Web Design Blog - Webdesigner Depot

16 May
Telling stories with your designs
Design, User Interface, Web Design
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Websites are incredibly versatile as a medium, to be used to display information and other content, and if well designed they can do this in an enjoyable way that’s easy for the reader to digest.
This can be done through combining a site persona with an ongoing narrative, consistent throughout, which will all come together to create a ‘story’ through which you can deliver relevant content.
It’s important to recognize as a designer that the story, which the content is then based on, comes before anything else in the site.
The content can’t simply be ‘dropped’ into the site post-design; it needs to be built up in the correct order: story, content, and then, finally, design.
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15 May
Customizing the WordPress login page for consistent branding
Tutorials, Web Design, WordPress
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Despite the consumer-focused nature of the WordPress content management software, an increasing number of larger organizations and even businesses are adopting WordPress to manage their site’s content — especially corporate blogs and customer outreach programs that take advantage of social media and interaction humanize a company’s brand.
These larger organizations aren’t content to let their backend user interface be branded using WordPress logos and design cues; instead, they prefer to customize the software and ensure that all of their employees know that they’re working within the company’s structure and purview.
It might sound complicated, but customizing the WordPress interface is actually pretty easy, especially when customizing the initial login screen that brings users to the traditional Dashboard homepage.
Because WordPress is styled using CSS, and can be customized with PHP functions, it’s straight forward and even encouraged to give this crucial part of the interface its own look and feel. Read more
14 May
What’s new for designers, May 2012
Apps, Compilation, Web Design
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The May edition of what’s new for web designers and developers includes new web apps, jQuery plugins, grid tools, CSS tools, WordPress resources, productivity and business tools, responsive design resources, and some really great new fonts.
Many of the resources below are free or very low cost, and are sure to be useful to a lot of designers and developers out there.
As always, if we’ve missed something you think should have been included, please let us know in the comments. And if you have an app or other resource you’d like to see included next month, tweet it to @cameron_chapman for consideration. Read more
13 May
Our favorite tweets of the week
May 7-May 13, 2012
Best Of, Compilation, Twitter
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Every week we tweet a lot of interesting stuff highlighting great content that we find on the web that can be of interest to web designers.
The best way to keep track of our tweets is simply to follow us on Twitter, however, in case you missed some here’s a quick and useful compilation of the best tweets that we sent out this past week.
Note that this is only a very small selection of the links that we tweeted about, so don’t miss out.
To keep up to date with all the cool links, simply follow us @DesignerDepot Read more
12 May
Comics of the week #129
Comics, Funny, Humor
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Every week we feature a set of comics created exclusively for WDD.
The content revolves around web design, blogging and funny situations that we encounter in our daily lives as designers.
These great cartoons are created by Jerry King, an award-winning cartoonist who’s one of the most published, prolific and versatile cartoonists in the world today.
So for a few moments, take a break from your daily routine, have a laugh and enjoy these funny cartoons.
Feel free to leave your comments and suggestions below as well as any related stories of your own… Read more
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11 May
Free download: Media Black UI Kit (PSD)
Design, Freebies, User Interface
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Today we have another great freebie for you created exclusively for WDD by Grafpedia.
This one is called the Media Black UI Kit and contains graphic elements suitable for any sort of media elements, such as video and audio players, along typical navigational items.It’s provided as a layered PSD file.
If you want more items like these, head over to Grafpedia, which hosts over 70,000 great files and where you can download more graphic resources like these along with icons, vectors, brushes and more.
Redistribution is not allowed, so if you’d like to share this one with your friends, kindly direct them to this page so that they can download their own copy from here.
The file is free for personal and commercial use… see the full preview and download after the jump! Read more
9 May
Posting a price list on your web site: does it work or fail?
Business, Design, Freelancing
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When I first saw a web site designer who had posted a laundry list of prices on his site, I gasped in horror. It created some buzz in the design circles in which I traveled. No one agreed with the concept. Then, a well-respected design firm owner announced he was going to try it.
He said that he thought by posting his prices, using a basic, bottom line cost, he would weed out the people who wanted bargain basement prices and he would save time of not having to deal with them for initial meetings and creative briefs, only to be told that the $10,000 he stated at for web sites was $9,750 too high.
It made sense when he put it that way. Figure the total amount of time one spends in a first meeting, listening to a prospective client talk about what they want, then explaining how your service works to them, following up with a short creative brief and then having to explain why it is the proper way to do a proper web site, he would cut out at least 75% of the people who are “just browsing” or looking at costs on their way to a crowdsourcing site.
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