How To Design Clean and Elegant Looking Websites

While a simple, clean website design might seem easy at first, the fact of the matter is the process is a lot more complex than you think. There’s a lot of stuff going on underneath the surface that makes the clean website functional. Most people don’t need or care about that makes these sites function,… Continue reading How To Design Clean and Elegant Looking Websites

How To Make Your Websites Look and Feel Original

There are hundreds of millions of websites active on the web. It can be hard to imagine how a single lonely website or brand can hope to make an impact. Decent inbound marketing can be help, and Search Engine Optimization can certainly play a role, but none of these efforts will help you get visitors… Continue reading How To Make Your Websites Look and Feel Original

Best PHP Books, Courses and Tutorials in 2017

November 8, 2017 by Alex Fox While JavaScript has gained popularity for animation and interaction, PHP still rules the server-side scripting world. Developers with strong PHP skills are more competitive in the job market, and can build better sites with improved user experiences. If you want to freshen up your PHP skills or get started… Continue reading Best PHP Books, Courses and Tutorials in 2017

Chatbot User Experience 101: Vital Tips to Improve Chatbot UX

Use Simple Language & Diction in Your Chatbot Design Process It can’t be overstated how important personality is for a chatbot; personality makes a bot fun to talk to. When you’ve developed a bot personality, ensure your bot’s voice remains consistent throughout the conversation. Moments where a bot speaks “out of character” can be immersion breaking… Continue reading Chatbot User Experience 101: Vital Tips to Improve Chatbot UX

The Company Name on a Logo: How to Make It Work

The name of your company incorporated into its logo isn’t always a right solution but sometimes it is really perfect for your company’s introduction. So, in which cases will it be highly beneficial for companies to implement their names into their logos? A logo can be described as your company’s face, while your corporate style… Continue reading The Company Name on a Logo: How to Make It Work

11 Communication Techniques for Designers

You have spent years getting this far — going to university, taking regular courses and workshops, going to conferences, reading countless books, articles, and listening to weekly podcasts — only for a stakeholder to steamroll your design expertise.Here are 11 techniques for improving your communication skills and getting your designs approved. There comes a point in every designers career… Continue reading 11 Communication Techniques for Designers

Are You Using The Right CMS Platform?

CMS is short for Content Management System – and it’s easy to understand why many novices find the term confusing. Broken down, it sounds like a specialized tool, something you might use to store and organize materials before putting them online or saving reference materials. In reality, though, CMS platforms are everywhere. WordPress is a… Continue reading Are You Using The Right CMS Platform?

Walking Through Design in Tokyo

People push past me as I exit the train at Shibuya station, and I start looking for the Hachiko statue. My friends told me to meet there before dinner, but ten minutes later I’m still lost. Thankfully once I slow down and look at my surroundings, I see guides all around me. At its size… Continue reading Walking Through Design in Tokyo

3 Ways to Fund Your Professional Website Development Project

April 28, 2017 by David Jones You’ve launched a business but you still need a website; however, you’re not sure how to create one. You’ve seen DIY platforms like Wix, Weebly, and WordPress, but you also know people who have had a custom website developed. Which route should you take? Though many people are perfectly… Continue reading 3 Ways to Fund Your Professional Website Development Project

How UberEats could make ordering for groups of friends simpler — a UX case study

The Problem — I find myself using UberEats (launched early last year) more frequently than the likes of DoorDash primarily because of two reasons: Continuous promotions — They have had some really cool promotions all this while. (No delivery cost upto $5 for an order) Ordering experience — From searching for food to ordering and waiting for it, the… Continue reading How UberEats could make ordering for groups of friends simpler — a UX case study

5 Key Areas to Help Manage Your Design and Content Creation Team

Even more radical than funny cat videos and memes in GIF form, the rise of the Internet has really empowered companies of all sizes to work with remote teams all around the world. This has dramatically impacted how modern business is being conducted because you could have team members everywhere from Sacramento to Sri Lanka. In addition… Continue reading 5 Key Areas to Help Manage Your Design and Content Creation Team

Common UX Mistakes and How to Avoid (or Fix) Them

Have you ever fumbled through a complicated contact form on a mobile website or wished for a button or link that wasn’t there? If so, you’ve experienced what a lack of foresight in user experience (UX) design causes. Don’t fall victim to the same common UX mistakes. Make sure potential customers poor UX design doesn’t… Continue reading Common UX Mistakes and How to Avoid (or Fix) Them

