Webdesigner Depot - Archives (mai 2013)

It’s fascinating to watch the evolution of a brand. Companies large and small inevitably change their identity over time. Those branding changes can be inspired by changes of personnel, changes in the cultural landscape, evolution of competitors, and most commonly a change in the company’s focus. This great infographic from the thelogocompany.net illustrates the evolution of [...]

After a few years (or even months) of designing and developing WordPress themes, especially for clients, you start to realize that a lot of the functionality can be standardized or distilled down into a “starter theme or kit”. This helps get the development process started and moving along apace. The best first step in doing [...]

The Android User Experience Team have published their own design principles for delivering a world-class user experience. Their 17 key points are divided into three categories: enchant, simplify and amaze. The team reports that the guidelines were developed as an internal process to help them keep users’ best interests at the heart of their process. Their [...]

You’ll find enough great deals on our sister site MightyDeals.com to keep you busy for weeks at a time, but even so, very few of them are able to live up to the incredible money-off awesomeness of the Mega Design Bundle, back right now by popular demand. The sensational 95% discount means you’ll save over $1000 on [...]

The last two articles have dealt with black and gray hat techniques employed by some search engine optimization specialists, and how these can affect rankings in Google. This time we’ll be examining white hat techniques and why they are the safest and most ‘ethical’ methods to use. White hat describes techniques used for SEO which [...]

Everywhere you go online you see lots of tweets, Facebook posts, and Google+ updates: the social networking noise can sometimes be overwhelming. All marketers have been taught that content is king, and other variations of this statement, but no one could have imagined how much content we would produce on social media these days.  Think [...]

In the first part of this article about CoffeeScript, you saw its basic capabilities; but let’s be honest, most of the time we use the jQuery library to help us write our JavaScript and what I showed you in the first part was just vanilla JavaScript. In this part we will join CoffeeScript, LocalStorage and [...]

The last great bastion of skeuomorphic design, Apple Inc., is rumored to be completely revamping its mobile OS, ahead of a relaunch at the Apple WDDC on June 10th. Speculation is that the next version of iOS, which powers Apple’s mobile devices, will both adopt a predominantly monotone look and abandon the textures associated with [...]

Pulling a peanut butter and jelly, or ham and cheese on rye out of your lunchbox every day can get boring pretty quickly, but Evan and Kenny LaFerriere don’t have that common school-kid problem. Their dad, Massachusetts-based graphic designer David LaFerriere, has been illustrating their sandwich bags with colored Sharpies nearly every day since 2008. [...]

I browse the internet everyday, on multiple devices. I use my Macbook Pro, iMac, PC, iPad, iPhone and yes even my television. So it really bothers me when I see websites that aren’t optimized for larger screen resolutions, or that take two minutes to load on my mobile device. We’ve all embraced the concept of [...]

Sometimes you need a fully-fledged CMS; something that lets you create any kind of website you want to create, with tons of bells and whistles. But other times you want a simple, elegant blogging platform. One that’s open source. And maybe even fun to use. Ghost is a new blogging platform from John O’Nolan and [...]

On May 6th Adobe announced its latest updates to its creative software. Some of these updates have big implications on how users work with their tools. In this article, I’d like to review what Adobe has changed in Illustrator and specifically how it impacts web designers. Of course there are a several new features, like [...]

Every week we tweet a lot of interesting stuff highlighting great content that we find on the web that can be of interest to web designers. The best way to keep track of our tweets is simply to follow us on Twitter, however, in case you missed some here’s a quick and useful compilation of [...]

Every week we feature a set of comics created exclusively for WDD. The content revolves around web design, blogging and funny situations that we encounter in our daily lives as designers. These great cartoons are created by Jerry King, an award-winning cartoonist who’s one of the most published, prolific and versatile cartoonists in the world [...]

Coloradore is the side project of graphic designer Anna Kövecses in which her aim is to create a collection of interesting color palettes that take the form of simple, quirky poster designs. Alongside each poster that Anna creates is a key that lists the hex code for each of the colors used in the design. The [...]

Adobe has been rolling out some major changes and updates to Creative Cloud. While the new subscription-only model and individual product updates have gotten most of the attention, the new social and networking aspects built directly into CC have the potential to be hugely important to the creative community. When Adobe purchased Behance a few [...]

Most sites have too much information; users are overwhelmed as CEOs wax lyrical on everything from their favorite charity to the dimensions of their first office. In today’s increasingly information-saturated world, what studies find users often prefer is a simple, straight-to-the point, presentation of key facts. One of the best ways to deliver that is [...]

Trends start everyday: an idea is adopted, passed on and before you know it it’s being discussed on design blogs. However, most trends vanish as quickly as they appeared. To paraphrase Andy Warhol, everything will be trendy for 15 minutes. Once in a while, an idea is found to have something so fundamental about it that [...]

