2010 April | Webdesigner Depot

30 Apr
Something New is in the Air…
Resources, Review
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A few months ago, we announced that we’ll be launching a brand new website this year… and that time has finally come!
We’ve kept the new site in ‘beta’ mode for a few weeks now, testing and tweaking things to get it just right and we’re finally ready to roll it out to everyone.
The new website is a really cool and exciting project and while it’s not directly geared towards designers and developers, we’re sure that most WDD readers will enjoy it.
The wait is nearly over! Mark your calendars and come back to WDD to check it out this coming Monday, May 3rd at 9AM PDT.
We’ll be taking you on a tour of the new site, showing you the cool features and how it all came together. Don’t miss it! Read more
29 Apr
Setting Up the Optimal Work Environment
How to, Productivity, Web Designers
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How much time do you waste on the average day looking for things buried somewhere on your desk? Or getting up to get something on the other side of your office? Or otherwise retrieving the things you need to do your job?
If you added up all those wasted seconds and minutes, you might be surprised at the percentage of your day that it takes up.
Taking the time to set up an optimal workspace can save you hours or even days over the course of a year.
It’s worth taking a day or two to set up your desk and work area to better suit the way you work to save time later on. And the process isn’t difficult.
It just takes a lot of planning and delving into how you work best, and then setting up both your physical and virtual workspaces to better cater to your work methods. Read more
28 Apr
Massive Giveaway of Iconshock Icons
Contests, Icons
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Iconshock is the largest icon design company in the world and today they’re bringing a spectacular giveaway to WDD readers.
In this contest, Iconshock will be providing 10 full subscription licenses to ALL their icons. Yes, you read that right, ALL their icons.
The value of all these prizes is an astonishing $4,990!
And this includes a staggering amount of goodies: 800,000 stock icons, 250 icon sets, 500 logo templates and 250 animated icons!!
That’s their entire collection and we have 10 of these licenses for you today. Read on for details on how to participate and check out some of the icons below…
Read more
27 Apr
Delicious Examples of Sandwich Art
Compilation, Design, Inspiration
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Through WDD we love to show you how you can use your design skills to be creative in all aspects of your life, not only when sitting at your computer.
Everywhere you look, you can find people in many different fields using their design talents, even in the food industry.
In this post, we’ve selected some amazing examples of creative sandwich art. Some are really fun (and look delicious too), so we’re sure that this collection will help feed your imagination by getting your creative (digestive?) juices flowing.
As usual, we’d love to see examples of your own creations or other great examples that you may have found on the web. Read more
26 Apr
How to Calibrate Color for the Web
Color, How to, Web Design
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When is orange more like red? Web designers, even picky ones, sometimes ignore color shift across monitors.
How is a web designer to manage color when the screens of their users could be any size or color or could be viewed under any lighting conditions?
Unlike fixing HTML errors, which affect browsers as the page is loaded, getting accurate color is part of the designer’s work process.
Maintaining colors across projects is possible once the problems are understood. Read on for the challenges—and solutions—to getting consistent color on the web. Read more
25 Apr
Our Favorite Tweets of the Week
Apr 18-Apr 24, 2010
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
24 Apr
Comics of the Week #22
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
23 Apr
Outstanding Photos with Partial Color
Compilation, Inspiration, Photography
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Partial color allows a designer to hone in on a particular part of an image and enhance it with color.
This makes the images really “pop” and this technique can be used for many purposes. For example, in advertising or corporate designs, features of a product can be highlighted that the eye may not normally be drawn to.
When used for artistic photography, non-focal points of the image can be colored in order to draw attention to them. Whatever the use, this fresh technique is popping up all over print design and on the web, and we’ve gathered some of the best examples here for you to enjoy.
This effect is easily achieved with most graphic software such as Photoshop. If you’re still wondering how to do it, check out this tutorial for a step-by-step on how to achieve partial color. Read more
22 Apr
Creating and Applying Natural Textures
Creativity, How to, Photoshop
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Textures make a website feel tangible.
They give content a relationship to the physical world, a sense of place and a reality that people can relate to.
Unfortunately, simulating physical textures isn’t as simple as shooting a photo or running a few Photoshop filters.
One has to blend random noise and recognizable patterns, striving for similarities rather than pure repetition.
Here, we’ll discuss what gives textures an organic quality, and we’ll look at techniques for creating and applying natural-looking textures and seamless tiles. Read more
21 Apr
Exclusive Free GUI Pack from Art.Gen
Freebies, User Interface
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The good folks at Art.Gen are providing WDD readers with an awesome and exclusive freebie…
This useful PSD file includes a great selection of GUI elements that you can use for free for both commercial and free app development (with attribution).
