Design Shack — Web Design Gallery, Articles & Community

5 Reasons You Should Be Writing for Design Blogs

You may have notice that this week’s theme at Design Shack has been talents to add to your skill set as a designer. First we looked at copywriting, then marketing, and today we’ll examine blog writing.

Blogging has come a long way in recent years. The practice has transformed from a questionably productive hobby into a popular and lucrative profession. The design blog industry is one of the fastest growing niches in the blogging world and here we bring you five convincing reasons to join the fun and begin writing your own design-related articles and tutorials.

Why You Can’t Ignore Marketing

In our last article, we looked at why designers can’t ignore copywriting, today we examine why marketing is the same way.

We’ll discuss why you should continue to better yourself by increasing your talents and how you as a designer should respond to the increasing need of online marketing for small business owners.

Web Design Critique #4: Anthem Design Group

Every week we take a look at a new website and analyze the design. We’ll point out both the areas that are done well and those that could use some work. Finally, we’ll finish by asking you to provide your own feedback.

Today’s site is Anthem Design Group. Anthem is a small award-winning creative and interactive design agency located in Atlanta, Georgia USA

The Importance of Copywriting in Web Design

Designers often neglect to focus on both well-written copy and structuring a design so that it highlights the copy on the page. Today we’ll discuss why copywriting is so important, who needs to learn it, and how to create content-centric designs.

Analyzing and Comparing Popular Blog Designs

If you’re thinking about starting a blog, there are a lot of technical details to consider when attempting the initial layout of your page. How large should your text be? What font should you use? Should your images have borders?

We’ll help you answer these questions and more by tearing apart the post designs of popular design blogs. Examining the work of others will give you insight into popular trends and what you think works best. Let’s get started!

HTML and CSS Debugging Tools

Whether you’re a beginner or a pro, troubleshooting your HTML and CSS can be a real pain if you’re not equipped properly. Today we’ll look at a few tools to help you force that pesky web page into submission.

Web Design Critique #3: Firefly

Our web design critiques have been a hit both with customers and commenters. Keep up the great work providing quality ideas and suggestions!

Today’s site is Firefly, the home page of a social work recruitment agency based in the UK.

Create a Moveable Sticky Note With MooTools and CSS3

I recently came across a neat tutorial at Woorkup pointing out a MooTools feature that allows you to turn any item on a web page into a positionable element.

Today we’re going to use this technique to create a simple and fun sticky note that a user can play with and move anywhere on the page. Along the way will be using lots of CSS3 so make sure you’ve got a decent browser!

6 Apps for Collecting Digital Inspiration

The online design community is simply overflowing with inspiration. Every day countless blog posts are being published showcasing 30-100 amazing examples of “insert item here.” Further, CSS galleries like our own contain hundreds or even thousands of great site designs.

With all this inspiration being tossed at you all the time, you need a way to catalogue and store it. Today we’ll look at a few tools out there that do exceptionally well at this very thing.

Web Design Critique #2

Today we’ll be continuing our new series of web design critiques where we take an in-depth look at a live website and point out both its strong points as well as the areas that could use improvement.

Top Test Prep, the site we’ll be viewing today, was our very first customer but the requests have been pouring in so be sure to get on the list soon!