A hard copy of Jeremy Keith’s HTML5 For Web Designers arrived in the mail today. It’s wonderful to finally see how well-designed it is as a physical object. Most importantly, it’s the clear explanation of a confusing subject that’s made this little book a must-read.
  |
To get you really excited about CSS3, last month we announced the CSS3 Design Contest and encouraged designers to experiment and get creative with CSS3. As expected, we have received many creative and original submissions. To choose the winners of the contest, we considered the originality of the technique or approach and its uniqueness. The idea mattered more than the execution.
This process has taken a lot of time as it wasn’t easy, because we received quite a few creative submissions: however, a decision had to be taken and so we thoroughly went from one competition entry to another. And the decision was made. So today, it’s time to announce the winners and present the submissions to the contest.
Please notice that the contest results are experimental and may not necessarily look or work alike in different browsers. The techniques presented below should be considered as innovative, creative approaches showcasing what can be achieved with pure CSS3 and a bit of creative thinking. Please feel free to build upon these ideas to create further techniques and design solutions and make them available for the design community.
[Offtopic: by the way, did you know that Smashing Magazine has one of the most influential and popular Twitter accounts? Join our discussions and get updates about useful tools and resources — follow us on Twitter!]
CSS3 Charts [ preview | download ]
This technique is an example of experimental CSS3 charts, without JavaScript and images in use. We miss cleaner markup and proper markup for tabular data here, but the use of CSS3 selectors is truly impressive: nth-child, :target, transformations, gradients and transitions in use. Designed by Sean Oh from USA.
CSS3 Rubiks Cube [ preview | download ]
Interesting idea for a CSS3 design. The designer’s idea was to create a navigation menu: although it’s not very user-friendly for regular navigation, it may be interesting for engaging portfolio sites. Gradients and transforms in use. Designed by Francesco Benanti and Maicol Zenatti from Italy.
CSS3D [ preview | download ]
Do you have your 3D glasses at hand? If yes, put them on and observe this stereoscopic 3D effect, created with CSS3. Works in all modern browsers, and also on iPhone. 3D red-cyan glasses required. Designed by simurai from The Netherlands.
CSS3 Monsters Blob [ preview | download ]
A CSS monster, created with pure CSS3. Also check out Blob’s brother, CSS3 Monsters Dragon. It goes without saying that the CSS monster is scalable. The eye is animated with jQuery’s Parallax effect. Designed by Sebastien Plaignaud from France.
CSS3 A Rift in Time [ preview | download ]
Interesting experimental layout: standard HTML/CSS web sites have always been vertical and horizontal. This entry shows what can be achieved if a site is flipped on to a 45 degree angle. Transitions and transforms in action. Designed by Maxwell Burton from USA.
We congratulate the winners of the CSS3 design contest and we again sincerley thank you for all the great entries that we’ve received. We appreciate your time, creative thoughts and we do respect your work and efforts. All winners will be contacted within the next 24 hours. Below you’ll find a detailed overview of the other entries of the contest. Thank you very much, and please join in next time!
CSS3 Jewelcase [ preview | download ]
“I love music and cover art, so this was a nice little project to explore some CSS3 features.” Designed by Bouke Regnerus from The Netherlands.
CSS3 Vicero [ preview | download ]
“I came up with this idea when I was sorting all my movies on my movie-stream-server. It would be so nice to have a web interface that’s rolling on a web server on the same machine. But if you dont have a server and just have regular DVD/BR, then you can type where the movie is in the shelf. So, what should we watch today? This theme is best experienced in Safari/Chrome because of some CSS3 effects; but it works also in FF, IE and Opera.” Designed by Adis Kurtalic from Sweden.
CSS3 iPad with Shadow [ preview | download ]
“I got a bit crazy at this contest. I’ve been experimenting a bit with CSS3. But when I saw this contest, I though for my self.. hey, let’s check this specifications at w3. There got be more to it than just rounded corners (which is great by the way). After using a couple of hours reading. I was stunned..whow! 3D effects, shadows. And I was thinking.. what can be painted can also be made in css3 using squares, circles… I was sitting with an iPAD in my hands reading about CSS3. I put it on the table… and thought; this image I am seeing right now, should be possible to make just with CSS3. The solution is best viewed in Google Chrome.” Designed by Morten Dischington Carlsson aka Mr.Jones.
CSS3 Time Machine [ preview | download ]
“A small example of using jQuery to trigger CSS3 animations in a ‘Time Machine’-fashion.” Designed by Nathan Burnett from USA.
CSS3 CSS Effects [ preview | download ]
“This started as an experimental playground when I started learning CSS3 — CSS animation. There are five simple looping effects (animations). Each one uses JavaScript to initially setup the environment, but after that, everything is looped through CSS animation.” Designed by Yohei Shimomae from Canada.
