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Joshua Johnson

Joshua Johnson

Equal parts editor, writer, designer, and photographer. Hit me up on Twitter, or check out my photos.

Inspiration / 13 Aug 2010

Designing in the Dark: 10 Dark Sites and Their Color Schemes

What goes well with a black website? Today we’ll find out but taking a look at some excellent examples of dark web design along with their primary color palettes.

Each website will have a screenshot along with a brief description, a visual representation of the color scheme, and a link to download the Photoshop color swatches from Pictaculous.

CSS / 12 Aug 2010

Using Less.js to Simplify Your CSS3

LESS is an amazing little tool that extends CSS with the addition of variables, mixins, operations and nested rules. What this means is that you can write leaner code very quickly. And with the recent rise of complex CSS3 properties, we have a few glaring examples of code that could definitely stand to be simplified a bit.

Today we’ll take a look at how to use the newest JavaScript implementation of LESS to simplify lengthy CSS3 markup. One of the key features we’ll be looking at that I haven’t seen discussed elsewhere is how to deal with multiple variables in mixins. It’s fairly simple but can be confusing if you’ve never tried it.

Inspiration / 11 Aug 2010

Dribbble Shots of the Week #2

Because we have come to love bite-sized inspiration, each week we feature ten Dribbble shots that we found to be particularly excellent.

We have no real guidelines for who makes it and who doesn’t, just pure off the cuff judgement based on aesthetic quality. We’ll also pick a VIP that represents our top pick of the week.

Graphics / 10 Aug 2010

Battle of the Burgers: American Fast Food Sites Compared

Today’s post will be an intense battle as we compare the design and usability of nine major American burger joints.

These corporations pull in millions making me obese with their irresistibly tasty grilled double heart attacks with cheese and should have plenty of revenue to invest into solid web designers. Let’s see how they fare against my inscrutable eye for ugly web design.

Graphics / 6 Aug 2010

An in-Depth Guide to Working With Typography in Illustrator

Adobe Illustrator is a fantastic application for crafting typographical masterpieces. However, whether you’re creating a simple paragraph for a print ad or a complex typographical piece of art for a website, there are several tips and techniques you should know for how to manipulate type within the program.

Below you’ll find a brief overview of some of the basic commands you should familiarize yourself with as well as some must-know keyboard shortcuts and even a few obscure features that you may not even know exist. Let’s get started!

Inspiration / 5 Aug 2010

25 Brilliant Uses of Colorful Spectrums in Web Design

I’ve noticed a recent trend in web design that involves the use of colorful spectrums as a main design element. The uses are widely varied but almost always quite beautiful.

Today we’ll learn how to build amazing spectrum-based artwork in Photoshop and then take a look at 25 brilliant examples of spectrums being used in real websites.

Inspiration / 1 Aug 2010

Dribbble Shots of the Week #1

I’ve definitely become quite sucked into the strange exclusive designer club that is Dribbble.com. Too often “design inspiration” implies ripping off the entire concept of someone else’s work. With Dribbble it’s really easy to find tiny bits of inspirational art that will spark a design idea where the final result is completely different than the work of the artist who provided the inspiration.

I’ve been so inspired by this bite-sized digital art museum that I decided to start a new series where I will hand pick 10 Dribbble “shots” to share with you. To make the selections, I’ll use no other criteria aside from my own off-the-cuff judgement. As a bonus, I’ll pick a “VIP” each week that showcases my favorite shot and what I liked about it.

So here we go! Please enjoy this week’s top ten shots.

CSS / 30 Jul 2010

27 Utilities for Saving and Sharing Code Snippets

You’ve got countless bits of HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, and PHP rolling around in your head and on your hard drive that you are forced to try to recall each time you start a project. It’s time to get organized.

This post will briefly point you to 27 great utilities that not only help you store your favorite snippets both locally and in the cloud, but also make sharing with others a breeze. Enjoy!

Graphics / 29 Jul 2010

The Designer’s Guide to Taking Better Photos

I’ve mentioned several times before that photography is one of the most natural complements to your skills as a designer. We designers are in constant need of very specific imagery and this can and does lead to hours of searching, unnecessary stock fees and ultimately the use of imagery that has a high likelihood of being found on the projects of countless other designers.

Becoming a decent photographer can save you time and money and provide you with a serious competitive edge in the form of truly unique imagery that no one in the world possesses but you.

Accessibility / 28 Jul 2010

Tips for Designing for Colorblind Users

It’s estimated that about 8% of males and 0.5% of females are born colorblind. That may seem like a low number but if you’re designing for a large audience, having a site that’s unusable for eight out of every hundred males is definitely less than desirable.

Fortunately, you can fairly easily make sure that your site is colorblind friendly by always keeping in mind the information below. We’ll take a look at what colorblindness really means and how you can tweak your designs based on a few simple principles.

Graphics / 23 Jul 2010

50 Fantastically Clever Logos

I know everybody and their brother does logo roundups so you’re probably sick of them, but I don’t believe I’ve ever done one and there is a particularly impressive brand of logo design that I wanted to point out.

Today we’ll look at 50 logos that are the result of going beyond the typical thought process and injecting a little wit and hidden symbolism into the design process.

CSS / 22 Jul 2010

20+ Free CSS3 Code Generators

One of the biggest problems with all the new CSS3 properties is that most of them have multiple browser-specific implementations. This means when you want a simple shadow, you have to remember quite a bit of code to make it compatible across as many browsers as possible.

To help you out with this task, a bunch of intrepid coders have created free interactive tools that provide simple user interfaces that spit out all the code you need with a fully customizable end result. Below you’ll find over twenty of these CSS3 generators.