Programming Blog » Design

I just ran across this awesome project by Felix Niklas and it blew my mind. it’s an HTML5 app for creating CSS3 in an intuitive way. The interface is very similar to Photoshop and functions just like it as well. I wrote a little preview/breakdown/review of it.
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CSS3 Buttons Experiment

Facebook-Web-Design — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 01:56:28 +0000

So I had a little fun last night and decided to experiment with some CSS3 buttons. I created eight different buttons so far. No images were used at all. I went wild with gradients and rounded corners.
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Premium Stock Flash Cartoon Animation

Facebook-Web-Design — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 01:50:38 +0000

Adobe Flash is one of the most important application to create cartoon animation especially for the web in SWF format. The Flash cartoon animation can be used in websites, banners, DVD, and video content.

In today’s premium resources post, I would like to provide two stock Flash cartoon animation sequences that can be used in your projects, banners and Flash animation.

The first stock Flash is for a woman setting in front of a computer and typing on the keyboard. The second animation is for a funny walking dog. You can use these stock Flash animation in SWF format or you can export it as video formats such as QuickTime and AVI.

The Flash files are easy to use and modify to be able to implement in your Flash project or website animated content.

You can click on the images below to preview each animation in a new webpage:

Typist Flash Cartoon Animation

Click to preview

Walking Dog Flash animation

Click to preview

The Flash animation files are in FLA format with 500 X 300px dimensions and 25 fps. The files are available in both CS4 and CS5 Flash versions.

If you are already a Premium Member then just sign in and you can download the Flash FLA source files for the above Flash cartoon animation.

Not a member? Sign up today or read more about our Premium Member area.

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Useful and Creative Examples of Infographics

Facebook-Web-Design — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 01:48:44 +0000

Visualizing data is one of the most efficient means of delivering rough numbers and statistics in a creative and interesting way.

Infographics is concerned with providing visual illustration for information and studies in the form of charts and elements. These charts help deliver the information to the audience fast and more easily compared to other methods of delivering ideas.

While infographics does not follow a specific design form or rules, such as charts, it needs to be usable and easy to understand. This challenge requires the infographics designer to understand the data flow and links between different pieces of information. In this showcase, you will find some useful and creative examples of infographics with different styles and creative approaches. I hope you will like these examples and find them useful, and do not forget to check the following infographics related posts:

How Long Will It Last?

Consumer Saving Behaviour

Adaptation Infographic

Design Process

Digital Nostalgia

A set of information graphics which examine the technological changes in our lifetimes and the influences they have had on our lives.

Burning Fuel

The average car vs. the average human fuel consumption

Caffeine and Calories Infographic

Information Design

Infographic shows how a product is made.

Our Present Economy

Google market shares around the globe

Gravity Wells Infographic

Infographic: Mega Shark

Michael Anderson’s resume is an infographic

Seeking Refuge Infographic

Timelines Infographic

Time travel in popular films and TV

Transparency Infographic

Transparency: The Largest Bankruptcies in History

The Volunteers Infographic

What the Tweet Infographic

Twitter Users Profile Infographic

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Extraordinary Examples of Concept Art

Facebook-Web-Design — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 01:45:50 +0000

Concept art is a form of digital art that mainly uses Photoshop and other similar applications to create fantasy-like scenes. Concept art is generally used in movies, games and the cinema industry.

Concept art is very challenging, because it relies greatly on the artists’ imagination and their ability to visualize fantasy scenes that look similar to Sci-Fi movies and 3D games. Along with a great imagination, the artist needs to have very good illustration and Photoshop skills to be able to use the brushes and other tools for creating a final professional look for the scenes.

In today’s showcase, I would like to share with you some amazing concept art examples from very talented artists in different styles. I hope you will enjoy them, and let us know whether you really think this is a separate form of art, or could be part of other digital art fields like photo manipulation. Do not forget to check these digital art showcases:

.:MotorStorm 2 Concept Art:. 9 by sundragon83

Markus Heitz by Jesse van Dijk

Concept Art by Sabin Boykinov

.:MotorStorm 2 Concept Art:. by sundragon83

Embrace by Hao Wu

hangar concept art by eWKn

Jeil Concept Illustration by kerembeyit

.:MotorStorm 2 Concept Art:. 8 by sundragon83

Couger UTP by Henry Pashkov

Concept Art by Tony Holmsten

Star Fantasy by ZEZ zhaoenzhe

Albesila concept 1by artozi

Female Necromancer Concept by bpsola

Concept Art by Jonathan Bach

Concept Art by Pat Presley

Concept Art by Stacey Diana Clark

Conccept Art by Raj Rihal

Shahalesti Concept by bpsola

Thor -Bull Frost Giant Concept by michaelkutsche

Tijon Concept Illustration by kerembeyit

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15 Hand Drawn Social Media Icons Vector Pack

Facebook-Web-Design — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 01:44:56 +0000

Although there are many updates in the design and style of web icons and graphics, hand-drawn icons still attract users as well as bloggers to use them in their sites and blogs. Hand-drawn icons and graphic elements suit casual designs and styles.

Here, I would like to present to you some new social media vector icons to use in your website or blog. Today’s icon pack includes 15 hand-drawn social media icons for sites like Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, RSS, Digg, StumbleUpon and more.

When you download this icon pack, you will get the icons both in a PNG and an AI Illustrator file, which gives you the freedom to edit, resize, and modify the icons according to your personal preferences. Below is a preview of the icon pack:

While this pack requires you to be a Graphic Mania Premium Subscriber, non-subscribers can also download 4 free icons by clicking the link below:

Download icons pack preview (4 icons)

If you are already a Premium Member then just sign in and you can download the hand-drawn social media icons vector pack.

Not a member? Sign up today or read more about our Premium Member area.

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Fresh and Creative Outdoor Advertising Ideas

Facebook-Web-Design — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 01:42:22 +0000

It is the time again for a new showcase of outdoor advertising ideas. Looking out for new designs and advertising campaigns is always the designer’s best resource to learn about fresh design ideas and find inspiration.

This is the main reason why I would like to share new advertising ideas with you every couple of weeks.

Today I would like to share with you some creative ideas from different agencies and places. I hope you will enjoy them and share your opinion with us about the best creative ideas in this collection. Do not forget to check these other advertising ideas:

Perspektiv Bredband: Up to 1000Mbit

Anta Sportswear: Li Xiaoxu

Denver Water: Big hair

Disabled Parking Awareness: This parking spot is not yours

Hot Wheels: Child shaped structures on highway

Activia by Ale Burset

Bulding The New Energy 4 by John Fulton

Gotextile Campaign I by Heiko Simayer

Hand And Spider by Adam Taylor

James Archer Speed Crash Survivor by Adam Taylor

Land Rover by Ale Burset

Love Story by Mauro Risch

Ocean Lifeguards by Chip Henderson

Plug by Mauro Risch

Perth Zoo: Tiger Bus

Sumo by Marcus Hausser

Pet Recycling: Grass

Pro Plus: Stay Alert

SunSmart Cancer Council Western Australia: Cut Out

Zerwijmy Lancuchy: Tear the dog off the chain

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Powerful New Tool: Dust off your Art files and easily animate them with CrazyTalk Animator!

Facebook-Web-Design — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 00:03:19 +0000

For most graphic designers, animation is a big step that demands a lot of effort and an additional set of expert skills; but not anymore. Now we have CrazyTalk Animator which is built from the ground up as a revolutionary 2D animation tool designed specifically to avoid neck-breaking, frame-by-frame animation. Anyone can now easily drag [...]

Arial vs. Helvetica

Facebook-Web-Design — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 00:03:00 +0000

Typography is a fine art form. To the untrained eye, it seems like there are about 40 unique fonts with identical copies abound that make up the hundreds of fonts in existence. However, typographers are a keen type and there are small differentiating features that when combined, result in a finely-crafted and unique font. As [...]

Web Usability: Top 5 Tips For Your Website

Facebook-Web-Design — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 00:02:48 +0000

The idea behind most websites are to deliver information, products or services to an end user. But what happens when that end user has difficulty in finding that information, those products or services? They leave the website and turn else where for their needs. Not only does usability help people quickly and easily find what [...]

PSD Files: 60+ Must Have Photoshop Files For Designers (Part2)

Facebook-Web-Design — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 00:02:36 +0000

PSD files can be very useful and save you lots of time with your design projects. If you are looking to create certain types of works such as a simple thumbnail slider, pretty little folded ribbon or even simple color selector, these free PSD files are right for you. Today I have assembled 60+ must [...]

Creative Websites with Panoramic Backgrounds

Facebook-Web-Design — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 00:02:22 +0000

Many web developers pay a lot of attention to their website’s background. There is nothing strange in it because the background often determines the impression that a website makes on visitors. It is rather clear that, for example, cute colorful toothy monsters will suit children websites greatly, but they will look freaky on business-related web [...]

Browser Theme Tool: Create Your Own Themes For Your Favorite Browser

Facebook-Web-Design — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 00:02:04 +0000

We live in a world where customization is key and vital to the products that we use. We want things to be our own, and we want to get out of these things exactly what we are looking for. Personalized and customized Internet browsers allow users to do just that – to use unique and [...]

The Importance of Color in Website Design

Facebook-Web-Design — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 00:01:46 +0000

Color deeply influences the overall look and feel of a website and can form the first impression about a company for visitors. Color is one of the top three most important factors in a purchasing decision, according to an article by the Touro College Journal. Cooper Marketing Group conducts an annual nationwide “color preference study”designed [...]

PB iPhone Game Sneak Peek

Facebook-Web-Design — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 23:40:43 +0000

PB iPhone Game Sneak Peek from Carlos B on Vimeo.

Here’s a sneak peek of my upcoming iPhone game. The game will be in the Apple App Store hopefully very soon. The game is a breakout clone, but I’m trying to include new features to make it somehow a little different and unique. It’s my first game so will see how it turns out. Any feedback will be appreciated.

