How to

When it comes to designing and building websites, it never seems to happen fast enough.

Given this fast pace, many small details that are eventually required to build the website are often left out of the design process. While these details might be minor, they are what take a website from nice to truly awesome.

These details are often easy to miss because they don’t drive the overall look and feel of the website. The problem is that as your development team works through the design, it will be forced to design and create these elements for you anyway.

You could adjust the production cycle so that the developers have time to return these assets to you, but why not just get it all done up front so that the process is that much cleaner?

Chris Fleming says: IE is on its way out. 7 years ago it made up 80% of the market, not it's only 26%. Unfortunately we still need to develop with IE...
Best Of

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

Russell Gillman Freelance Web Designer London says: Thanks. Particularly like the look of the article on CSS optimisation—will save for later :-) Optimising my CSS gives me that...
Comics

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…

Toma says: I have set a Gmail filter that bins anything with the word 'change' in it. I now sleep well at night.
Freebies

Today we have a great set of icons created exclusively for WebdesignerDepot by Vinod.

The set includes 10 appliance super cute looking icons of all types of appliances.

The icons are provided as transparent PNG files and also an Illustrator file is included.

The icons can be used for personal and commercial use.

Please do not distribute these icons. If you want to share them 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 icons!

Website Template Mockup says: Vinod Excellent and great idea , i really like the washing machine icon, i donno which name you will suggest for this icon...
Design

Alex Beltechi is a graphic designer and illustrator from Romania.

One of his stronger areas of expertise – as you can tell from the following pieces – is experimental typography.

His unique blend of (usually) clean lines and grungy textures brews a pixel-perfect typographic illustration every time that are always a pleasure to look at.

A lot of Alex’s work is produced for personal and experimental purposes, while some pieces are made into tutorials or sold as stock files.

If you like what you see, you can follow Alex on Twitter, and check out his other work on either his Behance or Flickr profiles.

Kim Phillips | Lucid Marketing says: Guy's got mad skills but much of it is illegible. If used as an illustration for something, could be wonderful. Most look very...
Apps

The Brushes app for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad provides a unique environment for artists to create works of art by finger painting on touchscreen displays.

The app achieved notoriety in 2009 when artist, Jorge Colombo, created a cover for the New Yorker magazine with the tip of his finger.

Since then, artists all over the world have been using the Brushes App to create paintings of different styles and genres.

On Flickr, there are currently 713 groups where artists have been sharing the work they’ve created with the Brushes app. One group in particular, Just Brushes, has over 3200 members and showcases paintings created from scratch.

jBelow are some awe-inspiring examples of art collected from the Just Brushes group including amazing abstract paintings, portraits, landscapes and much more.

Ckdesign says: @Jaso I have a Griffin Technology Stylus for my apple touch devices. I love it, way better then the Pogo which has been...
Compilation

Art-directed blogs (sometimes also referred to as “blogazines”) are making strides in the blogosphere.

Looking at them, it can be tempting to jump on the bandwagon and start creating your own art-directed posts. But it’s not that straightforward.

There are a lot of pros and cons to designing each and every post on your blog.

Below, we’ve covered the most important advantages and disadvantages to creating custom designs for your blog posts and we also included a collection of some great examples.

Please feel free to share your thoughts about art directed blogs in the comments…

Web Solution says: I love what i've read on the link that you posted saying "I’m never satisfied with my work. Invariably, two weeks after...
Best Of

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

Sony says: Twittes are always great way to express your thoughts. I liked the Laser-cut dollar bills by Scott Campbell, Tweet. You always...