February 1, 2012 — Like most well-designed things, the magic of an iPad app comes from a union of usefulness, usability and meaning. Games aside, the app must be useful by solving a problem that people actually have through the right set of functionality at the right time. It must be easy to use and, just as importantly, easy to get started using, without a lot of pesky setup and learning steps. And it must hold meaning for the user through visual beauty, an emotional connection, personal insights, etc. Read more…

January 31, 2012 — We always try our best to challenge your artistic abilities and produce some interesting, beautiful and creative artwork. And as designers we usually turn to different sources of inspiration. As a matter of fact, we’ve discovered the best one — desktop wallpapers that are a little more distinctive than the usual crowd. This creativity mission has been going on for over two years now, and we are very thankful to all designers who have contributed and are still diligently contributing each month. Read more…

January 30, 2012 — We do more reading on the screen today than we did even a year ago. If we are ever to have a golden age of reading on the screen, this might be the start of it. Tablets, Nooks and Kindles make buying a book or magazine for the screen almost unavoidable. With smartphones, we carry our reading material with us and enjoy instant Web access, enabling the reading experience to flow smoothly from one device to another. Read more…

January 27, 2012 — Controlling who is able to view a post is a simple task once the system is established. Limiting access to certain users has several advantages, ranging from a design studio distributing artwork among various clients, or a small school arranging to have its students’ homework posted online through a cheap and easy solution. Read more…

January 26, 2012 — UX practitioners, both consultants and in house, sometimes conduct research. Be it usability testing or user research with a generative goal, research requires planning. To make sure product managers, developers, marketers and executives (let’s call them stakeholders) act on UX research results, planning must be crystal clear, collaborative, fast and digestible. Long plans or no plans don’t work for people. Read more…

January 25, 2012 — We often hear companies, including Web agencies, boast about how they provide exceptional client service. But how do they define exceptional? Consider this scenario. You are hired to design and develop a new website for a retail client. The client loves the design, and the pages you develop use the latest in HTML5, CSS3 and responsive design, resulting in a website that works wonderfully across browsers and devices. Read more…

January 24, 2012 — Web design is a craft that is constantly evolving and yet also sometimes sabotaged. The moment a design is released, a new version is born. In the beginning, like a baby, it seems vulnerable and weak, but in time it grows up and becomes self-sufficient. Redesigning a website for its own sake doesn’t prove anything; quite the contrary, it reveals a lack of effectiveness on the part of the designer. Read more…

January 23, 2012 — At the heart of every modern Mac and Linux computer is the “terminal.” The terminal evolved from the text-based computer terminals of the 1960s and ’70s, which themselves replaced punch cards as the main way to interact with a computer. It’s also known as the command shell, or simply “shell.” Windows has one, too, but it’s called the “command prompt” and is descended from the MS-DOS of the 1980s. Read more…

January 22, 2012 — At Smashing Magazine, we are big proponents of diversity and sharing. We encourage designers and developers worldwide to step up and use Smashing Magazine as a platform to share their opinions, ideas or techniques. Read more…

January 20, 2012 — In all the years that I’ve been using Adobe Fireworks, I have always had to perform one task in every project: remove the background from a logo. Most of the time, it’s because the client doesn’t have the original raw file that their previous designer used to create their company’s logo, or because I need to work with a bunch of affiliate logos that I downloaded from the Web and not all of them have transparency information. Read more…