2011 October | Webdesigner Depot

31 Oct
Top 10 content management systems
Best Of, CMS, Compilation
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There are dozens of great CMSs out there. Regardless of what type of site you’re building, there’s probably one perfectly-suited to it.
The problem is that most designers and developers don’t want to spend time learning a bunch of different CMSs. They want to learn one, or maybe two, and use those for all of their sites. That means they need something that’s both flexible and powerful.
The CMSs below fit that bill pretty well. Some have practically become household names (in designer households, at least), while others are a bit more obscure.
The first three, WordPress, Joomla!, and Drupal, are pretty unarguably the best CMSs out there. The next seven are a bit more subjective, but have a good combination of support, features, and ease-of-use.
Try them out, and decide for yourself which one best fits your needs and the needs of your clients. Read more
30 Oct
Our favorite tweets of the week
Oct 24-Oct 30, 2011
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
29 Oct
Comics of the week #101
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
28 Oct
5 simple ways to beat designer’s block
Creativity, Inspiration, Productivity
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Designer’s block is no joke and it always seems to come around when a project’s deadline is quickly approaching.
You just can’t seem to create anything with enough power or spunk—heck, you may just be staring at your screen or sketchbook for hours straight.
It’s truly no fun at all to feel stuck and helpless, especially when your work seems to keep piling up. You feel like you’re stuck in a box, trying to figure a way out. You may try to do something, like step away for a few then come back, but what if that doesn’t work?
Relax and try not to stress. Take a look at these five simple ways you can help yourself remove the block and create some really amazing work before your deadline passes. Read more
27 Oct
8 Popular online apps to test the mobile version of your site
Cell Phones, Mobile, Web Design
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The mobile revolution has inspired major and minor websites alike to have a mobile version. Mobile versions can be created using themes, extensions, and other modifications.
While developing mobile version, you may want to test it on two, three, or even five different mobile handsets. After development, you are not aware how it will appear in each mobile present on this Earth as you have to buy each of them to test it manually.
Let us make this work simple for you by collecting some tools in this article to test the mobile version of your website.
You can test your mobile website on these tools, analyze it for the mistakes/errors, and then optimize it according to the recommendations. Let us have a look at some of the mobile testing applications available online. Read more
26 Oct
Simple but powerful website building and hosting with Squarespace
Resources, Web Design, Website Builder
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[Editor's note: This is a sponsored review for Squarespace]
Whether you want to create a blog, a brochure site, or something more involved, the platform you choose to create it on is important. There are a lot of blog and website building and hosting platforms out there, some free and some paid. There’s also a huge variation in the quality of the services these sites have to offer.
Some are reminiscent of the old Angelfire and Geocities websites of the 90s and early 2000s, with little storage space, hideous stock templates, non-existent support, and very limited control.
Others include enterprise-level hosting, attractive templates, full control over look and function, and business-class support.
Squarespace definitely falls firmly in the latter of these two categories. While website builders and hosting services of this kind aren’t always appropriate for designers and developers, when they are, you want to work with a company that understands what you want as a creative professional and gives you the control you need. Read more
25 Oct
Do’s and don’ts of call to action pages
How to, Tips, Web Design
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Good call to action pages (including landing pages and sales pages) are an important part of any website that either sells or asks visitors to sign up for something.
An effective call to action page can increase conversions and signups by a hundred percent or more (sometimes much more). As designers, we should know exactly what makes an effective call to action page, both in terms of actual design and the kinds of content they should ideally include.
Here are more than a dozen do’s and don’ts for crafting great call to action pages. In general, they’re not difficult to design well, but there are certain guidelines that sometimes run counter to a designer’s instincts, or what might work on other kinds of pages.
The main thing to remember is the purpose of a call to action page: to get a visitor to perform a specific action. If you keep that in mind while you’re designing, you’re likely to have a more successful result. Read more
24 Oct
50 Graphic tributes to Steve Jobs
Apple, Best Of, Design
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With the passing of Steve Jobs this month, designers around the world are creating tributes.
Considering the impact Jobs had on the technology and design fields, it’s not surprising to see the number of creative designs created to pay homage to his legacy.
A great collection of these tributes have been recently posted to Behance.net.
Below, we’ve collected fifty of these designs, all inspired by the life of Jobs and the impact he had on the world.
Feel free to share other designs that we may have missed and let us know which ones you like best in the comments…. Read more
23 Oct
Our favorite tweets of the week
Oct 17-Oct 23, 2011
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
22 Oct
Comics of the week #100
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
21 Oct
2011 Graphic Designer Survey (enter for a chance to win a Macbook Pro)
Graphic Design, Surveys, Web Designers
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In partnership with Uprinting, today we’re posting a 3 minute short survey to collect data about graphic designers and an awesome chance to win a brand new 13″ Apple Macbook Pro! (includes free shipping).

The survey will be used to learn more about the design community and create several posts and infographics about it.
The results will keep designers up-to-date with the latest graphic design practices, trends and technology by collecting relevant data from who else but actual designers like you!
