Creating Web 2.0 Effects With Photoshop, Part 1

Corrie Haffly, walks you through the process on how to add Web 2.0 graphic goodness to your site design using non-destructive techniques. It may even take your site from boring to trendy!

The new msnbc.com

If you haven’t paid it a visit already, the new msnbc.com is worth a look. Nearly two years of research, planning, iterative design, and development went into this behemoth overhaul. It isn’t merely a redesign with a more lively, vibrant brand, but a genuine realign that thoroughly repositions the website as a separate entity from the cable channel, among other things.

Web Design 101: Floats

As browsers get better and better, creating layouts with CSS becomes easier and easier. A reliable workhorse in CSS layout options is the float property.

Here's a great article by Virgina DeBolt covering the fine art of using this web technique.

Web 2.0 Still Unheard of to Some Industries

Believe it or not, there are many businesses out there who are still not Web 2.0 savvy. Here's a great article that calls out that point.

Non-Profit design

Inside tips on designing for non-profits.

SEO tutorial for web designers

Here's a simple SEO primer for website builders and those who are more used to designing than worrying about search engines.

BIGLIST of Search Marketing Blogs

Welcome to the BIGLIST of SEM and SEO blogs! Here you'll find a collection of over 400 blogs maintained by the staff at TopRank Online Marketing. This edited list includes blogs that cover a range of internet marketing topics ranging from SEO (search engine optimization) and PPC (pay per click) to blog marketing, marketing with social media and online public relations.

Splash Pages: Do We Need Them

Yes, sometimes we do. Should we use them? No, we probably shouldn’t. In fact, there are some situations in which we might want or might even need to use them.

Dynamic Drive CSS Library

Welcome to Dynamic Drive's new CSS library! Here you'll find original, practical CSS codes and examples such as CSS menus to give your site a visual boast.

53 CSS-Techniques You Couldn’t Live Without

Take a look at 53 CSS-based techniques you should always have ready to hand if you develop web-sites.

Color Theory for Web Design

Good use of color can have a big influence on a web site.

Web 2.0 & Online generators [100+]

Check out some of the more popular web 2.0 generators. These make it easy to add stuff like badges, stripes, loading gifs, rounded corners and more to your site.

300 Images From 1800 Sites

The purpose of this document is not to copy the intellectual property of others, but rather as a jumping-off point for your own unique web graphic projects. It's for brainstorming, if you will.

25 Beautiful Minimalistic Website Designs

Here are 25 websites that make use of very little unnecessary design elements but still manage to pull off a beautiful appearance.

Check out more here at Webcreme.

How to Write a Web Site Creative Brief

Here's a good page talking about tips to writing a creative brief.

A Wall of Imagination, Ideas, Tutorials, and Web Trends

Web Designer Wall is designed and maintained by Nick La, who also runs N.Design Studio and Best Web Gallery. He likes to share ideas and design techniques. This site serves as his public blog where he posts design ideas, tutorials, and talks about modern web design trends.

The Best Designs.com

The Best Designs recognizes the best Flash and CSS web sites from around the world. Websites are categorized by CSS or Flash and also by elements of the design.

Don't overlook the basics

Layout is the most crucial aspect of web designing. The basics of web are frequently over looked; instead people start calculating on tangent of (CSS, tables, frames, etc.)

Is SEO dead?

Over the last year we've seen various changes in how search engines and social media sites are getting traffic. What are the differences?

How to create a good enough website

Seth Godin offers his insights to creating a website that's 'good enough'.

Becoming a Master Designer

Here's a three part series on tips to becoming a good web designer.
Rule #1: Limit Your Fonts
Rule #2: Limit Your Colors
Rule #3: Contract, Contrast, Contrast

Color management for web designers and developers

Color management is great, but it’s a point of confusion for many web designers and developers. Should I use a color profile? What is sRGB? Why do colors look different in Photoshop vs. my web browser?

Design Expanse

Design Expanse is a website focused on providing its audience from all over the world specially from Pakistan with a large and best database of well designed websites from across the world.

