Birthdays are incomplete without cakes and to make the cake appealing to one's eye, it has to be designed in a way where it catches everyone's attention. Cake designs have always been a part of constant change thus leading to a lot of variations but at the end of the day, the design should be closest to the person's heart for whom it is being made for. There are endless possibilities but the cake has to be designed with the age and preferences of the person in mind. If the birthday boy or girl is a sports freak, then the design can be of a cricket bat, a football or rugby ball or in fact a stadium. For your kid's birthday cake you can get your baker to design a cake that resembles the child's favorite cartoon character or sports star. Irrespective of the gender of your child, you can get the cake in the shape of a mermaid, airplane, ship, pirate or colorful clown. If it's a girl then you can design the cake with a real doll on the cake, to be precise a Barbie. Gadgets like computers or laptops or I-pods can also be interesting for young adolescents. If your kid likes to read, you can also order for a cake that looks like a book, specifically a Harry Potter one. Kids would also love animal cakes like an alligator cake or an elephant cake, butterfly, cat or a dog cake. Car, bulldozer, police cars, bikes would also be a good idea for cakes. Even train or tractor cake would be innovative. A superman insignia or spaceship designed cake can also be a favorite with kids. For kids birthday cakes you can also try making a fish as a design, it can be a flounder or school of fish. Cakes can also be designed in the shape of burgers or hotdogs, candies, fruits and even drinks. There are various things that you can think of and gift your loved ones. When it comes to adults the design does not matter much, the flavor is more important. Another characteristic of cakes ordered for adults is that they have alcohol as an ingredient, mostly rum. Still in the case of women, they would certainly like floral designs and men would definitely like something based on sports. In case of adults, naughty birthday cake designs can also be considered like a playboy bunny or the TV remote that he loves the most or his car keys that he always forgets. Similarly in the case of women it can be her stilettos or her purse that can be used humorously. There are various sites on the Internet that help you to get a fairly good idea of how the design would look after you have made it or bought it as a cake since you can view clip arts which show you the colors and the designs quite vividly. It's always better to view those clip arts and get a printout of it so that you can show it to your baker and he can understand your concept better if there's something new that you are trying to do. Or else you can try the designs for birthday cakes given in this Buzzle article. If you really want to add some zing to the birthday that's approaching, you can either prepare a birthday cake yourself or order for one but do remember if you are ordering one, confirm with them a week in advance since all the good bakeries remain fairly busy and might just lose your order. Therefore to be on the safer side it is better to recheck and if you are making it yourself make a dummy cake before the final one, to correct any flaws it may have.