Tools and Tips on how to Optimize Images for the Web

The time a page takes to load is something every designer worries about, or at least is something that every designer should worry about. It doesn’t matter if the layout is nice and beautiful if it doesn’t function properly. Since images can be pretty heavy, this is certainly an issue to keep an eye on.… Continue reading Tools and Tips on how to Optimize Images for the Web

Making the Most of Photoshop Layers

The way web designers are using Photoshop is changing; pixel perfect comps are less relevant than they were a year or two ago. However, Photoshop is still an invaluable design tool and using its features properly is as important as ever. The following tips will help you master working with layers. A Quick Word About… Continue reading Making the Most of Photoshop Layers

How To Get The Most Out Of A Premium WordPress Theme

There has quite probably never been a better time to be a premium theme user. While a huge increase in the supply of quality premium themes hasn’t particularly driven down prices, it has promoted a huge push for innovation, best practices and quality design. Unfortunately, there’s one crucial thing which rarely gets quite so much… Continue reading How To Get The Most Out Of A Premium WordPress Theme

30+ Abstract Brushes and Patterns

A good piece of art always contains the aspect of attraction, which provides the initial prompt of glances from potential onlookers. But a great piece of art is able to capture and compel their gaze to linger for that extra span of time. Every true artist shoots to achieve this secondary level of interest, but… Continue reading 30+ Abstract Brushes and Patterns

11 WordPress Plugins That Will Get Your Site Ready for 2013

As the clock struck midnight on New Years Eve, many resolutions were being made all over the world. If you own a website, yours might have included a few decisions about your website. Even if you aren’t the New Years resolution type, you probably have a few things you’d like to change for your website… Continue reading 11 WordPress Plugins That Will Get Your Site Ready for 2013

Finding Design Inspiration in Others’ Work While Still Being Original

Originality can be hard to find, which is surprising since each one of us are creative individuals. Why don’t we embrace that individuality more often? It seems like it should be such an easy question to answer, but nonetheless, it doesn’t seem to be. Being a designer is a constant battle between embracing our own… Continue reading Finding Design Inspiration in Others’ Work While Still Being Original

Adobe Improves 3D Functionality in Photoshop CS6.1

Adobe made some rather significant changes to its 3D features in Photoshop CS6. In CS6.1, they have made a handful of tweaks that you should be aware of. These new features include a way to generate bump map textures from flat artwork, using the Normals menu; smoother previewing of soft shadows; full-image ray tracing, replacing… Continue reading Adobe Improves 3D Functionality in Photoshop CS6.1

20 Brilliant Premium Magento Themes

The ever progressive and technological age we in has paved the way for high doses of Ecommerce to be injected into our daily lives. Ecommerce is a phenomenon that holds the reins of the world of the internet, an ever growing trend available on numerous platforms, one of the best being Magento. Magento claims to… Continue reading 20 Brilliant Premium Magento Themes

26 Open Source Tools & Scripts for Web Developers

I am a big advocate for open source codes and software. These are possibly the greatest methods for learning new techniques and bridging your knowledge from another person or team of people. Scripts and webapps are some of the most commonly shared resources, but also consider desktop-based software applications as well. I have put together… Continue reading 26 Open Source Tools & Scripts for Web Developers

Designing for Performance

Designers have a tremendous impact on site performance based on how they design for the web, before a single line of code is written. This article will cover how performance can be designed and what it takes to make it happen. Speed is a fundamental part of user experience on the web. Web performance has… Continue reading Designing for Performance

A growing bundle of fantastic WordPress themes for Free

Hi there, today we want to talk about something that turns to be good news for all web masters out there. Themeshock has released an enormous bundle of free themes. and we took some time to review them and tell you what is so good about this bundle. We will tell you about its growing process.… Continue reading A growing bundle of fantastic WordPress themes for Free