Follow me on Twitter/FaceBook to stay updated.
Follow on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/PixelelementCom
Follow on FaceBook at: http://www.facebook.com/pages/PixelElement/261577454405

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10 Nature Inspired Urban Renewal Designs

Facebook-Web-Design — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 23:26:37 +0000

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This is a guest post from Antonina of OpenBuildings - a community-driven and openly editable encyclopaedia of buildings from around the world. It’s a database of historic, contemporary and conceptual architecture that exists as a website and application for iPhone, and since last week - Android, which enable users to find, learn about and share nearby buildings of architectural merit.

Rising sustainability concerns over the last decade have brought about a fascinating new tendency in landscape concepts for development and renewal of urban and even industrial areas. Nature is coming back to cities and that’s a wonderful opportunity for us to get back to it too. Experience the mesmerizing beauty of these nature bites inserted into urban context and let’s hope this is the future of landscape architecture!

James Corner Field Operations & Diller Scofidio + Renfro: The High Line

Mayfield Organic Lavender Farm

Albert Kahn & William McDonough + Partners: Ford River Rouge Complex

Burckhardt+Partner AG & Raderschall: MFO Park

West 8: Garden of 10 000 Bridges

coLAB studio: Bird and Butterfly Garden

Balmori Associates: Bilbao Jardín

Turenscape: Shanghai Houtan Park

Urbanarbolismo: Vertical Garden

Groundlab + Plasma Studio: Flowing Gardens

This is a post from Inspired Magazine. If you like it, you may want to subscribe to our RSS full feed to be updated on every article we’re publishing. Also, it’s highly recommended to follow us on Twitter!

10 Nature Inspired Urban Renewal Designs

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Boosting Your Social Media Reach by Updating Your Tech

Facebook-Web-Design — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 23:25:07 +0000

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As the next evolution of the Internet, the social Web is such a massively diverse and dynamic atmosphere that simply refuses to rest. What began as a casual conduit for the masses to connect with one another, logically progressed into a largely adapted standard even on the business segment.

But while these businesses have standardized their own specific processes, implementations and social media strategies, it’s also crucial to adapt to the freshest trends and technologies. These not only provide your company with countless ways to jumpstart your online traction, and invigorate your existing marketing plan’s progress.

Here are four technologies (and some not-so new ones) that you can utilize that can definitely help boost your business’ social media reach.

HTML5

For those not in the know, HTML5 is the next iteration of the Internet’s code base. But while it’s yet to be formally established as the Web standard, it’s already in wide use among popular Web sites given its new features that are significantly beneficial for search engine optimization (SEO) and social media marketing. Among the new updates are specific tags and attributes for multimedia and graphical elements that can help you better deliver your content to your site visitors without needing to install additional browser extensions or plug-ins for playback.

Moreover, HTML5 also offers an optimized set of features that enable search engines like Google and Bing to easily index your Web site or blog. This, of course, ramps up your brand’s visibility and increases its discoverability online, helping you engage with your targeted demographic and reach out to untapped segments.

Mobile Tech

Mobility has become an important part of most businesses, and it will prove to be among the most valuable tools in your social media arsenal. You can leverage on a variety of wireless connectivity options, your phone’s set of features, and many available apps to accomplish multiple tasks even when offsite. This can run from simple content creation, stat tracking, site maintenance, and account management, among many others—all can help make your regular workload a cinch to complete.

For the front-end, you’ll need a mobile site specially optimized for smartphones to increase your presence on the mobile Web (check out Mobify, WPtouch). You can also take advantage of mobile phones’ capabilities and integrate them into your social media marketing campaigns. Features like geolocation, augmented reality, mobile apps, text messaging, voice capabilities, and the built-in camera are among the most common features being utilized by social media marketers today.

Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is one of today’s most progressive technologies that continue to drive businesses forward. It offers companies with ways to expand their businesses, offer value-added products and services, and enhance their accessibility. This will also effectively trim down your IT costs, significantly reducing the expenses usually relegated to purchasing and maintaining of natively hosted hardware, and the acquisition of software licenses.

And it can be a great route for your company to take that will expand both the delivery of your services, better the campaign management and tracking, and can invigorate how you can engage with your potential customers.

From the back-end, you have cloud-hosted word processors with multi-user collaborative capabilities, online storage, and a handful of apps that can help you track your progress and manage every aspect of your campaign. And on the front-end, you can integrate the use of various apps for engaging with your followers. You can even create your own specifically developed to up your branding efforts, and make sure you get to specifically reach your goals.

Social Media Sites

Just because Facebook and Twitter are the most popular sites out there, it doesn’t mean they’re the only ones your brand should be on. While the aforementioned social networking giants can get you a lot of attention from your demographic, they can only do so much as far as capabilities are concerned. And as creative and as innovative as your marketing ideas are, this can limit your campaign’s progress and stem your brand’s growth online.

To get the most out of the Web, updating your social media arsenal can be the best thing you’ll do for your business. Out there you’ll find other channels for carrying your marketing strategies, some better than others, but it’s important to keep in mind exactly what it is you intend to achieve. For this, you may consider including sites like YouTube, Tumblr, Yelp or even Formspring — that is if their features and user base truly address your needs.

header image via Totally How To

Boosting Your Social Media Reach by Updating Your Tech

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33 Curious Uses of Periodic Tables – Great Visualizations or Mendeleev’s Worst Nightmare?

Facebook-Web-Design — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 23:22:13 +0000

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One of the first contacts we all have with a data visualization, in the early stages of our academic life, is the Periodic Table of Elements. I know, we do graphs and charts way before that, but, really, is there a more universal, and recognizable, visualization in the world?

And not to mention that it goes way back, more than 200 years of history, which makes it one of the first modern data visualizations, as well. If want to fully understand the history, and evolution of the Periodic Table of Elements, a good place to start is the Wikipedia article.

But what we’ll be showcasing here are some…how should we call it…deviations of the original one.

Because, as you will see, the term “Periodic Table” has gone far beyond the original scientific use…

Periodic Table of World Internet Facts | Via

The Periodic Table Of The Social Web | Via

The Periodic Table Of SEO Ranking Factors | Via

Periodic Table Guide to Google’s APIs | Via

You have it for businesses, organizations, sports and several other occupations…

Arsenal’s Periodic table | Via

Everton F.C. Periodic Table | Via

Periodic Table of Professional Cycling | Via

The Periodic Table of Business Cards | Via

Periodic Table of Storytelling | Via

Periodic Table of Artists | Via

Periodic Table of Typefaces | Via

The Periodic Table of Nickelodeon | Via

Also, covering serious issues…

Periodic Table of Elements, in Pictures | Via

Periodioc Table of Food | Via

Periodic Table of Dessert | Via

Periodic Table of Disasters | Via

Periodic Table of Terrorist Organizations | Via

…and not so serious…

Periodic Table of Smellements | Via

Periodic Table of Beer | Via

The periodic table of awesoments | Via

Periodic Table of Vulgarity | Via

Periodic Table of Irrational Nonsense | Via

Periodic Table of Swearing | Via

And you even have it for places:

Periodic Table of Hong Kong | Via

Let’s not forget entertainment!

The Periodic Table of Mad Men | Via

Periodic Table of Sci-Fi Film and Television | Via

Periodic Table of Science Fiction | Via

Periodic Table Of Super-Powers | Via

Periodic Table of The Empire Strikes Back | Via

Periodic Table of Videos [Interactive] | Via

Periodic Table of Controllers | Via

Periodic Table of Final Fantasy Characters | Via

And, last, but not least…

The Periodic Table of Periodic Tables | Via

I’m pretty sure that you’ll find some other “periodic table extravaganzas” out there. If so, feel free to share them!

33 Curious Uses of Periodic Tables – Great Visualizations or Mendeleev’s Worst Nightmare?

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33 Curious Uses of Periodic Tables – Great Visualizations or Mendeleev’s Worst Nightmare?

Facebook-Web-Design — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 23:22:08 +0000

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But what we’ll be showcasing here are some…how should we call it…deviations of the original one.

Because, as you will see, the term “Periodic Table” has gone far beyond the original scientific use…

Periodic Table of World Internet Facts | Via

The Periodic Table Of The Social Web | Via

The Periodic Table Of SEO Ranking Factors | Via

Periodic Table Guide to Google’s APIs | Via

You have it for businesses, organizations, sports and several other occupations…

Arsenal’s Periodic table | Via

Everton F.C. Periodic Table | Via

Periodic Table of Professional Cycling | Via

The Periodic Table of Business Cards | Via

Periodic Table of Storytelling | Via

Periodic Table of Artists | Via

Periodic Table of Typefaces | Via

The Periodic Table of Nickelodeon | Via

Also, covering serious issues…

Periodic Table of Elements, in Pictures | Via

Periodioc Table of Food | Via

Periodic Table of Dessert | Via

Periodic Table of Disasters | Via

Periodic Table of Terrorist Organizations | Via

…and not so serious…

Periodic Table of Smellements | Via

Periodic Table of Beer | Via

The periodic table of awesoments | Via

Periodic Table of Vulgarity | Via

Periodic Table of Irrational Nonsense | Via

Periodic Table of Swearing | Via

And you even have it for places:

Periodic Table of Hong Kong | Via

Let’s not forget entertainment!

The Periodic Table of Mad Men | Via

Periodic Table of Sci-Fi Film and Television | Via

Periodic Table of Science Fiction | Via

Periodic Table Of Super-Powers | Via

Periodic Table of The Empire Strikes Back | Via

Periodic Table of Videos [Interactive] | Via

Periodic Table of Controllers | Via

Periodic Table of Final Fantasy Characters | Via

And, last, but not least…

The Periodic Table of Periodic Tables | Via

I’m pretty sure that you’ll find some other “periodic table extravaganzas” out there. If so, feel free to share them!

33 Curious Uses of Periodic Tables – Great Visualizations or Mendeleev’s Worst Nightmare?

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iNoobs: Top 12 Web Design Guidelines (For Print Designers)

Facebook-Web-Design — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 23:21:03 +0000

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"Ohhhh God!! I love web design."

Welcome to another edition of the iNoobs series – where we teach you how to become a web developer (and how to grow lots of body hair and shoot omega beams from your eyes – because ya’ll know that’s the only thing that can defeat Superman).

