Here are the winners for the 1st Annual Design Awards and we look forward to seeing more of these in the future! Congratulations to all the winners – awesome job!  :)

Best Website Design (NonFlash)

Congratulations to Petrol!

Best Logo Design

Congratulations to Denis Wong!

Agency of the Year

Congratulations to Petrol, Chief Executive Officer Alan Hunter!

Best Website Design (Flash)

Congratulations to Le Pressing

Best Product Packaging Design

Congratulations to Chykalophia!

Best Book Cover

Congratulations to TL Price Freelance!

Best Self Promotion

Congratulations to TwentySix Digital!

Best Poster/Billboard Design

Congratulations to 19Marks Design!

Best Music Album Cover Design

Congratulations to Debaser!

Best Flyer / Newsletter Design

Congratulations to Nickeline Design!

Best Digital Art

Congratulations to Steve McGhee Freelancer!

Best Movie Poster Design

Congratulations to Empire Design!

Innovation in Design

This one is wicked cool, click the link on the image.  Congratulations to Art Machine!

So apple released details of the new iPhone OS 4.0 today in a keynote speech by Apple CEO Steve Jobs to considerably less fanfare than usual across the web than we normally see.

As an avid twitter user, I sat like most apple fans and twittered the keynote as it happened direct from the excellent coverage provided by gdgt.com. I’ve seen some giddy tweets about some of the new features, I’ve also seen some incorrect statements being twittered and some negative comments, the usual mixed bag that any new announcement from apple produces.

Most are excited and talking heavily about the added multi-tasking feature, the fact that you will be able to keep listening to Pandora while surfing the web or checking your mail from the newly unified mailboxes or even while you organize your apps in to the new folders feature – all good, all great improvements regardless to wether you are an Apple fan or not – everyone can clearly see these are features that will improve the iPhone and it’s family of electronic cousins.

However, I wanted to talk about something that most people are not over excited about, one that really isn’t being heralded as a new user feature – iAds. Apart from the fact that Apple are now becoming a parody of their own jaded naming convention, iAds will feed, direct in to an application, via Apples servers, interactive advertisements in to the bottom of all those free apps we love.

It’s a good thing for developers, a really good thing, and it’s an excellent thing for end users because it encourages and maintains the extent of these free applications, games and widgets we love to download, try and either remove or fall in love with. So what is so revolutionary about this new advertising platform? Let me paint some scenarios for you and explain how this will become a whole new industry – thanks to Apple.

Obviously Apple are gunning for advertising dollars here, they are also attempting to create their own advertising model, platform and, most importantly, they are squeezing out Google before they even get started. They quite simply did what any good company does, they looked at what they have and asked how they can produce more revenue from the same products and still retain ownership and control over their platforms and what people digest.

Some will say it’s the “Microsoft” in Apple coming out again, to be the Big Brother of everything they produce, and to some extent this is correct, but we forget why Apple do things the way they do, and have done for decades now – they like to control everything that an Apple device user has contact with for a very simple reason, if you know what goes in, you know what comes out. Apple produce all the hardware, the OS and offer robust API’s to developers to ensure we get a seamless experience, one Apple have built their empire on.

So why are iAds so groundbreaking? I’ve been a graphic designer, web developer and produced onscreen advertising for movie theaters now for a decade, and in that time I have never seen such a promising method of advertising that is not a one way street. Let me explain.

iAd is a breakthrough mobile advertising platform from Apple. With it, apps can feature rich media ads that combine the emotion of TV with the interactivity of the web. For developers, it means a new, easy-to-implement source of revenue. For advertisers, it creates a new media outlet that offers consumers highly targeted information — Copyright © 2010 Apple Inc.

