Inspiring advice, tips, and suggestions for improving your graphic design skills, logo design, working with templates, and more.
Today we are going to examine 15 bits of user interface and experience design that really heighten the experience of using a site or application.
Use these website, iPhone and desktop application examples as inspiration for creating your own uniquely addicting user experiences.
The web is a veritable wonderland of free design resources that can enrich and improve your designs. This post contains forty sites to bookmark and keep an eye on for a continual stream of amazingly useful resources.
Sometimes you look at a site that may be attractive enough, but something is missing. It has great colors, nice graphics, perfect alignment and clever copy, but there’s just something a bit bland about it. Though everything looks nice, nothing is really coming through vividly on a greater level than anything else. This solution to this problem is visual hierarchy.
Designers are often intuitive enough to give the elements on the page a clear hierarchy without even thinking, other times the lack of intention in this area leads to a design like the one described above. This article will examine some of the basic principles of designing with a visual hierarchy of information in mind.
Design ruts are the commercial artist’s equivalent of writer’s block. Sometimes you just seem to reach the end of your creative rope and can’t imagine thinking of any more good ideas.
Fortunately, all hope is not lost in these situations as there is plenty that you can do to both prevent and/or recover from a design rut. Today we’ll look at some different ways your creativity could potentially become stagnant and what to do in response.
Minimalism is a trend that will never die. No matter how many times we are left in awe by impressively intricate designs, there will always be something about simplicity that leaves us just as captured.
Today we’ll look at some of the key aspects of minimalism in web design along with some examples from designers who got it right.
All designers were not created equal.
Some possess illustrative abilities that put simple page layout to shame. Today we’ll honor these artists and take a look at 25 beautiful sites from all over the world that feature incredibly creative illustrations.
In design, the simplest of options are often among the best. Using a photographic background is an easy way to make your site beautifully eye-catching. Below you’ll find 30 examples of sites from all over the world using strong photographic elements as background pieces. Some use pure photography while others mix in illustrations, Photoshop effects, and text. Use these as a leaping point for your own ideas the next time you need a fresh design.
The advancement of web technology has led to some incredibly impressive improvements in online application interface design. Below we’ll look at 20 web apps that aren’t only extremely useful, but indisputably attractive as well. I’ve subdivided the applications into four categories: Design, Business, Productivity and Miscellaneous.
Protecting your intellectual property has always been a difficult task and the Internet has only served to complicate matters. The web has become an unoriginal designer’s one stop shop for endless material to shamelessly ripoff. Today we’ll take a look into some of the reasons design theft is so rampant online and explore some answers to the essential question of what to do if someone steals your design. A big thanks to Von Glitschka for providing much of the content and advice seen below!
This post began purely as a showcase of well-designed band websites. Naturally, to begin my search I opened up my iTunes library and Safari and began checking out the sites of the bands in my collection. What I discovered shocked me; nearly every site I came across was profoundly lackluster or altogether horrid. I’m at a loss as to why record companies, who spend countless dollars promoting their big money makers, seem to be incapable of finding web designers that match the remarkable talent of their artists.
At this point the nature of the article changed entirely. Due to the wealth of ugly sites to choose from, today we’ll examine some of the reasons I think the band website industry really needs to step up and make some major changes. We’ll conclude by analyzing some examples to follow if you want to create a band site that doesn’t suck.
Designing out in the open can be quite intimidating.
You’re basically swinging the doors open wide and hanging up a huge sign that says “Harsh Criticism Wanted.” However, the benefits of utilizing this particularly transparent method of design can often outweigh the grievances.
Today we’ll look at seven reasons to consider designing your next project in the open.
Getting noticed in an industry as competitive and overcrowded as web design is no mean feat. In order to stand out, first impressions need to be both targeted and executed to perfection.
To provide an insight into how it should be done, we’ve compiled a list of 25 of the most beautifully designed web agency sites. These amazing sites all have that “wow factor”, displaying cutting edge design alongside marketing savoir-faire. They are conscious of their target clientele, whether it’s large corporations or personal clients, presenting an understanding of their needs.