I've always had this crazy infatuation with packaging design. There's just something about getting a physical product and checking out what it's presented in and how its presented. Is it in a box? What color is the label? Is there stuffing of any sort in it? What materials are being used? How does it make me feel? Packaging is important because it's like the UX, or user experience, of a physical product. It determines how we interact with that product...

Motion graphics are flat out neat. They're what dazzles our eyes at the beginning of movies and during commercials. They're what takes stagnant illustrations and makes them great animations. Even little pieces of motion graphics are implemented in video productions as well. There's no other way to say it—motion graphics are cool. As connection speeds go up, and users crave more and more immersive experiences, we'll see motion graphics...

With so many new mobile phones, tablets and other devices coming out every day, designers have to be prepared to make common functions easy to do on these devices. The usual approach to this is responsive design. However, what some of us are still trying to figure out is how to use responsive design for things other than viewing. Forms are one of the most common elements on the Web, without them the conversation is only going one way. Forms are used...

In 2011, Adobe sent shockwaves through the design community by introducing Adobe Muse: design software that made websites. You could imagine my excitement as well as other non-coders worldwide. They created this WYSIWYG editor mixed with InDesign that could produce real live websites. How was this possible? What were the limitations? What took them so long? I must admit, I tried Muse when it was in beta and didn't really get it because it didn't...

If you're anything like me, you spend a lot of time studying other designers' work. I like to look at projects for the experience and the interactions created for the users. Obviously, as more techniques come about, the changes in web design take place and newer, better things arrive. We've experienced the life of the splash page, the introduction header, parallax scrolling and so many other things that have affected the web experience. However,...

When I was around 16, I got into freelancing for graphic design through a small non-profit. They needed some posters and book covers and I figured I could do that pretty easily. I handled things well for my age and made a couple bucks so I could buy shoes for the first days of school. As I continued to do this, I realized I really liked the work and was even interested in doing some web design. It couldn't be much different, right? Boy, was I wrong. I set...

Last year, WordPress was being used to power 72.4 million websites on the Internet. That was around half of all live sites at the time. Of all the websites using a content management system now, 59.8% of them are being run using WordPress. And their market share is continuing to grow! These are crazy stats for one of the greatest and simplest content management systems I've ever used. WordPress is increasingly popular because literally anyone...

The art of creating a website these days is learning how to create an online experience. Many of these experiences are extensions of a brand or person and are relayed via different colors, fonts, etc. Thanks to awesome advancements in technologies, we can do a lot of stuff with our websites that we couldn't do a few years ago. We are taking the experience from dry and drab to fun and fab. One of the trendiest techniques to have fun with is scrolling....

If you are a freelancer or you work from home, then you might know exactly how it feels to be on your own little island. You're cooped up in your office all the I time trying to get work done. If you're anything like me, you only look up and go outdoors when your stomach tells you it can't handle any more. Maybe you're not that bad, but it isn't uncommon to feel like you sometimes need someone to talk to without reading and imagining how they sound in messages....

One of the most important things about creating a brand is making sure everything is cohesive. Once a brand pinpoints their values and how they'd like to be perceived, they have to make sure all their touchpoints refer back to these values. What's of extreme importance is the look of a brand. In order to make sure this stays fairly consistent, brands should have corporate identity guides or brand style guides. These typically go over the do's...

If you're a living, moving, breathing person, then the chances are very high that you've heard of the newest infatuation in the design world, flat design. If you're unsure, here's a quick crash course: it's flat color. This means there are no (or very subtle) gradients and we are no longer making buttons and other parts of user interfaces look three dimensional. The sudden rush to this type of design honestly makes flat design feel like a fad....

We love responsive web design and rightfully so. As a matter of fact, it's almost mind boggling when a website isn't responsive these days. It's been a trend on the up and up for a while now. It's also been a trend that seems to change and create new technology every week to make it better. One of the hardest parts of creating responsive designs is creating navigation menus that work on the larger screens as well as on the smaller screens. With responsive...

In advertising and marketing, the term "soft sell" is an approach at selling and item by connecting with a potential customer. By soft selling a product, you don't put any pressure on a person to buy right now, but you give them the opportunity to decide if it's for them or not. Sometimes we use soft sell techniques by demonstrating a particular use of a product or by giving away something for free. We can even create soft sells by giving away information...

When I was younger and I had to make Powerpoint presentations, I never really liked to do them. I couldn't figure out why other than they just didn't do what I wanted them to do. They were often unappealing, tacky and most were just eyesores. That's back when Powerpoint was hard to use and wasn't intuitive at all. Since then I've tried my hardest to stay away for Powerpoint and have been successful for quite a while. Recently, I've had to become reacquainted...