Traditional advertising such as tv, movie theater, billboards, newspaper and so much more is a single stream, a one way consumption that relies solely on someone being interested and remembering what they saw and acting upon it. An example being that on your drive home you see a billboard for a movie, you then have to remember that movie, remember to go online and remember to order tickets – not the best method and one that relies far too much on the consumer in an era full of distractions.

iAds provides us an opportunity to digest an ad and act upon it instantly, and when we do we can get rewarded for doing so. In his keynote, Jobs showed a simple ad at the bottom of an app for Toy Story 3. Because the ads are presented inside the app and open in the app and “pause” your position in your original application you are using – it’s a safe click and a good start. Once open we are presented with a microsite for Toy Story 3, and what’s this, a free mini game – you just got rewarded for clicking the ad. Fantastic.

So let’s look at some really cool ideas for these iAds (man I really do think the name sucks) – imagine you using the ESPN app, watching the latest score results for your favorite sport, let’s pick soccer (as it’s the World’s largest and most popular sport before anyone gets on my case) when at the bottom of the app we get a joint promotional advertisement from Nike and LA Galaxy soccer team. You click the link and instantly you are presented with a full screen video advertisement of David Beckham kicking a ball, some fancy camera work and cool sounding music, at the end we get a close up of his new soccer shoes – Nike of course. It then fades out to a microsite to view all the latest Nike soccer products, you can click to view, spin them around 360 degrees, check your size and click “Buy Now” – it uses your iTunes information for one click purchase – no address needed, no credit card, nothing. Don’t want the shoes? No matter, maybe you want a ticket to the next LA Galaxy game, there’s a link right there for you to view the stadium, choose your seat and a single click buy ticket now button. OK so maybe not revolutionary at this point, but still cool and rewarding but very similar to web based advertising, with the exception of the included iTunes account information.

Let’s take another example, one that uses some more unconventional path. You are browsing the IMDB application, and you are viewing the profile of your favorite actor, you get fed an advertisement for the actors new movie – you click to view an exclusive 5 minute trailer available no where else. You finish watching it and are presented with a menu that enables you to download some size specific wallpaper for your iPhone, iPod or iPad directly, nice, free stuff! They have your attention now, and you want to see the movie, so they display a buy tickets button and because you are getting this on a device that can detect your location it can feed you showtimes and prices for the local theaters based on your current location – you click the time you want – set the number of seats and single click purchases everything through your iTunes account details – now we can even show you turn by turn directions on how to get there, right from where you are.

Now I defy anyone to tell me how this is not the single most interactive, rewarding and most progressive advertising model we have ever seen. Trust me, the creative brains behind some of the advertising agencies will come up with some incredibly useful ways of using this technology, and hopefully in the near future Apple will enable advertisers to offer iTunes account integration for purchases and at that point Apple will be holding some serious cards in their hand.

If you were one of the lucky people who grabbed yourself a new Apple iPad’s this weekend, then you may be a little disappointed with the selection of wallpapers available on the fantastic little device – fear not, help is at hand.

We have created a set of guides for all you budding and professional artists out there who wish to create your own. The download below offers a fully layered Photoshop (CS4 or earlier) file with guides added and an overlay to make sure you understand the process – let me explain.

The native screen size of an iPad is 768 x 1024px, or (and this is the funky bit) it’s 1024 x 768px – as we all know you can orientate the iPad either horizontally or vertically dependent on our preference of display – the iPad simply rotates the wallpaper image when you do this and as such we have to create an image that is 1024 x 1024px – to cover all the bases. There is also, because of this method, 4 corners of your image that will never be seen, regardless of it’s format.

Here is a reduced size of the download for you to get a clear idea on how things work.

The download includes the following formats for your convenience:

• Layered Photoshop
• TIFF
• JPEG

Please – NO HOTLINKING TO THIS FILE – I fully support linking to this article however.

We look forward to some designs from our small community, and we have lots more goodies in store for the iPad owners out there – stay tuned!

When you think of the word “Designer”, you typically think of what?  Web, print, art or maybe even fashion?  But do you ever think of bridges?  Think about it.  Someone had to design the plans to come up with the general structure of the bridge that would be  functional, safe and durable to withstand all seasons.  But the beauty of designing the bridge is not generally in it’s functionality, but the visually stunning personality that brings the bridge to life.

