A great restaurant website needs to communicate the atmosphere of the restaurant as well as its good food. These websites tend to be clean and uncluttered, often featuring large, glossy imagery of the restaurant interior, sumptuous closeups of its dishes, or friendly shots of the staff. Here is a showcase of mouthwatering restaurant websites – from family restaurant chains to fine dining.

See more at Inspiration Time

Print ads is few effective ways to engage an audience in very saturated advertising market. Designing a print ads is very difficult, you have to convey your message using few words and in single image.

Get their products or services out in print format is more challenging and difficult for any company.

See more at Graphic Design Bay

Very Handy Cool Wood Textures

Decay Textures

Ground Textures

Miscellaneous Grungy Textures

Rusty Shapes

70+ Beautiful Damask Patterns and Textures

Nebulae Grunge

Scratches

Metallic Textures

Stone Textures

Flash is a household name when it comes to multimedia. Whether you’re creating interactive demos, browser games or cool web components, Flash is a solid foundation on which to base your work. Flash Games plays a major role in browser based games over the internet and have always been one of the best pass-times for all internet users. For flash beginners, creating a flash game is a quite tough job and also interesting as well.

Read more at dzineblog.com

Second Star Wars-related post in a row. I am such a geek.

View full size video on google here.

Apparently Adidas has joined forces with the Dark Side to make some Star Wars-inspired sneakers for all the trendy and fashionable Star Wars geeks like myself. They have a pretty sweet website to support the campaign, as well as some really slick ads. I want the Yoda ones.

Click on links below to enlarge the images.

So you’re thinking about freelancing full-time? Are you sick of working for someone else or did you recently just get laid off? I’ve been there. And I realized freelancing for a living is only meant for a certain type of person. And right now at least, I am not that type.

When I got laid off, freelancing seemed so glamorous. I considered not looking for a new job entirely and just working for myself out of my house. I could do the work I wanted to, stay at home with my dog, have dinner waiting for my wife when she got home from work and make more money then I could working for someone else. In my downtime, I could read books and blogs to learn new technologies and techniques. I was going to be so well-off and so smart.

But the novelty quickly wore off. Clients wanted their work done instantly, but they weren’t so anxious to get my check in the mail. They wanted me to invest time and energy into pre-planning projects now, but without guarantee I would even receive the project, or give me a time frame on when it would start and when I would get paid. When I didn’t have anything to work on, I rarely turned to opening a book to learn something new. Why would I? My couch looked so comfortable and I had two new Netflix movies calling my name.

Fortunately a contract Web developer position became available to me just in time before I had to dip into my savings, I starved to death or I just went crazy.

Below is a list of the pros and cons of working for an agency, or another full-time employer, versus working for yourself. Please feel free to throw me some comments of things I may have left out.

Full-time Pros

• You can expect a steady paycheck (unless you’re working for some schmuck who doesn’t know how to manage his finances)
• You’ll have medical benefits, and possible dental and a 401K as well
• You get paid time off – vacation and holidays
• Your equipment will be supplied to you – A computer, software and other resources – and you don’t have to worry about paying to get them fixed when something does break
• You get to be sociable with other employees

Full-time Cons

• You have to deal with a boss and his crazy, hair-brained ideas
• You have to get up on time every morning to get to work
• You have to be sociable (I know I said this was a pro above. Sometimes it was for me, sometimes it wasn’t)
• Dealing with commuting to work

Freelancing Pros

• You get to work in your pajamas, or in sweatpants, or naked, like I chose to
• You save money on gas commuting to work
• You can have flexible hours
• You get to be your own boss
• You can potentially earn more money

Freelancing Cons

• You have to be accountable to yourself – nobody is going to scold you if you watch TV or spend too much time on Facebook and don’t get your work done
• You have to deal with clients directly – this isn’t always a problem, but I am a designer, not a salesman
• You can have no idea when you’ll get paid
• You have to go out looking for work

Here are 28 of the sweetest, most valuable and must read design-related articles of 2009 from the Design Cubicle. The articles include tutorials on Wordpress, typography, logo design, Web design and much more…

Visit Design Cubicle’s article

To make it easier for you, I have begun putting together a list of items that I wouldn’t mind having:

• A casual, western-style brown leather belt with a removable belt buckle requiring a single hole
• A very large photo of a polar bear and a husky for above my mantle or in my office (preferably very large and possibly already framed)
• The Apple Magic Mouse
• Gift Certificates to Human Productions Tattoo Parlor
• Wacom Intuos4 Pen Tablet – Medium or Gift Certificates from the Apple Store to save up
• The Smashing Mag Book (for the gift-giver on a budget)
• Seinfeld – the Complete Series
• Gift Card to Foot Locker to buy a new pair of kicks
• Ebay gift certifcates
  
• More coming soon…
  

During my unfortunate time of unemployment for the month of October thanks to my friends over at American Eagle Outfitters, I was fortunate and blessed to not only get some freelance work to help make ends meet, but also to get some great additions to my portfolio.

Several pieces in particular were for the worship band I recently enjoyed, Intent. I love not only doing ministry-related graphic and Web design work, but also work for bands and music.

Being that the CD case had to be designed and sent off to the printer in only a day to have it pressed in time for our CD release party that just passed on November 1 at South Hills Assembly, I was extremely happy how well it turned out. Under any other circumstance where I was working a full-time job, there is no way I would have had the time to get the CD designed in such a short time period, but I now realize that my brief unemployment was an extreme blessing to the band to get us off on the right foot.

In addition to the CD packaging, I have also done Intent’s Web site twice – once before I joined the band, and again shortly after to match the identity of the CD case. The Web site is still a work in progress as I have to still add a lot of pages and content, but I am pleased with how it looks so far.

Finally, I put together two t-shirt designs that I am also very happy with. Both shirts are available to purchase on Intent’s Web site. Members of Intent do not profit in any way from the sales we make on our merchandise. The money that is made is put back into our ministry for the equipment and gas we need. Your support is greatly appreciated.

Let me know what you think of the work I did.