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?

contemporary

Israel is a young country with an old heart. It has been quickly built up over the last 60 years as an independent democratic Jewish state and is shockingly cutting edge for a country so new. What’s unique about Israeli web design?

I had the opportunity to work with some very talented and highly experienced designers who all had made the jump from other design fields to the Web. It was there, as part of that training, that I learned about **critiquing**, both giving and receiving, through regular design reviews.

The design profession is full of happy folks, and understanding why so many designers enjoy their work is not hard. But not all are so happy. If you’re not careful, the joy of getting paid to pursue your passion can be tainted by the less joyous realities of the professional world. You see, no matter how skilled you are as a designer, unless you are equally prepared in **professional matters**, your prospects will be limited and your circumstances compromised. This is true whether you work freelance, for an agency or in-house with a company.

Logo design is often seen as a quick and easy job; you create a small graphic, stick it next to some text and the job is done! In reality there’s a lot more to it, which makes the whole process of creating a logo or identity a challenging task. Let’s take a look at some […]

… css layouts, visual effects and forms

The email newsletter is a powerful marketing and communication tool that has various useful functions. It reminds your users about you; it informs users about your products; it tells them what you have been up to; and it helps you build a unique relationship with them. Users like email newsletters if the newsletters bring them value.

“Mathematics is beautiful.” This may sound absurd to people who wince at numbers and equations. But some of the most beautiful things in nature and our universe exhibit mathematical properties, from the smallest seashell to the biggest whirlpool galaxies. In fact, one of the greatest ancient philosophers, Aristotle, said: “The mathematical sciences particularly exhibit order, symmetry and limitation; and these are the greatest forms of the beautiful.”

Planning and communication are two key elements in the development of any successful website or application. And that is exactly what the wireframing process offers: a quick and simple method to plan the layout and a cost-effective, time-saving tool to easily communicate your ideas to others.

Illustrator and graphic designer

… the Blog Theme That Changed the Internet

Take a look around any online marketplace and you’ll see the labor of designers, writers, and digital artists severely undervalued.

(about CSS performance)

Andrew Clarke shares a case study highlighting the benefits of progressively enhanced web design. Ever wondered how to convince your clients to let you use cutting edge web techniques? It may be simpler than you think.

»We aren’t designing copies of web pages, we’re designing web pages.«

Designers spend hours perfecting websites, whether their own or their clients’.

In our last article about CSS3, ["Pushing Your Buttons With Practical CSS3](https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/12/02/pushing-your-buttons-with-practical-css3/), we talked about using new CSS3 techniques like gradients, border-radius and drop-shadows to create compelling, flexible and (in some cases) hilarious buttons.

Drew McLellan kicks off our 2009 season with a look at some of the tools CSS3 provides for applying levels of transparency to colour values, enabling you to avoid weighing down a site design with heavy PNG images.

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