The field of web design is constantly changing and growing.

Getting in a rut is often the result of not staying up to date with the latest trends and technologies in the industry. Even if we do stay up to date, many of us at one time or another feel anxious about whether we’re advancing.

If you’re at a firm, you may be working towards a raise or promotion, or perhaps you’re thinking of jumping ship to a bigger and better company.

For the freelancers out there, we of course determine our own destiny; but far too often our careers feel stagnant, too.

This article goes over some ways to reignite your growth as a web designer. Read more

Web designers have a wealth of tools available to them, for doing everything from organizing their thoughts about a particular design to debugging the final design.

But with so many tools out there, how do you ever determine which ones are really useful and which ones are just going to waste your time?

We’ve compiled a massive list of some of the best and most useful tools out there for web designers.

Purposely left off the list are common tools most designers are likely already using (like Dreamweaver or Panic’s Coda, Photoshop or GIMP, and similar common software programs that pretty much every designer already has in their toolkit).

These are tools that will save you time, make you a more effective designer, simplify or speed up your design process, or otherwise make your life easier.

Read more

Cats and dogs. Cain and Abel. Designers and developers. These are just a few of the great historical face-offs.

Designers and developers often seem to come from different planets and have completely different brains.

Developers want a website to work right, designers want it to look right.

While these goals have a lot of overlap (and, of course, I’m stereotyping here a bit), the differences often come down to the designer and developer’s expectations of success.

Managing expectations is a matter of communication: making points clearly to the other side, finding common ground, and agreeing on goals.

Okay, so maybe it’s not that easy, but it is important for both sides to at least try to understand each other.

In an effort to promote goodwill between designers and developers, I will share some pet peeves I have encountered and explore the issues that lead to them and their solutions. Read more

Two characteristics that represent most web designers are a need for productivity and a love for technology.

This desire for increased efficiency and productivity leads many designers to look to technology for methods that will improve their work flow.

One common approach for designers (and others who want to improve productivity) is to use multiple monitors. Using two or more monitors can bring a number of significant advantages to designers.

In this article we’ll present some basic pros and cons of using multiple monitors, general instructions for setting them up, as well as a showcase of workstations that feature multiple monitors. Read more