Hello everybody! We’re finally back with our contest results –  I am apologising it took so long, but wasn’t easy to gather all results from Facebook, Twitter, comments –  decide which prizes get each winner and finally putting that all together and contacting all our kind sponsors. Holiday season also didn’t help to get job done faster..:)

Huh, okay, but to move on –  finally results are announced and you can check if you’re one of the winners in the list by reading further. Don’t worry we are contacting everybody even if we didn’t get your email –  expect for Twitter private messages or Facebook message so we can be sure you receive your prize as supposed.

About contest generally –  I really enjoyed your suggestions, tips, complains about design and overall support. We are and we will listen to our readers even more and if you have any more tips or you just want to chat with me directly, please check our  Twitter profile @1stwebdesigner. I am responding there directly now, promising to be more active –  just updating what I and our 1WD team are up to, what we are updating, sharing new ideas and yes –  if you have any question to me, ask there, I will always respond to help out.

OK, now I am answering to actual complains officially and I am happy to tell we fixed several issues already:

1. Logo

As you may notice, we changed current logo to temporary one to let everybody know it will change real soon. How we will do that? Idea is to launch a new contest ( probably after 1–2 weeks) where we will ask to our own readers to design new logo for 1stwebdesigner. Of course winner will get very nice prize as 300$ + iPod, which should be motivating.

Even in case we don’t get any good submissions, we will hire professional logo designer who will design logo anyway, but I am really hoping on our designer audience –  I am sure you can come up with some great ideas and see your own designed on 1stwebdesigner daily!

2. Twitter Stream

We listened and agreed, Twitter stream was way too long so we decreased update count from 15 to 10. You may also notice we took off also our Partners and Ads section to clean up our sidebar.

3. Further Reading Related Posts

There were a lot of complains, that it takes too long to scroll down to comment section and we changed featured images from 570x300px to 150x150px images which saves space greatly now. Now also related post should be really RELATED because we implemented custom code which searches related posts after first 2 tags or we select them manually –  before we used WordPress default results and they weren’t really appropriate, because usually WP filters posts just by date.

Such problems we have also with default WordPress search –  we’re searching for solution there too.

4. Social Bookmarking Sliding Sharing Bar

Sliding effect seemed to distract a lot of readers and they reported that in comments as well, so we removed sliding effect and just implemented customized Sharebar plugin, no more sliding –  no more distractions from article content!

Spacing also has been added when Sharing bar is appearing in comment section –  it should be ok on all screens now.

5. Premium Membership

Even before membership release there were complains about prizing and how useful it will be so we decided not just add usual membership, we are thinking now more about our own products like handy plugins, WordPress themes, ebooks –  maybe nifty software. Membership sites seems to be more than enough in design community already, we don’t want to be yet another design blog. Soon we’ll announce our future plans and change announcements!

Other issues and comments

About other announcements now you can also use www.1wd.co address so if you’re visiting site directly, now it should be less pain to visit our website, we are currently working on implementing our own URL shortener now!

Well, and talking about article structure and regularity –  we have hired 2 more fulltime writers and one more SEO/Social Marking person, we got also first PSD TO HTML tutorial from Ahmad, and yes –  I hope you enjoy regular Photoshop Web Layout tutorials from Michael Burns. We have also one more surprise –  soon you will see the 1^st art directed post here and we will cover also some design news, review some cool new sites/services so you don’t need to visit many other sources to be aware of what’s happening in design world.

Currently I am negotiating with proofreader, I hope we’ll get one real soon so finally no-one would complain about bad language, because many of our writers, including me aren’t native English-speaking and for readers from USA and UK some article quality may seem too low –  we will solve this problem real soon!

You should also feel how our article quality is increasing, we’re spending a lot more time into article idea research and actual writing process –  spending quality time there and trying to avoid from general list posts :) There will be occasional resource articles, but not so much as before, we are mixing everything together –  list posts, educational tutorials, tips/tricks articles and some well researched case studies.
We’re working hard, but we still need your feedback, we want to create functional site, we have a team to work on new features –  help us, share your idea here in Twitter, in comments or join our Facebook group and post updates there!