While fine art is a subjective field, graphic design is more formulaic in its fundamentals. An effective design should make people feel a certain way and take a certain action. In this article I’d like to share Gravity Switch’s web design principles and our thinking behind them. Those rules are: define goals first; focus on [...]

As so much of the content available on the web is text it’s essential for web designers to understand the basic principles of good typography. Having such knowledge allows designers to communicate more effectively, enabling them to create better designs and websites that are easier to use. For more experienced designers setting text may come [...]

I’m a lucky person. Every day I get to do what I love, which is helping clients work out what their web project is going to look like. As any good account handler or project manager will tell you, their primary role is to make sure that a project goes as smoothly as possible. This [...]

Film studios spend millions of dollars to create stunning epic masterpieces like The Lord of the Rings. But sometimes visual perfection can be created on a shoestring — that is, when enough time, energy and sacrifice are the alternate currency. British photographer Kirsty Mitchell has done just that, creating a fantastical, fairytale-esque series of photos [...]

Let’s face it, JavaScript hasn’t always had the best reputation among developers, and since the foundation of CoffeeScript back in 2009 this little language has taken the world of JavaScript developers by storm; mainly because it overcomes what some may say is the worst aspect of JavaScript: the syntax of its code. Even though this is a [...]

The Phraseology Project was originally setup by Drew Melton as a way for him to hone his typography skills. The idea is that people submit words or phrases and Drew, or a guest contributor, creates a typographic treatment of the submissions. The list of contributors include designers such as Ray Brown, Luke Ritchie, Simon Ålander and Joshua Bullock, all [...]

Recently, Condé Nast Digital undertook a complete redesign of the articles published on wired.co.uk. The aim was to provide a more content-first and immersive experience. These aims were established after research by our Information Architect. We started on the path of fulfilling those aims over a year ago with the redesign of the GQ.co.uk articles [...]

Every week we tweet a lot of interesting stuff highlighting great content that we find on the web that can be of interest to web designers. The best way to keep track of our tweets is simply to follow us on Twitter, however, in case you missed some here’s a quick and useful compilation of [...]

Every week we feature a set of comics created exclusively for WDD. The content revolves around web design, blogging and funny situations that we encounter in our daily lives as designers. These great cartoons are created by Jerry King, an award-winning cartoonist who’s one of the most published, prolific and versatile cartoonists in the world [...]

Hidden away in the depths of the CSS specification you’ll find CSS counters. As the name suggests they allows you to count a thing on your page with CSS incrementing the value every time it appears on the document. This is principally useful if you have a tutorial website — whether that be about cooking [...]

As I grew up, being a “creative child,” which was the description my school psychologist used to explain why I didn’t care for school or the usual subjects like math and why I wasn’t like the other children, my mother would get frustrated and call me “bull-headed, just like your great grandfather!” There was little [...]

Almost every business has a web presence these days; from single page ‘business card’ style sites, to million+ product e-commerce hubs, owning a website is as universal as taxes. Of course, there are new startups, but even in those cases entrepreneurs tend to have bought a domain name, or thrown up a template. It’s no [...]

In the last post, we took an in-depth look at Google’s Panda and Penguin updates and how they have impacted on search rankings for businesses. Whilst we established that using black hat SEO techniques is likely to result in a site becoming penalized, we didn’t look at what’s known as gray hat SEO. Gray hat [...]

In part one, we touched on how to harness the power of display: flex in your website layouts, and how versatile this new layout concept has proven to be. With those thoughts from the previous video kept in mind, we can now adapt the process and use it as part of a responsive design. Responsive [...]

The side project series is a series of posts in which we’ll be taking a look at the best of designers’ side projects. To get things started, this week we’re going to be looking at Type Fight, a side project by designers Drew Roper, Ryan Paule and Bryan Butler. Type Fight plays host to weekly [...]

The May edition of what’s new for web designers and developers includes new web apps, jQuery plugins and JavaScript resources, educational resources, wireframing kits, image tools, Photoshop extensions, web development tools, coding resources, and some really great new fonts. Many of the resources below are free or very low cost, and are sure to be [...]

Last week, Adobe announced that there will be no further development of their Fireworks application. Security updates will be provided and bug fixes may arrive, but for all intents and purposes Fireworks CS6 is a dead man walking. The petitions for clemency have already begun, but it seems likely that at some point Adobe’s CEO [...]

It’s all about presentation. Ideas and concepts are great, but mean nothing if they cannot be properly communicated. To help others understand them, we may create prototypes or sketch out an idea to get to a meeting of the minds. Fortunately, in graphic design, we do that by creating mock-ups. Most times when we create [...]

Every week we tweet a lot of interesting stuff highlighting great content that we find on the web that can be of interest to web designers. The best way to keep track of our tweets is simply to follow us on Twitter, however, in case you missed some here’s a quick and useful compilation of [...]

