Webdesign

16 Nov

The concept of the left and right brain only lately popped up in the late 1960’s, but since has become a well-known part of human psychology.

While we all use both sides of the brain, each of us has a dominant side, and this dominant side makes up for a huge part of our personalities.

Each individual thinks a certain way, has more interest in certain areas, and above and beyond all — is most effective in certain ways. An accurate understanding of the left and right brain can help one to become more productive, efficient, and creative.

This article will cover a basic understanding of what the left and right brains are, and each of their traits. We’ll also go into how we, as creative people, can harness this understanding of the left and right brain to be more creative, as well as succeed in other work-related tasks. Read more

1 May

Simplifying Website Usability: The 3 Step Approach

Inspiration, Usability, Webdesign

33

Simplicity is key to any successful website or web app.

If your site is too complicated, the user will have to go through too many hoops to find what they are looking for and won’t even bother trying it out.

The Jackson 5 got it right back in the 70’s when they sang “easy as 123″.

A simple and effective approach is to break down your services, signups and checkouts into 3 easy steps. This will improve usability, increase sales, signups and conversion rates.

In this article, we’ll take a look at 20 great examples of the 3 step approach for effective website usability. Read more

14 Apr

50 Excellent Corporate Website Designs

Corporate, Inspiration, Webdesign

158

Web design is all about conveying information to the users in the most direct, clean and usable manner.

A corporate website also needs to capture the feel of the company and its purpose, while remaining professional in order to attain a solid and lasting impression to its customers.

Graphics, layouts and color palettes are all essential in how the customers perceive a company when visiting their website. Dark color designs, for example, can be interpreted as serious, while blue hues give a feeling of trust.

Here are 50 corporate website designs that you can use for inspiration in your own corporate designs. Read more

11 Apr

Introducing Avatar Wall: Show Your Avatar to the World

Avatars, Design, Webdesign

48

Today we turn the focus to you, the loyal readers of Webdesigner Depot…

Through the Internet we get to know you through your websites, blogs and even more, your avatars. Avatars appear in most blog comments these days and they truly enhance a comment with each person’s unique personality and design.

A few weeks ago, I was preparing to do a round up of avatar designs around the web to showcase here on WDD, when I had the idea to take this a step further by making a full website for this.

Today I’m happy to bring you the results by introducing Avatar Wall, a brand new website dedicated to showcase avatars from around the world. Read more

3 Apr

50 Beautiful Websites with Illustrated Landscapes

Illustrations, Inspiration, Webdesign

107

The use of illustration in web design is an excellent way to add a theme and take a website to a whole new level.

Some websites go even further by basing and designing the entire layout and background on illustrations, usually vector based illustrations.

Many websites today feature complex and visually stunning landscape illustrations, which is what we’ve decided to focus on in this article.

Here are 50 beautiful websites with landscape illustrations in a variety of styles. Read more

1 Apr

Breaking The Design Cycle: Get Creative To Be Creative

Design, Inspiration, Webdesign

66

Designers, we have a problem. It seems we have forgotten how to be creative.

It is true, the very nature of what we do is based on creativity, however more often than not we tend to be swept away by the latest trends or “what’s hot” rather than seeking out fresh inspiration.

“A wise man makes his own decisions, an ignorant man follows public opinion.” – Chinese Proverb

There are several reasons for this creativity block in which we are suffering from and in this article I’ll list some of these as well as alternatives for where to find appropriate sources of inspiration. Read more

5 Mar

8 Tips to Design a Charity Website

Design, Webdesign

50

A lot of charities rely on voluntary funding. This funding is carefully distributed and there are often more important things ahead of a generous budget for the website.

So how does a charity get the most out of its website? It needs to let users find out information about the charity, but the main objective of the site is to get people involved with the charity, usually resulting in the user donating money.

In this article, we look at 8 principles that you should follow when creating a charity website. Read more

28 Feb

A Life Guide for the Anti-Social Freelancer

Freelancing, Webdesign

54

In the workplace, we hear a lot about work-life balance and the need to be a well-rounded person.

For many freelancers language like that is reason enough to never work for another person again.

We aren’t very social animals and most of us aren’t normal workers either. Some of us do our best work at 2:00 in the morning after a feverish round of Halo 3.

Perhaps this T-shirt from ThinkGeek says it best: Read more

18 Feb

Meet Radim Malinic: The Graphic Artist Behind Webdesigner Depot

Color, Design, Interviews, Webdesign

32

When I started crafting the idea for the Webdesigner Depot blog, I was looking for a designer that could create a design for the site demonstrating the fun aspects of design while being colorful, vibrant and using many different design elements. The blog was intended to be a relaxed, fun place to explore the different aspects of design.

I found Radim Malinic and his exceptional work through Webdesigner Magazine. I love the way his designs explode with boldness, color and shapes, truly demonstrating the infinite possibilities of design, being somewhat risky by breaking out of the norm. I wanted WDD to be exactly that, a loose grip on all things related to design.

Here’s an interview that I recently conducted with Radim, in order to gain more insight into his professional work, his personal life and the way that he crafted the memorable design of Webdesigner Depot, which is now featured in countless website galleries. Read more

17 Feb

22 Website Designs Inspired by Apple.com

Apple, Design, Webdesign

85

It’s well known that Apple is one of the most creative and innovative companies in the world, so it’s no wonder that many software companies and web designers would choose to follow Apple’s style of branding.

The Apple website is one of the best websites out there due to its ease of use, functionality and the beautiful environment that it creates.

