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Introduction To Photoshop Scripting

Automation is useful in the work of every designer. It saves precious time on repetitive tasks and helps us solve certain problems more quickly and easily. You can automate your workflow in Photoshop with actions, which are pretty popular and which most of you already know about and use. Today, we’ll introduce you to an advanced automation technique: scripting. All you need for this is basic knowledge of JavaScript, which some of us Web designers already have. I’ve known about Photoshop ...

Mistakes I’ve Made (And Lessons Learned Along The Way)

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We all make mistakes. Whether in our design and development work or just in life in general, we all do it. Thankfully, even the biggest mistakes carry valuable lessons. As a contrast to the many Web design articles that focus on successes and what we can learn from those triumphs, this article looks to the other end of the spectrum to explore what failures teach us. Along the way, I will share stories of some of the missteps I have made in the course of my career and the lessons I’ve ...

All That Glitters Is Not Gold: A Common Misconception About Designing With Data

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Too often when working in information design, you’ll hear the request, “Can you make the data look cool?” “Cool” is a rather ambiguous term, and means different things to different people. Unfortunately, when working with data, the term “cool” is often directly juxtaposed with common charts like line, bar and pie, which are often relegated to the backbench, and written off as “boring.” The emphasis on the instant visual appeal of an infographic over the clarity of the ...

Part Two: How To Fix The Web: Obscure Back-End Techniques And Terminal Secrets

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Just a little reminder before you start: In part 1 we explored the infrastructure of the Internet and the make-up of a Web server. We left off at the stage where our Web server software is up and running again, and we’ve just double-checked this by telnetting an HTTP request and received the successful response code. It’s now time for… Finding Your Website The 200 code means that your home page is okay, and you should be able to visit it in your browser. However, it may not ...

Desktop Wallpaper Calendar: August 2013

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We always try our best to challenge your artistic abilities and produce some interesting, beautiful and creative artwork. And as designers we usually turn to different sources of inspiration. As a matter of fact, we’ve discovered the best one—desktop wallpapers that are a little more distinctive than the usual crowd. This creativity mission has been going on for over five years now, and we are very thankful to all the designers who have contributed and are still ...

The “Other” Interface: Atomic Design With Sass

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As front-end developers and designers, we’re constantly refining two interfaces simultaneously: one for visitors who load the website, the other for developers who have to tackle the code in the future, when adjustments or full-scale redesigns must be made. Yet we tend to assign the role of “user” to the first group, often forgetting that the code we write must work for developers in a similar way. We shouldn’t forget that developers are users, too. If this is the ...

Teaching Web Design To New Students In Higher Education

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The Web is evolving rapidly. Front-end Web development has been majorly affected by recent changes in coding techniques and approaches. In 2003, a competent front-end Web developer would have known HTML and CSS, possibly with a bit of copy-and-pasted JavaScript, and they built websites that would be viewed on desktop computers. Not so in 2013! Now, a competent front-end Web developer is well-versed in HTML and CSS, JavaScript and jQuery, CSS preprocessors, new techniques such as responsive ...

A Journey Through Beautiful Typography In Web Design

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First impressions are lasting impressions. Whether you realize it or not, your typography helps to create an experience for users before they’ve even read a word or clicked a button. Typography has the potential to go beyond merely telling a story — it shows the user who is behind the website and what you’re about. The treatment of type creates an atmosphere and elicits a response much the same way as tone of voice does. You need to ask yourself, what do you want ...

Type & Grids: Free Responsive HTML5 Template

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Today, we are pleased to introduce Type & Grids, a free responsive HTML5 template by Jeremiah Shoaf. It looks great on all devices, including desktops, laptops, tablets and phones. All of the content resides in a single HTML file, so setting it up is super-simple. Its extensive customization options set Type & Grids apart from other templates out there. The template has 21 type themes and 29 color themes built in, giving you over 500 unique design combinations. ...