Looking for Inspiration for Header Graphics

I've been looking around at different places that can show examples of banners and header to give me ideas my Blip.tv page. I feel intimidated until I remember that there is a difference between okay and a designed header.

I am aiming for acceptable. Decent, clean and meeting the requirements but it doesn't have to be the best dang header graphic ever created. I'm looking for ideas and inspiration.


There is a great web design web site called Smashing Magazine. They have a tremendous amount of tutorials and content. Smashing Magazine also has a tendency to provide free icons, graphics and blog headers and banners.

I can't use them for my needs, but here are some of the ideas that I've gleaned from observation:

• Perhaps a wallpaper image could be placed on the header or part of the header
• Use of transparency to overlay images
• I like the top image of segmenting different images connected by a common theme of the the lightning.
  

I found another good idea at MakeUseOf using PowerPoint. It is really easy to arraign objects using PowerPoint. You can export the slide out as a jpeg and edit in a simple photo editing program. Purists may curl their lips but for those of us not able to invest 100 hours in Photoshop tutorials this isn't a bad way to go.



MakeUseOf lead me to the Open Clip Art Library where I can find a bunch of free or public domain clip art that I can recycle. One hitch is that the clip art submitted must be in the SVG format.

This means if I choose to use any clip art that I find I have to make sure that I have a software program that can read SVG. I have Irfanview. That sucker can read and open just about any image format from the past to the present.

Keeping my time constraints in mind, I need to review my photos and videos to see what I can come up with for a header graphic.