A popular trend over the past year or two is using landscapes, cityscapes and seascapes in a design. Often placed in a website’s footer, they’re a great way to show off your creativity and as a web designer gives you a chance to test out your Illustrator skills.
A few tips for designing your ’scape’
1. Get some stock photography
You can get lots of downloadable vector graphics and photos from iStockphoto.
2. Check out Flickr
Flickr has loads of Creative Commons photos available for use.
3. Take your own photos
Get out around your town/city and take a few photos of noticeable buildings.
4. Sketch your own ideas
Jot down your own hills and buildings on paper.
5. Finally, get tracing and cutting in Illustrator and Photoshop
Now you have your inspiration you can start tracing in illustrator and trying different Photoshop effects on your buildings to come up with the perfect amazing scape.
Check out the showcase below for inspiration from the best.
Showcase of cityscapes
1. Andy Sowards
2. Disability Heroes
3. Flayks
4. Gotta Get To FOWA
5. Carrot Creative
6. Sawyer Hollenshead
7. TJ Mapes
8. Bainbridge Studios
9. NY Moon
10. DrupalCon
Showcase of landscapes
11. The Mattinator
12. Kulturbanause
13. Hicks Design
14. Viget Inspire
15. Rissington Podcast
16. Adit Shukla
17. Vimeo
18. Koller Media
19. TwitterFone
20. Project Vino
Showcase of seascapes
21. Dizzain
22. Tomas Pojeta
23. We Are Not Freelancers
24. Frisk Design
25. David Torondel
26. Design Disease
27. Volll
28. Get Me Fast
29. Stylized Web
30. DivVoted
Further Reading
- Cityscapes group on Flickr
- Inspiring cityscapes
- Create spectacular concept art in Photoshop
- 55 vector landscapes
About the author
Lee Munroe is a freelance web designer from Belfast Northern Ireland. Like this article? Feel free to follow Lee on Twitter.
Tags: cityscapes, footers, illustrations, inspiration, landscapes, showcase, trends
Lee! Amazing post! these are some top notch sites! And the technique is dead on. Find a good pic, trace an outline in PS or Illustrator, and then get creative!
Takes forever sometimes but theres just something about an all vector design that makes me weak in the knees :).
Keep up the good work!!
Thanks for the add, some of those other ones look epic.
The key is getting the right landscape to sort your need. Once you get that is game on.
Congrats Andy!!!
Lee…when I saw this topic in my Reader I was hoping that my site had made the list. There’s definitely a growing trend with using cityscapes, landscapes and seascapes in design.
If you’re looking for great vector versions of big city scapes check out Go Media. They’ve got some great stuff.
Thanks guys, glad you like the list.
@Bryan: Sorry mate, your cityscape does look very cool though!
Here’s a landscape to add! Very colorful, illustrated landscape header. Surprised you missed it
http://www.bestmortgagedeals.co.uk/
Nice showcase of cityscapes, landscapes and seascapes for inspiration. Thanks
I love this post… sometimes I’m already here again just to inspire myself! Is really a good research! THANKS!!
nice collestions. thanks.
Thanks for the link on my blog
Nice collection, there’s some really nice ones in here.
Hi
most of your collections are wonderful such as this.
try for more!!!!!!!
thanks
These sites are amazing! Great post.