The visual language of a website impresses a visitor far beyond their first glimpse.

In fact, in observing the best websites, you notice that the small details speak to you subconsciously and that consistency improves your experience of the website and as a result makes you more likely to return.

In this article we’ll explore what makes a design consistent, and we’ll showcase some of the most consistent website designs out there.

Please comment at the end of the article about the consistency of these websites and feel free to add links to others that follow this principle. Read more

In January, Jason Santa Maria sent out a tweet announcing that visitphilly.com had been redesigned by world-renowned design studio Happy Cog. My interest was piqued, and I couldn’t help but take a look.

I can honestly say that I’ve never been more impressed with a website redesign than I was with this one.

That Happy Cog was able to turn such a large website into a beautiful, accessible, functional and inviting user experience testifies to the talent of the team at Happy Cog.

By no means am I in a position to offer a critique that does justice to the planning, design and development that must have gone into this project.

But I thought it would be useful to point out why this redesign epitomizes a beautiful and effective website design for today’s market. Read more

Nazaury Delgado is a digital artist from the Bronx who uses Photoshop to create evocative and surreal images.

He begins the process with a photograph of himself or others, which he then overlays with another photo collage. The entire composition is then faded together to make the final product.

Delgado is nineteen years old and is currently attending the Fashion Institute of Technology on a full scholarship.

While he was a participant in an arts program for at-risk teens in the Bronx, Delgado’s teachers were amazed when they saw the digital photographs that he had created on his iPod Touch.

One of them, Neil Waldman, said of his art that “There are some people who have an innate ability to create spectacle, something innate that you can’t teach.”

In this post, we’ve compiled some of his most exceptional works that are sure to inspire you… Further information and links can be found below the image collection. Read more

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

The information bloggers choose to put out there often has a huge impact on how they’re perceived and what others online think about them.

And what many bloggers don’t realize is that information they put on their blogs can have a direct legal impact.

Even if what you’re posting to your blog isn’t breaking any laws, it may be considered unethical by others, which can often be just as damaging.

Here’s a guide to free speech and freedom of information specifically for bloggers. Legal issues, ethical issues, and other things to consider are all covered.

If you have additional input or advice, or disagree with anything here, please speak up in the comments. Read more

Though the methods used to gather website traffic statistics call into question the validity of the stats themselves, the fact is that some of your website’s visitors will have JavaScript disabled.

You could divide your traffic sources into four broad categories:

Search engines, mobile visitors, visitors using screen readers and visitors who have JavaScript turned off.

When planning your information architecture and design, you must figure out how to deal with these special groups.

I have assembled a few recent real-world scenarios to find clarity on the issue. Read more

Photoshop has been a part of every web designer’s life since they picked up their first mouse.

On February 10th, 2010, Photoshop turns twenty. To mark this anniversary, we’ve come up with an article that takes you through the evolution of Photoshop from its modest beginnings as a bundled program sold with scanners to its current version.

For each version and major feature listed, we couldn’t help but think “did Photoshop ever exist without that feature?”.

Some of the minor details are fun too, such as the one-liner Easter Eggs that Photoshop developers hid in some versions and the fact that the most current versions of Adobe Photoshop CS are equipped with anti-counterfeiting measures for multiple world currencies.

Please join us in thanking the Knolls and Adobe for making all of our lives more awesome, every day. Read more