Patrick McNeil is a master of both web design and UX/UI principles. In this excerpt from the first section of The Web Designer’s Idea Book, Vol. 4, he showcases the most successful industry and design portfolio examples from a wide variety of agencies and graphic designers. Web design is constantly evolving, and it can be difficult to stay on top of the latest trends, but this eBook can help. Featuring more than 40 examples of successful website designs, this guide can be used as a source of visual inspiration for web designers. Explore what others have done with their creative graphic design portfolio websites, and discover how these ideas can be adapted to suit your own needs.

Download this excerpt for free for incredible portfolio design inspiration. Discover inspired design portfolios with this free download! This 24-page excerpt from the first section of the book takes an in-depth look at online portfolio design styles and trends.

Get access to the best design downloads for graphic, web & interactive designers. Download free creative exercises & other design resources online. Start Bootstrap's collection of free Bootstrap portfolio themes and. Custom Bootstrap Design Services WrapBootstrap - Premium Bootstrap Themes. Search; Portfolios.

McNeil analyzes six patterns extensively in this area, providing stunning examples for each of successful designer and agency websites. These websites aren’t simply limited to graphic design portfolio sites, either—you’ll find the best portfolio design work from photographers, painters and sports figures as well. This section also includes handy QR codes that you can scan and use to explore all of the featured sites. Portfolio design styles and trends are at the heart of this excerpt, and it’s amazing to see the patterns that emerge across this broad variety of examples. These patterns can also be used to identify and solve problems that designers encounter when developing and building a portfolio design.

Take a closer look at the ideas Patrick explores in this section of his book. Super Clean: Minimalist Web Design “This style embodies all of my favorite qualities and the sites here are typically the ones I admire the most.” Minimalist web design is a continuously popular trend that makes excellent use of simplicity and whitespace on websites. The examples in this section range from pure minimalism to less sparse simplistic designs that apply successful typographic styles and solid colors in the design. While showcasing several excellent graphic design portfolio examples, McNeil explains the advantages of minimalist web design and a reliance on clarity and concision. Learn how to use whitespace and minimalism to reinforce the content hierarchy of your web design and present your work in a clear, easy-to-use format.

Illustrated Design: Illustrative Portfolio Design Inspiration “I have long been an advocate of illustration in design if only for a single reason: It almost always leads to a really unique design.” If you want to blend in with the herd, these ideas aren’t for you. But if you’re interested in creating a stunning, memorable web design that will rope in clients and keep them coming back for more, you might be interested in creating an illustrative graphic design portfolio. From the beautiful type and subtle textures of Symphony Online to the offbeat look of William Cole’s website, these examples are sure to inspire more unconventional and innovative designs.

Masonry Styles: A Perfect Fit for a Design Portfolio “The Masonry [jQuery] plug-in organizes rectangular items that vary in size and dimension by laying them out in such a way that they all fit together perfectly.” The Masonry jQuery plugin is a wildly popular web design function that rearranges your web content like stones in a wall, making it perfect for a flawless, responsive design. In this chapter, McNeil showcases the personal graphic design portfolio websites of Alexa Falcone, Glauce Cerveira and more, all featuring the classy application of the Masonry plugin. He also points out the drawbacks of the plugin, explaining that you have little control over the location of the content of your page. He even includes alternatives that provide the same look and feel without the restrictions of the plugin. One Page Folios: Creating a Single-Page Portfolio “The one page folio is certainly not a new phenomenon, and yet it is rather easy to find examples of one page portfolio sites with styles and trends all their own.” A one page portfolio makes for a great interactive resume—you can assemble all of your best work in one place so that any potential clients and visitors can explore your work without having to click around to access it. The most important aspects of a one-page portfolio web design are a clear statement of purpose, easy-to-use navigation, and unique application of design trends. Check out the work of designer Cody Eason and other sites that make great use of the one-page model.

