Equal parts editor, writer, designer, and photographer. Hit me up on Twitter, or check out my photos.
Always eager to jump into a debate, today I tackle the concept that artsy eye candy is currently too prevalent in design. Design inspiration galleries and communities are constantly critiqued for displaying art when their focus should be on design.
Can we cut through the biases and assumptions of the common rhetoric and discover the proper place for artistic talent in relation to functional design? Let’s find out.
Recently, I decided that I needed a refresher in all of the various CSS shorthand properties. The best way to learn something is to teach it so here’s my attempt at exactly that.
Today we’ll learn how to use CSS shorthand for backgrounds, margins & padding, borders, fonts, list-styles and transitions.
The web is completely over-saturated with apps that help you connect with a social network, make grocery lists, manage large projects, decide who will make tea and every other crazy task you can imagine.
With all of this competition, how can you possibly convince visitors that your app is a the proverbial needle among the hay? Today we’ll look at some real examples to see if we can learn which strategies to mimic and which to avoid.
CSS3 is completely changing the game for creating buttons on the web. Techniques that were once only possible with images are now easily executable with just a few lines of code. For this post we custom built six attractively styled CSS buttons for you to copy and paste right into your projects, zero attribution required.
As with anything good in CSS3, the buttons below work great in Webkit and Mozilla browsers, but various versions of IE will fall short.
Several years ago a friend of mine asked me to teach him how masks work in Photoshop. This is my incredibly late response.
We’ll go over the basics of what masks are, what they’re used for and how wielding them properly will take your Photoshop skills to an entirely new level.
Sign up forms come in many different shapes and sizes. Some are a single field, others are a multi-step process that stretch over several screens.
Today we’ll take a look at 20 attractive and functional forms to see if we can find any useful ideas that you can apply the next time you’re building a sign up form.
Do you ever wonder how Photoshop masters create such realistic compositions? Seemingly simple tasks such as throwing some text onto a brick wall can easily lead to lackluster results if you don’t know what you’re doing.
So what sets you apart from the pros? Why are their final results so believable while yours reek of Photoshop? The simple answer is that they know more tricks than you! Let’s fix that.
Realism in UI design is a hot topic right now. Every design blog worth anything is openly telling Apple that they are way off in their suggestion that iPad apps should mimic reality.
Join us as we add some life to the debate by tackling some of these notions head on. We’ll go over when realism is effective and when it is destructive and how you can wield it in your own designs without ruining your interface.
This week has been all about branding and package design. We’ve gone over some tips for creating effective packaging and taken an in-depth view of the branding histories of Coca-Cola and Pepsi to see what we could learn about the power of a good brand.
Today we’ll finish off the week with a roundup of awesome packaging concepts from Behance and Packaging of the World.
Today we’re going to jump into an age old rivalry between the two biggest soft drink companies on the planet and their flagship products: Pepsi and Coca-Cola.
The main theme will be brand evolution. We’ll take a look at how both brands have changed over the years and which seems to have the better strategy.
Package design is deceptively simple. Many designers wrongfully approach this task as merely a matter of aesthetics and give no thought to the fact that packaging has to succeed on many variables.
Today we’ll go over some basic principles to keep in mind the next time you’re designing either the package itself or merely the artwork. Along the way we’ll see a few amazing and not-so-great examples to learn from.
The web is full of free texture resources. Unfortunately, we’ve all used them before and hate all the inherent restrictions that come as a result of using borrowed art. For your next project, why not just use textures that you make yourself from scratch? You skip the restrictions and the end product is much more unique because you’re not using the same resources used by everyone else.
Today we’re going to get you started by teaching you how to use a couple of basic Photoshop filters to create five completely different textures. Each texture should only take you anywhere from one to three minutes to bust out and can therefore be quickly applied without eating up your crucial design time. Let’s get started!