2010 November | Webdesigner Depot

30 Nov
Google Insurance: 8 Steps to Protect Your Reputation
Business, Google, Reputation
Tweet View Comments

It doesn’t take much to set off a tsunami of public relations headaches in the digital world.
As the last 12 months have shown us-what with BP’s environmental disaster and a variety of online scandals-the damage that a disgruntled client or audience can do can’t be measured in income alone but can easily swell to ridiculous proportions.
Don’t fret; there is action you can take. While BP’s strategy of bidding on its own name for online ads triggered a new wave of controversy, small online businesses can protect their names in hundreds of ways without fearing backlash.
The8 steps we’ll talk about here aren’t the only ways to protect your reputation online, but they can form a fantastic foundation for PR. Read more
29 Nov
The Word Art of Juan Osborne
Art, Compilation, Inspiration
Tweet View Comments
“A picture is worth a thousand words’. We’re sure you’ve heard this expression a million times before, but you probably have not quite ‘seen’ it yet…
Juan Osborne is a Spanish architect and designer, that has literally taken this expression and created stunning art with this concept. His amazing compositions are made up of words, literally thousands of words!
He starts his process by collecting words from books, speeches, movies and recreates photographs and painting using these words laid out in a way so that they form the picture.
Just like with tags on blogs, the more repetition he encounters for each keyword, the bigger it appears in the final composition.
In this post, we’ve compiled some of his more unique works, which include classics such as “The Scream” to more contemporary visualizations for a character on the TV show “Lost” and even Obama speeches.
You can find out more about Juan and his art at his website. Larger versions of these images can be accessed by clicking on any the images below.
Read more
28 Nov
Our Favorite Tweets of the Week
Nov 22-Nov 27, 2010
Best Of, Compilation, Twitter
Tweet View Comments

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
27 Nov
Comics of the Week #53
Comics, Funny, Humor
Tweet View Comments

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
25 Nov
Adding Transparencies and Gradients With CSS
CSS, Code, Color
Tweet View Comments

The way you handle color in your web designs is about to change. Perhaps you’ve been playing around with hexadecimal color values since you were a wee web-babe; if you were, get ready to to grow up fast. CSS3 has arrived, and your palette is about to get a whole lot bigger.
Compared to what’s coming, it’s sas though designers have been color-blind, working with only a small part of the chromatic spectrum. No, new hues will not be added to the rainbow.
What will happen is that color values will be defined in new ways, the entire spectrum of opacity levels will be added and gradients based on pure CSS rather than images will be thrown in, too.
Some forward-thinking websites, such as the impressive 24 Ways to Impress Your Friends, are already playing around with RGBa for text and background color effects—and the results are great. Read more
24 Nov
The 7 Heavenly Virtues of Design
Freelancing, Web Design, Web Designers
Tweet View Comments

No one intends for their business to stagnate. In an attempt to advance their freelance work, many people turn to the wealth of advice on the Internet.
But several age-old virtues seem to be lacking from the online conversation. This post is an attempt to rediscover them.
There is more to the success or failure of a business than attracting new clients. Reputation is also important.
How do you ensure that people say good things about you?
Applying the seven virtues to your freelance enterprise could boost its reach and image among the masses online. Do your virtues need a bit of polishing? Read more
23 Nov
Finding Inspiration on Flickr
Compilation, Inspiration, Photography
Tweet View Comments
Flickr hosts millions of photos from photographers, both professional and amateur, from around the world.
It’s a fantastic resource when looking for inspiration, but it can get a little overwhelming. After all, you can’t exactly browse a few million photos in an afternoon, right?
Flickr Groups can be a great solution to photo-overload. There are groups for virtually every subject under the sun, and for photographers of all skill levels.
Some groups focus on the artistic merit of the photo itself, while others focus more on the content of the image than the composition.
In either case, the groups below are sure to inspire you. We’ve even included similar groups for most of them, to offer more variety. Read more
22 Nov
Why Joe Client Doesn’t Care About Standards
Code
Tweet View Comments

