Equal parts editor, writer, designer, and photographer. Hit me up on Twitter, or check out my photos.
Restaurant websites are quite frequently disasters of both design and usability. Even good designers can go very wrong on this particularly tricky task.
Before you attempt your next restaurant website design, check out this article. We’ll go over some super practical tips for success in addition to a few pitfalls to avoid.
This week’s awesome Design Shack Deal allows you to snag a commercial license of the awesome CouchCMS for a mere $9! CouchCMS offers designers the option of creating custom CMS-driven sites for their clients without any knowledge of PHP.
We sat down with the developer behind CouchCMS to learn what it’s all about, why he created it and why you should consider using it on your projects. If you haven’t picked up your copy already, you won’t want to miss this!
For this week’s post we’ve rounded up fifteen cloud brush sets that collectively contain over 150 brushes to add to your Photoshop library. Some are super realistic, others are more artistic so you can pull off any look you’re going for.
Take a look and let us know what you think in the comments below!
The Wireframe Toolkit for Keynote allows just about anyone with a basic grasp of how to use presentation software to rapidly build user interface mockups for iOS and the web. If you don’t have Keynote, don’t worry, there’s a Powerpoint version included as well!
Today we’re going to give you super quick run through of how to use the Wireframe Toolkit for Keynote to build a basic web app layout. If you can copy and paste, you can do this!
Etsy is a community that fascinates me. Thinking it was limited to scrapbooks and crafts I paid little attention to the site for years, but recently I discovered that there’s a lot more to this group than meets the eye. It turns out there are several very talented designers on Etsy making a decent amount of cash selling stock designs.
Today we’re going to take a closer look at some of the successful sellers of graphic design templates on Etsy to see if we can glean any trends and tips from them.
So you’ve finally graduated and you’re ready to hit the bricks and start looking for your first real 9-5 design job. You searched some job postings and lined up a few interviews, what now? How can you impress potential employers fresh out of school?
In this article we’ll go over some of the dos and don’ts of preparing for design job interviews. You’ll learn what employers are looking for in a portfolio, resume and candidate so you can be better suited to land that dream job.
Abstract watercolors are useful when you need a background that really draws interest from the viewer. No two are exactly alike and all of them are fascinating to behold.
Today we’ve rounded up a great collection of abstract watercolor textures and texture packs for you to use in your designs. Collectively you’ll be able to grab over 60 awesome textures from this post!
Congratulations so our three winners! Jano, Dave and Lance will be receiving emails soon from the good people at LemonStand with more details.
Jano Garcia: @janogarcia
Dave Mozdzanowski: @dave_moz
Lance Heiskell: @lheiskell
Thanks to everyone who entered!
I have a dirty little secret, I hate slicing Photoshop files. By that I don’t mean that I hate turning PSD comps into websites, I mean that I hate Photoshop’s slicing tools. The whole process makes my PSD look busy, cluttered and overly complicated so I usually skip it altogether and instead opt to manually crop and save out images individually as needed.
In order to fight this tendency and attempt to see the true usefulness of Photoshop’s slicing tools, I embarked on a mission to learn all the intricacies of how slicing works. Below is a collection of tips and tricks that resulted from this journey. Hopefully, you’ll learn a thing or two you never knew!
On a technical level, the term “bokeh” refers to the aesthetic quality of the blur in a photograph. Photos and even lenses are often judged by this factor and points of light in the distance are one of the most commonly seen tests and experiments in this area.
The images that result from these experimentations are quite beautiful and have really captured the attention of designers in recent years. Today we’ve rounded up thirty of our favorite free bokeh textures for you to use in your designs. Enjoy!
Business cards are a constant point of creativity for designers. This little personalized piece of marketing holds an impressive amount of potential for capturing the attention of potential customers and many businesses are willing to spend plenty of money to make sure their cards make a lasting statement.
Today we’ve collected over fifty business card designs and concepts that not only have aesthetic appeal, but really go that extra mile to increase impact. Some pop up into 3D shapes, others glow in the dark or even serve a lasting useful purpose. All of them are sure to inspire you in your own endeavors to create amazing business cards.
Are you in a professional rut? Whether you’re an employee or a freelancer, it’s easy to reach a point in your career where you feel stagnant, both financially and in personal fulfillment. So how do you break free of that? How do these people that you hear about really manage to leave everything behind, venture out on their own and actually become a successful entrepreneur earning more than any agency would pay them?
Today we’re out to answer that question. We sat down with Ken Peters, founder of Nocturnal Design to hear his story about leaving a senior design position with an impressive salary to start his own company. You’ll get some real answers about how he managed to make this transition a huge success rather than falling on his face.