Jan
08
Unless you’ve been living under a very large rock, you probably know this is that time of the year were everyone feels obligated to provide advice about what’s good, what’s not and what’s just plain stupid.
So lately I've been debating with myself about whether or not I should write an article about Web Design Advice and Tips, mainly because:
Then yesterday, while catching up with my RSS feeds, I found a great (and sadly true) post from Greg about how hard is it to find good talent in today's industry.
As an employer of a growing number of full-time and freelance workers I can tell you that it's becoming increasingly difficult to find good people. I have had several conversations with persons of top stature in the web design business who are of the same opinion. Their own businesses' have been slightly crippled this year due to work demand vs. human supply.
I don't see there being a quick turn-around for this problem but it will escalate if we don't spend time and resources to proactively help improve the situation
After reading Greg's post (and experience it several times myself), I decided to help, to be more proactive and write an useful list of resources that could simplify what I learned over the last 11 years in Web Design. Who knows, that old Spanish Proverb might be right after all:
The Devil is wiser because he's old, not because he's the Devil
Below there's a set of 25 links I gathered from my bookmarks. On this links you'll find not only very useful tools, but also real mind opener tips and information about Web Design, ranging from Typography, Creative Tactics, Design Principles, Tutorials, and great inspirational examples.
Smashing Magazine's
"The importance of typography in design can’t be overestimated. The accuracy, precision and balance of geometric forms can give letters the elegance and sharpness they deserve"
PSDTUTS's
"Web design can be deceptively difficult. Getting a design that is both usable and pleasing, delivers information and builds brand, is technically sound and visually coherent..."
A List Apart's
"My first design job was with a small print design agency in Manchester that produced work in varying media: packaging, publications, and marketing support materials, and… direct mail"
PSDTUTS's
"When I put together designs I usually do so in two phases - Layout and Polish. During the layout phase I place the main objects on the page usually finishing with something that looks relatively complete."
Smashing Magazine's
"35 designers. 5 questions. 5 precise answers. Result: 175 professional suggestions, tips and ideas from some of the best web-developers all around the world."
FreelanceSwitch's
"Everyone who hasn’t encountered designer’s block, raise your hand. Just as I thought. Well then, chances are you could use some places to get inspiration for those days when the pixels aren’t aligned and your mouse finger isn’t clicking like it should"
SEOmoz's
"Web design can be incredibly frustrating. You'd think that with the infinite possibilities of what-goes-where it'd be pretty easy to land a design that works, yet somehow we've all been stuck before."
Smashing Magazine's
"Regardless of what it is that you’re selling, in order to remain competitive, you have to know exactly, what’s going on in the field you’re working in. More than that - actually, you have to know what happens next, which trends are coming up and which technologies will become big in the future."
The Photoshop Roadmap's
"Let’s dive today into a sea of brushes. Hundreds of thousands of sets are lying undiscovered like pirate treasures all over the web. "
Smashing Magazine's
"It’s not hard to design a weblog, but it’s getting harder when you try to achieve a unique weblog design. It doesn’t matter what weblog-engine you are using — frequently used themes tend to become boring over time, and they also don’t necessarily reflect the unique identity of the blogger. "
WebSiteOptimization's
"Free web site speed test to improve website performance. Enter a URL below to calculate page size, composition, and download time. The script calculates the size of individual elements and sums up each type of web page component."
Hell Yeah Dude's
"So you want to start discussing the theories on your mind? But you have no where to do it? No problem, don’t fall into the free blogging platforms that display all their ads on your blog!"
Smashing Magazine's
"Have your e-mails already been flagged as spam, although you’ve sent a seemingly legitimate proposal to your client? Have you ever wondered why the efficiency of your newsletter campaigns suddenly dropped down? In both cases you deal with a problem which is harder to get done with than you think it is: bulletproof e-mail delivery."
Vitamin's
"Glossy buttons, ornamental backgrounds, futuristic interfaces. We’ve all been guilty at one time or another of committing the 7 design-isms in this article from Larissa Meek. But that’s okay, she tells us, they’re classics for a reason."
Tutorial Blog's
"These are a tricky site to get right and design can give way to conversions, which is after all, the reason they are there - to make money."
Campaign Monitor's
"Not everybody has an email client that can show HTML, and some people just prefer plain text. We got permission from the creators of three really well designed plain text newsletters to share modified forms of their format with you..."
