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.

They say you can’t create fine art using fractal algorithms; but Finland-based digital artist Jukka Korhonen has set out to prove them wrong.

Fractal art is a subclass of two-dimensional visual art that produces images from the calculations of a fractal object (a fragmented geometric shape that can be subdivided into parts and is a reduced-size copy of the whole). Examples of this kind of art include the Julia set and the Mandlebrot set, which both include the fractal property of self-similarity.

Because of its mathematical nature, fractal art is primarily considered a genre of computer and digital art. Thus, the challenge for Korhonen was to impart the aesthetic qualities of an exquisite painting, done in a minimalistic style. The result is an ongoing collection of works that would look right at home in a fine art gallery.

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

Whilst the term “flat design” might not be a phrase you’re yet familiar with, you will definitely have noticed the concept and the design features whilst browsing the internet.

For those of you that have noticed an increase in the “drop shadow” trend in web design, the easiest way to describe flat design is to say it’s the opposite of that. Flat design is designing a website that has left behind the drop shadow and the 3D effects, and that is by all intents and purposes flat.

Flat design looks modern, fun, fresh and refreshingly simple compared to it’s 3D counterpart. Flat design is embracing the use of solid colors, sharp, well-defined typography and bold shapes. It takes away any faff and fussiness from the design making it so much easier to digest and to navigate. It’s modern and is without a doubt going to be a huge design trend this coming year.