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31 Jan

Spread The Love! Inspiring Wallpapers For February 2019

by TBSCategories: News

Spread The Love! Inspiring Wallpapers For February 2019

Cosima Mielke

2019-01-31T12:09:12+01:00 2019-01-31T12:58:11+00:00

As designers we usually turn to different sources of inspiration, and, well, sometimes the best inspiration lies right in front of us. With that in mind, we embarked on our wallpapers creativity mission more than nine years ago. The idea: to provide you with unique and inspiring desktop wallpapers each month anew. Wallpapers created by the community for the community.

We are very thankful to all artists and designers who have contributed and are still diligently contributing to this challenge, who tickle their creativity to keep the steady stream of wallpapers flowing. This post features their artworks for February 2019. All wallpapers come in two versions — with and without a calendar — and can be downloaded for free. At the end of this post, we also collected some wallpaper favorites from past February editions for you. After all, some things are just too good to be forgotten, right?

Please note that:

All images can be clicked on and lead to the preview of the wallpaper,
You can feature your work in our magazine by taking part in our Desktop Wallpaper Calendar series. We are regularly looking for creative designers and artists to be featured on Smashing Magazine. Are you one of them?

Savannah Stroll

“February is a month focused on romance and as a southerner, I can’t think of a more romantic way to spend a day than strolling the historic moss-draped streets of Savannah, GA. Spending time sitting on a bench on one of the many beautiful squares, holding hands and people watching as you sip a cappuccino.” — Designed by Heather Ozee Designs from the United States.

preview
with calendar: 320×480, 640×480, 800×480, 800×600, 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1152×864, 1280×720, 1280×800, 1280×960, 1280×1024, 1366×768, 1400×1050, 1440×900, 1600×1200, 1680×1050, 1680×1200, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 1920×1440, 2560×1440
without calendar: 320×480, 640×480, 800×480, 800×600, 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1152×864, 1280×720, 1280×800, 1280×960, 1280×1024, 1366×768, 1400×1050, 1440×900, 1600×1200, 1680×1050, 1680×1200, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 1920×1440, 2560×1440

Love Is Worth Fighting For

preview
with calendar: 320×480, 640×480, 640×1136, 750×1334, 800×480, 800×600, 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1152×864, 1242×2208, 1280×720, 1280×800, 1280×960, 1280×1024, 1366×768, 1400×1050, 1440×900, 1600×1200, 1680×1050, 1680×1200, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 1920×1440, 2560×1440, 2880×1800
without calendar: 320×480, 640×480, 640×1136, 750×1334, 800×480, 800×600, 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1152×864, 1242×2208, 1280×720, 1280×800, 1280×960, 1280×1024, 1366×768, 1400×1050, 1440×900, 1600×1200, 1680×1050, 1680×1200, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 1920×1440, 2560×1440, 2880×1800

Dark Temptation

“A dark romantic feel, walking through the city on a dark and rainy night.” — Designed by Matthew Talebi from the United States.

preview
with calendar: 1400×1050, 1440×900, 1600×1200, 1680×1050, 1680×1200, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 1920×1440, 2560×1440
without calendar: 1400×1050, 1440×900, 1600×1200, 1680×1050, 1680×1200, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 1920×1440, 2560×1440

Feel The Love!

“We’re celebrating Valentine’s Day with our February wallpaper. Whatever Valentine’s Day means to you we’re on board, love, relationships or the best of friends. It’s something to be celebrated!” — Designed by Focus from the United Kingdom.

preview
with calendar: 320×480, 640×480, 800×480, 800×600, 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1152×864, 1280×720, 1280×800, 1280×960, 1280×1024, 1366×768, 1400×1050, 1440×900, 1600×1200, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 1920×1440, 2560×1440
without calendar: 320×480, 640×480, 800×480, 800×600, 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1152×864, 1280×720, 1280×800, 1280×960, 1280×1024, 1366×768, 1400×1050, 1440×900, 1600×1200, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 1920×1440, 2560×1440