They have various categories that I think provide inspiration for how to design websites.

Web Design 101: Floats

Virginia DeBolt writes about how with browsers improving, creating layouts with CSS becomes easier and easier. A reliable workhorse in CSS layout options is the float property.

15 Excellent Examples of Web Typography

I Love Typography provides some beautiful examples of web sites that stage typography that mimics print, leverage web technology, and good use of CSS. Read the article here.

Web Designer of the week

Empire Elements is a web design company located in London, England. Richard Kacerek (CEO), leads a group of qualified, forward-thinking, creative designers to provide a first-class web design service at realistic prices.

Photoshopsupport.com

Here's a great website I came across for those who use Photoshop when building websites.

10 Signs You Need a Website Makeover

Everyone wants to be part of the big bandwagon called Web 2.0. Most have no idea what Web 2.0 is or it’s value. What they do know is that their current site doesn’t work and they want something better. Read on.

Moving From Print Design to Web Design

Moving from print design to web design involves taking into account various subtle but important differences between the two mediums. This article describes both the technical aspects of web design as well as the various differences in the mediums.

Do's and Dont's Guide to Great Web Design

The following guide will prove to be quite a valuable web design resource. From the inexperienced to the experienced, this guide has something for everyone.

Entheos

This is a well crafted site offering various tips on web design covering areas in Flash, Dreamweaver tutorials, Photoshop, and more.

Web Design Wiki

Here's a great Wiki site covering numerous web design topics stemming from New York University.

Zpeech

Enables every internet user to comment any website of the world "on the website itself." By adding "zpeech.com/" in front of any URL, a window pops up on the current website URL you have entered and you can add your comments. (Link: zpeech)

Firedoodle

A Firefox add-on that allows you to turn any web page into a white board. Easily mark up any web page, image, or map for review purposes, or just for fun. If you create an account, you can even save your doodles for future reference. (Link: Firedoodle)

An Event Apart

• October 4–5, 2007
• The Palace Hotel
• $795* | REGISTER | SCHEDULE

Featured Speakers for An Event Apart San Francisco

• Joe Clark Building Accessible Websites
• Jared Spool User Interface Engineering
• Aaron Gustafson Advanced DOM Scripting, A List Apart
• Kimberly Blessing PayPal, The Web Standards Project
  
  and more
  

Web 2.0 How-To Design Guide...And How Not To

In this tutorial, Ben Hunt, describes various common graphic design elements in modern web ("2.0") design style.

He then attempt to explain why they work (i.e. why they have become common), as well as how, when and where you might use each element in your designs.

It follows on from his Current Style article, and analyses in greater depth the design features of the current "Web 2.0" design style.

Read Ben's design guide here.

A Design Process Revealed

For individuals who are neither designers nor artists, it may seem like those who are, use a lot of smoke and mirrors, magically whipping up each stunning creation. Artistic talent and creativity can certainly aid and enhance the final result, but design, in particular, generally follows a process.

What a designer has to do when looking for a job

"If I take a trip down memory lane to the time that I was looking for a job, I immediately remember very vividly how hard it was to get noticed or heard. I’m talking pre-internet days so things were handled via snail mail." Read more about Veerle's trip down memory lane on getting noticed as a graphic/web designer.

CSS @ Ten: The Next Big Thing

CSS is ten years old this year. Such an anniversary is an opportunity to revisit the past and chart the future. CSS has fundamentally changed web design by separating style from structure.

Inspirational Web Designs

Best Web Gallery is an inspirational gallery site where you'll find a collection of wide range quality design websites (Flash & CSS). What is quality design? Quality design = visual + technical + creativity.

Web Site of the Month

Web Designer Wall is designed and maintained by Nick La, who also runs N.Design Studio and Best Web Gallery. He's been designing for several years and his works have been published on numbers of magazines. Nick loves to share ideas and design techniques. WDW serves as his public blog where he posts his design ideas, tutorials, and talks about modern web design trends.

