Webdesigner Depot - Archives (aout 2013)

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 [...]

Advertisers on Facebook will shortly be getting some new options for sprucing up their ads with high-quality stock photographs from Shutterstock. All of Facebook’s more than 1 million active advertisers will get integrated access to millions of photos and illustrations (over 25 million, to be exact) for use in their Facebook ads. Facebook advertisers will be [...]

When it comes to stock elements, you can’t have to many. Sure, it’s possible that you’ll collect more than you can use in a single career, but the important thing is to have a good body to choose from; you never know when that obscure vector illustration of a cactus may come in handy. Of [...]

Every now and again I come across a talk that I find to be truly inspiring or informative. Over the years I’ve made sure to bookmark these talks for later reference and now, after recently revisiting my collection, I thought it would be a good time to share those that I believe all creatives should [...]

Dreamweaver has long been a curious beast, loved and loathed in equal measure. For many it is the very best WYSIWYG editor available, for others it is still just a WYSIWYG. Most developers have a passing infatuation with Dreamweaver before taking a look at the source code and realizing they could do a much better [...]

Responsive web design is the buzzword of the decade already, and is ideal for the multi-screen connected world that we live in. However, the trade-off for this is in performance due to larger file sizes. This has prompted some experts to say that, like the early days of Flash, responsive design is something that we [...]

Fifty years ago today, one of the greatest orators of modern times delivered his most impassioned plea. At the march on Washington, August 28th 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. made his famous “I Have a Dream” speech. Rev. King spoke of his vision for an America in which all men, black and white, were [...]

No matter your area of expertise, chances are you’ve worked with photographs. Web and print designers alike are no strangers to the magnificence that can be captured in photos. It’s what we build our designs on top of and with, whether they’re the focus or just a background piece. And as the time passes and [...]

Dribbble doesn’t have an official app and that can sometimes be a bummer. Sometimes you’re away from the computer and would like to flip through some shots to get some quick inspiration. For those that love the natural, original feel of Dribbble, they fortunately have a responsive site that can be seen on mobile phones. [...]

Designers often find themselves in a chicken-egg situation when it comes to content: you need the content to design, but the client wants to write content for finished designs. This is where placeholder text comes in. Since the 1500s the role of placeholder text has been played by a passage from Cicero’s — yes, he [...]

When it comes to styling webpages, nothing’s as tricky as forms. And when it comes to styling forms — almost — nothing’s as tricky as the <select> input. We can style a <select> with CSS, but there are big limitations on how much we can achieve with CSS alone. Often, the only viable option is [...]

There’s a good chance you’re intimately acquainted with the work of Steve Matteson, it’s probably right in front of you for much of the day. Arguably one of the most influential designers of the 21st century; his most famous achievement is the acclaimed Open Sans, originally designed as Google’s corporate face it’s now also the chosen [...]

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 [...]

Smashing Magazine is one of the premium sources for learning the principles of web design. Their articles and eBooks cover everything you need to know to get started on the web. Incredibly, you can now get the full library of eBooks — that’s more than 60 titles — and a whole year of free updates [...]

Mocking up a product online can be difficult. Leave it floating in space and it looks wrong. But then, Photoshop it onto a desk or a work surface and you risk overpowering the product; or worse, making the image appear deceptive. Designers with lightbox facilities in their office have nothing to worry about, but for anyone [...]

Finding the right elements for a project can significantly improve the quality of the final product, especially if your deadline’s too tight to build these things yourself. Quality is essential if you’re to maintain a professional finish. Fortunately the quality of the resources available to us continues to rise and premium standard resources are everywhere. [...]

It’s amazing how far we’ve come in the last 15 years; the web has developed at a rate it took print 150 years or more, to match. What’s exciting is that we’re still going, still exploring, still innovating. As designer’s we’re used to designing brochure sites, but increasingly we’re designing application interfaces. As technology keeps [...]

Establishing an online presence is absolutely essential in this digital day and age, more so if your profession lies within a creative industry. However, we’ve all heard of how well-shod cobblers children are; it can be hard to focus on your own site when you’re getting stuck into client work. All too often creating a [...]

Personal projects allow us the freedom to work on whatever we want, to experiment or to try something new. With no client demands and no set deadlines, the direction and final outcome is entirely down to you. In essence, personal projects give you the opportunity to do exactly the sort of work that you want [...]

