Bokeh Effect in Web Design
From Spyre Studios, a look at the Bokeh Effect in web design. A nice article with images of sites using this style, worth a read.
100 Clean Simple and Minimalist Website Designs
From Hongkiat, a nice collection of the best of minimalist web design, worth browsing.
Many people still view minimalist designs as boring. But there’s a real art to effective minimal website designs, something not all designers can effectively master. When you limit the number of graphic elements you use and put the focus on negative space and typography, a good eye for spacing and proportion becomes crucial.
100 Clean Simple and Minimalist Website Designs
10 Fonts You Can Embed with Cufon and sIFR
From Cats Who Code, a round-up of 10 nice fonts that are available (licensed) now for embedding in your websites.
Cufon, Sifr and Flir are very powerful tools for designers and developers: They allow you to embed any font in a web page. Though, you have to be careful with font licences. In this article, I’m going to show you 10 very good looking fonts that you can embed in your websites.
10 Fonts You Can Embed with Cufon and sIFR »
Comment Form Styling: Examples and Best Practices
From Noupe, a nice article looking at style of site comment forms, with examples and best practices for design.
A good comment form should align with our website’s main design, but at the same time it should be interesting enough to encourage easy commenting. It must be usable and accessible if we want to capture all of our visitors’ feedback.
Comment Form Styling: Examples and Best Practices »
10 Web Design Rules That You Can Break
If you only read one post today, you probably want to make it this one. Web Designer Depot takes a look at the web design "rules" that are worth breaking. Nicely illustrated and explained, this is a great web design read.
10 Web Design Rules That You Can Break (Webdesigner Depot) »
How to Create a Clean Web 2.0 Style Web Design in Photoshop
From Six Revisions, a detailed Photoshop Tutorial for creating a Web 2.0-style Web Design. A nice tutorial, with clear instructions and illustrated steps.
How to Create a Clean Web 2.0 Style Web Design in Photoshop »
30 Inspiring Web Design Layouts and More
Six Revisions has found 30 great web design layouts from deviantARTists. Worth browsing.
30 Inspiring Web Design Layouts from deviantART »
More Web Design Articles and Resources:
48 Excellent Examples of Blog Post Footer Designs »
Find Some Great Seamless Design Patterns at Pattern8 »
50 Inspirational Web Design Blogs »
40 Amazing Resources for Inspirational Typography »
Over 40 Beautiful Portfolio Designs »
32 Indispensable Bookmarklets for Web Developers and Designers
Specky Boy has a great round-up today of web design and development bookmarklets that are worth browsing, as there were a couple nice ones I hadn't seen before. 32 Indispensable Bookmarklets for Web Developers and Designers » (Speckyboy Design Magazine)
200 Beautiful Seamless Patterns for Web Design
Web Design Ledger has collected a lot of nice seamless patterns for web design. Always handy, so worth browsing!
200 Beautiful Seamless Patterns Perfect for Web Design » (WebDesignLedger)
3 Nice Resources for Background Images
Patterrific provides free seamless repeat patterns in both vector and pixel format to designers around the world. Some nice patterns here.
Patterrific.com | Passion for Pattern
From Designus, browse over 60 Floral Patterns and Backgrounds.
Also, if you don't find what you're looking for from the first two resources, CSS Tea has a round-up of 12 Free Online Background Pattern Generators.
30 Most Incredible Textures for Vintage Style Design
Some nice vintage texture resources in this round-up from Web Design Ledger. 30 Most Incredible Textures for Vintage Style Design (Web Design Ledger)
Also: 30 Excellent Resources for Graphic Design Freebies (Six Revisions)
3 Looks at Great Web Design
I always enjoy browsing posts that highlight the best in web design. It's always a great way to find design inspiration and to see what the common trends are. Here are 3 recent posts that do just that ...