Cold And Frost

“Frosts in Russia are very severe. Walking through the Park, I found these branches at the top and decided to capture the moment.” — Designed by Nikolay Belikov from Russia.

preview
with calendar: 320×480, 640×960, 640×1136, 750×1334, 800×600, 828×1792, 1024×768, 1152×864, 1242×2008, 1242×2688, 1280×720, 1280×800, 1280×960, 1280×1024, 1366×768, 1440×900, 1440×1050, 1600×1200, 1680×1050, 1680×1200, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 1920×1440, 2560×1440, 4096×2304, 5120×2880
without calendar: 320×480, 640×960, 640×1136, 750×1334, 800×600, 828×1792, 1024×768, 1152×864, 1242×2008, 1242×2688, 1280×720, 1280×800, 1280×960, 1280×1024, 1366×768, 1440×900, 1440×1050, 1600×1200, 1680×1050, 1680×1200, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 1920×1440, 2560×1440, 4096×2304, 5120×2880

What Is Love

“We all feel it, even if we cannot define it. But, who needs a definition anyway? When you sense it in your gut and feel like standing on the top of the world. Happy. From the bottom of your heart. ‘Where there is love, there is life,’ said Mahatma Gandhi. And we couldn’t agree more. May the love be with you. Always.” — Designed by PopArt Studio from Serbia.

preview
with calendar: 800×480, 800×600, 1024×768, 1152×864, 1280×720, 1280×800, 1280×960, 1280×1024, 1366×768, 1400×1050, 1440×900, 1600×1200, 1680×1050, 1680×1200, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 1920×1440, 2560×1440
without calendar: 800×480, 800×600, 1024×768, 1152×864, 1280×720, 1280×800, 1280×960, 1280×1024, 1366×768, 1400×1050, 1440×900, 1600×1200, 1680×1050, 1680×1200, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 1920×1440, 2560×1440

Polar Cold

“February is the month of the bear. I would like to be in the Arctic and play with the bears.” — Designed by Verónica Valenzuela from Spain.

preview
with calendar: 640×480, 800×480, 1024×768, 1280×720, 1280×800, 1440×900, 1600×1200, 1920×1080, 1920×1440, 2560×1440
without calendar: 640×480, 800×480, 1024×768, 1280×720, 1280×800, 1440×900, 1600×1200, 1920×1080, 1920×1440, 2560×1440

Lovely Day

preview
with calendar: 320×480, 640×480, 800×480, 800×600, 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1152×864, 1280×720, 1280×800, 1280×960, 1280×1024, 1366×768, 1400×1050, 1440×900, 1600×1200, 1680×1050, 1680×1200, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 1920×1440, 2560×1440
without calendar: 320×480, 640×480, 800×480, 800×600, 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1152×864, 1280×720, 1280×800, 1280×960, 1280×1024, 1366×768, 1400×1050, 1440×900, 1600×1200, 1680×1050, 1680×1200, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 1920×1440, 2560×1440

Let Love Speak

“As it’s February, we just thought of celebrating Valentine month. Let the love between nature and human being prosper. These days we are forgetting to take care of our nature. So it’s a kind of gentle reminder for all of us.” — Designed by Sweans Technologies from London.

preview
with calendar: 320×480, 640×480, 800×480, 800×600, 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1152×864, 1280×720, 1280×800, 1280×960, 1280×1024, 1366×768, 1400×1050, 1440×900, 1600×1200, 1680×1050, 1680×1200, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 1920×1440, 2560×1440
without calendar: 320×480, 640×480, 800×480, 800×600, 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1152×864, 1280×720, 1280×800, 1280×960, 1280×1024, 1366×768, 1400×1050, 1440×900, 1600×1200, 1680×1050, 1680×1200, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 1920×1440, 2560×1440