I looked at websites that use one or more design elements inspired by Apple.com. Some of these sites sell Mac software and apps, so it makes sense for them to keep the same Apple look and feel. Consider this though: How many software companies that develop for Windows, choose to brand their websites to look like Vista? I have included a few screenshots of the Apple website, just in case you haven’t never seen it before. Read more

2 Feb

30 Desktop and Office Themed Website Designs

Design, Webdesign, WordPress

48

Its seems like the desktop and office style websites have been a popular design idea for a few years now. While many of these design share some of the same elements, it is always interested to see the random extras and nic-nacs that people add to them.

What is even more interesting about this style is how it has crossed over to many other genres of business aside from designers.

You will notice that we included a few websites from other industries that follow the same basic idea of the desktop design. Read more

21 Jan

14 Essential Magazines for Graphic Designers

Design, Magazines, Webdesign

60

In spite of the tremendous expansion of the Internet, the power of the printed word remains strong and popular.

Print media is where it all began and today we take a close look at some amazing design magazines that can really boost your productivity and expand your design knowledge.

In addition to their printed versions, some magazines also offer online versions on their websites as well as PDF downloads and single issue orders. Order online or pick them up at your local bookstore.

Here’s our recommended list with descriptions taken from each magazine’s website…

How NOT To Design A Logo

Logos, Webdesign

363

Logo design in today’s world is totally under rated.

People do not understand how important a good logo is and how valuable it is to their business.

In this article I am going to outline the ways in which you should NOT go about getting your logo designed… that is, if you are truly serious about business.

Why Mood Boards Matter

Design, Webdesign

55

It has happened to everyone. You spend countless hours producing a beautiful, pixel-perfect comp only to have it rejected by the client because it isn’t what they were envisioning in their mind’s eye. It’s the dreaded “I’ll know it when I see it” curse.

You get sent back to the drawing board, your ego and the budget take a hit, and everyone is frustrated by the process. After this happens a few times you realize that getting the client involved earlier in the process can make a huge difference in the outcome of your design presentations. Read more

24 Dec

Create An Amazing Illustration Using Scraps

Photoshop, Tutorials, Webdesign

21

In this tutorial I will walk you through a few steps that will show you how I managed to create this illustration. I would like to give all the credit for this to Chris Haines. He is a very talented designer from Australia and one of the depthCore artists.

When I saw his illustration named Skin I was really curious to imagine how he achieved the result so I took my own style, used some free stock and the result is actually really interesting. Now that I managed to finish the work I thought I will share this with you. Read more

22 Dec

Designing Outside Your Comfort Zone

Design, Freelancing, Webdesign

32

When you’ve been designing for a few years, it’s easy to fall into patterns. You carve out your personal style and find your inner voice. You figure out what you’re good at, and the world encourages you to play to those strengths.

Bosses, clients and peers want to see you do what you’ve always done because they know they like it. There are no unpleasant surprises. Sticking to your strengths is an easy formula for success, but only in the short-term. If you don’t adapt and grow as a designer, you’ll end up like that poor guy wearing the Members Only jacket without a hint of irony. Sure, it was uber-cool once. But styles change, and so should you. Read more

19 Dec

100 Websites With Outstanding Artistic Design

247

We live in a world of information saturation, and that translates to web design. In such a competitive world, it becomes more and more important to stand out by breaking conventions. Sometimes it’s about layout, sometimes about the graphics and cool illustrations or anything else that can be different from others.

In this post, we take a look at 100 websites that look really different from their peers and automatically captivate their audiences with their design of elaborate backgrounds, illustrations, and textures. Is different always good? Let’s take a look and decide by yourself… Read more

10 Dec

10 Characteristics of Excellent Portfolio Sites

Design, Portfolios, Webdesign

37

Recently we looked at the characteristics of effective blog theme design, and I’d like to take a similar look at the portfolio sites of freelance designers.

A designer’s online portfolio is a critical part of the business, and in some cases the most valuable asset of the business.

A good portfolio site is a constant lead-generation tool, but what is it specifically that makes a great portfolio site? Read more

8 Dec

Pass or Fail: The Top 30 Technology Company Homepages

Corporate, Design, Webdesign

55

Although there are lots of posts that evaluate different design blogs, I haven’t seen many that focus specifically on corporate websites.

Therefore, I thought it would be fun to take a look at the homepages of the Top 30 technology companies (the order of this list was determined by the InfoTech 100 from Business Week), and assign them a PASS or FAIL rating based on the quality of their homepage design.

Click on the screenshots to check out each website.

13 Characteristics of Outstanding Blog Design

Blogs, Design, Webdesign

62

Most web designers and getting more and more requests from clients to design custom blog themes.

While designing a blog theme isn’t entirely different from designing any other type of website, there are some unique challenges that blog theme designers face.

There are plenty of sources available for designers who are seeking inspiration from high quality blog design, but it’s also important to understand specifically what will influence and determine the success of a blog theme design. In this article we’ll examine 13 characteristics that separate great blog themes from the rest. Read more

19 Nov

Large Website Backgrounds Do’s and Don’ts

CSS, Webdesign

42

Large backgrounds make a very impressive visual impact on websites. A web designer has the possibility to play with different design variables that are usually used by photographers, such as depth of field or focus. The background does not have to be just photos, but also any other large illustration or even video.

In this article you will learn about the different large background styles and how to use them. You will also find out about the impact that large backgrounds has on bandwidth and site performance in general. Finally you will learn how to properly implement large backgrounds. Read more