Articles - Page 149

Browse hundreds of articles, tips, and inspiring design collections. Find helpful design advice, or the perfect resource for your next project.

CSS / 25 Jul 2011

Achieving Multi-Step Animations With CSS Transitions

Multi-step CSS animations are easy with keyframes, but what if we want to use plain old transitions to achieve a similar effect? Further, how do we take a single hover event and translate that into multiple animations on different elements?

The answer lies in using buried hovers, a simple and effective trick you should definitely try out.

CSS / 22 Jul 2011

How to Implement Some Slick Icons Using a Font and CSS

Using an image-based font can be a fun and quick way to implement icons across your site. It’s a super easy process that gives you complete freedom to go back and re-size your icons at any time.

Today we’ll use the excellent Pictos font to build a simple web page so you can get a feel for the process.

Layouts / 20 Jul 2011

Ditching the Grid: Alternative Layout Strategies and Tips

Are you tired of creating building websites using the same old grid-based layouts for every project? Have you been itching to break away from the norm and attempt something a little more organic?

Today we’ll take a look at a few sites that have done just that to see what we can learn about alternative layout methods and how they can be successfully implemented.

Graphics / 14 Jul 2011

Build Awesome Color Palettes Effortlessly in Illustrator

Here at Design Shack we can’t get enough of good color schemes. We recently discussed some Awesome and Unusual Places to Steal Color Palettes From and today we’ll follow up that discussion with some tips on how to build your own awesome color sets in Adobe Illustrator.

We’ll go over the extreme basics of working with color in Illustrator and jump into how to use the excellent built-in Color Guide to get you on the path to lightning-fast generation and manipulation of custom color schemes.

Business / 11 Jul 2011

How to Teach Someone Graphic Design

Do you have a friend, family member or colleague who is considering design as a profession and looks to you for guidance? Your instruction could mean the difference between a meaningful career and a non-starter.

Today we’ll offer up some basic advice that everyone should consider before attempting to teach someone to be a graphic designer.

CSS / 6 Jul 2011

Rolling Your Own Grid Layouts on the Fly Without a Framework

Do you hate CSS grid frameworks but love the rapid layout benefits that they provide? Do you struggle with the math and code necessary to create your own flexible multi-column layouts on the fly?

Today we’re going to walk you through creating your own basic, reusable system for creating multiple columns that you can implement anywhere any time with only a few lines of code. No bloated code or non-sematic class names required!

Graphics / 23 Jun 2011

Say Hello: 50 Simple and Effective Website Greeting Messages

Placing a large greeting message at the top of your site is a great way to create a welcoming environment and provides the perfect opportunity to clearly state your purpose for being.

Today we’ve rounded up over fifty such messages for inspiration on both the message and visual appearance fronts. The greetings has been divided up into clear categories so you can analyze the different popular techniques being used by designers today.

Business / 22 Jun 2011

Using the Black Box Model to Design Better Websites

Today we’re going to introduce you to a popular model used in marketing to understand consumer behavior. We’ll then discuss how you as a designer can use this model to structure your designs to encourage action from users.

By becoming more equipped to analyze your visitors, you’ll be able to make informed decisions about how to design more persuasive websites.

Inspiration / 17 Jun 2011

50 Creative and Clever Examples of Outdoor Advertising

Outdoor advertising is an incredibly rich and diverse medium that allows a very unique spectrum of creativity for designers to play with. Sometimes you have to catch someone’s attention in a split second, other times you can do something fun and interactive.

Today we’ve scoured Ads of the World and come up with fifty particularly creative billboards, bus stops, subway ceilings and more. If you need a fresh blast of creativity to boost your next project, take a look!

Graphics / 16 Jun 2011

Awesome and Unusual Places to Steal Color Palettes From

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.

Business / 10 Jun 2011

What to Do With Your Portfolio’s Contact Form: 3 Popular Solutions

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.

CSS / 3 Jun 2011

Mastering CSS Reflections in Webkit

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.