Umbrella Day

“Always good to have an umbrella, on rainy or sunny days! On the 10th of February we celebrate the umbrellas.” — Designed by Melissa Bogemans from Belgium.

preview
with calendar: 320×480, 640×480, 800×480, 800×600, 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1152×864, 1280×720, 1280×800, 1280×960, 1280×1024, 1400×1050, 1440×900, 1600×1200, 1680×1050, 1680×1200, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 1920×1440, 2560×1440
without calendar: 320×480, 640×480, 800×480, 800×600, 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1152×864, 1280×720, 1280×800, 1280×960, 1280×1024, 1400×1050, 1440×900, 1600×1200, 1680×1050, 1680×1200, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 1920×1440, 2560×1440

Sunset

“I want to emphasize February 14th because it’s Valentine’s Day. I thought it would be fun to use two cats that are in love watching the sunset in the park. I have tried to use as many warm and loving colors as possible, such as red, rose, orange and purple.” — Designed by Vince Teckmans from Belgium.

preview
with calendar: 320×460, 800×480, 1024×768, 1920×1080, 2560×1440
without calendar: 320×460, 800×480, 1024×768, 1920×1080, 2560×1440

World Radio Day

“Music is an important element in our everyday lives. It connects people all over the world, regardless of culture, religion etc.” — Designed by Ilke Cauwenbergh from Belgium.

preview
with calendar: 800×600, 1024×1024, 1280×720, 1280×800, 1280×960, 1280×1024, 1366×768, 1400×1050, 1440×900, 1600×1200, 1680×1050, 1680×1200, 1920×1080, 1920×1200
without calendar: 800×600, 1024×1024, 1280×720, 1280×800, 1280×960, 1280×1024, 1366×768, 1400×1050, 1440×900, 1600×1200, 1680×1050, 1680×1200, 1920×1080, 1920×1200

Oldies But Goodies

No matter if it’s a brave icebreaker that confronts even the most adverse weather conditions, a piece of design wisdom, or a pun — a lot of things have inspired our artists to design a February wallpaper in the past few years. Below you’ll find a little best-of. Please note that these wallpapers don’t come with a calendar.

Dog Year Ahead

preview
without calendar: 320×480, 640×480, 800×480, 800×600, 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1152×864, 1280×720, 1280×800, 1280×960, 1280×1024, 1366×768, 1400×1050, 1440×900, 1600×1200, 1680×1050, 1680×1200, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 1920×1440, 2560×1440

Balloons

preview
without calendar: 320×480, 640×480, 800×480, 800×600, 1024×768, 1152×864, 1280×720, 1280×800, 1280×960, 1280×1024, 1366×768, 1400×1050, 1440×900, 1600×1200, 1680×1050, 1680×1200, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 1920×1440, 2560×1440

Febpurrary

“I was doodling pictures of my cat one day and decided I could turn it into a fun wallpaper – because a cold, winter night in February is the perfect time for staying in and cuddling with your cat, your significant other, or both!” — Designed by Angelia DiAntonio from Ohio, USA.

preview
without calendar: 320×480, 800×480, 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1152×864, 1280×720, 1280×1024, 1366×768, 1400×1050, 1440×900, 1600×1200, 1680×1200, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 1920×1440, 2560×1440

Minimalistic Love

“This minimalistic love logo is designed from geometric shapes, where the heart represents the letter ‘O’ and love. The anchor represents the letter ‘V’ very delicately and stylish and it symbolizes your wanderlust. The anchor is a symbol of adventure and travels.” — Designed by Antun Hirsman from Croatia.

preview
without calendar: 800×600, 1024×768, 1152×864, 1280×960, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1200, 1920×1080, 2560×1440

