Articles - Page 227

Competitions / 15 Jun 2011

Win an iPad 2 & One Year of Hosting (Worth £730)!

I’m excited to let you know that – in partnership with Heart Internet – we’re kicking off a fantastic competition to win an iPad 2, and one year of free reseller hosting with domain and goMobi!

It takes just five minutes to enter, and we’re asking you to fill out a short survey. We’ll be publishing the statistics from this in a few weeks time, to give you some awesome insight into the web design industry. Read on to find out more…

Graphics / 14 Jun 2011

Designing News: How Top News Sites Handle Tons of Content

If I had my way, along with just about every other web designer, web pages would always contain a fairly limited amount of content in order to keep the focus clear and the line of communication easy to follow.

Unfortunately, real world situations call for web pages with immense amounts of content. To learn to tackle the issues that arise in this arena, we’re going to look at a particular section of websites that are perhaps more overcrowded than any other: news websites. How do the designers at CNN, MSNBC, Fox and others handle the layout of so much information? Find out after the jump.

Navigation / 13 Jun 2011

Custom Web Design Techniques for Unusual Navigation

Page navigation is arguably the most important aspect to any properly constructed website. How easily your visitors can travel from page-to-page will affect the overall emotion and user interface of your website.

Great web designers always keep a surprise around every corner, and navigation menus can feature this big time. From fullpage to corner links I’ve shared a few great examples of unusual website navigation. Hopefully these ideas can incite a barrage of creativity within yourself and any future projects.

Critique / 11 Jun 2011

Web Design Critique #54: BDQWorks

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 BDQWorks a Drupal/WordPress theme design and development company.

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.

Freebies / 10 Jun 2011

Weekly Freebies: 25 Beautiful Stone Textures

Happy Friday everyone! Before you blast out of the office and declare your freedom for the next couple of days, take a gander at these awesome stone textures to add to your arsenal of design resources.

All of the textures below are completely free and licensed under creative commons. They have also been approved for commercial use so you can use them in pretty much any project you want! How sweet is that? Enjoy and have a great weekend!

Business / 9 Jun 2011

Outsourcing Your Own Brand: Pros and Cons

Should designers outsource their own website or personal brand? It may sound crazy but the practice is more common that you might think.

Today we’re going to attempt to look at both sides of this issue and explore the good and the bad of letting another designer define your digital identity.

CSS / 8 Jun 2011

3 Rock Solid Website Layout Examples: Coded

Recently on Design Shack we featured an article titled “10 Rock Solid Website Layout Examples“, which broke down some common layouts into simple silhouette wireframes so you could easily apply them in your work.

Today I’ve chosen three of these layouts and converted them to live, responsive web pages with some HTML and CSS. They’re all super simple and easy enough for many beginners to take on, plus we’ll be using an awesome framework to do the heavy lifting.

Critique / 4 Jun 2011

Web Design Critique #53: Distinction

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 Distinction, home of a web design agency in Nottingham.

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.

Freebies / 3 Jun 2011

Weekly Freebies: 20 Awesome and Free UI PSDs

This week’s myriad of freebies is a superb collection of layered PSDs that you can download and use in your projects. Each PSD contains a button, form, navigation menu slider or some other UI element that will no doubt prove useful as you build your next site.

Typography / 2 Jun 2011

50 Examples of Beautiful Typographic Art

Everyone loves a good typography roundup. Type is the muse of so many extremely talented designers and the web is simply overflowing with beautiful examples just waiting to inspire you to create your own masterpiece.

Today we’ve got a collection of fifty of the most attractive typographic art pieces we could find from artists all over the world. Take a look!