Comic book geeky-ness aside I was asked the other day to help a friend get into web design…

“Holy f$%k,” I cursed at my grandmother… “I can combine two loves, kill two birds if you will. I can help my friend (aka my grams) and write a great post for the iNoobs series…”

(Is he already calling this a “great post”, sometimes I like his cocky writing style… sometimes it’s just too much. And is his “friend” his grandma?)

Yes… and… the parenthesis means YOU’RE thinking it…

On to the design juice…

Top 12 Web Design Guidelines (For Print Designers)

I know a lot of you out there are fantastic designers.

You can mouse through photoshop, clickety-clicking like there’s no tomorrow.

You can draw vectors in Illustrator like a boss (sometimes spelled BAWSE for effect).

You can layout stuff out in InDesign that would give any typophile a Times New Roman Orgasm. (Is that a font joke…?)

“I’m not sure, just stay with me.”

But you want to know more about web design.

Well, if you’re like my friend – as well as a few designers I’ve coached while working at an ad/marketing agency – you’d like to create some sweet designs for the web, but have some questions like, “Where do I begin?“

Unfortunately, I’ve tried simply telling designers to “open your eyes” but that never seems to work – but let’s start there anyway. Before we get to our bulleted list goodness:

OPEN YOUR EYES (BTW I’m saying this in a sultry Penelope Cruz voice)

As you move throughout the web pay attention to how everything is layed out. Pay attention to everything that has been taken into account (or haphazardly mashed together by the devs). Look at the margins, the size of the site, its behavior as you scroll, the consistency of titles, and boxes, and advertisement space and… EVERYTHING.

Then I would start by replicating the design of one of your favorite sites. That’s how I started. Just go find a beautiful site and… do it again, in photoshop or your application of choice (oh shit, I used the word application – when I used to use “program” apple is taking over).

Go recreate and enhance it. Add stuff and play with things. You’re a designer you probably have a good eye for design (and hopefully beautiful eyes in general) and will be able to move through your changes tossing the chaff and keeping your delicious wheat.

But, if you must have a complete break down here are my… Top 12 Web Design Guidelines (for Print Designers)

1) Photoshop

Preferably work/design in Photoshop (or export final design to a photoshop friendly format).

We coders like this because of layers. Layers rock for design, and for cutting up HTML/CSS.

While working within Photoshop or other software make sure colors are set to RGB and the resolution of the document you’re working on is 72DPI (but these are both defaults). It’s important to make sure to keep your design file organized (if using photoshop, keep your layers organized) using groups, and naming. Part of the next steps of cutting up a design into HTML & CSS require that we get to very specific portions of the design and organization helps reduce that time.

2) Design Resolution/Image Size

When considering the size of the website almost 100% of the time we go with a fixed width (set number of pixels) and centered design. If you’ll be following this same recommended path you’ll need to then set a maximum size for the design (boundaries for which all of the content falls under. For smaller screens 760px is recommended, however with larger and larger screens more readily available the de-facto is currently 960px as it allows lots of design freedom, as well as space for advertising and multiple columns worth of content.

Additional Resources – http://960.gs/

3) Background

It’s important to illustrate in the design how the background will be handled so that it can be coded properly. There’s a number of different options here:

Static Background (simple color or image)
Tiled Background (vertically or horizontally)
Static Background (an image that stays in place despite scrolling)

Additional Resources – http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/03/31/backgrounds-in-web-design-examples-and-best-practices-2/

4) Navigation

The main site navigation should (in my opinion) almost always be positioned at the top – and only in extreme situations to the side of the site. If you must put it on the side – position it to the left. The site navigation should be one of the most prominent elements on the page and should be consistent across the whole site.

5) Fonts

It’s important to understand that photoshop by default will anti alias text (make it look rounded and pretty onscreen – this is the “strong, sharp, etc.” setting) and has a host of EXTRA fonts unavailable to most users.

Most modern web browsers however don’t make font’s look pretty they stay jagged and that most users won’t have specialized fonts (see additional resource for most common web friendly fonts). Unlike colors, which you can display as many as you’d like (“web friendly colors” are no longer important to adhere to) fonts are a different story. Although fonts can be specially imported to create a unique design that is consistent for all users, it is usually done so at the cost of speed – it takes time for the user to download the tools required to have this done. I’ve played around with the flash versions and javascript version of embedded fonts and although both can work exceptionally well – they can seriously slow down the speed of your website!

Additionally, when converting the design into HTML, we’ll need to make sure we have the same fonts (in the cases where fonts are to be implemented exactly) should you want to use a custom font.

Web safe fonts (render the quickest/easiest) – http://www.fonttester.com/help/list_of_web_safe_fonts.html
Google Font Library – all fonts can be quickly and easily implemented (and SEO friendly) but will slow down end user computer http://www.google.com/webfonts#ChoosePlace:select

6) Headers/Titles

Much like the fonts consideration it’s important to consider headers. Any titles on the site (big areas of text usually signaling a page title) are considered “headers” being consistent here (using a similar font and style) will help in the conversion process.

7) Content

Although the fancy images and colors are important the single MOST important thing is your content (text!) – it’s probably the most space any single element will need to take up, and will take the most time of your user (reading) so consider the type/font, the contrast between the content and the background it sits on, as well as secondary elements (for example a blog/news section will typically have a comment section, a box listing the author, date, etc.).

Details

Often the best designs are very simple but with consistency and very specific tiny details. For example just adding a slight border and drop shadow to a box can make a world of difference. Great web design is all about those kinds of tiny details, both on the home page as well as throughout the site.

9) Colors/Links

Because of screen discrepancies and considerations for eye site problems it’s recommended to contrast your colors as much as possible, particularly links. Although this is ultimately an esthetic decision, contrast can really help ease the use of a website.

10) Graphics

If additional graphics are to be provided it’s important to consider file size, we try to compress all graphics as much as possible when posting to the web. For example JPG’s are typically compressed to 60% (good balance of size/quality), but Gif’s are used in places where not a lot of colors are important, and PNGs are used when transparency in an image is necessary. Because the design is to be provided as a PSD this is a moot issue unless other graphics/images are to be sent or uploaded to the site later on.

11) Goals

For each page being designed it’s helpful to sit down and come up with 3 goals (with a major goal on top) for a single page and then design so that you feel those goals are met easily and simply conveyed to a new visitor.

Then test – have a friend come over (perhaps your grandma) and see what the design communicates to them. Remember everyone is different and will have an opinion so although use cases and surveys like this are helpful – stick to your own gut. And seriously, old people make perfect test cases – they are rarely extremely computer savvy and typically get angry quickly so you’ll be able to tell if your design is not “up to snuff” (that’s an old person saying right?) by the fact that there’s now a keyboard lodged in your monitor.

JK – I love old people.

12) Consistency

Be consistent in the overall design, particularly the navigation, title, and page elements. Although typically a homepage will look much different than internal pages consistency is important in communicate the flow of the website.

iNoobs: Top 12 Web Design Guidelines (For Print Designers)

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iNoobs: Top 12 Web Design Guidelines (For Print Designers)

Facebook-Web-Design — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 23:20:54 +0000

Advertise here with BSA

"Ohhhh God!! I love web design."

Comic book geeky-ness aside I was asked the other day to help a friend get into web design…

“Holy f$%k,” I cursed at my grandmother… “I can combine two loves, kill two birds if you will. I can help my friend (aka my grams) and write a great post for the iNoobs series…”

(Is he already calling this a “great post”, sometimes I like his cocky writing style… sometimes it’s just too much. And is his “friend” his grandma?)

Yes… and… the parenthesis means YOU’RE thinking it…

On to the design juice…

Top 12 Web Design Guidelines (For Print Designers)

I know a lot of you out there are fantastic designers.

You can mouse through photoshop, clickety-clicking like there’s no tomorrow.

You can draw vectors in Illustrator like a boss (sometimes spelled BAWSE for effect).

You can layout stuff out in InDesign that would give any typophile a Times New Roman Orgasm. (Is that a font joke…?)

“I’m not sure, just stay with me.”

But you want to know more about web design.

Unfortunately, I’ve tried simply telling designers to “open your eyes” but that never seems to work – but let’s start there anyway. Before we get to our bulleted list goodness:

OPEN YOUR EYES (BTW I’m saying this in a sultry Penelope Cruz voice)

But, if you must have a complete break down here are my… Top 12 Web Design Guidelines (for Print Designers)

1) Photoshop

Preferably work/design in Photoshop (or export final design to a photoshop friendly format).

We coders like this because of layers. Layers rock for design, and for cutting up HTML/CSS.

2) Design Resolution/Image Size

Additional Resources – http://960.gs/

3) Background

It’s important to illustrate in the design how the background will be handled so that it can be coded properly. There’s a number of different options here:

Static Background (simple color or image)
Tiled Background (vertically or horizontally)
Static Background (an image that stays in place despite scrolling)

Additional Resources – http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/03/31/backgrounds-in-web-design-examples-and-best-practices-2/

4) Navigation

5) Fonts

Additionally, when converting the design into HTML, we’ll need to make sure we have the same fonts (in the cases where fonts are to be implemented exactly) should you want to use a custom font.

Web safe fonts (render the quickest/easiest) – http://www.fonttester.com/help/list_of_web_safe_fonts.html
Google Font Library – all fonts can be quickly and easily implemented (and SEO friendly) but will slow down end user computer http://www.google.com/webfonts#ChoosePlace:select

6) Headers/Titles

7) Content

Details

9) Colors/Links

10) Graphics

11) Goals

JK – I love old people.

12) Consistency

iNoobs: Top 12 Web Design Guidelines (For Print Designers)

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How to: Create a Dashboard Feed Reader for Your WordPress Theme or Plugin

Facebook-Web-Design — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 23:20:18 +0000

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This is a guest post by Konstantin Kovshenin — a WordPress core contributor, developer and consultant. Editor in chief of Theme.fm — tutorials, tips and tricks on WordPress themes and plugins, setup, security and performance, as well as WordPress consulting. Follow Konstantin on Twitter and don’t hesitate to poke him should you need any help.

