Smashing Magazine
Billboard Web Design: How to Win Your Audience’s Attention
Let's say you're driving down the freeway at 65mph and you see the roadside plastered with advertising posters on both sides. Some small, some large, all meant in some measure to cause you to remember a brand or identity, to keep that company name in your mind. The more saturated the roadside becomes with advertisements, the more the brand has to be distinctively creative, unique and memorable.
Generally, the eye-catching ads are mostly the ones with witty taglines that are easy and fun to remember. As much as the colors of the images and fonts being used are important to make it easy on the eyes, the idea actually has to be unique and simple enough to be separated from other commercials.
Successful Freelancing With Ruby On Rails: Workflow, Techniques And Tools
A freelancer is a self-employed person who pursues a profession without a long-term commitment to any particular employer. Your curiosity in this opportunity was probably sparked by posts marked "Freelance" or "Work from anywhere" on the myriad of job boards around the Web. Freelancing is equal parts freedom and responsibility. While you have the freedom to choose when you work, where you work and what you work on, you are also responsible for everything: deadlines, finding work, the quality of your work, communication and so much more.
Ruby, with all of its frameworks and libraries (such as Rails, Merb and Sinatra), is a practical tool to use in your freelance Web development career because of its focus on clean code, object-oriented syntax, efficient development practices and strong community (whether a simple IRC chat room or large conference). For all of these reasons, I find that it is also quite fun to use and exciting to be a part of.
When A Thousand Words Is Worth A Picture
Good design speaks for itself, right? Unfortunately, that is rarely the case. Most of us don’t have the privilege of designing for ourselves; we design for clients, clients who have their own taste and ideas, clients who ultimately need to be persuaded on why we’ve made certain decisions. Good design doesn’t speak for itself; it needs an advocate.
This article examines both why design requires justification and how you can go about providing it in a way that is clear and understandable. While we'll focus on visual design, the principles described here are applicable to any creative process or endeavor. Indeed, we learned most of these lessons while presenting Web interfaces and prototypes to clients, which took place after the visual designs had been agreed on.
Get Started Developing for Android with Eclipse
There's a lot to get excited about in mobile application development today. With increasingly sophisticated hardware, tablet PCs and a variety of software platforms (Symbian OS, iOS, WebOS, Windows Phone 7...), the landscape for mobile developers is full of opportunities — and a little complex as well.
So much choice can be overwhelming when you just want to get started building mobile applications. Which platform should you choose? What programming language should you learn? What kit do you need for your planned project? In this tutorial, you'll learn how to start writing applications for Android, the open-source mobile operating system popularized by Google.
How To Make Innovative Ideas Happen
In one of his recent presentations, Frans Johansson explained why groundbreaking innovators generate and execute far more ideas than their counterparts. After watching his presentation The Secret Truth About Executing Great Ideas, my thoughts began to surface about how meaningful the presentation was regardless of a persons industry, culture, field or discipline. Anyone can come up with an amazing idea but how you execute the idea will determine your success.
Coming up with an innovative idea will require some methods of generating ideas from brainstorming to mind mapping that can help conjure up useful ideas. During this process one must make sure to keep focused on a goal. If you have no goal, how will you know when you have reached the finish line and are ready for refinement? Start out with a few thoughts or themes and see what you can come up with.
Free PNG Credit Card, Debit Card and Payment Icons Set (18 Icons)
Today we are glad to release a Payment Icon Set, a set with 18 payment icons in PNG format, in the resolutions 32×32px — 128×128px. This set was designed by Phil Matthews and released especially for Smashing Magazine and its readers. The icons are inteded to be used on e-commerce websites where you can show what types of payment the shop accepts. Each icon comes in curved and straight edge variations.
You can use the set for all of your projects for free and without any restrictions. You can freely use it for both your private and commercial projects, including software, online services, templates and themes. The set may not be resold, sublicensed or rented. Please link to this article if you want to spread the word.
- @yoprice Congrats, you just won a Typolar font license! Please DM me your e-mail and we'll take care of the rest!
- Ontwik: Lectures, Screencasts And Conferences For Real Web Developers & Designers - www.ontwik.com #useful (via @codepo8)
- Colors of the Year 2010: By The People - http://bit.ly/ckkT8O (via @colourlovers)
- Fresh on SmashingMag: Billboard Web Design: How to Win Your Audience’s Attention - http://bit.ly/cURxNj
- Sencha Animator: desktop app to create CSS3 animations for WebKit and touchscreen mobile devices - http://bit.ly/bMf6I9
- The UX Design Education Scam - http://bit.ly/9dt7j5 - Nice read.
- jQuery 1.4.3 Offline Learning Kit - http://bit.ly/97ZpHC #useful
- The Bazaar: marketplace to buy and sell creative objects - http://bit.ly/96qHIj #useful
- New on SmashingMag: Billboard Web Design: How to Win Your Audience’s Attention - http://su.pr/1QN3wG (please RT)
- New Cartoon on SmashingMag: Children - http://bit.ly/b7SNmE - by @behindcadi
