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 awesome folks at DesignDeck has designed a cool set of 24 social icons which we’re calling “Simplito”.

The icons are provided as JPGs, PNGs and a master PSD file for easy editing.

You are free to use the icons for personal and commercial projects as per the licensing terms attached in the file.

Please do not distribute these icons. If you want to share these with your friends, simply direct them to this page so they can download their copy from here.

The download button is right under the large preview after the jump. Enjoy the new awesome icons! Read more

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

Bookmarklets are special links that users can add to their browser’s favorites.

These special links include code (i.e. not just a target URL), and they trigger various kinds of useful functionality, allowing you to modify and extend any web page.

Once you begin using and building your own, you will no longer see web pages as static elements that you have no control over.

With bookmarklets, you have the power to bend any web page to your needs. Read more

Lomography and lomography-styled photography has been growing in popularity in the past year or two, largely spurred by smartphone apps that make it possible for virtually anyone to mimic the style.

Lomography is characterized by its inherent low-fi quality. Lomographic images often have strange light effects (caused by extra light leaking into the camera body and exposing the film in the original Lomo cameras), ultra-satured colors, blurring, vignetting, and other imperfections generally avoided in traditional photography.

The other main feature of real lomography is the spontaneous, spur-of-the-moment style of images produced.

These “imperfections” are what give lomography its unique look and style. As already mentioned, apps like Hipstamatic for the iPhone and Vignette for Android make it easy to achieve these effects without special equipment. For purists, the original cameras are less expensive than a traditional SLR, but getting film developed can be a challenge (if you don’t do it yourself) now that digital is the norm. Read more

Life as a web designer can be insanely busy. We have multiple clients, each making numerous demands on our time. We work in a fast-moving sector in which we have to constantly relearn our skills. We also read endless posts that encourage us to network and develop our “personal brand.”

With so many demands on our time, and things set to only get worse, all we can do is put in more and more hours to get things done. Unfortunately, there are still only 24 hours in a day and 7 days in a week. If things continue at this pace, most of us will simply run out of time or collapse from exhaustion.

If we want to be successful in this highly competitive world, we will have to work smarter rather than longer. This is a lesson I have had to learn from experience since starting as a web designer back in 1994. As I got older, pulling the all-nighters that defined my early career became impossible. Eventually, the pressure overwhelmed me and led to sickness and depression.

This forced me to reconsider the way I work and helped me discover five secrets that enable me to get as much done as possible without burning out. My hope is that by sharing them here, I can help the next generation of web designers avoid the fate that befell me and many of my peers. Unsurprisingly, the secret to getting more done in less time begins with being organized. Read more

Facebook Comments is a recently released plug-in commenting system by Facebook that allows commenters to use their Facebook identity to post comments on content around the Web.

And as simple and innocent as that sounds, it has caused an uproar throughout the Web.

You’d think it was the end of the Internet itself! But people must realize that the Internet will still function as it always has, with or without Facebook Comments. It just might be more civilized place, which isn’t a bad thing.

So, why all the drama? Well, it’s because Facebook Comments eliminates something that quite a few people on the Internet clamor for: anonymity. It’s important in many ways. But anonymity comes with a price, and that comes in the form of an overall poorer experience in online interaction. But does that alone justify the elimination of anonymity?

It’s complicated. But the real question of the matter is simple: will the Web be better or worse with this new commenting system? That is what we are trying to figure out. 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