CSS3 Book [ preview | download ]
“This design allows you to place any amount of content in the ‘columnified’ DIV of the layout, allowing for a site-wide flexible and fully customisable ‘book-like’ feel. It uses the CSS3 multi-column module for the multi-column layout (and a JavaScript solution for Opera and IE, two browsers that, to date, do not support this module — this solution is a modified version of Cédric Savarese’s css3-multi-column.js, and uses a combination of CSS shapes, border-radius, transforms, box-shadows and gradients to create the book appearance.
Page turning is achieved via Javascript (pageturn.js). The different stylesheets are fed to browsers via Javascript as well, so as to detect whether the multi-columns are supported or not (stylesheet.js — basic browser detection only, on the assumption that Opera, Firefox, Safari and Chrome users update their browsers regularly). As no images have been used in this template, total customisation of the appearance is easily achieved (moreover, the CSS is annotated). For a full explanation of how the two-column, multi-page layout works, please visit the following tutorial.” Designed by Peter Craddock from Belgium.
CSS3 Rocket Man [ preview | download ]
“Whenever I work on a project for myself, I like to try and learn something new. This contest gave me a chance to play with CSS3 without having to worry about clients asking why it works in some browsers and not in others. The main thing I was curious about was the keyframe animations, this was something I had heard about but not played with at all. I am glad that I entered the contest for the sole reason that I learned a lot. I did not realize how easy it was to work with transitions and animations with CSS. This exercise has me really excited about the future. I can’t wait to see tomorrows rookie designers using this for spinning swords and dragons that breathe fire.” Designed by James Vecchio from USA.
CSS3 Wii-ish Idea [ preview | download ]
“Just a little bit of CSS3 as an idea for holding some images. Would work really nice alongside some JS.” Designed by Stephen Cook from UK.
CSS3 Video CSS [ preview | download ]
“It is interleaved video in a jpeg file. Instead of having each frame in its common order, each row is interleaved with the next frames rows. So, the you can see the first row of the first frame, then the first row of the second frame, the first row of the third frame and so on. Jpeg files are size limited, so to be able to have a lot of frames, I’ve reordered the rows in a 16×16 grid. The top left of the grid is the first row, the next to the right is the second row, the next the third, and in the next colunm we have the n+16th row. This is the code to generate the jpeg file. The frames where named a0001.jpg, a0002.jpg, a0003.jpg…
<php
$num_img=128;
$out2=imagecreatetruecolor(256*16, 16*$num_img);
for ($j=0; $j<$num_img; $j++)
{
$num=$j*4+10001;
$filename="xplsv/a".substr($num, -4).".jpg";
$out=imagecreatetruecolor(256, 256);
$img=imagecreatefromstring(file_get_contents($filename));
imagecopyresampled($out, $img, 0, 0, 0, 0, 256, 256,
imagesx($img),
imagesy($img));
for ($i=0; $i<16; $i++)
{
for ($n=0; $n<16; $n++)
{
imagecopy($out2, $out, $n*256,
$i*$num_img+$j, 0, $n+$i*16, 256, 1);
}
}
imagedestroy($img);
imagedestroy($out);
}
imagepng($out2, 'test.png');
?>Then, I’m using the CSS displacement maps I’ve used in the Coke Can and the other displacement maps I did for Ajaxian. The displacement maps de-interleave the jpeg file. Then, displacing the background-position with CSS3 for each row, I get the video effect. Finally, I added a Smashing Magazine transparent png on top on the video to create the overlay effect. I really like to add video on websites with shapes, it looks really good. I would like to add that this is a crazy way to add video and that it should not be used for any real purpose. When I do things like that is just for pure geek entertainment and to show it is possible. I would suggest for CSS3/HTML5 to have a background-video tag.” Designed by Javier Roman from Spain.
CSS3 Megans RADius Font [ preview | download ]
“I am a print/web designer who likes to play with CSS+HTML from time to time. I have a passion for experimental typography, and like to explore new ways of creating type. For this project, the font can be adjusted to change the into a totally different face just by changing a few small images.” Designed by Megan Brown-Taylor from Honolulu, HI, USA.
CSS3 Monsters Dragon [ preview | download ]
“CSS Monsters are vector images created only with CSS.” Designed by Sebastien Plaignaud from France.
