Joshua Johnson

Layouts / 8 Nov 2011

How to Design a Tour Page: Examples and Best Practices

Tour pages are one of the most important components for websites advertising apps and/or services. The tour page is often where interested users will either make the firm decision to sign up or move on to something else.

Needless to say, there’s a lot of pressure as a designer to get this right! Fear not however, many talented designers have gone before you and we can learn a lot by looking at their examples. We’ll dive into tour pages from giants like Mozilla, 37Signals and Mint.com and see what common tricks they all use to win conversions.

Layouts / 7 Nov 2011

Design History: The Art of Playing Cards

Great design inspiration is all around us. Sometimes the best examples are so common that we see them all the time without a second thought. The cars we drive, the advertisements in our mailbox, the cover art on that new album you just downloaded, all of these are teaching their own little design lessons and if we would but listen, we just might learn something.

Today’s subject is playing cards. At least one pack can be found in almost every home in America, which means they’re a perfect example of ubiquitous design that we take for granted. We’ll take a fresh look at why they’re so perfectly designed and learn a little history along the way.

CSS / 27 Oct 2011

Build an Animated Sliding Menu With Pseudo Selectors and CSS3

Today we’re going to have all kinds of fun. First we’ll build an animated menu using some shiny new CSS3 while learning how to implement pseudo selectors in a practical way on a real project. Then we’ll follow that up with how to build the same thing without pseudo selectors for better browser support. Finally, we’ll end with a look at how to scrap all that fancy CSS in favor of some good old fashioned jQuery.

Join us as we examine not one but three ways to tackle a CSS sliding navigation menu!

CSS / 24 Oct 2011

What Is CSS? Back to Basics

This is the third article in our back to basics series where we’re taking a look at the absolute beginning concepts of web development. If you’re a designer with little to no knowledge of web programming, this series is for you.

In our first article, we went over what HTML is and in our second article we outlined the basic anatomy of an HTML document. Today we’ll jump to a new topic and answer a very important question: What is CSS?

Business / 10 Oct 2011

Establishing a Hierarchy of Goals for Everything You Design

What one thing above all else makes for a great design? Where should your focus lie? More importantly, is it possible or even desirable to focus on a single goal at the expense of others?

Today we’ll take a look at why goal-oriented design is good design and discuss how being a designer means weighing several competing factors. We’ll also discuss how to decide which goals are the most important and how establishing a hierarchy for each project will make for a better experience for the client, the user and the designer.

HTML / 10 Oct 2011

What Is HTML? the Anatomy of an HTML5 Document

This is the second article in our series on the absolute fundamentals of web development. Our first article explained in detail what HTML is on a conceptual level. We looked at what a markup language is, what tags are and how HTML compares to other important pieces of the web development puzzle such as CSS.

Join us today as we move on and take a look at each basic piece of an HTML document. I’ll explain all that stuff at the top of an HTML file that confuses you and outline the basic structure that you’ll follow for creating your own HTML files.

HTML / 8 Oct 2011

What Is HTML? Back to Basics

Since I have a background in print, I’m always eager to help designers from other areas get a start in web design and basic development. I know from experience that the transition is an extremely intimidating one that many people simply don’t think they can manage.

Fortunately, I can also attest to the fact that it’s probably not as difficult as you might imagine. In the world of hardcore coding, HTML and CSS rank pretty low on the barrier to entry scale.

Today we’re going to start a series that examines the basic building blocks of web development. HTML, CSS, JavaScript; if you’re a complete and utter beginner who might not even have a basic grasp of what these technologies are much less how to wield them, then this series is for you.

Graphics / 5 Oct 2011

Five Fascinating Things You Didn’t Know About Famous Car Logos

Automobile logos represent some of my favorite emblems. I recently became curious as to the origins of several of these popular icons and came across some incredibly interesting facts!

Join us as we look back at some of the most well known logos around and uncover some of their unbelievable secrets!

Layouts / 3 Oct 2011

Doing More With Less: Tips for Designing With Limited Resources

Today we’re going to tackle some common issues that arrive not with having too much scattered content but with too little. How can you flesh out a design when your client has barely given you anything to work with?

We’ll go over some quick and easy tips for crafting gorgeous designs that don’t feel empty despite using very few resources.

Mobile / 30 Sep 2011

How to Crank Out a DIY Mobile Site in Minutes Flat

Huge strides are being made in professional web design in the mobile arena. More than ever, the web is a place that’s quite friendly to devices of all shapes, sizes and operating systems. If you’re not a professional designer, this news can be unwelcome and even overwhelming as you wonder how you’re going to afford or create your own mobile site.

Today we’re going to take a brief look at how mobile websites are becoming ubiquitous, why turnkey DIY services are a necessary part of the web design world and a few of these services for you to check out. We’ll even walk you through the process of using one of these services so you can see how easy it is to have your own mobile site up and running in minutes.

CSS / 28 Sep 2011

CSS Button Tutorial: How to Code Buttons in 5 Simple Steps

Here at Design Shack we like to feature a full range of tutorials, from expert PHP projects to very simple CSS tips. Today’s tutorial is targeted at those still in the beginner stages of CSS.

One of the most frequent questions I get from CSS beginners is, “How do I create a button?” It’s a simple question with a complicated answer. There are quite a few ways to go about it and unfortunately there are also quite a few ways to go wrong. When I first started out in CSS, figuring out all the button syntax was one of the most persistent troubles I faced, it seemed like I was always doing it wrong. Today we’re going to walk through a very simple and flexible process that you can apply to any button you create. More important than the end result is the in-depth explanation at each point outlining why we do it that way.

Graphics / 20 Sep 2011

10 Tips for Designing Better Infographics

Infographics have been around for ages but in recent years they’ve really come into the spotlight as an almost irresistible way to communicate complex scenarios and information. We can’t help it, when we see a link for an infographic, we almost have to check it out!

If you’re at all interested in infographic design, read along as we take a look at some of our favorite examples and discuss some important do’s and don’ts for creating compelling and effective graphics.