Raster Graphics

1. Jingle Jam Christmas Party Flyer ($6)

Use this design for any Christmas advertisement or Christmas party at a nightclub, at work or use as a holiday party invitation. 4×6 inches, CMYK, 300 DPI.

2. 20 seamless christmas backgrounds ($5)

This set comes with 10 patterned papers and 10 textured papers – that all look and feel like original Christmas wrapping paper. Patterns come as 500×500 jpegs.

3. Christmas Backgrounds ($5)

Pack with six artificial Christmas textures and decoration patterns. 3000x3000px, 300 dpi.

4. Christmas & New Years Eve Party Flyer ($7)

A clean, crisp, wintery, cold, exciting 6×10” PSD flyer template, perfect for any nightclub or party event. 3 variations, CMYK, 300 DPI.

5. Christmas Bash Party Flyer Pack ($7)

Modern and shining design to spotlight your event. 5 PSD files, CMYK, 300 DPI.

6. Santa and Christmas Reindeer ($2)

Illustration of flying Santa and Christmas reindeer

7. Typo Christmas Flyer Template ($4)

8. Wonderful Christmas Flyer & Postcard ($6)

This item includes a uniquely and carefully designed flyer & postcard. 8.5×11’’ + 8.5×5.5”, editable layers.

Vector Graphics

1. Santa Into the Winter Christmas Night ($3)

Christmas winter landscape with Santa in the sky.

2. Red and golden christmas background ($4)

3. Set Of Christmas Icons ($5)

4. Christmas Banners ($4)

5. Set vector christmas greeting card ($3)

Editable and scalable vector Christmas greeting card

6. Christmas Background with Sparkles ($4)

7. Santa Holding Wooden Banner ($4)

Email Templates landing pages

1. FeastMail ($14)

Feast Mail is an exclusive Christmas email template with business style. Snowy style with exclusively designed Christmas collages is a great way to share the warmth of the season your clients by sending them a beautiful Christmas email. 3 styles, 5 layouts and 6 color variations.

2. Simple Christmas ($15)

Simple Christmas is a user-friendly and flexible festive template. There are three designs with many possible variations and layered 3 Photoshop files included. 3 different layouts, commented code, layered PSD files.

3. Holiday Mail ($9)

Holiday Mail is a highly customizable email template. It comes with multiple modules which can be stacked over each other to get different layouts.

4. FeastMail 2 ($18)

Feast Mail 2 is a Christmas email template with twelve exclusively designed Christmas collages. great way to share the warmth of the season your clients by sending them a beautiful Christmas email. Inline CSS, commented code, layered PSD.

5. Christmas Season Landing Page Template ($10)

Included in this template package is one HTML page – the main landing page is perfectly formatted using good practices for landing page design including strong, obvious CTA areas (Call To Action) to help convert visitors into clients / customers.

6. XMAS Season ($6)

XMAS Season is a Christmas special deal promotion webpage for any kind of product you want to sell. HTML and CSS3 markup, responsive layout, Javascript slider, layered PSD.

Photographs

All prices apply to medium size download.

1. Christmas ball($3)

2. Christmas gift sitting on a table ($3)

3. Christmas Present ($3)

4. Brightly lit Christmas tree ($3)

5. Beautiful xmas tree at dusk ($3)

6. Door opening into a living room ($3)

7. christmas($3)

8. Christmas($3)

9. Two candles with decoration ($3)

Designers and artists, and geeks in general, can be nitpicky when it comes to gifts. Most often, they don’t like gifts that are uncreative and uninspiring. If you want to make an effort this year by giving the best gifts for your designer friends, stop shopping at local shopping stores and malls. Sure, designers and creative types are easy to please–gift them with the latest iPad, smartphone, or a state-of-the-art Wacom tablet and you’ll be BFFs. But if you have a tight budget, better be creative! Explore unique gifts by going online.

We provide you the list of the best holiday gift ideas for designers and creatives. Gift this for your fellow designer friends or for yourself. If you don’t want to receive crappy, generic gifts from your friends again, you can share this link and hope they can get the hint. Enjoy!

1. Black and White Clock

The Black and White Clock is designed by Vadim Kibardin. The minimalist aesthetic is clean and beautiful.

2. Unique Coffee Cups

Coffee and designers have always come hand in hand. Sure, coffee mugs are often seen as generic gifts, but a one-of-a-kind mug will make it any designer’s best friend.

Slim Coffee Cup by Sharona Merlin

Mustache Coffee Cup by Peteri Bruegger

Mugs that are useful too, like this self-stirring mug is sure to quickly warm a recipient’s heart.

3. Lego Rings

Lego Rings are adorable for the female population of web designers. Their geeky, fashionable and whimsical. I would love to have one of these. Rock the look in the retro geek style. Get one from Skinny Bitch Apparel.

4. Cast Iron Ampersand

Designers love good typography. The Ampersand is a piece of work, and this cast iron version will work well in any designer’s home or office as a bookend, door stop, paperweight or simply as a sculpture. Each model is numbered & signed by the artist.

5. Nomad Brush

The Nomad brush is made of natural and synthetic fiber that allows you to paint on your iPad. It creates a more realistic experience of digital painting, as compared to using your finger or a stylus.

6. Star Wars Plush with Sound

Galactic and huggable friends from Think Geek are available in all sizes(4-inch, 9-inch and 15-inch). Darth Vader has never been this cute.

7. 8-bit Oven Mitt

Even designers have to do household chores (i.e. cooking). Give them the more reason to enjoy cooking and baking with this ultra geeky 8-bit oven mitt. Another great gift item from Think Geek.

8. 8-bit LED Holiday Wreath

A geeky holiday wreath to decorate your doorstep. One look at it and it screams: Mario Lives Here!

9. The Creative Sleep Pillows

After hours staring at the screen and working on Adobe Photoshop, wouldn’t it be nice to lie your head on one afterwards? Pillow logos are available for the Ps, Ai, Fl, Id, Dw and more. Grab these comfy Creative Suite pillows at My Suite Stuff.

10. DIY Mighty Wallet

The DIY Mighty Wallet has it all–it’s thin, it’s strong and it’s green. And it gives you total artistic freedom to draw on your own wallet. Now who wouldn’t want that?

11. Geeky T-shirts

There’s no place like 127.0.0.1. Or in layman’s terms, There’s no place like home!

The t-shirt speaks for itself. We may love computers, but we certainly have better things to do than fix other people’s computer.

A reference to the simplest markup knowledge that every web designer knows. The opening and closing tags are printed on the front and back of the shirt, respectively.

Ironman Light Up Shirt from Think Geek.

And finally, Threadless has many creative and inspiring t-shirt designs!

12. Ray Solar Charger

The Ray Solar Charger is a great gadget present for designers on the go. It charges your electronic gadgets as long as there is ample amount of sunlight. Now you’ll never go powerless again.

13. Geek Statement Socks

Celebrate geekiness and be proud of it with these adorable socks! Another awesome product from Think Geek.

14. Come In / Go Away Ambigram Doormat

The Coir Doormat has a unique ambigram design of ‘Come In’ and ‘Go Away’, depending on the direction you are looking at it. Welcome guests with the ‘Come In’ sign as they come in, and surprise them with the ‘Go Away’ sign on their way home. A great doormat to welcome guests during Christmas and New Year. Get this from Amazon.

15. Bose QuietComfort

Many designers don’t have their own office where they can work in peace. Instead, they have to deal with busy coffee shops and noisy environment. Now designers can get rid of that inconvenience and get rid of unnecessary noise and distractions with the Bose QuietComfort headphones.

16. Brookstone Wireless Key Finder

We all love items that are unique and useful. This Wireless Key Finder is a classic ‘Why didn’t I think of that?’ item. You would never lose your keys again. The key finder works up to a 60 feet range.