CSS3 iMac [ preview | download ]
“A pure CSS iMac – no images. You can use it to display anything on the screen. In the example I setup a Flickr Feed of images as a slideshow. It is also completely resolution independent. All relative sizes – feel free to scale it up or down by changing your font size. I used some cool techniques including CSS gradients (and Safari Radial Gradients), CSS border-radius, text-shadow, even used a Safari CSS 3D transform for kicks! I used some jQuery to make a slideshow with the Flickr images and image title overlays. Overall, I think it turned out great. I am sure people out there could take this to the next level. It’s really easy for anyone to change the flickr feed and put in their own photos if they want. I hope to see this out there somewhere. Exciting! I love CSS3! Works in: Firefox 3.5+, Opera 10.5+, Safari 4+, Google Chrome 4.0+, but of course – looks the best in Safari.” Designed by Joshua Gatcke from México.
CSS3 A Book Full of HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript [ preview | download ]
“I wanted to use the bleeding-edge 3d capabilities of CSS3 & animations while working with JavaScript to trigger interactive events. Using CSS animations for a game is something that I also find intriguing.” Designed by Kurt Zenisek from USA.
CSS3 Camera [ preview | download ]
“This “camera” was created solely with CSS3, with fallback gradients for browsers that do not support CSS3 gradients. Tested (and working) on:
Google Chrome
Opera 10.54
Firefox 3.6.6.”
Designed by Oscar Lemstr?m from Finland.
CSS3 Under the Sea in CSS3 [ preview | download ]
“A webpage using CSS3 in an under the Sea theme.” Designed by Carlo Rosati from USA.
CSS3 90s [ preview | download ]
“Description: My idea was to create a design very 90’s style, like David Carson with the desconstruction of the form using CSS3 Transform. It’s still only working on Webkit because of the transitions.” Designed by Fabio Sasso from Brazil.
CSS3 Magazine [ preview | download ]
“A Magazine design inspired from Wired. Built using A4 dimensions. Uses the following features: transparent colors, even-odd selectors, rotation, text shadow, box shadow, border radius, custom font faces. Would’ve liked to used more if not for the differences in Webkit and Mozilla support Concept, Design and HTML in 6 hours. CSS3 rocks!” Designed by Anand Gorantala from USA.
CSS3 Lightsaber [ preview | download ]
“I’m a huge Star Wars nerd, as well as a web standards geek. Naturally, these two *ahem* interests were bound to collide eventually. I’m just glad it resulted in a CSS3 lightsaber rather than my admittance into a mental hospital. I actually wrote a tutorial on how I made this CSS3 lightaber, and that can be found at.” Designed by Max Luzuriaga from USA.
CSS3 Smashing Magazine Logo [ preview | download ]
“The Smashing Magazine logo using CSS3 and a little Javascript to replace the “G” in “Smashing” with a “C”" Designed by Niko de Luna from The Philippines.
CSS3 Expert Cook [ preview | download ]
“Simple as it may seem this template relies heavily on css3 for animations, transformations and gradients it uses all sorts of selectors and different css3 effects to achieve the design you see.” Designed by Andrei Oprea from Romania.
CSS3 Visoki Decani Temple [ preview | download ]
“CSS3 web design showcase dedicated to Serbian Orthodox monastery Visoki Decani.” Designed by Milos Zekovic from Serbia.
CSS3 Pseudo 3D Radial Buttons [ preview | download ]
“Easy to use 3D Radial Buttons.” Designed by Denis Arkhipov from Russia.
CSS3 Moving Stick Figure [ preview | download ]
“Use CSS 3 border-radius and animation to create a stick figure and add moving control using jQuery.” Designed by Jeffri Hong from Indonesia.
CSS3 Image-less Warp Shadows [ preview | download ]
“A simple CSS3 technique to apply warped shadows to elements.” Designed by Tyler Dawson from USA.
CSS3 Rabbit [ preview | download ]
“Just playing with CSS3 properties (and rabbits).” Designed by Fabien Vauthey
CSS3 – The future is here [ preview | download ]
“My wish was to create design that shows the full concept, presenting the different capabilities and aspects of CSS3. Probably the design would seem familiar to you and that’s it because I used the vision of the template published at your website. I considered that design as extremely appropriate for the case because it’s functional and catches the eye of the user. Honestly, I didn’t have time to think of my own design but I think that I accomplished my mission to show designers and developers what they can do with little more effort and that’s how I even learned some new stuff. I hope that my design will make others reconsider the usability of the browser they use and motivate them to do some action and step forward.” Designed by Antonio Stoilkov from Bulgaria.
CSS3 Rainbow Template [ preview | download ]
“Web template design with sky and rainbow theme.” Designed by Anggun Pribadi from Indonesia.
CSS3 Totally Fresh [ preview | download ]
“Totally Fresh is a fun project created not only to display the capabilities of CSS3, but to show an exciting design that pops off the 2-dimensional canvas that is cleanly and properly marked up. I tend to design simple, typographic pieces, but I wanted this design to feel “fresh.” The design, therefore, resembles a car air freshener. It reflects a tangible print piece in a 3-dimensional space.” Designed by Chris Nager from USA.
