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…

Dezine Weblog says: Being a freelance really spoil you. When you work you think of sleeping, when you go to sleep you think to work on new project or...
Business

It is assumed in the online business, especially in the design field, that most big clients are international.

But that doesn’t mean that all lucrative projects are with international clients. As companies such as the controversial BlitzLocal have discovered, there’s a vast and lucrative market for providing local businesses with online visibility.

While such businesses specialize in search marketing, the fact that they exist is fairly solid evidence that there’s a viable market for local design.

Before investing in an international advertising campaign, designers should consider the business opportunities in their local communities.

Whether a small town, regional center or global city, a designer’s community is a source of projects that never runs dry.

The 7 tactics below will help designers locate new clients, attract the attention of local business leaders and generate a region-based design empire.

David @hotelpepper says: Great article Matthew. I agree with the last comment here too. Pro bono is great when it gives something back to a charity /...
Creativity

As a designer, especially one without a lot of experience, it’s normal to look at the designs of others and think how great their work is compared to our own.

It’s a frustrating experience for many, especially when we can’t quite put our finger on why their design is so great when ours is merely good.

The thing about design, though, is that greatness is usually quantifiable.

Unlike with more abstract and interpretable creative pursuits, there are definite elements that go into “great” designs.

The best part is that anyone who can create a good design can go on to create great designs with a bit of practice. Here’s what goes into great design and what you can do to improve your own designs.

Brad says: Great post Cameron. I think another aspect that distinguishes good design from great design is the proper use of white space and...
Inspiration

Irina Werning is a photographer who loves to look at other peoples’ old photographs. Instead of just admiring the photos, she wonders how people would feel and look if they were to reenact the same photos today.

This project, titled Back To The Future features a collection of her photographs of individuals and groups of people reenacting a photograph that was taken in the past (usually many years ago).

The result is somewhat beautiful. You can tell just from one photo that a lot of work has been put into research, locations and props for each and every shoot – even time and money has been put towards finding the same (or similar) object in the background, such as wallpaper or curtains.

Irina Werning is a photographer from Buenos Aires, Argentina. If you like her unique style of portrait photography, be sure to check out her portfolio.

Pixeno Web Host says: Thats an awesome idea! These look great. You can tell in some of the backgrounds where things back been replaced and renewed,...
Compilation

A few things can be learned from this latest roundup of new WordPress themes, all released within the past five months or so.

First of all, there’s a definite trend toward more premium themes, with fewer high-quality free themes available.

Minimalist and simple, clean themes are definitely the favorite of designers at the moment, representing the vast majority of the themes in this roundup.

There’s also been an increase in jQuery integration in themes, though this has been a growing trend for awhile now.

A large percentage of themes in this list have at least some jQuery integration built-in, and some have quite a lot.

AUDIOMIND says: Tried changing the spammy links (not back-links to original theme creator) in the footer of the Woody Magazine theme and my blog...
Fonts

We’ve got a lot to thank Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and the computing world’s other leaders for. They’re responsible for some of the greatest leaps forward in communications and business in the last 30 years-and many of the biggest innovations in design, too.

Without them, our industry wouldn’t be what it is today, and many of the world’s top designers wouldn’t have a platform for their work.

However, there is one reason to resent these giants: their choice of fonts. In releasing mega-popular suites and catering to a broad, design-illiterate audience, leading business applications such as Microsoft Word shocked us with the overused fonts that they include standard in their latest releases.

This isn’t a riff on the world’s worst fonts, but rather an invitation for amateur designers and business users to stop abusing some of the world’s best fonts.

Nothing is particularly wrong with Impact or Comic Sans as fonts per se, but there is a huge deal wrong with using them in every situation. The 10 fonts below are overused and patently annoying, and we give 10 good reasons to stop using all of them.

Charlie says: Klaus has it correct. Any type face has value in context. And given the visuals used as examples for this article I wouldn't use...
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: Some fantastic links here that will come in really useful, especially the 'How to Manage Simplicity in Web Design' article.
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…

Brian says: LOL the first one, because i'm working in a Music instrument store... with a lot of accordeons!