“Greben” Icebreaker

“Danube is Europe’s second largest river, connecting 10 different countries. In these cold days, when ice paralyzes rivers and closes waterways, a small but brave icebreaker called Greben (Serbian word for ‘reef’) seems stronger than winter. It cuts through the ice on Đerdap gorge (Iron Gate) – the longest and biggest gorge in Europe – thus helping the production of electricity in the power plant. This is our way to give thanks to Greben!” — Designed by PopArt Studio from Serbia.

preview
without calendar: 320×480, 640×480, 800×480, 800×600, 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1152×864, 1280×720, 1280×800, 1280×960, 1280×1024, 1366×768, 1400×1050, 1440×900, 1600×1200, 1680×1050, 1680×1200, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 1920×1440, 2560×1440

Winter Wonderland

“In February, nature shows its creativity. Our artwork occurs when it is being drawn.” — Designed by Ana Masnikosa from Belgrade, Serbia.

preview
without calendar: 640×480, 800×480, 800×600, 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1152×864, 1280×720, 1280×800, 1280×960, 1280×1040, 1400×1050, 1440×900, 1600×1200, 1680×1050, 1680×1200, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 1920×1440, 2560×1440

Love Angel Vader

“Valentine’s Day is coming? Noooooooooooo!” — Designed by Ricardo Gimenes from Sweden.

preview
without calendar: 320×480, 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1280×800, 1280×960, 1280×1024, 1400×1050, 1440×900, 1600×1200, 1680×1050, 1680×1200, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 1920×1440, 2560×1440, 640×960, 1366×768, 1600×1050, 2880×1800

Febrewery

“I live in Madison, WI USA, which is famous for its breweries. Wisconsin even named their baseball team “The Brewers.” If you like beer, brats, and lots of cheese, it’s the place for you!” — Designed by Danny Gugger from the United States.

preview
without calendar: 320×480, 1020×768, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1136×640

, 2560×1440

Farewell, Winter…

“Although I love winter (mostly because of the fun winter sports), there are other great activities ahead. February, the last winter month, this year is even one day longer. But I don’t mind. Thanks, winter, and see you next year!” — Designed by Igor Izhik from Canada.

preview
without calendar: 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1152×864, 1280×720, 1280×800, 1280×960, 1280×1024, 1400×1050, 1440×900, 1600×1200, 1680×1050, 1680×1200, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 1920×1440, 2560×1440, 2560×1600

Principles Of Good Design

“The simplicity seen in the work of Dieter Rams which has ensured his designs from the 50s and 60s still hold a strong appeal.” — Designed by Vinu Chaitanya from India.

preview
without calendar: 320×480, 640×480, 800×480, 800×600, 1024×1024, 1152×864, 1280×720, 1280×800, 1280×960, 1280×1024, 1400×1050, 1440×900, 1600×1200, 1680×1050, 1680×1200, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 1920×1440, 2560×1440

I Believe I Can Fly

preview
without calendar: 1024×768, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1366×768, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 2560×1440

Out There, There’s Someone Like You

“I am a true believer that out there in this world there is another person who is just like us, the problem is to find her/him.” — Designed by Maria Keller from Mexico.

preview
without calendar: 320×480, 640×480, 640×1136, 750×1334, 800×480, 800×600, 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1152×864, 1242×2208, 1280×720, 1280×800, 1280×960, 1280×1024, 1366×768, 1400×1050, 1440×900, 1600×1200, 1680×1050, 1680×1200, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 1920×1440, 2560×1440, 2880×1800

The Great Beyond

“My inspiration came mostly from ‘The Greay from’. It’s about a dog and an astronaut exploring a strange new world.” — Designed by Lars Pauwels from Belgium.

preview
without calendar: 800×600, 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1152×864, 1280×720, 1280×800, 1280×960, 1280×1024, 1366×768, 1400×1050, 1440×900, 1600×1200, 1680×1050, 1680×1200, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 1920×1440, 2560×1440

Join In Next Month!