Front and Center: Featuring Work on the Homepage of Your Portfolio “I want to highlight portfolio sites that don’t hide the portfolio pieces away on sub pages; instead they push them to the front page. But these sites don’t stop there—they make the work the primary focus of the home page by placing images front and center.” Your design portfolio is where you feature your best work.

So why make clients dig for it? Feature your work front and center just like the excellent web designers featured in this chapter. The best portfolio design examples in this book are also very adaptive; the work featured in the portfolio looks great on any device. Check out the Hidden Depth website and Sarah Coulton’s portfolio web design as the most successful applications of this trend.

Atypical Portfolios: Offbeat Portfolio Design Ideas “Portfolio sites as a whole are pretty much atypical. Though we find common patterns, there is such an extreme range of approaches that the sites here don’t feel too much off-the-beaten-path.” If you want visitors to remember your design portfolio, you need to create a memorable, interesting design that breaks the mold.

For example, the site for design agency Creanet features a distinct horizontal orientation instead of the usual vertical orientation found on most websites. While most websites feature squares and rectangles, the AltSpace design features unusual shapes that scale to fit any browser or device. What are you waiting for?

Grab your copy of this free download! The best portfolio design is one that takes typical design trends and transforms them into something memorable and unique.

In this excerpt, you’ll find fresh ideas to inspire great portfolios and other web designs. Get plenty of web design ideas for layout, color, style, and content, and benefit from a special focus on portfolio design ideas. Whether you need to create a new portfolio or update your current website, or you just want to find some great portfolio design inspiration, this section from The Web Designer’s Idea Book, Vol. 4 is perfect for you. Enter your email to download this free excerpt on portfolio graphic design today. Claim your FREE Download.

Not everyone has the cash to spend kitting themselves out with the most expensive graphic design software, particularly when starting a new business or embarking on a new career in design. There's no denying that paid-for creative software – like Adobe's fantastic suite of applications – will always be better than a freebie. But for those who don't want to pay and have time to do the groundwork, there is some free graphic design software out there that will do the job well. To save you from doing said groundwork, we've compiled this list of the best options around and divided it into five sections – use the drop-down menu to navigate to the section you want. Free vector art software 01. Gravit Designer delivers a full vector toolkit for free • Platform: Online, PC, Mac, Linux, ChromeOS Previously known as plain old Gravit, Gravit Designer is a full-featured vector design app suitable for all manner of jobs, from screen and icon designs through to presentations, illustration and animation. With a clean and intuitive interface that adjusts itself as you need it, this free graphic design software packs a wealth of tools for creating detailed and beautiful vector imagery, including non-destructive booleans, a knife tool and path graphs, plus multiple fills and blending modes, and a powerful text engine. It'll export as PDF, SVG or bitmap, and if you need to access a project on the go there's the Gravit Cloud service that enables you to get to your work wherever you are.

Vectr's online options make it great for live collaboration • Platform: Online, Mac, Windows, Linux, Chromebook Available both as a browser-based web app and as a stand-alone desktop app, Vectr is a free editor for creating 2D vector graphics. With all the vector features you'd hope for, plus plenty of options for using filters, shadows and fonts, it's versatile enough for day-to-day design tasks. Particularly useful are its live collaboration and synchronisation options, which enabling you to hook up with anyone, anywhere, to create in tandem.

Although SVG-Edit is limited to the SVG format it's surprisingly capable • Platform: Web Browser If you're looking to quickly output SVG or edit an existing SVG file, there are a few online editors that will do the job just as well as Adobe Illustrator. (scalable vector graphics) is an open format that allows you to reproduce your Vector drawings programmatically, and one of the nicest projects is SVG-Edit.

This is built entirely on HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript without requiring any server-side processing. So not only can you use it to create and edit documents, but as it's open source you can also download and modify the code – making your own version if you want. The standard – albeit basic – toolset of every vector-image editor is here, and although it's limited to the SVG format it's surprisingly capable.