17. Be A HeadCase iPhone Hard Case & Bottle Opener

The iPhone case offers protection to your phone, and an extra-handy beer opening feature for beer nights!

18. IdeaPaint Dry Erase Whiteboard

Every artist has that unfulfilled fantasy from childhood to draw on walls without being scolded. Now you will have that artistic freedom to draw on walls through IdeaPaint!  It can turn any wall into a dry erase surface, the perfect wall to any artist’s studio, home or office.

19. Star Wars Hans Solo Ice Cube Tray

Men (particularly Star Wars fans) will enjoy this present–it’s so geeky it’s just awesome. Aside from ice cubes, it works well with chocolate, too.

20. Mobile Office by Tim Vinke

Tim Vinke has created a clever design for a mobile office, which he calls the Kruikantoor. It has wheels to easily transport the office anywhere and everywhere. Plus it has all the necessary features for any office, such as a desk table, chairs, light, electrical connection and storage. It’s like an office on wheels!

Christmas Wallpapers

To begin with, lets go through some of the amazing Christmas Wallpapers that will pop out of your screen.

1. Waiting for Miracle

2. Merry Christmas

3. My Christmas Tree

4. Merry Christmas

5. Christmas Wallpaper

6. Christmas Login – XP Version

7. Christmas Cowboys

8. Candy Christmas

9. Jack Skellington and Oogie Boogie

10. HD Wallpapers

11. Frosted

12. Green Christmas

13. Christmas Time

14. NOEL New Year Wallpaper

15. Sweet Christmas Desktop

Christmas Web Designs

Here goes the list of Christmas web designs that have worked hard to make the most of this Holiday Season.

1. Christmas Dreaming

2. Site5 Christmas Theme

3. Christmas Tweets

4. Claus Kids

5. Fee XMAS MP3

6. Merry Christmas

7. Noella Designs

8. On the 12 Days of Christmas

9. Rap Your Presents

10. Red Web

11. Secret Santr

12. Snow Flakes for Christmas

13. The Kidz Page

14. Titkostelapo

15. XMAS Fun

Christmas Fonts

To wrap up, here is the list of Christmas Fonts that can make your documents more festive. It is time to add that touch of Christmas to whatever you are writing:

1. Kingthings Christmas

2. KR Christmas Frames

3. Christmas Lights

4. PC Snowball

5. Snow Persons

6. Bodie MF Holly

7. Candy Time

8. Frosty

9. Chausettes

10. Snowman Citadel

There are too many items to cite but I only chose the coolest and most stylish. Things that a designer (developer, writer, etc.) would want to use not only at work but off-work, make your friend designer happier in this Christmas and remember there aren’t too many days left to get the gifts – huh..I need to remind that myself too .

SanDisk Cruzer 16 GB Flash Drive

Estimated price: $35.11

Adding to the fact that it has a lifetime warranty, it is capless so you won’t have to lose the cap. Massive storage for immediate and more portable needs. Features boasts that it includes JetFlash Elite data management tools which can help you to “Take your E-mail with you on the road” and “one-click automatic website log in”.

Livescribe 2 GB Pulse Smartpen

Estimated price: $99.99

I believe this is the smartest pen ever invented. Features include voice recording for over 200 hours, things that you write is written and at the same time recorded which in turn you can upload to your Mac or PC for a virtual image of your notebook. From there you can “search” a term and the software finds it for you. Also has built in translator and calculator. Of all the items featured here this is the one item I want. Works well for writers, developers, and designers who are in meetings or far from a laptop/desktop.

Wacom Bamboo Pen and Touch Fun Small Tablet

Estimated price: $83.57

Several months ago I had the chance to use one and I loved it even if I’m not really good at designing. For starters or pro this is a good tool in digital painting and other artworks.

Star Wars Darth Vader Mini-Figure Alarm Clock

Estimated price: $49.99

Admit it, many designers have seen Star Wars and are amazed by it. Who doesn’t know Darth Vader? Let Vader wake you up!

MIMO USB LCD Screen

Estimated price: $149.99

A busy designer’s screen has no place for e-mails and IMs, they won’t just fit in one. Here’s the solution, plug it and have an extra space.

Imagelab Slide and Negative Scanner

Estimated price: $80.56

From negatives to digital images, I never thought such a technology existed. Insert your negatives, wait a moment, and view your scanned images on the LCD.

Canon SELPHY Compact Photo Printer

Estimated price: $59.99

Compact printer. Can print 4” by 6” photo in about 47 seconds with high quality. Wireless and has an LCD.

PanDigital’s 8.5”x11” Photo Scanner

Estimated price: $99.84

A device which requires no PC to scan images. Can scan up to 8.5”x11”. Photos are scanned as 650dpi full color. Scanned images are saved directly to a memory card.

The Web Designer’s Idea Book, Vol. 2: More of the Best Themes, Trends and Styles in Website Design

Estimated price: $19.80

A book to help avoid/remove designer’s block. Full of ideas, fresh and new.

Thinking With Type

Estimated price: $16.47

Reviewers of this book mentions that they “became better designers” just after reading this. I wonder, what’s inside?

Wi-Fi Detector T-Shirt by ThinkGeek

Estimated price: $19.99

Aside from its ability to detect human presence, it also detects Wi-Fi! Imagine that? You won’t have to ask people if the place is Wi-Fi enabled or open your device just to check. Cool guy, knows where Wi-Fi signal is.

App Magnets

Estimated price: $17.06

Too much time spent on your smart phone results to real-life App Magnets. Decorate someone’s fridge with these either for a laugh or for style.

Holmes Black Robot Desk Lamp

Estimated price: $23.15

You do not mess with the Robot Desk Lamp! Add a creative touch to a friend’s room, a designer would love this greatly!

365 Cats Page-A-Day Calendar 2011

Estimated price: $9.62

Meow for inspiration. Meow.

Sharkoon X-Tactic SP Gaming Headset

Estimated price: $69.99

Every designer needs silence but holidays are coming and they will need to rock. Note: This is a gaming stereo headset for PlayStaion 3 and Xbox 360 with detachable microphone.

One Piece Anime Nami Oppai Mouse Pad

Estimated price: $49.95

Ergonomic mouse pad has good pads for wrist support. Yes, wrist support.

Kindle 3G + Wi-Fi Reading Device

Estimated price: $189.00

Imagine a pdf reader that you can use for a whole month in just one-time charging. Impossible? Wired Magazine’s comment about this product is “Battery life is long enough for space shuttle missions.” Kindle is also Amazon’s #1 bestselling item for 2 years and running. It boasts to be the most-wished-for, and most-gifted product in Amazon.

The Art of God of War III

Estimated price: $40.95

If you know a designer who is a fan of God of War then this book will delight him/her. This book gives the reader a peek into the epic conception of its epic art.

Photoshop CS5 Digital Classroom

Estimated price: $31.49

Perfect for beginners and even for experts. It has a DVD that will guide you along the way.

Designer Notebook Sleeve

Estimated price: $19.90

Can fit in a 15.6” notebook and will protect it with its Anti-Shock System. Who wouldn’t love such a beautiful design for a notebook sleeve? I’d buy it for 30 dollars.

Logitech MX Revolution Cordless Laser Mouse (Black)

Estimated price: $152.99

Best mouse for designers. Offers vertical and horizontal scrolling. Scrolling is fluid, you will never have a problem with that. There is also a search feature, set your default search engine and just highlight a word or phrase and let the mouse do the rest. To sum all of the reviews, this mouse is one of the most smartest today. And it’s wireless!