Please note that we respect and carefully consider the ideas and motivation behind each and every artist’s work. This is why we give all artists the full freedom to explore their creativity and express emotions and experience throughout their works. This is also why the themes of the wallpapers weren’t anyhow influenced by us but rather designed from scratch by the artists themselves.

Thank you to all designers for their participation. Join in next month!

Articles on Smashing Magazine — For Web Designers And Developers

10 Dec

From Cats With Love: Welcome The New Smashing Membership

by TBSCategories: News

We can’t believe it’s actually happening. After 18 months of hard work on the big bang relaunch of this little website, today is the day when everything changes. New design and new technical stack. New personality and new ambitious goals. But most importantly, a new focus on our wonderful web community, with the brand new Smashing Membership. Rewarding Great People Doing Great Work In times when we fight all the craziness and narrow-mindedness around us, we need to remind ourselves how wonderful a vast majority of the web community actually is.
Articles on Smashing Magazine — For Web Designers And Developers

02 Dec

From Cats With Love: Welcome The New Smashing Membership

by TBSCategories: News

31 Jan

From The Design Community With Love: Unique And Inspiring Desktop Wallpapers

by TBSCategories: News

Time flies by! February is already here and artists and designers from across the globe have once again diligently created a potpourri of unique wallpaper calendars to freshen up your desktop. This monthly wallpapers mission has been going on for eight years already and we are very thankful to all the creative minds who challenge their skills and contribute to it each month anew.

This post features their desktop artwork for February 2017. The wallpapers all come in versions with and without a calendar and can be downloaded for free. Now there’s only one question left to answer: Which one will make it to your desktop this month?

The post From The Design Community With Love: Unique And Inspiring Desktop Wallpapers appeared first on Smashing Magazine.

Smashing Magazine

31 May

How to Create a Website People Will Love

by TBSCategories: News

Thousands of websites are created every day and each one of them is pretty much distinguished. They differ in design, topics or content, targeted audience, purpose (spreading news, making money,etc).

There are also quite a lot of things that websites differ in, that users or visitors do not necessarily see, such as website traffic, rankings, user engagement and satisfaction with the content, etc. After all, there is one common thing that almost all websites and blogs strive to achieve. And that’s a community of loyal readers and active visitors. Because if your posts and content go unread it isn’t worth a single penny.

But how on earth, we are supposed to create a website that people will actually love and find worth spending time on? Well, that’s rather a complicated question, but the good news is that it’s absolutely achievable!

Below I offer straight-to-the-point tips and solutions backed by research and my personal experience, that will help you to create a WordPress blog/website your visitors will love. I’ll also suggest some plugins that can be used for achieving faster and better results.

Create a Popular WordPress Website

Identify Your Audience

First and foremost, make it clear who you are writing for and who your reader is. If you identify who your readers are from the outset, it will get much more easier for you to better serve them and create a website that will meet their needs.

Do a thorough analysis of what type of content or topics they are interested in, what time of the day/week they are most active, which of your posts they give most attention to, which headlines or topics engage them better, etc. You can use these valuable facts to make it a place where your readers will constantly refer to and find it worth spending time on.

Give Your Website Design Careful Thought

Design or layout is one of the most important aspects of a website. Simple and straightforward design makes it easy to navigate across a website and provides better user experience. I always tend to include website functionality in its design as well, as I do think they are strongly connected. I mean there are a lot more things that go into website design apart from the colors, sections, style elements. Website functionality is also a part of it.

For a modern and functional website design I would recommend checking out WordPress Business Elite theme. It’s an advanced one page WordPress theme with a beautiful one page layout featuring a slider and a fixed menu at the top.

The theme provides several sections to showcase your content in a visually distinguishable way and helps your visitors to get around on your website with ease. There are also 10 page templates available, 30 pre-installed fonts, 6 customizable layouts, and a contact form on the homepage. Although the theme targets primarily business and corporate websites, its modern design and advanced features can be well used for other purposes as well.