Smashing Magazine's
"Well-documented and readable source code is essential for every collaborative project. Logically structured, well organized and nicely formatted, the code can speed up the bug hunting... "
Clear Function's
"A particular strategy of Web design that emphasizes accessibility, semantic markup, and external stylesheet and scripting technologies...."
Smashing Magazine's
"Designers have only a fraction of a second to attract users’ eye and win over their loyalty. Clear visual structure, thought-out typography and moderate use of images are extremely important..."
Very useful tool when your client doesn't know...
"Who Is Hosting This is a tool that enables you to find out who is hosting any web site. Simply type in any domain name, and you'll get a link to the company that's hosting this particular domain. It's that simple! "
A List Apart's
"My first design job was with a small print design agency in Manchester that produced work in varying media: packaging, publications, and marketing support materials, and… direct mail"
Smashing Magazine's
"It’s quite easy to get stuck in creativity blocks, but it’s damn hard to get out of them. Particularly if you are out of time and don’t want to compromise your professional principles..."
Liquidicity's
"Being a successful creative has a lot to do with the way you work. Sure, you can’t teach good design, but it never hurts to learn a few new tricks, or simply make the most of your talents."
How does "affordable stock images" sounds for a change
"iStockphoto is the world's preeminent collection of member-generated royalty-free images, at the world's best prices. There are no subscription fees or extra costs. Just the best Stock Photography, Vector illustrations, Flash Files, and Videos, at prices for everyone"
Smashing Magazine's
"Business companies tend to impress visitors with solid site structures, precise navigation and the credibility of presented content. Therefore business layouts are usually quite unspectacular, mostly informative, but not attractive.
Yay for SUM Agency appearing #1 on the list!
While this probably not the Ultimate and Definitive way to do it, If you go through each and one of them, you WILL take your talent to a different level.
Enjoy and good luck!
2
Thanks for stopping by Andrew. Keep it up with the good work at DF!
3
This is such a great collection I bookmarked it (and added it to Stumble Upon).
Keep up the good work, web noobs like me depend on it.
4
The most inspirational thing here is the style of your site. Your theme and visuals are very cool! Great job.
5
@Apple Pie Recipe Guy: Thank you for your words! Feel free to suggest new topics too!. PS: I’m bookmarking your website now, I never knew my favorite pie could have so many variations. I just send the “low fat” recipe to my wife and needless to say, LOOKING FORWARD TO THIS WEEKEND!
@Benny: Thank you so much for your compliments. It such a great great GREAT feeling to know someone actually reads the nonsense stuff things I write.
6
I just want to thank you for these links, I’m currently building a website right now about the legalization of pet skunks and I’ve been having some trouble getting a design together. The 40 fonts especially helped! Once again, thank you!
7
Currently redesigning my site. Thanks for all of the good info. It is helping me get unstuck. Keep up the good work.
9
Thank you for all the feedback guys. I will be happy to review your work once finished. Good luck!
13
Dude, seriously, great website, great info. You’re going straight to my RSS feeds.
15
A blog about good webdesign, with white and light blue text on a black starfield backgound…. I’m sorry, but that just makes me laugh, and my eyes hurt from trying to read this through all the white dots.
16
@ DIM67:
A blog about good webdesign, with white and light blue text on a black starfield backgound…. I’m sorry, but that just makes me laugh, and my eyes hurt from trying to read this through all the white dots.
Thank you for your opinion. As for the color scheme, I’ve chosen a black background for my website because it’s easier on the eyes than staring at a white screen. Think about it: your monitor is not a piece of paper, no matter how hard you try to make it one. Staring at a white background while you read is like staring at a light bulb (if you ever worked on a word processor in the middle of the night you will know what I mean).
In fact, I was talking to an optician friend of mine about it a few months ago and he told me that since most of the screen is usually bright, a lot of people may experience some eye-strain and never realize it’s because of the brightness of the screen.
So I think is just a personal preference that make you either love staring into a bulb or not. However, your mileage may vary.
May I suggest making your font size a little bit bigger on your browser? Hope it helps.
17
amazing list. cool links dude.
keep posting such good info.
thanks :)
Techdudes
19
Hi!
your list is pretty much what I was looking for, so thanks for sharing!