5 Above the Fold Elements that Get Your Audience’s Attention

An old study from Nielsen states that web visitors spend 80.3% of their time above the fold – the top area of your site that’s immediately viewable upon loading. Furthermore, Google found out that ads above the fold had 68% viewability, as opposed to ads below the fold with only 40%. Naturally, a lot of… Continue reading 5 Above the Fold Elements that Get Your Audience’s Attention

Every Designer Should Know The Importance Of Prototyping

Advertisement The importance of prototyping should be obvious to anyone involved in designing website or mobile apps. A prototype allows a designer or developer to create a form out of a concept, so that everyone who is involved in the process can give their feedback and make necessary adjustments before a final version is produced.… Continue reading Every Designer Should Know The Importance Of Prototyping

Taking Control of the tvOS Focus Engine

Introduction On iOS, users normally interact with your apps via the device’s touch screen. On tvOS, however, user interaction is handled by moving the current focus between views on the screen. Luckily, the tvOS implementations of the UIKit APIs handle the changing of focus between views automatically. While this built-in system works very well, for specific… Continue reading Taking Control of the tvOS Focus Engine

Power Up Your Mobile Game With Design, Sound, and Music

A successful game needs to be beautifully designed and immersive. Most game developers aren’t good designers, though. And it doesn’t stop with design. Sound and music are just as important to captivate people playing your game. Fortunately, you don’t have to be a design or team up with one to create a fantastic game. You… Continue reading Power Up Your Mobile Game With Design, Sound, and Music

Style Guides in Sketch

Product design is a team sport. The best teams tend to have lots of moving parts: designers and developers and managers and researchers all working in concert on a single, refined vision. All those moving pieces come with a cost, though, in the form of meetings, emails, and file versioning—all things we do in order… Continue reading Style Guides in Sketch

Android From Scratch: Building Your First Android Application

What You’ll Be Creating After taking a look at the current state of Android development and how to set up your development environment, in this lesson, you are going to learn how to build and launch your first Android application. I won’t focus too much on the details, because those are covered extensively later in… Continue reading Android From Scratch: Building Your First Android Application

What Are WordPress Themes?

We recently wrapped up a series that covered How to Get Started With WordPress. Though it’s not a pre-requisite for reading the following article, I recommend reading through the four posts, especially if you’re someone who is just now getting started with WordPress. The people who visit Envato Tuts+ come from a variety of backgrounds, both… Continue reading What Are WordPress Themes?

10 Key Things Web Design Clients Should Know & Understand

Web design is always changing, and the future is about as clear as an oil slick. New trends emerge every day, it seems, and Google algorithms are always forcing everyone to adapt. SEO, web design, and the number of devices people use seems to expand web design horizons every day. All of this can be… Continue reading 10 Key Things Web Design Clients Should Know & Understand

How Welcoming are WordCamps to Women?

This month it’s International Women’s Day, a worldwide event designed to raise the under-representation of women in many walks of life and encourage us all to open up more opportunities to women and girls. I thought it would be a good opportunity to take a look at gender diversity at WordCamps, and compare these with… Continue reading How Welcoming are WordCamps to Women?

10 Tips for Improving Your Photo Manipulation Skills

Over it’s 20+ year history, Photoshop has proved itself useful for a great many things. One of the primary applications is photo manipulation. In fact, it’s photo manipulation that is meant by the colloquial term “to Photoshop”. Yet pulling off a successful photo manipulation isn’t quite as easy as it sounds.  So whether you are… Continue reading 10 Tips for Improving Your Photo Manipulation Skills

How to Install WordPress: The Application

In this introductory series for how to achieve some tasks in WordPress, we’ve talked about themes and plugins and how to install our web server. The one thing we haven’t covered, though, is how to install WordPress. In this tutorial, I’m going to walk through the process of downloading a copy of the WordPress source… Continue reading How to Install WordPress: The Application

Working with Data, Assets, and Templates in Middleman

This second tutorial about building static websites with Middleman dives a little deeper into the framework. By the end, you should know enough to build your own project from scratch. We’ll cover topics such as Data Files, Pretty URLs, Project Templates and the Asset Pipeline, so let’s get stuck in! Data Files So, having already… Continue reading Working with Data, Assets, and Templates in Middleman