David Appleyard

Freebies / 17 Jul 2013

7 Lovely Flat Freebies for Designers

The concept of “flat” design is fairly prevalent at the moment and, although you should never stick with a trend just because it’s the “in thing”, there’s certainly some merit to stripping back unnecessary design flourishes and focusing on the basics.

Today we’re featuring seven freebie packs that can help to give you a useful starting point when designing something with a flat, minimal look and feel. From icons to complete web templates, there’s plenty to get your teeth into!

News / 16 Jul 2013

Introducing Creative VIP: The Exclusive Membership for Creative Professionals

As one of our awesome Design Shack readers, we wanted to let you know about a new project we’ve just launched — Creative VIP. It’s an exclusive membership club for creative professionals, and we’d love to welcome you as one of our first members.

Our members receive special privileges and discounts on world-class products and services, access to hundreds of design resources, and creative goodie bags on their doorstep. Keep reading to find out more about a Creative VIP membership, and to grab an exclusive 25% discount for Design Shack readers!

Competitions / 9 Jul 2013

Giveaway: $500 Worth 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!

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.

Deals / 2 Jul 2013

Grab the Beautiful Samantha Script Font for $17

Today we’re featuring a fantastic offer from Mighty Deals. Fonts can make or break a project. Whether it’s on a T-shirt an ad or a headline on a website, if a font is boring or really hard to read, you’ve already lost your audience. Finding the right elegant font can be particularly tricky, though, since the intricate detail can often render your words illegible.

That’s why Laura Worthington’s Samantha Script font is so perfect. Elegant and easy to read, this beautiful font is also significantly marked down for a limited time. Read on to find out more.

Competitions / 25 Jun 2013

5 Premium WordPress Themes Up for Grabs

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!

Business / 19 Jun 2013

Understanding Agile Design and Why It’s Important

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.

Graphics / 20 May 2013

How to Choose Effective and Attractive Icons in Your Designs

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.

Business / 27 Mar 2013

How to Creatively Market Yourself as a Designer



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.

Competitions / 15 Jan 2013

Giveaway: 3 Premium WordPress Themes From ThemeFuse

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!

News / 19 Nov 2012

Introducing the Design Shack Re-Design!

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!

Competitions / 16 Oct 2012

Win $500 of Services From PSD2HTML

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!