All elements are on their own layers which should make customization really quick and easy.
If you’d like to share this PSD with your friends, please refer them to this page so that they can download their copy from here.
Below is a full preview of all elements for quick reference. Enjoy! Read more
20 Apr
60+ Awesome New WordPress Themes
Best Of, Compilation, WordPress
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It seems like every time you go looking for a new WordPress theme, you find countless roundups of the same old themes.
And while many of those themes are featured for good reason, they’re also used on countless blogs around the web. We’ve all seen them a hundred times.
But WordPress themes are being released on nearly a daily basis. Not all of them are great, but plenty of them are.
Below are more than 60 of those great themes, none older than October of 2009 and many from as recent as this month.
Have we missed any good ones released recently? Please add them at the end of this article.
Read more
19 Apr
20 Reasons You Shouldn’t Be a Freelancer
Blogging, Business, Corporate
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We’ve all read countless articles on the reasons you should consider freelancing.
They often make it out like anyone still working in the corporate world is just a schmuck with no ambition. But the truth is, there are plenty of reasons not to start freelancing.
Below are twenty such reasons, all laid out so you can make an informed decision about whether freelancing is really something you want to do in your career.
There’s nothing wrong with staying in a corporate job, just as there’s nothing wrong with setting out on your own. But it’s a choice every designer and developer needs to make for themselves.
One note: when we talk about “corporate jobs”, we’re talking mostly about design firms with multiple employees (whether they’re corporations or not), but most of it also applies to in-house design teams at large companies. Read more
18 Apr
Our Favorites Tweets of the Week
Apr 11-Apr 17, 2010
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
17 Apr
Comics of the Week #21
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
16 Apr
Book Review: Digging Into WordPress
Books, Review
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Digging Into WordPress by Chris Coyier and Jeff Starr is one of the most comprehensive looks at WordPress available.
At over 400 pages long, it’s massive, whether you have the PDF version or the print edition.
Whether you’re just getting started with WP or you’ve been using it for years, there’s something for everyone in this book.
In this post, we’ll review the book and talk a bit about its highlights and features.
If you own this book or have read it, please feel free to add your own comments at the end of this post. Read more
15 Apr
The Virgin Atlantic Airways Blog: A Case Study
Blogs, Development, Web Design
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Working with a company as large as Virgin Atlantic was something of a dream come true for me. I it’s something that a lot of web designers aspire to.
Over the last few months, I was fortunate enough to be given the opportunity to fulfill this dream.
I was about to write this post up over on my blog but Walter very kindly invited me to share this case study with the much larger audience here on Webdesigner Depot and across the Smashing Network.
I’m no Elliot Jay Stocks and I certainly don’t claim to be, so when Virgin Atlantic got in touch with me back in November I was surprised, humbled and extremely enthusiastic at the prospect of working with the company on a new blog for the “vtravelled” website. Read more
14 Apr
Winners of iPad and Free ActiveCampaign Licenses
Contests
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Finally, the day you’ve been waiting for is here… The contests’ results are in!
2048 comments were made for this amazing giveaway. This is certainly a record for any contest on WDD!
A ginormous thank you to the generous folks at ActiveCampaign for providing us with some stunning prizes (total worth of $8,979).
The prizes include 1 Apple iPad and free licenses to their awesome email marketing and survey software.
As usual, all winners were chosen at random and the results appear after the jump. We will contact all the winners via email with details as to how to receive their prizes. Read more
13 Apr
Captivating Examples of Sleeveface Photography
Compilation, Inspiration, Photography
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Sleeveface is an intriguing phenomenon making its rounds on the web. It has become particularly popular on social networking sites.
The technique is pretty straightforward and consists of photographs of one more people obscuring or augmenting any part of their bodies with album sleeves, causing an illusion.
In this post, we’ve compiled a few of the most fascinating examples of sleevefaces out there.
They’re really fun to watch and give the viewer a very unique perspective on the subjects being photographed.
You can find more examples by visiting the Sleeveface Flickr Group or Sleeveface.com.
Read more
12 Apr
Adobe Creative Suite 5 Brings Sexy Back
Adobe, Photoshop, Review
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Adobe will unveil its new Creative Suite 5 on Monday April 12th at 8AM PDT, just a few hours from now.
You can catch the official launch online here, however, if you can’t wait, we’ll be revealing all the juicy details before the official launch… right now!
