Design

Michelangelo once said, "The best of artists has no conception that the marble alone does not contain within itself." Translate this to the world of Web design and you might say, "No matter how great a designer you are, you’re only as good as your content." While the reality of client work sometimes makes it challenging to gather and produce content prior to starting the design, this is now widely accepted as being necessary.

Take one line of markup, a couple of CSS3 rules (no images), and you can have yourself a swish folded ribbon effect in five minutes. Let's see how.. Step 1: Markup We'll begin with an empty...

«So what are the options for implementing web fonts? I'm going to review the three main methods of incorporating @font-face and explain the pros and cons of each method. […]»

As I explained in my previous post, user experience design is a multidisciplinary activity which includes psychology, user research, information architecture, interaction design, graphic design and a host of other disciplines. Due to the complexity of the field a user experience team will typically be made up of individuals with a range of different specialisms.

«Digital news is broken. Actually, news itself is broken. Almost all news organizations have abandoned reporting in favor of editorial; have cultivated reader opinion in place of responsibility; and have traded ethical standards for misdirection and whatever consensus defines as forgivable. And this is before you even lay eyes on what passes for news design on a monitor or device screen these days. […]»

Truth be told, I am a philistine. When people talk about recycling, I don’t think of saving the planet. In my earlier post, “Lessons Learned: Productivity Tips For Running A Web Design Business,” I wrote about how we can reuse and recycle what we do in the Web industry to save time and money.

Designing websites and related media for kids presents plenty of opportunities for Web designers. Openings are available at many businesses and schools, as well as through parents and kids themselves, giving designers many ways to find work on electronic and print projects that appeal to kids. The types of work range from interface designs for video games to websites for birthday parties.

This article tries to show how developing a process for Web design can organize a developer's thoughts, speed up a project's timeline and prepare a freelance business for growth. First of all, what exactly is a 'process'? A **Web development process** is a documented outline of the steps needed to be taken from start to finish in order to complete a typical Web design project.

In this installment of my column, I’ll take a look at one of the most important visual design elements for graphic user interfaces: typography. I’ll concentrate on general guidelines for the effective use of typography in the design of applications for children between 3 and 10 years of age. What considerations do we need to take into account when working with digital typography when children are its primary interpreters?

Some tricks for non-pros to help make up for UX design weaknesses.

When we initially sat down to discuss features for FaultPress you may imagine the words "bugs, tickets, milestones, priorities" being thrown around a lot.

“How did you do that?” My colleague Leigh sounded impressed. He had been working with a problem client for weeks trying to get design approval. Then I came along and was able to get signed-off in a single conference call. “Can you teach me how you did that?” he asked. I mumbled something about years of experience, but the truth was I didn’t have a clue. It just seems I can find design approval easier than most.

Usability is ridiculously important to your website. It doesn't matter how cool your website looks or how amazing your content is if visitors can't quickly, easily, and enjoyably access and use it. Many of them will eventually just give up and look elsewhere. So how do you make your website as usable as possible? Well, you're in luck, because this article features 20 usability tips for your website. Technology will always change, thus changing the usability tips. So make sure you share your own tips and tricks with the rest of us.

There are tools that make our lives much easier. However, finding those obscure time-savers which would save time in every single project isn't easy and requires a lot of time. At Smashing Magazine, we are regularly looking for such useful tools, gather them, review them and eventually prepare for a truly smashing round-up. Such posts are quite lengthy and extensive, but they are always worth checking out.

What is so special about this pencil that its devotees will accept no substitute and make them willing to spend $250.00 for a box of them?

Designers have coveted print for its precision layouts, lamenting the varying user contexts on the web that compromise their designs. Ethan Marcotte advocates we shift our design thinking to approp…

Are we pulling our punches too much when it comes to critiquing design? Are we being honest with one another?

Lightbox is a great image display technique for the modern Web, just be sure it's still usable!

8 Tools to Analyze Your Website’s Level of Accessibility