Create Genuine, Worth-Reading, Valuable Content

For me, content and website design are strictly interrelated. Without good website design nobody would ever like to read the content that’s inside it, even if it’s worth giving a read. And vice verse. If the content you provide is outdated, copy pasted from somewhere else, or doesn’t match your website topic, even the coolest website design will not save your life.

The tip here is to provide valuable content in a timely manner, that you know your readers will be interested to read.

Go Visual

Visuals are doing a great job in driving attention. They are also good at increasing user retention and growing engagement. Not only do statistics show that visual content generates more views and engagement, but it’s proved that 90% of the information that comes to our brain is visual. Moreover, brain processes visual information 60,000 faster than text. So, why not? Take advantage of your visual content and make the most of it!

There are a lot of WordPress tools that are focused on images and visual content and are aimed at providing smooth viewing experience to users. Among them, Photo Gallery plugin is certainly distinguished, not only with quality and powerful features, but with the beautiful views and customization options as well. This WordPress gallery plugin enables you to add and edit images for different views and combine them into galleries and albums for better organization.

Its Masonry, Thumbnails, Mosaic, Blog style view options attract a lot of attention and can be customized to fit your specific needs. The galleries can contain both images and videos and they can be viewed as a slideshow in the lightbox with 15 transition effects.

The plugin also supports commenting possibility with 3 types of Captcha protection, Instagram integration, social sharing and many other advanced options necessary to best display your galleries and albums. It’s the best option to go with, if you want to showcase your visual content at its best. Your website visitors are going to love it.

Keep the Important Things “Above the Scroll”

Prioritizing is so important. It’s not possible to capture everything on one page at once,so make sure you show your most important content/posts/events/services/contacts up front. This strategy works great for your visitors as well. Instead of going back and forth on a page, they will be able to find the important highlights faster and with much ease.

Try To Get Subscriptions

I know that when you create a website every single visitor counts. But one-time visitors are not changing the game in the long run. What you need to make your blog work and generate a stable visitor base is to obtain regular readers and keep them coming back. Website subscriptions are a great way for growing its traffic and readership.

One of the best tools that will help you convert visitors into subscribers is OptinMonster plugin. It helps you to create beautiful and proven to convert opt-in forms which are able to detect user behavior. There are multiple types of forms available, such as floating bars, slide-ins, lightbox pop-ups and they are all open to complete customization. The plugin also offers built-in analytics to see which of your opt-ins works for you best.

Create Compelling Headlines

Headlines are the first things that strike our attention on a page. Before diving deep into the content it’s the headlines that give us a clue of what the text is going to be about and define our further actions. Make sure to provide obvious, compelling and concise headlines for your posts, and let your readers know up front whether your content/product/service is exactly what they’re looking for.

If you’re looking for some guidance on how to create catchy headlines for your posts, check out this article by Jeff Goins.

Mind Your Site Speed

We live in an era where every single second counts and people just don’t have any spare time to waste waiting for a website to load. The impact that the loading speed has on your visitors’ satisfaction and experience on your website is huge and in case of slow speed, it’s even harmful. Don’t leave your visitors with the feeling of frustration and take your site’s speed very seriously.

You can ensure the fast loading of your website by using caching plugins such as WP Super Cache or W3 Total Cache.

Be Generous

Everything needs a payback. As your visitors are the ones who fuel the work of your website, giving them something back is a great way to show that you actually care about them.

You can share useful tips and tricks, or offer a free trial of a product/service, create an event/gathering for your visitors, create contest/competitions, give something away for free, etc.

Conclusion

These tips may seem minor things but they do have a great effect on your website. Once you put some time and energy to understand your audience and its needs , you’ll be able to better serve them and build a website that they would definitely love to spend time on.

Remember to make your readers and visitors your first priority and they will eventually pay you off. The results will not make you wait for long!

Onextrapixel – Web Design and Development Online Magazine

30 May