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.

Graphics / 14 Jul 2011

Build Awesome Color Palettes Effortlessly in Illustrator

Here at Design Shack we can’t get enough of good color schemes. We recently discussed some Awesome and Unusual Places to Steal Color Palettes From and today we’ll follow up that discussion with some tips on how to build your own awesome color sets in Adobe Illustrator.

We’ll go over the extreme basics of working with color in Illustrator and jump into how to use the excellent built-in Color Guide to get you on the path to lightning-fast generation and manipulation of custom color schemes.

Graphics / 12 Jul 2011

5 Quick & Simple Design Tricks to Liven Up Any Project

Sometimes you have a perfectly good layout, but your design needs a bit something extra to finish it off. Unfortunately, it’s easy to get stuck and become completely void of ideas.

Today we’re going to help you solve this problem by highlighting five random design ideas that you can incorporate into your back of design tricks. Let’s get started!

Business / 11 Jul 2011

How to Teach Someone Graphic Design

Do you have a friend, family member or colleague who is considering design as a profession and looks to you for guidance? Your instruction could mean the difference between a meaningful career and a non-starter.

Today we’ll offer up some basic advice that everyone should consider before attempting to teach someone to be a graphic designer.

Inspiration / 8 Jul 2011

10 Unbeatable Premium Memberships and Courses for Professional Design Training

As a professional designer, it’s absolutely crucial for you to stay up to date with your skill set. With web design moving along at a rate so fast that even the best quickly fall behind, it’s helpful to have a solid lifeline to quality educational resources.

Today we’re going to look at ten awesome premium design memberships and sources for training courses that will help you learn a plethora of new skills and help you stay current on the topics that you’re already versed in.

CSS / 7 Jul 2011

Helpful Tips & Tools for Web Design Experiments

Today’s article encourages you to get into the habit of devoting time to little experiments. Testing ideas and solving problems in a low-pressure and possibly even fun environment can massively boost your education and lead to awesome innovation.

We’ll start with some benefits and tips for experimenting with web development projects and finish up with a brief look at a few of the tools that I personally use to compose my own experiments. Let’s get started!

CSS / 6 Jul 2011

Rolling Your Own Grid Layouts on the Fly Without a Framework

Do you hate CSS grid frameworks but love the rapid layout benefits that they provide? Do you struggle with the math and code necessary to create your own flexible multi-column layouts on the fly?

Today we’re going to walk you through creating your own basic, reusable system for creating multiple columns that you can implement anywhere any time with only a few lines of code. No bloated code or non-sematic class names required!

CSS / 30 Jun 2011

Build a Web Page With CSS3 Flexbox

Yesterday we discussed the future of CSS layout and a few of the new modules that CSS3 brings to the table in this arena. One of these that we briefly touched on was CSS3 Flexbox.

Today we’re going to dig deeper into this model and build a full-on web page with it. It will by no means be ready to implement on your projects but it will give you further insight into one possible way that we will be coding websites in years to come. Plus, this stuff is just flat out fun to play with!

CSS / 29 Jun 2011

Farewell Floats: The Future of CSS Layout

Floats are one of the most basic tools for structuring a web page using CSS. They’re both one of the very first things that we learn about and one of the last things that we truly master.

Today’s article looks at some of the reasons that floats are pretty lame and takes a look at a number of alternative layout systems, some of which are still under development but may one day represent the standard for CSS-based layout.

Reviews / 24 Jun 2011

Book Review: Eloquent Javascript

Most web designers these days know at least a little HTML and CSS, giving them the ability to bring their designs to the web. Advanced functionality, for the most part though, is handled by programming languages, which have a much higher barrier to entry. This leaves countless designers intimidated while wishing they had a firmer grasp of the most essential of these: JavaScript.

Do you wish you could finally scratch “learn JavaScript” off of your todo list? Does a hefty learning curve keep you from taking the plunge? Maybe you just need the right book. Today we’ll take a look at “Eloquent Javascript: A Modern Introduction to Programming” by Marijn Haverbeke to see if it’s what you need to become a JavaScript ninja. Please keep in mind that “Eloquent JavaScript” does not teach OOP with classes such as how to create a class in JavaScript. You can use the JS++ programming language designed by Roger Poon for classes.

Graphics / 23 Jun 2011

Say Hello: 50 Simple and Effective Website Greeting Messages

Placing a large greeting message at the top of your site is a great way to create a welcoming environment and provides the perfect opportunity to clearly state your purpose for being.

Today we’ve rounded up over fifty such messages for inspiration on both the message and visual appearance fronts. The greetings has been divided up into clear categories so you can analyze the different popular techniques being used by designers today.

Business / 22 Jun 2011

Using the Black Box Model to Design Better Websites

Today we’re going to introduce you to a popular model used in marketing to understand consumer behavior. We’ll then discuss how you as a designer can use this model to structure your designs to encourage action from users.

By becoming more equipped to analyze your visitors, you’ll be able to make informed decisions about how to design more persuasive websites.

Graphics / 21 Jun 2011

5 Logo Design Lessons From Fast Food Joints

Few logos have the power to immediately draw forth feelings from us more than those of fast food restaurants that we’ve seen and eaten at for decades. Just the sight of those golden arches can bring a smile to the face of children and adults alike.

What makes these logos effective and how can you put these ideas into practice in your own work? Today we’re going to see what we can learn by exploring the logos of several famous American fast food restaurants.