1. Authors
  2. Joshua Johnson

Joshua Johnson

Joshua Johnson

Equal parts editor, writer, designer, and photographer. Hit me up on Twitter, or check out my photos.

CSS / 19 Sep 2011

Build an Animated Mario Block Navigation Menu With CSS3

Today we’re going to have some good clean fun by recreating the animated Mario Bros. question mark box with pure CSS3.

Along the way you’ll learn how to use several cool CSS3 technologies such as rounded corners, box and text shadows, and keyframe animations that work in both Safari and Firefox. Let’s jump in!

Graphics / 15 Sep 2011

Then and Now: The Evolution of Cereal Mascots

Today we’re going to have some good old nostalgic fun and take a walk through cereal box history to look at some beloved characters that have been with most of us since we could chew.

Keep reading to see what your favorite cereal box mascot looked like years ago versus today!

Business / 14 Sep 2011

The Best Online Portfolio Service: Three Free Options Compared

Whether you’re a freelance designer, a full-time-employee or an out of work designer actively seeking a position, it’s a good idea to increase your web presence as much as possible. It’s always great to have your own site and domain, but you can easily supplement that with some awesome free online services created specifically to host creative portfolios.

Rather than give you another roundup of twenty of these services and force you to do the research yourself, I’ve gone through and picked three of my favorites for comparison so you can quickly see which is best for you. Let’s get started!

Inspiration / 8 Sep 2011

30 Useful and Hilarious Lorem Ipsum Generators

Lorem ipsum represents a long-held tradition for designers, typographers and the like. Some people hate it and argue for its demise, but others ignore the hate as they create awesome tools to help create filler text for everyone from bacon lovers to Charlie Sheen fans.

Today we’re going to briefly discuss why lorem ipsum and its brethren still have legitimate uses and then we’ll have some fun as we check out thirty great dummy content generators that you’ll definitely want to bookmark.

Software / 7 Sep 2011

8 Ways to Get the Selection You Want in Photoshop

Mastering different forms of selection creation is one of the fundamental aspects of becoming a Photoshop professional. If you don’t know half a dozen techniques or more to create a usable selection, your toolbox of skills is unnecessarily limited.

Today we’re going to take a quick look at eight popular methods for creating selections in Photoshop and where each is the most applicable.

Typography / 31 Aug 2011

8 Simple and Useful Tips for Kerning Type

Kerning is fun! All right, unless you’re a serious type nerd like me, that’s definitely not going to be a true statement. However, it is an absolutely essential part of your typographical education and implementation.

If you’ve been ignoring kerning or simply aren’t sure how to do it properly, take a look at these eight quick tips and get started on the road to becoming a kerning master.

Mobile / 30 Aug 2011

More Than Scaling: How to Make the Leap From Mobile to Desktop

In the last decade, much discussion time has been given to how both interfaces and user experiences translate from desktops to smaller mobile devices. Recently however, the conversation has switched and we’re now seeing trends begin in the mobile environment and make the leap back to the desktop.

This leap is deceptively simple and merits significant inspection as to the fundamental differences between mobile and desktop platforms and how that can and should affect how interfaces and experiences are crafted.

Inspiration / 29 Aug 2011

Important Marketing Lessons From Outrageous Vintage Advertisements

I absolutely love looking at old ads from the early to mid 20th century. The themes covered and claims that are made are often so completely outrageous that you wonder how they ever made it to print. Looking at these, you can’t help but marvel how far advertising has come.

How much advancement have we really made in this area though? Aren’t the advertising ploys of past generations still the same tricks used by marketers today? Follow along as we take a look at some truly ridiculous ads and how they really aren’t so different from advertising we see today.

HTML / 23 Aug 2011

Mastering Markdown: 30 Resources, Apps and Tutorials to Get You Started

If you’re like me, learning Markdown has been on your todo list for months. I finally took the plunge and instantly became addicted to sorting through the wealth of resources, apps and other Markdown related materials available.

The following is a collection of the best Markdown resources that I’ve found. Whether you’re a complete Markdown newbie looking to learn the syntax or a seasoned expert in the market for a new iPad app, you’ll find something here that’s perfect for your needs.

CSS / 22 Aug 2011

Should Web Designers Know Code? Finding Compromise in a Tired Debate

Should web designers understand basic HTML and CSS? It’s a tired argument with two sides that refuse to yield, why even discuss it?

The purpose of this article is not to prove which group is right but to attempt to show that both sides do indeed make valid points and to see if analyzing these points brings us to a compromise that both parties can agree on.

Software / 18 Aug 2011

Why Adobe Doesn’t Understand Web Designers

Earlier this week Adobe launched a preview of a WYSISYG web design project currently codenamed “Muse.” Though it looked promising, disappointed and even angry reactions from the web community are already all over the web.

With all the time, effort and money that Adobe spends on creating a “code free” solution for designing websites, you’d think that they would be able to create something decently usable by now. So what’s holding them back? Today we’ll take a brief walk down memory lane, starting all the way back at PageMill, to see if we can discover any reoccurring themes in Adobe’s history with web designers.