Webdesigner Depot - Archives (juillet 2013)
eb Design Resources for Web Designers. We include Photoshop Tutorials, WordPress Plugins, and Web Development tools. Download free icons, Photoshop brushes and tools for web and graphic designers.
A few weeks ago Alex Cornell, posted what he describes as “The Worst Portfolio Ever” a page of clichés, overused trends and boring copy. His motivation was presumably to educate the masses as to how a portfolio should look. Cornell’s amusing spoof features such gems as the obligatory “road to nowhere” photograph, pretentious biography and a [...]
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“Stop resizing that browser, you’re gonna wear it out!” How many times have you heard that one? Well okay, maybe not so many times, but if you develop responsive design web sites, you know what I’m talking about: with every DOM or CSS edit you’re dragging that browser edge back and forth, testing your changes [...]
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While airline travel in recent years has become a mundane exercise in getting from point A to B, it was merely a few decades ago that flying the friendly skies was full of glamour and prestige. It’s little wonder, then, that today’s functional baggage tags look nothing like they did in the 1950s — in [...]
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Microlancer is a brand new site from the Envato network, designed to simplify outsourcing small design jobs. Everything from websites to logos can be ordered from professional suppliers worldwide. Freelancers who would like to offer services can sign up and start offering services immediately. Microlancer is designed to speed up the process of outsourcing design projects [...]
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As designers part of our job is keeping up to date with what’s happening in the industry, one aspect of which involves keeping an eye on the latest trends. Although it should be noted that ‘keeping an eye on’ and ‘being part of’ are two very different things. The popularity of things like Dribbble rebounds just [...]
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One of the things about advancements online is the ability for us to learn. We’re able to not only be easily connected to our colleges and universities, but we have the ability to get our degrees, diplomas and certificates online. It’s convenient and also helps those who have been desiring education to get it. There [...]
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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 [...]
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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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Button states saved as images and toggled by CSS are so out of date it’s painful. We should all be using CSS3 to create buttons. We all know why: they’re easily editable, cross-platform, lightweight, accessible; the list of benefits is endless. What’s not always so easy is coding them up. Sure you can use a framework, [...]
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Do you cringe at the mention of a “brief”? It’s just a document for clients and “suits,” right? Wrong! A brief has the potential to be the single biggest factor to determine your profit margin, which means you should care about them. Creating a great design brief takes extra effort and time, yet a tight [...]
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The web is full of advice on different aspects of UI design, but what no one ever seems to offer is a complete start to finish, blank page to finished app, step by step guide. Until now of course, because our sister-site, MightyDeals.com, has set up a sensational 54% discount on Sacha Greif’s ‘Step by [...]
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For years developers have been taking advantage of PHP frameworks like CakePHP, CodeIgniter and even Ruby frameworks based on the MVC pattern. But if you think about it, there haven’t been a lot of JavaScript frameworks to help us out in the same way. Perhaps it’s because JavaScript is often looked down on by ‘real’ [...]
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We all love a good satire. It’s one of the highest forms of political wit and frequently bites at targets that would otherwise be unassailable. Case in point: Maentis’ Universal Unbranding project, an amusing reworking of famous logos and emblems. Of course, it’s pretty hard to find a satirical logo collection that doesn’t feature an [...]
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Creating a brand is a tough task. There’s a lot of work and research that goes into it, and even more time that’s required. With building a brand, you also have to be very aware of the fine line there is with creating a gimmick or joke, as those don’t tend to have lots of [...]
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This lovingly honed set, of 200 vector icons is fantastic for use on all manner of sites. With subjects ranging from science to entertaining, the vast scope of the icons means that you’re bound to find something useful. There are some really charming details that you don’t often find in free icon sets: there’s a [...]
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The Dead Words is a project created and curated by graphic designer Karen To. The idea behind the project is to rediscover dead words — words which were once part of our language but have now been omitted from the English dictionary — through the art of lettering. What’s interesting about this project is that [...]
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It’s no secret that designers must start designing for mobile. With more and more people starting to browse the web from their phones, web designers have to get hip to making sites good and viewable on smartphones. It’s imperative because we’re not just taking a look online, but we as consumers are beginning to purchase, [...]
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If the recent flat design trend has demonstrated anything, it’s how incredibly limited web designers are when it comes to composition. Now that we’re no longer distracted by bevels, gradients and gloss it’s clear that web designers have one structure to build their designs around: rectangles. There are of course as many ways of composing [...]
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The web is full of people discussing the finer points of the design field. Many who are focused on figuring out exactly what design is, and even what design isn’t. Many points have been made, and just about as many have been contested. This is a good thing. The more we dissect and explore the [...]
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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 [...]
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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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Everyone loves a good WordPress theme. Whether you use it straight out of the box, or as a starting point for your own design, themes are a great way of achieving results quickly and on a budget. And of course, it’s even easier to stick to a budget when the theme in question is free! [...]
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If you have one workhorse display font that you rely on again and again, make sure it’s a slab-serif. In recent times slab-serifs have become understandably popular; they’ve been used at display sizes for decades and their relatively small stroke contrast means they deliver wonderful legibility on screens. One of the best new slab-serifs we’ve [...]
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All over the web, sites are springing up, that use what is known as a parallax scroll. In essence, a parallax scroll is when content scrolls at different speeds, creating a sense of perspective and therefore depth. It’s an appealing effect, and can be applied to as many layers as you like. In this article [...]
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Google Fonts are a tremendous addition to any designer’s arsenal, providing a basic library of typefaces that cover most requirements. But if you’ve ever tried to add them to a WordPress theme you’ll know what kind of hacking is involved. Fortunately, web designer Eric Alli has recognized the issue and released a great plugin for WordPress [...]