100 Websites With Outstanding Artistic Design | Webdesigner Depot
40 Excellent Blog Designs (Six Revisions)
15 Minimalist Designs That Inspire Me (Spyre Studios)
29 Most Useful Texture Packs of 2008
As 2008 draws to a close, a lot of website are doing some nice best of the year round-ups. This one, from Web Design Ledger, rounds up a bunch of nice, free and useful texture graphics for web design.
29 Most Useful Texture Packs of 2008 (Web Design Ledger)
10 Common Typography Mistakes
Site The Design Cubicle has a great look at common typography mistakes and how to correct them. A good read!
The goal of this post is to help designers and clients understand the importance of good type skills, while avoiding some common mistakes. Please keep in mind that most of these mistakes are subjective and can be changed varying on the project, goals or circumstances.
Free Textures and Icons
Two nice round-ups today with some great resources for web design.
First, from Elite By Design has a round-up of 22 new and free high quality icon sets. 22 (New) Free High Quality Icons Sets
From abduzeedo,com, a nice collection of free textures. 29 Great Free Textures
24 Beautiful and Creative Website Headers
Looking for some website header inspiration? Toxel.com has a nice round-up of 24 of them, worth browsing.
24 Beautiful and Creative Website Headers.
60 Free Vector Icons Packs for Design Professionals
Any round-up from VECTORTUTS is a good one but this one is especially nice. They have rounded-up 60 free vector icon packs that these are the cream of the crop. Worth a browse!
60 Free Vector Icon Packs for Design Professionals.
30+ High Quality, Free Vector Sets to Beautify Your Designs
WebResources Depot has a nice round-up of high quality and free vector object sets to enhance your designs. Worth browsing for some nice finds!
30 High Quality And Free Vector Object Sets To Beautify Your Designs
40 Great Web and Graphic Design Resources
From ThinkDesignBlog, a nice round-up of resources for web and graphic design. Resources for CSS/Coding, Wordpress and Design related resources and tools.
40 Great Web/Graphic Design Resources | Think Design
40 Beautiful Free Icon Sets
Unless you're someone who can make great icons, free icon sets are a great thing for designers or even just for personal desktop use. Six Revisions has a round-up today of 40 nice and free icon sets worth browsing.
Elegent Web Typography
Interested in great web typography? Check out this presentation from Jeff Croft. It was part of Web Directions South in September and is now available for viewing on SlideShare.
10 Princlipes of Logo Design Masters
VectorTUTS has a great look at logo design today. Written by Chris Spooner (of SpoonGraphics), the article looks at the "solid-gold" principles of world class logo design. A great read!
10 Principles of the Logo Design Masters (VECTORTUTS)
208 Retro Photoshop Patterns
From Well Medicated, a look at "retro" patterns for web design. In this case, retro being only a couple of design trends ago ;) A nice collection though and worth checking out.
A couple of Background Pattern Resources
Design Shard has a nice collection of links to sources for repeating background patterns and images, as well links to some tutorials for making your own.
Ultimate Source for tiled background patterns
Pattern Cooler is a great little tool that allows you to take their patterns and add your own colors to them. You can then download them and use them for free on personal sites.
Ultimate Collection of Free Textures, Background Patterns and Seamless Tiles
Site beex.net has a great big round-up of free, high-res background patterns, textures and seamless tiles. Definitely worth browsing for some new sources for these great design resources.
23 Beautiful Examples of Web Site Archives
Sitepoint has a nice article today, looking at web site archives and examining 23 examples of archives done well. Worth a read!
23 Beautiful Examples of Web Site Archives [Design Principles]
400+ High Quality Patterns
Design Reviver has a really nice round-up of patterns today, worth browsing.
Patterns can be found every where. Most commonly we can see them in fabric and wallpaper, but they also make great visual elements for web design. Here is a collection of patterns of all shapes, sizes, and color. Some are images, and some are pattern files for Photoshop and Illustrator.
