All posts tagged articles

The Four Key Components of a Great Web Design

There’s a lot that goes into creating a web design, but I believe it can be broken down into four main components. If you’re able to execute on all four, you will have a hit web design on your hands. However, if you come up short on one, the entire design will suffer. That’s the challenge. All aspects of a great design must compliment each other while helping achieve the end goals of the website. In this article, I’ve broken down the four key components of a great web design with examples and resources

21 Resources for Getting Design Feedback

Getting feedback and making use of it is essential to a successful design project. However, the communication process with clients and with team members can become quite cumbersome to manage with the amount of emails that are sent back and forth and the various revisions and versions of the project. Fortunately, there are some very helpful resources out  there that can improve efficiency and organization with feedback.

In this post we’ll look at 21 useful resources. They are categorized by purpose.

15 Useful Resources to Get Clued Up on HTML5

html5
HTML5 this, HTML5 that! There’s been plenty of HTML5 talk around the blogging world recently. It’s no longer a tiny spec on the horizon, it’s due to arrive soon! Some have already embraced it and are using it on their latest sites. Want to join in on all the fun? Check out this collection of some of the best resources from various blogs and websites in the industry. Each one gives an interesting insight into what’s in store with detailed write-ups, tutorials and handy cheat sheets to help you along your way.

10 Useful Bookmarklets for Web Designers and Developers

tools

You may not be away of bookmarklets which are an underused tool in web designer or developer’s toolbox. A bookmarklet is a a term that merges bookmark and applet to add functionality to a web browser. They can be stored in the bookmark bar of any browser and used from there to perform useful tasks and consist primarily of Javascript code.

As Javascript is synonymous with web development, some clever developers have created some extremely helpful bookmarklets that can improve your day to day work. Here are ten of the best available.

50 Fresh Interactive Studio and Social Media Agency Websites

frog

As you might observe, social marketing is the new black. Tons of studies predict huge budgets for social media strategies from the top shots, so the agencies need to sharpen their interactive skills in order to separate clients from their money. Lots of big advertising and PR networks created digital marketing divisions but given the fact that this is such a fresh trend, the independent studios have almost the same chances to land a big contract if they’re creative enough.

Long story short, here is a showcase of 50 outstanding websites of digital marketing agencies, interactive advertising studios and online PR bureaus. The majority follows the trends of modern web design – wide layout, projects carousel, text over images, crisp textures in the background, large headers, homepage smooth animations, and – of course – integrated Twitter & Facebook functionalities.

Size Really Does Matter

size-really-does-matter
Whether you’re talking about weight, height, or the code for a website, the truth is that size really does matter. It isn’t a question of whether or not size matters — in one way or another, our experiences have shown that it does. The real question is how much does size matter? And how much does it matter when it comes to your code?

On the web, size is a major factor in the quality of the user experience. Its a fact — keep visitors waiting and you’re sure to lose them. Every front-end web designer knows there are things we can do to minimize file size and therefore, reduce download times. In short, we recognize size matters.

A Round-Up of Free Apps and Tools for Designers

title-wpmonk-web-design-interface-inspiration

Designers and developers can never get enough of them, especially when they are free. We are talking about free apps, those little tools that can that save you so much time and save you so much money. In this post we have collected the best recent round-ups and have listed them below. In total there are 77 apps, I am sure you will find something useful in this collection.

In todays news we have collected the best resources for customizing Firefox to meet your every need.

Understanding Your Brain for Better Design: Left vs. Right

The concept of the left and right brain only lately popped up in the late 1960’s, but since has become a well-known part of human psychology.

While we all use both sides of the brain, each of us has a dominant side, and this dominant side makes up for a huge part of our personalities.

Each individual thinks a certain way, has more interest in certain areas, and above and beyond all — is most effective in certain ways. An accurate understanding of the left and right brain can help one to become more productive, efficient, and creative.

This article will cover a basic understanding of what the left and right brains are, and each of their traits. We’ll also go into how we, as creative people, can harness this understanding of the left and right brain to be more creative, as well as succeed in other work-related tasks.

20 Email Design Best Practices and Resources for Beginners

200x200

Even for experience designers, building email newsletters isn’t easy. You receive a lovely looking design, and you crack on with the development. Unfortunately, it just doesn’t work as it should in every email clients. Styles don’t display, images aren’t visible, etc.

This is where these twenty best practices come in handy.

2 Forgiveness in UI design

Users make mistakes, no matter how good your user interface is designed. But there is something you can do about it. There are approaches you can use to allow users to recover from errors, or even better to prevent errors. One such approach is called forgiveness. Let’s explain it in more detail and see some inspiring examples.