WordPress themes (both free and paid) nowadays come bundled with a lot of different kind of options — color schemes, custom post types, portfolio pages, contact forms, custom shortcodes and much more. These are the kind of things developers usually offer to their users, but what do they get in return? Well if it’s a paid theme they obviously get some money and if it’s a free one, donations are more common. But there’s one thing you always get in return as a WordPress theme (or plugin) author, and that’s awareness.

Whether it’s yours, or your brand’s, awareness is what gets people to know you in the community, therefore building trust. Trust brings you more visitors to your website or blog, more chances of getting hired for a project and of course a little bit of fame and respect.

Today’s topic is a Dashboard Feed Reader, which is quite a simple widget hanging in your admin dashboard screen, showing the latest stories from your blog. Such widgets often drive more traffic to your website and gets people to read (at least) your headlines directly from their WordPress admin panel. A dashboard reader is a great way to announce new versions of your themes or plugins, as well as promote your new products.

People often think that dashboard readers are distracting or annoying, but the good thing about WordPress is that the Dashboard is actually configurable. In only a couple of clicks, any user can enable or disable any of their dashboard widgets, leaving on screen only the stuff that’s important to them. It’s done via the Screen Options button at the top right of the Dashboard page. So dashboard readers are way more loyal and user friendly than hard-coded links or banners on the front end of your theme or plugin.

Understanding Dashboard Widgets

Dashboard widgets in WordPress are actually meta boxes. They’re used in other places too, like the Edit Post or Page screen. They can be dragged around, shown or hidden from the Screen Options menu, collapsed and expanded by hitting the tiny arrow on the right side of the box titles. But hey, you should probably know that already!

Meta boxes are registered with the add_meta_box function but the ones on the Dashboard screen have a function of their own called wp_add_dashboard_widget which should be used during the wp_dashboard_setup WordPress action. So with that in mind, let’s go ahead and write some code.

Creating a New Dashboard Widget

In this tutorial I’ll be creating a dashboard feed reader for Theme.fm. The reader can then be bundled in a theme or plugin and the implementation doesn’t differ at all. So in your plugin file or the functions.php file of your theme, type in the following snippet.

It’s quite simple to understand what it does. I’ve got two functions, one for the dashboard setup and another one for the actual content. The content function is used as a callback during the setup of the widget, while the setup function is used in an action as I mentioned earlier. You can furthermore nest this into an admin_init action, since the dashboard is not available elsewhere, but that won’t have any noticeable impact on your site’s performance.

If you browse to your Dashboard at this stage, you’ll see a new widget called Latest from Theme.fm with the contents that we wrote in the second function. Guess what? You’re done! With the widget, that is… That’s all there is to it adding new dashboard widgets, you can move it around, expand or collapse it, and even turn it off and back on from the Screen Options panel.

Now, before you start shipping this piece of code with all your new themes and plugins, let’s fill it in with some actual content. You can go ahead with “lorem ipsum” but I suggest getting the content from your RSS feed, so that’s what we’ll do next.

Gathering Content From Your RSS Feed

WordPress itself comes bundled with SimplePie and FeedCache to work with the internal stuff, which means that we can use the exact same functions for our own functions. SimplePie is quite easy to work with as you’ll see in a second. WordPress allows a neat function called fetch_feed which could be used out of the box, provides feed parsing and caching and all that for free, without any extra coding. Go ahead and try it out in that content area where you were about to stick “lorem ipsum”

This will print all the feed contents (if there was no error retrieving them) in a nicely structured object. Get familiar with the structure, see what content is available and what’s not. There are neat SimplePie functions that we can use against that object to retrieve the data in the format we want, like dates for instance.

To spare you the hassle, here’s what my content function looks like after implementing the feed contents:

So double check the $feed variable in case it returned an error. Set the maximum number of items to yield to 5 and then, with a simple foreach loop, walk through all the items and print them out in a nice looking way — with permalinks, dates and descriptions.

That’s about it, that’s how easy it is to use SimplePie inside WordPress and again, caching is given to you for free, without even having to activate it or whatsoever, so if you refresh the dashboard screen you won’t notice any lags at all! Here’s what your new dashboard screen should look like, now with the new feed reader:

Congratulations, you’ve just built yourself a feed reader, which you can bundle in your themes and plugins, free and paid ones. You just got your users to read your blog directly from their admin panels, unless the deactivate you of course

Conclusion

So in this tutorial you’ve seen how to create your very own dashboard feed reader, getting more readers to your blog and awareness to you or your brand. In only a few lines of code, we’ve registered a new dashboard widget, then used SimplePie to fetch an RSS feed and display the content, with built-in caching.

A word of caution is that if you’re planning to bundle the reader in numerous themes and plugins, think about what will happen if somebody activates one of your theme, together with three of your plugins? You don’t want your users to end up with four dashboard readers, right? There are numerous techniques to avoid this, my favorite one is constants. I basically wrapped up the whole widget code into a class which I initialize during admin_init. I then wrapped the code into a simple if statement, like this:

Including the same constant in every theme and plugin you ship, you’ll make sure that only one instance of the feed reader is created. You might also want to use the class_exists PHP function if you’re planning to use the same class names for your reader in all the themes and plugins.

Well, that’s about it! Hope you enjoyed this tutorial and make sure you use it with caution, plus test before shipping. Thank you so much for reading and hope to see you again soon!

How to: Create a Dashboard Feed Reader for Your WordPress Theme or Plugin

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How to: Create a Dashboard Feed Reader for Your WordPress Theme or Plugin

Facebook-Web-Design — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 23:20:13 +0000

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Understanding Dashboard Widgets

Creating a New Dashboard Widget

Gathering Content From Your RSS Feed

To spare you the hassle, here’s what my content function looks like after implementing the feed contents:

Conclusion

Well, that’s about it! Hope you enjoyed this tutorial and make sure you use it with caution, plus test before shipping. Thank you so much for reading and hope to see you again soon!

How to: Create a Dashboard Feed Reader for Your WordPress Theme or Plugin

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10 Colour-Inspired Buildings to Light up Your Day

Facebook-Web-Design — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 23:17:52 +0000

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This is a guest post from Antonina of OpenBuildings – a community-driven and openly editable encyclopaedia of buildings from around the world. It’s a database of historic, contemporary and conceptual architecture that exists as a website and application for iPhone (and any moment now – Android) which enable users to find, learn about and share nearby buildings of architectural merit.

Until recently, the furthest architects would habitually take colour exploration would be seen in children-oriented buildings, while “serious” and “representative” edifices would stick to the proven elegance of black & white aesthetics and thoughtful use of natural materials. The reasons for the above-mentioned phenomenon could perhaps be attributed to the modernist legacy of subtly despising decoration. However, colour and light are inseparable and both possess an impressive potential to influence mood, behaviour and perception. La Defense Offices: a 23.000 m² ode to iridescence, whose colours and brilliance depend strongly on weather and light conditions was ‘designed with the office tenants in mind’ and sets a wonderful example of how architecture – armed with understanding and appreciation of colour – can create a refreshing and surprising environment for routine activities. Hopefully, today’s pick of colour-inspired buildings will be able to light up your day too!

Jean Nouvel: Hotel Puerta America in Madrid, Spain

MVRDV: Didden Village in Rotterdam, Netherlands

UN Studio: La Defense Offices in Almere, Netherlands

Rojkind Arquitectos: Nestlé Application Group Building in Querétaro, Mexico

Rudanko + Kankkunen: Sra Pou Vocational School in Sra Pou village, Cambodia

Asymptote Architecture: The Yas Hotel in Abu Dhabi, UAE

Neutelings Riedijk: Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision in Hilversum, The Netherlands

Luis Barragán: Cuadra San Cristóbal near Mexico City, Mexico

D. Villanueva Arquitectos: Rioglass Solar Production Plant in Pola de Lena, Spain

Kengo Kuma & Associates: The Opposite House in Beijing, China

10 Colour-Inspired Buildings to Light up Your Day

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iNoobs: The DNS Trick EVERY Developer Must Know

Facebook-Web-Design — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 23:16:45 +0000

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This is a guest post by Zach Katkin – entrepreneur, web developer, designer and writer – co-founder of Florida Web Design Company Atilus. Additionally Zach also owns a number of web properties including Promana.net, a resource for Small Business Software News including Basecamp Project Management.

So in the Inspired Noob series we’ve been talking a lot about DNS. With that said there was a trick I learned a few years ago (I think it was thanks to my hosting company support). This trick does a number of things:

Saves countless hours on development
Removes client intervention/help from the development process
Allows you to secretly work on ANY website, view the results live and in real time, while the rest of the world is none-the-wiser

So what is this DNS panacea? What simple trick can solve all these problems?

Adjusting Your Local DNS File

For a quick refresher on how DNS works you can review our post on How Does DNS Work? But one thing I purposely left out was that – as a last resort – your computer’s OS stores a DNS file that it uses to resolve (match) domain names to IP addresses. Because it’s local and manually updated, changing or adjusting this file means you can FORCE your computer to look at ANOTHER IP ADDRESS for ANY DOMAIN.

Example in Action

Lets say you’re working on your client’s site at HorseMagnet.com – they want a completely new design AND they want you to host it. But, they’re hosted somewhere else currently. You don’t yet have the information (or the time/desire) to transfer their hosting over. You want to just setup their site on your server and type in HorseMagnet.com and begin working and finalize your design.

By modifying your local host file, this is possible – and easy. You’ll be forcing (in a total violent sexual way) your browser/computer to view your own hosting when typing in HorseMagnet.com.

