Joshua Johnson

Inspiration / 30 Oct 2012

The New Wendy’s Logo: What Went Right

Logo updates are a precarious business. One wrong move and you’ll have an angry mob calling for your head. This is especially true with brands that people have literally interacted with for the majority of their lives.

Today we’re going to take a look at just such a brand. Wendy’s, the self-proclaimed old fashioned hamburger joint, has a brand new logo. Spoiler alert: it’s great, especially when compared to the recent Arby’s update. So what went right here compared with what we saw with Arby’s? Let’s take a look.

Critique / 26 Oct 2012

Web Design Critique #90: MOO.com

Every week we take a look at a new website and analyze the design. We’ll point out both the areas that are done well in addition to those that could use some work. Finally, we’ll finish by asking you to provide your own feedback.

Today’s site is Moo, an awesome service for printing business cards, postcards, greeting cards and more. Let’s jump in and see what we think!

Business / 25 Oct 2012

Meet Creative Market: A New Platform for Buying and Selling Creative Resources

The folks that brought you COLOURlovers have cooked up something new and exciting: Creative Market, a beautiful and simple way to buy and sell digital creative goods online.

Join us as we jump in to see what Creative Market is all about and how they’re uniquely positioning themselves in this market.

Inspiration / 22 Oct 2012

15 Great Gadgets and Gifts for Designers: 2012

It’s that time of year again. The weather is cooling down, everything from candles to coffee smells like pumpkin, and the holidays are right around the corner. Before you know it, you’ll be standing in a shopping mall with absolutely no idea what to purchase for the lovable but oh so nerdy designers on your list. Hint: they don’t want another “fancy” pen set from Staples.

Fear not, my fellow geeks have elected me to inform you of all the things that they’d love to see under the tree this year. Just like last year, I’ve put together a list of fifteen awesome gifts for designers. Take a look and start crossing off some names.

Inspiration / 15 Oct 2012

The New Arby’s Logo: Better or Boring?

Everyone’s favorite roast beef sandwich fast food chain (ok, maybe the only roast beef fast food chain anyone can name) just jumped headlong into a brand refresh. Their new logo, menu and website is meant to bring the admittedly old-timey restaurant into the 21st century.

The question of course is, did they succeed? Follow along as we take a look at the logo and website to see what we think.

Software / 11 Oct 2012

50 Amazing Resources for Dribbble Lovers

Here at Design Shack, we’re huge Dribbble fans. Sort of a Twitter for design, this awesome site is home to beautiful bite-sized work samples from the web’s best designers.

To showcase our love for Dribbble, we’ve put together a collection of fifty fantastic resources for anyone and everyone who uses Dribbble. From open source developer projects and quirky web projects to desktop and mobile applications, we’ve got enough Dribbble goodness to keep you occupied for months.

News / 9 Oct 2012

Check Out Design Shack on Your Mobile Device With Google Currents

Great news! Design Shack is hitting your tablet and smartphone in a big way with Google Currents, a beautiful and free newsreader app for iOS and Android. With just a quick click or tap, you can get a daily dose of design goodness delivered right to your Google Currents feed. Read on to see how!

CSS / 8 Oct 2012

Battle of the LESS Mixin Libraries: LESS Elements vs. LESS Hat vs. Bootstrap

LESS is a friendly, easily-approachable CSS preprocessor. Though ultimately, Sass and Stylus are more powerful and robust, LESS has a certain charm that keeps it as a forerunner in the battle of the preprocessors.

If you’re a Sass fan, then you can take advantage of Compass, an incredible framework that makes coding with complex CSS3 properties a breeze. But what about LESS users? Where’s their Compass? Today we’ll look at three awesome mixin libraries that will help fill that void.

CSS / 4 Oct 2012

How to Use Adobe Edge Web Fonts on Your Site

Adobe recently launched a free web font service to complement Typekit, their amazing premium service. Adobe Edge Web Fonts currently gives you around 500 free font families that you can use on your site today with little effort. How great is that?

The process for implementing these fonts isn’t quite as straightforward as some of the other services that you might be used to, so today we’re going to dive in and take a look at how it all works.

JavaScript / 2 Oct 2012

40 Awesome MooTools Plugins You Need to Check Out

Recently, we published an outstanding collection of 40 jQuery plugins that every developer should check out. Today we’re following that up with some love for the MooTools crowd.

Like jQuery, MooTools has an awesome community of developers that constantly churn out stellar free plugins for all types of tasks and interfaces. In this collection you’ll find plugins for sliders, lightboxes, tags, navigation and a lot more.

Software / 1 Oct 2012

How to Avoid Stupid Screw-Ups With Adobe Template Files

Don’t you hate it when you use some important file as a template and then accidentally save over it? I used to do this all the time and it frustrated me to no end.

Fortunately, Adobe has invented these great little template file types that fundamentally function differently than your normal files to make sure you don’t screw anything up. Read on to see how they work.

Critique / 28 Sep 2012

Web Design Critique #89: Discoveries Magazine

Every week we take a look at a new website and analyze the design. We’ll point out both the areas that are done well in addition to those that could use some work. Finally, we’ll finish by asking you to provide your own feedback.

Today’s site is Discoveries Magazine, a medical research publication. Let’s jump in and see what we think!