When developers build websites, they often focus on the layout and technical features but neglect one very important aspect — how the user experiences the site. If users have a hard time figuring out how to accomplish their goals, they will look elsewhere and not come back. A pleasant user experience, on the other hand, [...]

Looking for long shadow style icons? Good, then you came to the right place! Flat design has been continuing virtually unchallenged for some time now, and it’s started to develop sub-styles. One of the most popular new trends is long shadow design, and you’d have to have been living under a rock not to have [...]

The power of a good visual isn’t just a scientifically well-documented phenomenon; it’s the whole reason our industry exists. Indeed, our existence as a species is largely defined by our sense of sight. What we see, and how we interpret the things that we see, is a major factor in determining our actions and thus, [...]

As designers we seem to have lost our courage, churning out identical brand ‘solutions’, posting Dribbble shots of the same regurgitated formula. Perhaps it’s the lack of control on the web. Perhaps it’s the increasing need for an international outlook, and the consequential safety offered by Helvetica. Perhaps it’s the diminishing respect designers receive from [...]

When you think of minimalism in design, whitespace usually comes to mind. When the designer is strips a piece down to its bare essentials, and opts for less ornamentation and more core, one tends to see the amount of whitespace rise and become a prominent element in the design. But what happens when they take [...]

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 [...]

When it comes to presenting screenshots of your work the most obvious choice would be to use a straightforward screen-grab. Today, however, we’re going to look at some alternative methods and discuss how they might be able to make your screenshots that little more interesting. Not only that, but we’re also going to provide you [...]

I’m sure you’ve heard of personas and scenarios, but let’s start with a quick explanation of how they are useful in the design process: A persona is an elementary tool of usability and user experience design and describes a typical member of your target audience. Although a persona is a fictional representation of a user, [...]

Tired of the same old flat design? Everywhere you look there are people offering up flat icons; some are fabulous, but far too many are derivative. Occasionally you come across a set of icons that tries to push the boundaries of the established flat design mold. Case in point: the 30 flat shopping featured here [...]

Hands down the most frustrating task in Photoshop is cutting out hair, especially when the background’s busy. For some reason it’s almost impossible to isolate hair strands convincingly and your image always looks faked. The same applies to foliage, clouds, and just about anything that isn’t a solid shape. There really isn’t a solution, other [...]

There are three things every creative yearns to hear: “we pay the total up front,” “our staff is ready to sexually reproduce with you at your request,” and “be as creative as you want.”  The first will never happen, the second only happened to me when I was in Sweden, and the third happens, but [...]

The August edition of what’s new for web designers and developers includes new web apps, jQuery resources, web development tools, responsive design tools, color 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 a lot of designers [...]

Typography is a subject of two extremes: you love it, or you hate it. Designers who love typography revel in all manner of archaic terminology like kerning, lining figures and ligatures. Designers who hate typography don’t know what any of that means. It seems inconceivable to many designers that in their midst are colleagues whose approach [...]

One of the key concepts in any responsive design is the change of viewport size. That’s because mobile viewports vary greatly from desktop viewports. To control the viewport size we traditionally use the viewport meta tag. However, the viewport meta tag, like all the worst browser developments of the last forever, isn’t W3C valid. It [...]

For me, working with startups has been a huge learning experience. Over the last two and a half years I’ve experienced working both in-house and as a consultant for two startups, as well as recently agreeing to provide my services to a third. I’m still very much in the early stages of my journey but [...]

The inspiration for Apple’s color scheme in the iOS7 beta design has been a jealously guarded secret for months. Jony Ive, known for his rational, logical approach to design doesn’t pull things like colors out of his hat. Where then, can Apple’s design guru have drawn inspiration for the iOS7 color scheme from? And why, [...]

For a long time JavaScript functions have existed that allow us to create drag and drop interfaces, but none of these implementations were native to the browser. In HTML5, we have a native method of creating drag and drop interfaces (with a little help from JavaScript). I’m going to let you in on how to [...]

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 [...]

Give your flat design a boost with this Flattastic UI kit, designed by Vlade Dimovski, free to download and simple to use. The PSD is properly layered, with intuitive naming, making modifying it for your own projects a synch. The design features four pairs of complimentary colors perfect for any flat design: bittersweet, which is [...]

