Lovers of abstract art are undoubtedly familiar with the superlative Wassily Kandinsky — the Russian-born painter, printmaker, and theorist who was recognized as having painted the first purely abstract compositions in modern art history. As a tribute to the pioneering expressionist, Turkish graphic designer Sinan Buyukbas has created a series of stunning 3D typographic art — aptly titled “Kandinsky Type” — to reflect Wassily Kandinsky’s groundbreaking style.

Using bold, striking hues and funky shapes to craft the letters, Buyukbas states he approached each character as a blank canvas, channeling the creative mojo of Kandinsky with both color and form. In fact, one look at the painter’s work known as “Composition X” (1939) makes it easy to see where Buyukbas got his inspiration.

Free-spirited, whimsical, and even a bit indulgent, the finished product of this typographic experiment is the perfect homage to the abstract expressionism of the Russian trailblazer. Enjoy!

How well does Buyukbas’ design capture the spirit of Kandinsky? Is this a suitable subject for type design? Let us know in the comments.

I’m thrilled to officially announce that CodeVisually.com has been recently acquired by Webdesigner Depot and is now part of our growing family of sites.

If you don’t know the site yet, Code Visually offers a simple way to discover the latest web development resources and tools out there. We cover CSS, Javascript, HTML, PHP, frameworks, browser extensions, web apps and tools, CMS templates, CMSes, wireframing tools and a lot more.

The site has been online since 2011 and was created by Paul Andrew, the webmaster of the popular blog Speckyboy.com, and has been gaining tremendous popularity among web developers ever since. Developers visit it daily to read about all the latest tools and resources. The website is often checked by many of the major design/development bloggers so that they can report on the latest resources, even though it’s not always given recognition as being the original source. It’s one of those little secrets among bloggers that’s not so secret anymore!

It’s billed as the battle of the century, at least as far as app developers are concerned; which has better ROI, Apple’s iOS or Google’s Android? Consumers are split: Apple have the single largest market share, Google have numerous manufacturers on their side; iOS dominates North America, Android wins out in Europe.

If you’re targeting mobile devices, then ideally you want to have releases for both iOS and Android. But in the age of the lean start-up, where minimum viable products are all the rage, you have to pick a side and prioritize one or the other.

Not sure whose team you’re on? Keep reading and we’ll help you decide.

There’s an expression in advertising that goes “I know that 80% of my advertising isn’t working. I just don’t know which 80%”. The same logic applies to all forms of design, including web design. If only we knew which part of our page content, layouts and workflows were not working as well as they should, wouldn’t that be amazing?

It would seem like a godsend to know what works when it comes to user experience design, to have confirmed in harsh quantifiable data which of two layouts, elements, or routes is the optimum and this is the promise of A/B testing. It is a powerful tool, but it is not a panacea and over-reliance on it can not only blunt your judgment as a designer, but also paradoxically result in sub-optimal solutions.

In this article I’ll take a look at some of the pitfalls of using A/B testing, and how such comparative testing can be used as part of a designers toolkit, rather than a dominant design methodology.