Simplicity: The Hardest but Most Important Part of Web Design

This article is by the most veteran blogger Down Under, who has who has a beautifully simple blog design - well worth checking out his examples, tips and recommendations.

Website of the Week

The website speaks for itself.

Designer Source

Designer Source is an online showcase of selected web designs. This website is good for web and logo design inspiration.

Blasting the Myth of the Fold

We are all well aware that web design is not an easy task. There are many variables to consider, some of them technical, some of them human. The technical considerations of designing for the web can (and do) change quite regularly, but the human variables change at a slower rate. Sometimes the human variables change at such a slow rate that we have a hard time believing that it happens.

Why Aren't Alt Search Engines Crawling Websites?

Richard MacManus why are only a few of the hundreds of alternative search engines crawling.

50 Best Websites 2007

Time magazine shares it's poll identifying the best 50 web sites [audio and video, social networks, etc.].

Time also shares it's opinion on the 5 worst websites.

Evaluating Web Pages: Techniques to Apply & Questions to ask

Evaluating web pages skillfully requires you to do two things at once:

1. Train your eye and your fingers to employ a series of techniques that help you quickly find what you need to know about web pages;
2. Train your mind to think critically, even suspiciously, by asking a series of questions that will help you decide how much a web page is to be trusted.
   
   Read the rest here.
   

Introduction to Web Accessibility

Web accessibility means that people with disabilities can use the Web. More specifically, Web accessibility means that people with disabilities can perceive, understand, navigate, and interact with the Web, and that they can contribute to the Web.

Stonebriar Community Church Redesign

Chris Merritt is a self-taught freelance web designer from Dallas, Texas. His design studio is Pixelight Creative, which focuses on creating stunning visual designs for standards-based web interfaces. In his free time, he likes to Wii, go to the movies, and hang out with his wife and daughter. Read about how he redesigned the Stonebriar Community Church website.

In The Future, Web Sites Will Design Themselves

Why web analytics will change everything when it comes to web design, as web sites become continuous experiments in optimization and designers embrace 'evidence based design'.

The Open Source Web Design Toolbox

The open source model has, over the last 20 years, proven that collaborative development is one of the best ways to incorporate the newest ideas and latest concepts into design.

In fact, the open source model, which began with programmers, has been so successful that it is currently being applied in government, media, education and private business. But despite these new applications, the unique combination of the open source model with the universalism of web design remains one of the ideal applications of open source. This pervasiveness of the open source spirit in web design now means that you can use open source software to design both graphics and your CSS and HTML, and you can also use the dozens of reliable open source code resources or thousands of web design templates to base your own designs on. In this article we highlight 100 open source web design templates, resources, and tools.

The Best Directories of Free Open Source Web Design Templates

There are tons of free design template directories on the net, but sorting through all of them can be a very tedious process. Instead, we suggest that you start with these four, which we consider to be the best free open source design template directories online.

1. OSWD: Over 2,000 of the best freebie web design templates. Also allows for search capability by color, contrast, validation, and other categories.
2. OpenWebDesign:A large and active community of individuals who share free web design templates. Includes regular design contests and a sub-category of most popular designs to speed up your search.
   
3. Open Designs: Headed by a non-profit board, the open design community has almost 600 designs which have been vetted and moderated by the community’s volunteer board. Also includes a relatively active forum where designers can share tips and resources.
   
4. CSS Tinderbox: CSS Tinderbox prevents you from having to “reinvent the wheel” by providing very basic, yet solid, CSS/XHTML design templates from which you can build off of.
   

Read more here.

SEO Web Design the Basics

When you think about traditional advertising and the respective costs associated with it, we know for a fact that an advertisement placed in the Super Bowl costs more than local newspaper placement, but why?

Tag a Cloud

TagACloud is an Elite group of Web-Developers and Scientists of Marketing who have come together to create one of the most unique website ideas in recent history.

They have culminated their minds and creative powers to create from scratch, a purely intuitive website. They are from Albuquerque.