Logitech Illuminated Ultrathin Keyboard with Backlighting

Estimated price: $61.21

Very thin, has 3 levels of  back-lighting to help see keys in the dark, ultra comfortable and the most elegant keyboard you’ll ever see. A reviewer says this is the best keyboard he ever bought. Good gift? Yes.

Logitech Comfort Lapdesk N500

Estimated price: $38.15

Has a heat-shielding design which protects your skin from the heat. Recent studies suggests that placing a laptop on your lap may trigger allergic conditions because of the heat on your skin. Be protected from harm. Aside from that, this lapdesk promises to give its users comfort whether on the sofa or on the bed, reviews from buyers supports this claim.

Shumacher PP-2200 Portable Outdoor Power Unit

Estimated price: $66.17

This is a good gift for a friend or to yourself. Going on a vacation far from civilization and you need access to your laptop or other gadgets? This one is for you. Reviewers of this product says it powers their laptop for several hours. Amazing, huh?

Optoma PT100 PlayTime LED Gaming Projector

Estimated price: $179.99

Who wouldn’t want to have a home theater at $179.99? Works with game consoles and computers, has built-in speakers, and exceeds general expectations for such a small amount. Clearly, a good gift if you want people to relax at home.

1TB USB 3.0 and USB 2.0 Ultra Portable External Hard Drive

Estimated price: $129.99

You know what’s cooler than 500GB? 1TB. Powered by your laptop/desktop, no need for an external source for power. Ultra Portable can fit inside your pocket.

Wii

Estimated price: $197.00

In France they call it Yes. Need I say more? Best gift for everyone.

Sony PSP

Estimated price: $169.99

Every designer needs fresh ideas and Sony’s PSP is a good gadget to get them fresh. Already finished work? Relax and have fun through PSP.

Website Design for ROI: Turning Browsers into Buyers & Prospects into Leads

Estimated price: $27.66

Let’s face it, a website’s design is as important as the content.  Because humans are visual beings who decide quickly based on appearance of things, the principles should also be incorporated in web designs.

Fujifilm FinePix J40 12.2 MP Digital Camera

Estimated price: $59.00

Capture moments that inspire you. Great gift for an outgoing designer. Great price too.

I bet you’ve noticed little silence here and how articles don’t come out as often then they should, but I have really strong reason for it. For 2 weeks now, I have session and examinations in academy, so of course my daily work-flow is really messed up – I am working almost until morning, then sleep through days, wait for teachers, try to print everything out in time and so on. Very intense – since I left most of my exercises for last night.

All right, but on this Friday finally I finished everything and I am coming back even more seriously now!

Guest writers

I got many proposals for latest time through e-mails, I must apologize – I haven’t responded yet to many e-mails, but I will do now. Just don’t overreact – I really appreciate You contacting me and wishing to contribute, just I couldn’t get all works done in time, but don’t worry – I will write everybody back and hopefully 1stwebdesigner website will get several great new authors here!

And one more time – if you are designer, who would like to give some tips, educate and get involved – get in touch with me and we will discuss details.

Little peek in future

Yes, I worked all this time from my home sitting near my bed – I think it really distracts and don’t create right atmosphere. Things are changing and I will work in office from now on and even hiring more people and writers to help grow 1stwebdesigner even bigger. For me it’s something really big and new, we will see how this will work out in future!

I’ll keep focusing on webdesign topics, creating more tutorials and informing about new things happening in Internet world and blogosphere. Huge work has been done, but I think even bigger work will be in future, a lot of topics and article themes should be improved and I am working hard to do that!

Be patient, sit back in your chair and keep enjoying 1stwebdesigner articles, resources and tutorials! We will not disappoint you and with new writers contribution site will be getting a lot better for sure! Thank you, loyal readers and guest writers!!

IconSchock Great Cartoon

A while ago, I pronounced our collaboration with Iconshock company. They also offered to me create cartoon from real photo with me – I was very excited about their idea and gladly agreed. Artist is really talented and outcome looks amazing! Yep, that’s me – with Latvian flag behind me, big smile and always patriotic about this website as you can see on my T-Shirt..:) I should create one like that though! Thank you, Iconshocks and our collaboration continues, I received free icon set from them already and I will release it shortly!

If you haven’t heard about them or just want to get unique icon set for your project, visit their website and I am sure you will find something suitable for you as well!

SmashingMagazine Network

Yes, we got accepted in SmashingMag Network as well! I must say huge thanks to Vitaly Friedman and SM for this great opportunity! Here you can visit 1swebdesigner Smashing page. I am very excited and we’ll see how this collaboration will go and evolve, stay with us and stay with SmashingMagazine!

From now on you will see their badge on sidebar and in that way you will recognize all the blogs, which are in SmashingNetwork.

And finally I wish Merry X-mas to all our visitors in these thanks giving and sharing holidays! Ho ho ho!

Last year I also create several Christmas related tutorials and articles, maybe you would like to visit them as well!:

Night Before Christmas : Photoshop Tutorial And WallPaper

Beautiful Christmas Vision Tutorial And Wallpaper

In this article you’ll find books teaching you how to create great websites, get ideas, learn CSS,HTML, usability, typography, be aware about user experience, web standards,markup and much much more! Check for yourself!

Enjoy this collection, create your own wishlist and keep coming back – I will continue soon with article showcasing the most popular free webdesign and development books available as well! And again – if you wish to contribute and create better this website for everyone, just contact me and check contribute section to see what I can offer in exchange. Maybe you are capable on writing good review about some of these books? It would be extremely useful as well!

1. Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, 2nd Edition

By Steve Krug

Visit Website: http://www.sensible.com/

Usability design is one of the most important–yet often least attractive–tasks for a Web developer. In Don’t Make Me Think, author Steve Krug lightens up the subject with good humor and excellent, to-the-point examples.

The title of the book is its chief personal design premise. All of the tips, techniques, and examples presented revolve around users being able to surf merrily through a well-designed site with minimal cognitive strain. Readers will quickly come to agree with many of the book’s assumptions, such as “We don’t read pages–we scan them” and “We don’t figure out how things work–we muddle through.” Coming to grips with such hard facts sets the stage for Web design that then produces topnotch sites.

Using an attractive mix of full-color screen shots, cute cartoons and diagrams, and informative sidebars, the book keeps your attention and drives home some crucial points. Much of the content is devoted to proper use of conventions and content layout, and the “before and after” examples are superb. Topics such as the wise use of rollovers and usability testing are covered using a consistently practical approach.

This is the type of book you can blow through in a couple of evenings. But despite its conciseness, it will give you an expert’s ability to judge Web design. You’ll never form a first impression of a site in the same way again. –Stephen W. Plain

Topics covered:

• User patterns
• Designing for scanning
• Wise use of copy
• Navigation design
• Home page layout
• Usability testing

2. Web Standards Solutions: The Markup and Style Handbook

By Dan Cederholm

Web Standards are the standard technology specifications enforced by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to make sure that web designers and browser manufacturers are using the same technology syntax.

It is important that these implementations are the same throughout the Web, otherwise it becomes a messy proprietary place, and lacks consistency. These standards also allow content to be more compatible with multiple different viewing devices, such as screen readers for people with vision impairments, cell phones, PDFs, etc. HTML, XML, and CSS are all such technologies.

This book is your essential guide to understanding the advantages you can bring to your web pages by implementing web standards and precisely how to apply them. Web standards such as XHTML and CSS are now fairly well-known technologies, and they will likely be familiar to you, the web designer. Indeed, they are all around you on the Web. However, within web standards still lies a challenge: while the browser’s support for web standards is steadily increasing, many web developers and designers have yet to discover the real benefits of web standards and respect the need to adhere to them.

The real art is in truly understanding the benefits and implementing the standards efficiently. As a simple example of its power, you can use CSS to lay out your pages instead of nesting tables. This can make file sizes smaller, allowing pages to load faster, ultimately increasing accessibility for all browsers, devices, and web users.