400 High Quality Patterns | Design Reviver
Typography is Sexy
From Fuel Your Creativity, Part 1 of their visual round-up of "some really sexy use of typography". Some nice examples, worth a look.
Typography is Sexy - Part 1 | Fuel Your Creativity
Hand Drawn Design Round-up
Design Reviver has a big round-up of resources for the hot hand drawn look.
You don’t need to have your finger on the pulse of web design trends to know that hand drawn style is hot right now. To achieve this look you have a few options: you can do some sketches and doodles on paper and scan them in, or you can draw them directly in Photoshop. The third option would be to take advantage of the resources found in this article.
350 Brushes, Textures, and Fonts: Massive Hand Drawn Roundup
30 Great Free Paper Backgrounds and Textures
Site Creative Closeup has a nice round-up of high resolution paper images for web and graphic design. Worth browsing for some nice resources.
30 Great Free Paper Backgrounds and Textures
400+ Swirls, Curls and Fleurons
Design Reviver has a nice round-up today, featuring swirls, curls and flower shaped elements.
Ornamental web design is often comprised of swirling, curling, or flower shaped elements. This style is influenced from decorative art pieces and architectural accents from centuries ago. Using ornamental style is a great way to give your site a classic look. Here is a list of Photoshop brushes that should help you out with your next ornamental design.
400 Swirls, Curls, and Fleurons
Want to know how to design? Learn the basics.
Just Creative Design has a nice article today, covering the basics of design from Colour to Shape and more.
Want to know how to design? Then you should learn the basics of design. The basic elements of design include colour, line, shape, scale, space, texture and value and these are the fundamental pieces that make up any piece of work. If you ever start a design course this will be the very first thing that you are taught, guaranteed.But what if you’re not a student? What if you’re not self-taught? What if you are a looking for ways to enhance your design skills? Then this is the guide for you.
Want to know how to design? Learn The Basics.
2008 Design Trends
From Web Designer Wall, what's hot in design for 2008 that's well worth browsling for a great collection of current trends.
So what’s hot now? Pencil sketches, handwritten notes, card stocks, watercolor effects, collage art, script fonts, grungy and splatter ink backgrounds (glossy gradients are not "in" this year). Another trend to be on the lookout for are the vintage and retro styles which I’ve posted earlier this year. Here is a list of 82 sites picked from Best Web Gallery that show the current design trends.2008 Design Trends
3 Nice Design Resources
From site Design Reviver, a round-up of 200+ grunge textures, brushes and fonts worth browsing. 200 Textures, Brushes, and Fonts: Ultimate Grunge Roundup.
For Fireworks users, Deziner Folio has 131 Web 2.0 Layer Styles for Fireworks 8.
And finally, from Speck Boy, 30 Free Vector Icons, Buttons, Stickers, Banners, Labels and Speech Bubbles.
Round-up of Some Nice Design Inspiration Links
35 Beautiful Bright, Colorful Web Designs from Six Revisions
And at the other end of the spectrum, 32 Wicked White Websites, from inspiredology.
From Positive Space Blog, 10 Amazing Website Designs, The Freshest Yet.
Website Noupe.com offers up 60+ Unusual WordPress Blog Designs.
And finally, from Blog Design Blog, 30 Must See Comment Designs for Web Designers.
BB Petie Boy Original Font from Bittbox
Website Bittbox has released it's very first original free font. BB Petie Boy is available in four weights, one of which is a grunge style.
Free to download and use in personal and/or commercial designs. Nice. Thanks!
Design Packs for Web Designers
Looking for some image resources for web design? New site Design Packs offers up packs of images, based on common themes. Images are free for use on personal or commercial sites.
DesignPacks.com | Free Image Collections for Web Designers
20+ Free Web Design Ebooks and Guides
For anyone looking for some free web design learning resources, it would be worth browsing this round-up of free web design ebooks and guides at Blogging Bits.
20 Free Web Design Ebooks And Guides
A Guide to Web Typography: The Basics
Still trying to get a handle on good web typography? I Love Typography walks through the basics of good web photography.
