CategoryWorkflow

October 24, 2013 — Much of that page weight could be reduced if images were conditionally optimized based on device width, pixel density and modern image formats. These reductions would result in faster loading times, but the debate isn’t about whether to optimize images for different devices, but about how to go about doing so. In this article, Shawn Jansepar will take a look at Mobify.js, which lets us generate small images for small devices from a single high-resolution image. Read more…

October 16, 2013 — I don’t know about you, but I wake up every morning with at least 10 emails that I didn’t have when I went to sleep. While most people probably know that these emails aren’t being sent manually by some sleep-deprived, coffee-fuelled intern, many people don’t understand the ins and outs of the systems that automate tasks such as sending email. Read more…

October 10, 2013 — Is sketching by hand more than a nostalgic activity? How is paper any different from a screen, especially when hardware is becoming more and more sophisticated? Is improving your hand-sketching skills really worthwhile when high-tech software is advancing every day? Read more…

October 2, 2013 — Time is a key factor in productivity. Working efficiently enables us to deliver better value at a competitive price. In this article, Melanie Lang presents a collection of tools, tips and tricks that will make your standard workflow as fast and practical as possible, so that you have more time for the exciting parts of the project. Ready? Here we go! Read more…

September 26, 2013 — Daniel Pataki has been working with WordPress since the dawn of time, and he still discovers new tips and tricks. He has compiled his own list of 21 techniques that are handy, fun or best practices rarely followed. He hopes everyone finds something new in the list! Read more…

September 20, 2013 — In the previous article on Smashing Magazine, we discussed seven excellent extensions that could fundamentally change your Web design workflow in Adobe Fireworks. Ashish Bogawat would like to add to the list six more extensions. These are extensions that he always installs whenever he sets up Adobe Fireworks for himself or anyone on his team and that have proven to be big time-savers over the period that I’ve been using them. Read more…

September 18, 2013 — While working for Simple Focus, a couple of our designers noticed how images always scaled perfectly. The line length of hypertext, on the other hand, changes based on its parent element’s width, which has a negative effect on readability. One of our designers asked, “wouldn’t it be nice, if text worked more like images?” and a few weeks later FlowType.JS was fully-developed and ready to be sent into the world. Here’s the process of how we got there. Read more…

August 28, 2013 — Jesse Friedman has spent nearly a decade trying to create scalable, predictably insightful, inspirational environments. he has led creative teams in these environments, and is currently doing it as the Director of Web Interface and Development at Astonish. What follows is what Jesse has found to help his team harness inspiration effectively. Read more…

August 26, 2013 — Thanks to strong mobile Web adoption worldwide, we have seen the launch of even more responsive designs in 2012 and 2013. Most of these have been in the publishing category, but lately we are starting to see complex transactional websites, such as Currys UK, take a brave step into this new world. Read more…

August 16, 2013 — Adobe’s InDesign page-layout application has been made faster and more feature-rich with each iteration. But even the best applications lack some features. Luckily, Adobe realized this and opened the doors to allow designers to expand this set of tools through plugins. In this article, we’ve put together a small collection to show a bit of what InDesign can do. Read more…