2009 March | Webdesigner Depot

31 Mar
30 Funny Twitter Comics
Comics, Social Media, Twitter
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As you probably already know, Twitter is hotter than ever. Everyone seems to be tweeting these days about anything and everything that’s on their mind.
If you’re still not into Twitter, check out our popular Ultimate Guide for Everything Twitter that we recently posted here.
In this post, we’ll take a look at 30 Twitter comic strips that reflect on how the world is using and reacting to Twitter, the latest social media trend. I’ve also added a funny video at the end of this post.
Feel free to add links to more related comics in the comments section and if you like this article, why not tweet about it? Read more
30 Mar
15 Online Financial Tools for Freelance Designers
Business, Financial, Freelancing
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Efficiency and organization are critical for freelance web designers. Managing finances and tracking down payments is not what drew most freelancers into this line of work. Fortunately, while handling finances is a necessary part of the business of freelancing, there are many tools and resources to that can help to simplify things. These tools can be critical to keeping your business running smoothly and efficiently.
In this post we’ll look at 15 online tools and services that can offer freelancers some help in the area of finances and billing. Most of these tools are paid, but limited free plans or free trials are available in most cases.
While paying for this type of tool or software may not sound appealing, the time you will be able to save should more than make up for the cost, not to mention less headaches and increased accuracy. Read more
27 Mar
200 Free Exclusive Icons: Siena
Design, Freebies, Icons
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Siena is a brand new set of 200 free icons, developed exclusively for Webdesigner Depot. You can use them for your designs such as logos, websites and much more. They come in 6 different raster sizes and we have also included vector files for all the icons, so you can resize them as needed.
These icons are completely free for both personal and commercial use and they’re being released exclusively to all our readers.
If you’d like to share these icons, please refer your friends to this page. Below is a full preview of all 200 icons for quick reference. Enjoy!
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26 Mar
Intro to Git for Web Designers
Add Ons, Software
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Unless you’re a one person web shop with no team to collaborate with, you’ve experienced the frustration that goes along with file sharing. No matter how hard you try, when multiple people are working on a single project without a version control system in place things get chaotic.
If you work with developers on the buildout and implementation of websites, the merge between front-end templates and back-end functionality can be a scary black hole.
Issues like overwrites, lost files, and the all-too-common “working off a previous version” phenomenon crop up constantly. And once back-end functionality has been put into your templates, you become terrified to touch them for fear of breaking something a developer spent a great deal of time getting to work.
In addition, even if you have a common repository that everyone is pulling from odds are at least one member of your team forgot to grab the latest files and is about to blow things up with their latest additions.
In this article, I’ll give you a quick review of Git, an excellent version control system.
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25 Mar
50 Inspirational Website Introductions
Blogs, Design
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In portfolio web pages, especially in the field of design, one of the first things that you will notice is an introductory text consisting of a few words about the company or the designer behind the site.
This can be extremely useful for readers, as it provides quick and direct information about the designer, or the company behind the site.
These introductions are generally highlighted by the use of large text, positioned at the top of the site, and always catch the visitor’s eye. They give a more personal feeling to the site and tend to replace the traditional taglines under a logo for example.
In this article, we list 50 examples of excellent web page introductions used in portfolio websites that you can use as inspiration for your own designs. Read more
24 Mar
The Ultimate Guide for Everything Twitter
Social Media, Twitter
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Twitter isn’t just a cute way for keeping in instant touch with friends on mobile phones anymore. It has ramped up quickly to be the search engine of choice for some with its human driven results.
Applications galore allow you to find friends all over the world with similar interests and keep up with them in real time.
Businesses can form instant direct relationships with their customer bases simply by signing up and using the service regularly, and according to the models Twitter is trying out, they will soon be able to advertise to the Twitter community as well. It has grown into a behemoth that is hard to get your hands around, which is why we’ve put this article together for you.
We’ve compiled an alphabetized glossary here for you so that you can just scan down the list and find the term that you are looking for, as well as a list of popular Twitter applications and instructions for incorporating Twitter into your website and blogs.
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23 Mar
30 Useful Web Design Books for 2009
Books, CSS, Design
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To keep up with the fast-paced web design industry you must seek out self education sources as often as possible, such as books, or you’ll be left behind.
The year 2009 promises to bring us some excellent, and even groundbreaking, new reads. Listed below are 30 web design related books from some of the brightest designers and developers in the industry, that will likely be influential must-reads.
Certainly there can’t be any promise that these books will deliver, but it will be worth your while to check them out.
Each book has either a release date or estimated release date listed, however these dates often change due to publishing and other related issues, so please take these dates as approximations only. Read more
20 Mar
40 Excellent Logos Created with Helvetica
Design, Fonts, Logos, Typography
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It’s over fifty years old, it’s the most widely used font ever, and it has recently become the subject of its own movie.