How to Modify Your Local Host/DNS File

Open Up Notepad – If you’re on a fancy version of Windows – Vista/7 - you may need to run notepad as an administrator. You can do this by right clicking Notepad’s icon and selecting “run as administrator.”
Open up the host file in windows – C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts
Edit the file based on what changes you want to enforce. Start with the IP address of the area you’re forcing your browser/computer to look at (probably the IP Address of your server) then *tab* and the domain name you’ll be forcing. Now it’s important to remember that you’ll need to include BOTH www. and non-www versions as each is considered a different location.
Save the file
Now there’s two things you can do – either restart your computer – or if you don’t want to waste time…
Close your browser
Open up command prompt (CMD in “run”/”search” box)
type “ipconfig /flushdns” (without quotes)
Relaunch browser and visit your website
You’ll now see your server instead of the live site

That’s it… now you can edit and play with your new site to your heart’s content and see the changes immediately. And the rest of the world has NO idea! It looks live, and in a way it is, but because of the way DNS works, nobody can see these changes yet. And when your HorseMagnet.com is just the way you and your client want it you can change the DNS settings for real for the domain and voila! The site is now live to the world!

iNoobs: The DNS Trick EVERY Developer Must Know

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10 Best Flickr Groups Featuring Original Toy Photography

Facebook-Web-Design — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 23:16:25 +0000

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Love toys? Love photography? Have you ever considered combining the two? Toy photography has been a major source of photo inspiration for years. The look of a doll or stuffed animal captured in a certain way can have a major emotional influence, and we have seen examples of that in the prevalence of abandoned or damaged toys used to set the tone for tragedy in various medias.

But what is great about toy photography is the versatility. You can create any feeling from a shot of a toy, and there are endless possibilities for creating scenes or just having fun. Flickr has a whole lot of groups that are dedicated to this purpose. Below are a collection of what I think are the ten best of the lot.

1. Toys

This is perhaps the largest toy-centric photo pool group on Flickr. It is dedicated to pictures about any kind of toy, from stuffed animals to retro wind-up numbers. There are more than 243,000 pictures already posted by the astonishing 18,000-plus members. But what makes it so great is the quality of most of the photos.

You would expect that a large number would result in a less concentrated level of quality. But there are very few bad pics there, and some that really some true ingenuity.

2. Toy Tuesday and Thursday

This is a really interesting photo challenge. It works by daring toy photographers to take a picture every Tuesday and Thursday for a year. In addition to this, there is a second challenge every two weeks where you take a photo starting with a different letter of the alphabet for that week.

The end result is an impressive set of 104 photos at the end of the year. This used to be a once a year challenge that has now been opened up to anyone year-long. Don’t worry if you are late joining…you can go from the date you start.

3. Excellent Photography Toy Awards

This is one of the biggest official award groups for toy photography. It works by either submitting your work or anything it invited by an existing member. It is then put into the photo pull and voted on. Since they refuse to take anything but the very best you are looking at some very stiff competition. They are also a group that has been voted sweeper active, which means for every photo you submit or accept an invite for you have to vote on thre.

4. Toys Take Over

A basic but well-populated group where anyone who likes photographing any kind of toy can join. They have more than 36,000 pictures already, and it is a good place for beginners to show off their work and watch the progression of other photographers.

5. Toys On Black

I have always liked the look of simple shots on black backgrounds more than any other. Between the shadows it creates and the dramatic but subtle tone, it is a great way to enhance a picture before you even take it. Toys On Black agree, and they have an entire group dedicated to the principle. They have a current three per day posting limit, though sometimes this is more or less, depending on how much activity they have had in recent weeks.

6. The Other Side

I personally love this group. Unlike other toy photo pools on Flickr, this one has a specific purpose related to the shots themselves, not the subject. While all photos should be of toys, the objective is for them not to look like toys. Or, at least, to have something in the shots that give them a sense of realism, movement or life. The members have done some incredible work, and you will see what I mean by that description if you check them out.

7. Toy Shooter Assignments

This is a directive specific group. When you join you will be able to see the current assignments that have been decided on through member voting. From there you can participate in photo opportunities that involve toys.

They might be to shoot something starting with a letter of the alphabet or from a specific time period. Maybe the toys will have come from a second hand shop or flea market, or be related to a film or television show. They have regular group directives to choose from.

8. Comic Book Toys

This group has been subject to a bit of confusion lately. It is not a group for comic book pictures or photos. It is for toys relating to comic books or characters from graphic novels. While a comic book can be present in the photo, it has to be toy specific.

Otherwise it will be deleted and you will receive a warning. However, if you are a comic book toy or action figure lover, then this is the place for you. Their open gallery has some amazing scene shots created with action figures, as well. My personal favorite so far is one of Doctor Who (Christopher Eccleston).

9. Secondhand Toys

I have found some amazing items there, including some fantastic art and toys at the thrift store. This group is for taking pictures of toy items that have come from secondhand shops from anywhere in the world. Flea markets, swap meets and other similar sources are also welcome. Considering some of the odd things you can find at thrift shops, this can be a fun little exercise. I know I have seen some horrifying – but fascinating – little treats there in my time.

10. Plastic Toy Soldiers

Another great little group, this one centers on those old plastic soldiers, the ones that come with a stiff base and poses. The pictures are scenes that have been created using this retro toys, and there are some really cool ones. If you were a kid who liked to play toy soldiers back in the day, this might be just the place you want to be.

10 Best Flickr Groups Featuring Original Toy Photography

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HOW TO: Organize Web Development Projects Like a Pro

Facebook-Web-Design — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 23:16:00 +0000

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This is a guest post from Jay Melone, founder @ DigitalXBridge, which provides web and mobile design + development, SEO, eMail Marketing and hosting services out of the NYC area.

While web designers and developers are touted as being the tech-savvy and brilliantly creative types, they also have the unfortunate rap of being some of the most disorganized individuals on the planet. Luckily, most design shops come equipped with overly attentive, detail-oriented project managers. For those freelance designers working solo, or small web shops still operating in cowboy-code-slinging mode, this post is especially for you. Take some notes on the process employed below and begin pitching your services as Grade-A Professional. These process tips and tools will help you stay on top of your deliverables, submit dates to your clients you can reasonably hit, track changes requests along the way and, in the end, deliver a quality product. Do all of this well and expect your customers to become your word-of-mouth marketing evangelists, overnight.

Note: I’ll be speaking to traditional desktop browser web design and development (PHP).

Phase 1: Research & Analysis

If you’ve ever heard the expression “measure twice cut once”, this the measuring phase. During R&A you’re familiarizing yourself with the client, their project, their business and their industry. Before you can spend a minute on actual design and development, you should immerse yourself in the client’s vision. This is not only important in nailing the proposal/estimate, but helps ensure you build what the client asked for and avoid costly changes to scope and aesthetics at the 11th hour.

Before any exchange of information takes place, be upfront and ask the lead/client if they’d like you to sign an NDA. This will show you’re considering their IP (intellectual property) in their best interest and help avoid any awkward feelings some clients may have about asking you to sign one in the first place.
Project intro questionnaire — At DigitalXBridge we have a tailor-made questionnaire we ask all of our new leads/clients to fill out. It’s a 1-pager, so it’s short enough not to overwhelm the client with homework on day one, but insightful enough to provide the answers to 90% of the introductory Q&A that takes place at the outset of a new engagement.
Follow-up discussion — Once the client submits the questionnaire, give them a call and go through each answer provided to make sure you’re both on the same page. It’s also a good idea to take notes for both you and the client during this discussion. Later, the client can review the notes again in writing. Measure twice.
Proposal (aka Estimate or Quote) — Now that you and the client are speaking the same language, it’s time to take those line items and start applying effort and costs to each. We use FreshBooks for all of our accounting, including estimate-writing. The more detailed a proposal, the less questions you’ll have to field and the more the client will understand how you arrived at the numbers you did. If you send them a 1-liner with one big number at the bottom, expect your phone to ring with a confused and frustrated client, at best. At worst they walk away without giving you the chance to explain yourself. Ride the transparency train as often as you can.
Review the Proposal with your client and discuss next steps — If the project is approved, now is when you should gather up 3rd party credentials such as registrars, hosting accounts, payment gateways, SSL certs, etc. If you use any project management software (we use Basecamp), this is also a good time to officially kick off the project whereby all previously gathered notes are dumped in the project workspace and some early to-dos and milestones established.
Site Plan — The final step of the R&A phase, and only once the project is approved, is the site plan. The site plan can come in a variety of forms (from hand-written sketches to outputs from the plethora of online tools), but the premise is that you’re asking your client to convey to you the basis structure of the site; i.e. the top-level navigation and transitions from page to page. 9 out of 10 clients will struggle to pull this all together so it’s important to use your skills as a designer to coach them through this so you have enough to get started on Phase 2: Design.

Phase 2: Design

While you were busy measuring repeatedly during phase 1 you had the opportunity to gather up all of your client comments, project specs and meeting notes. Now during phase 2 it’s time to turn all of that scribbling into eye-popping visuals.

Client Content — Before any designer can really dig in, they need some direction on content (copy, images, colors, product/customer data) from the client. Keep the requests light as you just need a nudge.. you’re still the designer and they’re still the client. This input should simply feed the Creative Concept step below, of which the client can focus on their most important page (e.g. Home Page) and supply all relavent content. Then they can move on to the rest of the site as the designer completes the Creative Concept. This job is almost always heavily underestimated by the client and once they realize they need to supply things like Policies and Terms, they hit a wall. Make sure you prep them for this assignment and give them adequate time and support. If you have copy writers available, make sure you make them available.
Creative Concept — This is your first design draft (images only; e.g. PSDs, no HTML just yet) of whichever page the client cited as most central to the theme and vision of the entire business and website, to which they provided content for in the previous step. The designer set of tools we use most for all web-related design work is Adobe Creative Suite.
Creative Walkthrough — Considering this is the client’s first encounter with not only your creative work but in seeing their idea come to life, you’ll want to discuss your first draft of the creative over the phone (in-person is even better). Explain the theme, where you drew your inspiration for colors, layout, fonts, etc and then hear them out on any tweaks they’d like made for the next version. Once you nail the general aesthetic of the site based on the initial page creative, you can get started on the remaining (“inner”) pages. To make the process of submitting designs and gathering client changes/feedback more efficient, you could take advantage of tools like ConceptShare (which recently launched an entire new v3 product). We’ve found it to streamline all of the countless emails and phone calls with a simple, visual interface.
Design sign-off — Before you move onto Phase 3: Implementation, you want to have creative sign-off from your client. Going back and changing design after coding begins can be costly to the budget so don’t underestimate the importance of this step.