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Let’s start with an observation: I love me some frameworks. As an alternative to completely reinventing the wheel, or styling a button from scratch, again, it’s hard to beat having an all-in-one solution to your basic HTML/CSS/JavaScript needs. The problem is, well, it’s what I said right up there. Frameworks really aren’t an all-in-one solution [...]
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Business can be a lot like an Olympic race; being world class isn’t good enough, to be successful you have to out-perform your competitors. Nowhere is that more true than search engine optimization, when results are quite literally about your position in a league table. You simply cannot win by focusing exclusively on your own [...]
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One of the biggest trends right now is animation. It’s smaller than video, more engaging than still images, and the range of talent worldwide seems to grow daily. Just a couple of years ago, web animation meant Flash, and when Flash lost credibility animation fell alongside it. That’s no longer the case, now when we [...]
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The July edition of what’s new for web designers and developers includes new web apps, JavaScript resources, iOS 7 development tools, responsive design tools and frameworks, icons, e-commerce solutions, image apps, coding resources, and some really great new fonts. Many of the resources below are free or very low cost, and are sure to be [...]
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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 [...]
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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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By this time, I can assume you’ve formed some type of opinion of the iPhone’s newest operating system. Some love it, lots (of designers) hate it, but either way, I’m sure you have an opinion about it. The design community seems to have a pretty unanimous opinion that the new look of iOS7 is a [...]
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We’re all looking for ways to insert some cool into our designs, and you’d have to go some way to be cooler than this week’s deal from our sister-site MightyDeals.com; a great vintage typeface from Yellow design studio. The Veneer font is a lovingly rendered, all-caps, typeface with multiple distress options. It’s ideal for inserting [...]
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There’s been a lot of talk about iOS 7 since its unveiling earlier this month and most of it has been centered around the design, in particular the new icons. Now, as we’ve all had time to mull over the changes, questions are beginning to be asked about how they will affect the design of our [...]
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Bootstrap is by no means the only HTML/CSS interface framework out there, but I think it’s safe to say that it changed the game. This kitchen-sink-included pile of code has made the design and development of many an app (and website) a lot easier, and popularized the massive HTML framework as a byproduct. Sadly, the [...]
Flat design is all the rage, and trend-conscious clients are beginning to ask for redesigns to meet the current fad for all things flat. Most commentators agree that ultimately, flat design will soften into something flatter than skeuomorphism, but less extreme than that which the current crop of flat-evangelists propose. One of the simplest ways to [...]
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Every great designer knows that the wrong font can totally change the direction of a project. It’s why we use Helvetica instead of Comic Sans and why we should stop using fonts like Lobster (yea…I said it!). Designers just have to know fonts. Choosing the right font is a task. If you choose something too [...]
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An Australian entrepreneur, usually known for his restaurants, has stunned the design world by creating a ligature to replace the word ‘the’. It could be a prank until you hear that Paul Mathis estimates spending anywhere between $34,000 and $68,000 USD developing his symbol, leaving a shocked design world asking, ‘How on earth did he [...]
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If done correctly, minimalist design is one of the best and most effective approaches to creating beautiful websites. Not only is the target audience subjected to less clutter and noise, but you can use colors, textures, and fonts to create a very simple yet very memorable experience for the person viewing your site. Of course, [...]
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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 [...]
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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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One of the best ways of adding personality to a website is with a typeface; and when you’re looking for a touch of luxury, one of the best solutions is a script. Unfortunately, most scripts are based on handwriting, which makes them largely illegible. An affordable script font with good readability is worth its weight [...]
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With the increasingly geometric nature of website design, especially now that flat-design is all the rage, it’s refreshing to see sites that replace the mechanical with an organic feeling alternative. This charming set of 46 hand-drawn frame and ribbon vectors, by Frisk Web is a case in point. And we’re delighted to be able to [...]
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As a freelance web designer and developer I have become accustomed to working in a specific order from start to finish on a typical client’s website. My typical workflow starts with programming/sketching which then leads to development and revisions all with constant contact with the client along the way. When I was asked about developing [...]
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In 2011, the movie industry made a whopping $87 billion worldwide. With that much cash up for grabs, film studios and corner-office execs are all clamoring for their piece of the pie; and that means branding and marketing a given release is anything but child’s play. It’s interesting, then, that one approach to attracting film-goers [...]
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This set of 12 flat SEO icons is perfect for adding a light-hearted and playful tone to sites. The flat aesthetic is set off beautifully by the modern color palette and the addition of the long shadow technique is a sophisticated touch. Playful and approachable, the icons are useful for a number of different industries: [...]
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User experience is greatly important in the development of a website these days. A great user experience makes sure someone visit your site and enjoy every portion of it. User experience also makes sure you can maneuver around a site and find everything you’re looking for. Think about how you like the experience you partake [...]
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Webfonts have been revolutionary on the web; they’ve changed the appearance of websites in a way that arguably no other web technology has. Yes, it’s true that many webfonts aren’t hinted correctly for Windows; yes, it’s also true that many haven’t been drawn for the screen; yes, it’s also true that matching available webfonts to [...]
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The introduction of Windows 8 saw a massive overhaul of the Windows user interface in line with the Windows Phone interface in order to be more intuitive for people using touch screens, and Apple have subtly been adapting OSX over time, streamlining features that are becoming increasingly shared across their mobile and desktop operating systems. [...]
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Whilst many designers embrace flat design wholeheartedly, it seems a growing number have already tired of its charms and are casting around for the next big thing. One contender, being championed by some, is “long shadow” design. Long shadow design produces an effect like looking at an object late on a Winter’s day, when the [...]
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There are tons of blogs, tutorial sites, and other resources out there that can teach you about web design and development. But what if you want something a little bit more formal, without actually having to go back to school? That’s where resources like the ones below can come in handy. These sites offer courses [...]
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