There are so many resources for web designers out there. Amazing! People want to share their work and make it available for others. That’s one of the nice things about the Internet. Regarding this, Brant Wilson made a huge effort to collect 2000 free photoshop patterns from around the web. What a valuable resource, hope you will send it to every designer you know.

Interesting facts about how people interact with brands on Facebook.  The first thing that motivates them to Like a specific company is the fact that they receive discounts and promotions (40%). The article is very interesting, here is a short hint “On the surface, some of these findings seem to conflict with the idea of users being resistant to marketing messages. But the real takeaway is that users like brands for a wide variety of reasons, and the mix of content you post to your Facebook Page should reflect that.”

You perhaps know about our passion for flash, no wondering all of our apps are developed on this multimedia platform. Recently I found a collection of flash portfolio websites. They look great and have that “wow” factor, you should check them out for inspiration. What do you think?

And because I liked it and because her photos are like sweet summer memories I recommend you to view the work of a talented photographer, Laura Taylor.

Wish you a perfect weekend!

*** image credits Laura Taylor

Hi dear friends, I just realized it’s Friday so  it’s time for a post full of nice links. How are you? How was your week?

To start, let me share with you a beautiful collection of photos and artworks from around the web. Diversity, color and interesting perspective. What do you think?

I have one little question: do you like coffee? What’s your favorite? If your answer is yes, I think you might like this showcase of delicious coffee websites. For your inspiration.

For all the designers out there looking for new great fonts, here is a fresh article from Smashing Magazine who collected 30 new free quality fonts. Hope you’ll find this resource useful for your future projects.

Before I close let me show you a list of 12 Photoshop tutorials geared toward beginners. Learn the basics, the most important tools, about layers and filters, brushes and actions.

Wish you an awesome weekend!

***image credits Dardan Ibrahimi

For a little inspiration, here is a showcase of fresh texture-based web designs. As Noupe wrote, textured images were a big trend this year and sometimes they were used heavily, perhaps a little to much. But used in a subtle way, as the examples posted in his article can make a website look very good.

Need a Twitter bird for your blog or website? Or perhaps you’re tired if the old one and want to change it. Then this might help you, 10 free and fun bird icons. Number 10 is my favorite.

To end this blog post I want to share with you an article that I found very interesting, related to marketing: Techniques from Gilt.com, one of the most popular ecommerce websites around. Use amazing imagery, create a sense of exclusivity for your members, create a story and customize for multiple platforms are just four of the 10 lessons you can learn.

Hope you’ll have a beautiful weekend, see you next week!

Hi dear friends, time to leave you with with some great links and wish you a wonderful weekend.

I want to start this post with something beautiful, a showcase of macro images. “There is so much detail around us that goes unnoticed by the naked eye, but thanks to this type of photography, we get to see and appreciate all that detail”, I think Henry Jones, the author of the article is right.

There’s always place for a little inspiration and whether your interested in design or want to start your own business,  a collection of colorful logos might be interesting for you. I’d like to know if you found this useful or not.

Here is a very handy article for people owning a business or people involved in the process of promoting one on the internet: How to enhance your online presence with video. Video’s can be a great way to show customers or potential customers what you do, how you do it and why, to show your personality and to be closer to them.

This is all for today nice guys, see you next week.

*** image credits Christophe Kiciak

Time for a new collection of useful links to end well this week. How are you my friends? Did you make plans for this summer? I’d like to know if you’d like to share.

Learn how to create recognizable article thumbnails, with a great showcase of examples. I’ve learned that there are large thumbnails below title and introduction to make visual impact and square thumbnails right beside paragraphs just to give a hint about what you’ll read. There are also different techniques to make your article thumbnails, like related photo or a screenshot of the article and many more. I think it’s a good read for people interested in blogging.

Staying in the same area, design, here is a great collection of 40 examples of excellent single page websites.

Interested in fonts? Do you know what are the best calligraphy fonts that designers use in their projects? Here they are.

To end this blog post, I’ll let view these stunning black and white images. Happy, sad, funny, intriguing and fresh…

Enjoy your weekend!

