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Carrie Cousins

Carrie Cousins

Carrie is a freelance writer with years of experience in web and graphic design. Sports fanatic. Information junkie. Designer. True-believer in karma.

Breaking Down the Costs of a New Website: Tips & Rules

Business / 7 Sep 2021

Breaking Down the Costs of a New Website: Tips & Rules

It’s a common question: What does a new website cost?

It might be for a new brand or company that’s never had a website before or for an existing organization looking for a website design refresh. And the answer is a bit complicated.

It all depends on the path you want to take and your timeline for getting a new website online. Here, we’re going to break down the options available to you and the costs associated with a new website.

Plus, a few tips and rules to follow as you begin the process.

Everything You Need to Know About Design Tokens

UX Design / 2 Sep 2021

Everything You Need to Know About Design Tokens

Design tokens are a way to easily identify and understand the elements in a design system. As more designers and companies adopt use of design tokens, their value will continue to grow.

The key to design tokens is that they facilitate cross-disciplinary collaboration. More people on a team can understand and use design values without specificity, but with accuracy. They’ve already been adopted by design giants such as Adobe.

Here’s everything you need to know about design tokens.

Get All the Design Assets You Need From Creative Fabrica

Reviews / 2 Sep 2021

Get All the Design Assets You Need From Creative Fabrica

Almost every designer is on the lookout for tools and resources that can make work quicker and easier. A solid fonts and graphics library platform can be just that resource.

Creative Fabrica is packed with design tools for designers, crafters, and more. Whether you’re a crafter, a hobbyist, or a professional designer, there’s something that’s worth taking a look at.

Here, we’re going to take a closer look at the platform and how you can use it in your daily routine, all while building up your library of graphics, assets, and more.

Design Trend: Frosted Glass Effect in Web Design

Trends / 30 Aug 2021

Design Trend: Frosted Glass Effect in Web Design

With just the right combination of blur and transparency, you’ve got one of the hottest trends in website and app design – the frosted glass effect.

It is a design technique that uses a gaussian blur, shadows, and transparency to create an element that mimics looking through real-life frosted glass.

Let’s dive into seven different ways to use this design trend.

And, if you need more inspiration, it’s no surprise to know that Dribbble is packed with frosted glass design ideas!

10 Tips for Working With Bold Colors in Web Design

Graphics / 26 Aug 2021

10 Tips for Working With Bold Colors in Web Design

Designing with bold color is a lot of fun.

It’s also a little dangerous.

Bold color choices can evoke emotion, draw attention, and create just the right vibe for a design. On the other hand, bold color can feel frenzied or off balance. Users are instantly drawn into color or turned off by it.

Here’s a look at a few ways to use bold color in web design. We’ll walk through how to bring personality and vivid style into your projects, while keeping a sense of balance and accessibility that makes the site easy to use.

How to Balance “Good Design” vs. a Functional Website

Graphics / 23 Aug 2021

How to Balance “Good Design” vs. a Functional Website

It’s the chicken and egg debate of website design: What comes first “good design” or functional design?

Both answers are right… and wrong.

Unlike much of what we share on Design Shack, this is more of a personal essay on the benefits of each type of thinking and why I’ll design with function over “good design” almost any day of the week.

And I’ll back up my thinking with some examples that have made a difference for real-life projects.

7 Reasons You Need to Be Using Landing Pages

Layouts / 19 Aug 2021

7 Reasons You Need to Be Using Landing Pages

You’ve come across them everywhere: Landing pages that take you to a website but aren’t the homepage.

It’s a great strategy that helps get visitors directly to the information they want to see from a marketing source – social media, advertising, etc. – and is generally designed for a specific goal.

If using landing pages isn’t already part of your website strategy, it’s time to consider them. Here, we’ll look at seven reasons you need to be using landing pages to help drive the right kind of conversions on your website.

Design Trend: Flat Cards UI

Trends / 17 Aug 2021

Design Trend: Flat Cards UI

Cards are a design element that have been popular for a while. The look and function of them have continued to evolve in a number of ways, from tiny cards that are more of an oversized button to full-screen or split-screen cards that denote click or tap functionality.

The reason this trend remains popular is because of the latter. Cards innately cue users into an element of function.

The most popular iteration of cards right now is in a super flat style that works with almost any type of content. While every example below is different, one thing is the same: the combination of card elements in a flat style.

Let’s look at a selection of websites featuring this design trend and ways that you can make it work for you.

Learn to Color Match and Create a Palette Like a Pro (Tips and Tools)

Graphics / 9 Aug 2021

Learn to Color Match and Create a Palette Like a Pro (Tips and Tools)

You know it the minute you see it – a design that has so color that’s so impactful you can’t help but look at it.

These designs typically fall into one of two categories. Either it’s a great color palette that you want to find a way to replicate immediately. Or it’s a color palette so bizarre or bad that you can’t figure out why a designer would make that choice!

Since no one wants to fall in the latter category, learning to color match and develop palettes is a vital design skill.

It all starts with color theory but then goes a little further.

User Privacy and Design: Things You Can Do for a Safer Web

Web Standards / 5 Aug 2021

User Privacy and Design: Things You Can Do for a Safer Web

Online privacy is a hot topic.

There’s a delicate balance between providing personalized user experiences and asking for (or gleaning) too much information. It can be hard to strike just the right chord.

Then there are regulations to think about, depending on where you and your users may live.

What best practices can designers put in place to ensure that they are designing for a safer web?

Design Trend: No Images Above the Scroll

Trends / 2 Aug 2021

Design Trend: No Images Above the Scroll

Have you taken notice? More designers are launching websites with no images (or video) above the scroll.

There are a lot of interesting uses of text elements, animated effects, and other divots that keep the result from being boring.

Here’s a look at this website design trend, examples, and how to make it work for you. You’ll be amazed at just how creative you can get, without a single image in sight!

Design Trend: Soft UI

Trends / 23 Jul 2021

Design Trend: Soft UI

There’s a website and app design trend that’s so subtle you almost don’t see it.

Soft UI creates a frost-style or glassy blur where elements sink and extrude from the background to create varying levels of depth and dimension.

Combine this effect with a softer, more pastel color palette, and the result is a light, “soft” interface with depth in shadows and subtle overall effects.

Here, we’ll look at the trend with examples.