The Adobe team kindly invited us to an exclusive sneak peak demo of Creative Suite 5 and they also provided us with a pre-release copy for this review.
In this post, we’ll be sharing some of the highlights of each application in this exciting new release, with some detailed info on the new applications. We’ll also discuss whether we think CS5 is worth upgrading to or not.
That being said, get ready to be amazed… there are tons of new features to get excited about in this release. Read more
11 Apr
Our Favorites Tweets of the Week
Apr 4-Apr 10, 2010
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
10 Apr
Comics of the Week #20
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
9 Apr
Book Review: Making Ideas Happen
Books, Productivity, Review
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Most creative professionals have no problem coming up with ideas.
In fact, too many ideas is more often the problem rather than too few. Where we usually run into issues, though, is in the follow-through.
How do we take the brilliant ideas that we come up with on a daily basis and see them through to completed projects?
That’s exactly what the book Making Ideas Happen by Scott Belsky (the founder of Behance) aims to teach us.
He’s spent years studying the habits and methods of successful creatives who have a knack for following through on their great ideas and bringing them to fruition. He presents this information in a way that is both easy to understand and easy to implement. Read more
8 Apr
You’re Failing as a Web Developer — and Here’s Why
Design, Web Designers, Webmasters
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There is endless content available in the world of web design blogging telling us how to do things right, and how to succeed at our chosen profession.
That’s obviously a good thing, and it will certainly continue that way. But once in a while we need reminders on the things we do (or fail to do) that are negative.
That is, things that can have a detrimental impact on our progress as designers and developers — despite that these things may be temporarily helping us pay the bills and keep us afloat financially.
We all need to analyze our situation and assess whether or not we’re forming healthy design and coding habits, and whether those habits could be providing short-term gains that are not conducive to long-term success.
So, take this information with a grain of salt (because I know some of it is highly debatable) and consider whether or not you personally are doing anything that could prevent you from having a job in five years. Read more
7 Apr
Win an iPad and Free ActiveCampaign Licenses
Contests
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Who doesn’t like freebies? We all do, and today the good folks at ActiveCampaign are bringing you an absolutely awesome giveaway that’s sure to make you drool…
By participating in this contest, not only you stand the chance of winning a just released Apple iPad, but you can also win a bunch of free licenses for ActiveCampaign’s email marketing and survey software, that will come in really handy for your next project.
ActiveCampaign specializes in awesome web based software which includes email marketing and survey software.
Read on for more details on how to participate in this amazing contest…
Read more
6 Apr
The Ups and Downs of Being a Perfectionist
Business, Clients, Productivity
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Almost everyone out there knows someone who’s a perfectionist, if they aren’t one themselves.
Some people are perfectionists in only one aspect of their life (such as school or work) while others apply their perfectionist tendencies to every aspect of their lives.
Perfectionism is often looked at by those who don’t share the same obsession as a negative personality trait. In reality, perfectionism has both positive and negative impacts.
Learning to work within the constraints of being a perfectionist can lead to much higher productivity, but not working with those traits can lead to much lower productivity. Read more
5 Apr
How to Make a Screencast for Your Website
How to, Technology, Tutorials
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Having a video on your website can vastly improve your conversion rate. Whether the goal is for users to sign up for your web application or simply to get users to contact you via a web form, a video improves the likelihood of this happening.
You need only go to the home page of any new Internet-based startup, and you’ll see an embedded video with a very large call to action beckoning you to play its two- or three-minute video introduction.
Videos that demonstrate web applications or web-based services are often called screencasts because they usually capture events on the company’s website. These screencasts can sum up in just two minutes what might otherwise take up many pages to explain, so they make for powerful additions to websites.
Is it easy to make a screencast? How much does it cost, and what tools are required? Let’s answer these questions. Read more
4 Apr
Our Favorite Tweets of the Week
Mar 28-Apr 3, 2010
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
3 Apr
Comics of the Week #19
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
1 Apr
4 People You Should Ask For Website Feedback
Community, Design, Web Design
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Most people know that good feedback is essential to designing and developing quality websites.
But what constitutes “feedback” can be ambiguous: for some, it is little more than a hasty spell-check; for others, it is akin to submitting and defending a PhD dissertation.
While there is no one-size-fits-all solution for those seeking feedback on their work, there are some proven ways to get helpful input from others.
Here are a few ideas and tools to assist you in your quest for an improved product.
Have more ideas? Please share them in the comments area. Read more