Near the end of 2009 and on into the first months of the new year I have seen a number of articles and blog posts discussing web design trends, with reviews, discussions about the good and the bad, and predictions for what will happen in 2010. As technologies advance, new languages develop, and limitations decrease, the possibilities of what can be done in web design expand to amazing proportions, opening the door for innovation and inspiration  beyond anything we have seen to date.

To effectively manage a project with very little mistakes, you must make it a priority to plan. Diving into the development process with not a single clue as to what elements go where or how certain aspects of a websites interface differ from one another is dooming yourself to hard-earned headaches.

For as long as humans have been able to hold a pen and a paper in hand, we have been prototyping and although different from now, “wireframing“. This dates back to thousands of years ago when architects and artists began converting their artwork into an actual physical presence.

Well the Twitter stream integration is almost a standard these days when designing a portfolio website, but there are some brands with a more complex view when it comes to social media integration. Here are four brands with entire websites built over Wikipedia, Flickr, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.  Enjoy and leave your suggestion in the comments.

No matter if its Typography, Color Scheme, Images, Animation, Backgrounds or something else we (web designers) using in our new web design project, the motive ends to impressing our visitors. Background images or self created backgrounds are one of the visual elements in web design that help make a website design visually interesting, can create an amazing atmosphere and convey the style the designer has chosen.

In this showcase you will see a fresh collection of websites having some creative uses of background images or self created backgrounds, which I hope will be inspirational for your next design Project.

I believe all of you has so many experiences of seeing so many web design when surfing in internet. I could guarantee that you often see bad web design layout more than good one. I feel the same way too, there are a lot of websites which has bad web design & layout, so i won’t comeback & bookmark them. I will share some of my experiences of seeing basic visual web design mistakes which makes me leave those websites forever.

Since the launch of Hull Digital Live ‘09 back in August 2009 I have been flooded with requests on how I created the graphical navigation on the web site. The answer is simple, a sprite and a dash of CSS!

This technique of image replacement can be found on a range of websites including the Apple website and Web Designer Wall, and it has a range of benefits, mainly loading time and reduction of file size.

Using the image replacement technique is very handy when each link is unique. If you notice on the Hull Digital website, each link on the navigation has its own unique background on rollover. It can be used if each link has the same interactive states but I would advice using CSS more in this case. So here is a short tutorial on how to create an accessible based navigation similar to the Hull Digital website.

The blogosphere continues to expand almost on a daily basis, and as a web designer we often inform clients of the numerous benefits of attaching a blog to their site. It is always a great way to continuously update your readers as to what new developments are being made in your business and what to look for as they stick with you on this journey.

This in turn, keeps your site well trafficked by the online masses as new content is added on a regular basis. And while there are a plethora of points and elements that are vital when designing a blog, some take precedence over the others.

84% of Americans currently own a mobile phone. Sadly, there are no figures showing how many of these devices are ageing bricks without internet capabilities, but you can bet that, within a few years, the majority of mobile phone users will be able to browse the internet, wherever they are.

Right now, most websites are completely unsuitable for mobile viewing, taking 60 or more seconds to load and looking jumbled and confused as they’re squashed onto smaller screens.

Every day, however, thousands of people are releasing mobile versions of their websites and seeing greatly increased levels of traffic as a result. Unless you optimize your website for mobile phone users soon, you could be left behind by the competition. Creating a mobile-friendly version of your site sounds like a daunting task, but it couldn’t be easier to do. Using one of the excellent tools below, you’ll be able to build, host and launch your mobile site with absolutely no coding knowledge whatsoever.

Transparency is being used in an increasing number of websites. In some cases transparency subtly adds to the quality and character of the design, and in other cases it can be a major design element. In this post we’ll feature 35 websites that are making excellent use of transparency.

Designing websites seems to appeal to a certain niche of people. Sure, we get called geeks and nerds (and we somehow find it endearing), but that doesn’t begin to cover the wide array of personalities that make up the design community. In this post the last thing I want to do is to paint all designers with a broad brush, but I do want to get to the bottom of what makes being a web designer so appealing to so many of us.

One common denominator seems to be the design process itself, and how it tends to be the perfect blend of creativity and logic, but that only touches the surface. In this post I’ll uncover my top 5 reasons why I love being a web designer.