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

Tristar Web Design says: Thanks for a great collection of articles, I found the visual direction in web design really interesting and it contained a lot...
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…

Mihai Baboi says: Oh, yeah... I've had that "Big picture" thought in my head a few times. Every time I hear this kind of stuff, I know it can't be...
Code

Not every designer wants to (or knows how to) code. Sometimes all you want to do is design, and leave the coding to someone else.s

Or maybe you’ve just taken on more design work than you can handle, and don’t have time to code everything yourself.

In either case, PSD to HTML services can be a great way to save time and energy, while still getting a hand-coded design.

In this post, we’ve compiled a hundred PSD to HTML services that might be just what you need for coding your next project.

Some of the services below also offer CMS implementation and other add-on services. The better services take as much time and care with converting your design as you would take yourself, so be sure to shop around and compare not only on the basis of price (which starts as low as $29), but also quality and service.

When picking a service like this, make sure you find a company that either provides samples of their work or a money-back guarantee (preferably both). A non-disclosure agreement is also a good idea, especially if you’re using them for client work.

Stu says: Whooooa... that's a LONG list! I've tried three PSD to HTML companies; CSS Chopper, XHTMLChop and PSD2HTML. I'd avoid CSS...
Clients

Web designers and developers sacrifice countless hours and sleep sorting out clients’ objectives, audiences’ needs, brand continuity, page layouts, information architecture, navigation, functionality, cross-browser compatibility, accessibility — the list goes on. And then the web copy finally arrives.

If the content is good, it conveys the right messages, and helps boost online presence, traffic and conversion rates.

The client gets an attractive ROI, the designer is labeled a hero, and referrals flow.

If the content misses the mark, it can damage or even destroy the website, and all that time and effort (not to mention credibility) goes down the toilet.

So here’s an outline of common web copy culprits that kill websites, and how to spot and avoid them.

Ulrika says: Great list! I'm amazed that so few people discuss web copy, considering how important it is. And I want to add the obvious: The...
Compilation

In this article, we’re going to start by looking at a few inspirational movie posters from the 1980s which we’ll use for inspiration.

Then, we’re going to use Adobe Photoshop to create a 1980′s style movie poster for our fictitious film titled “The Designer’s Mansion.”

This tutorial is aimed for designers with a fair understanding of Photoshop.

If you follow this tutorial, please feel free to post a link to your final product in the comments area below. We’d love to see it!

Let’s get started!

/jmj says: I'm not a designer but thanks for your tutorial. I made this little picture/montage/collage (not with photoshop but with the...
3D

Alex Eylar is an advanced LEGO scene creator from California, USA.

Alex is in his young twenties and has become very well known for his brilliant movie scenes that he creates out of LEGO pieces; his work has even been featured on the CNN and The Telegraph websites.

He says his love for both LEGO and movies come from his childhood, and is surprised that his scene recreations have gone down so well with the public.

He assumes that this is because most people are familiar with a lot of the films he depicts in his work.

Great photography and editing skills play a large part in these fantastic creations, allowing Alex to create a great depth of field and make his work more realistic.

You can view more of Alex’s LEGO experiments at his MOCpages profile, or on his Flickrstream, where he posts all of his projects, small and big.

Tristar Web Design says: This is fantastic and definitely put a smile on my face this morning! Alex Eylar is brilliant to be able to create the scenes so...
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...