Free graphic design software Inkscape has very good SVG integration • Platform: Windows/Linux (Mac possible if you're technically minded) As with many of the free options available, Inkscape focuses on the SVG format as its primary file format. This highly capable editor has a very good SVG integration, supporting many of the more advanced features that aren't always available in other apps – such as alpha blending, cloned objects, and markers. Full support for different colour modes means this is a viable alternative to Illustrator for both print and web design, and although the interface is somewhat simpler than Illustrator, it's still possible to achieve extremely sophisticated artwork. Of particular note is the ability to trace bitmap images, support for variable width strokes and native import of Illustrator files.

There are source binaries available for Windows, Linux and Mac, and compiled versions currently offered for Windows and Linux. Need to fix your photos?

Photo Pos Pro can do that and more • Platform: PC If you're on PC and need a decent set of image editing tools without Photoshop's price tag or GIMP's immense toolset, Photo Pos Pro should hit your sweet spot. Built with image enhancement and editing in mind, it's perfect for typical photo editing tasks such as fixing contrast, lighting and saturation, but it'll also stretch to more advanced techniques.

It boasts an extremely user-friendly interface as well as an in-depth help system to get you started, and if you want to expand its tools to fit your needs there are plenty of expansions and plugins available. Krita has been in development since 1999 • Platform: Mac, Windows, Linux Designed with the VFX industry and concept artists, illustrators, matte and texture artists in mind, Krita is a free and open source painting tool that's been in development since 1999. It comes with a full set of brushes suitable for all manner of work, and there's a whole host of plugins available, from advanced filters to painting assistants for perspective work.

Notable features include brush stabilisers to smooth out any shaky lines, a wrap-around mode for creating seamless textures and patterns, and a pop-up palette for quick colour-picking. Free graphic design software Pixlr comes with more than 600 effects • Platform: iOS, Android Free graphic design software Pixlr claims to be 'the most popular online photo editor in the world'. It boasts more than 600 effects, overlays and borders, and lets you do all the main things you'd expect from a photo editor, from cropping and resizing to removing red-eye and whitening teeth. If you're used to using Photoshop, then you'll find Pixlr's user interface easy to pick up, as it's very similar.

This free app is available in both and varieties. For photo editing, free graphic design software Paint.NET is an excellent alternative to Photoshop • Platform: Windows Paint.NET is a Windows-based alternative to the Paint editor that Microsoft shipped with versions of Windows. Don't let that put you off, though, as it's surprisingly capable, useful and free graphic design software. The focus is on ease of use, and there's a definite tendency towards photo editing rather than artistic creation. That said, there are a range of special effects available, allowing you to easily create fake perspective, blend and push pixels around the canvas, tile and repeat selections, and so on. A good range of selection tools, support for layers, and adjustments such as curves and brightness/contrast mean that Paint.NET is a great alternative to Photoshop for photo editing, especially if you can do without some of the more recent additions to Photoshop's toolset.

Free graphic design software Sumo Paint works in the browser • Platform: Web browser (requires Adobe Flash Player) Sumo Paint is a highly capable browser-based image editor. All the standard features you'd expect from a desktop tool are present and correct (and by buying the Pro version you can install a desktop version of the app if you prefer). You need the Adobe Flash Player to use this tool, so you're not going be using Sumo Paint on your iPad. That said, it's lightweight and quick to load, and the free version is very usable. The standard range of tools and adjustments you'd expect are all included. Brushes, pencils, shapes, text, cloning, gradients and so on are all quickly accessed from the Photoshop-esque floating toolbar.

It can also open saved documents from your hard drive, making Sumo Paint a perfectly viable option for editing and re-editing. GIMP is a popular, free graphic design software alternative to Photoshop • Platform: Linux, Windows, Mac Open-source free graphic design software that debuted on Unix-based platforms, GIMP stands for GNU Image Manipulation Program. Today it's available in versions for Linux, Windows and Mac. GIMP's interface differs somewhat from Photoshop, but a version of GIMP is available that mimics Adobe's look and feel, making it easier to migrate over if you're ditching Photoshop.

