David Appleyard helps to build fun things for the design community, including Design Shack, Theme Junkie, Creative VIP, and Themelantic.
We’re excited to let you know that we have 5 premium WordPress themes up for grabs this week from TemplateMonster. Entering is easy, and the lucky winners will be able to choose any theme from a library of over 1,600 WordPress themes (including over 200 responsive templates).
Read on to find out how to enter, and be in a chance with winning your own theme — complete with 24/7 support from TemplateMonster!
It’s no secret that the agile development process has been hurtling through the development world for several years now, swatting aside the older, clunkier waterfall development method. To be fair, whether it was agile or something else, waterfall really had it coming, as its risk-averse, top down approach just can’t keep pace with the demands of today’s marketplace.
While similar changes are occurring in the design world, the agile design process should necessarily look and feel a little different than agile development; they are, after all, different disciplines. Let’s take a deeper look first at what agile development is, and then at a few great ways to adapt the process to the design world.
Icons can be considered one of the universalities of web design; almost any website benefits from the addition of at least a few of them. So it’s tempting to assume that if you sprinkle in a handful of these little pictures, your job is done. But there’s a lot more to it than that: good icons should feel like they’re visually integrated into the group of images that they’re in, as well as into the site design as a whole. They need to have a conceptual clarity and purpose that goes beyond being mere eye candy. Any icon that doesn’t serve a stated purpose, or doesn’t convey the right concept in its imagery, is one that needs to be reconsidered.
Of course, there’s room for interpretation and generalization with any kind of imagery, but icons are not mere illustrations that are used purely to break up space and add interest: they’re visual metaphors that can invest meaning into a subject at a single glance; and as such, they’re a powerful tool for improving user experiences.
Sometimes it seems like every time you jump online, you read about a talented new designer who’s making it big with their latest project. There are a lot of wonderful designers out there, and the constant showcasing of others’ skills makes it feel all the more like you’re lost in the crowd. It’s not enough anymore to have a solid portfolio and work experience; if you really want to stand out in today’s market, going the extra mile in marketing yourself can make all the difference in landing the perfect job, or getting some great freelance projects going.
When you’re considering all the ways that you could market yourself, the most important thing to take into account is how much of a time commitment you can realistically make. Don’t overstretch yourself with a daily blog entry or illustration unless you think you’ll be able to do a great job on it. There are many different levels of requirement for projects that can make a difference in your career; choose what works for you.
ThemeFuse has decided to share 3 WordPress themes licenses with our readers. How would you like some free stuff? What better way is there to start the day off?
The three winners of today’s giveaway will receive access to one premium WordPress theme of their choosing – at absolutely no cost whatsoever. If you run a WordPress site, you’re in for a special treat here. We’ve got 3 vouchers to give away. Here’s what you need to do to get one!
We’ve had a very busy few months behind the scenes at Design Shack, working away on various changes and improvements to the site. First and foremost is a brand new design — it’s cleaner, faster, responsive, and hopefully a much more enjoyable experience for you to use!
Second is a host of new features for Design Shack members. These include vastly improved submission of your designs, keyboard navigation, an “Activity Stream”, the ability to save designs to a “Collection”, and your very own profile on the site.
We’re really proud of this latest iteration of Design Shack, so read on to find out more about our thinking behind some of the new features!
It’s time for another amazing giveaway! Today you get the chance to win $300 and $200 worth of services from PSD2HTML, a leading PSD to HTML coding company. Entering is easy, read on to see how you can win!
We have teamed up with Heart Internet to offer you the chance to win a Virtual Private Server worth £540 ($874) completely free for a year, plus an awesome Google Nexus 7.
All you have to do is spend 5 minutes answering a handful of questions about your thoughts on the web design industry. You will then automatically be entered in to the prize draw.
The Dealotto Bundle is back, and this time it’s even bigger. We’re partnering up with the good people at Dealotto for the course of the week, running an exclusive competition to give away three copies of the bundle!
Dealotto has a unique model that gives you the chance to bag an absolute bargain on 10 amazing design resources, including over 6691 icons, 300 UI design elements, 36+ WordPress Themes, 1 Beautiful Font, 1 jQuery Photo Viewer + 1 eBook for no more than $45. Read on to find out more…
We’re excited to launch a new competition today, giving you the chance to win one of two awesome markup packages, courtesy of Markup Service! It’s a great way to speed up development on time-sensitive projects, and you can be confident that the end result will be of a highly professional standard.
Read on to find out how to enter the competition, and get your hands on $300 credit for your own markup requirements!
We’re incredibly excited to let you know about a new project we’ve been working on for the past few months — Design Curate. While we love to share inspiration and articles here, we also wanted a place to offer some fantastic freebies and resources for designers.
Design Curate already has a growing collection of freebies — PSDs, WordPress themes, CSS/HTML snippets, and lots more! We’ll be adding new free resources every week, along with featuring a few commercial design goodies from time to time as well.
Read on to find out more about the new site, or just head over and take a look!
There’s nothing more concerning than receiving an email from someone — completely out of the blue — to let you know that they think your domain name may have been stolen. Particularly when a quick Whois search changes the initial feeling of complete denial to extreme concern…
Last Thursday, I found out that someone had taken it upon themselves to “hijack” our primary domain name — designshack.net — and transfer it away from our registrar. We’re working hard to reverse the process, and I’ll be documenting the current situation here.