Joshua Johnson

Typography / 18 Nov 2010

Ode to Ampersand: 30+ Inspiring Images of Our Favorite Character

Did you know that the ampersand comes from the phrase “and per se and?” Or that it originated around 1st century AD as a combination of the Roman cursive letters E and T? Even more interesting than its history and origin is its fantastic shape, which designers are constantly using as a muse for a new piece of typographical art.

Below you’ll find over thirty excellent inspirational images that feature ampersands as a primary element. Looking through these will help you learn to take advantage of what is arguably the most attractive character on your keyboard.

JavaScript / 5 Nov 2010

Effortless Full Screen Background Images With jQuery

Today we’re going to build a simple and fun webpage for the sole purpose of showing off Fullscreenr, a great little jQuery plugin that makes it easy to add a background image to your site that automatically adjusts to the window size.

We’ll also throw in some @font-face and rgba action to keep things modern and educational on the rest of the build. Let’s get started!

Graphics / 4 Nov 2010

10 Design Lessons From HTML Email Templates That Actually Sell

In the past we and several other blogs have outlined some useful technical information for how to code and structure your HTML emails from a developer point of view. But much less discussion has been given to how to actually undertake the design component of email newsletters.

Today we’ll take a look at some of the top-selling email templates from Themeforest and see if we can decipher what their designers did right so you can mimic these basic principles in your own designs.

Business / 3 Nov 2010

Feedback From a Theory X and Theory Y Perspective

This article is for both designers and clients/employers. I have been on both sides of this equation so I know how it feels to give feedback as well as receive it and I firmly believe that there is a right and wrong way to go about each task.

Today we’ll look at both sides of the coin and discuss how employers can motivate the people working for them to meet necessary goals and how designers should react in the face of both constructive and destructive criticism.

As we’ll see, designers and managers are often equally guilty of approaching the problem of feedback in a poor manner. While abusive managers do exist, designers tend to unnecessarily wear their feelings on their sleeves and take offense too quickly.

Graphics / 29 Oct 2010

Design an Edgy Flyer Using Your Own Photography

Today we’re going to take on a design project from start to finish using primarily resources that we create ourselves. We’ll walk through taking the photo, editing it in Adobe Lightroom, and using it as the main element of a flyer design that we’ll take on in Photoshop.

Along the way you’ll learn some great and practical techniques that you can apply immediately to your own work. Let’s get started!

Graphics / 27 Oct 2010

Photoshop Blending Modes: Beginner’s Tips and Tricks

Photoshop’s blending modes are a source of constant confusion for many designers. There aren’t really any sort of built-in examples for you to see and the blending mode names are no where near intuitive suggestions of what the effect actually does to the appearance of your document.

Today we’ll help remove a little of the mystery by discussing how a few key blending modes work in addition to some hints for how to use them effectively.

HTML / 22 Oct 2010

How to Build a Website With Flux 3: A Coder’s WYSIWYG

Flux is a WYSIWYG website editor for Macs. Now, before you curse under your breath about how much you hate WYSIWYGs, you should know that Flux is different and is both powerful and flexible enough to be used by professional web developers.

Today I’ll introduce you to Flux by creating a super simple web page from scratch (no annoyingly rigid templates). Along the way we’ll see what a typical workflow looks like and why it just might be the best visual web editor I’ve ever used.

Typography / 21 Oct 2010

Ultimate Web Font Resource Roundup: 50 Awesome Sites

The idea that web designers ignore typography is officially dead. In recent years countless tools and services have sprung up to meet the need of making the web a more type-friendly place, and they’re succeeding.

Today we bring you a huge list of awesome websites for all things related to web fonts. You’ll find sites offering free fonts, web font services, font building tools, previewing utilities, and a lot more!

CSS / 20 Oct 2010

CSS3 Cookbook: 7 Super Easy CSS Recipes to Copy and Paste

By now you’ve probably seen enough lengthy CSS3 tutorials to last a lifetime. You’re probably starting to become familiar with what CSS3 has to offer and are ready to move past basic theory and see some practical design examples that you can copy and paste right into your code without without wading through tons of commentary.

Well you’re in luck because that’s exactly what we have for you today! Below you’ll find seven fun and attractive CSS tricks that you can grab and insert right into your own projects and customize at will. Keep in mind that since this stuff is still cutting edge, older browsers won’t support most of it. I’ve tried to ensure graceful degradation where possible so that you can provide a working experience to all users and a better experience to those with using webkit.

Layouts / 15 Oct 2010

Create a Stunning Wooden Website Template in Photoshop

Today we’re going to build an awesome website template in Photoshop utilizing a number of advanced techniques.

I’ll take you through the entire process in ten easy steps and provide you with a link to download the finished template. Let’s begin!

Graphics / 14 Oct 2010

5 Super Easy Illustrator Typography Tricks

Beautiful typography goes much further than finding the right font.

Today’s post will help you break out of the nasty habit of simply typing out a headline and calling it a day by showing you how to craft standard text in Illustrator into something more interesting and unique.

Below you’ll find a fairly random collection of tricks that I’ve picked up in the last few years. Each method is highly open to interpretation and you should definitely try to tweak and customize them to your own preferences.

CSS / 13 Oct 2010

Introducing the LESS CSS Grid

In the past we’ve taken a look at several CSS grid systems. We’ve also gone over how LESS.js can add a lot of flexibility to the way you style web pages. Today we’re going to combine these two ideas and create a grid system that utilizes LESS.

Read on to see why on Earth we would do such a thing. If you understand the concept, you can also skip the tutorial and go straight to the download. Let’s get started.