• Expanded edition containing bonus material.
• Teaches how to use Web Standards effectively to build better web sites.
• Solutions style promotes learning by work-through examples and assessments.

3. Build Your Own Website the Right Way Using HTML & CSS

By Ian Lloyd

“Build Your Own Website The Right Way Using HTML & CSS, 2nd Edition” teaches web development from scratch, without assuming any previous knowledge of HTML, CSS or web development techniques. This book introduces you to HTML and CSS as you follow along with the author, step-by-step, to build a fully functional web site from the ground up.

However, unlike countless other “learn web design” books, this title concentrates on modern, best-practice techniques from the very beginning, which means you’ll get it right the first time. The web sites you’ll build will:

Look good on a PC, Mac or Linux computer Render correctly whether your visitors are using Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, or Safari Use web standards so your sites will be fast loading and easy to maintain Be accessible to disabled users who use screenreaders to browse the Web

By the end of the book, you’ll be equipped with enough knowledge to set out on your first projects as a professional web developer, or you can simply use the knowledge you’ve gained to create attractive, functional, usable and accessible sites for personal use.

4. Web Standards Creativity: Innovations in Web Design with XHTML, CSS, and DOM Scripting

By Andy Budd, Andy Clarke, Ian Lloyd, Cameron Adams, Rob Weychert, Ethan Marcotte, Dan Rubin, Derek Featherstone, Jeff Croft, Mark Boulton, Simon Collison

• Be inspired by 10 web design lessons from 10 of the worlds best web designers
• Get creative with cutting-edge XHTML, CSS, and DOM scripting techniques
• Learn breathtaking design skills while remaining standards-compliant

Here at friends of ED, we know that as a web designer or developer, your work involves more than just working to pay the bills. We know that each day, you strive to push the boundaries of your medium, unleashing your creativity in new ways to make your websites more engaging and attractive to behold, while still maintaining cross-browser support, standards compliance, and accessibility. That’s why we got together ten of the world’s most talented web designers to share their secrets with you. Web Standards Creativity is jam-packed with fresh, innovative design ideas. The topics range from essential CSS typography and grid design, effective styling for CMS-driven sites, and astonishing PNG transparency techniques, to DOM scripting magic for creating layouts that change depending on browser resolution and user preference, and better print layouts for web pages. We’re sure you will find something here to inspire you! This full-color book’s examples are not just stunning to look at, but

5. Dreamweaver CS4: The Missing Manual

By David Sawyer McFarland

When it comes to building professional websites, Dreamweaver CS4 is capable of doing more than any other web design program — including previous versions of Dreamweaver. But the software’s sophisticated features aren’t simple. Dreamweaver CS4: The Missing Manual will help you master this program quickly, so you can bring stunning, interactive websites to life.

Under the expert guidance of bestselling author and teacher David McFarland, you’ll learn how to build professional-looking websites quickly and painlessly. McFarland has loaded the book with over 150 pages of hands-on tutorials to help you create database-enabled PHP pages, use Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) for cutting-edge design, add XML-based news feeds, include dynamic effects with JavaScript and AJAX, and more. This witty and objective book offers jargon-free language and clear descriptions that will help you:

• Learn how to control the appearance of your web pages with CSS, from the basics to advanced techniques
• Design dynamic database-driven websites, from blogs to product catalogs, and from shopping carts to newsletter signup forms
• Add interactivity to your website with ready-to-use JavaScript programs from Adobe’s Spry Framework
• Effortlessly control the many helper files that power your website and manage thousands of pages
• Examine web-page components and Dreamweaver’s capabilities with the book’s “live examples”

Perfect for beginners who need step-by-step guidance, and for longtime Dreamweaver designers who need a handy reference to the new version, this thoroughly updated edition of our bestselling Missing Manual is your complete guide to designing, organizing, building, and deploying websites. It’s the ultimate atlas for Dreamweaver CS4.

6. The Web Designer’s Idea Book: The Ultimate Guide To Themes, Trends & Styles In Website Design

By Patrick Mcneil

The Web Designer’s Idea Book includes more than 700 websites arranged thematically, so you can find inspiration for layout, color, style and more. Author Patrick McNeil has cataloged more than 20,000 sites on his website, and showcased in this book are the very best examples.

Sites are organized by color, design style, type, theme, element and structure. It’s easy to use and reference again and again, whether you’re talking with a co-worker or discussing website design options with a client. As a handy desk reference for design layout, color and style, this book is a must-have for starting new projects.

7.Will be updated

8. Learning Web Design: A Beginner’s Guide to (X)HTML, StyleSheets, and Web Graphics

By Jennifer Niederst Robbins, Aaron Gustafson

Visit Website: http://www.learningwebdesign.com/

Everything you need to know to create professional web sites is right here. Learning Web Design starts from the beginning — defining how the Web and web pages work — and builds from there. By the end of the book, you’ll have the skills to create multi-column CSS layouts with optimized graphic files, and you’ll know how to get your pages up on the Web.

This thoroughly revised edition teaches you how to build web sites according to modern design practices and professional standards. Learning Web Design explains:

• How to create a simple (X)HTML page, how to add links and images
• Everything you need to know about web standards — (X)HTML, DTDs, and more
• Cascading Style Sheets — formatting text, colors and backgrounds, using the box model, page layout, and more
• All about web graphics, and how to make them lean and mean through optimization
• The site development process, from start to finish
• Getting your pages on the Web — hosting, domain names, and FTP

The book includes exercises to help you to learn various techniques, and short quizzes to make sure you’re up to speed with key concepts. If you’re interested in web design, Learning Web Design is the place to start.

9. The Principles of Beautiful Web Design

By Jason Beaird

Tired of making web sites that work absolutely perfectly but just don’t look nice?

If so, then “The Principles of Beautiful Web Design” is for you. A simple, easy-to-follow guide, illustrated with plenty of full-color examples, this book will lead you through the process of creating great designs from start to finish. Good design principles are not rocket science, and using the information contained in this book will help you create stunning web sites. Understand the design process, from discovery to implementation Understand what makes “good design” Developing pleasing layouts using grids, the rule of thirds, balance and symmetry Use color effectively, develop color schemes and create a palette Use textures, lines, points, shapes, volumes and depth Learn how good typography can make ordinary designs look great Effective imagery: choosing, editing and placing images And much more

Throughout the book, you’ll follow an example design, from concept to completion, learning along the way. The book’s full-color layout and large format (8″ x 10″) make The Principles Of Beautiful Wed Design a pleasure to read.

10. Creating a Web Site: The Missing Manual

By Matthew MacDonald

Get everything you need to plan and launch a web site, including detailed instructions and clear-headed advice on ready-to-use building blocks, powerful tools like CSS and JavaScript, and Google’s Blogger. The thoroughly revised, completely updated new edition of Creating a Web Site: The Missing Manual explains how to get your site up and running quickly and correctly.

11. Designing Interfaces

By Jenifer Tidwell

Designing a good interface isn’t easy. Users demand software that is well-behaved, good-looking, and easy to use. Your clients or managers demand originality and a short time to market. Your UI technology — web applications, desktop software, even mobile devices — may give you the tools you need, but little guidance on how to use them well.

UI designers over the years have refined the art of interface design, evolving many best practices and reusable ideas. If you learn these, and understand why the best user interfaces work so well, you too can design engaging and usable interfaces with less guesswork and more confidence.

“Designing Interfaces” captures those best practices as design patterns — solutions to common design problems, tailored to the situation at hand. Each pattern contains practical advice that you can put to use immediately, plus a variety of examples illustrated in full color. You’ll get recommendations, design alternatives, and warnings on when not to use them.

