April 23, 2008 — There are some basic approaches, guidelines and goals to consider when working with type on the Web. Overall, the medium of Web typography involves readability, accessibility, usability, and brandability. On the Web, these aspects function together to accomplish design’s goals of communication and user interaction. Read more…

April 21, 2008 — Retro and vintage designs are often considered as being outdated, looking old, unattractive and dull. That’s not true. Although compared to modern design, retro is mostly a completely different realm, it has a large variety of benefits modern graphic designers often tend to overlook. And that’s a pity. Because we, as designers, can learn a lot from it. Read more…

April 14, 2008 — Book covers are hard to design and nice to look at. An effective book cover manages to catch human’s eye and convey the idea behind the book on one single page. However, it’s getting even harder: to make a book really hard to forget, designers need to design the cover in a unique, creative and striking way. That’s not that different from Web where it’s important to build a sound information architecture upon a rather restricted design layout. Read more…

April 9, 2008 — This article presents creative examples of footers and ideas for footer design. We’ve tried to identify some trends and some interesting approaches you may want to use or develop further in your projects. Read more…

April 7, 2008 — Handwriting seems to have lost some of its attraction over the last years. Nobody writes beautiful handwritten letters, and uses digital means of communication with smileys, abbreviations and standard lettering instead. And that’s a pity. Since handwriting is unique, it has a tremendous expressive power a standard lettering isn’t able to achieve. Read more…

April 3, 2008 — Lighting effects in Adobe Photoshop are used to add flare and polish to images. They communicate feelings of creativity, technology, magic, and fantasy. Creating beams, glows, motion trails, rainbows, or an assortment of other lighting effects, give your images ambiance and depth. Read more…

April 1, 2008 — We love high-quality freebies. Over the last years we’ve featured a number of designers and developers who released their work for free — among other things we presented high-quality free fonts, free Wordpress themes, free wallpapers and, of course, free icons. Read more…

March 31, 2008 — Laptop design doesn’t have to be boring. Although often laptops look exactly as we expect them to look like, there is a number of design solutions and approaches which are completely different — unusual, creative, beautiful and damn useful. In fact, over the last years designers came up with a number of interesting concepts which have somehow stuck between the prototyping stage and the production stage. Nevertheless, much is possible. And this post is supposed to prove this point. Read more…

March 26, 2008 — Grid systems bring visual structure and balance to site design. As a tool grids are useful for organizing and presenting information. Used properly, they can enhance the user experience by creating predictable patterns for users to follow. From designer’s point of view they allow for an organized methodology for planning systematic layouts. Read more…

March 20, 2008 — Typography is more than being legible and looking good. Among other things, effective typography manages to achieve two important objectives: a) to create an appropriate atmosphere and enable users to develop trust toward the site and b) to make sure visitors get the main message of the site and (if possible) become interested in the services offered on the site. Since written text is the most efficient instrument to communicate with visitors precisely and directly, the power of typography shouldn’t be underestimated. Read more…