Phase 3: Implementation & QA

Implementation is a fancy word for coding. Hand those beautiful PSDs off to your engineers to develop.. the site is ready to come to life. And because we encourage working iteratively, QA comes along for the ride during this heavy development period. That said, testing, as a whole, is a post in itself (to be covered later), so we’ll keep the view at 30k feet for now.

Client-side Coding — Start with HTML and CSS, then move onto any JavaScript, AJAX, Flash, etc, wherever applicable. If you have separate people handling design and development, communication between the two needs to be fluid so as to maintain the visual concepts born during phase 2. In fact it’s best if the designer can hand the page off to developer once client approval is received so that everything regarding that page is top-of-mind.
Client-side QA – Again, each of these points can be expanded upon but the general testing routines you want to validate here include: (1) typography/formatting, (2) accessibility, (3) and browser/OS compatibility.
User Guide – Well-written documentation not only conveys how things were built, but how to use the site and any administrative functionality (e.g. an admin panel or CMS). It also serves as a training manual and cut down on subsequent support calls post-launch. Finally, this document will serve as a guideline during client testing (UAT) within phase 4.
Site Demo – As pages get layered with client-side coding, it’s a good idea to share links with clients. The images produced during phase 2 are pretty to look at, but often you won’t begin to receive true client feedback until they can point and click.
Server-side Coding – Time to hook the client up to the server with PHP coding.
Hosting Account Setup – Whether or not you’ll be hosting the site, now’s the time to make sure the hosting account is established, email accounts exits, DNS entries are accurate, SSL certs are in place and implemented wherever necessary on-site and any other IT administrative steps have been carried out.
Functional QA: Includes testing (1) features/forms/fields, (2) cookie settings, (3) performance, (4) server-side communication and (5) security/penetration checks. Once all of the internal (i.e. completed in-house by you/your team) QA has been completed you can prepare to officially hand the site over to the client for testing and approval in Phase 4.

Phase 4: UAT & Training

While you’ve been keen at keeping the client informed of your progress along the way and asking for regular feedback, it’s been light in terms of formal client testing to this point. Now it’s time to really hand the reigns to your paying customer and iterate through a cycle (or two, or three) of UAT – User Acceptance Testing.

Training – One of the biggest mistakes we used to make when we started building client sites was to build something, turn it over to the client and say “good luck, let us know if you find anything wrong.” No good. For one, most of your clients will not understand technology like you do – some may need to understand the basics of website protocol; others may even be a bit more advanced but still need a primer on how to, say, upload catalog merchandise via FTP. Hold their hand. Send them the User Guide crafted during phase 3 and then take them step-by-step through each page and process. We like to use GoTo Meeting for client demos, where we’ll often run a scenario and then give keyboard and mouse control to the client and ask them to give it a shot. It works well and pays huge dividends to do it in a simulated training environment now and while you’re moderating vs. later in production when the boss is standing over their shoulder and you’re not around to lean on.
UAT – Now that your client is a pro with what’s under the hood of their site, UAT begins. But before they begin, coach them on best practices for reporting issues; e.g. trace their steps, break out expected vs. actual outcomes and provide screenshots whenever possible (with annotations on the screenshot.. even better!). If you use a PM tool you’ll probably want to capture all discussions and issues/changes found during this process there so that as you apply fixes, the entire process is tracked and documented. The more you guide them on the testing approach that works best for you and your team, the more streamlined the entire process will remain. Even though the client is testing on their end, the responsibility to deliver a high-quality product remains on your shoulders. Make sure you own this process, just as you have the previous steps.
Sign-Off – As UAT comes to a wrap, you want to somehow have your client both acknowledge that they’re approving of the work produced as well as give you permission to publish it to the world. Some shops use very formal documentation, others use email or even IM. Whatever works for you, both semantically and legally; but I’m sure most would recommend having it in writing. Whatever your approach, once you have their blessing it’s time for Phase 5: Go-Live.

Phase 5: Go-Live

You’ve made it. Blood, sweat and tears have been shed by you and your client (hopefully not too many tears) and now it’s time for publishing to the live, production hosting account.

Planning – Before you actually release the site into the wild, sit down with your client and explain the release process. We typically put client sites live during off-peak (local) hours. So say we’re launching a site in NY, we would typically plan to begin this process at 3am EST so as to give ourselves plenty of time to run the release procedures, or worst case, take the site offline and notify the client of problems/delays.
Private URL Launch – Upload the site to their production environment with a private URL (e.g. just an IP or http://test.domainname.com) and then..
Smoke Testing – Immediately upon launch you want to make sure everything is stable. Run through all pages and perform a basic level of functional QA to ensure the site is still standing. If the site is transactional (e.g. eCommerce) place a couple test orders and validate the workflow on the back-end and database, as well verify email notifications. If we’re good to go..
Go-Live – Flip over to the public domain and notify your client that their site is officially live.
Check-In – Don’t forget to keep an eye on things over the coming days and weeks. You want to make extra sure that if there are problems, you’re the first to find them. There’s nothing worse than a client calling to tell you the site is down.. it will erase all those hours of hard work as well as the trust you’ve built with your client.

Summary

Designing and building websites includes lots of moving parts however the most important element throughout is communication. Whether things are going smoothly or falling apart, keep your client in the loop and work through things together. The process above is not a one-size-fits-all, but, at its core, contains a good guide to keep you and your web projects on track.

HOW TO: Organize Web Development Projects Like a Pro

Web :: http://digitalxbridge.com

Skype :: jaymelone | Yahoo IM :: digitalxbridge

Social :: Facebook | Twitter

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Infographics of The Week #4

Facebook-Web-Design — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 23:15:22 +0000

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This is a guest post from Tony Shin – with a double major in Economics and Management from the University of Washington, this Seattle native regularly contributes his work to several other publications. He has moved into social media and creative design in hopes to help lead and innovate the future of information with others. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook!

I enjoyed seeing a lot of great infographics this week, a majority of which focused on one theme: Social. Coincidence or not, as I sat there looking at each graphic, a few thoughts continuously popped in my head. “Has social media taken over my life? This can’t be right. Wait, why do I care so much? Without Facebook, Google+ and Twitter, how bored would I be?”

It’s refreshing to see another perspective of the virtual lives we’ve created for ourselves. Personally, I’m a lost cause. I’m in way too deep. So save yourself while you still can! Okay, just kidding. Just take the few minutes out of your day to really think about where we’ve come so far. Yes, it is exciting. Yes, it has made communication much easier. The question isn’t what has it done, but what will it do?

1. The State of the Internet

Every so often, when the update data is accessible, someone makes a state of the Internet infographic, highlighting some major points about the evolution of the Internet and what it has in store. After seeing this interactive piece by Online Schools, I realized they just upped the ante on any one who desires to create a ‘State of the Internet’ infographic. With that said, I’d imagine it’ll be some time before we see anything like this. Press play to be blown away.

Created by: Online Schools

2. Do You Need a Social Media Detox?

This one brought me the fresh perspective I was talking about earlier. I found this infographic on Visual.ly that Column Five Media put together, which illustrates the symptoms of one who needs that detox. I don’t want to believe it, but maybe I need one. I’m quite positive I have 8 of the 10 symptoms.

3. Where Twitter’s Town Hall Left Us Hangin

I have nothing against Obama. I’m sure he’s a great guy. Ask Zuck and Jobs, they had dinner with the guy! But seriously, you’re going to chew him out because he didn’t answer your tweet? I’m sure along with the 500 million tweets he probably gets a day, he checks each and every last one of them. Ha. Right. Imagine his phone constantly alerting him of new tweets. Umm, no.

Regardless, InboxQ designed this infographic, highlighting all the data and stats about President Obama’s tweets, which really shows the kind of effort and dedication out there to record all that. Oh, the eagle/twitter bird comparison was cute, too…

Infographics of The Week #4

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8 Useful CSS Tools

Facebook-Web-Design — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 22:46:33 +0000

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Writing better CSS is something all web designers and developers should strive for, and thankfully there are some useful tools out there to help do just that. For this post, we’ve rounded up a collection of new tools to help you with your CSS. From learning new CSS3 properties, to making your code more efficient, there’s bound to be a few tools here you will find useful.

CSS3 Patterns Gallery

CSS3 Patterns Gallery lets you browse various CSS3 patterns as thumbnails or fullscreen and grab the code so you can use them on your own site.

PrefixMyCSS

PrefixMyCSS helps you save time by letting you write your properties one way. Paste in your code, pres the Prefix button and it adds all of the necessary vendor prefixes for you.

Layer Styles

Layer Styles is a HTML5 app for creating CSS3 in a intuitive way. The interface will remind you a lot of Photoshop.

Sencha Animator

Sencha Animator is a desktop app to create CSS3 animations for WebKit browsers and touchscreen mobile devices. Create rich experiences for today’s most popular devices.

The Web Font Combinator

The Web Font Combinator was created in order to preview web font combinations. There have been various printed collections of font examples that the reader can combine in order to see how a header and body font work together.

CSS Pivot

CSS Pivot lets you add CSS styles to any website, and share the result with a short link. You can also invite others to submit improvements for your website.

CSS Lint

CSS Lint is a tool to help point out problems with your CSS code. It does basic syntax checking as well as applying a set of rules to the code that look for problematic patterns or signs of inefficiency.

CSS Prism

CSS Prism lets you enter the URL of any site so you can view an modify its color spectrum.

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WDL Premium: Light Retro Web Elements Kit

Facebook-Web-Design — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 22:45:53 +0000

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For our WDL Premium members, here’s an awesome kit containing 60+ light retro web elements from WeGraphics. In this kit you will have an excellent set of light, clean, retro web elements which can instantly make your designs stand out by a mile. A perfect mixture of old and new.

Be sure to check out WeGraphics for more high-quality design resources, like vectors, brushes, textures, icons, and more.