Each chapter’s introduction describes key design concepts that are often misunderstood, such as affordances, visual hierarchy, navigational distance, and the use of color. These give you a deeper understanding of why the patterns work, and how to apply them with more insight.

A book can’t design an interface for you — no foolproof design process is given here — but “Designing Interfaces” does give you concrete ideas that you can mix and recombine as you see fit. Experienced designers can use it as a sourcebook of ideas. Novice designers will find a roadmap to the world of interface and interaction design, with enough guidance to start using these patterns immediately.

12. A Project Guide to UX Design: For user experience designers in the field or in the making

By Russ Unger, Carolyn Chandler

User experience design is the discipline of creating a useful and usable Web site or application—one that’s easily navigated and meets the needs of both the site owner and its users. But there’s a lot more to successful UX design than knowing the latest Web technologies or design trends: It takes diplomacy, project management skills, and business savvy. That’s where this book comes in. Authors Russ Unger and Carolyn Chandler show you how to integrate UX principles into your project from start to finish.

• Understand the various roles in UX design, identify stakeholders, and enlist their support
• Obtain consensus from your team on project objectives
• Define the scope of your project and avoid mission creep
• Conduct user research and document your findings
• Understand and communicate user behavior with personas
• Design and prototype your application or site
• Make your product findable with search engine optimization
• Plan for development, product rollout, and ongoing quality assurance

13. Designing Web Interfaces: Principles and Patterns for Rich Interactions

By Bill Scott, Theresa Neil

Want to learn how to create great user experiences on today’s Web? In this book, UI experts Bill Scott and Theresa Neil present more than 75 design patterns for building web interfaces that provide rich interaction. Distilled from the authors’ years of experience at Sabre, Yahoo!, and Netflix, these best practices are grouped into six key principles to help you take advantage of the web technologies available today. With an entire section devoted to each design principle, Designing Web Interfaces helps you:

• Make It Direct-Edit content in context with design patterns for In Page Editing, Drag & Drop, and Direct Selection
• Keep It Lightweight-Reduce the effort required to interact with a site by using In Context Tools to leave a “light footprint”
• Stay on the Page-Keep visitors on a page with overlays, inlays, dynamic content, and in-page flow patterns
• Provide an Invitation-Help visitors discover site features with invitations that cue them to the next level of interaction
• Use Transitions-Learn when, why, and how to use animations, cinematic effects, and other transitions
• React Immediately-Provide a rich experience by using lively responses such as Live Search, Live Suggest, Live Previews, and more

Designing Web Interfaces illustrates many patterns with examples from working websites. If you need to build or renovate a website to be truly interactive, this book gives you the principles for success.

14. Head First Web Design

By Ethan Watrall, Jeff Siarto

Want to know how to make your pages look beautiful, communicate your message effectively, guide visitors through your website with ease, and get everything approved by the accessibility and usability police at the same time? Head First Web Design is your ticket to mastering all of these complex topics, and understanding what’s really going on in the world of web design. Whether you’re building a personal blog or a corporate website, there’s a lot more to web design than div’s and CSS selectors, but what do you really need to know? With this book, you’ll learn the secrets of designing effective, user-friendly sites, from customer requirements to hand-drawn storyboards all the way to finished HTML and CSS creations that offer an unforgettable online presence. Your time is way too valuable to waste struggling with new concepts. Using the latest research in cognitive science and learning theory to craft a multi-sensory learning experience, Head First Web Design uses a visually rich format specifically designed to take advantage of the way your brain really works.

15. Information Architecture for the World Wide Web: Designing Large-Scale Web Sites

By Peter Morville, Louis Rosenfeld

In Chapter 6 of Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, the authors discuss the details of good search-engine design. In a bitingly humorous segment, they analyze a Web site’s search-page results: “Let’s say you’re interested in knowing what the New Jersey sales tax is…. So you go to the State of New Jersey web site and search on sales tax. The 20 results are scored at either 84% or 82% relevant. Why does each document receive only one of two scores?… And what the heck makes a document 2% more relevant than another?”

With a swift and convincing stroke, the authors of Information Architecture for the World Wide Web tear down many entrenched ideas about Web design. Flashy animations are cool, they agree, as long as they don’t aggravate the viewer. Nifty clickable icons are nice, but are their meanings universal? Is the search engine providing results that are useful and relevant? This book acts as a mirror and with careful questioning causes the reader to think through all the elements and decisions required for well-crafted Web design. –Jennifer Buckendorff –This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

16. Bulletproof Web Design: Improving flexibility and protecting against worst-case scenarios with XHTML and CSS (2nd Edition)

By Dan Cederholm

No matter how visually appealing or content-packed a Web site may be, if it’s not adaptable to a variety of situations and reaching the widest possible audience, it isn’t really succeeding. In Bulletproof Web Desing, author and Web designer extraordinaire, Dan Cederholm outlines standards-based strategies for building designs that provide flexibility, readability, and user control – key components of every sucessful site. Each chapter starts out with an example of an unbulletproof site one that employs a traditional HTML-based approach which Dan then deconstructs, pointing out its limitations. He then gives the site a make-over using XHTML and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), so you can see how to replace bloated code with lean markup and CSS for fast-loading sites that are accessible to all users. Finally, he covers several popular fluid and elastic-width layout techniques and pieces together all of the page components discussed in prior chapters into a single-page template.

17. Sexy Web Design: Creating Interfaces That Work

By Jina Bolton, Elliot Jay Stocks

Sexy Web Design is an easy-to-follow guide that reveals the secrets of how to build your own breathtaking web interfaces from scratch. You’ll be guided through the entire process of creating a gorgeous, usable web site by applying the timeless principles of user-centered design.

Even if you’re short on design skills, with this book you’ll be creating your own stunning web sites in no time at all.

Throughout, the focus is on simple and practical techniques that anyone can use – you don’t need to have gone to art school or have artistic flair to create stunning designs using the methods outlined in this book.

The book’s full-color layout and large format (8″ x 10″) make Sexy Web Design a pleasure to read. Master key web interface design principles Design amazing web interfaces from scratch Create beautiful, yet functional, web sites Unleash your artistic talents And much more

18. Robin Williams Design Workshop, 2nd Edition

By Robin Williams, John Tollett

Learn design theory and practical know-how from the award-winning author/design team, Robin Williams and John Tollett! Robin Williams introduced design and typographic principles to legions of readers with her best-selling Non-Designer’s book series. Now she and designer/co-author John Tollett take you to the next level of creative design with practical advice and lessons in composition, visual impact, and design challenges.

Presented in Robin and John’s signature style—writing that is so crystal clear, it’s accessible to absolutely anyone—and illustrated with hundreds of full-color design examples, the ideas in this book tackle design theory, visual puns, and layout and graphics strategies for real-world projects. Developing designers will appreciate the authors’ imaginative approach and well-chosen examples.

• Discover practical and effective design principles and concepts—and how to apply them to virtually any project.
• Learn why some designs are attention-getting and others are not.
• Learn how to choose just the right look—corporate or casual, classic or trendy—for specific types of projects, such as business cards, letterhead and envelopes, newsletters and brochures, logos, advertising, and more.
• Test your design acumen by comparing before-and-after examples.
• Find a wealth of inspiration for your own design projects.
• Gain insight into the design process by studying the work of guest designers, who offer their personal commentary and insights.

19. Designing with Web Standards (2nd Edition)

By Jeffrey Zeldman

Standards, argues Jeffrey Zeldman in Designing With Web Standards, are our only hope for breaking out of the endless cycle of testing that plagues designers hoping to support all possible clients. In this book, he explains how designers can best use standards–primarily XHTML and CSS, plus ECMAScript and the standard Document Object Model (DOM)–to increase their personal productivity and maximize the availability of their creations. Zeldman’s approach is detailed, authoritative, and rich with historical context, as he is quick to explain how features of standards evolved. It’s a fantastic education that any design professional will appreciate.