*** image credits Dan

Ok my friends, let me write down what nice things I found lately. I will start with a very delicious article, about Chocolate websites that just look amazing. The collection is published by SmashingMagazine, a blog I’m sure most of you are very familiar with. In the same idea, here are 40 tasty restaurant websites for your inspiration. They look good, right?

Another post to inspire you is published by WebDesignerLedger, 40 blog designs. So if you’re looking to refresh your blog’s image or thinking about creating a new one, you’ll find nice things here.

I will end this blog post with a very interesting article, about influence on the web, but especially about the people that “have it”. Lisa Barone, which I admire because I have a lot to learn from her, divided the influencers in five categories (or as she calls them types): the social butterflies, the thought leader, the trendsetter, the reporter and the everyday customer. Hope you’ll enjoy this as much as I did.

See you next week, have a wonderful weekend!

We all listen to music, right? On our way to work, at work, when practicing a sport, driving, even when we go out somewhere in the evening… Related to music is this article Add Music To Your Workflow To Improve Results. So more than entertaining, music can create a mood that can be perfect for what you do at your job. It can also give a greater impact to your presentation. Do you agree?

What’s happening online right now? Group buying, big interest in location, mobile ads, mobile payments and setting a social media policy since more and more companies are interested in this new form of communication and marketing. These are the 5 social media trends that Mashable is talking about. Interesting.

A wonderful tutorial for the web designers reading this blog, How to design a website with Photoshop.

I found a lovely collection, Sunrise photography. Hope you will like it, I enjoyed every photo …

See you next week, till then have fun!

This week is almost ending … so fast. We had a great and busy week, launched 4 giveaways (for more details check out this blog post) and we were working hard to finish a huge collection of banner templates. If you are already a member, you received a newsletter with the announcement that the templates are live. If you are new here, log in to BannerSnack and you should see them in the section called “My banners”.

How was this week for you? Busy, interesting, sunny?

Let me get back to what I came for, interesting links to share with you. Would you like to browse through a fascinating collection of ads from the 2010 World Cup ?

For the web designers out there, discover 76 free vector resources that 1stWebDesigner found very useful. I’m pretty sure you will like them too. Also for you, 10 resources for inspiration. I think you know some of them, hope some are new and that you are ready for a little exploration.

Do you write a blog? Perhaps for your company, like I do or a personal blog. I found a very helpful article that might interest you, 5 Do’s and Donts for blog coverage.

And to end this blog post in a nice way, I’ll invite you to view a dessert photography collection. Hope I made your weekend a little sweeter.

Wish you a sunny weekend!

***Image found here

Before I end this week, let me note dawn what I found worth telling you. As a beginner in blogging I’m very interested in reading how experienced bloggers build their way. If you too are writing a company blog or your personal blog, finding a voice to express your ideas is very important. This is why I recommend this article, posted on Copyblogger, a popular blog I’m sure you’ve heard about.

Do you sell online? Do you use photos in order to do that? If so, here’s something you will like, published by one of the biggest blogs on design and development, SmashingMagazine, How to use photos to sell more.  “Tell a story” was the part that draw my attention, I believe that people need, well I should say… people love stories, to see that there is more than a product or a service. It helps them connect, get closer to what you sell and see more details. I found the tips very useful!

A little inspiration for the web designers out there (but not only for them), warm versus cool website designs. Have you found something that you like a lot?

Banner ads are part of what we do, is where we started with the first application, our banner maker. Perhaps this is why the blog post said something to me Banner ads: excellent examples for inspiration – “a showcase of different ways that a few websites show their ads, which might be helpful when it’s time to place banner ads on your site”.

Hope  you had a beautiful week and you’re preparing for an awesome weekend.

OK, it’s time to post my links for this week. Here‘s an interesting way to advertise your brand: make a banner ad that ca be fed live with tweets from your clients so that people can see what other people think about you. Toyota was the first to have this brilliant idea.

Do you like handwritten fonts? I do… so this collection of 60 free script fonts for your design projects is one of the things that drew my attention this week. Hope you’ll like it too. Plenty of fonts to choose from.

Thinking about starting a new business? Do you have a great name for it? ‘Cause I found a great article on Mashable that could help you naming your startup.

PS: PhotoSnack’s product manager celebrated his bday this week. Happy Birthday again!