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.

Screenalcio.us

Screenalicio.us is the web's new premier source for showcasing excellent websites and inspire artists all alike to create spectacular work of their own.

They have the largest collection of websites you will ever lay your eyes on, and it keeps on growing every day.

All you got to do is start browsing. Go on. Get inspired!

A Digital Magazine Awarding Super Hot Websites

Here's a great web site that was established in 2005 to promote and award websites that exhibit outstanding design qualites...Website Design Awards.

Websites of the Week

24-7media.de


annielennox.co.uk

Retro Style

Revised versions of past styles is a common and very popular technique. It is found in advertising, cd design, fashion, and of course, website design. It is done for a variety of reasons, sometimes driven by the content of the site and at other times by the desire to associate the site with some element of the past.

Web Page Development: Best Practices

Apple's Developer Connection web site offers some very good information on best practices for building web sites. The article offers some practical hints on how to create standards-conforming websites, and to work around some issues that will arise on Explorer's browser.

Ten questions for Patrick Griffiths

Patrick Griffiths (or PTG) is a London-based freelance webmaker. He is most widely known for his site HTML Dog, an HTML and CSS resource for beginners and experts alike. The 10 questions.

Articles & Tutorials on Good Web Practices

Check out this site for helpful information on good web practices when building your web site.

Batch Processing Images

Here's a great tutorial using Photoshop to turn a bunch of digital photos into thumbnails, and then format them on a web page with Dreamweaver.

Design Melt Down

A great site that covers design elements, trends, and problems in web design.

Looking for some good text tricks?

Mandarin Design offers some very good methods by which to add in some unique text tricks to your web site.

eHub

Emily Chang has jumped into the middle of what everyone seems to be whispering about these days. She’s part of the Web2.0 Work group, a member of TheCorantNetwork, has been involved in the creation of eighty plus websites.

eHub is a constantly updated list of web applications, services, resources, blogs or sites with a focus on next generation web (web 2.0), social software, blogging, Ajax, Ruby on Rails, location mapping, open source, folksonomy, design and digital media sharing.

CSS Help Pile

There are some amazing resources available for creating powerful standards-based websites (a quick look at this site's inspiration proves that). Unfortunately, often these resources aren't centralized and searching for specific information can often lead to getting lost in a maze of links -- this is an especially daunting task when you're not exactly sure what you're searching for. The css help pile is an attempt to centralize linkage to those resources and tips in a collected and organized manner. The css help pile doesn't intend to compete with these resources, but rather, to promote access and discussion to many of the resources that are out there. CSS Help Pile

Web Developer's Handbook

Check out Vitaly Friedman's web site titled Web Developer's Handbook. It had information stemming from CSS layouts, color tools, typography, and more.

Did you take your Vitamin today?

The web has undoubtedly entered a new and exciting phase. Designers, developers and entrepreneurs are energized, refueled and producing some mind-blowing projects. The buzz is most definitely back! Vitamin is a brand new online magazine dedicated to that new web industry.

Vitamin will inspire you, teach you, advise you and sometimes test you with its in-depth features, audio interviews, training sessions and reviews.

It’s updated every week, and it’s free! So whether you just want to get dirty with the code or plan to topple Google with your next cunning web app idea, Vitamin is your new best friend.

Check out Luke Wroblewski's blog site about Interface Design

Functioning Form is a blog about interface design. That is to say, it is where art and technology emerge as experience, where message and medium meld, and where interactions are useful, usable, and enjoyable.

Web 2.0 Has Corporate America Spinning

What every CEO needs to know about the array of new tools that foster online collaboration -- and could revolutionize business.

Web Standards

What are web standards and why should I care about them? Read on and find out why.

GOOGLE LOOKS TO SPIFF UP ITS DESIGN

Don't look now, but Douglas Bowman is joining Google as ``visual design lead.''

Bowman's work includes a redesign of the Wired News site a few years ago. More recently, he punched up some of the templates for Blogger, and apparently helped with Google Calendar.

It'll be interesting to see what influence Bowman has over Google products. It's a company that's never really been known for its design sensibility -- fairly or not.

Bowman notes on his blog a very cool Google Calendar feature that lets you get a daily agenda of your appointments via SMS whenever you need it. Very nice.

Bowman said he would be helping Google establish a ``common visual language'' across all its products including Gmail, Writely, Page Creator and other projects in the pipeline.

See and read some of Bowman's work and interviews.

[courtesy of the San Jose Mercury News]

Preparing for Widescreen

The metrics of screen width are already beginning to change. A quick glance at the Web sites for Dell, HP/Compaq and Gateway shows that at least 75% of laptops are now offered with widescreens.

What Is Web 2.0?