Every week we feature a set of comics created exclusively for WDD. The content revolves around web design, blogging and funny situations that we encounter in our daily lives as designers. These great cartoons are created by Jerry King, an award-winning cartoonist who’s one of the most published, prolific and versatile cartoonists in the world [...]

Adobe has just announced that Creative Suite will cease to exist after CS6 (in name at least), and be replaced exclusively by Creative Cloud. On its most basic level, that means there won’t be perpetual licenses for future Adobe products (though, for now, you’ll still be able to buy CS6 in that format) and instead [...]

SEO has always been a tricky business, not only do experts have to spend time on researching keywords and following the best practices, they have to be prepared for the changes which search engines inevitably put into place. Last year saw search giant Google make two major algorithm updates — Panda and Penguin — that saw many [...]

The most popular CMS out there, WordPress has a ton of great features; probably the best of which is its extensibility. Taking advantage of that Lizatom Shortcodes provides literally thousands of shortcodes and countless shortcode combinations, to give you a simple, easy to implement solution for improving your site’s design. Consequently, we’re delighted to say [...]

It’s been said that the only thing constant is change; and in the world of advertising, this saying is especially true. For years, successful “Mad Men” merged art with copy, effectively defining the creative team and reaping great rewards. Fast forward to today, where digital advertising is increasingly omnipresent, and one thing becomes clear: the [...]

One of the most important tasks on your plate as a web designer is usability. Usability is defined as a gauge of the quality of the user’s experience when interacting with your website. Any website you design should always be seamless from the standpoint of the user. They should find your site easy to navigate [...]

With every new revision of CSS, a plethora of new, exciting attributes come to light;  one of which being the understated display: flex approach. The flexbox layout model has been floating around the web for a little while now, each time with its own variation on the approach (some outdated, such as the display: box [...]

The most frustrating aspect of web design for designers trained for print, is the persistent lack of typographic control. Careful typographic choices are the hallmark of quality work and the lack of that quality online never ceases to be jarring for those of us that know what we’re looking for. Fortunately, the level of control [...]

Every time we begin a web design project, we do research. We research our clients, their customers, the website’s target audience, and the competition. Throughout our careers, we research new trends, techniques, tools, and other designers. We’re always on the lookout for that one new thing which will make us better at what we do, [...]

I’ve always had trouble getting large groups of shapes from Illustrator over to Photoshop without rasterizing them all in the process. Up until recently the only way I knew how was to copy and paste each shape one by one – a process which soon becomes tedious. However, recently I discovered a method which takes [...]

I first took notice of flat color web design when Google started to redesign their sites. This was during a time when gradients and drop shadows were all the rage. In using what was then Google Docs and my Google Calendar, I always realized there was something better and more user friendly about these sites [...]

Every week we tweet a lot of interesting stuff highlighting great content that we find on the web that can be of interest to web designers. The best way to keep track of our tweets is simply to follow us on Twitter, however, in case you missed some here’s a quick and useful compilation of [...]

Every week we feature a set of comics created exclusively for WDD. The content revolves around web design, blogging and funny situations that we encounter in our daily lives as designers. These great cartoons are created by Jerry King, an award-winning cartoonist who’s one of the most published, prolific and versatile cartoonists in the world [...]

Lovers of abstract art are undoubtedly familiar with the superlative Wassily Kandinsky — the Russian-born painter, printmaker, and theorist who was recognized as having painted the first purely abstract compositions in modern art history. As a tribute to the pioneering expressionist, Turkish graphic designer Sinan Buyukbas has created a series of stunning 3D typographic art — aptly [...]

I’m thrilled to officially announce that CodeVisually.com has been recently acquired by Webdesigner Depot and is now part of our growing family of sites. If you don’t know the site yet, Code Visually offers a simple way to discover the latest web development resources and tools out there. We cover CSS, Javascript, HTML, PHP, frameworks, [...]

It’s rare that you find a typeface with both legibility and character; the latter often obscures the former. So you’d be wise to take advantage of our sister site MightyDeal.com’s current offer on the beautiful Solomon font family. The family includes 2 different styles in 6 weights, 12 fonts in total. The first style is [...]

It’s billed as the battle of the century, at least as far as app developers are concerned; which has better ROI, Apple’s iOS or Google’s Android? Consumers are split: Apple have the single largest market share, Google have numerous manufacturers on their side; iOS dominates North America, Android wins out in Europe. If you’re targeting [...]

We’ve talked about ‘Contact’ pages. We’ve talked about the ‘About’ page. You know what to put on these pages because, hopefully, you’ve thought long and hard about it. And you know exactly what to put on the inside pages, because you have your content for those as well. You think you’ve got it all covered, [...]

There’s an expression in advertising that goes “I know that 80% of my advertising isn’t working. I just don’t know which 80%”. The same logic applies to all forms of design, including web design. If only we knew which part of our page content, layouts and workflows were not working as well as they should, wouldn’t [...]

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