As I was flying back from the Smashing Conference in New York, I wondered whether it was a success. This wasn’t an original thought. We are always wondering what makes a conference good and what elements will make industry workers stay away.
Good and bad are such subjective terms, though, with almost as many expectations as there are attendees. We decided that just looking at the numbers... Read More
In the Web world, hearing businesses and freelancers alike complain about low-budget projects is not too uncommon. Let’s say that a local coffee shop needs to update its Web presence and contacts you for a redesign. It also requires a blog so that it can announce new coffees, events and so on. However, during the course of the first meeting, the client mentions that they don’t have a budget.
... Read More
Perhaps one of the most talked about websites in the last 12 months has been Nike Better World. It's been featured in countless Web design galleries, and it still stands as an example of what a great idea and some clever design and development techniques can produce.
In this article, we’ll talk to the team behind Nike Better World to find out how the website was made. We'll look at... Read More
I’m always fumbling with the A/C controls in my car. My daily commute is in hot, sunny Southern California, home of the courteous freeway driver. I can’t afford to take my eyes off the road for too long to find the control I’m looking for. Half of the time when I'm trying to adjust the temperature, I end up blowing my beard off because I’ve spun the wrong dial. If my wife’s in the car with me,... Read More
This article is a part of our new eBook Mobile Design For iPhone And iPad (just $9.90). The eBook presents articles on professional design for the iPhone and iPad, including guidelines for the development of mobile web pages. Available in PDF, Mobipocket and ePUB formats.
The industry has evolved in many ways, but one particular area has affected how we build websites to a greater extent... Read More
In our past articles, we've experimented with better ways to engage users on web pages with CSS3. We love getting into the nuts and bolts of web design by showing off some nifty coding tricks. In this article we'll take a step back to provide some reasoning for designers to embark on that next redesign.
Great web design happens with sound user needs, solid business goals and focused... Read More
In our recent study on Typographic Design Patterns and Best Practices, we asked our readers about case studies they would like us to conduct. One of the most popular suggestions was a detailed case study of portfolio websites. Following the requests of our readers, we have carefully selected 55 design agencies and Web development agencies, analyzed their porfolio websites and identified... Read More
Even with a relatively limited set of options in CSS, typography can vary tremendously using pure CSS syntax. Serif or sans-serif? Large or small font? Line height, spacing, font size and padding... The list goes on and on.
To find typographic design patterns that are common in modern Web design and to resolve some common typographic issues, we conducted extensive research on 50 popular... Read More
Last week we presented the first results of our study of top blogs. As promised, this week we publish the second part of the survey, including further findings and problem solutions we have found out during the study. In the first part, we discussed layout design and typographic settings. What remains to be covered is the navigation design, information architecture, advertisements and... Read More