Web 2.0 generally refers to a second generation of services available on the World Wide Web that lets people collaborate and share information online.

Internet Glossary

If you're looking for the meaning of various web terms, take a look at Motive.

Font Savvy

If you're in need for some new fonts, try Font Savvy.

Web Sites of The Week

ContourCase
It's all we can hope for - clean, clear, I know what it's about and how to use it, plus fantastic and fresh design!



Rescuing Da Vinci
A different take: this time intricately woven interface with a purpose - unraveling the world of how Da Vinci's art was stolen by Hitler and recovered. Darker tones set the feeling well for this graphical story. Nice work.



JasonLimon
Best looking portfolio site of the week I'd say... nothing earth shattering, but solid, clean attractive design... tell me it's not becoming a lost art!

How to conduct a Web site competitive analysis

Conducting a competitive analysis is an important part of the job if you're a usability engineer or information architect. A good competitive analysis not only produces usability metrics but also aids decision makers in their strategic goal-setting and planning.

Zen Garden

A demonstration of what can be accomplished visually through CSS-based design.

What Are HTML Meta Tags? (Meta Tag Tutorial)

Meta tags are hidden html tags of an html document that are not displayed in a browser but provide a browser or search engine robot with useful information.

Teacher John

Here's a great web site from Teacher John [ John Govsky ] covering web graphics, CSS, HTML, and tons of resources.

Seven Accessibility Mistakes (Part 1 & 2)

Everyone makes mistakes. Avoid fatal flaws by learning about the top seven ways designers and clients contribute to inaccessible Web sites. In the first part of a two-part series, you’ll find out how taking too much responsibility and planning for only the direst of circumstances can undermine your accessibility project.
Part 1 Part 2

Web Sites of The Week: General

JasonLimon

Best looking portfolio site of the week I'd say... nothing earth shattering, but solid, clean attractive design... tell me it's not becoming a lost art!

Gulyas Jozsef

Love the photo transitions and the mood of the photos. This is an elegant personal portfolio site with a fantastic infectious feel. Once again, simplicity with ELEGANCE takes the day! Ok, the site is in Hungarian, but you'll like it just the same.

StratoCucine

Italian kitchens... wow.. what a nicely done design and site. Clean, slick, clean, slick, clean slick! Nice layouts, transitions, colors, photos. All cohesive and makes me want that high end hardware man!

Web Design rom Scratch

'Web Design from Scratch' aims to be a complete guide to web design for eveyone interested in creating effective web pages.

Wufoo

If you can submit it, we can build it. Making forms easy+fast+fun.

Live by the Mockup, Die by the Mockup

Luke Wroblewski talks about the Mockup. The term itself brings to mind the duality inherent in this omnipresent design artifact. It’s both a direct...

htmldog.com

HTML Dog is a guide and resource, for beginners and experts alike, to the most commonly used technologies in making web pages - HTML and CSS.

Looking for web books?

Looking for web books? Check out Peachpit.

CSS Sprites: Image Slicing's Kiss of Death

Say goodbye to old-school slicing and dicing when creating image maps, buttons, and navigation menus. Instead, say hello to a deceptively simple yet powerful sprite-based CSS solution.

Web Design Times

Web Design Times is a new daily news and information resource for web designers.

Web Sites of the Week

Chris Garrett is a young designer based in Gloucestershire, UK. He's been working in new media for over 4 years now.
http://chrisgarrettmedia.com

Stylegala is an online resource and inspiration guide for web agencies, designers and developers who take interest in websites that combine the powers of design, web standards and CSS.
http://www.stylegala.com

Yahoo! Developer Network

Do you eat, sleep and breathe JavaScript? This is your source for information for using JavaScript with Yahoo! Web Services APIs.

'Instant' Domain Search

This site is designed to help you find the right domain name for your web site. Just start typing.

Early and Often: How to avoid the design revision death spiral

David Cronin covers the lessons one can learn from client collaboration, and how critical it is success.

Top 5 Firefox Extensions for Web Designers

One of the best features of Firefox is that it can be expanded with a wide range of optional extensions. There are extensions to help with blogging, privacy, working with RSS files, or just having fun. Here’s a list of the 5 extensions most useful when doing web design.

CSS Curly Quotes

Simon Collison recently explained how to create Swooshy Curly Quotes Without Images using CSS. It’s a nice technique that works cross-browser, but you have to add tags to your markup for it to work. Here is an alternate technique that requires no changes to your markup that will work in modern CSS2 compatible browsers like Firefox.

Five simple steps designing grid systems

Mark Boulton is an award-winning typographic designer based in Cardiff, UK. Specialising in clean functional design. In this article he points out steps in going about designing grid systems.