Today we're going to talk about web typography in terms of a recipe of four fundamental ingredients. If you've ever tried to cook a soufflé, you'll know how important the recipe is. Follow this recipe and your typography will rise up like ... that's enough of the cooking metaphors, let's cook
A Guide to Web Typography (i love typography, the typography blog)
Pattern Inspiration
Patterns have been popular in web design for some time and today, Veerle has sourced out some great options for pattern inspiration.
Sometimes it’s needed to go look in odd places to find inspiration. Take patterns for example, often used for backgrounds etc. There is a bit of a trend in interior design at the moment with the revival of the vintage wallpaper backgrounds from the sixties & seventies.
Pattern inspiration (Veerle's Blog)
Vintage Style Web Design
Website Web Designer Wall has a nice round-up of vintage style web design. Interesting look at a unique style.
Top 10 Free Resources for Background Patterns and Textures for Web Designers
Website specky boy has a really nice round-up of resources for web design backgrounds and textures. Worth browsing for discovering some new links for bookmarking.
Top 10 Free Resources for Background Patterns and Textures for Web Designers
Top 25 Icon Resources for Web Designers
Icons are one of those things that are always a nice addition to a web page and free, icon resources are always welcome. Website speckyboy.com has rounded up 25 nice resources for free icons, including a couple that were new to me. Worth browsing.
Top 25 Free Icon Resources for Web Designers
The 50 Most Popular Web Design Posts of 2007
The 50 Most Popular Web Design Blog Posts, Resources & Cheat Sheets of 2007
The past year has been an amazing period for those wishing to learn the ropes of design, whether you're a noob just getting into the game or a seasoned designer or programmer. As we enter 2008, let's take a look back at some of the most popular articles, resources, and tutorials that helped those who toiled away on the web everyday.
A nice list, worth a look!
15 Great Examples of Web Typography
Typography site i love typography starts 2008 with "a little typography inspiration". A nice round-up worth browsing.
15 Great Examples of WebTypography
Color and Typography in Good Design
Another great article from COLOURlovers, Color Design Blog / Color and Typography in Good Design, that looks at how color and typography can combine in web design in good or bad ways (such as the low contrast example image posted above).
Typography is a significant issue for designers. On many projects, finding just the right font, size, spacing, etc. can require considerable time and attention. In addition to typography, color is also a major factor in the success of the design. What is sometimes overlooked is the combination of color and typography and the effect that it has on the overall project.
A great read!
9 Essential Principles for Good Web Design
Website PSDTuts has a nice article today on 9 Essential Principles for Good Web Design.
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... Add to this, the fact that many web designers (myself included) are self taught, that web design is still novel enough to be only a side subject in many design institutions and that the medium changes as frequently as the underlying technology does.
Worth a read for an look at what elements make up good web design.
11 Images You Might Want to Avoid in Your Designs
Website Snap2objects has a round-up of 11 images that they consider "cliche" and suggest are best avoided if you'd like a fresh, creative design.
I will show some images I considered overused since the beginning of the web and could make your website (or any design) look generic, unimaginative and dated - if use them just for the sake of it.
11 Images you might want to avoid in your designs.
Typographic Contrast and Flow
Design site Web Designer Wall has a nice article on web typography, in Typographic Contrast and Flow.
... most online readers don’t read line by line, instead they scan (from one point to another). For this reason, designers create typographic contrast and flow by emphasizing certain text. Contrast is important because not all the content within a page have the same value, some have greater significance than the others. By creating contrast, you can direct the reader’s attention to the important messages and at the same time enhance the visual appearance.
A nice article, worth a read.
Killing Some Bad Layout Conventions
Website Design View takes aim at some web site layouts that he feels should be left in the past. In Killing Some Bad Layout Conventions takes aim at the 3-column, center content layout and the news site layouts.
