Archive for July, 2011
50 Superb & Free PSD Files From Dribbble To Learn From The Best
Daniels MekšsEither for self-promotion or simply for goodwill and to help others, the truth is that finding free resources and inspiration can be a really easy task. If you are an experienced designer, you know the best way to learn is by just looking and studying other people's work. PSD files can be a powerful way to learn and fulfill your work expectations. Today, one of the main references for this purpose is definitely Dribbble. Dribbble is not only an awesome place to be inspired by many talented designers. You can actually stumble upon some fantastic free PSD files and examine them and learn more. This collection includes some fantastic UI kits, a lot of assets for web and graphic design, as well as a few cool icons. These PSDs are as perfect for learning as they are for your future projects. Personally I haven't practiced learning from PSDs lately but by checking out some of these I surely realized how much you can learn from a well-built PSD.
23 Creative Book Cover Designs and Their Story
Rachel ArandillaEven in a deep and text-based world like literature, you still have to think about art: book cover designs. Cover designs are probably the hardest thing for designers to design because it should show the heart and the soul of the book in one single image. At the same time, it should be visually striking and appealing. Readers are still visual people after all. And a creative book cover design needs to be acknowledged and celebrated. And this article is made to give them the justice. Enjoy the showcase of what we consider some creative book cover designs. These are just some of the amazing book cover designs that made us think, laugh, cry, smile, or contemplate about life.
GD-Gaming: Create a Simple Gaming Layout in Photoshop
Michael John BurnsIn this week's tutorial we are going to create a simple template for a gaming website. You will learn how to create basic highlighting, color combination, alignment, what background works, and many other important things. I hope you can follow me from start to finish. You have two options: to follow the tutorial and acquire all the techniques listed here, and soon you can design something relevant to this. Or you can just download the file, but I promise you that you will be confused if you just download the file. The best thing to do is to follow the tutorial, it takes less than 30 minutes!
Inspiring Videos For Designers & Developers
Whether you're a motion designer, front-end developer or economy student - you have to keep up with the times and constantly increase your knowledge and broaden your professional viewpoint. One of the best ways to do that is by watching videos from professionals and experts in your field. Videos don't have to be strictly instructive. A good and gripping video can inspire you for the rest of the day. In this article you'll find a compilation of 40 awesome, inspiring and valuable videos varying from entrepreneurship to web design and self-motivation which will help you to develop new skills, gain a bunch of inspiration and simply look at things from a different perspective.
Vertical Navigation vs. Horizontal Navigation: Your Take?
Rean John UeharaFor people out there who have designed websites, I'm pretty sure that once upon a time you've spent some time thinking where to place the main navigation. This is a very minor thing that has a great implication on the overall performance of the website. Keep in mind that a finely placed element can make or break the whole design. Another thing to keep in mind is that this article is an observation, not in any way should it be used as professional advice. The most important thing in designing a website is how the purpose, design, and the content itself complement each other.
45+ iPhone Apps To Keep You On Top Of the Edge Wherever You Go
iPhone has gained popularity rapidly and is a must have gadget for nearly everyone now. Even I, an old clumsy Nokia owner, have finally realized it. iPhone is not your typical phone you pull out only to make a call. It can do much more than that. And with over 350 000 apps it would be silly not to fully use the potential this phone's offering. But which apps to choose and which are worth the money? It can be rather frustrating to pick the right ones for you in all that mess. This article is here to help you and presents 45+ of the most useful, efficient and awesome apps to keep you on top of the edge every time you use your iPhone - be as productive as possible wherever you go. The apps collected in this article range from advanced bookmarking services to simple photo effect tools. These fantastic apps will help you increase your productivity greatly and get the best from your iPhone. You might ask if you can afford all that? Don't worry, most of these apps are actually free or at a ridiculously low price for the value you get.
Foolproof Method from Beginning to End for Design Projects
Just like there is a Scientific Method that scientists and researchers should follow, there is also a process for all designers to follow. This is called the 'Design Thinking Process', created to make the designer's job a whole lot easier. The Design Thinking Process has seven concrete steps wherein the problems are defined, ideas are created, and in the end, the best solution is chosen and implemented. The process isn't exactly linear though, as the steps can occur simultaneously and can be repeated when needed. The whole intention of the 7 step process is to meet the client's needs and maximize the designer's precious time.
jQuery Plugin Development: Hover to Reveal Masked Password
Rochester OliveiraWe talked about how to improve your HTML forms performance a couple of days ago. There we covered a pretty controversial topic "Don't mask your passwords", discussing how bad masking your passwords could be for usability. At this moment, we basically have two options: mask password field and don't ask for any feedback, or show password field as text and potentially decrease security. This is why I think a hover revealing password could be a really good alternative: You can increase your security, and if you are unsure about what you've typed just go and hover over it. So, what we will be doing today is a jQuery plugin to do that, and additionally, we will have a behavior pretty similar to what many mobiles does, where we can see the last character for a couple of seconds. This is a good chance to learn more about plugins, dynamically generated content, and some good coding practices. Moreover with this technique we could apply different effects and a lot of variations since all this things are based on non-obtrusive and almost only decorative javascript. So, let's rock!
Social Networking Sites and their Sidekicks
Recently there has been a race between major social networks to acquire just about every widely used services such as Skype, Fridge, Tweetdeck, and Imeem. Be it the users they are after or the service itself, ordinary people like me are often taken by surprise by their decision. We're talking about millions to billions of dollars per acquisition. What's inside: • Google + and Fridge • Facebook and Skype • MySpace and Imeem • Twitter and TweetDeck What are you waiting for? Read on!
17 CSS/HTML Effects with Cross-Browsing Alternatives
Well, we surely have a lot of different ways to achieve similar effects and with CSS the hardest part is to make it look good in almost every browser. You don't need to reinvent the wheel every time, if you get one good snippet that does what you want (and you understand what is happening) you don't need to reinvent it every time you need a simple round corner, right? Thus, our point here is to collect some cool CSS effects that you should be using: • Min / Max width (IE included) • RGBA (IE included) • Opacity (IE included) • Image rotation / scaling (IE included) • FullScreen Background (IE included) • Background pattern or bullet without image file • Text Shadow (IE included) • Multiple borders (IE included) • Box Shadows (IE included) • Rounded corners • Screen reader only accessible content • Don't use negative text-indent • Clearfix (IE included) • @font-face (IE included) • Pull quotes without image • CSS for iPhone4 (higher resolution) • CSS landscape / portrait orientation for mobiles So, Let's rock!