Retailers Revamp Web Sites With New Functions And Cleaner Looks

Retooling their e-commerce sites is a continuous exercise for online merchants as new technologies, capabilities and user behaviors and expectations evolve. Here's a look at the most recent upgrades at some of the leading CE specialty sites.

How To Organize Your Graphic Design Files and Folders

If you are a designer who works on multiple projects at a time, you know how important it is to stay organized. Saving files in various location, all with different file names, can be confusing and end up costing you time and money.

Tips On Getting Traffic To Your Blog Or Website

Maki discusses some ways you can get some quick traffic to your new blog or website. Do the following:

• Provide baits: these baits are the incentives you give to your visitors to visit your blog again and again. The baits could be quality content, useful tips and tricks, some online free tools, interviews with achievers, etc.
• Generate traffic for your baits: you can do this by letting people know about your baits through social networking websites, user forums and by writing to other bloggers.
• Build a community and sustain it: gather a community of dedicated readers who value your content.

Maki rightly stresses that marketing is really important. He says there should be a 30-70 ratio of content writing and marketing which means you should spend 30% of your blogging time generating content and 70% time promoting your blog. But marketing cannot, in any way, be underestimated because once you start getting a decent number of visitors to your blog or website, it becomes a great motivation to write content regularly, with greater frequency.

Search Engine Optimization

There is not much difference between SEO content and optimized content. As you may already know, SEO means search engine optimization.

Is The Page View Dead?

Nielsen/NetRatings dealt the aging Internet-audience metric its latest blow when the company said that it would no longer provide page-view rankings for Web sites.

Ten Tips for Avoiding Google Hell

Can’t get your site into the search engine rankings? Have pages that have sunk in their rankings? Wondering how Google and other search engines find your pages? Here are ten tips to help webmasters and online marketers promoting a website to understand just how the search engines work and how they get their information.

Ice Templates

Having a professional looking site is really important for the success of any business. If you ever heard someone saying that a website is not important for their business, it is because they have not utilized the proper resources to get their return on investment. Check out Ice Templates.

Creative Use of PNG Transparency in Web Design

Now that PNG transparency is finally getting some IE love, the world is its oyster—subtle gradients, overlays, and watermarks—all perfectly suited to the humble PNG. Jeff Croft gets our creative juices flowing, makes the technicalities clear, and includes some tips for helping older browsers play along, in this chapter from the new and absolutely delicious friends of ED book, Web Standards Creativity, written by some of the finest designers and developers in the web standards community. Read the article here.

Typography and Web Advertising: Making every Opportunity Count

Design principles and goals for web ads and print ads are similar—but the constraints seem starkly different. We can only benefit from standing back and taking a fresh look at our approach to these areas of web pages that need to pack a lot of punch within their tiny dimensions. Digital Web recently spoke with Alexander W. White’s about his new book, Advertising Design and Typography.

10 Reasons Why Content Shold Be Your #1 Priority

Web development isn't easy. There's no get-rich-quick scheme (that actually works) or a golden lamp with a genie waiting to grant you three wishes.

And too often, site development goes the way of the quick-and-easy. Put together a nice design, add some official-looking text, and wait for the traffic to pour in.

But it doesn't work like that.

Writing for the web

When creating, editing and designing content for the web, get the message across as quickly as possible.

Tutorials Round-Up: Ajax, CSS, PHP and More

Coding or designing a page, it’s always nice to have some basic templates you can quickly modify or adapt to your needs. However, at least once you have to know, how to create this “universal” template. In this case tutorials prove to be an ultimate solution, particularly if you just want to get an idea how something works and where to start from. Read more here.

Making Your pages load faster

Here's a great article by which the author provides information on how to load your web pages faster by combining and compressing javascript and css files.

Design on the cheap with open source software

So, you would like to be a designer. Ouch, it's going to cost you some dollars. Or does it have to.

Unfortunately, we don’t all have endless reserves of cash to spend on powerful computers and industry leading software. An alternative solution can be to acquire pirated software. But you know that every time legitimate software is copied a puppy gets run over, right? A more morally sound solution can be to delve into the geeky waters of open source software.