Web Sites of the Week

1- Well design site for a great architeture firm.
http://www.hillier.com

2- For the sports person inside us all.
http://www.nike.com/

3- Designer site that provides clients with interactive and print design solutions.
http://www.firstbornmultimedia.com/

Sensible Forms: A Form Usability Checklist

Brian Crescimanno, discusses ow often the smallest usability quirks, creat the biggest annoyances for users and forms.

Writing a Web Business Plan

So, you've mastered HTML, CSS and Perl. You have a great sense of intuitive design. Now, can you write a great business plan for your client? Find out by Scott Kramer, what steps to take to make it happen.

Clean, Crisp Web Design: How To Create Clean Looking Designs

Tim Donahue offers some great ideas on how to go about creating a great web design that clean and inviting to the eye.

Web Sites of the Week

1-Bold design, and nice use of Flash to show off stunning photos!
tonygarcia.com

2-Great creative feel to this site. Fun 3-D images.
design-insights

3-Nike has put together a great looking site that is clean and yet provides greats tips for the beginner and expert runners.
nike.com

Cool Web Designs

Here's a great web site I browse to get ideas. Hope you'll like it.

Navigation Systems: A Visual Perspective

Go here to read a Powerpoint presentation by Reshma Kumar and Marina Naito, discussing the the methods by which to structure a web navigation system.

Web Production Tips

Envision Internet Consulting, LLC offers some great tips when it comes to web production.

Understanding You Web Audience

A detailed understanding of your target audience provides you with an effective metric by which to evaluate all your design decisions: structure (content and organization), visual presentation (personality and tone), and interaction (functionality and behavior). Luke Wroblewski expands on this concept. Read more here.

Filling Amazon's Tall Orders

See how the world's largest online retailer ensures that gifts get delivered on one of the busiest shopping -- and shipping -- days of the year.

Style versus Design

Jeffrey Zeldman offers his insights into understanding the difference about style and design, and what it's all about. Check out his PDF.

Some tricks to use in CSS

Trenton Moss offers some of his tips and tricks to using CSS.

Ten Rules for Web Startups

Wanting to start your own web design company. Here are some helpful tips.

Email Design Guidelines for 2006

As 2005 draws to a close, here are some key email design trends and guidelines to pay attention to now and into the new year.

Top 10 Custom JavaScript functions of all time

For those who like usinging javascript, here's a link to see functions to use on your web site.

Tag, your it

Tagging has quickly gained popularity because it allows human beings to bring intuitive organization to what otherwise would be largely anonymous entries in an endless sea of data. Read more about it here.

How To Be a Successful Freelancer, Part 1

Ryan Carson article looks at how following some easy methods, you can set yourself aprt from the masses.

Design Choices Can Cripple a Web site

Good article by Nick Usborne covers how a well designed website will have a dramatic impact on conversion rates, for better or for worse.

Web Design Studio of the Week

Check our our web design studio of the week. Added Sugar Media is a full service graphic design and advertising agency located in historic downtown Boston. Their design and production abilities have expanded far beyond their humble roots as a web site design company. They have been recognized as a multifaceted design house providing their clients with superior identity and branding solutions capable of capturing the essence of their business philosophy.

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.

Note: This article also exists in French at Pompage.net, translated (with permission) by Stéphane Deschamps: Les coulisses d’un design.

11 Ways to Improve Landing Pages

You’re about to launch a big online marketing campaign complete with media buys, search engine placement, banner ads and blog buzz. You’ve tested your creative and your clickthrough rate is strong. You know once you go live, tons of targeted traffic will be hitting your site.

Time to sit back and relax, right? Not quite yet.

Best of the Web: BusinessWeek

Best of the New Web

The Web is no longer for idle wanderings or passive viewing. It's about socializing, sharing--and creating

It's A Whole New Web

And this time around it will be built by you

Content: Voices Of The People

Graphic: Home

E-Society: My World Is Cyworld

Graphic: Play

Tagging: Keeping Tabs On The Net

Graphic: Work

School Aid: It Takes A Web Site

Graphic: Public Domain

Ajax: How To Weave A Faster Web

Graphic: Toolbox

Online Extra: A Plethora of Web Picks

Our Best of The Web survey drew a huge response from readers. Compare their picks to those of BW editors

Online Extra: Jakob Nielsen on the Unwieldy Web

The Web usability whiz says some sites are getting better, but far too many remain too complex and frustrating for typical users.

Macromedia Blog Site

For those of you who use Macromedia products [and who doesn't], here's a great blog site that covers a lot.

