Joshua Johnson

CSS / 16 Apr 2012

Sass vs. Stylus: Who Wins the Minimal Syntax Battle?

Today we’re going to pit two CSS preprocessors head to head. You’ve no doubt seen lots of discussion about how SCSS compares to LESS, but where does Stylus, the new kid on the block, factor in? Can it possibly match the power and versatility of SASS?

We’ll jump head first into both syntaxes and compare them side by side to see which is more logical and versatile. We’ll also talk about features and give you a clear argument for why one preprocessor is more powerful. You can rest assured, we’re not going to wuss out and give you some crap about a tie, there will be a winner!

Inspiration / 11 Apr 2012

200+ Pinterest Boards for Designers to Follow

If you love design inspiration, you should be on Pinterest. This free service has really taken off and designers everywhere are using it to collect and archive examples of great design. Whether you’re a typography nut, need some ideas for design books to read, or want some inspiration for out of the box brochure ideas, there are designers on Pinterest who are no doubt pinning exactly what you’re looking for.

Much like, Twitter, the key to enjoying Pinterest is to find and follow users that share your interests. The trick here is that while every user has multiple “boards,” only some of them are actually design related. We’ve spent hours and hours hunting and have found over two hundred of the best Pinterest boards that designers should find useful. Read on to check them out!

CSS / 10 Apr 2012

What’s the Deal With :target in CSS?

I’ve been seeing a lot of tutorials lately that utilize :target in CSS to perform some fancy feat so I thought I’d take the time to really dig in and discuss how and why this syntax works. Instead of blindly following someone else’s code, you should be able to wield this tool with the knowledge of what’s happening how it affects browser support.

Read on to learn all about the basic functionality associated with the :target pseudo class and how you can stretch that ability to perform all kinds of crazy stuff with pure CSS. Along the way we’ll build some great navigation and slideshow examples for you to learn from.

CSS / 5 Apr 2012

3 Free Apps for Testing Your Responsive Designs Online

Responsive design has brought about a whole new list of challenges for web designers who have decided to take the plunge and leave static design behind. Creating a layout that works well at not one but several, or even all, possible widths requires patience, creativity and of course, lots of testing.

Nothing replaces checking out your design on the actual devices that you’re targeting, but as you’re building, it’s nice to be able to get a quick peek of the layout at various widths right on your computer. You could resize your browser window manually, but this gets ridiculously tedious if you’re shooting for precise pixel dimensions. Fortunately, several talented developers have already built some great tools to aid you in this process. Join us today as we take a look at three of them.

CSS / 3 Apr 2012

Build an Infinite Scrolling Photo Banner With HTML and CSS

Today we’re going to embark on the challenge of creating an animated banner of photos that automatically scrolls horizontally through an infinite loop. The best part: we’re going to do it without a single line of JavaScript.

To make this banner truly useful, our goal will be to use individual photos dropped into our HTML, not simply one long CSS background that repeats. This is pretty tricky but we’ll walk you through exactly how it works. Let’s get started!

Graphics / 29 Mar 2012

Style Tiles: The Flip Side of Wireframes

Style Tiles provide a fresh and productive way to approach the design process. They allow you to specifically hone in and focus on a project’s personality and mood without worrying about specific layout decisions.

Today we’re going to show you exactly what Style Tiles are, why you should use them and how to incorporate them into your design process. Follow along and you just might change the way you design forever.

HTML / 22 Mar 2012

Ready or Not, Here Comes HD Web Design

Apple is pushing the tech industry forward by increasing the pixel density on iPhone and iPad screens. This is great from a user’s perspective, but as a web designer or developer it literally threatens to completely change the way you build websites.

Are you ready for HD web design? Do you know how your sites will look on a new generation of high resolution screens? What steps can you take to prepare yourself and what skills will you need to stay relevant in the years to come? Read on to find out.

Inspiration / 21 Mar 2012

105 Remarkable Retro Logos

It’s time for another massive logo collection. This time around we’ve sifted through thousands of great logos to find over one hundred that were designed in a retro or vintage style.

If you’re looking for some good old fashioned logo design inspiration, this post will surely get your creative brain firing on all cylinders. From robots to muscle cars, these logos are flat out cool.

Google Fonts / 20 Mar 2012

10 More Great Google Font Combinations You Can Copy

The last time we wrote about Google Web Fonts, it was a fairly new program with a handful of fonts. Today there are nearly 500 font families ready and waiting to be served up to your website completely free of charge. Google has certainly made its mark on web typography and stands as an excellent alternative to premium subscription services.

The downside of this growth is that it’s becomingly increasingly difficult to sift through the library to find the best selections.

We’ve got your back though and are serving up another great collection of Google Web Font combinations ripe for the stealing. Just copy and paste our code, then tweak the style to fit your needs and you’ll be good to go!

Graphics / 16 Mar 2012

5 Gorgeous Note & Point Presentations You Have to See

One of my favorite sites for design inspiration is Note & Point, which is a fantastic curator of great looking presentation decks (Keynote + PowerPoint = Note & Point). Not only is this site chock full of awesome design examples, most of their presentations are actually design and development related so you learn some great stuff along the way!

Today we’re going to look at five of my favorite Note & Point decks, which will teach us a ton of great stuff about presentation design.

CSS / 15 Mar 2012

Sass and Media Queries: What You Can and Can’t Do

Preprocessors like Sass are helping us flex our development muscles in nearly every area of our CSS. Variables, mixins, inheritance and many more great features make coding easier and more concise than ever.

So what about leveraging Sass for responsive design, or more specifically, for media queries? Are there any features of Sass that pair particularly well with media queries? Is there anything you should avoid? Join me as I experiment and discover the answers.

CSS / 14 Mar 2012

Code a Responsive Navigation Menu

Navigation menus used to be a fairly simple thing. Code up an unordered list, float it left and you’re good to go. With responsive design being all the rage these days though you’re faced with some new challenges when creating a menu design.

Follow along as we start from scratch and code a simple but effective responsive navigation menu that you can easily modify and reuse in your own projects.