The open source movement is a community of dedicated geeks and nerds who develop alternative versions of commercial software, with all the features, bells and whistles, and distribute it for free (or donations). Personally, I’m a firm believer in you get what you pay for, but when you’re not paying anything you can’t really lose. So lets take a closer look at some open source design software.

The GNU Image Manipulation Program (The GIMP)

The GIMP is one of the most famous open source applications, and is considered by many as the open source alternative to Photoshop.

The down side is that the GIMP is pretty ugly - functional more than glossy - and the user interface isn’t the most intuitive. But if you can get over the bad looks, you’ll find a great personality. It offers many of the features and tools of Photoshop and can certainly hold up its own as a decent alternative.

The GIMP is available for PC, Mac and Linux, and can be downloaded from the GIMP website.

Gimpshop

Gimpshop is based on the GIMP application, but replicates as far as it can the feel of Photoshop by replacing the user interface. As the GIMP doesn’t have all the features of Photoshop it is not an exact like for like, but if you are comfortable with Photoshop but scared by the look of the GIMP, Gimpshop might be worth a try.

Gimpshop is available for PC, Mac and Linux, and can be downloaded from the Gimpshop website.

Pixelmator

Edit: Pixelmator is not actually open source. It will retail at $59 (US). The listing is shown here as it is still in interesting option for designers on a budget.

Pixelmator is currently in development but due for release later this year. It’s a Mac only affair, but worthy of mention because the preview screenshots look stunning. It promises many of the features of Photoshop and it looks very similar indeed. As it’s not been released yet, I can’t comment how it compares, but because I know designers are a superficial bunch who love good looks above all else, I know this will cause a stir when it’s released.

Pixelmator will be available for the Mac later this year. Further details are available from the Pixelmator website.

Inkscape

Inkscape is a vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Adobe Illustrator. Currently many of Inkscape’s functions are operated with keyboard shortcuts rather than contextual mouse-operated menus. This is great if you can learn all the functions but for a newcomer it’s a steep learning curve. Inkscape still lacks a few features that a professional designer might need, especially when preparing artwork for print. However, Inkscape is still at version 0.46 - it is very much a work in progress and is showing a lot of promise.

Inkscape is available for PC, Mac and Linux, and can be downloaded from the Inkscape website.

Pushing the boundaries of web design

Do you remember creating your first website?

Children of the web

How the second-generation Internet is spawning a global youth culture--and what business can do to cash in.

Introduction to CSS editing using Firebug

For anyone who’s not familiar with the Firefox add-on - you really should be, it’s a really cool hands-on way to edit or peruse code while you browse, read more, or get firebug here *snipped from the website

Firebug integrates with Firefox to put a wealth of web development tools at your fingertips while you browse. You can edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page.

Switchy McLayout: An Adaptive Layout Technique

CSS-based liquid layout has proven successful during the reign of 800-pixel to 1024-pixel screens, but as we use a wider range of devices to access the web, we need more powerful and flexible ways of managing layout. If we want to serve devices whose viewports range from 240 pixels to about 1680 pixels—and with resolution ranging from 72 to 150 pixels per inch—we need a new method.

Google PageRank

Everybody is using it, but (almost) nobody really knows how it works. Google PageRank is probably one of the most important algorithms ever developed for the Web.

Internet Marketing - Search Engine Optimization - Google

Google Boys. Andrew Hazen, President of Prime Visibility speaks with Google Boys regarding Search Engine Optimization and Marketing.

Documentary: The Next Web

An iChat Video interview with 5 Internet Influentials who answer 5 basic questions in almost 20 minutes. Tim O'Reilly from O'Reilly Media, Steve Rubel from Edelman and Micropersuasion.com, Matt Mullenweg from WordPress, Marten Mickos from MySQL and Jay Adelson, CTO and co-founder of Digg.com tell us what the Next Web will look like.

