Archive for October, 2010

Found Friday Vol 31

October 29, 2010

Hey all, and welcome to volume 31 of Found Fridays – the best design finds of the week. This week we’re all over the place: some fun Halloween wallpapers for your desktop, a great article on effective call-to-action buttons, furniture made from old mines (yes, mines), a must-read article for designers on justifying your design decisions, and a complete guide to WordPress as a CMS. Read on!

Festive Halloween Wallpapers to Ghost Your Screen

It’s that time of year! Know how I know? It snowed in Edmonton the other day. Thus, it must be close to Halloween. Anyway, get in the moment and rock one of these Halloween wallpapers. Well-designed to boot!

Halloween Desktop Wallpapers

Attract Your Visitors With Call-to-Action Buttons : Best Examples

We’ve had a few questions of late from clients about call-to-action buttons – namely, their purpose and how they’re to be used. Here’s a good article talking about these very things, and showcasing some great examples.

Best Call to Action Buttons

Mine Furniture

Yes, this is furniture made from old mines. Sounds crazy – and it is – but it’s awesome. Just look at the fireplace and tell me you don’t want it.

Mine Fireplace

When A Thousand Words Is Worth A Picture

As designers, we are constantly faced with the need to explain our design decisions & why we made them. It can be difficult at times, as we’ve all had clients who hire us for our expertise and then don’t use it. Read this article on Smashing Magazine to understand the importance of justifying your design decisions to clients and to learn best practices to do so effectively.

Justifying Your Design Decisions

The Complete WordPress-as-a-CMS Guide

We are unabashed WordPress fiends. We use it as a CMS for a variety of reasons – it’s easy for clients to learn, it has a huge user base, it’s open source and more. This article goes in-depth about using WordPress as a CMS – read it if you’re interested in jumping into the WP realm, or even if you’re already a seasoned WP user. You might learn something new!

Wordpress as a CMS

That’s it! See you next week.

Graphic design is a saturated field. Just look at the amount of design blogs, this one included, out there in Internet-land. Yes, there are many of us providing our services for clients – whether those services are web design, identity design, print design, all of the above or some combination. Getting into the graphic design field and providing services is one thing, but being a responsible designer is another. What, then, is a “responsible” designer?

How to be a Responsible Designer

As experts in our field, we have responsibilities to uphold. Three main responsibilities that come to the top of my mind are ethics, honesty, and environmental responsibility. These obvious don’t encompass everything about being a responsible designer, but it’s a good start. I welcome additions in the comments.

Read the whole article >

Found Friday Vol 30

October 22, 2010

Welcome, internet trailblazers, to volume 30 of Found Friday – the best design finds of the week. This week, we have a roundup of the new announcements from Apple, a gangstafied Lorem Ipsum site, an online caricature-drawing service for $50, A List Apart’s web survey, and a free online web development estimation tool. Great stuff all around!

All the Cool New Stuff from Apple

Crazy thin Macbook Air? Check. New OS? Check. Facetime for Mac? Check. Mac App Store? Che… wait, what?!

All the Cool New Apple Stuff

Gangsta Lorem Ipsum

I’ve been known to have some fun with client mockups, from using placeholder photos of George Clooney & Fabio to sending along fake mockups drawn in MS Paint. If you’re like me, then, you’ll love the opportunity to use Gangsta Lorem Ipsum. If you can’t have any fun, why do anything at all?

Gangsta Lorem Ipsum

Caricature Pro

Caricatures are a specific skill, and if you’re looking to brand yourself (or your client) as a welcoming, laid-back business person, Caricature Pro might be an option worth looking in to. Mine would probably end up with a giant head biceps.

Caricature Pro

The Survey for People Who Make Websites

A List Apart runs annual survey designed to gather information from web designers like you and I. Help out your own industry, take 5 minutes, and complete this survey!

A List Apart Web Design Survey

Astuteo Web Development Project Estimator

A great little tool for those not completely sure about what to charge for a project, or to see if what you’re currently charging is accurate. Glad to say we were bang on! There are some items in the form that I hadn’t really thought of articulating to clients too, so that was a bonus.

Astuteo Project Estimator

That’s it! See you next week!

I remember the first album cover that truly grabbed my attention: Meatloaf’s Bat Out of Hell. Why my dad had a Bat Out of Hell LP, I don’t know. What I do know is that image of a guy on the chopper bursting out of hell in a cemetery on the cover, made me think, “I need to listen to this record.”

The Changing Landscape of Album Design

Such is the power of album art. It draws the viewer in. It can expand the story of the album. It can increase album sales. In some cases it can even achieve legendary status, like Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon or the Beatles’ Abbey Road. For years, designers have worked alongside musicians and record labels to create imagery and packaging that brings an album to completion. However, the landscape of album art is changing drastically with the rise of iTunes and similar digital music providers, and as graphic designers we need to adapt.

Album Sales Figures

If we look at Soundscan’s 2009 stats for music sales in the United States, there are a few numbers that jump out.

  • Music sales overall went up 2.1% – good news for the music industry and thus for the design industry.
  • Digital singles sold 8.3% more than the previous year, and digital albums themselves rose 16.1%.
  • Vinyl sales climbed 33%, but still only make up 1.6% of total sales (2.5 million units compared to 1.55 billion units).
  • 297.6 million physical albums were sold; of this, 76.4 million were digital albums.

What do these numbers tell us? Basically, digital sales continue to rise while physical album sales continue to decline. Read the whole article >

Found Friday Vol 29

October 15, 2010

Welcome to Found Friday, Volume 29: the best design finds of the week. This week we found some great stuff on the ol’ interwebs: a great article on usability findings that can help you back up your design decisions; a collection of great online color/code/web-related generators; a great quick tip on creating better spotlighting effects in Photoshop for web design; a fun dueling piggy bank; and a new website with some great, free design elements. Read on, readers!

Usability Resources to Win Arguments

Aesthetics are not ammunition enough to convince your client that your design decisions are good. What you need, when it comes to web design, is actual findings that back up your decisions from a usability/user experience end. This article (combative title aside) has a bunch of great findings sure to help you win over your next client.

Usability Findings

40 Useful Online Generators

Color schemes, grid layouts, CSS and more – this article covers a bunch of great code and color generators out there for web designers. Sometimes generators are a quicker way to reach the right solution, so it’s worth a read in my opinion.

40 Useful Online Generators

Quick Tip: How to Increase the Quality of Large Spotlights in Photoshop

Spotlights, and lighting effects in general, can add a lot to a web design. However, sometimes large radial gradients or soft brushes result in unsightly banding effects – this article has a great, quick way to combat that. Read it. I COMMAND YOU.

Photoshop Spotlight Tutorial

Duel Savings Bank

Duel Savings Bank makes saving fun! And competitive! I always dig designs that make the mundane a little more fun; the Duel Savings Bank does that very thing. Check it out!

Duel Savings Bank

Design Kindle

There are a bunch of “free design resources” sites out there, but Design Kindle is the new kid on the block. Their stock isn’t huge right now, but the quality is great and their site design is as well.

Design Kindle

Until next time… enjoy your weekend!

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