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A good color palette can make or break a design. It sets the tone, conveys emotion and can even drastically affect usability. With all this pressure, choosing a color palette is tricky business.
Today we’re going to think outside the box and explore some fresh and interesting ways to select the colors for your project by pointing out some great sources of inspiration. Let’s get started.
Adobe Illustrator is one of my absolute favorite applications. For vector work, Illustrator simply can’t be beat and you should really set your reservations aside and give it a shot. Even if you’re commonly creating raster graphics for the web, there are a number of things that Illustrator simply does better than Photoshop so getting to know both apps and their strengths/weaknesses is a must.
Today’s article is for the extreme Illustrator newbies. You have the Adobe Creative Suite installed on your computer and have seen Illustrator sitting there quietly begging to be played with but you’ve never jumped in. We’ll go over ten basic things you should know before starting.
If I had my way, along with just about every other web designer, web pages would always contain a fairly limited amount of content in order to keep the focus clear and the line of communication easy to follow.
Unfortunately, real world situations call for web pages with immense amounts of content. To learn to tackle the issues that arise in this arena, we’re going to look at a particular section of websites that are perhaps more overcrowded than any other: news websites. How do the designers at CNN, MSNBC, Fox and others handle the layout of so much information? Find out after the jump.
You’ve got your portfolio site almost finished and it’s time to tackle that task you’ve been putting off: the contact form. Some designers love forms, but many of us find them boring and annoying and would rather spend our day creating anything else.
One of the most difficult parts of this task is simply deciding what fields and questions to place in your contact form. What information should you be gathering from potential clients? Today we’ll answer that question by looking at three different common solutions.
Should designers outsource their own website or personal brand? It may sound crazy but the practice is more common that you might think.
Today we’re going to attempt to look at both sides of this issue and explore the good and the bad of letting another designer define your digital identity.
Recently on Design Shack we featured an article titled “10 Rock Solid Website Layout Examples“, which broke down some common layouts into simple silhouette wireframes so you could easily apply them in your work.
Today I’ve chosen three of these layouts and converted them to live, responsive web pages with some HTML and CSS. They’re all super simple and easy enough for many beginners to take on, plus we’ll be using an awesome framework to do the heavy lifting.
The box-reflect property is just one of many awesome new CSS3 effects that Webkit brings to the table. Unfortunately, it’s not the easiest to use. There’s a lot of syntax that can be confusing and today we’re going to sift through it and explain it in detail so you can get the hang of it.
It’s important to note that, at this point, box-reflect is only supported by Webkit browsers. It’s a superfluous visual effect so you can use it as long as you accept that it’s not going to render in anything but Chrome and Safari.
Everyone loves a good typography roundup. Type is the muse of so many extremely talented designers and the web is simply overflowing with beautiful examples just waiting to inspire you to create your own masterpiece.
Today we’ve got a collection of fifty of the most attractive typographic art pieces we could find from artists all over the world. Take a look!
Do you have a list of things that you know you should learn but just haven’t been able to pick up? Have you tried to read through a book or two with no success?
Today we’re going to discuss why you can’t get through those boring web design books, how they should be different and what to look for to leverage the way you actually learn.
More and more lately it seems that design companies are bucking tradition and tossing out resumes as the de facto way to differentiate between and choose candidates.
Should you be concerned about how you look on paper or diverting your efforts towards something more important? Read on to find out.
Recently we published an article showcasing 20 Amazing Examples of Using Media Queries for Responsive Web Design. These web pages respond extremely well to different browser window sizes, from huge HD screens to smartphones.
Today we’re going to show you how to use a boilerplate called Skeleton to take the headaches out of designing and building a responsive web page. You’ll be stunned at how easy it is!
Thumbnail galleries are one of the most common solutions on the web for showcasing multiple images. The efficiency of this tool can’t be beat, it allows for quick browsing and closer inspection when desired.
Whenever I build a thumbnail gallery, I like to look around the web to see what other designers are doing to make theirs unique. Today we’re collected fifty great galleries for you to check out. Along the way, we’ll also discuss some ideas that you can use in your own galleries.