Web standards should be a driving force behind the work of any designer or developer. They provide a scale against which to measure the quality, structure, syntax and methodology of design work.
To explain the benefits of web standards, I’ve compared on my own blog the landscape of the web today with that of 10 to 15 years ago.
Questions related to cross-browser compliance and the necessity of testing extensively before launching still linger, but the standardization of DOM, (X)HTML, CSS and a number of other technologies has made the digital world much more predictable.
When coding a standards-compliant website, we can be reasonably certain that it will render the same in Firefox, Safari, Chrome, Opera and even Internet Explorer (from version 7 up, of course). Inconsistencies do arise, but anyone who has stood on either side of the past decade of web design and development would surely recognize the value of standards. Read more
21 Nov
Our Favorite Tweets of the Week
Nov 15-Nov 21, 2010
Best Of, Compilation, Twitter
Tweet View Comments

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
20 Nov
Comics of the Week #52
Comics, Funny, Humor
Tweet View Comments

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
19 Nov
A Close Look at Adobe CS Review
Adobe, Review
Tweet View Comments

Adobe’s CS Live online service includes a ton of useful tools for designers and their clients.
Adobe CS Review is just one such tool, but arguably might be one of the most useful for many designers.
CS Review is a free (for the first year, at least) service that allows you to share documents from any CS5 program with clients or other team members for review, even if they don’t have CS5.
You can also use it to upload projects within your web browser, for those who might not have CS5, or if you need to post something for review from outside CS5. Read more
18 Nov
Amazing Type in the Sky Photography
Compilation, Photography, Typography
Tweet View Comments

In 2005 German student Lisa Rienermann spent a semester in Barcelona. While standing in a little courtyard, she looked up to the sky…
“I saw houses, the sky, clouds and a “Q”. The negative space in-between the houses formed a letter. I loved the idea of the sky as words, the negative being the positive. If I could find a “Q”, other letters should be somewhere around the corner.”
Lisa spent the next few weeks running around and looking up to the sky, and slowly found all the letters of the alphabet. This became a project for her Typography class at the Folkwang School of design in Germany, which has won her several awards and recognition.
In this post, we present Lisa’s work in both poster format and for the first time, Lisa has also kindly provided us with the large image of each of the letters.
You can find more about Lisa and her work at her website LisaRiennerman.com Read more
17 Nov
Win 3 Licenses of the WordPress Manual Plugin
Contests, WordPress
Tweet View Comments

Although never fully intended as a CMS, WordPress is indeed one of the most widely used CMS in the world.
When working with some clients, you’ll often encounter difficulties training your clients on how to use it properly in order to update the content of their websites.
This is were the WordPress User Manual Plugin comes in really handy. This plugin is a very solid and professional effort by the folks at VideoUserManuals.
They created a very comprehensive video and online manual packaged as a WordPress plugin that you, as a developer, can give to your clients.
The plugin contains over 30 video tutorials and over 100 pages of instructions, always updated and covering from version 2.8 through 3.01 (and updated with every new stable version).
One week from today, we’ll be giving away 3 Lifetime Licenses to the WordPress Manual Plugin (which sells for $24 per month) to three lucky WDD readers. Read more
16 Nov
What Every Web Developer Should Know About Front-End Performance
Code, Programming, Web Development
Tweet View Comments
Too often as developers, we ignore a crucial last step before launching a website: optimizing for performance.
Most developers now recognize that organized, valid code ensures maintainability and compatibility.
Anyone who doubts this merely has to speak to a developer who has picked up work on an old website that is littered with unorganized, uncommented spaghetti code.
Just as preparing our code to be read by other developers is important, so is preparing our code to be read by browsers. Great web development might start with great organization, but it ends with great optimization.
This article introduces best practices of front-end performance. Read more
15 Nov
MightyDeals is Officially Unleashed!
Web Designers, Web Developers
Tweet View Comments