I’ll add another website I found useful - but maybe it’s more to go from “beginner to good”:
http://webdesignfromscratch.com/
cheers,
Thibaut
20
@ DIM67
The stars are’nt quite white, and even the brighter ones arent big enough to cause problems with reading the text. There’s more black than anything which I think not only makes for a very beautifl looking design, it makes it very unique - and for me, still makes for a readable site.
—-
Great collection of resources here, most of which I knew about, but always nice to find little gems that you wern’t aware of. Congratulations mate.
22
This is great information and thank you for sharing. Will try to go through all of them. Luckily I’m visited most of the site. Those site will takes you in to higher skill indeed.
23
Thanks for the links, but I got to agree its hard to read this text with that background.
26
I found your site through StumbleUpon. Great list, deserves (and got) another thumbs up.
28
I also found this site through StumbleUpon.
As a newly graduated professional, you are always looking for ways to perfect your style and your unique touch up a certain extent.
I just wanted to thank you so much for this wonderful collection of resources. This helped me to get started on a design and implementation for a client I just signed a contract with. (Another hotel that liked what I did for some of the other hotels here).
Hope you keep on sharing your advice, tips and tricks for the rest of us :-)
29
Ps.
Hope you will excuse the poor design I have on my website. It is in the process of being re-designed as we speak and I needed a template to put up in the meantime.
Not the best practice I know, but I had to do something until the new design is ready to launch.
30
@Jon and everyone else
Thanks you! It’s great to know that you can in fact help people. I’ll be happy to come up with a Volume 2 of this article, in the meantime, keep it up with the good work guys!
31
wow, very effective collection of all about web design work. i spent almost 3 hours to review all post. thanks for sharing
32
Amazing thought of sharing.. thanks for that,
Very useful stuff..
Yogesh
34
Hi, great roundup, some really good sites in your collection. Also, love the design of your site, it’s a nice departure from so many blogs that look essentially the same.
Thought you might like to know that the Design Blog From the Ground Up article has moved, I had to use google to search the domain, it’s now here: http://hellyeahdude.com/articles/starting-a-design-blog-from-the-ground-up/
That said, I’ve read most the article before seeing this post, and love almost all of them. I found the advice in the above mentioned article, well, just bad and incomplete. Not what I would point a newbie to and no info for someone who knows web design at all. Although hellyeahdude.com itself is well designed…just a bad article (IMHO).
Thanks especially for the design block / inspiration links.
35
I’m updating the link HellYeahDude right away. Thank you for the hat tip Mahalie, and also your compliments on the design of the site are much appreciated.
36
wow this is bulk of web design sites.. thanks for sharing
37
Oh my!Too many resources!
Thanks very much!
and I will release my first WP theme later:-)
38
Very nice site! Thanks!
<a >Nice</a>
<a >Nice</a>
http://www.google.com
39
Hey dude,
First of all, I want to say thanks a lot!!!. Great. From your blog, I have got very very useful information about web design.
But, I couldn’t find your name, here. So, please, I request you to mention your name, as I want to know who has made this nice effort.
Again, thank you & keep it up.;)
40
Great list. I would only add Dieter Ram’s Ten Commandments On Design: http://meiert.com/en/blog/20080325/design-theses-of-rams/
41
This is vast information about web design work..thanks for sharing
43
Hmm!
Nice effort. You have made useful resource for web developers.
Thanks for sharing it here.
44
Great resources for css coders, in smashing magazine can also have blogs designs very interesting nowadays. I put you website in my delicious, thanks for your job.
45
i’ve learn a lot from this blog , particularly about CSS and stuff i need to sharpen my skills with…thanks for the great post ;)
46
I have book marked this page. Thank you for sharing your bookmark, and write this great post. I am still new to web design, but I am sure these websites are very good resources I will need it in the future.
47
this is something worth reading for…u’re my new mentor ;) cool blog
49
i’ve learn CSS before and this is by far the simplest one..splendid work here
54
Nice Collection of sites! All of them have some special quality in design. Thanks for providing such great database.
56
57
Thank you for your invaluable help
this information will myself very useful
Voyance gratuite Voyance gratuite
58
Wow, what an enormous amount of information! It will take some to visit all the websites that are mentioned above. With 783 Delicious bookmarks allready , a lot of people value and really appreciate all your work. Just like me, so I will add nr. 784! Regards Annemarie
59
Thank you for your invaluable help
this information will myself very useful
kral oyun
ilahiler
saç modelleri
60
Wow! thats a great list on designing. It will take some time to check them one by one but looks like its got a ton of information.