Building a bridge from blueprints to the exact object could be a lot like building a website.  You want it to make people go “OH WOW” when they see it.  It needs to age well – you can’t go building new bridges every other month and you certainly wouldn’t want to do that with your site.  But of course, most importantly – it needs to have user functionality – to provide the user with that of which they seek – in the sense of a bridge…it’s to get to the other side.

To regular people, like most of us using the bridges, they are simply just that – just a bridge, a thing that gets us from one place to another.  To bridge the gap.

To some creative communities they are seen as forms of art – let’s take a look at some appealing creations of Art now from our friends – Flickr.

Yup! You read that correctly – to celebrate the launch of his very first WordPress Theme at ThemeForest.net he has decided to give away – completely FREE – the photoshop layered files of this amazing design here on Web Tips Magazine!

Here is what Jonathan sent us:

The HTML / CSS version of this template is one of the largest selling templates on ThemeForest and with the addition of the all new WordPress Premium Theme and the new Email Template I thought it was a good time to say thanks to everyone and for those without much money or who have not seen this product of mine before I thought it would be a perfect time to give away the never before for sale Photoshop Files only.

If you like the photoshop files, and don’t want to code her up yourself it’s already available as HTML here ($15), WordPress Theme ($30) and an accompanying Email template ($10) here.

The package includes a total of 5 complete and layered / grouped photoshop page designs including home, contact, portfolio, services, and about pages.

The images in the portfolio and sliders etc are from the creative commons section of Flickr and therefore you cannot use those images – they are simply there as placeholders, albeit VERY pretty ones – attribution in the form of a full list of those authors is available in the readme file contained in the download file.

OK so here are some gorgeous screen shots for you to drool over and then follow the download link below to start grabbin’ the swag!

Modern Business 3 DARK Photoshop by Jonathan Atkinson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License

PLEASE RESPECT THE RIGHTS OF ALL ARTISTS – ESPECIALLY THOSE KIND ENOUGH TO SHARE!

Finally, an awards ceremony worth keeping up for.  Welcome Design Awards 2010!  The Annual Design Awards (ANNDAS) is hosting it’s first ever Design Awards 2010 – sponsored by some of the best known names on the internet such as Icon Finder, Envato, GSI Corp and Photoshop Roadmap – just to name a few is an award like no other.

The Annual Design Awards (ANNDAS) is going to be global recognition of the most visually stimulating “best of the best”.  The group is really thinking of everything with this Award.  With keeping the fee to a reasonable amount of just over $15 USD per single entry (or 10 GPB) and just over $93 USD for multiple entries (or 60 GPB) – this opens the doors for some excellent opportunities for anyone to enter.  Not only does each applicant get featured in the new Designers Directory, but also have a chance to feature in the yearly book that will be published to showcase the best designs and also have access to the website notice board where you can promote your own business – as one example.

Some of the key points judges will be looking for is Creativity and Effectiveness.  But also, if you are entered in the Website Categories – judges will also be looking for usability.

With several categories to enter and several awards to be given – it is a designer’s dream.  Categories include but not limited too Best Logo Design, Best Book Cover Design, Best Digital Art and Designer of the Year Award plus many more.  In addition to that, the ANNDAS will also be handing out awards to outstanding contributions, judges will award those most creative individuals with an “Excellence in Design Accolade” amongst other ‘special’ awards.  All finalist will feature in numerous promotions and media coverage and will also gain GLOBAL – yes – I said GLOBAL – respect within the industry as well as receiving promotional tools and an AWESOME trophy!

Entries must be submitted before 4/22/10 and winners will be announced 6/22/10.

Portions of the profits will go to benefit the Cancer Research UK.  So what are you waiting for?

For more details and contest entry please visit http://www.annualdesignawards.com/index.php and good luck to all!