Webdesigner Depot - Archives (juin 2013)

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 [...]

Ampersand 2013 — held today in Brighton, UK — was the third iteration of the popular web typography conference. Describing itself as “an affordable one-day event for knowledgeable web designers and type enthusiasts”, the event is increasing in popularity year on year, and several people I spoke to today felt that this year’s was the [...]

Web designers are expected to be masters of all trades; from responsive websites to email templates, animated banners to WordPress SEO techniques. It’s pretty hard to be great at everything. Take the obligatory Facebook page. It’s impossible for a business to be ‘liked’ without one, but designing something professional for Facebook can be a tough [...]

The days of CS6 are fading into the distance behind us, and Adobe has officially launched the newest version of what has, until now, been called Creative Suite (though from here on out it’s called Creative Cloud). Major updates and new features have been integrated into the newest version of the Creative Cloud apps, including [...]

Today, everyone’s a photographer, grabbing their iPhones for a quick snap. Pictures are posted at a moment’s notice on Facebook and Instagram, so there’s never a void of visuals. Perhaps this image saturation is why surreal photo manipulation is particularly intriguing; smartphone cameras and social networking can’t hold a candle to an artist’s vivid imagination. [...]

In order to deliver a clean, fresh, and — more importantly — effective user interface, usability tests are required. It is very unlikely any designer, regardless of his reputation and skills, will be able to design a good product without doing some kind of research and testing. Usability testing is a technique used for evaluating [...]

Silver Screen Society is a project curated and maintained by graphic designers Trevor Basset and Brandon Schaefer. The idea is to honor the many stories told through the world of cinema by each month featuring a new film and inviting several creatives to create artwork based on their own unique interpretations. Not only is it fascinating to see [...]

We’re all familiar with Adobe Creative Cloud (née Creative Suite). Popular favorites are Photoshop, Dreamweaver and Fireworks. They’re great tools that are extremely powerful, get the job done and help create the best product for designers and consumers. However, Adobe’s switch to a subscription model has infuriated some users; many swearing off the software giant’s [...]

I dare say that many of us are interested in the nuts and bolts of how things work. I know I was fascinated by the exposed interior of my first iMac back in the 00s. I’m not sure I’d go so far as to actually take my computer to pieces though, certainly not if I [...]

I ought to know a lot about charities and non-profit organizations. My parents are career missionaries; and I grew up in an environment where everyone I knew was dedicated to improving the lives of others. My family moved around a bit, and I spent my childhood and teen years in several different missionary communities in [...]

Responsive design is everywhere, and whether you’re using a framework or writing media queries yourself, some elements on your page are bound to move or scale. If your media queries are based on browser dimensions and the browser is resized, then your elements will jump into place. Adding a little animation to those properties is [...]

Stock photo sites are almost always behind any great designer. Good stock photos can do great things for a project, just as bad stock photography can ruin it. Picking the right pics has a lot to do with picking the right site for your stock needs.  There are tons of sites that offer stock photography [...]

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 [...]

One of the biggest problems designing websites in Photoshop is that time-consuming period after your design gets approval, when you have to work through it layer by layer, converting your design to CSS. There was a time when you could just slice the PSD into JPGs and code them into your HTML, but slicing just [...]

The first thing that springs to mind when we think of branding is likely the large, cultivated brand imagery that forms the face of billion-dollar firms such as Apple. The reality is that branding is borne out of any identifying features, and is used to create a persistent identity for products and firms. Wikipedia describes [...]

Got a great idea for a site, but don’t know how to create a WordPress theme? Maybe you’ve already built a site but your client wants a CMS and you’re not sure where to start. Or perhaps you know exactly how to theme WordPress, but you don’t have time to track down what’s causing that [...]

The Everywhere Project is a collaborative project curated by designer and illustrator, Adrian Walsh. It was created as a tribute to the classic folk song “I’ve Been Everywhere” which was written in 1959 by Australian songwriter, Geoff Mack. The original version of the song listed Australian place names but was later adapted to North American [...]

For some web designers, it’s pretty standard practice to place a link back to their own site on the footer of a website designed for a client. Whilst many reputable designers have always avoided it, in the wake of the Panda update, this is something that all really should reconsider. This is because Google may [...]

