January 19, 2009 — The city is a fantastic source of beauty and inspiration, with all the glitz and glamour glistening beneath the city lights. But there is another side of the city altogether, one rife with its own kind of allure. Across the tracks, away from the dazzle of downtown, lies a darker imagination, this one looking to grunge-ridden, dilapidated architecture for inspiration. There is a beauty that pervades this kind of urban decay and captured wonderfully through a photographer’s well-trained eye. These industrial city scenes are wonderfully dark and offer a glimpse of the weathered face beneath the city facade. Read more…

January 17, 2009 — Designers love freebies that make life easier and help them create higher-quality work. Free vectors are useful, free vector packs even more so. Fortunately, there are plenty of talented graphic designers who are willing to give away their work (or samples of it) to benefit the rest of us. In this post, we feature 60 of the best and most useful free vector packs. Read more…

January 16, 2009 — A couple of weeks ago we celebrated Cartoons and Comic Strip Art and, to be honest, there was a good reason why we took some time to research on this topic. The truth is that we are pretty tired of the same kind of content appearing in the Web over and over and over again. During our winter break in December we came up with some new ideas, concepts, formats and projects that we will try to achieve with Smashing Magazine in 2009. Read more…

January 16, 2009 — JavaScipt libraries have made huge leaps and bounds in helping developers write code and develop products more quickly. jQuery is one of the most popular JavaScript frameworks, with powerful tools that improve the user’s interaction with Web applications. jQuery has an additional advantage in that it allows developers to select elements on a page using CSS-like syntax. To help you take it up a notch, we share below some methods that can help you give visitors to your website an amazing user experience. Here are over 45 impressive jQuery plug-ins and techniques that have been recently created and that could make the development of your next website an easier and more interesting experience than the last. You may want to take a look at the following related posts: * jQuery and JavaScript Coding: Examples and Best Practices * 75 (Really) Useful JavaScript Techniques * 80+ AJAX-Solutions For Professional Coding * 60 More AJAX- and Javascript Solutions For Professional Coding Read more…

January 13, 2009 — More and more applications these days are migrating to the Web. Without platform constraints or installation requirements, the software-as-a-service model looks very attractive. Web application interface design is, at its core, Web design; however, its focus is mainly on function. To compete with desktop applications, Web apps must offer simple, intuitive and responsive user interfaces that let their users get things done with less effort and time. Read more…

January 12, 2009 — One of the most charming contrasting color effects you can get in photography is by using infrared. An easy way to understand near-infrared light is to think of it as the color of the rainbow next to red, a color that is invisible to the human eye. But near-infrared is not the same as thermal imaging. Read more…

January 8, 2009 — There are exciting new features in the pipeline for Cascading Style Sheets that will allow for an explosion of creativity in Web design. These features include CSS styling rules that are being released with the upcoming CSS3 specification. Read more…

January 8, 2009 — If you look around at well-designed websites in CSS galleries or any other source of design inspiration, you’ll see that texture is extremely common in modern Web design. One of the reasons it’s so popular is because of its versatility. Textures can be used in countless different ways and in a wide variety of design styles. As you look around, you’ll see how textures can be used in so many different ways by Web designers. Read more…

January 6, 2009 — Few products have generated the kind of hype that the iPhone has. Its beautiful design and large multi-touch screen are irresistible. Although its interface is beautifully designed, some of us want to put a little something extra in it to suit our style, personality and profession and to further beautify this magical masterpiece. Read more…

January 4, 2009 — Adobe Illustrator is the industry-standard when it comes to the creation of vector graphics. Though a very robust tool - the learning curve involved in mastering it can be high. Thankfully, there are abundant resources on the web that allows you to “learn by doing”. Video tutorials (in general) enable the learner to witness - step-by-step - how a particular technique works. We often learn best by seeing how things are done and following along with the instructor (much like in a classroom environment). Read more…