sure, check each web site usage terms and license before downloading. Below each image sample, there is a link to the usage license. In some cases, where the scope of the license was not clear enough, I placed a link to the author profile so you can contact him. You can also read this excellent Guide to Finding and Using Incredible Flickr Images to help you find more free images for your work.

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