We’re talking about the world’s most recognizable font: Helvetica. Its relevance in design through the years and even today seems unbeatable.
The appeal for a distinctive, professional and timeless typeface has never dwindled and it keeps gaining more followers day by day. Love it or hate it, with its multitude of styles and versions, Helvetica is here to stay.
From airlines, to car companies to the largest software company, Helvetica’s use in logos throughout the world remains as strong as ever. In this article we’ll take a look at 40 excellent logos created using Helvetica. Read more
19 Mar
5 Things Your Clients Should Know
Business, Corporate, Freelancing
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Do you ever feel like you are endlessly repeating the same day? I do, every time I attend a kickoff meeting with a new client. Each time I find myself covering the same old issues from explaining the client’s role, to encouraging investment in content. I find it incredibly frustrating and this is what ultimately led me to write the Website Owners Manual.
This is not a criticism of clients, however. There is so little information that clearly defines their role. Sure, there is no shortage of material on usability, accessibility, online marketing and copywriting, but who has the time to read all of it?
The problem is that the client does need to have a very broad understanding (certainly more than can be communicated in a single article), however I have found that understanding certain key issues can make an enormous difference to the efficiency of a client.
What follows is a list of the 5 things that I believe will have the biggest impact on a client’s site. At least they should, if the client understands them and chooses to implement them. Read more
18 Mar
Microsoft Announces SuperPreview for IE Browser Testing
Compatibility, Microsoft
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Browser testing is a hot and frustrating issue among web designers and developers alike. In most cases, developers design for one target browser and once they’re done, they start tweaking their design to make it compatible with other browsers.
There are many ways to test a website before launching, and these include having multiple browsers and operating systems installed, running virtual machines with different configurations or using a hosted image service where a screenshot is produced for a given browser version and operating system to be used for comparison purposes.
Starting today, there’s a new way for testing browser compatibility developed by Microsoft and it’s called SuperPreview. In this article, I’ll be giving you a brief review of SuperPreview as well as comparing and listing alternate systems for testing your website designs. Read more
17 Mar
50 Monochromatic Website Designs
Color, Design
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Color choice is a key element to the success of any design. It invokes an atmosphere and sets the mood. One method for using color is to use only shades of a color, which is known as a monochromatic color scheme.
Of all the color schemes, the monochromatic is one of the easiest to pull off successfully. This reason for such ease is that one shade of a color will naturally almost always work with another shade of the same color.
One of the most popular monochromatic color schemes is Blue. This is likely because blue is seen as trustworthy, dependable and committed. Blue, however, is not the only successful color scheme. Greens, Purples, Browns, Reds can also appropriately set a mood.
In this article, we feature 50 monochromatic website designs, categorized based on the predominant color that they use. Read more
16 Mar
Best Practices for Designing a Social News Website
Design, Social Media, Usability
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How do you get your daily news these days? Well… you may be visiting your favorite sites and blogs, but that’s inefficient since those blogs may not have any updates. Perhaps you subscribe to them using RSS, which delivers all the new articles straight to you, but in this case you’ll have to sort through all the new stuff to find what’s interesting to you. Another option today would be to visit a social news site.
Social news sites are link aggregators, which means their main function is to collect and share interesting links. This may be done through user submissions, or it may be done automatically by the system. The aggregation aspect is only part of it though because these sites also sort the links. Again, this may be done through user voting or some mechanical algorithm (although in this case, can we really call it a “social” news site?). The end result is the same however: the most interesting links rise to the top. This particular feature makes social news sites a great alternative to RSS.
In this article I’ll showcase some of the current top social news sites, will identify trends and patterns in their designs and suggest some best practices to follow when designing such sites. Let’s begin by looking at four popular social news sites and see how their designs compare. Read more
13 Mar
40 Comics Strips for Web Designers
Blogging, Comics, Freelancing, Internet
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With the massive exodus towards online publishing, many people hardly reach for the newspaper these days. If there’s one thing I truly miss from the newspaper, it would be reading the comic strips.
There’s something magical about comic strips that seems to lighten your day and make you feel good. There’s certainly something to be said about starting your day with a bit of humor.
I figured that we’re so immersed in the Internet that it would be cool to compile a list of funny strips related to web design, the Internet and of course blogging.
Take a few minutes from your busy day to relax, have some fun and see how many of these situations relate to you… Read more
12 Mar
10 Tips for Working With Clients Remotely: Part 2
Business, Freelancing
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When you’re working with clients remotely it can sometimes be difficult to keep everyone happy and your project on track. Without the benefit of face-to-face meetings, it’s easy for a client to feel neglected or out of the loop.