How to Make a Tumblr-powered News Ticker

Tumblr is a blogging service with an elegant interface for creating and publishing content. In this tutorial, we are going to use it as the foundation of a news publishing system. We are going to develop a simple widget which cycles through the most recent posts on a Tumblr blog, and presents them as news items… Continue reading How to Make a Tumblr-powered News Ticker

How to Utilize the Pattern Tool to Create a Pattern Brush in Illustrator CS6

One of my favorite new tools with Adobe Illustrator CS6 is the Pattern Tool. It’s great for creating complex seamless patterns in real time and gives you so many options. However it’s not so easy to create a Pattern Brush. Today’s Quick Tip tutorial is a bit of an experimental one, showing you how you… Continue reading How to Utilize the Pattern Tool to Create a Pattern Brush in Illustrator CS6

CSS: Responsive Navigation Menu

Previously I wrote a tutorial on how to make a mobile navigation for responsive design, now I’ve discovered a new technique to produce a responsive menu without having to use Javascript. It uses clean and semantic HTML5 markup. The menu can be aligned left, center or right. Unlike the previous tutorial where it is clicked… Continue reading CSS: Responsive Navigation Menu

Exceptional Landscape Photography from Jakub Polomski

Born in 1985, Jakub Polomski found his love for photography when he was 20 years old. Inspired by photos from National Geographic, he borrowed a DSLR from a friend and then it began… Since 2007 Jakub has been awarded with several prizes and commendations in various photography contests. Hist most notable achievement was the National Geographic Poland… Continue reading Exceptional Landscape Photography from Jakub Polomski

Advantages and Disadvantages of Blogger vs WordPress

The competition never ends but then, it’s a must have to find out the best available choice. This comparison has always been a part of every aspect and it does drive the result-though not between WordPress and Blogger. Both of these have been the top notch rivalries and it’s been an era since the competition… Continue reading Advantages and Disadvantages of Blogger vs WordPress

How to Write Code That Embraces Change

Writing code, which is easy to change is the Holy Grail of programming. Welcome to programming nirvana! But things are much more difficult in reality: source code is difficult to understand, dependencies point in countless directions, coupling is annoying, and you soon feel the heat of programming hell. In this tutorial, we will discuss a… Continue reading How to Write Code That Embraces Change

80 Awesome Twitter Bootstrap Templates To Get You Started

Twitter Bootstrap is a powerful and easy to use framework enabling front-end developers to craft professional and high quality Bootstrap templates with flexible responsive layouts that look great on tablets, mobiles and desktops. Since its release back in august 2011 the development community has been growing fast, providing developers with the tools and knowledge to… Continue reading 80 Awesome Twitter Bootstrap Templates To Get You Started

25 Interactive HTML5 Websites

Few years ago, there were lots of cool and interactive websites that were built with Flash. They would often feature full screen layouts, animated elements and futuristic interfaces that made HTML websites look plain and tedious. Yet unfortunately Flash comes with several problems such as high processor load or loading time, but these days these… Continue reading 25 Interactive HTML5 Websites

30 Best News Magazine WordPress Themes

We have been covering a lot of WordPress topics lately. We are finding that users are becoming more and more committed to WordPress because of its simplicity and overall ease of use. If you didn’t check out our post a couple of weeks ago it was called The 10 Best Selling WordPress Themes of All… Continue reading 30 Best News Magazine WordPress Themes

Planning Your Web Design with Sketches

There are plenty of foundational courses taught in design school. And it’s no surprise that big agencies and startups are taking a back-to-basics approach to their design processes. Whether you’ve been a lifelong doodler or have serious sketch ‘chops,’ being able to use paper to explore new ideas is an important skill in the design… Continue reading Planning Your Web Design with Sketches

Design an Appealing Print-Ready Restaurant Menu in Illustrator

If you’ve ever seen a “food designer” fuss over every last detail of a delicious food item, you’d understand how exquisitely visual the food marketing process can be. The visual evaluation of food has been ingrained in the human psyche for thousands of years, and the right imagery can still elicit strong, visceral reactions (mostly… Continue reading Design an Appealing Print-Ready Restaurant Menu in Illustrator