Zeldman is an idealist who devotes some of his book to explaining how much easier life would be if browser developers would just support standards properly (he’s done a lot toward this goal in real life, as well). He is also a pragmatist, who recognizes that browsers implement standards differently (or partially, or not at all) and that it is the job of the Web designer to make pages work anyway. Thus, his book includes lots of explicit and tightly focused tips (with code) that have to do with bamboozling non-compliant browsers into behaving as they should, without tripping up more compliant browsers. There’s lots of coverage of design and testing tools that can aid in the creation of good-looking, standards-abiding documents. –David Wall

20. Designing the Obvious: A Common Sense Approach to Web Application Design

By Robert Hoekman Jr.

Designing the Obvious belongs in the toolbox of every person charged with the design and development of Web-based software, from the CEO to the programming team. Designing the Obvious explores the character traits of great Web applications and uses them as guiding principles of application design so the end result of every project instills customer satisfaction and loyalty. These principles include building only whats necessary, getting users up to speed quickly, preventing and handling errors, and designing for the activity. Designing the Obvious does not offer a one-size-fits-all development process–in fact, it lets you use whatever process you like. Instead, it offers practical advice about how to achieve the qualities of great Web-based applications and consistently and successfully reproduce them.

CSS Topic

21. CSS: The Missing Manual

By David Sawyer McFarland

“Almost 500 pages of CSS help, with more than 100 pages of practical tutorials to guide you through the process of implementing and refining CSS to save you many a wasted hour. At GBP25, you’ll be hard pressed to find a better guide to designing with CSS.”

You can tap into the real power of this tool with CSS: The Missing Manual. This second edition combines crystal-clear explanations, real-world examples, and dozens of step-by-step tutorials to show you how to design sites with CSS that work consistently across browsers. Witty and entertaining, this second edition gives you up-to-the-minute pro techniques.

You’ll learn how to:

• Create HTML that’s simpler, uses less code, is search-engine friendly, and works well with CSS
• Style text by changing fonts, colors, font sizes, and adding borders
• Turn simple HTML links into complex and attractive navigation bars — complete with rollover effects
• Create effective photo galleries and special effects, including drop shadows
• Get up to speed on CSS 3 properties that work in the latest browser versions
• Build complex layouts using CSS, including multi-column designs
• Style web pages for printing

22. CSS Mastery: Advanced Web Standards Solutions

By Andy Budd, Simon Collison, Cameron Moll

Over the past couple of years, web designers and developers have begun taking more care in designing and building web sites. Less readily do they turn to old-fashioned techniques such as GIF spacers, tables for layout, and deprecated HTML elements, which can cause accessibility/usability problems and are just bad practice. There are three main web standards married together to create usable, standards-compliant web designs – XHTML for data structure, JavaScript for dynamic effects, and Cascading Style Sheets for styling your data.

Working as a companion to our Web Standards Solutions book, this title covers advanced Cascading Style Sheet techniques, and includes are all the techniques you need to master CSS and craft modern, standards-compliant web page designs. You’ll already know why you should be using CSS, so we don’t bore you with pages of theory; instead, we jump straight into practical solutions, allowing you to get what you need as quickly as possible.

Renowned web designer Andy Budd starts off by introducing the elements of an effective CSS toolkit, including good working practices, the cascade, the box model, relative and absolute positioning, floating, and more. He then delves into advanced techniques like replacing images, styling links and lists, creating navigation menus, making forms look good, debugging and overcoming browser quirks, and hacking and filtering. The book is rounded off with two case studies to give you inspiration for your own designs, written by two more of the world’s finest web designers, Simon Collinson and Cameron Moll.

23. The Ultimate CSS Reference

By Tommy Olsson, Paul O’Brien

A complete and thorough and up-to-date reference guide for CSS.

Stop wasting time doing Internet searches only to find inaccurate, out-of-date, or incomplete information. “CSS: The Ultimate Reference” includes all the ins-and-outs you need to know including compatability information for all major browsers, lists of useful hacks, known bugs in CSS, and much more – all presented in a beautiful, full color layout that will have you coming back over and over again.

Coverage includes: CSS 2.1 syntax and specifications, including features from current CSS 3 working drafts that are implemented in one or more major browsers (IE, Firefox, Safari, Opera), and useful browser-specific features A clear and concise guide to the CSS cascade, including compatability information, known bugs and useful CSS hacks A media type guide, with coverage of which media types apply in which user agents under what conditions. A quick-reference guide to currently supported at-rules (@import, @media, etc.). An alphabetical property reference.

24. The Zen of CSS Design: Visual Enlightenment for the Web

By Dave Shea, Molly E. Holzschlag

Proving once and for all that standards-compliant design does not equal dull design, this inspiring tome uses examples from the landmark CSS Zen Garden site as the foundation for discussions on how to create beautiful, progressive CSS-based Web sites. By using the Zen Garden sites as examples of how CSS design techniques and approaches can be applied to specific Web challenges, authors Dave Shea and Molly Holzschlag provide an eye-opening look at the range of design methods made possible by CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). By the time you’ve finished perusing the volume, you’ll have a new understanding of the graphically rich, fully accessible sites that CSS design facilitates. In sections on design, layout, imagery, typography, effects, and themes, Dave and Molly take you through every phase of the design process–from striking a sensible balance between text and graphics to creating eye-popping special effects (no scripting required).

25. CSS Cookbook, 3rd Edition (Animal Guide)

By Christopher Schmitt, Dan Cederholm

This cookbook provides you with hundreds of practical examples for using CSS to format your web pages, complete with code recipes you can use in your projects right away. With CSS Cookbook, you’ll go beyond theory to solve real problems, from determining which aspects of CSS meet the specific needs of your site to methods for resolving differences in the way browsers display it.

Arranged in a quick-lookup format for easy reference, the third edition has been updated to explain the unique behavior of the latest browsers: Google Chrome, Apple Safari, Microsoft’s IE 8, and Mozilla’s Firefox 3.

• Learn the basics, such as understanding CSS rule structure
• Work with web typography and page layout
• Create effects for images and page elements
• Learn techniques for formatting lists, forms, and tables
• Design effective web navigation and create custom links
• Get creative by combining CSS with JavaScript
• Learn useful troubleshooting techniques, hacks, and workarounds

26.

The Art & Science of CSS

By Jonathan Snook, Steve Smith, Jina Bolton, Cameron Adams, David Johnson

CSS-based design doesn’t need to be boring. “The Art & Science of CSS” brings together a talented collection of designers who will show you how to take the building blocks of your web site’s design (such as headings, navigation, forms, and more) and bring them to life with fully standards-compliant CSS.

This full color book helps you to design web sites that not only work well across all browsers, are easy to maintain, and are highly accessible, but are also visually stunning.

Create truly attention-grabbing headings. Discover multiple ways to present images effectively. Use background images to give your site zest. Build usable and attractive navigation. Design forms that are stylish and functional. Learn how to break away from the square box gclich. Create funky tables. And lots more From the Publisher.

This book is ideal for anyone who wants to gain the practical skills involved in using CSS to make attractive web sites, especially if you’re not the type who likes to learn by memorizing a formal specification and then trying to work out which browsers implemented it completely (does anyone enjoy reading specifications?). The only knowledge you’ll need to have is some familiarity with HTML. This book will give designers the skills they need to implement their ideas, and provides developers with creative inspiration through practical examples.

27. CSS: The Definitive Guide

By Eric A Meyer

CSS: The Definitive Guide, 3rd Edition, provides you with a comprehensive guide to CSS implementation, along with a thorough review of all aspects of CSS 2.1. Updated to cover Internet Explorer 7, Microsoft’s vastly improved browser, this new edition includes content on positioning, lists and generated content, table layout, user interface, paged media, and more.