Here’s a preview of the kit:

Download Light Retro Web Elements Kit

Premium Member

You must be a WDL Premium member to download this file.

About this Partner

WeGraphics is the definitive solution for designers who need high-quality resources but don’t want to be obliged to spend hundreds of dollars for them.

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8 Useful CSS Tools

Facebook-Web-Design — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 22:45:48 +0000

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CSS3 Patterns Gallery

CSS3 Patterns Gallery lets you browse various CSS3 patterns as thumbnails or fullscreen and grab the code so you can use them on your own site.

PrefixMyCSS

PrefixMyCSS helps you save time by letting you write your properties one way. Paste in your code, pres the Prefix button and it adds all of the necessary vendor prefixes for you.

Layer Styles

Layer Styles is a HTML5 app for creating CSS3 in a intuitive way. The interface will remind you a lot of Photoshop.

Sencha Animator

Sencha Animator is a desktop app to create CSS3 animations for WebKit browsers and touchscreen mobile devices. Create rich experiences for today’s most popular devices.

The Web Font Combinator

CSS Pivot

CSS Pivot lets you add CSS styles to any website, and share the result with a short link. You can also invite others to submit improvements for your website.

CSS Lint

CSS Prism

CSS Prism lets you enter the URL of any site so you can view an modify its color spectrum.

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WDL Premium: Light Retro Web Elements Kit

Facebook-Web-Design — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 22:45:12 +0000

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Be sure to check out WeGraphics for more high-quality design resources, like vectors, brushes, textures, icons, and more.

Here’s a preview of the kit:

Download Light Retro Web Elements Kit

Premium Member

You must be a WDL Premium member to download this file.

About this Partner

WeGraphics is the definitive solution for designers who need high-quality resources but don’t want to be obliged to spend hundreds of dollars for them.

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25 Intelligent Resume Ideas

Facebook-Web-Design — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 22:44:30 +0000

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Resumes are one of the most important documents needed when applying for any kind of a job. If you’re wondering how to get a job of your dreams, first of all consider creating an impressive and outstanding resume with a custom design. It’s your opportunity to create personality, show off your skills and creativity. In this post you will find 25 intelligent resume ideas for your inspiration revealing smart ways of presenting technical information by using some creativity.

Infographic Resume

My Resume

Fahmy Aualudin Resume

Self Promotion

Resume

Chris Harris Resume

Mindview Resume

My CV

Curriculum Vitae

Loyez Geoffrey Resume

Self Promotional Package

My Graphic Design Resume

Resume Prototype

Jenn Gerlach Resume

Kelly Weihs Resume

Design Resume

Joshua Moorhead Print Resume

X-Ray Resumay

Jude Gichumbi Resume

Alan Guilloux Resume

Irmantas Genotas Resume

Violaine ECOLAN resume

Curriculum Vitae

Infographics Resume

Gaming Cover Page for Resume

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20 Inspiring Examples of Single Page Websites

Facebook-Web-Design — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 22:43:20 +0000

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Since we really like single page layouts and the last time we had them around was back in March, we decided to gather a new list to inspire you! We will show several different approaches to single page layouts – from minimal and clean ones to super colorful pages using parallax scrolling effects – there is certainly some that will get your attention.

Single Page WordPress Theme

Sean Gaffney

Kevin Whitaker

Kevin M Heineman

Dreams Are Made by Pedaling

Osura

Bennett Feely

Riot

CoFinery

Nudge

Supereight Studio

TM Design

More Hazards More Heroes

Academy for Global Citizenship

The Drift

TypeMedia 2011

this is Marcela

Design Beast

Dentsu Network

Finely Sliced

Fabio Neural

Source:

One Page Love
The Best Designs

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23 Tips For Effective Poster Design

Facebook-Web-Design — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 22:41:14 +0000

Creating an effective poster is different that designing for print flyers or brochures: you need to grab your audience’s attention in half a second, sometimes from across the street and you need to make sure you can communicate the main message clearly and fast. Here are 23 tips to ensure your next poster is a winner.

Layout

01. No clutter! If understanding a poster seems like work, a viewer will simply walk away.

02. Design the poster so the eye flows naturally across all the information in the order it should be read.

03. Make sure there’s some white space. White spaces give the eyes a little break from all the great graphics and text on your poster. Put some blank space around your text and see how much more pleasant it is to look at.

Colours

04. Use bright colours. Nothing grabs the eye like bright things.

05. Use contrast. Contrasting colours look good together but, most importantly, they make it easy to read your poster.

06. Use a colour wheel. If you aren’t sure how to pick colours that work well together, find a colour wheel and learn how to use it.

07. Don’t use too many colours. It will make the poster look chaotic.

08. Make sure the colours keep with your branding. If you’re a high-end, boutique hotel, hot pink posters may grab attention but you might not appeal to the customers you’re looking for.

Text

09. Focus on a single message. Whether it’s an event, a special deal, a great product or a service just keep to the point. Now is not the time to get into your company history or your environmental policies, no matter how impressive they are.

10. Now that you’ve got the message down, keep it short. No matter how much of a poet you are, words always come second to graphics on effective posters.

11. Keep the text contained to one section, not scattered all over the page.

12. Make it catchy. Use all those poetic devices you learned about in high school to make your words ring in a reader’s ears long after they’ve walked away.

13. No more than two fonts. One for the heading and one for the rest of the text. Too many fonts will make a poster look cluttered.

14. Speaking of fonts… Choose fonts that are clear and easy to read from a distance (especially in the header).

Graphics

15. Stick to one, unified image. If your poster is made up of five distinct paragraphs and half a dozen various clipart images, it just won’t work.

16. The design should be big and bold: something easy to recognise from a distance.

17. Make sure your image correlates to the poster’s message. Viewers will often process the image before they read the words.

18. Don’t use ambiguous images. Use images that clearly communicate the message of the poster, and only the message of your poster.

19. Don’t include too many graphic elements. Borders, shadows and textured backgrounds are nice but only if kept to a minimum. These elements should complement the main image and text, not overshadow them.

20. Remember it’s going to be big! Work with large images when you design. Blowing up the logo you use on your business cards will look blurry and terrible.

When it’s finished

21. Look at it big. Before you print, get a full-sized mock-up made just to make sure it looks they way you want it to.

22. Have it proofed. The more time you spend looking at something the less likely you are to see its glaring errors. Get some fresh eyes to look it over.

23. Have it made by professional poster printers. Having quality printing is the final touch in producing an effective poster.

About the author

This article is contributed by Whitney Cox. Whitney is a writer and blogger based in Christchurch, New Zealand. She writes on behalf of a number of businesses including Print Monday, an online printing business that print flyers, stationary and specialise in postcard printing.

Get the stock images and vectors you need for your designs on Stutterstock

Want to advertise here ? Contact us

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Weekly Design Inspiration #26

Facebook-Web-Design — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 22:40:40 +0000

This article is part of our “Weekly Design Inspiration” series. We are showcasing once a week cool and inspirational designs submitted that week in the CrazyLeaf Web Gallery. If you think your website belongs here, you can submit it for review (link opens in new window).

Underscore

Taothiep

Think Galapagos

Juan David Perafan

Filippo Valente

Mobily

Quodis

For daily inspiration check out our web gallery.

Get the stock images and vectors you need for your designs on Stutterstock

Want to advertise here ? Contact us

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Weekly Web Design Inspiration #107

Facebook-Web-Design — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 09:09:06 +0000

A showcase of the very best web designs from the last week

Carnivale Du Vin

UW Design Show

Hugo & Marie

Hard Graft

Sunborn

Web Typography For The Lonely

Iconmonstr

Maersk

Yoggrt

Moody International

Jenier

Growcase

Niketo

The Lit Pub

Pucket

If you like this post you may also want to look at:

Weekly Web Design Inspiration #106

Weekly Web Design Inspiration #105

Why not follow me on twitter: @atikusdesign
or to ensure you are updated with every D-Lists posts follow: @d_lists

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This week in Dribbble #4

Facebook-Web-Design — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 09:07:54 +0000

A roundup of the best design inspiration posted on Dribbble this week

Task tracking counter

Video component update

100% Happiness

Facebook app version

Construction

Brazilian flip-flop

Making choices…

Search

Battery stats

Dashboard beta 2

Virgin uploading

Bunker app

Meal invite for iPhone app

Super Action Bros Completed

Ohlando Type Treatments

If you like this post you may also want to look at:

This week in Dribbble #3

This week in Dribbble #2

Why not follow me on twitter: @atikusdesign
or to ensure you are updated with every D-Lists posts follow: @d_lists

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A Showcase Of Illustrative Websites #6

Facebook-Web-Design — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 09:07:20 +0000

A showcase of some beautiful web designs that heavily use illustrations

Get Satisfaction

Resolution Interactive Media

Theo Thermometer

Forgotten Colours

Go Live

Head 2 Heart

Angry Nerds

Imaginamos

App Galaxy

Oobafit

Rays Lab

If you like this post you may also want to look at:A Showcase Of Illustrative Websites #5

A Showcase Of Illustrative Websites #4

Why not follow me on twitter: @atikusdesign
or to ensure you are updated with every D-Lists posts follow: @d_lists

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Weekly Web Design Inspiration #106

Facebook-Web-Design — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 09:06:46 +0000

A showcase of the very best web designs from the last week

Renault

Type Media

Kout

Mario Kart

The Battle Of The Bit

Us Two

Oobafit

The Music Bed

Syropia

Starting Bloc

Design/Array

Badgeville

Foodily

Souljade

If you like this post you may also want to look at:

Weekly Web Design Inspiration #105

Weekly Web Design Inspiration #104

Why not follow me on twitter: @atikusdesign
or to ensure you are updated with every D-Lists posts follow: @d_lists

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High-Quality and Free Design Resource Websites

Facebook-Web-Design — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 09:05:36 +0000

Design Informer is here to inform you of some great high-quality websites that offer some really good design resources. Best of all, these resources are free. Whether you are looking for a button, textures, or other web design elements for your next design, you are sure to find it in one of these websites.
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Design Mistakes

Facebook-Web-Design — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 09:05:29 +0000

I was chatting with my friend Nate Winn last night and he mentioned that the new MacBook Air was awesome. So earlier, I decided to go to the Apple website and check out the laptop, view the specs, etc. As I was looking at the page, I couldn’t help but notice the reflection of the “i7″ graphic. It had the wrong reflection.
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The Best Free Fonts for Designers

Facebook-Web-Design — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 09:05:27 +0000

I’ve been meaning to write this post but just haven’t had the time to do so. I’ve received several messages and emails asking me about fonts that I use on some of my design projects. I have a pretty large font collection. Some of them are paid, but a lot of them are free! First of all, I suggest investing in some of the best typefaces out there but I also suggest that you take advantage of the free resources that can be found online.
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WDL Premium: Real Estate WordPress Theme deCorum

Facebook-Web-Design — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 10:01:23 +0000

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Today for our premium members, we’ve got a new premium WordPress theme from ThemeShift. deCorum is a complex and fully-featured real estate WordPress theme. The minimal style and extensive layout options let you easily change it to your special needs with no coding skills.

