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40 Amazing Resources for Design Freebies

The web is a veritable wonderland of free design resources that can enrich and improve your designs. This post contains forty sites to bookmark and keep an eye on for a continual stream of amazingly useful resources.

Create a Color Changing Website Using CSS3

Though the changes implemented by CSS3 are still not supported on all browsers and cross-browser functionality across those that do support it can be a real pain, it’s still quite fun to experiment and see what’s possible.

In this brief tutorial we’ll take go crazy with CSS3 transitions in Webkit to create a simple web page that showcases some really nice color fade effects.

How to Use Visual Hierarchy in Web Design

Sometimes you look at a site that may be attractive enough, but something is missing. It has great colors, nice graphics, perfect alignment and clever copy, but there’s just something a bit bland about it. Though everything looks nice, nothing is really coming through vividly on a greater level than anything else. This solution to this problem is visual hierarchy.

Designers are often intuitive enough to give the elements on the page a clear hierarchy without even thinking, other times the lack of intention in this area leads to a design like the one described above. This article will examine some of the basic principles of designing with a visual hierarchy of information in mind.

10 Tips to Becoming a Healthier Designer

I’m sure the title of this article made more than a few readers scoff at the legitimacy of exploring such a topic, but the reality is being confined to a desk all day can take a serious toll on your health. When being a dedicated designer begins to directly affect your likely lifespan, it’s time to pay attention and make some changes.

This article will explore a few steps you can take to becoming healthier despite sitting on your can all day.

How to Avoid Sticking in a Design Rut

Design ruts are the commercial artist’s equivalent of writer’s block. Sometimes you just seem to reach the end of your creative rope and can’t imagine thinking of any more good ideas.

Fortunately, all hope is not lost in these situations as there is plenty that you can do to both prevent and/or recover from a design rut. Today we’ll look at some different ways your creativity could potentially become stagnant and what to do in response.

20+ Designers and Freelancers You Should Read, Watch and Follow

Today we’ll take a brief but personal look at over 20 designers and freelancers that have made an impact in the online design community through books, blogs, tweets and various other means. Some are huge names, ubiquitous in the design community, while others are just getting their start.

Most of the profiles below feature a quick bio and some links to find out more about the designer. I’ve also included a few expanded profiles for some of the better known individuals.

5 Questions to Ask for Deciding When to Fire a Client

One of the amazing things about being a freelance designer is the freedom to choose who you are willing to work with. Unlike the nine to five crowd, we freelancers don’t always have bosses or coworkers that we are simply stuck with. If we don’t like working with someone, we fire them and move on.

Though this process sounds dandy in theory, the reality is much more complicated. Like anyone else, we have mortgages, utility bills and an annoyingly expensive need to eat just about every day. If you’ve got a client you can’t stand, run through the questions below to you help decide whether or not you can ditch them successfully (and whether you should).

30+ Gorgeous Typography Based Sites

“No other design discipline requires so much learning and training as fontography, and by no other aspect can amateurs be so easily distinguished from professionals.” – Dmitry Kirsanov

To follow up our recent article, 8 Rules for Creating Effective Typography, this post contains over 30 sites either dedicated to or designed with beautiful typography.

Winner Announced: Zeldman’s “Designing With Web Standards”

Congratulations to Roberto Glaviano, you’ve been selected as today’s winner! You’ll be receiving an email shortly with more information. A big thanks to everyone who entered, check back for more competitions soon!

Today’s competition features a book from one of the web design community’s most respected individuals: Jeffrey Zeldman.

Read on to find out how you can win a copy of the the excellent book Designing with Web Standards: Third Edition.

8 Rules for Creating Effective Typography

Today we’re going to discuss something that is both a hot trend and timeless art: typography. The basic rules outlined below will help you become more aware of how you structure and use typography in your designs. Being conscious of these rules can improve nearly everything you create that contains a headline or major typographic element. Let’s get started!