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Found Friday Vol 77

January 6, 2012

Number 77 of Found Fridays checking in here. You know what else was #77? Ray Bourque. There, maybe you learned something today. Feel free to learn more (perhaps related to your profession, i.e. design) with the following finds: an awesome “day in the life of a designer” parody video from the holidays; a super-simple WordPress plugin for front-end uploads; an interesting year-end update from Process Type Foundry; a site with a great collection of design & dev tools; and finally some beautiful new monitors from Samsung.

Viewpoint Creative – Holiday Card

So I’m a little late on this one, but if you missed it, check out this short (and hilarious) video. If you’re a designer of any ilk, you’ll relate.

Front End Upload WordPress Plugin

This is a simple, open-source solution to adding front-end uploading capabilities to your WordPress site. Looks pretty handy, although I haven’t tried it myself.

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The Best Parts of Being a Designer

January 2, 2012

The online design community has its fair share of articles, comics and websites about the downsides of design work. Forums and comments are rife with stories about being “forced” to create poor work; dealing with irrational clients; breakdowns in communication and more stress-inducing cons of being a design professional. These negatives can’t be denied – every designer has had a poor work experience at some point, I’d imagine, myself included – but what about the flipside? What are the best parts of being a designer?
Pros of Graphic Design Career Read the whole article >

January 2012 Desktop Calendar Wallpaper

December 30, 2011

Welcome to 2012, the year the world ends apparently. I know, what a nice way to welcome you back. However, if the world does go up in flames, at least your computer will go out in stylish fashion if you’re rocking this January 2012 Desktop Calendar Wallpaper. Enjoy and happy new year!

Click to download the free January 2012 Desktop Calendar Wallpaper in 2560X1600, 1920X1200, 1920X1080, 1680X1050, 1440X900 and 1280X800 pixels.

Responsive Web Design: Standard or Feature?

December 12, 2011

Web design is a flexible, consistently evolving medium. There are a variety of different ways to accomplish the same goal; there are always new techniques and best practices on the horizon; web design projects can range from the tiny (one-page websites) to the huge (multi-page CMS-powered websites). Any web design freelancer or web design firm knows the range of features, and their corresponding costs, that can be built into their projects – dynamic content, jQuery effects, advanced layouts, etc – and the question of what should be a standard vs. what should be a feature is constantly evolving too.

responsive-web-design

With all that in mind, the newest web design technique on the block is responsive web design. If you’re not clear on what responsive web design means, read this article. Go ahead, I’ll wait.

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Found Friday Vol 76

December 9, 2011

Found Friday Vol 76 is upon us, and this week we have: a dead simple article on responsive design; a gorgeous letterpress poster for sale based on a Steve Jobs quote; a great tutorial on numbering ordered lists; a must-read article on judging business practices; and a solid tool for validating your site markup (as opposed to page-by-page validation).

Responsive Design in 3 Steps

Responsive design – website design that adapts to the device window – is all the rage these days. Like Skrillex (or so I hear, I don’t know). Anyway, it can be a little intimidating, but this article is very simple & straightforward. It’s a great way to get your feet wet with responsive (albeit not fluid) design.

Here’s to the Crazy Ones Letterpress Poster

There’s been a few different designs based on quotes floating around since Steve Jobs passed – here’s another, printed and designed beautifully. This letterpress poster is available printed with or without a frame.

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