Over the past few days, I have taken a crash course in coding and am actually learning how to do it. Now, don’t everyone applaud me — I’ve always been extremely transparent and forthright in my lack of knowledge and desire to code. Now, as I’m actually starting to put things together, I’m wondering how much [...]

With the amazing apps available for Mac these days, Windows users must get sick of hearing about “the latest must-have app” that they can’t use. Fortunately there are still a few gems available, designed and build exclusively for Windows, to make Mac users jealous. One of them is the great cross-browser testing application BrowseEmAll. BrowseEmAll [...]

For years, I’ve continuously read how print is a dying industry and how print designers are in danger. It’s hard to argue, when many big name newspapers and magazines of the past see more readership online than in print. It’s even harder when many of these magazines and newspapers cease printing altogether to go full-blown [...]

For the average user there’s little difference between products offered by Yahoo! and by market leader Google. Yahoo!’s position is largely dictated by brand; or rather by Google’s superior brand. There has long been debate over Yahoo!’s identity. Long before Marissa Mayer moved into the big office, questions were asked about the longevity of Yahoo!’s [...]

Cloud computing is one of the buzzwords in the web design and computing industry that seems to have a very simple definition, but a myriad of uses. It is a phrase used to define the use of the internet and remote servers to store and manage data. A popular example is Google Docs. You can [...]

Every time we use CSS, we use selectors. But despite this, CSS selectors are one of the more neglected parts of the specification. We talk about the big transformations in CSS3 but all too often forget the basics. Good use of selectors makes our day-to-day coding simpler and more elegant. Today I’m going to cover [...]

The flat design juggernaut continues to roll on, crushing everything in its path. With an emphasis on simplicity, it’s easy to manage basic design principles when you’re working flat. Essential to any flat design is a consistent set of icons, so we’re delighted to be able to bring you this free set of 48 office, [...]

Patterns have graced our designs for thousands of years. The texture, color and life added by patterns have enhanced design the world over. The love of pattern reached new heights with the advert of the web and our ability to easily tile graphics. And adding pattern to your site is easy thanks to these 25 [...]

Most designers struggle with putting a price on their services. Many end up using a pricing model that leaves them run ragged trying to pay the bills, rather than one that lets them build a healthy, sustainable business. If you’re quoting clients an hourly rate for your services, chances are you’re hurting your business…even if [...]

Responsive web design is popular and it’s absolutely no secret. It’s what experts are calling for and what many brands are switching to. It’s not just about creating a mobile-ready site, but about making your site visible to every browser size, whether via desktop, tablet or smartphone. The tricky part about designing for responsiveness is [...]

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 very best frameworks to build new sites on is Twitter Bootstrap. Mobile-first, lightweight and powerful; it’s a great starting point. The only issues with Bootstrap are that it’s both easily recognized due to extensive use, and time-consuming to modify due to its comprehensive approach. Solving these problems are 10 premium Bootstrap templates [...]

It’s clear that the mobile web is on the rise. Taking a look at the stats, it’s hard to see how desktop browsing can survive the onslaught. People use smartphones for almost everything. 91% of US citizens own a smart phone, and with the relatively low cost compared to computers, smart phone usage is growing [...]

With so many social media B2B strategies for your business, the options can sometimes get a bit overwhelming. That is why it is important to state this disclosure. The strategies we discuss below are not nearly as important as your understanding of your target market. You have to know your target market. Are they hip, [...]

For years premium design and development software has been the exclusive preserve of Adobe. Since they outmaneuvered Quark and purchased Macromedia, few tools have been able to compete with their products. However, for all the market dominance of tools like Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign, Adobe’s recent shift to a subscription model has infuriated many loyal [...]

Facial hair (or lack thereof) can say a lot about a man. A day’s worth of scruff could mean a late night out the day before, and two weeks of growth likely indicates he’s channeling his inner lumberjack. Now there’s a guide that goes beyond mere intuition and literally spells it out. German designer Christian [...]

I’m a little choosy about who I follow back on Twitter. As with my other opt-in social sites, I’m not into quantity but quality. Having the right connections are good for business and, after all, business is why we network, in most cases. When I go through my daily Twitter followers, I click the email [...]

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