As good design further penetrates the Web, once highly-regarded conventions fall into disfavor and are replaced by more effective ones. Yet some flawed conventions persist. In fact, they persist on some pretty high-profile websites; to their detriment.
An interesting read.
2007 Web Design Trends & Cliches
It's that time of year and all kinds or articles are popping up looking back at 2007 and forward to 2008. This is a nice one, looking at web design trends of the last year. 2007: More Web Design Trends & Cliches.
Free Icons and Buttons
There are a couple of themes running through links today. The first one is icons, specifically free icons and where to find them.
Free Icons and Buttons - Downloadpedia - a nice selection of free icons and buttons.
A Secret Source for Great Free Icons offers up some more, free icon sources for you, particularly in places you may not have though to look for them.
20 Golden Rules of Great Design
Another nice article on Sitepoint, The 20 Golden Rules of Great Design, details 20 things to consider when designing anything (print, web).
If design is something that doesn't come naturally to you, it may surprise you to discover that good design is not some innate, magical gift - good design can be taught, and it can be learned. In my view, there are 20 rules that, if followed, will guarantee you achieve a good design. Here are those rules.
Worth a read.
2007 Best CSS Designs
As 2007 is wrapping up, I would like to share the best design sites with you. Here is a list of 50 websites hand-picked from Best Web Gallery — Best of CSS Design 2007.
Nice, Free Mini Icons to Download
Quality Mini Icons - a nice set of mini icons free to download and use. Thanks for sharing!
Principles of Design
Design Meltdown if presenting a great series of articles on the Principles of Design.
It will be a six-part series looking at the areas of Emphasis, Contrast, Balance, Alignment, Repetition and Flow in design. So far, the first three are up.
Definitely worth a read for a thoughtful look at web design.
How to Develop a Wordpress Theme
website Deziner Folio has posted a really helpful tutorial, detailing how to Develop a Wordpress Theme.
The tutorial clearly walks through the basic steps for taking your html/css design in to Wordpress. Handy resource for Wordpress users.
Analysis of Web 2.0 Design and Layout Trends: Part 1
Part 1 of an analysis of Web 2.0 Design and Layout Trends features Clean, Colorful and Horizontally Divided Website Designs. A nice article, with a lot of screen capture illustrations to demonstrate the points.
Well worth a read to understand just what makes "Web 2.0" web design tick.
Beautiful Sites with No (or Very Few) Images
ｻ Beautiful sites with no (or very few) images takes a look at sites designed with none or few images.
I’ve decided to examine (by example) the characteristics of sites that are aesthetically pleasing even though no (OK - maybe one or two) images have been used. In essence, this could also be a testament to CSS and the talented folk who use it to its full potential. Or a look into how character is injected into a deign without imagery.
35 Website Footer Designs, Trends and Styles
35 website footer designs, trends and styles takes a look at some nice footer designs and presents them nicely for some great design inspiration.
The Design View Show: weekly design podcast
The Design View Show - Show #1
The Design View Show is a weekly podcast by Andy Rutledge, examining design fundamentals, business, culture, and professionalism and has just released it's first show on the world.
Free Vector Graphics
Free Vector Graphics at Web Design Blog - a number of sets of nice and free vector graphics in EPS format.
For more free vector graphics, check out freevectors.net, which is a collection of links to free vector graphics around the web. Nice to have these all in one place, so worth checking out.
Tips and Tricks for Designing Logos
If you've ever struggled with designing a logo, website Wipeout44 has some great Tips and tricks for designing logos. The article covers simple, font layout logos and more complex shapes and colours.
Worth a read for some insight into effective logo creation.
50 Ways to Become a Better Designer
Website liquidcity has a great article on web design - 50 Ways to Become a Better Designer. It's a great read for professional designers or anyone who has an interest in producing websites.
Web Designisms: 7 Surefire Styles that Work
Vitamin Features ｻ Web Design-isms: 7 Surefire Styles that Work
"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."
