Found Friday Vol 59

June 24, 2011

This week’s best design finds are varied, enlightening and entertaining. We have: ten free tools to manage snippets of code; an innovative design solution to littering; an article on letting go of pixel-perfect web design; a great look at the new Van Gogh museum identity system; and a camera that lets you focus your shot after you’ve taken it. Read on!

10 Free Desktop Applications for Managing Code Snippets

I reuse snippets of code all the time, especially with WordPress sites – can’t remember everything! This list showcases 10 different desktop apps that help you organize these snippets (I use Snippley, personally).

10 Code Snippet Apps

Play with Trash

Check out Lucerne’s (city in Switzerland) solution to get people to throw away their garbage – make it fun. Now that’s design – solves a problem, and looks good while doing it.

Play with Trash

Time to Give Up on Controlling Our Designs

This article is a must-read for old, new and aspiring web designers alike. Can we control our designs, now that we have to deal with a wider array of desktop browsers, plus mobile applications, RSS readers, and the like? Short answer: no.

Time to Give Up on Controlling Our Designs

Van Gogh Museum Identity Redesign

This look into the new Van Gogh Museum identity is a perfect example of a visual identity being more than the sum of its parts. The logo by itself is underwhelming. But how it is used within the identity, and how the identity is rolled out across various mediums, is great.

Van Gogh Museum Identity Redesign

Lytro Camera

This camera lets you change the focus of your photo after you’ve taken it. Click through to Wired’s article and a working demo too. Pretty interesting tech.

Lytro Camera

See you next week!

Found Friday Vol 58

June 17, 2011

This week’s Found Friday is a great one – especially if you’re a WordPress guy/gal who likes the odd beer now and then. We have: a new, free WordPress e-commerce plugin; a web app to manage multiple WP installs from one location; a new web app for dealing with faxes (somehow this is still a thing, in 2011); a nifty grid calculator application; and a fridge with a built-in beer tap.

Jigoshop

This free e-commerce WordPress plugin looks great, plus it has solid documentation. Customizable too, and it’s built on WordPress 3′s custom post types functionality.

Jigoshop WordPress e-Commerce Plugin

ManageWP

From their site: “All your sites under one dashboard! ManageWP helps you manage all your WordPress sites from one dashboard, keeping them updated and secure.” Nice. Free right now, but they’ll introduce pricing at some point.

ManageWP

HelloFax

I can’t believe the ol’ facsimile machine is still something people use in today’s day and age. We can go to the moon; we can fly; we can use our phones to watch hi-def video, unlock our cars and set our DVRs to record. Yet we still get requests to fax stuff. Sigh. Anyway, maybe Hellofax will solve this problem – you can sign, edit & fax documents from your computer. Free for 5 faxes; very reasonable costs afterward.

HelloFax

GridCalc

Math is for losers and people much smarter than me. Thus, I rely on tools like GridCalc to do my design math for me. Set your total width, column width & gutter width, click go, and watch the magic happen.

GridCalc

Northstar Brew Master Fridge

Hear me out… beer is related to design because I like one after work. Plus this fridge, with its built-in tap, is a unique design. See? It totally fits in this post.

Northstar Brew Master Beer Fridge

See you next week!

For Your Clients: The Benefits of Blogging

June 13, 2011

As both graphic & web designers, we create a lot of websites for small businesses. We are frequently asked if, in our opinion, the client should include a blog in their new website. Of course, there is no blanket answer for this question; each client and each site has different needs. However,outlining the benefits of blogging will help you (or your clients) make your decision: should I blog or not?

The Benefits of Blogging

There are questions to consider before jumping into blogging. While there are downsides, the benefits of blogging can be huge – benefits that range from social to SEO. Let’s explore them in a bit more detail. Read the whole article >

Found Friday Vol 57

June 10, 2011

This week’s Found Friday is a combination of silly & useful design finds. We have: bacon ipsum; a new jQuery slider; a collection of great WordPress tips & tricks; the authorized Steve Jobs biography; and a letter-holder bookend. Enjoy!

Bacon Ipsum

Tired of Lorem Ipsum? Try Bacon Ipsum! Prepare yourself for some quizzical responses if you actually mock up & send a client design using this.

Bacon Ipsum

TN3 Gallery

A slick jQuery-powered image gallery plugin. Freemium – the free model is quite useful, and the other licenses are very reasonable.

TN3 jQuery Gallery

40+ Best WordPress Tips & Tutorials

A great collection of WP tips & tricks, especially for those using WP as a CMS.

40+ WordPress Tips

iSteve

The authorized Steve Jobs biography for you fanboys and girls out there. Who am I kidding; I’ll read it.

iSteve - Steve Jobs Biography

Letter Holder Bookend

Kill two birds with one stone! Organize your books AND your letters with this ingenious solution.

LetterHolder Bookeend

See you next week!

Found Friday Vol 56

June 3, 2011

Welcome to Volume 56 of Found Fridays, where we showcase the best design finds o’ the week. This week, we have: part one of an article on Dieter Rams’ 10 principles of good design; how to make the best out of unwanted downtime; 20 iOS style app icons for inspiration; a website that has a ton of free, established brand logos for download; and a combination of useful CSS3 & HTML5 apps.

Dieter Rams & The 10 Principles for Good Design: Part I

Dieter Rams is a huge inspiration for many a designer, and published 10 principles for good design. Over on Drawar, a community member has summarized these principles in a two-part post.

Dieter Rams

Making the Best out of Unwanted Offline Time

It happens – your internet goes down. Instead of lying, shivering, in the fetal position, why take this time to tackle some outstanding, non-internet-related work? Here’s a good article that helps you get cracking. Note: read this before your internet goes down.

Making the Most of Unwanted Offline Time

20 Inspiring iOS Style Icons

Quite simply, 20 beautiful iOS-inspired icons. Have a look if you’re working on an icon design project and get those wheels turning!

20 iOS Style Icons

Brands of the World

While this isn’t a find of this week, it is definitely worth sharing. Brands of the World lets you download vector logos of established brands for your use; we’re talking big brands to small brands; Coca-Cola, IBM etc. Definitely a useful bookmark for designers.

Brands of the World

CSS3 & HTML5 Toolbox Starter

There’s a ton of resources out there designed to make our lives as web designers a little easier. This article rounds up some great tools to add to your web development toolbox.

CSS3 Toolbox

See you next week!

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