January 5, 2010 — Jesse James Garett, founder of Adaptive Path and author of the book The Elements of User Experience, speaks on what UX and UX design is, what UX looked like before and what are some of the challenges people are encountering now. He cites engagement as the main goal of UX design and, through some fantastic examples, shows that engagement is an universal quality achieved through visuality, sound, touch, smell, taste, body and mind. One of the most impressive moments from the session is when Jesse compares Beethoven to an experience designer, accompanied by the Ninth Symphony. Read more…

January 4, 2010 — “Ask the Expert” is a popular series. This time in our round of “Design discussion”, the theme for the interview is with James White, the renowned graphic designer from Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. Read more…

January 4, 2010 — The navigation menu is perhaps a website’s single most important component. Navigation gives you a window onto the website designer’s creative ability to produce a functional yet visually impressive element that’s fundamental to most websites. Because of their value to websites, navigation menus are customarily placed in the most visible location of the page, and thus can make a significant impact on the visitor’s first impression. The design of a navigation menu has to be outstanding in order to sustain the user’s interest. As the adage goes, “Content is king,” but getting to the content requires navigation. In this post, we’ll be explore some of the more recent trends in navigation design. We’ll look at the aesthetics that recur in today’s best Web designs. The focus here is on the visual direction that leading designers are taking. You should also read the following related posts: * Navigation Menus: Trends and Examples * 50 Beautiful And User-Friendly Navigation Menus * CSS-Based Navigation Menus: Modern Solutions * Breadcrumbs In Web Design: Examples And Best Practices Read more…

December 31, 2009 — If you were to ask me what’s the best way to showcase your creativity, then I would definitely say that it is in designing a website. I would not be exaggerating if I said that the sky’s the limit when it comes to creative possibilities in web design. Needless to say, we all want to come up with beautiful, usable, and creative designs to make a name for ourselves in the web design community. Read more…

December 30, 2009 — It is a most beautiful experience — the sounds and colors of fireworks in the silence and darkness of night. Words alone cannot describe such an experience. The sky comes alive with so many vibrant hues, starbursts, and showers of light along with ribbons of smoke, making us happy and awestruck. Read more…

December 29, 2009 — 2009 was a very successful year for Smashing Magazine. It was a year of ambitious goals and an intense time schedule, which brought many changes over the past year. In 2009 we published more posts than ever (on average, 8 posts per week). We broadened our areas of interest: for instance, we explored freelancing and the business side of web development, but also tackled user interface design and mobile web design. We also discovered new formats, such as the “Global Web Design” series and Q&A-Sessions — unfortunately, the latter (the Ask SM series with Chris Coyier) lasted only a couple of months. Read more…

December 29, 2009 — Companies spend thousands upon thousands of dollars every year in advertisement. Some companies even spend millions of dollars. Print advertisements take up a large portion of those advertising dollars. There are different types of advertising techniques that these companies use in their campaigns. One such technique is to use a series of advertisements to promote a particular product or brand. Today, we will look at 10 clever and effective series of advertisements as well as the reason why I chose to include each of them. Read more…

December 28, 2009 — Constructive and engaging discussion is crucial in reinvigorating the heartbeat of any community. The design community in particular has often been lauded for its highly discursive and interactive nature; several design websites have now taken the concerted effort to tailor their content in ways which encourage debate and discussion, ingredients which are absolutely vital in stimulating collaboration and learning. The earnest now lies on readers to actively participate in these “online dialogues,” with passion and purposefulness. Read more…

December 28, 2009 — I read somewhere that showing your client the full range of your creative ideas during a project is important, the rationale being that the client is entitled to see the ideas coming from the creative professional who they have hired and invested in. While this approach has some benefits, in some cases showing too many ideas is counter-productive to the natural flow of a project. Proof of how imaginative you are can be shown in other ways. Read more…

December 27, 2009 — This is the seventh edition of Wallpaper of the Week here at Design Informer. The wallpaper for this week is entitled Love Color. I designed this wallpaper about 3 months ago for my personal use. I was trying to do something creative with a quote by John Ruskin and decided to make a wallpaper that exhibited a lot of color. Read more…