See this page for all terms and conditions, FAQs and more information. You can fill out the survey after the jump. Thanks! Read more
20 Oct
A round-up of great vlogs and podcasts for designers
Graphic Design, Resources, Web Design
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Being a designer is not your average job: your work is constantly evolving, giving you new tools to either become more productive or to simply create better work. For that, we all do our best to read books, brush up our skills following some tutorials, subscribe to blogs or attend design conferences. However, we often overlook one medium: the podcast.
If you are a seasoned multitasker, you can listen to podcasts while working. Otherwise, the other big advantage of podcasts is that you can take it anywhere and listen to it whenever you want, while riding the bus to work or doing the dishes.
To find the perfect podcast is hard, but there are many good shows out there, especially for designers. Good podcasts usually have the following: a great host that chooses good topics and quality guests, good sound quality and jingles, show notes and links.
The following shows usually combine all those properties, check them out! Read more
19 Oct
20 websites that engage users with social media icons and links
Compilation, Social Media, Web Design
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The topic of social media is all over the web, and it is important to consider it when designing a website.
The way you display social media icons or links has a direct effect on user engagement.
You have to consider many details when laying out a page, including the layout, the flow of content and the main area of rest on the page.
Whether you end up with typographic links in the header or icons in the footer, you should test out colors, shapes, typography and iconography to ensure that your social links are thoughtfully combined, engaging and well designed.
Here, we’ll show you some examples of how websites display their social links so that you can see the variety of options out there. Check them out, and let us know what you think.
Read more
18 Oct
A web of lies
Ethics, Information, Internet
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I recently added to my top ten most embarrassing moments of my professional life. No, I won’t be listing the top ten but this one was extremely disturbing because it affected a lot of people and basically went unnoticed and pushed out the truth and replaced if with a falsehood that had become the truth. I’m referring to an article I wrote about a famous designer but the images of the fantastic work weren’t actually his.
It was not my intention to prank or scam readers but I used the wonderful World Wide Web to gather my information and that was a blunder I should have seen coming. It wasn’t until a reader pointed out that the designer did not do the work, that I scrambled to find out the truth. At first, I thought, by the way the comment was worded, it was just a spam scam for a website and this was glomming onto the popularity of the article.
I started searching via Google to see if the work did truly belong to the designer, as I had found them on there. It seems my article had replaced most sources on this designer. Both a power trip and a frightening realization–I had rewritten history as far as the web was concerned.
Read more
17 Oct
Asymmetrical balance in web design
Best Of, Design, Web Design
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When I first covered the idea of symmetrical design patterns here on Webdesigner Depot I had no intention of digging into the notion of asymmetrical design.
However, the more I thought about it, the more I felt compelled to cover the topic to contrast some of the ideas revolving around symmetrical design patterns.
In asymmetrical design we find designs that contain elements that do not create a mirror image. Most often, these asymmetrical designs are in fact balanced, but just not through perfectly similar halves.
This sort of design is actually far easier to come by, considering most content doesn’t lend itself to perfect symmetry.
Let’s consider a variety of sites that put this design approach to work and perhaps discover some ideas that can impact your own design work. Read more
16 Oct
Our favorite tweets of the week
Oct 10-Oct 16, 2011
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
15 Oct
Comics of the week #99
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
14 Oct
5 things designers can learn from sports
Business, Reputation, Tips
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Right now, we are surrounded by so many great sports leagues. Whether you prefer baseball, basketball, football or even hockey, you can flip to ESPN and catch some pretty great highlights and news.
Not everyone is big into sports (or at least not the popular ones), yet no one can deny the entertainment value that sports give us day in and day out.
Personally, I am a huge NBA junkie (go Celtics!). With the recent close of the 2010–11 season, I picked up on some implied rules that typically guarantee a team some measure of success.
I also discovered that following these rules and tips could be useful to me as a freelance graphic designer in search of my own success. Rather than looking forward to the next season, I’ll share some of these rules with you now.
Read more
13 Oct
No mobile site? No more excuses!
Mobile, Resources, Web Design
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[Editor's note: This is a sponsored post for Wix Mobile]
Considering the growth of the mobile web, not having a mobile accessible version of your website is akin to ignoring a huge segment of the internet population.
With more than 77 percent of the world’s population using mobile phones, and more than half a billion people accessing the web over 3G or faster connections, many of whom are mobile-only users (they rarely ever use a desktop, laptop, or tablet computer to access the web), ignoring this access point can severely limit your traffic and the success of your website.
While some mobile devices can handle websites aimed at desktop users, other phones don’t work as well. Smaller screens can become a nightmare with tightly-packed links or content that doesn’t adapt. This is why a mobile website can be a great option, rather than expecting mobile users to access your full website. Read more
12 Oct
What’s new for web designers – Oct 2011
Apps, Best Of, Design
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The October edition of what’s new for web designers and developers includes new web apps, boilerplates, some JavaScript tools and resources, useful documents for working with clients, and a number of great new fonts.
Many of the resources below are free or very low cost, and are sure to be useful to a lot of designers and developers out there.