Simply put, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a way to separate a document’s structure from its presentation. The benefits of this can be quite profound: CSS allows a much richer document appearance than HTML and also saves time–you can create or change the appearance of an entire document in just one place; and its compact file size makes web pages load quickly.

Author Eric Meyer tackles the subject with passion, exploring in detail each individual CSS property and how it interacts with other properties. You’ll not only learn how to avoid common mistakes in interpretation, you also will benefit from the depth and breadth of his experience and his clear and honest style. This is the complete sourcebook on CSS.

The 3rd edition contains:

• Updates to reflect changes in the latest draft version of CSS 2.1
• Browser notes updated to reflect changes between IE6 and IE7
• Advanced selectors supported in IE7 and other major browsers included
• A new round of technical edits by a fresh set of editors
• Clarifications and corrected errata, including updated URLs of referenced online resources

28. Pro CSS and HTML Design Patterns

By Michael Bowers

Visit Website: www.cssDesignPatterns.com

Pro CSS and HTML Design Patterns is a reference book and a cookbook on how to style web pages using CSS and XHTML. It contains 350 ready–to–use patterns (CSS and XHTML code snippets) you can copy and paste into your code. Each pattern can be combined with other patterns to create an unlimited number of solutions.

Each pattern works reliably in all major browsers without the need for browser hacks.

The book shows how to

• Code CSS and XHTML
• Turn HTML into XHTML
• Use CSS Selectors
• Use six CSS Box Models
• Create rounded corners, shadows, gradients, sprites, and transparency
• Replace text with images without affecting accessibility
• Style text with fonts, highlights, decorations, and shadows
• Create flexible, fluid layouts
• Position elements with absolute pixel precision
• Stack elements in layers
• Size, stretch, shrinkwrap, indent, align, and offset elements
• Style tables with borders and alternating striped rows
• Size table columns automatically
• Integrate CSS and JavaScript without embedding JavaScript in XHTML
• Create drop caps, callouts, quotes, and alerts

The book’s layout, with a pattern’s example on the left page and its explanation on the right, makes it easy to find a pattern and study it without having to flip between pages. The book is also readable from cover to cover, with topics building carefully upon previous topics.

A software developer can use this book to learn CSS for the first time. A designer familiar with CSS can use this book to master CSS and XHTML. If you are completely new to coding or completely new to CSS and XHTML, you may want to read an introductory book on CSS and XHTML first.

Typography Topic

29. The Elements of Typographic Style

By Robert Bringhurst

This lovely, well-written book is concerned foremost with creating beautiful typography and is essential for professionals who regularly work with typographic designs. Author Robert Bringhurst writes about designing with the correct typeface; striving for rhythm, proportion, and harmony; choosing and combining type; designing pages; using section heads, subheads, footnotes, and tables; applying kerning and other type adjustments to improve legibility; and adding special characters, including punctuation and diacritical marks. The Elements of Typographic Style teaches the history of and the artistic and practical perspectives on a variety of type families that are available in Europe and America today.

The last section of the book classifies and displays many type families, offers a glossary of typography terms, and lists type designers and type foundries. The book briefly mentions digital typography, but otherwise ignores it, focusing instead on general typography and page- and type-design issues. Its examples include text in a variety of languages–including English, Russian, German, and Greek–which is particularly helpful if your work has a multinational focus. –This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

30. Thinking with Type: A Critical Guide for Designers, Writers, Editors, & Students (Design Briefs)

By Ellen Lupton

Visit Website: http://www.papress.com/other/thinkingwithtype/index.htm

“Worthy of adding to your library; it’s essential if you salivate when you look at well-designed and well-chosen type.”

“Design isnt just about how things look, the answer to a design challenge is more about discovering why certain things work. In steering projects toward visual solutions that deliver clear messages, we have to look at the very building blocks of design. Thinking with Type: A Critical Guide for Designers, Writers, Editors, – Students aims to get at the heart of this issue.” — Brian E. Young (March 2, 2009)

Share Your Thoughts!

What is your favorite design book you have ever read? Share your recommendations as well so I could maybe improve this article so we all could have ideal Christmas wishlist, you can bookmark for later reference. Now when anybody will ask what would you wish, you can just point to this article and slowly create your own library, which will never disappear as virtual resources could!

And now I wish You good luck – and keep Your Christmas spirit going!

We will create something like this, click on the image to see full preview:

Step 1: Document Creation And Sky

Create a new document, I wanted this image to use later as wallpaper, so I used 1920×1200 resolution, 72 dpi.

Fill background with radial gradient (press G to activate gradient menu) with colors #1773e3 and #0b3972:

Step 2: Star Creation

Although we will create night effect, we need again to create some stars.

Now create new layer ( CTRL+SHIFT+N), right above the background, fill it with black ( choose black and ALT+DELETE to fill).

Go to Filter–>Add Noise and add settings like on picture below (amount 20-30):

To get lesser amount of white noise, go to Image–>Adjustments–>Brightness/Contrast:

Change Blending style to Color Dodge:

Step 3 : Ground creation

Press CTRL+SHIFT+N to create new layer ( look at screenshot at my layers palette so it’s the same like mine).

Then select rectangular marque tool (press M) and do selection like this:

Let’s use linear gradient to create 3D look with colors #000b17 and #0b3972:

Ok, now we have background:

Step 4: Adding Detailed Star

Create a new layer and grab soft  brush (B), change foreground color to white ( press D to reset colors and X to switch foreground/background).

Draw big stars in various sizes on the sky and use right/left brackets [ ], to change brush size  :

Step 4: Adding Moon

What is Christmas night without moon? Let’s create one!

Create a new layer, select from custom shape tool – “Crescent moon”, if You don’t have shapes like me, do this bonus step:

Add moon in sky, where You want, also add white outer glow to the moon.

Step 5: Hills And Downs

In the fifth step we will add some hills and downs, but I won’t repeat this step, techniques is the same as in my previous tutorial – Beautiful Christmas Vision Tutorial And Wallpaper, start from the step 2 there.

Also look at my layer order:

Step 6: Adding Trees

Now let’s create some trees to make look our scene more interesting.

Add some guidelines to create more precise results, create new layer, then grab pen tool and try to do something like this:

(You can get guidelines, by pressing CTRL+R to get rulers. Just click and pull from rulers to get them).

Now CTRL+Click on path, and fill it with any color pressing ALT+DELETE ( foreground color):

If You don’t see Your path palette – go Windows–>Path.

Now on the tree layer, add blending options–>gradient overlay with colors – #1b2d02 and #477407:

Duplicate layer 2 times (press CTRL+ Upper Arrow) and upper layer transform perspective a little bit:

Ok, now holding SHIFT select all three layers and group them pressing  CTRL+G. You can also smudge trees to add texture, but I won’t do that this time.

With all three layers still selected, resize trees to much smaller size  – CTRL+T and holding shift resize.

We will use these trees in background, so we need many trees. Just press on the group with CTRL+Upper Arrow to create more duplicates and position trees like in the picture below:

Add as much trees as You think is necessary.

Step 7: Horizontal Shadow

Let’s add shadow on trees – create a new layer, select rectangular tool with black color:

Go Filter–>Gaussian blur and blur it 100px radius. Change blending mode to overlay and reduce opacity to 64%.

Step 8: Adding Global Colors and Shadows

Create a new layer on the top of all layers and add some colorful radial gradient, change blending mode to overlay.

Adding Shadows:

Let’s add some more shadows – use Elliptical marque tool and feather 100px. Create a selection and then press CTRL+SHIFT+I to invert selection and fill it with black ( ALT+DELETE). Change blending mode opacity to 75%.