The full suite of tools is available here – everything you're accustomed to is within easy reach, including painting tools, colour correction, cloning, selection and enhancement. The team that oversees development has worked hard to ensure compatibility too, so you'll be able to work with all the popular file formats without any trouble at all.

You'll also find a very capable file manager built in, along similar lines to Adobe's Bridge. Free 3D software 11. 3D becomes much easier if you use SketchUp • Platform: PC, Mac For getting your first foothold in the world of 3D, it's hard to go wrong with SketchUp, and its free version, Sketchup Free, is an ideal starting point. It provides a friendly and forgiving introduction to building stuff in 3D, starting you off by simply drawing lines and shapes that you can then push and pull around to turn them into 3D forms. If you need a bit of inspiration, you can search the SketchUp 3D Warehouse's immense library of models and download them for free.

3D software Daz Studio is available to download completely free of charge • Platform: Mac, Windows Daz Studio is a 3D figure customisation, posing and animation tool that enables artists of all skill levels to creating digital art using virtual people, animals, props, vehicles, accessories and environments. With Daz Studio, you can create custom 3D characters and avatars, design virtual environments, produce graphic design elements and much more. There's also a handy table that shows you what this free tool offers in comparison to its paid alternatives (scroll down ). The superb animation Big Buck Bunny was made using free graphic design software tool Blender • Platform: Mac, Windows, Linux If you're serious about 3D but struggling to afford software, then you're in luck. Is a free, open source 3D content creation suite, available for all major operating systems.

Started by founder Ton Roosendaal back in 2002, Blender is now largest open source tool for 3D creation. Its makers are constantly working on its development, but you can pretty much do anything 3D related with this software, including modelling, texturing, animation, rendering and compositing. Master the art of digital sculpting with Pixologic's free graphic design software Sculptris • Platform: Mac, Windows If you're interested in the art of digital sculpting, check out 3D software from. Perfect for all skill levels, the software is a great starting point for users new to the discipline, while more experienced CG artists will find the software a quick and easy way to realise concepts. Sculptris is based on Pixologic's ZBrush, the most widely-used digital sculpting application in today's market. So, when you're ready to move on to the next level of detailing, skills learned in Sculptris can be directly translated into ZBrush. Get to grips with the Houdini graphic design software with this free Apprentice version • Platform: Mac, Windows, Linux Houdini is a 3D animation and visual effects tool, used widely throughout the media industry for film, broadcast, entertainment and visualisation.

And its cheapest version costs just a little under $2000. But the makers of the programme – – are a good bunch and, knowing that cost can be an issue, offer an Apprentice version for free.

Collage Maker Software Free Download For Windows 7. With this you can access all the features of the full version in order to develop your skills and work on personal projects. The programme is purely for use non-commercial and learning purposes. Free data visualisation software 17. Create infographics for your website or to share on social media • Platform: Web browser Infogram is a great free tool that offers access to a wide variety of graphs, charts and maps as well as the ability to upload pictures and videos to create cool infographics. The data upon which the infographics are based can be found in an Excel-style spreadsheet, which the user can easily edit and see the results change in real time.

When you're happy with your infographic you can publish it to the Infogram website for all to enjoy, or embed it in to your own website or share it via social media. Other useful free tools 21. Klex is an easy-to-use way of creating great designs quickly • Platform: Online, PC, Mac, Linux, ChromeOS Made by the people behind Gravit Design, and sharing the same engine, Klex is an easy-to-learn and accessible tool for anyone who wants to create impressive graphics in just a few clicks. While obviously not aimed at pro designers, it's a perfect tool for anyone who wants to quickly bang out memorable designs. There's a plethora of ready-made templates to choose from, plus thousands of assets and a great selection of effects and filters, as well as customisation options and a load of fonts and text assets.