As always, if we’ve missed something you think should have been included, please let us know in the comments.
And if you have an app or other resource you’d like to see included next month, tweet it to @cameron_chapman for consideration. Read more
11 Oct
7 Photoshop tips for designing clean and modern websites
Photoshop, Tips, Web Design
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Clean, elegant, and beautiful web design is often a matter of personal perspective. I look at hundreds of websites every week, and several of them stand out to me, but not all of them are necessarily effective.
Too often designers boil a concept down too far, producing a final design that is nothing more than text and a grid. While these minimal designs have their aesthetic appeal, particularly when paired with excellent typography, they risk falling short of notice.
Personal opinions aside, there are certain features of a design that allow it to be proudly labeled as clean or modern and enhance its usability and likability on a universal level. Simplicity is not a design trend, but rather an attribute of good design.
Photoshop grants us a versatile set of tools for creating depth and interest, and invites us to integrate subtle detail where we would leave a blank space. You need only a handful of these tools to infuse the qualities of modern design into a layout. By mastering them, you can create clean designs that express functionality clearly and effectively. Read more
10 Oct
SnapTags: Will they kill QR codes?
Design, Marketing, Packaging
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I remember a time when truncating the UPC bar code on the cover of a magazine was a huge coup. Taking the huge, lumbering code, which took up too much real estate on the cover of a publication, was bothersome and affected the design space.
Cutting the bar code by half, in height and width, was celebrated as a major advance in the much-needed item used for scanning the price by, at best, only half the retailers, seems so petty and foolish now.
When printers discovered you didn’t need to place the codes on white boxes, we rejoiced at not having the little lines popping out on what were beautiful covers, interrupted by alien chunks of absurdity. Again, it seems odd no one had discovered this fact for all the years bar codes had been used.
When we discovered that we could play with the bar codes, making fun little designs and jokes; we wondered why something so simple had escaped us for so long. We reveled in the design challenge of playing with the codes while still keeping them functional.
Read more
9 Oct
Our favorite tweets of the week
Oct 3-Oct 9, 2011
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
8 Oct
Comics of the week #98
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
7 Oct
30 e-commerce sites worth seeing
Best Of, Ecommerce, Web Design
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In this day and age, if you are not selling your product online or at least making it available online, you are missing out on a ton of money. Unfortunately, the makers of these sites are most interested in making a dollar rather than making sense (did you catch the pun?).
At any rate, some folks get the job down. They understand that design is a way to communicate and get their point across, rather than something that needs to be pushed to the side in order to get people to buy. Good companies understand good design can mean a better bottom line.
If you need inspiration for your upcoming e-commerce site or you just like this type of thing, we’ve put together some sites that get their audiences moving—not just through pretty decorations and design but through good usability, interfaces and interactions. Not all sites are perfect but you are sure to learn a thing or two from these 30 sites. Read more
6 Oct
Steve Jobs, a designer at heart
Apple, Inspiration, Opinion
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We at WDD are deeply saddened by Steve Jobs’ passing… And while the Internet is buzzing with people’s heartfelt emotions about his life’s impact and legacy, we’d also like to pay tribute with this modest homage.
A designer at heart, design was at the core of Steve’s life and that translated to revolutionary and yes we can also say ‘magical’ products. But he says it better: “Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”
And we can only imagine how many lives have been influenced by his vision and how deep he reached into all the corners of the world…

In this post, we’ve collected some rare photos of Steve as well as some famous quotes that depict his visions and personality.
Comments are open for you to share how he impacted your career as a designer and as a person, we sure know that he has deeply influenced us! What did you learn from him and how has his legacy impacted you? Where will YOU take his legacy next? Please share your candid thoughts below… Read more
4 Oct
What do you really want to achieve as a web designer?
Inspiration, Opinion, Reputation
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“Learn how to be happy with what you have while you pursue all that you want.” – Jim Rohn
More and more, as the scope and lucrativeness of the Internet increase, web designers are becoming highly sought after. As the design profession gains in demand, its practitioners are put in an interesting position.
The opportunities for growth appear to be limitless, so it is up to each designer to determine their own life path.
It is a very good place to be, although it might feel challenging and overwhelming.
As a web designer, you have to ask yourself, “Where do I want to take my life? What do I want to achieve?”
Read more
3 Oct
A comparison of leading WordPress theme frameworks
Web Design, WordPress, WordPress Themes
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If you’re going to design a WordPress site, there are a few ways you can start. Many designers start with an HTML template that they then add WordPress code to.
Others start with the basic WordPress code and design around that.
But others begin with a starter theme or framework, which is arguably the most efficient way to create a WP theme.
So you know you need a framework if you want to be more efficient in designing WP themes, but there are dozens of starter themes and frameworks out there. Where do you begin?
The answer to that is with the list below. Check out the free and premium frameworks and starter themes below. Try a few of them out and then decide which one(s) work best for your projects. Read more
2 Oct
Our favorite tweets of the week
Sept 26-Oct 2, 2011
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
1 Oct
Comics of the week #97
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