A great article that looks at 7 of the tried and true web design styles.
Icon Search Engine Iconlet
iconlet.com - icon search engine - free icons for your project. Be sure to check out the "Advanced Search" where you can specify icon size, name, format (gif or png) and specifiy a particular license for use.
A nice resource and great to bookmark for handy icon searches.
Top 20 Most Popular Blog Colors
Design Meltdown takes a look at the color palettes of the Top 20 most popular blogs (according to Technorati.com). A look at the color palettes shows that there really isn't a dominant popular color or set of colors. There are a lot of strong colors though, so maybe that's the trend to take away.
Top 20 Most Popular Blog Colors
Web Design Survey 2007
"Designers, developers, project managers. Writers and editors. Information architects and usability specialists. People who make websites have been at it for more than a dozen years, yet almost nothing is known, statistically, about our profession. Who are we? Where do we live? What are our titles, our skills, our educational backgrounds? Where and with whom do we work? What do we earn? What do we value? It’s time we learned the answers to these and other questions about web design."
You can take the survey here - A List Apart: Articles: The Web Design Survey, 2007
Free Web Design Background Patterns
Pattern4u - 246 free background patterns including lined, dotted, squares, classic, dirty, funky and real.
Large Collection of Free Icons
Free Icons - for the web, desktop, xp and more. A nice collection, worth a look.
Web 2.0 Gradients v2
Ultimate Web 2.0 Gradients v2 - another nice set of web 2-ish gradients, free to download and use.
Principles of Beautiful Web Design
Sitepoint has published an excerpt from the book "The Principles of Beautiful Web Design" that is a great read for anyone interested in the subject.
"Anyone, no matter what level of artistic talent he or she has, can come up with a design that works well and looks good--all it takes is a little experience and a working knowledge of some basic layout principles."
The Principles of Beautiful Web Design
11 Tips for a Successful Web Design Process
Blog Studio is a well-respected blog design house and today have collected some of their wisdom as 11 Tips to Ensure a Successful Web Design Process. - a really great read with some good advice.
19 Gorgeous Website Footers
They may be at the bottom of the webpage but they are just as deserving of some design love. SEOmoz | Put Your Best Foot Forward: 19 Gorgeous Website Footers puts the footers of 19 different websites in the spotlight and they are indeed gorgeous. Worth a look for some footer design inspiration.
Free Fading Rounded Corner Images
Web 2.0: Free Fading Corner Images with Photoshop psd files to customize. (example image above).
Really nicely done and very generous of the author to share! Thanks.
Five Simple Steps to Designing with Color
Seems today is all about color. Here's another, an extract form an upcoming book, Five Simple Steps to designing with colour part 3: Colour combinations : Journal : Mark Boulton - a look at the importance of color choices in designing for the web.
6 Things you need to know about color
(24)slash7 - Drop That Design! 6 Things You Need to Know About Color - a good article on things to consider when chosing colors for your design, with examples of why there is a good choice and a bad choice.
Web 2.0: how to get the look
Web 2.0 how-to design style guide - just about the most comprehensive web 2.0 "style guide" I've come across.
113 greyscale icon set
Brand Spanking New has an early Christmas gift for us all. HoHoHo: 113 Free Greyscale Icons! These are 10x10 greyscale icons in .gif format and are very handy to have on hand. Thanks!
More free symbols, buttons and icons
More Symbols, Buttons and Icons For Free - a nice list of links to some more freeware design elements.
The 10 most popular newspaper typefaces
The 10 most popular newspaper typefaces - (37signals) - interesting to know.
Visual Design of Web 2.0
The visual design of Web 2.0 attempts to quantify what makes a site "look" web 2.0. You know, rounded corners, gradients, big fonts. The article is well done thought and a nice round up. Worth a read.
Template World Free Website Templates
If you're looking for a free website template, you could do a lot worse than the nice offerings at TemplateWorld - FREE Website Templates (Valid XHTML And CSS). As noted, the templates feature valid code and good looking graphics.