10 ways to lose visitors to your website

Here are some issues that could drive visitors away from a site and many of these factors can impact all types of website.

Web Design Trend: Monkey See Monkey Do

Ever wonder what happened to the wonderful days when you could find a site that was truly original.

Avinash at PodTech

Avinash Kaushik [Analytics Evangelist for Google] speaks with Jeremiah Owyang about kicking off a web analytics strategy for your corporate web program. This is a 15 minute video.

Measure Effective Of Your Web Pages

Avinash Kaushik offers information on focus on metrics, key performance indicators and tips on how to measure effectiveness of individual pages.

Checklist: Before you start a web design project

Martin Hardee provides some insightful information on having a good checklist at hand before starting a web design project.

60 Elegant and Visually Appealing Designs

Another great list from SmashingMagazine where you ’ll find 60 fresh, elegant, professional and visually appealling designs, which pay close attention to details and manage to remain simple, user-friendly and nice-looking.

Creating bulletproof graphic link buttons with CSS

A very useful technique that uses an image-based button to expand and contract based on the amount of text it contains.

Five Techniques for Getting Buy-In for Usability Testing

Christine Perfetti outlines the 5 best techniques for convincing management and key stakeholders of the benefits of incorporating usability testing into the formal design process. It's easier than you think.

Here's another helpful tip on web usability testing.

Coding for Content

Most of us have read countless articles and books about (X)HTML and CSS, but, especially early on in our careers, we wonder what goes on in the mind of someone adept at markup and code. What exactly is the thought process? Is it the same every time, or does one start by focusing on a specific challenge in a design? Veteran front-end developer and designer—and regular Digital Web columnist—Garrett Dimon shares his thoughts as he takes on the markup challenges behind his latest personal blog redesign. Read more

Observing SEO Best Practices When Designing Your Website

Often we get asked to do search engine optimization for various clients who have existing websites. We will review the websites, and we are amazed at the blatant mistakes made by the previous webmasters.

Part 2 here

Weebly challenges TypePad, WordPress

Weebly got its start as an easy to use web publishing tool, targeting individuals and small business owners. Its drag-and-drop offering was dead simple and has helped the company attract over 25,000 users.

Strategy With Design

From BusinessWeek to Davos, design is being heralded as an essential contribution to successful corporate strategy and innovation. But it wasn’t that long ago that many corporations only thought of design as a way to “make things pretty”.

Understanding Your Web Audience

Although there are lots of elements to consider when designing compelling Web experiences (writing style, look and feel, information organization -to name just a few), there is one "knowable" element that can be used to appraise the rest: audience.

11th Annual Webby Awards

Webby Honorees, Nominees and Winners truly represent the best of the Web. They are but a small percentage of total entries and have been chosen by members of the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences based on a number of creative and functional criteria. See them all here.

The New Google Analytics

Avinash Kaushik writes a very detailed post about the new-look Google Analytics that is rolling out across accounts right now.

Now, more than ever web analytics are essential. In my experience, web analytics at museums have been the last thing on people’s busy timetables. Most organisations report the most basic level of statistics to their funding bodies and leave it at that, yet they offer the best and most immediate opportunity to see exactly what users are doing on your site and how they are using it.

Redesigning the ExpressionEngine website

Observing design process is always interesting, particularly if the results is both functional and beautiful. Review the site here: ExpressionEngine.com.

Jesse Bennett-Chamberlain talks about about the redesign in this article.

Design View/Any Rutledge-Web Standards: It's about quality, not compliance.

The Web standards movement faces widespread resistance and apathy, in part, for the most ridiculous of reasons. These reasons are unnecessarily supported by poorly chosen terminology and how the message is being communicated.

Web-Typography

Graphic designers know that layouts with a consistent baseline will look much better than inconsistent ones. Even if you are not a graphic designer, this is an easy way to make your text look tidy. Check out Baseline Rhythm Calculator, and see how it can be used to generate a basic stylesheet with the proper calculations. The unwritten rule in web-typography says that the perfect proportion lies somewhere between 1:1.5 and 1:1.7.

