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David Appleyard

David Appleyard

David Appleyard helps to build fun things for the design community, including Design Shack, Theme Junkie, and Creative VIP.

Get 7 Free Days of Downloads With GraphicStock

Reviews / 13 Aug 2015

Get 7 Free Days of Downloads With GraphicStock

GraphicStock have a big collection of stock resources for designers — backgrounds, concepts, icons, patterns, textures, templates, photos and more.

Today we’re featuring a great deal, which gives you seven days of completely unrestricted access to the GraphicStock library. Read on to find out more about the site, how to redeem the deal, and see a collection of different assets and resources from the site!

Adobe Stock: Shaking Up the Stock Content Market

Business / 6 Aug 2015

Adobe Stock: Shaking Up the Stock Content Market

Adobe Stock has introduced a stock content service that’s directly integrated into creative tools and workflows.

Approximately 85% of creatives who buy stock use Adobe tools, and over 90% of stock sellers use Adobe’s tools to create their images. Adobe is working with buyers and sellers to create a streamlined experience that makes the flow of content more efficient for buyers and increases the opportunities for sellers.

How to Make a Budget Wedding Website With Tumblr

Tumblr Themes / 5 May 2015

How to Make a Budget Wedding Website With Tumblr

Having a wedding website or blog is all the rage, and it can be a great way to keep your friends and family up-to-date with your wedding planning for the special day.

There are lots of services out there to help, but many are quite expensive or complicated. Today we’re taking a look at how you can build your own wedding website in a few simple steps, using the Wedding Tumblr theme.

You’ll have a wedding website to be proud of, in no time at all (here’s an example). All for the price of a couple of wedding magazines!

Stay Up-to-Date With Webdesigner News

Inspiration / 1 May 2015

Stay Up-to-Date With Webdesigner News

There are plenty of ways to stay across what’s happening in the design industry. Twitter, Facebook, your collection of RSS feeds, and a growing collection of newsletters and news aggregation sites.

Today we’re taking a look at the new Webdesigner News, to see how it fares, and explore how it can be a useful place to stay up-to-date with the latest news, announcements, releases, and sensations in the web design industry.

30 Premium Tumblr Themes With Beautiful, Minimal Design

Tumblr Themes / 29 Apr 2015

30 Premium Tumblr Themes With Beautiful, Minimal Design

There are thousands of Tumblr themes all over the web. To be perfectly frank, most of them aren’t great, and won’t do your creative work justice. Today we’ve collected thirty of our favourite premium Tumblr themes from across the web.

All of these cost a few dollars, but all of them will take your Tumblr blog to another level. From stylish, minimal Tumblr themes, through to those featuring big colours and bold images — we have a full selection. All of them are available to buy straight from Tumblr directly, and can be set up on your blog in a few minutes!

Introducing Media Temple’s WordPress Hosting

Business / 13 Apr 2015

Introducing Media Temple’s WordPress Hosting

We’ve hosted Design Shack with Media Temple for years. So we were very pleased when they came to us, and asked us to take a look at their new managed WordPress hosting solution.

Media Temple’s new full-featured WordPress hosting solution features four new, customizable and scalable plans. Whether you’re a photographer, web designer or creative agency, there’s a plan that should work for you. Today we’re taking a look at this new hosting product, to see how it stacks up!

A First Look at Bloom: An Opt-in Plugin From Elegant Themes

Software / 18 Mar 2015

A First Look at Bloom: An Opt-in Plugin From Elegant Themes

Today, we’re excited to be taking a first look at a new product from Elegant Themes — Bloom. It’s a WordPress plugin that takes the headache out of growing your own email list using beautiful, customizable and easy-to-use forms that can be placed anywhere on your website.

The email inbox is a sacred place. Emails are not lost in the endless stream of chatter or filtered out by social algorithms. They are a direct line to your visitor’s ear, it’s an incredibly important medium. Talking to your customers is the fun bit, but building your list is the hard part, and that’s where Bloom comes in.

30+ Free & Premium Ghost Themes & Templates

Inspiration / 6 Feb 2014

30+ Free & Premium Ghost Themes & Templates

The Ghost platform is growing quickly, and shaping up to be a fantastic blogging platform for designers and developers alike. It’s built on a powerful framework, and we’re starting to see a wonderful array of Ghost themes and templates cropping up from dozens of designers.

Today we’ve rounded up a collection of over 30 of our favourite Ghost themes, designs, and templates for you to browse through. Some of these are free, and some are commercial (but all under $25, which is something of a steal!). We hope you find something that fits what you’re looking for!

The Startup Framework: Simple Web Mockups

Graphics / 7 Jan 2014

The Startup Framework: Simple Web Mockups

Today we’re going to be taking a look at the Startup Framework from Designmodo — one of the most polished and professional component frameworks we’ve seen for a while.

It’s a set of graphics, blocks, and components that are designed to help you plan and conceptualise your design, without spending weeks on starting from scratch. We’ll take a look at what’s on offer in the framework, and share a few examples!

5 Traits of Successful Minimalism

Minimalist Graphic Design / 2 Oct 2013

5 Traits of Successful Minimalism

At first glance, minimalist websites might look like they’ve just been slapped together as quickly as possible. After all, they’re plain and simple, and most people tend to associate lots of detail with good craftsmanship. But the same rules just don’t apply to the online world.

It only takes a small amount of user interaction to quickly reveal the quality of a minimalist site. This is because the original idea that fueled the rise of minimalism was that functionality is inherently beautiful. A design that clarifies and reveals the structure of a website can be just as appealing as one that obscures its purposes behind fancy decorative additions. Furthermore, it often yields a much better user experience, because those unnecessary distractions are eliminated.

Current Color Trends: Muted Pastels

Graphics / 30 Jul 2013

Current Color Trends: Muted Pastels

Of late, you may have noticed a crop of new site designs have a softer and lighter look. After all the rainbow brights and even neon or fluorescent hues that have been so popular of late, it seems that some designers are taking a more subtle approach by using lighter or muted colors.

Although the same basic treatments are still being utilized — like colorized photography or color blocking — the new hues are making for a more refined and understated variation on these themes. Today we’re going to delve into this trend a little more, and explore various design examples and approaches.

Using Moo.com for Your Wedding Stationery

Graphics / 8 Jul 2013

Using Moo.com for Your Wedding Stationery

Weddings can be an expensive business. Photographers, venues, food, drink, entertainment, and all manner of other things to consider. But it’s also a fun opportunity for some design work! Wedding “branding” and stationery has the potential to be another big wedding expense, but by thinking a little creatively, you can not only give your special day a personal touch, but also cut down on the cost.

Today I’ll be sharing a little insight into how you can use your copy of Photoshop, and Moo.com, to create a fantastic array of different wedding stationery. We did it for our wedding a couple of weeks ago, and it went down brilliantly.