This set of 25 Colorful Grunge Textures was designed by Florin Gorgan and is perfect for use as overlay textures on your photos. You can see more of Florin’s work in his site or his Etsy shop. For best results, set the texture layer to Soft Light, Overlay, Multiply or Screen, depending on the look you [...]

Somewhere around 18% of the web is powered by WordPress. The humble blogging platform has grown into a web-titan of monster proportions. Substantially fewer sites are hosting on WordPress.com — Automattic’s free, hosted solution for WordPress blogs — but it’s still a very dominant player. Whilst the codebase behind WordPress.com is updated everyday, with bug [...]

Back in January this year jQuery announced a new plugins registry, so now seemed like a great time to write a tutorial combining building a jQuery plugin with my passion – realtime web technologies. Realtime web technologies make it really easy to add live content to previously static web pages. Live content can bring a [...]

Imagine this: you’re sitting at a bus stop, patiently waiting for your ride. Maybe you’re checking Facebook or reading an ebook on your phone, or staring off into space, or mentally reviewing your to-do list. You see movement out of the corner of your eye and glance over at the stop’s integrated advertising. And there [...]

The June edition of what’s new for web designers and developers includes new web apps, JavaScript resources, Photoshop scripts, web development tools, color palette tools, image apps, video resources, coding resources, and some really great new fonts. Many of the resources below are free or very low cost, and are sure to be useful to [...]

The Secret Handshake is a fabulous project, aimed at helping young designers (18–25) find their way into the industry. You should always quantify the advice you take based on who’s giving it to you, and The Secret Handshake — set up by Bright Bright Great — offers advice from some hugely successful industry names, as well professionals who’ve [...]

When I was first introduced to graphic design, I was extremely young and a member of a pretty popular message board. Posters showed respect for other members by presenting them with these things called “sigs” — they were little rectangular graphics that fit in the reserved area for a person’s signature. If you’re familiar with [...]

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 [...]

It was only a matter of time before Apple’s recent updates by hardware design chief Jony Ive became fodder for talented jokesters and spoofers alike. A new Tumblr blog, aptly named Jony Ive Redesigns Things, is a sampling of mockups by web users around the globe of familiar items redone in Ive’s colorful iOS7 motif.  LA-based [...]

Most of the time, the first contact a customer will have with your business is through your website. Consequently, the website could make or break your business. To ensure that the website makes it, having it be both aesthetically pleasing and user friendly is imperative. Look for five main features in a corporate WordPress theme [...]

A good cursive typeface is hard to come by; most have a tendency to look like either a hand-written note from the Marquis de Sade, or a grocery list written in haste by a particularly harassed doctor. Consequently, a script with both clarity and character, suitable for extended use in a project is worth its [...]

Responsive design is a relatively new term in web design. It was only coined three years ago in May of 2010, when web designer Ethan Marcotte used the term in his article for A List Apart. Today, there’s even a mini debate going on regarding whether responsive design is here to stay or whether it’s just a [...]

There has been furious debate in the last twenty four hours on the merits and failings of Apple’s iOS7 update, and the most hotly debated subject is the new icons. They’ve been hailed as a daring, and radical move, and they’ve been condemned as a half-hearted Android rip-off. Apple are hoping that they’ll mark the [...]

Modus Versus is a free multi-purpose PSD template, designed on the 1170 grid system. Excellent for use with responsive frameworks like the popular Twitter Bootstrap, it could form the basis of a good corporate site. Designed by Dimitar Tsankov, aka Outlinez; 12 PSD files are included, fully layered and organized into folders. Unfortunately the stock [...]

A couple of weeks ago the famous Foundation framework released its fourth version. If you have never heard of Foundation we’re going to guide you through using this responsive framework. Since version 3 of Foundation was built from the ground up using SASS — a CSS pre-processor that helps in the writing of more efficient CSS [...]

There were plenty of announcements at yesterday’s Apple WDDC keynote speech: the new Mac Pro; MacBook Airs; and of course, iOS7. But the announcement that seems to be universally well received is the new version of MacOS X, Mavericks. With lots of little tweaks, notably tags and tabs in the finder, improved notifications and updates [...]

If you’re a designer or developer with an idea for a new product or website, the chances are that you will need someone who has the skills that you lack in order to help make it a reality. It’s a problem that we all recognise but one that some appear to have more trouble solving [...]

