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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.

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.

Competitions / 13 Nov 2014

Form Building From a Designer’s Perspective

When people think of beautiful web design, form building isn’t usually the thing that comes to mind. But for the crafty designer, form design creates a unique opportunity to show off some serious skills. Executed well, it can singlehandedly elevate your site’s look and feel.

JotForm has always allowed users to create custom form designs using CSS, but their new Form Designer feature hands web designers their time back with incredibly simple functionality. Starting from basic black on white, your form can be fully customized using dozens of preset click options, with changes appearing in real time. The only thing required is your artistic touch, and just a few minutes to spare.

Competitions / 8 Jul 2014

Giveaway: $700 of PSD to HTML Services Up for Grabs

We’re excited to bring you another great competition today, from Markup-Service.com, who are giving away $700 worth of their services. It’s a great chance to save your time and energy on coding and get clean, valid and fast-loading markup developed.

Read on to find out a little more about how to enter — it just takes a couple of seconds!

Competitions / 2 Jul 2014

Giveaway: Win Any Template From TemplateMonster

It has been a year since we hosted a giveaway together with TemplateMonster. We noticed that you like getting premium WordPress themes for free, so today we’re back with another giveaway!

Moreover, the new giveaway is even more attractive than the previous one because there will be more winners and this time you can win any template from TemplateMonster! Read on to find out more.

Competitions / 17 Jun 2014

Inky Deals Giveaway: 11” MacBook Air & Design Resources

We are happy to announce another massive giveaway from Inky Deals that comes with a free pack of premium resources worth $66.

The freebie is sent to the email address you use to enter the contest and is part of the epic bundle. It’s really simple to enter, so read on to find out more!

Competitions / 8 Apr 2014

Giveaway: $500 of PSD to HTML Services Up for Grabs

We’re excited to bring you another great competition today, from Markup-Service.com, who are giving away $500 worth of their services. It’s a great chance to save your time and energy on coding and get clean, valid and fast-loading markup developed.

Read on to find out a little more about how to enter — it just takes a couple of seconds!

Competitions / 1 Apr 2014

Win an iPad Air & Heart Internet Hybrid Server (Worth Over £800)

We have teamed up with Heart Internet to offer you the chance to win a 16GB iPad Air and a super-powerful Hybrid Server for your websites and projects, completely free for a year.

All you have to do is answer a handful of questions about your thoughts on the web design industry, and you will then automatically be entered in to the prize draw.

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!

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!

Competitions / 26 Nov 2013

Grab a Free Dot Grid Book and Save 10% at Creoly

It doesn’t matter how fancy the iPad, or how realistic the e-ink, there’s something about a good quality pen and a thick, fresh pad of paper that’s impossible to replicate. Whether it’s for sketching, taking notes, or planning your to-do list, often paper is best.

We’re pleased to tell you about a fantastic partnership we have with Creoly for Design Shack readers, giving you the chance to win one of five exclusive notebooks, and save 10% on any order you place (with free international shipping!). Read on to find out more.

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.

Competitions / 12 Sep 2013

Giveaway: Win PSD to HTML Coding From Markup-Service

We’re excited to bring you another great competition today, giving you the chance to win one of three awesome packages from Markup-Service.com.

This is going to be a real treat for busy web designers and developers out there who need a little help with their PSD to HTML conversions. We have $600 of packages up for grabs, so read on to find out a little more about how to enter — it just takes a couple of seconds!