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Archive for the ‘Found Fridays’ Category

Found Friday Vol 43

February 11, 2011

Welcome to Found Friday Vol 43; the best design finds of the week! This week we have the following: a great article on measuring the effectiveness of web designs, a roundup of new web tools/fonts etc for designers, a digital note-taking machine, a new file format for eco-friendly designers, and beautiful letterpress wallpaper.

How to Measure the Effectiveness of Web Designs

If you’re a freelance web designer, or if you run your own web design business, you learn pretty quickly that the sites you’re building need to be effective. They can’t just look nice, or else you’ll quickly run out of clients. This article outlines some tools and ways to measure your web design effectiveness.

What’s New For Web Designers – Feb 2011

There are always a boatload of new fonts, web apps, tools and more being released every month that aid designers in their day-to-day. This article highlights some of the best of February 2011.

NoteSlate

A simple, beautiful, relatively cheap way to record digital notes. If the iPad is too much for you, check out the NoteSlate.

Save as WWF

WWF file format is a new development from the World Wildlife Foundation – essentially, it’s a PDF that can’t be printed (thus saving trees). Check it out. (via swiss-miss)

Letterpress Wallpaper

Type nerds, rejoice! Share your love of typefaces by wallpapering your house!

See you next week.

Found Friday Vol 42

February 4, 2011

Forty-two Found Fridays later, and this week we bring you: a must-read article on branding vs. logos, a bunch of WordPress hacks to avoid plugins, a good read on combining typefaces, an article on increasing traffic to your site, and a new website gathering a bunch of well-known designers and their life-changing books. Yes, it’s a solid Found Friday this week. Tell your friends!

The Brand Power! It’s More Than Just a Logo

I’m guilty of this -misusing the terms “brand”, “logo” and “identity”. My excuse is laziness and general poor vernacular. I know, what an excuse. But this article is a must-read, especially for graphic designers working with new, small businesses who don’t have a lot of experience in the areas of logos and branding.

20 WordPress Theme Hacks

WordPress rules, partially due to the breadth of plugins that can do near-anything you would want on a website. However, if we rely too much on plugins, the end result is be a slower site with potential for plugin conflicts. Read this article to learn a few tricks on avoiding plugins by hardcoding in functionality into your next website design.

Eight Ways to Combine Typefaces

Like everything in design, there is a rhyme and reason with regards to combining typefaces. Read this article for some thoughts and good general typeface-combining tips.

Effective Ways to Increase Web Traffic

Everyone wants to be “number one on the Google”. While not always an attainable goal, this article has some great tips on how to increase traffic – and hopefully, business – to your website.

Designers & Books

It seems like anyone who is any good at their craft is well-read. Check out this newly launched website, designed by Pentagram, which lists well-known designers and their life-altering books.

See you next week!

Found Friday Vol 41

January 28, 2011

In this, the forty-first volume of Found Fridays, we have the following: handy wordpress snippets, a site that collects and showcases awesome web button designs, a gorgeous HTML5/CSS3 music player, a really nicely designed bluetooth stereo, and a great collection of the best jQuery plugins of 2010. Read on!

Useful & Timesaving WordPress Snippets

WordPress is like playing the bass: relatively easy to learn, but you can spend years trying to master it. This tips & snippets will help you on your path to becoming All Knowing WordPress Master.

House of Buttons

Bookmark this site for the next time you’re stumped trying to design buttons for a website. Great collection (via swiss-miss).

ZEN Player

Even if you have no web design projects that require music players in the near future, click through to see this player just for its craftsmanship. HTML5 & CSS3, so make sure you’re using a modern browser. On the site, the author mentions that he’ll be uploading the source to github, so hopefully we can see some multi-song offshoots soon!

Sound Freaq Stereo

This stereo is a) beautifully designed, b) affordable, and c) Bluetooth compatible. That means you can have your iPod next to you, streaming tunes across the room to this stereo. Pretty solid for your web design studio, no? Want.

75 Most Useful jQuery Plugins of 2010

A somewhat overwhelming list, but worth slogging through. There are some great solutions in here that might save your hair on your next website build.

See you next week!

Found Friday Vol 40

January 21, 2011

Ahoy hoy. It’s time for Found Friday – volume 40. To send you off on your weekend, we have the following this week: an article on the elements of retro web design, an article on email etiquette (some great tips), a look at the new HTML5 logo, a tutorial on styling WordPress navigation for you noobs out there, and a good read from Smashing Magazine on identifying good/bad clients.

The Elements of Retro Web Design

This article provides an in-depth look at the retro trend sweeping web design right now. Vintage looks, light texturing, simple shapes… we’re seeing more and more of this stuff each day. Here’s what to look for and some mini-tutorials on how to do it.

Email Etiquette for the Super-Busy

Email is overwhelming and easy to screw up – this article (via swiss-miss) provides some really useful tips on how to be an efficient and clear emailer. The only one I don’t agree with is “Never send a ‘thank-you’ email”. Yes, it clutters up the inbox, but I know I appreciate them… and immediately delete them.

HTML5 Logo Unveiled

The HTML5 logo has been unveiled; here’s a look at it and what it means.

How to Style WordPress Navigation Menus

WordPress as a CMS – perhaps the most popular choice for web designers these days. Here’s an easy-to-follow tutorial on how to style WP navigation menus for those who don’t know.

How to Identify Good Clients (and Avoid Bad Ones)

This in-depth article is a must-read for a couple reasons: one, it provides tips as the title would suggest. However, the part I found most interesting was seeing how bigger studios/agencies handle budget inquiries. The size and cost of these agencies’ web projects are astronomical (compared to what we charge, which isn’t peanuts by any means). Granted, the scope and reach of their projects are generally much larger, but it was a real eye-opener.

Thanks & see you next week!

Found Friday Vol 39

January 14, 2011

Bonjour & welcome to Found Friday Vol 39. This week we have a great collection of useful/fun finds: a jQuery plugin that resizes text, 10 great web conferences to attend this year, a new website solely for geek gifts, a collection of useful web-based tools for designers, and a joystick that attaches to your iPad. Read on!

BigText

BigText makes text big. Specifically, it’s a jQuery plugin that “takes a single element and sizes the text inside of its child divs to fit the width of the parent element. Gives the text that lovely vertical alignment.” I need to use this.

10 Best Upcoming Web Conferences

Learning online is great, but there is something to be said for immersing yourself in a well-run conference. You meet and learn from like-minded graphic designer, web designers, web developers and more, and come back reinvigorated. Check these 10 out.