Here is a brief overview of further entries submitted to the contest.
CSS3 Super Mario 3D Animated [ preview | download ]
Unfortunately, this entry was submitted too late and couldn’t participate in the contest, but it is certainly worth mentioning. Here are the insights from the developer: “After my latest CSS3 experiment without images (Internet Explorer Pure CSS Logo), a friend suggested to create an animated 3D Super Mario Icon based on the 3D Retro Mario GIF image by Cezkid. Well, this is the result of two weeks of work — an animated 3D Super Mario Icon built completely in CSS3 without images.” Designed by Andreas Jacob from Germany.
(mm), (vf)
© Smashing Editorial for Smashing Magazine, 2010. | Permalink | Post a comment | Add to del.icio.us | Digg this | Stumble on StumbleUpon! | Tweet it! | Submit to Reddit | Forum Smashing Magazine
Post tags: CSS, css3
 |
We’ve all heard that “one man’s trash is another mans treasure”. That saying takes on new meaning when we view the world through the eyes of the artists featured in todays post. These talented individuals see possibility in the things we throw away every day. Instead of heading to the art supply store they just collect common trash and turn it into works of amazing art. Take a look at these 40 terrific works of art made from common trash and be prepared to start looking at your garbage in a whole new way.
Ann P. Smith
This awesome owl and bird sculpture was made from reclaimed electronic trash. It reminds me of the mechanical owl in The Clash of the Titans.
This ram looks like anything but trash. Each piece fits perfectly.
These delicate birds and other sculptures by Ann can be bought at her store online.
Belen Hermosa
Got a few thousand CDs lying around? Have a seat.
Lamponi
Lamponi make some really cool lamps from trash. This one was an old steam iron.
An old ice scoop makes a good lampshade.
This old school hair dryer lamp and others are actually available to purchase. Check out the site for more far out creations.
Alex Andromeda
This three-legged beast is made from electronic garbage.
Computer circuit boards make up this work of art that almost looks like a burning man effigy.
It’s hard to believe that this intricate motorcycle was made from random bits of trash. Amazing!
Austinevan
This huge dragon was created using aluminium cans.
Law Kevin
What a stunning sculpture. Notice the computer mouse teeth and the washing machine door eyes.
Sayaka Kajita
Sayaka uses reclaimed plastic material to build her wonderful sculptures. Look closely at these two and you can see plastic spoons.
Another great creation made from common plastic trash.
This dog sculpture has a great pose. How many plastic spoons do you see?
Paul Villinski
This awesome piece was made from old soda cans and a hiking backpack frame. Great concept.
This whimsical butterfly spiral was also made from old soda cans.
David Mach
This huge Gorilla was made from old coat hangers.
Another coat hanger sculpture from David. The protruding hangers make the sculpture almost look kind of blurry. Nice effect.
Robert Bradford
Robert Bradford uses discarded toys to bring his ideas to life. How many of these toys did you play with as a kid?
These sculptures have a nostalgic quality to them that takes you back to more innocent days.
Jeremy Mayer
The artist obviously has a great understanding of the human form. Notice the old typewriter pieces on the lower abdomen.
Actually, both of these pieces from Jeremy were made from old typewriters. Notice the cat’s eyes. Check out his site for more of his awesome work.
iri5
iri5 uses old cassette tapes to create the likenesses of celebrities. This one’s Kurt Cobain.
Michael Jackson released from the tape. I love the super clean lines and the curly hair.
185Queens
This polar bear is made out of used grocery store bags. Is plastic OK?
Brian Jungen
This skull was crafted from old baseball coverings.
That’s the fossil remains of some ancient dinosaur, it’s plastic chairs.
This walk-though sculpture was created from old plastic storage bins. Notice hoe the negative space is in the shape of a person.
Strife
Scrap metal was used to construct this sea horse looking sculpture.
Moonlightbulb
This fantastic mosquito was once just ordinary trash. Now it’s a beautifull work of art.
Christian Fuar
Christian uses crayons as pixels to produce captivating images.
This stunning image almost looks like an old (blurry) photo.
En Pieza
Got some old ball point pens lying around? Make a cool lamp out of them.
Brian Marshall
Brian Marshall creates wonderful bots that are full of personality from discarded materials.
This little guy is ready for battle with his pencil sharpener shield.
I just love this one. Check out the old camera and oil can.
Bernard Pras
Bernard Pras takes trash art to a whole other level. Absolutely stunning rendition of Bruce Lee.
This geisha looks fantastic! Notice the little face to the left of her eye.
Albert Einstein never looked so cool. I love the colors and shapes in this masterpiece.
A genius concept for an iPhone app: to-do list meets RPG. For a procrastinator like myself, this just might be the ticket to checking things off.