We teased you long enough…. but now the wait is finally over, and it’s very much worth it!
We’re super excited to officially announce the release of MightyDeals.com
Our new website has just been unleashed and it’s now live! MightyDeals is the ultimate destination for amazing discounts and impossible unbelievable deals for creative professionals.
The site will feature deals for applications, services, software, resources and everything in between. There’s only one deal promoted at any given time and these deals last between 24 to 48 hours and then they magically disappear into thin air…
The deals are really varied so if you don’t see something that you want one day, don’t despair, we have multiple deals per week and the next deal might be just what you’re looking for
The products and services featured will be heavily discounted (sometimes up to 90%) and we have already lined up an amazing number of deals from great companies which will be rolled out over the coming days…
And we kick off our launch today with a mega mighty deal for all of you!
Read more
14 Nov
Our Favorite Tweets of the Week
Nov 8-Nov 14, 2010
Best Of, Compilation, Twitter
Tweet View Comments

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
13 Nov
Comics of the Week #51
Comics, Funny, Humor
Tweet View Comments

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
12 Nov
How to Design the Perfect Business Card
Business Cards, Design, How to
Tweet View Comments

In this post, we’ll discuss how a thoughtful, well-designed business card can help your company give a good first impression and send the right message. We’ll look at elements to include in your design and the different approaches to take.
We often hear of the importance of first impressions in both our professional and personal lives.
In business, the first impression we make on potential clients and other professionals can affect how much business we get. If we fail to dazzle in the first meeting, we might not be attending the follow-up meeting in which we could raise the bar.
Also, we tend to forget that first impressions often begin with a business card. Let’s be honest: in most networking situations, we tend to lead with our cards. Read more
11 Nov
Celebrating 2 Years of WDD (win an iPad!)
Contests
Tweet View Comments

Today we celebrate our second birthday! And we couldn’t be happier with the success we’ve had over the past 2 years.
Since many of you enjoy stats, here are a few numbers to give you some insight into WDD…
Since our launch on November 11, 2008, we’ve been visited by over 20 million visitors and served a total of over 32 million pageviews. We currently have 587 posts on our site and almost 45,000 comments!! Also, we’re close to 80,000 rss subscribers and more than 200,000 Twitter followers.
All this wouldn’t be possible without the kindness and support of our devoted readers and I’m truly thankful for the amazing following over the past 2 years.
It’s been an awesome ride so far and I thoroughly enjoy communicating with all of you and receiving your emails, tweets, etc – thanks a million to all of you! Actually, make it 2 million Read more
10 Nov
What’s New for Web Designers – Nov. 2010
Apps, Compilation, Websites
Tweet View Comments

New apps and websites seem to be appearing on an almost daily basis, but trying to find the good ones among them can be tough, especially considering how many are not that great.
That’s why every month we research and showcase some of the best and latest resources available for web designers.
Here’s the newest installment of what’s new for web designers in the past few weeks. This month we’ve covered everything from new fonts to useful web apps to some new resources for you to use in your own designs, all recently launched!
As always, if we’ve missed something, let us know in the comments. And if you know of an app you’d like included in the next roundup, please tweet it to @cameron_chapman.
Please feel free to share your views on the products and services that we’re featuring this month, in the comments area below…
Read more
9 Nov
Developing Efficient, Streamlined CSS
CSS, Code, Programming
Tweet View Comments
CSS can be compared to a sculptor’s tool set; like sculptors at work, we designers use CSS to create structured layouts of websites.
Over the years, this process has become more organized; rules have been put in place to create best practices of coding.
In this article, we’ll take a look at some ideas you can use when writing style sheets to speed up your code.
Efficient CSS is easy to manage and easy to read and can be a resource for web designers. Getting organized is a big step, but using CSS can be a little more complicated than that.
As you read this article, keep your own preferences in mind; the best advice you can get from any developer is to find your own way of working. Combine a few of the techniques here with your own methods to get the most benefit. Read more
8 Nov
Are Too Many WP Theme Sites Hurting the Industry?
Business, Websites, WordPress
Tweet View Comments
Run a search for some common terms associated with premium WordPress themes and you’ll likely find between a few hundred thousand and a few million results.
“WordPress premium theme” brings back nearly 11 million results. “WordPress theme marketplace” brings back nearly a million.
It’s easy to see that there are thousands of sites out there selling or giving away WP themes, even if we factor in that a large percentage of those search results are likely irrelevant or duplicates.
What’s the effect of all these WP theme sites? What are they doing to the marketplace for both designers and theme buyers? Are all those sites really useful, or are they doing more harm than good? Read more
7 Nov
Our Favorite Tweets of the Week
Nov 1-Nov 7, 2010
Best Of, Compilation, Twitter
Tweet View Comments