If you’re not yet a WDL Premium member, you’re missing out on a great deal. Learn More!.

Also, be sure to check out the other great themes by ThemeShift

Click the image below for a live demo of deCorum.

Key Features

For a full feature list, check out the deCorum product page on ThemeShift.

Layout Options

To best fit your needs deCorum comes with extensive layout options to customize the theme to your needs without touching any code. Take control through widgets and theme options.

jQuery Image Slider

deCorum comes with a home page and a single property jQuery image slider in two layout variants each. There is a full width and a 2/3 width layout with sidebar.

Custom Widgets

To be as flexible as possible I created a useful set of custom widgets for the home page, sidebars and footer to help you present your real estate objects in the most convenient way.

More screen shots

Download deCorum

Premium Member

You must be a WDL Premium member to download this file.

About ThemeShift

Themeshift is a WordPress theme shop operated by Simon Rimkus. His themes are beautifully designed and of the highest quality. You can also follow Themshift on twitter.

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Design Inspiration – Political Pencilheads

Facebook-Web-Design — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 10:00:24 +0000

The Amazing Details

The details on each piece are amazing as shown in the enlarged image below.

The Story

Project : Pencilheads by Cicero Magazine

Get the stock images and vectors you need for your designs on Stutterstock

Want to advertise here ? Contact us

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Must-Learn Photo Manipulation Tutorials You’ll Enjoy Checking Out

Facebook-Web-Design — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 09:46:00 +0000

As requested, here are some of the best photo-manipulation tutorials online. These tutorials are great, not just because the final products are good, but because you can use one or more of the theories you’ll learn from them to create your very own masterpieces. It is not often that you can actually mix and match certain techniques on Photoshop, but we’re pretty sure you’ll find a few here that you can make use of any day.

So here they are, some of the most helpful photo-manipulation tutorials to aid you in learning Photoshop further. Enjoy trying them all out!

How to Create a Steampunk Style Illustration in Photoshop

Make an awesome steampunk photomanipulation in Photoshop. Tutorial by James Davies on PSD Tuts+.

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Money Style Illustration in Photoshop

Create money-styled illustrations out of your own photo. Check out how Fabio Sasso, Abduzeedo’s talented founder, created this illusion in 12 or 13 steps. (The 13th step is optional on your end.)
View Tutorial

Spirit Dove

Manipulate photos to create the illusion of a dove bursting out from a female’s body.
View Tutorial

Painting Liquid Figures

See how Jennifer Cirpici transformed a lady into water in 12 steps.
View Tutorial

Create an Intricate Mythological Statue

Learn how to turn simple photographs of a woman into a stoned angel. Tutorial by Joe Moore.

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Create a Surreal Photo Manipulation

Let your imagination flow. Literally. Learn how Loredana Papp created this illusion.

View Tutorial

The Dancer – Dynamic Liquid Splash Effect

You might have seen this before, but perhaps some of you are still wondering how to make splatters seamlessly connect to other images.

View Tutorial

Trap Your Friends in a Jar Using Photoshop

Trap people inside jars, if at least on a photo. Learn how Scott Pelham did it in 10steps.

View Tutorial

Create a Burning Effect

Create an illusion of burning charcoal in few steps.

View Tutorial

The Fourth Kind

Make a surrealistic scene of men being abducted by UFO’s.

View Tutorial

Photo Manipulate a Falling Angel

Edit stock photos to create a falling angel photo manipulation.

View Tutorial

Create a Divine Angel Montage in Photoshop

Learn how to manipulate stock photos to create an angel.

View Tutorial

Making of a Sexy Humanoid

Learn the basic steps in transforming an ordinary picture of a woman (or a man, if you so prefer) into that of a humanoid.

View Tutorial

Water Effect Photo Montage

Learn another technique in turning man into liquid on Photoshop.

View Tutorial

Checkmate

See how Eric Vasquez created this stylish photo manipulation on Photoshop.

View Tutorial

Create a Cosmic Love Goddess With Photoshop CS5

Find out how to turn raw images into an awesome, surrealistic artwork.

View Tutorial

Create an Incredible Fantasy Photo Manipulation

One of our faves. Learn how this fantasy scene has been created from raw images into such a wonderful piece.

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Design a Spectral Photo Manipulation

Create how to create a seemingly scary but touching scene using Photoshop.

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Creating a Smoke Fading Effect

Create the illusion of images fading into smoke with this easy to follow tutorial.

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Create a Funky Perspective of a Model Riding Digital Volume

Learn how to create the above shown image on Photoshop.

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Grunge Stone Woman Photo Manipulation in Photoshop

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Transforming the Image of a Girl into a Milk Figure

Learn the basic steps of turning any man or woman into a body of milk on Photoshop.

View Tutorial

Creating a Sexy Mechanical Pin-Up Girl

Another beautiful pin-up girl…with a twist. Learn the technique on how to turn anyone into a mechanical figure.

View Tutorial

Create a Face Paint Dripping Effect

Somewhat basic but definitely useful for many design concepts.

View Tutorial

Deserted

Another surrealistic piece. Learn how to create this effect on Photoshop.

View Tutorial

Create a Nebula Cosmolady in Photoshop

Create a wonderful photo montage of a cosmic lady using several stock images in several, fun steps.

View Tutorial

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36 Strong Logo Designs Inspired by Animals

Facebook-Web-Design — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 09:44:38 +0000

Nothing says branding more than your very own logo. Corporations, organizations, groups and teams all have their own emblems, symbolizing the very ideals and vision that they stand up for. From the purely graphic to the wordy, you too can establish your very own brand with your own logo!

Represent and be recognized through these fierce animal-inspired logo designs. In as much as the inspiration for these designs are strong, regal, and the leaders of the pack, then so too are the companies and organizations that they characterize.

Xerxes

Black Sparrow

Mosquito

Church of the Hills

Fox

Istocna Cuda

Cinqleo

Pacific Shore Capital

Serpent Studios

Artopus

Sprintfox

Flamin Fish Taco

Stallion Construction

Hedgehog

Asgardia

Elk

Collaborative Conservation Network

Slugshot

Profis Bud

Fundrival

Red Lions

Ecodeer

Fox Burrow

Fire Officers Association

Powerplant

Silver Squid

Orange Cat

Vangaard

Bison, Vancouver

Flaming Eagles

Humberstone

Tuatara

Unimedia

Ken L Gazelle

Icarus

Taurus

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40 Adorable Digital Paintings of Animals (and Other Cute Creatures)

Facebook-Web-Design — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 09:41:42 +0000

Cuteness can easily disarm even the most heartless of persons…at least sometimes. It can certainly make the more soft-hearted smile broadly at a cute kitteh battling with all his might to conquer a pack of pasta or a strawberry gold fish about to be swallowed whole by a shark. (Wait, that doesn’t sound right, does it?) It is remarkable to see how well cuteness can be rendered through digital paintings and it made it difficult, on our end, not to share. For today, at least, we’ve decided to slim it down to cute and cuddly animals.

So here they are, some of the most adorable digital paintings of animals (and other cute creatures: real, living, or otherwise) that we were able to find. We’re certain that there are lots left out there, but we’re pretty sure these 40 samples will not disappoint. If there are any cute digital art you’ve discovered and want to share, or any awesome stuff you’ve created yourself, feel free to share your links below. After all, we do love hearing from you. No harsh words please. Today, if just for today, we shall settle only for cuteness.

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Programming Blog » Design

This week in Dribbble #5

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Photoshop Layer Styles in CSS3

CSS3 Buttons Experiment

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33 Curious Uses of Periodic Tables – Great Visualizations or Mendeleev’s Worst Nightmare?

33 Curious Uses of Periodic Tables – Great Visualizations or Mendeleev’s Worst Nightmare?

iNoobs: Top 12 Web Design Guidelines (For Print Designers)

Top 12 Web Design Guidelines (For Print Designers)

1) Photoshop

2) Design Resolution/Image Size

3) Background

4) Navigation

5) Fonts

6) Headers/Titles

7) Content

Details

9) Colors/Links

10) Graphics

11) Goals

12) Consistency

iNoobs: Top 12 Web Design Guidelines (For Print Designers)

Top 12 Web Design Guidelines (For Print Designers)

1) Photoshop

2) Design Resolution/Image Size

3) Background

4) Navigation

5) Fonts

6) Headers/Titles

7) Content

Details

9) Colors/Links

10) Graphics

11) Goals

12) Consistency

How to: Create a Dashboard Feed Reader for Your WordPress Theme or Plugin

Understanding Dashboard Widgets

Creating a New Dashboard Widget

Gathering Content From Your RSS Feed

Conclusion

How to: Create a Dashboard Feed Reader for Your WordPress Theme or Plugin

Understanding Dashboard Widgets

Creating a New Dashboard Widget

Gathering Content From Your RSS Feed

Conclusion

10 Colour-Inspired Buildings to Light up Your Day

iNoobs: The DNS Trick EVERY Developer Must Know

Adjusting Your Local DNS File

How to Modify Your Local Host/DNS File