The key to successful remote work relationships is frequent and honest communication and trust between both parties. The tips below will help improve your everyday interactions with clients, no matter how far away they may be.
Please note that this is part 2 of a series – part 1 outlined the first 5 steps for remote interactions with clients which you can read here.
Now, let’s look at 5 more tips that can help improve your relationship with your clients. Read more
11 Mar
Operating System Interface Design Between 1981-2009
Design, Operating Systems, User Interface
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A Graphical User Interface (GUI for short) allows users to interact with the computer hardware in a user friendly way.
Over the years a range of GUI’s have been developed for different operating systems such as OS/2, Macintosh, Windowsamiga, Linux, Symbian OS, and more.
We’ll be taking a look at the evolution of the interface designs of the major operating systems since the 80′s.
I should mention that this article showcases only the significant advances in GUI design (not operating system advances) and also not all of the graphical user interfaces and operating systems existing today. Read more
10 Mar
50+ Popular Airline Logos
Design, Logos
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Every day thousands of people take it to the air… With so many airlines to choose from, branding is extremely important and at its core lies logo design.
In this article we’ll take a logo at the logos of over 50 popular airlines. The list is by no means a complete list of all airlines and is just intended for inspiration for your own projects.
Noteworthy is the lack of any depiction of an airplane in most of these logos, but a tendency to suggest flying through the use of curved shapes that resemble wings.
The fonts used tend to be sans serif for the most part, although there’s a fair share of serif typefaces as well. The colors vary a lot, but there appears to be a clear tendency towards reds and blues. Now fasten your seatbelt and let’s take off! Read more
9 Mar
5 Simple Ways to Improve Web Typography
Design, Fonts, Typography
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Type is one of the most-used elements of the web. Think about it. Unless you are YouTube or Flickr, chances are your site visitors are coming for your text content – not the fancy packaging that surrounds it. So why are web designers still treating text like a secondary element?
Good typography brings order to the page and increases legibility. It allows people to process information faster.
A more scannable, readable site means happy visitors. Happy visitors return often, buy products, leave comments, and share the site with friends. See why it might be worth thinking about?
I could blather on forever about how far typography has come on the web, and how far yet it has to go. I have frequently bounced between web and print design. When you’re going from InDesign to TextMate, the limitations of web type are crystal clear.
But plenty has been said about what web type can’t do. This isn’t going to be another rant. Instead, let’s focus on a 5 easy fixes for the typographic eyesores that abound across the Web. Read more
6 Mar
20 Beautiful Photoshop Montage Tutorials
Photoshop, Tutorials
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Photomontage is a technique widely used by graphic designers and consists of cutting and joining multiple photographs in order to create a unique image, using graphic applications such as Photoshop.
The idea here is to create the illusion that all of the photo elements are parts of the same photo.
In this article, we’ll look at 20 beautiful Photoshop montage tutorials that teach you step by step how to create these amazing photo composites.
Follow these tutorials and mix them up. The possibilities are endless and the results can really stretch anyone’s imagination. Read more
5 Mar
8 Tips to Design a Charity Website
Design, Webdesign
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A lot of charities rely on voluntary funding. This funding is carefully distributed and there are often more important things ahead of a generous budget for the website.
So how does a charity get the most out of its website? It needs to let users find out information about the charity, but the main objective of the site is to get people involved with the charity, usually resulting in the user donating money.
In this article, we look at 8 principles that you should follow when creating a charity website. Read more
4 Mar
10 Tips for Working With Clients Remotely: Part 1
Business, Freelancing
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Collaborating with clients you never meet face-to-face has become normal for most web workers. Ours is an industry where working remotely poses very few real obstacles — nearly every part of the web design process can be done from the comfort of a home office or coffee shop.
We’re lucky to have this flexibility, especially in tough economic times when a swanky office doesn’t fit in the business budget. Even if you do have an office, chances are you will land a few clients who aren’t located around the block. But you quickly discover that working remotely has its downsides.
Without face-to-face interaction it’s easy for major communication issues to develop… often without you knowing until it’s too late. Avoid a major meltdown with these simple tips. Read more
2 Mar
39 Olympic Logos From 1924 to 2012
Design, Logos
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Living in Vancouver, Canada, I’ve been seeing the logo of the upcoming 2010 Winter Olympic Games more and more around the city as the date draws closer.
I thought it would be interesting to take a look at how the design trends in Olympic logos have evolved over the years.
Noticeably, the logos seem to have changed from a monochromatic trend to a more multicolor approach in recent years.
Logo design seems to have been streamlined to simpler and cleaner shapes. This article features every logo from the summer and winter Olympic games from 1924 to 2012. Read more