Articles - Page 208

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

Freebies / 27 May 2011

Weekly Freebies: 18 Simple and Useful Web Apps for Designers and Developers

Lately the web has just been bursting with simple, single-purpose tools that help make make our jobs easier by handling tasks such as generating CSS code or providing placeholder images for comps.

Below is a fairly random collection of such tools that I’ve found indispensable recently. All are completely free, extremely useful and super easy to use. Enjoy!

Inspiration / 26 May 2011

50 Creative and Inspiring Thumbnail Galleries

Thumbnail galleries are one of the most common solutions on the web for showcasing multiple images. The efficiency of this tool can’t be beat, it allows for quick browsing and closer inspection when desired.

Whenever I build a thumbnail gallery, I like to look around the web to see what other designers are doing to make theirs unique. Today we’re collected fifty great galleries for you to check out. Along the way, we’ll also discuss some ideas that you can use in your own galleries.

JavaScript / 25 May 2011

Create an Awesome Zooming Web Page With jQuery

Want to create a really unique and eye-catching effect for your site? How about an animation that zooms into a specific portion of the page when you click on it?

It may sound like a lot of work but with jQuery and Zoomooz.js, it’s a snap! I’ll walk you through the process step by step as we build a stunning zooming thumbnail gallery.

Business / 24 May 2011

Survival Tips: Doing Free Design Work for Friends and Family

As a designer, you’ve no doubt encountered situations where friends, family members, neighbors or even mere acquaintances ask you for a favor in the form of free design work. If you’ve ever given in to one of these requests, you probably know how quickly they can get out of hand.

How should you respond to these requests and what should you prepare for if you take one on? Today we explore the wonderful world of pro bono design.

Business / 23 May 2011

Marketing Your Business With Viral Social News Communities

Internet marketing can be a tough gig. It doesn’t come easily and often requires a detailed understanding of how the Internet works. The copious opportunities for social networking only clouds the judgement of marketing agencies.

When first building out your business, it’s important to recognize your branding tactics. The viral marketing techniques used in popular websites work best with memorable headlines. Within communities such as YouTube and Facebook it’s never been easier to get your small business recognized.

News / 23 May 2011

Announcing the Design Shack Affiliate Scheme

Design Shack Deals launched back in February, and since then we’ve featured some fantastic discounts on products and services for designers.

Today we’re announcing an affiliate program that all Design Shack members can take advantage of. If you run a blog, have a Twitter account, or want to spread the word about our latest deal via email, we’d love for you to help with promoting our weekly deals!

We pay a 15% commission on every sale you generate, and you can keep track of every click and sale you generate in real-time. Read on to find out more!

Critique / 21 May 2011

Web Design Critique #51: Brush Lovers

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 BrushLovers, an online store for Photoshop brushes run by Walter Apai from Web Designer Depot.

Graphics / 20 May 2011

Judging Best Sellers by Their Covers: Does Good Design Sell Books?

I adore a good read. In a time where 90% of my life is spent staring at a digital screen, reading a physical book with real pages gives me an ephemeral illusion that life is simple again. To defy the age old adage, I will freely admit that I choose books to read based on their covers. I’m a designer, I simply can’t help it.

The question I’m exploring today is whether or not the rest of the world thinks like we designers do. Does everyone judge books by the quality of the cover design? If we take a look at the bestseller list, what will we find?

News / 19 May 2011

Design Shack Poll: What Type of Content Would You Like to See More Often?

Design Shack has undergone a ton of changes and growth in the last year or two and we thought it would be good to take a minute and get your input. We want to make this site as helpful and interesting as possible for you, our readers.

To help us better target our content towards what you’re interested in, take a second to answer the poll below. We can’t do it without you and highly value your input!

HTML / 19 May 2011

How to Link to Specific Points in a Page and Animate the Scroll

You’ve seen it done before, you click a link in the navigation and it takes you not to another page but a specific point within the current page. How is this accomplished? With some extremely basic HTML that you can pick up in a few seconds!

To take it further, we’re also going to see how to animate the transition using a little jQuery.

Business / 18 May 2011

What Skills Does It Take to Get a Job in Web Design?

There is an ever-raging debate in the design community regarding whether or not web design and web development jobs should overlap (if so, how far?). For example, should a Photoshop layout guru also know how to write HTML and CSS? How about JavaScript and PHP? Where does it end?

Ultimately, this debate isn’t settled in design blog posts but in the real world where businesses are hiring freelancers and employees with very specific qualifications in mind. Today we’re going to explore what employers are looking for in a new hire and how you can prepare yourself to land the job.

Freebies / 17 May 2011

Weekly Freebies: 15 Fantastically Fun Free Fonts

In today’s collection of freebies we’ve compiled a list of crazy decorative fonts. Some of them are so wacky that you would probably pass them right by on a free font site but we’ve built custom previews that just show you how amazing they can be with some attention and creativity.