Links of the Week 14
September 11th, 2009 — 1 Comment
Make your site stand out, streamline your creative process, important things any website needs to succeed, spezify and iTunes 9′s design changes.
Links of Interest
3 ways to make your site stand out from the crowd
Great post by Paul Boag encouraging web designers to create websites that stand out from the competition.
5 Steps to Streamline your Creative Process
Five simple steps to get the most out of your creative process.
The Important Things Any Website Needs To Succeed
Consider these points the absolute necessary aspects of an web design and development.
Spezify
Spezify is a visual based search engine. Great way to find inspiration and is really cool despite being built in Flash. This was great find by, Mike, a colleague of mine where I work.
iTunes 9 – Interface Changes
iTunes seems to be the testbed app for Apple to introduce new design elements into OS X and iTunes 9 is no exception.
Design of the Week
Freelance Folder
Nice use of icons and description in navigation as well as tabs in sub navigation make the new design of Freelance Folder easy to use.
Inspiration for the Weekend
ffffffive
ffffffive is a great source for creative inspiration. One of those sites that you can spend hours on.
This Week on Inspect Element
Recent Web Designs that Don’t Follow Recent Trends
Wallpapers of the Week 14: The Sky
How to Design Buttons to Help Improve Usability
Read more...Links of the Week 13
September 4th, 2009 — No Comments
Vreate a valid non-Javascript Lightbox, go beyond your working comfort zone, top designers’ own favourite work, SVG support in all browsers and a code snippets gallery.
Links of Interest
How to Create a Valid Non-Javascript Lightbox
Go Beyond Your Working Comfort Zone
Be proud, your favourite pieces of work!
Google’s SVGWeb Brings SVG Support to All Browsers
Css-Tricks’ Code Snippets Gallery
Design of the Week
Max Voltar
Inspiration for the Weekend
blitblit
Read more...Links of the Week 12
August 28th, 2009 — No Comments
Typedia, get creative beyond your education, A/B testing results, IKEA’s bizarre font swap, Photoshop disasters, design of the week and inspiration for the weekend.
Links of Interest
Typedia
Recently launched, community driven site with almost everything you ever wanted to know about typography including individual typefaces.
Don’t Stick With What You’ve Been Taught; You’re a Creative So Get Creative.
A great article encouraging designers to be more creative beyond what they’ve been taught.
Which Test Won
Great little site that takes A/B tests and shows which one was the best. Very handy to get an idea of what works best before you do your own testing.
IKEA says goodbye to Futura
Ikea has inexplicably changed their main font from Futura to Verdana. See just how bad it looks.
Awful Photoshop Disasters
A collection of funny Photoshop mishaps.
Design of the Week
Make Photoshop Faster
Dan Rubin has designed a beautiful site informing people of two simple steps to make Photoshop work. Superb use of colour, webkit transition effects and CSS3 properties.
Inspiration for the Weekend
Think of Ember as the flickr for designers. Make sure to check out the categories section to narrow down the type of inspiration you are looking for.
Read more...Links of the Week 11
August 21st, 2009 — No Comments
The font-as-service, interview with the founders of Envato, blog effectively, alignment in design comic and advanced CSS selecting.
Links of Interest
The Font-as-Service
Elliot Jay Stocks, writing for I Love Typography, discusses the new wave of font services that aim to bring paid-for-fonts to the web.
Interview with Founders of Envato Collis and Cyan
A great insight into the minds that created the success of the Envato network. Must watch.
How to Blog Effectively
Great tips for bloggers or would-be bloggers to improve their work.
The Brads – Alignment in Design
A little lesson in alignment in the form of a web comic. A very fun and easy to digest method of learning.
Taming Advanced CSS Selectors
Smashing Magazine takes an extensive look at advanced CSS selectors.
Design of the Week
ngmoco’s plus
Plus is a social network for iPhone and iPod touch games. Now that ngmoco have released an SDK to third party developers they’ve also given their site an overhaul and it looks great.
Inspiration for the Weekend
The Design Inspiration
Found this site recently and it serves up a good mix of inspiration from various aspects of design.
Read more...Links of the Week 10
August 14th, 2009 — No Comments
Ultimate A/B testing recources, Think Geek background fade technique, reduce clutter, usability best practices for beginners and web browser elements to use in your designs.
Web Browser Elements
Downloadable browser elements in Photoshop files, such as radio buttons, separated by browser and operating system. Very handy for use in designs.
Ultimate A/B Testing resources and how I used them
Testing is an extremely important part of web design and this is a great collection of resources for A/B testing.
Think Geek Background Fade Technique (Screencast)
Think Geek have a cool background effect that changes the background from Robots to Zombies and this is a great screenshot showing just how simple but clever it is.
How to reduce clutter in web design
Reducing clutter is an important thing to do in web design so here are some tips to help you along the way.
8 Web Usability and Best Practices for Beginners
Usability best practices for beginners but even season pros can forget some of the simple things so it is always good to brush up on your knowledge.
Read more...Links of the Week 9
August 7th, 2009 — 1 Comment
The Espresso illustration, using Twitter for inspiration, what if websites we’re people, HTML5 goodness, colour tips and a great web comic.
The process behind the Espresso illustration
Veerle Pieters guides us through the ideas and thinking for her beautiful design for one of the best text editors on the Mac.
Essential Guide to Using Twitter for Inspiration
This one does exactly what it says on the tin and it’s always fascinating to see how other people work so check it out.
What if Websites Were People…
A fun post matching websites to people they most resemble. Very creative.
HTML5 Canvas Experiment
A look at the potential of HTML5 can do. Don’t forget that no flash is being used here at all, just Javascript and HTML5. View in latest version of Safari, Firefox or Chrome.
Five Really Simple Colour Tips
Colour can be a harsh beast to get to grips with but Mike Kus over at Carsonified gives five tips to get you started.
Brad Colbow
I’m a big fan of online comics and the only one missing was a web design comic. Brad Colbow’s comic about web design fills in the missing gap superbly.
Read more...Links of the Week 8
July 31st, 2009 — No Comments
Usability lessons from Don’t Make Me Think, text rotation with CSS, fresh portfolio inspirations, a/b testing and free analytics tools.
10 Usability Lessons from Steve Krug’s Don’t Make Me Think
If you haven’t read Steve Krug’s book, Don’t Make Me Think, then you really should. Even if you have read it here are ten usability lessons learnt straight from the book.
Text Rotation with CSS
Jonathan Snook shows a way of rotating text in CSS. There’s even a method that works in Internet Explorer! I’ve noticed that this doesn’t work in Opera however.
50 Fresh Portfolio Websites for Your Inspiration
Looking to redesign your portfolio? Think of doing something different with this unique collection of inspirational designs.
How to do A/B Testing in WordPress
A/B testing is a great way of trying our two or more aspects of a design to see which has a greater effect. Ryan Carson talks through the process of setting this up in WordPress. Well worth checking out.
Best Free Website Analytics Tools
The best free (all except one) analytics options for your websites. Analytics tools are vital to testing a site so make sure you use at something at least.
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