Design in-Flight

The well respected digital magazine Design in Flight was cancelled a few weeks ago but now it is back in an online edition. With contributors like Eric Meyer, Jason Santa Maria, Jon Hicks, Mark Boulton, Keith Robinson, Molly Holzschlag, Eris Free and others this is one magazine that should end up in your bookmarks.

Back in April Veerle Blog wrote an article about Color Theory: Choosing color combinations that you now can read online for free. So if you ever wondered about the wonderful world of colors maybe it is something for you. Give Design in Flight a try I think you'll love it. Good luck Andy with your online adventure!

Tips for your web site

Illustration by Ron Deviney

Match Colors Between Images in Photoshop
Photoshop's Match Color adjustment is a powerful tool for matching colors between two images. Photoshop Tips

Reinventing the Brand Identity of AG Hair Products
After expanding its line from 4 to 28 products, AG Hair Products turned to Dossier Creative for brand coordination. Graphic Design Tips

Correct Exposures with Shadow/Highlight in Photoshop
The Shadow/Highlight feature, first introduced in Photoshop CS, can reveal shadow detail and enhance highlights. Photoshop Tips

Add Color to Images with Levels and Variations in Photoshop
This black-and-white image becomes hot through the application of a little Photoshop wizardry. Photoshop Tips

Best of Website Design Winners: Step Inside Design

For all your web designers and web designers to be, take a look here for some inspiration on various web site winners, courtesy of Step Inside Design magazine.

DSF - Robust CSS Drop Shadows

Drop shadows are cool, but adding them to elements of a web page can be a pain. You can fiddle with background images, tables, pure CSS solutions, Internet Explorer PNG limitations, or fixed single-use shadows tied to an image and a particular background.

The latest release of TypePad has a new popup (or flyout) interface element which presents the user with a set of options or an expanded view of an object when clicked on. The flyouts are similar to the location bubbles used in Google Maps. They have soft alpha-blended drop shadows that scale with the size of the box. The drop shadows are implemented in valid XHTML and CSS, with no CSS hacks or JavaScript. We call it ydnar Drop-Shadow-Fu.

Article is courtesy of Randy 'ydnar' Redding

Search Engine Watch

Here's a great resource for search engines that provides tips and information about searching the web, analysis of the search engine industry, and help to site owners trying to improve their ability to be found in search engines.

PCWorld.com - New Version of Firefox Coming in Late Summer

The next version of the Firefox Web browser, which will be called Firefox 1.5, is slated for release later this summer, and development work continues on new features that include an automatic update service.

Background Color Selector

Check out this site for you or aspiring Web artists who want to experiment with a wide variety of text and background color schemes.

Design Project

Here's an interesting web site covering design examples, interviews with leading designers, tutorials and so on.

Usable Web

Usable Web is a stale collection of links about information architecture, human factors, user interface issues, and usable design specific to the World Wide Web.

The Principles of Design: In Theory and Practice

If you work on the Web, organizing your time and work is critical. Many professionals—from information architects to graphic designers—find themselves acting as the “glue” of a project, liaising between client and manager. So how do you stay on top of deadlines, drawings, and disputes? Columnist Joshua Kaufman shares his productivity insights as an IA in Part I of “Getting IA Done.” Read more

The Principles of Design

Take a step back from the nitty-gritty of style sheet jigs and alpha-channel jogs to examine the defining principles of your profession. After all, Web design is part of a much larger world of design. If you’ve been getting by on gut feel, here’s your chance to make your projects even stronger with a primer in design basics. Read more

Template Design Competition

It’s hard to believe, but Style Master, Webciv’s full-featured CSS editor, will be six years old on 9 September. To celebrate, Westciv is holding a Style Master Templates Competition with over US $1000 in cash prizes:

The competition challenges designers to develop stylish, standards-based CSS + XHTML templates that can be reused and adapted by developers around the world.

In addition to offering a high-quality CSS product, Westciv has long been a source of knowledge, offering free tutorials on standards-based design from novice- to expert-level, including their famous Complete CSS Guide. Westciv, in tandem with the W3C’s Australian office, is sponsoring this month’s Web Essentials 04 conference in Sydney (and I would be speaking there if not for Mr Stork’s impending bundle)

Inspiration

Looking for inspiration on how to create that next great web site for your customer? Check out some of these great designers web sites and their work:

1. Amy Burnham. Graphic and Web designer extraordinaire.
2. Nick Finck. Here's a mantra: Design, design, design.
3. Lynda Weinman. She is the Empress in my imaginary Tarot deck.

True Colors

Are you practicing safe color? Do you care? While the challenge of interoperable color has been somewhat ameliorated by the spread of better color-management systems, achieving consistent color across computers, platforms, and browsers is still very difficult, if not downright impossible.