Not that long ago we entertained a discussion about design plagiarism here on Design Shack, but what does it mean if your work is stolen? How do you even know if your work is protected? And moreover, what can you do about it?
That’s where the protection of copyrights and trademarks come in. But what are they? And how do they apply to your designed work? Let’s take a look.
Today’s topic is a delicious one: restaurant and food websites. Small businesses pay the bills for freelance designers and local restaurants can serve as a major source of revenue. If you’re embarking on your first restaurant site design though, there are a few things that you should know.
In this article, we’ll learn by example as we take a look at lots of mouthwatering food and restaurant websites. By examining what these designers got right, you’ll help ensure your own success in this area.
HTML5 has made many things simpler in web development, one of which is using embedded audio. Today, we’re going to work through the process of completely customising the HTML5 audio player element, which can adapt to older browsers with fallbacks. It’s a simple method that’s easy to build upon and tweak.
The open source project MediaElement.js is wildly popular, and has even been built into the core of WordPress since version 3.6. It allows you to embed any HTML5 audio or video using a native player interface which can dynamically adapt into a Flash/Silverlight player when needed. I was really impressed to see all the features and it seems to be one of the more advanced solutions for handling legacy browsers. We’ll be using that as a starting point!
Trends in web design can change and fade almost as quickly as they become fashionable. But so far in 2013, a handful of trends have really seemed to take web design by storm, and seem to be sticking.
Today, we’re going to examine ten trends in modern web elements and showcase some great examples of each — everything from vintage typography and circles, to vibrant colours and handy vCards. Even better for you is that all of the examples below are available for download (some free, some paid).
Design jargon is everywhere. And you need to be able to speak the language. Working on digital projects has its own set of terminology. From dither to color values to fluid or fixed layouts, there are a few terms every designer needs to have a grasp of.
So we’ve made it easy for you, and put together a list of digital design terms you need to know. This list started as a top 10, but we added some bonus jargon for comparative purposes. How many of these terms are you already familiar with?
When designing a navigation system for your website it is important to consider dynamic alterations for handling mobile support and responsive designs. But another systematic approach is to keep your visitors in full control throughout the entire viewing process. This often requires a quick-to-access menu or dropdown area for pulling links to other webpages.
In this tutorial I’m going to be building a top navigation bar which appears only after moving beyond the header navigation. This effect is great if you have a few pages which are most commonly accessed by visitors. The sticky navbar will stay fixed at the top of the screen and only disappear when re-entering the header nav zone. To get an idea of what we will be making check out my live demo example after the jump!
Loads of new freebies and open source codes are placed online every day. Web & mobile designers can learn a lot by studying newer interface trends and design layouts. Creative VIP is one such website which publishes freebies and premium content. This is an excellent resource for designers who want to dig a bit deeper into constructing usable layouts for the web.
In this roundup I have put together 30 of the latest freebies from Creative VIP. You will find both PSDs and HTML/CSS codes mixed in with each other. Some resources actually offer both graphics and the code together! But no matter what items you’re looking for, this showcase is bound to have something cool.
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.
Here at Design Shack we offer a simple but useful service called a web design critique. It’s basically a consulting service that you can take advantage of for a mad cheap price in exchange for letting us post it on the site as an educational tool.
I’ve personally written up a whopping eighty five of these things thus far (#85 will be posted later this week). That’s a whole lot of design advice! Read on to see what I’ve learned about web design in the process, both from the good examples and the bad.
If you follow Chris Coyier on Twitter, then you have no doubt seen quite a few mentions go by in recent months of a not so secret project called CodePen. Chris promised us that this new tool would join the ranks of jsFiddle and Tinkerbin, serving as a sort of online playground to experiment with and share CSS, HTML and JavaScript demos.
Like a kid in December anxiously awaiting Christmas day, I’ve been dying to see what Chris and his team would come up with. Fortunately, Christmas has arrived. CodePen is a live project and I can’t wait to tell you all about it.
The Option key (that’s Alt for you PC folks) is an amazing little helper for the Photoshop user. For the most part, you can probably get along without it but when you learn to wield it well, you open up tons of time saving features.
Why is it so great? What are all these great things you can do with the Option key in Photoshop? Read on to find out!
Here at Design Shack, WordPress is our bread and butter, but in the world of blogging platforms, we have lots of love for Tumblr as well. It’s simple, gorgeous, and simply enjoyable to use.
Today we’re going to take a look at what makes a great Tumblr theme. With thousands of options in the Tumblr theme garden, it can be difficult to stand out.
Why do some themes catch so much attention while others are ignored? Good design holds the answer. Not all themes are created equally, and knowing what aesthetic cues to look for can help you choose a Tumblr theme that will serve you well.