February 25, 2016 — As logo and brand designers, our work starts long before the first concept sketches, and finishes long after the last perfectly placed pixel. Our work requires so much more than just creative ideas and technical skills — it compels us to be a marketer, strategist, psychologist, salesperson, showman and project manager at the same time. It’s difficult, but it’s also exciting and challenging! The goal of my article is to help you rethink your (logo) design workflow. Some of these tips are mine, others are borrowed from world-famous designers. All these tips and tricks are tested and proven, and are tailored to improve your workflow for (re)branding projects. Read more…

February 25, 2016 — It’s possible to make visually impressive augmented reality projects using just open source libraries. In this tutorial, Martin Sikora will make use of OpenCV in Python to detect circle-shaped objects in a webcam stream and replace them with 3D Earth in Three.js in a browser window while using WebSockets to join this all together. His core idea behind this demo was to use tools that are common on the web and don’t require any prerequisites so anyone can start using them right away. That’s why Martin wanted to use just circle detection and not pattern matching, which would require to print or have some particular real-world object. Read more…

February 24, 2016 — Everybody loves a nice set of icons, right? Today we collected some icon sets that you can use in your projects for free. The following collection offers both — payment provider icons just like summer goodness to help you over a rainy day. All icons can be downloaded and used for free. Enjoy! Read more…

February 24, 2016 — This is an experiment in a slightly different format for Smashing Magazine — using a storytelling approach to convey the same lessons learned that a traditional article would have provided. In this article, Lyndon Cerejo will take you through the story of Noah, the “UX guy” for the corporate office of a regional fast food restaurant, that was in the process of creating a mobile app to allow patrons to customize their meals, place orders and earn rewards. Read more…

February 23, 2016 — In this article, Cosima Mielke has collected tips, tricks, and tools To give you a head start into Flexbox and provide you with ideas on how to use it to master common coding challenges, that will help you get the most out of its power already today. Flexbox gives us a new kind of control over our layouts, making coding challenges that were hard or impossible to solve with CSS alone straightforward and intuitive. It provides us with the means to build grids that are flexible and aware of dynamic content. The list is by no means complete but includes the resources which we found helpful and useful. Read more…

February 23, 2016 — Was there a tool Steve Hickey could use to help people quickly model content in a platform-agnostic manner and simultaneously build an artifact that was ideal for communicating intent to a client or team? There are some great further features that can established by digging into the Jekyll docs in more detail, but what we have here are the basics of a good content modeling prototype: the ability to define different types of objects, the attributes attached to those objects, and IDs that allow us to call specific objects from anywhere. Best of all, the whole system is simple and human-readable, and outputs plain HTML for use elsewhere if necessary. Read more…

February 22, 2016 — In this article, Ben Callahan will help you be more successful with your web projects by starting at the beginning; by working from day one to help set your client’s expectations about what’s going to happen, and by working throughout a project’s life cycle to do the same. By the end of this article, you’ll find yourself more inspired to invest in your own understanding of how the web works, and more willing to invest in your teammates’ understanding. Ben hopes you’ll feel excited to try a new approach, but he also that you’ll be empowered to tear these pages up if they don’t work for you. Only you, your team and your customer can figure out the best way to approach a project. The time is now — so, get to it! Read more…

February 19, 2016 — What’s going on in the industry? What new techniques have emerged recently? Anselm Hannemann is collecting everything that popped up over the last week in his web development reading list so that you don’t miss out on anything. The result is a carefully curated list of articles and resources that are worth taking a closer look at. Read more…

February 19, 2016 — Creating the perfect website is not an easy task, nor is it a done deal. The perfect website requires time and continual work to keep it that way. Perfecting a website entails putting services in place to handle such problems. There’s always something to optimize, trends to keep up with, security issues to worry about. If you plan on being in business for years to come, prepare yourself. Don’t worry if you don’t have everything in place to make your website perfect. Start out as best as you can. Above all else, a perfect website requires experience, which you can only get by giving things a go and sticking around. Read more…

February 18, 2016 — We often want information on what users and potential users of our designs think and how they behave in the context of where they will use our design. Intercepts allow you to engage users in a variety of settings to collect data to inform your design. In this article, Victor Yocco shares a method to design and carry out effective intercepts as part of your user research. You can use the steps and information provided in this article in your own process for intercepting users! Read more…