Over the past few years, soaring mobile usage has sparked an evolution, or perhaps revolution, in the way that we approach delivering content to online users. The ultimate goal is a fluid, mobile and device-agnostic web, and one school of thought has emerged as the widely favoured means to this end: responsive design. However, while [...]

As expected, Apple used today’s keynote presentation at their WWDC (Worldwide Developers Conference) to launch the latest version of their mobile operating system: iOS7. The launch has been greatly anticipated, not least because iOS7 has been completely overhauled by Apple’s design guru Jonathan Ives. Ives’ involvement with Apple has, until now been restricted to hardware [...]

The web’s increasing infatuation with flat design has lead to a rapid rejection of artifice like drop shadows, in favor of a cleaner more shape-based look. But this leaves the designer with a problem: how do you style type to be vibrant whilst adhering to the tenets of flat design? One solution is the renewed [...]

Why are magazines and books always laid out the same? Even with alternative design, there is a harmony in layout or the reader’s head will explode… or they will just stop reading and skip to the next page. Successful design in publishing, advertising, web design, illustration and anything else that ties together elements depends on [...]

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 [...]

While most artists seek to have their work immortalized, 51-year-old Jim Denevan plans for his art to be temporary. His enormous land creations use natural materials like sand, earth and ice, effectually making the landscape itself become the means of his masterpieces. Due to their colossal scope, aerial photography is often employed to appreciate the [...]

I think it’s safe to say that we all love a bit of web nostalgia. Towards the end of last year the Space Jam website — which hasn’t been updated since 1996 — started doing the rounds on Twitter once again and even more recently so did this website from November 1992, which has been widely reported [...]

For this week’s featured deal our sister site, MightyDeals.com, has put together a massive bundle from the team at CrazyPixels; sure to help out any freelancer without the chops or the time to produce the work themselves. Ideal for developers whose clients ask them to dip their toes into the design world, there’s enough here [...]

Cutting a path through the clouds, heading to some far-flung destination; or working through the night to connect national and international business; the way we perceive airlines has barely changed in the past 50 years. And that perception — one of glamour, efficiency, and professionalism — is almost entirely due to clever advertising and careful [...]

 As an amateur designer, there were two things I loved to go to when making pieces: filters and brushes. Filters were just cool and fun to mess around with. Brushes were tons of fun as well, but I would tend to use them as stamps. Nothing really too fancy. They were just quick ways to [...]

The growing dissatisfaction with Adobe’s exodus to the cloud and the accompanying subscription licensing model shows no sign of abating. Thousands of designers have been searching for alternatives to Creative Cloud products, but with Adobe’s near-monopoly on professional grade web design software alternate applications are thin on the ground. The time is right it seems, [...]

The Wander Postcard Project is the brainchild of the team at social media start-up Wander. They asked some of their favourite designers and illustrators to imagine a postcard from everywhere and nowhere at once. There were 58 contributors in total including the likes of Dan Cassaro, Fuzzco, Tim Boelaars and Matt Chase, to name a few. [...]

There’s always that one big problem in art school, where you spot a few fellow students that you know “have it!” They don’t need to learn anything because they came into school with “it.”  Still, they sit there and continue to have their brilliance illuminate the mediocrity that surrounds them. You knew they were destined [...]

In version 2.5 WordPress introduced shortcodes, and all of us have probably used them at one time or another. They usually come bundled with plugins, or even themes, and what they do is watch for when you insert something inside square brackets then replace that with some other content; it could be a simple sentence or it could be [...]

Nostalgia is very common in the world of web design. We see it in varying degrees in vintage and retro styled websites, as well as in small touches on otherwise-modern designs. A lot of designers likely give very little thought to why they might design a site with a nostalgic feel. They simply like the [...]

Today we have a neat giveaway from our friends at Jumpeye which will come in handy for all developers. The Jumpeye framework is a responsive design framework that helps users build websites that look perfect on desktop, tablets and smartphones. By using the included fluid grid system, UI elements and components along with the recently [...]

Web design is a subtle science that is lost to most who are not in the field. The amount of choices that go into building the perfect presentation for the content the client has to offer are so vast, that often the best way to demonstrate the full scope of this spectrum is to showcase [...]

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 [...]

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