1WD 2 Year Anniversary And Massive 6000$ Worth Giveaway Contest Results

Okay, enough waiting - let’s start with winners announcements! You asked for it, here it is –  congratulations to all winners, I think every loyal reader who left nice feedback got prize –  thank you all for such a huge activity and good wishes!

1000$ Worth Giftcards From CodeMyConcept PSD To HTML Service Company

1. rorchachdesign
2. Sergei Tatarinov
3. Chris

5 Premium HTML Licenses Worth 500$ From SlideshowBox

1. Martin
2. Zachary A. Mau
3. Thinkjayant
4. Dumazz
5. Romulo Aguiar Figueiredo

500 Die Cut Business Cards for 3 Lucky Winners ( Worth 250$)

1. Demitra Mroncz
2. Rahul
3. Steverobillard

5 Yearly Subscriptions from Azigos (Worth 100$)

1. Tomas Lau
2. Shrikrishna Meena
3. Michael @ Project Center
4. Sarah Schager
5. Belinda VanBuskirk

Win 100$ Off Custom Stickers : 5 Winners ( Worth 500$)

1. Kristi Hines
2. Zach Mau
3. Pablolarah
4. Kerry
5. Clara

3 Single User Licenses From MagicMembers (Worth 300$)

1. Thomas Varil
2. Adim Subedi
3. Arun Prabu

Eleven 2 GiveAway 1 Year of Free hosting To 5 People (Worth 500$)

1. Mehdi Raza Jaffery
2. George Elias
3. Thomas Elkhart
4. Nikunj
5. Ari Arsyadi

3 Individual Theme/Support Packages of Winner's Choice From StudioPress (Worth 240$)

1. Tim Soulo
2. Satrya Bima
3. Edmund Ng

KreativeThemes 5 Themes Giveaway of Winner's Choice ( Worth 350$)

1. Hitgirl
2. Yuni Ardita S.D
3. Adam Majchrzak
4. Kiraly Tamas
5. Christie

Iconshocks Giveaway: 3 Bundle Licenses of Your Choice (Worth 700$)

1. Lee Gustin
2. Adrian
3. Paddsolutions

3 ProThemeDesign Themes Giveaway of Winner's Choice (Worth 240$)

1. Irina
2. AnotherBlogger
3. Matt L.

5 Templatic Premium Theme Single Use Licenses Giveaway of Winner's Choice (Worth 450$)

1. Abdelhadi Touil
2. Francois
3. Sumon Seleem
4. David Mejias
5. Jacob S. Campion

5 GabFire Themes Premium WordPress Themes Giveaway of Winner's Choice (Worth 300$)

1. Ilona Andrews
2. Digital Imagination
3. crunchynow
4. Bligbook
5. Athul Jayaram

ElegantBanners Giveaway: 3 Custom Banner Ad Packages (Worth $336)

1. M Pike
2. PamS
3. Stephanie Haw

Those who shared just their twitter accounts or Facebook pages, make sure to contact me dainis [at] 1stwebdesigner.com – I will write you on Twitter,Facebook directly, but I need your responses!

Congratulations to all the winners, I really hope you enjoyed this contest as much as I did!

White is clean and elegant, these are the two things we see on White. This color has always been popular that is used in different kinds of industries. For instance in interior designing, designers prefer more White to stand out as the main color in decorating a room or a house. Take a look at this image of a room that is decorated in all White.

Image by: New Inspiration Home Design

Do you find this beautiful? I do. And the color is just simple yet it brings out the elegance and cleanliness of the room. Also with web design, White is becoming famous as the chosen dominating color for a theme of a website. Not only that it is simple, clean and elegant, it also brings a lot the creativity on designers reflecting on their works. Personally, I find it very easy to create a web design when I use White as my main color. In this article, I will be sharing to you my thoughts and ideas regarding White color in creating a web design.

What Makes White Beautiful?

Clean and Simple

I think everyone will agree with me that White symbolizes cleanliness. And that is one thing we are looking for on a website, right? We can say that a website is clean when the contents and other elements of the site look organized where they are properly placed in an appropriate position.