Note that these are website templates (not Wordpress or other blog-specific templates), although a savvy user could easily adapt to a blog template.
These templates are released under Creative Commons Attribution License, which means they may be modified as you like but a link back to Template World is required.
Logo Design from concept to completion
The Logo Design Process - From Concept to Completion - a detailed look at how the author approaches logo design, from the formation of the original concept through to design in Adobe Illustrator. A good read for anyone interested in logo creation.
Navigation Inspiration Web 2.0 style
The text might be in German, but the visuals are the reason to visit anyway. A nice collection of navigation menus from Web 2.0 sites to gather some good old-fashioned inspiration. Collection of Web 2.0 Navigation Menus - Dr. Web Weblog
Fall CSS Reboot Launches Today
The Fall CSS Reboot launches today at 18:00 GMT, which by may calculation, is 1:00 p.m. today where I am (Eastern Time).
The CSS Reboot is a great opportunity to see the best of the best in CSS designs and always a jumping point for trends is design.
35 Sexiest Websites Part 3
The 35 Sexiest Designed Websites you've Forgotten, part 3 - PhilRenaud.com - because looking at sexy websites is always fun and inspirational!
twotone icons for free
twotone icons for free! - in a number of colours AND the psd, so you can create a set in custom colours as well. Free, license-free, use them anywhere. Very generous. Thanks!
Essential Icon Sets
22 Essential Icon Sets illustrated and detailed as to their usage requirements.
Five Simple Steps to designing with colour
Five Simple Steps to designing with colour : Journal : Mark Boulton - the first in what will be a series of posts about the subject, this one dealing with tone and the value of limiting your palette.
Free Mini Pixel Icons
ndesign is offering up a really nice set of mini pixel icons for free. The only requirement to use is that if you use more than 10 of them, you need to link back to their site. A small price for some nice design elements.
Free Pictograph Icons
peterme.com: Pictographs for you to use! - a useful resource for web design. And free is always good.
Creating a Style Guide for your site
"One thing you'll realize after you do alot of front-end work is that after you don't work with the CSS and HTML for a few days, you'll forget the classes that you defined and end up writing alot of similar CSS styles."
Drinking Rockstars and Programming - Creating a Style-Guide for your site explains why and how to create a style guide for your site as a starting point for a site's design and as a resource for future site maintenance and design decisions.
You can see the style guide for Kevo (a new web 2.0 site) here.
Fall Color Forecast
It seems that color trends are universal, showing up in design for the home, on the web, in print and of course, in fashion. So if you have an interest in color trends, the Fall 2006 Fashion Color Report [PDF Document] is worth a read. It predicts the hot colors for the next season, with the corresponding Pantone colors listed, as well.
The problem is though, I don't do Pantone. I'm all about the HEX. So I grabbed the colors and added the corresponding hex values to each one, which are shown and listed below, for a little color trend inspiration ...
Most Inspired: Like Popurls for Gallery Sites
What do you get if you put the Popurl concept together with the raft of website gallery sites out there? Most Inspired,
I'm not sure I like the on-hover, popup screenshot thing. It seems a bit jerky on my computer, at least and a lot of entries seem to be missing screenshots altogether. And since it's really all about the screenshots for me, I'd prefer them there and front and center, so they are easy to scan and pick out ones I'd like a closer look at. But that's just me.
Styleboost Returns
Nice to see that Styleboost™ - showcasing outstanding websites since 2001 has returned with a nice, new look. There are a lot of showcase-type sites these days, but not many (any?) can say they've been at it since 2001!
Calendar Design Showcase
Calendar & Date Picker Design Showcase
A daily dose of design inspiration, featuring a page full of screen captures of various calendar/date picker designs.
20 Pro Web Designer Tips
20 pro (web designer) tips - .net magazine - nothing earth-shaking here but a lot of worthy reminders of the fundamentals of a good design process.
