I love clean design and in general simple solutions to design nice and attractive elements for my websites. This tutorial illustrates how to design nice clean buttons using some lines of HTML, CSS code and proxal icon set. The result is something like this…
Today I’m doing a round up of the magazine-style blogs that are usefull for web designers. I prefer these over printed magazines as they’re quicker with the latest information and the quality is as good if not better than traditional mags.
Grid systems bring visual structure and balance to site design. As a tool grids are useful for organizing and presenting information. Used properly, they can enhance the user experience by creating predictable patterns for users to follow. From designer’s point of view they allow for an organized methodology for planning systematic layouts.
After creating a well-structured and usable grid, consider allowing it to breath. A page without a grid is a usability nightmare. On the other hand, a grid that has creatively overlapping, escaping, or energizing columns leads to a more enjoyable user experience. Discovering or planning areas of the design that will have some freedom will lead to more interesting and appealing design solutions.
Usability and the utility, not the visual design, determine the success or failure of a web-site. Since the visitor of the page is the only person who clicks the mouse and therefore decides everything, user-centric design has become a standard approach for successful and profit-oriented web design. After all, if users can’t use a feature, it might as well not exist.
We aren’t going to discuss the implementation details (e.g. where the search box should be placed) as it has already been done in a number of articles; instead we focus on the main principles, heuristics and approaches for effective web design — approaches which, used properly, can lead to more sophisticated design decisions and simplify the process of perceiving presented information.
If you’re a designer looking for a job—whether of the freelance or permanent variety—then an online portfolio is pretty much mandatory. In many instances, your portfolio will be looked at without you present, without any other information about you, and probably by a person who has never spoken to or seen you in person. If your portfolio has to stand alone in a critical situation like hiring, it’s worth spending some time making sure it’s going to get the job done!
I like to think I’ve seen all the angles on portfolios; I started out working as a designer, went freelance, expanded into an interactive agency where I hired designers, and finally cofounded a startup where we employ lots of freelancers. Let me share with you some of my observations and opinions—particularly from the viewpoint of an employer—on how to approach the task of building an online portfolio.