Greece is for Lovers, a website where you can buy several limited Greece-inspired products, is one good example of a website that value simplicity and neatness. Notice that the navigations and contents are well placed. The whole site is simple to use, therefore gives users comfort in exploring.

Another example of a website that looks clean is i am Dan, a portfolio website owned by a web designer and flash developer. The contents and elements of the site are placed in a right position, the texts are readable and the navigations are user-friendly.

There are just some of the examples of website where White gives a cleanliness in the look of a website. Now, let us go to how White can offer simplicity on a web design.

In the mind of viewers, the simplicity of a website is determined when it loads faster, user-friendly, easy to navigate and responses quickly. For designers, a simple website is easy to create, edit and maintain, therefore giving less cost on employers . To fully understand this one better, I have here examples of websites that value simplicity.

Zurb is an agency of web design that has a website that is simple to use, refreshing and very direct.

Professional and Elegant

When a website looks professional is elegant, it gives an impression to users that the company or the person is professional and elegant or formal too. White is one of the colors that can give a look like this on a site.

fourthfloorinteractive is an agency that gives interactive solutions on their clients. Take a look at their website, White gives a professional and elegant look and it blended well on the other elements of the site.

The professionalism and elegance of a company or a person can be determined on the impression their websites is giving, and putting a White color on your site can hand you these things.

Creative and Attractive

Websites should be creative and also attractive. In this way, visitors will have an excitement and drive to fully explore your site. A website is creative and captivating when the viewers enjoy and is having a comfort exploring well, even if it only have less contents on the page.

The reason that I always find White as a main color on a design is because whatever you match with it, it will still look good. And that’s what is why I find White very creative and attractive. Why don’t you take a look at these sites for an evidence that White can also be creative and catchy.

Noemie Chevaux-Tavernier

Here is one example that White website can be creative. The designer used different kinds of figures and beautiful fonts to make it look creative. I think if the White was put into different color, it won’t look good as the way it is.

We Make It Live

Each elements of this website gives a creative and uniqueness on the whole design. White makes the design look fabulous, cute yet professional in look.

Benefits of Using White

It makes your contents stand out.

Imagine a plain canvass, it’s all in White right? But after you have drawn on it, the drawing stands out. And that’s how contents also stand out on a layout if you will be using White color.

Compare the two websites below:

Bootb

As soon as the page (image above) loads, the first thing you will notice is the Black. But if you will be seeing this page (image below), you will immediately notice the contents but not White. And that’s how contents stand out on a White canvas.

Log

It is easier to mix and match.

This applies to everything. When you choose a top that is in White, you may pair it with bottoms in any color. When you use White wallpaper or paint on for your wall, you can have your furniture in any color. And for web designing, when you use White you may use any colors to mix with it. You may use Black, Gray, Pink, Blue or even Orange! Try looking at the picture below.

Image by: gugy

I can say that White is a color that you can mix and match with other colors.

It looks neat.

White symbolizes neatness and cleanliness. This also implies on web design, it makes your website looks neat even you put any colors to match it.

Image by: jessamyn west

When Creating a White Web Design: Tips and Guidelines

• As much as possible, use dark colors on your texts to make them stand out from the White. Make your text readable in size.
• Make your buttons in a darker color, so that your viewers will notice them quickly. Also, design them as simple as White is to give your viewers comfort in exploring your site.
• Put your contents in an organized way to make your website look more neat. This will also make your viewers easier to read and explore.
• Be simple yet creative. You can put different kinds of figures or images to make your web design look simple yet creative. This can capture viewers’ attention.

More Examples: Websites With White Design

Look Designs

Koeln Bonn Airport

Numan Cebi

Hello Lucky

Devia

Alcian Blue

Threadless

Gustavo Urena

AQ Works

Big Youth

Itchy Pixel

Chriss Loan

Tisha Creative

Midiaweb

Christa Robillard

One Day Without Google

Anywhichway

SquareFACTOR

A Woman In The Mirror

Shop YCN Online

Your Thoughts

I hope you learned something from this article and got inspired to create a website with White color on it. You may also want to share some thoughts regarding White color on the Comment section.