LogoPond
LogoPond - A Place To Fish For Ideas - the name says it all. A great bookmark when looking for logo design inspiration.
IconDB
IconDB is a pretty slick icon search site, which returns a lot of nice results from across the web. Of course, you'll want to click through to the originating site to check usage limitations as well.
Free Website Icons
Free Website Icons: : - lots of variety of free icons here.
Super Stripes
Super Stripes - how to get those trendy diagonal striped backgrounds, complete with downloadable sample for the lazy.
Design Cliches of 2006
8 Web Design Cliches of 2006 - a list that contains what you'd expect it to contain, but an interesting read, nonetheless.
Pixel Groovy
Pixel Groovy - described on digg as "like digg but for designers". Lots of links to lots of design/graphics tutorials, that you can vote up or down.
Using Icons in Web Design
Design Melt Down - Icons looks at the use (and importance) of icons in web design and usability. Scroll to the bottom of the article for some valuable links to icon sources, particularly the regularly updated list at maxpower.
Buttonator
Buttonator - not just another button maker. This one does some nice looking buttons! Bookmarked.
Website Button Maker
Dynamic Drive online tools: Button Maker - just in case you haven't already got a handy dandy tool for making these, this one is nice. Bookmarkable.
Super Clean Web Design
Design Melt Down - Super Clean a look at clean web design styling.
Seven Deadly Sins of Web Design
Ten deadly sins of web design | 456 Berea Street - probably nothing here we didn't already know but a gentle reminder never hurts, I guess.
Web Design Trends
PingMag - The Tokyo-based magazine about "Design and Making Things" - Archive - The Web Design Trend Obituary & Death Clock - Interesting article on the likely lifespan of current web design trends.
Another look at Grey in Design
Design Melt Down - Grey. Part 2 of Design Melt Down's look at the use of grey in design, with some nice screenshots to illustrate.
Blog Comment Form Showcase
Blog Comment Form Design Showcase | Smiley Cat Web Design - next in an apparently continuing series of design showcases, this one for blog comment forms.
Website Badges
Design Melt Down - Badges - a colourful look at website badges, so "Web 2.0". Includes some vector badges to download to make your own, as well as a link to a photoshop tutorial to show the way.
Color Scheme Project
Netcocktail :: Get Color - Understanding the importance of color coordination in Web and Graphic Design - a visual feast of color pallettes against a backdrop of actual designs. Go forth and be inspired!
Top 10 Best Design Blogs
Top 10 Best Designed Blogs by Elliott Back - another list of this author's favourite blog designs from the web 2.0 era. Obviously subjective and probably missing a few sites that deserve to be on the list (imo), but always interesting to take a look at who made the list and why.
Web Design Review
Digital Web Magazine - Principles and Elements of Design - part of a continuing series from Digital Web Magazine, taking a close look at website design and the elements that make them work (or not).
Sweetie2
Sweetie | Free icon set - a sweet looking little icon set, free for use, which is also sweet.
Free Icons List
Free! Icons for your website or application at MaxPower - a regularly updated list of quality, free (CC etc) icons available around the web.
Tutorial: How to use Photoshop, Dreamweaver and Image Ready to Design a Website
Design a Website with Photoshop Dreamweaver and Image Ready - an older tutorial but still a nice primer for using these programs to build a webpage.
Free Pixel Icons
Mini Pixel Icons - a nice set of 270 pixel icons, all with transparent backgrounds, ready for use on your website or app.
DinPattern
dinpattern - a collection of really nice background patterns. Definitely bookmark worthy.
DesignEducation
DesignEducation.ca - Thousands of Design Resources - for web design, graphic design and design in general. A whole lotta links!
Ajax Loading gif Generator
Ajaxload - Ajax loading gif generator - bookmarking incase I need a loading gif quick!
Background Patterns
Kollermedia.at - pattern4u - a whole lot of really nice background patterns to download and use.
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