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
6 Nov
Comics of the Week #50
Comics, Funny, Humor
Tweet View Comments

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
4 Nov
Photoshop lover? Then you may be a brush lover, too!
Brushes, Photoshop
Tweet View Comments

Have your clients ever told you “make it pop” or “add more personality”?
We’re guessing you’ve been there and this is why we love Photoshop brushes so much…
With little effort you can use one or more brushes to enhance or create truly outstanding designs with just a few clicks.
That’s why today we’re super excited to unveil another member of the WDD family of websites with our brand new site for those Photoshop brush lovers out there! And we call it… BrushLovers
For the past 12 months, top designer Liora Blum has been working hard with us to create a really amazing and exclusive collection of free and premium Photoshop brushes just for BrushLovers.com
Read more
3 Nov
10 Steps To Taking Your Own Simple Stock Photos
How to, Photography, Photoshop
Tweet View Comments

Bad stock photography is a cliché, there’s nothing worse than going to an “about us” page and seeing a bunch of people in suits with telephone headsets who all look really happy.
Good stock photography on the other hand has a lot of value, the downside is that it’s often very expensive.
Today we’ll be looking at a few simple techniques which you can use to photograph things on a pure white background so that they can easily be used in almost any web design project under the sun.
There’s no need to spend a lot of money when you can create some beautiful simple shots with a little time and creativity.
Read more
2 Nov
The Seven Deadly Sins of Design
Design, Web Design, Web Designers
Tweet View Comments

In this article, we’ll look at some of the worst offenses committed in design and how to avoid them. When your design project is judged, will you be held accountable for any of these sins?
A design project requires preparation. There are protocols to follow, theories to consider, briefs to dissect and, as we’ll see, sins to avoid!
In any design project, pitfalls are to be expected. These pitfalls can impede progress or even derail the project. Most experienced designers are able to avoid them by recognizing the warning signs.
The following seven deadly sins of design have their warning signs, too. They are worse than your average pitfall, though, because they can kill your design if you are not vigilant. So, stay on the straight and narrow and beware the traps on either side of the path. Read more
1 Nov
Twenty Ten’s Front-End Code: 5 Things it Gets Right
Code, Programming, WordPress
Tweet View Comments

By now most bloggers using WordPress should have upgraded to the latest version of WordPress which is officially at version 3.0.1.
Along with updates to the core framework, when version 3.0 was released the WordPress team also added a new default theme, replacing the now obsolete Kubrick. The new theme, as most of you are probably aware, is called Twenty Ten.
Not to sound too corny here, but from the first moment I laid eyes on Twenty Ten, I fell in love with it. But I’m not talking about theme’s visual design (which is pretty humdrum); I’m talking about the front-end code, which has seen a number of improvements over the previous default theme.
In this article, I’ll discuss some of these improvements that I feel are worthy of examination and imitation.
And keep in mind that this is not a discussion of the features of the theme itself; this is a discussion of the structure and organization of the HTML and CSS and how it provides an excellent model to follow for front-end developers. Read more