Designers

Get out of a Creative Slump

By Andrew Faulkner on June 23rd, 2008.

We’ve all been there. We’re creative people but suddenly the creative juices have stopped flowing. We want to work and output some killer material but it just isn’t coming.
(Graphic) Design
Probably the hardest part of the process if you’re lacking in creativity. The worst thing to do is to just plough …

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Getting Design Approval: The Single Mockup Theory

By Darren Hoyt on May 26th, 2008.

For years, my employer has included this line in their standard contract: “We will propose 2-3 homepage mockups and a single secondary page mockup”.

There are variations on this throughout the industry, but overall it’s pretty standard, the assumption being that clients should see multiple concepts before choosing a direction for …

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Watch the birdy!

By Andrew Faulkner on March 17th, 2008.

OK, this little niche trend is unlikely to become the next gradient or ‘wet floor’ but I thought I’d point it out all the same. I’m sure somebody somewhere will find this useful. ;-)

Whilst browsing through my recent inspiration bookmarks (I need to get a del.icio.us account so …

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25 Ways To Improve Your Site In 5 Minutes

By Andrew Faulkner on February 12th, 2008.

A while back I wrote 25 Ways To Improve Your Site Today. Many people thought it was useful. I’m trying again now with a twist. I’m offering you, dear reader, tips to improve your site in various ways - each one only taking approximately 5 minutes.

This is starting to …

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Accessible can be Beautiful

By Andrew Faulkner on January 15th, 2008.

I may be preaching to the choir in this post, but one can always use it as a reference to clients or colleagues.

Accessibility is one of my favourite aspects of web design. It’s also got a lot of hangups and myths associated with it. For …

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The Life and Times of Cool

By Ron Scott on January 2nd, 2008.

2007 has been an interesting year for the internet, and for web design in particular. We have seen the rise and fall of Web 2.0, the increase of lobbying for web standards, and the growth of interest in CSS3 and HTML5. And these three things are just a few out …

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Where Are The Female Designers?

By Matt Davies on November 19th, 2007.

It is a fact that there are less women in the design industry then men. What the precise ratio of men to women actually is, one cannot be sure. However, as some indication, the guys at A List Apart recently undertook a web design survey in which, in their …

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The rise of Wordpress for ‘Non-Blogs’

By Andrew Faulkner on October 31st, 2007.

And by non-blogs I mean portfolios, magazines, communities - essentially anything that doesn’t tend to come under the banner of a blog. You get the idea. I aim to showcase some of my favourite Wordpress powered sites that don’t follow the traditional layout. And following that, I’ll explore why these sites have deviated from the mean.
Straight to the juice…
I wouldn’t want to keep you waiting for some examples, would I?

Jen Gordon’s portfolio oozes character and flair. Her Wordpress install powers the portfolio, page hierarchy and her blog.

ComplementaryDuo mixes portfolio and blog effortlessly.

Darren Hoyt shows off his brilliant design talent. Definitely not ‘just another Wordpress blog.’

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Beautiful sites with no (or very few) images

By Andrew Faulkner on October 25th, 2007.

Catchy title, I know.

In stark contrast to my last post about intricate backgrounds, I’ve decided to examine (by example) the characteristics of sites that are aesthetically pleasing even though no (OK - maybe one or two) images have been used. In essence, this could also be a testament to …

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Branding your CSS Stylesheets

By Johan on October 20th, 2007.

I am not sure this is only a fad that has following in the web standards community; since CSS is part of their world. What am I talking about? Designers that add the color scheme of their personal website to their stylesheets. What motivates them? Let’s scratch the surface …

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Big, Bold Backgrounds

By Andrew Faulkner on October 10th, 2007.

It’s one of the simplest things one could possibly add to a site. It’s extremely easy to achieve in CSS and it doesn’t present many problems at all for the designer who’s laying out a webpage. What am I talking about, then? Big background images (normally) on the body tag of course.
A bit of background to the post

After seeing the ground-breaking Johuaink design (pictured) in early 2006, I imagined that many more designers would start using large, graphic-intense images on the background of their website and that the trend would escalate and break into mainstream websites. For the most part however, this hasn’t happened.

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Interview with Smashing Magazine

By Andrew Faulkner on September 3rd, 2007.

Coinciding with Smashing Magazine’s first anniversary (hop over there for their birthday giveaway), we catch up with Vitaly Friedman:
Vitaly, welcome to fadtastic. Please say a few things about yourself and Smashing Magazine.
Andrew, first of all the Smashing Magazine team would like to thank you for the opportunity to …

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