11 Almost Perfect Business Layouts

Business companies tend to impress visitors with solid site structures, precise navigation and the credibility of presented content. Therefore business layouts are usually quite unspectacular, mostly informative, but not attractive. It’s an appropriate approach if you want to inform your visitors, but what should you do if you want to attract users’ attention? How to combine serious tone with attractive design? Smashing Magazine decided to figure it out and selected 11 almost perfect business designs / layouts used by companies from different countries of the world.

70 Expert Ideas for Better CSS Coding

Smashing Magazine does it again with a superb list of little CSS tips & tricks to increase your productivity.

Unlocking the mysteries of Webspeak

Maybe it's because the Internet is a social haunt of the young, or maybe it's because network technology is a science that requires specific terminology, but the Web has always had a jargon all its own.

Personas and Storytelling

"Personas work because they tell stories. Stories are part of every community. They communicate culture, organize and transmit information. Most importantly, they spark the imagination as you explore new ideas. They can ignite action." - courtesy of craig marion

19 Things NOT to Do When Building a Website

Here's a list of some basic and fundamental rules that all webmasters must learn when developing a website that needs to make actual money.

Why Simplicity is Essential to Web Design

A simple website charges you less time. A complex website charges you more time. Time is your most precious resource.

Creating User Friendly 404 Pages

We understand what 404 means: Page Not Found. But the average internet user has no idea what 404 means or what to do about it. To them, it's yet another unintelligible error message from the computer.

Read more.

Joomla

Joomla! is one of the most powerful Open Source Content Management Systems on the planet. It is used all over the world for everything from simple websites to complex corporate applications. Joomla! is easy to install, simple to manage, and reliable.

Free! Icons for your website or application

List of some amazing icons by various artists who have made their work available to the general public for a variety of uses. These icons are all free. - By Kirk Montgomery

Top 5 annoying buzzwords clients give you

The Top 5 buzzwords clients use to describe how they want their site to look.

Is Less Really More?

In terms of design and development, is less really more?

Weekly Design Resources

Some links to web design resources.

Internet Spider Bot is More Popular than Spider Man

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a systematic, inexpensive, thought-intensive procedure that helps a website get a higher ranking in search engines. In simple words, effective SEO makes sure that your page appears within the top results. Read the article.

Cascading Style Sheets

CSS 3 is a great site covering various CSS properties such as font-variant, lists, classification,...

CSS Vault

Great website where you're shown great sites that use CSS so that others can be inspired to use the technology.

XHTML in Layman's Terms

Everything that goes up must come...

Web Site of the week: CBT

Sites for architectural studios are the most consistently visually satisfying. Like any self-promotional vehicle, they serve a very specific purpose: to garner new projects and to recruit employees.

SEO and Your Web Site

We all know the importance of having a Web site rank well in search engine results for searches on specific keywords/phrases. If your Web site doesn’t have a page appearing in the top 10 search engine result positions (SERPs) the chances of someone clicking on your listing, and actually visiting your site, drop dramatically. If you’re not in the top 20 you have almost no chance that someone will scan through the SERPs that far to find your page.

Packaging Design for Web-based Products

Rip. Crinkle. Pop. The sounds of unpacking that eagerly anticipated product you just brought home from the store are music to the ears. Each successive layer of packaging reveals new information or reiterates the reasons you put down your hard-earned money for the consumer goodness now in your hands.

What is Deep Link Ratio?

Answer: Deep link percentage is the % of all your backlinks (or inbound links) that point at pages other than your home page. Read the article here.

Design Questions Every Website Should Address for Success

Views and news on the holistic approach to usability, seo/sem, accessibility and organic, people on purpose web design.

10 Things to keep in mind when changing a site design

When you create a new site design, you should always remember a few key points. If you don’t, not only is it bad for search engines, but also visitors.

Internet Marketing Best [Blog] Posts of 2006: The Year in Review

Various links that reflect on some of the best blog posts and books regarding Internet Marketing.