July 1, 2009 — When people talk about image optimization, they consider only the limited parameters offered by popular image editors, like the “Quality” slider, the number of colors in the palette, dithering and so on. Also, a few utilities, such as OptiPNG and jpegtran, manage to squeeze extra bytes out of image files. All of these are pretty well-known tools that provide Web developers and designers with straightforward techniques of image optimization. Read more…

July 1, 2009 — The “about me”-page is one of the most overlooked pages in development and one of the highest ranked pages on many websites. In a world that’s becoming increasingly connected through the Web, it’s important that you engage your audience in a personal and friendly way, otherwise you risk just being another faceless web designer among a sea of websites. [Links checked February/10/2017] We had to go through hundreds of sites to come up with the following list. It seems most designers and developers run out of steam by the time they got around to developing their about pages. Most designers we came across simply threw up a few hastily written words about themselves instead of treating the page as an important asset. Others, however, have truly taken the time to treat their about page as if it were important as the home page. In fact, some went as far as using their about pages as their home page. We present 60 beautiful and effective about pages that engage users and neatly present their designers. We also examine the growing trend of Business Card Websites (BCW’s). Read more…

June 29, 2009 — Dealing with clients, designing prototypes, coding, programming, and testing — there’s a lot to keep track of and a lot to make sure gets done. Read more…

June 28, 2009 — In this article, Vitaly Friedman collected over 50 useful and practical tools and resources that will help you to improve your writing skills. You will find copywriting blogs, dictionaries, references, teaching classes, articles, tools as well as related articles from other blogs. Read more…

June 26, 2009 — Macro photography is also known as close-up photography. Compared to other types of photography, macro photography is quite difficult, because of the nifty equipment, lightning and other techniques involved. However, in the end it comes down to what kind of pictures you want to take and what level of precision you are striving for. Read more…

June 25, 2009 — CSS-design is not easy. We need to find workaround across browser inconsistencies, not that easy CSS-concepts and quite counterintuitive CSS-solutions. Read more…

June 25, 2009 — With the power of the Web, and more eyes watching than ever, it’s important for a business to communicate its unique message clearly. The easiest way to recognize a company and distinguish it from others is by its logo. Below, we go through 10 common logo design mistakes that you should avoid if you want to create a successful and professional logo. Read more…

June 24, 2009 — Corporate Web design has certain elements designed to attract customers. One of those elements is the introduction. The page or website introduction does what you would think: it introduces the website or page to the user and entices them to visit more of the website. Read more…

June 24, 2009 — A module tab is a design pattern where content is separated into different panes, and each pane is viewable one at a time. The user requests content to be displayed by clicking (or in some instances hovering over) the content’s corresponding tab control. Read more…

June 23, 2009 — Design patterns were first described in the 1960s by Christopher Alexander, a civil engineer who noticed that many things in our lives happen according to patterns. He adapted his observations to his work and published many findings on the topic. Since then, design patterns have found their place in many areas of our lives, and can be found in the design and development of user interfaces as well. Read more…