Okay, we are already finished, I added just a few more effects:

1. I added those swirly lines at the moon, with pen tool –> stroke path.. –> simulate pressure.

2. Also I added two trees on the front side in the same way as I added background trees, I just didn’t want to go through whole process again.

Hope You enjoyed this tutorial as much as I did!

Download *.psd file

Download wallpaper in 1920×1200 resolution

1. VladStudio Christmas Train Wallpaper

Unregistered users can download several different resolutions – 800×480, 800×600, 1024×600, 1024×768, 1152×864, 1280×1024, 1600x1200px.

2. VladStudio NOEL New Year Wallpaper

Unregistered users can download several different resolutions – 800×480, 800×600, 1024×600, 1024×768, 1152×864, 1280×1024, 1600x1200px.

3. VladStudio Christmas Ice Skating Wallpaper

Unregistered users can download several different resolutions – 800×480, 800×600, 1024×600, 1024×768, 1152×864, 1280×1024, 1600x1200px.

4. VladStudio Siberian Winter 4 Wallpaper

Unregistered users can download several different resolutions – 800×480, 800×600, 1024×600, 1024×768, 1152×864, 1280×1024, 1600x1200px.

5. VladStudio Santa Flying 2 Wallpaper

Unregistered users can download several different resolutions – 800×480, 800×600, 1024×600, 1024×768, 1152×864, 1280×1024, 1600x1200px.

6. VladStudio Christmas Night Wallpaper

Unregistered users can download several different resolutions – 800×480, 800×600, 1024×600, 1024×768, 1152×864, 1280×1024, 1600x1200px.

7. X-mas Wallpaper by Nicklas Forsberg

Available for download in 1900x1200px high resolution.

8. X-mas Wallpaper Red by Nicklas Forsberg

Available for download in 1900x1200px high resolution.

9. Christmas Wallpaper by eucalyptus427

Available for download in the *.rar file – 1024×768, 1280×1024, 1600x1200px high resolutions.

10. Christmas Imperfection by `DivineError

Available for download in 1600x1200px high resolution.

11. Christmas Gift Wallpaper

Available for download in 1680x1050px high resolution.

12. Christmas Postcard Wallpaper

Available for download in 4000x3000px high resolution from sxc.hu.

13. Follow Winter Wallpaper by moroka323

Download file contains images in two resolutions:1600×1200 and 1280×1024.

14. Merry Christmas WallPaper by Richard Mohler

Download file contains 1600px, 1280px & 1024 px resolution in zip.

15. Merry Christmas drawing Wallpaper

Available in 13 different resolutions from 1024×768 until 2560 x 1600 widescreen.

16. Red Christmas Wallpaper

Available in 13 different resolutions from 1024×768 until 2560 x 1600 widescreen.

17. Snow Trees Wallpaper

Available in 13 different resolutions from 1024×768 until 2560 x 1600 widescreen.

18. Snow Reception Wallpaper

Available in 13 different resolutions from 1024×768 until 2560 x 1600 widescreen.

19. Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy by A. Wilson

Available for download in 1280x800px resolution.

20. Christmas Fairies by James

Available for download in 1600x1200px resolution.

21. Christmas Wallpaper

Available for download in 2000x1500px resolution.

22. Winter Wonderland Wallpaper by Steven Rowlands

Available for download in 1600x1200px resolution.

23. A Magic Christmas Wallpaper

Zip file download includes 1920×1200, 1280×1024, 1280×768, 1024x768px resolutions

24. White Christmas Wallpaper

Amazing wallpaper, unfortunately available only in 1280x1024px resolution.

wallpaper without text

25. Santa’s Parcel Service Wallpaper

Max resolution is 1920x1200px in *.zip file.

Merry X-mas once again – enjoy this spirit from these wallpapers every day!

We will learn how to use pen tool, use paths, smudge tool and yes – how to create 3D effect in Photoshop in joyful way!

This is what we are going to create this time, finished result:

Click on the wallpaper to view and download it full sized.

Step 1

Create a new document, I wanted this to use later as wallpaper, so I used 1920×1200 resolution, 72 dpi.

Activate radial gradient (G), use colors #3d51f7 and #1525a0 and fill background with it like in the picture below.

Step 2

Now let’s create some hills and falls.

Hit CTRL+SHIFT+N to create a new layer and press P to activate Your Pen tool. Do selection like picture below creating smooth lines and don’t forget to close whole selection.

Now bring up Your path panel – Window–>Path and press CTRL+CLICK on the work path to make selection.

Grab again gradient tool (G), but this time use linear gradient using colors – #a2acff and #4759e5.

Step 3

It’s time we add more snow feel to hills.

Go to Filter–>Add Noise and use settings like me. This action will give us snow effect.

This is important – with still Your hill selected, grab smudge tool and smudge our hill in the right direction, like on the picture below.

Pick Your own settings or choose mine, but be patient, this action takes much memory, so Your computer will sow down for a time while smudging.

Ok, I am checking with You – I got result like this :

Step 4

Now repeat step 3 multiple times using different colors to get more unique results, but I cheated and just duplicated this layer several times and I’ll go through those steps with You too:

I duplicated Layer 1 four times, You can do it with right click on the layer and clicking “Duplicate Layer” or just pressing CTRL+ALT+UP button.

Move every duplicate to create hills and falls – flip few layers horizontally, by pressing CTRL+T and right click on layer and “Flip Horizontal”.

Also if You got ugly corners press CTRL+T and right click –>Warp moving Your layer until it looks okay for You.

Looks already interesting? But let’s add more natural colors to add 3D look.

Step 5

Remember Your layer hills in the front must be lighter and hills at the back must be more in the shadow.

I won’t go in details with these steps, just use different colors in the inner glow, example of my back layer settings:

You should use a little different settings on each layer to get effect like me:

Step 6

Let’s add stars on our background now.

Organize Your hill layers, by selecting them all holding SHIFT and clicking on each of them and pressing CTRL+G then to group all hill layers.

Rename new group to “Hills”.

Now create new layer ( CTRL+SHIFT+N), right above the background, fill it with black ( choose black and ALT+DELETE to fill).

Go to Filter–>Add Noise and add settings like on picture below (amount 20-30):

Change Blending style to Color Dodge

To get lesser amount of white noise, go to Image–>Adjustments–>Brightness/Contrast:

Press CTRL+L or go Image–> Adjustments–> Levels, to get little more different effect, if You need:

And optionally grab soft brush, change opacity to 40-50% and erase something if You feel You have to much stars.

Step 7

Now create a new layer, grab soft white brush (17-20px) to create a snow or pick some cool Christmas brushes from my collection – 48 Snow, Ice, Snowflake and Christmas Brushes, but if You are interested I will guide You shortly through my final steps -

Change opacity and randomly put snow in the sky.

Now, I used Christmas Tree brushes, added outer glow, shadow on the bottom of the tree and got result like this:

Create new layer right above background,sky and hills;

Press CTRL+A to select all,  choose elliptical marque tool and take selection like me:

Press ALT+DELETE to fill Your layer with foreground color ( You must have black color #000000), change opacity if it’s too dark.

I also added some more brushes, Christmas text and we’re finished! I didn’t go detailed on finish, so everybody of You can create unique wallpaper to share with friends, and again don’t forget about my brush collection – 48 Snow, Ice, Snowflake and Christmas Brushes.

Download *psd file

Download Christmas Scene Wallpaper (1920x1200px)

Please share with Your results if You go through this tutorial and feel free to ask if You don’t understand something! Merry X-mas!

Put these brushes in good use or just bookmark them for later use! Remember soon these brushes will become handy!

Feel free to share some of the favorite Christmas brushes you use, will be appreciated!