All Amazing Articles » Web Design

22 Beautiful jQuery Plugins for Web Designers

admin — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 15:01:13 +0000

This collection of jQuery plugins might come in handy next time you’re building a site. This post highlights some of the more aesthetic plugins online that can add a spark of creativity into your web design.

20+ Beautiful jQuery Plugins for Web Designers

Thickbox 3.1

This is a ThickBox. A ThickBox is approximately like a lightbox, but with more effects. It supports content using AJAX etc etc, and is very useful displaying several images in a row.

Lightbox

Like ThickBox but with less features. Simpler. For those of you that doesn’t need many features and just want a simple image-display-funcition-plugin.

jQuery.popeye an inline lightbox alternative

Another alternate version of lighbox. But this one stands out from the rest. Check it out to see what can be done!

Sliding boxes and captions with jQuery

This is a multiple-effects-plugin and is very useful if you want to have hidden captions that shows when hovering an image(mouseover).

jPlayer – jQuery mp3 player plugin

Using this plugin you can have your own musicplayer in no time! It is very useful. Almost like your own myspace but with jQuery!

jQuery form plugin

This is a very simple but useful plugin. Have you ever had problems establishing a form? Now you dont.

easyDrag jQuery plugin

With this plugin you can drag and drop any item as you wish! Good for moving content around. And it’s very simple to use.

jQuery accordion plugin – vertical

This is maybe one of the most attractive jQuery plugins out there. Accordion I say! Vertical niceness to the eyes.

jQuery accordion plugin – horizontal

This accordion plugin is the same as the above but with a little twist… It’s horizontal! Very useful displaying larger images. Good for portfolio-usage

Switch stylesheets with jQuery

This is a very small but useful plugin. Using this plugin you can switch the styles of your webpage using different CSS files and this plugin.

Innerfade with jQuery

This plugin alows you to fade any element inside a container in and out. These elements could be anything you wish. Very useful displaying your portfolio in a nice way.

Coda slider 1.1.1

This jQuery slider, I think, is one of the most used plugins on the web. A slider simply slides content from content1 > content2> content3 etc. Very nice and useful effect.

jQuery toggle elements

Simply toggle elements on and off. This one has a very cool animation on the content too, so its not only the toggle effect.

jCarousel – Riding carousels with jQuery

This one shows many images(commonly thumbnails) in a smaller area. You could actually call this a thumbnailslider. Very useful if you have too many images in a too small area.

jQuery Plugin – a Sliding Menu

This menu shows, when clicked on, sliding out from nowhere in a nice animation and does the same when clicked on again, vice-versa.

jQuery Lavalamp for jQuery lovers(and everybody else)

Lavalamp is a very smooth meny-animation-effect. It has a feeling of its own. You need to see it for yourself to know what I’m talking about(my personal favourite).

jQuery colorpicker

Pick your own colours using jQuery! Almost like in Photoshop, but with less colorchoices. You can use it to change the textcolor in a textarea or just let your visitors change your textcolor on your website maybe?

jQuery star rating – Dynamicly create a Ajax rater

This is a star-rating-plugin. Use this to let your visitors rate your content based on what they think of it. You can have up to how many stars you would like, but my advice is to use the maximum of 10.

jQuery – IconDock

Like Apples Dock. But with jQuery. This plugin is very attractive and very useful for everyone that wants a cool effect and look on their menu/portfolio navigation/quickbar navigation/etc.

jQuery – Imageselect

Use this to croop an image using jQuery. Very useful for avatar-crooping and crooping other images that may be used on the web that you want to make a smaller size inside of the browser.

jQuery loopedslider

A slider that slides your images just the way you want! This one has some nice extra effects and many options to choose from.

jQuery – Beautiful slider

Least but not last(or actually, last), the most beautiful jQuery slider on the web(according to me). Has a very nice twist on the caption!

45 Sites, Free Icons And PSD Resources For Web-Design

admin — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 06:22:35 +0000

Since previous graphic design related article turned out to be really popular, I decided to do similar article about web-design related resources. In this list You’ll find many free icons, psd files in good quality, Photoshop layer styles for easier icon creation and many websites specialized to deliver good quality freebie related content. You could say, it’s better to create icons Yourself, but I think there is no sense to create something that’s already there available for free, however if there isn’t something, this is only way to know it. Also yes, here is many *.psd files, so You have a chance also to see how really these icons are created and learn something. At least I think it’s worth bookmarking!

One more time, before You use these icons read licence terms and legal agreements.

1. FamFamFam

Actually I think this is one of the best founding I ever had, that’s why this resource is the first in the list. Very useful and huge silk, flag, mint and mini icon sets to add in web design as spice. Nice quality, small file size – what more can You want?

2. 2 Button PSD’s by easydisplayname

3. PSD Resource Pack One by deluxive

4. Deluxive Creative Pack by deluxive

5. Slash N Flash Buttons PSD by el3ment4l

6. Varied Glass Style Set by allhopeislost

I added also Photoshop Style files from great designers, which are even better, because You can use style surface on any element You want, also it’s useful for icon creation and easy way to get glassy effects.

7. Designer’s Delight Style Set by allhopeislost

8. Varied Glass Style Set 2 by allhopeislost

9. Pin Pictures PSD by godspeed0

Here is offered very nice way, how to present Your photos or works.

10. Gems PSD by niccey

11. Aero Avatar and Sig PSD by fastnfurious

12. Glass Orb Styles by kjherstin

13. Template PSD Pack by tyr4nt

14. Preview Icon Template by whyred

15. Star Sticker PSD by matu666

16. Radium Neue Icons 5 PSD by gakuseisean

17. Vista Flare Orb by frnak

18. PSDFox by vathanx

19. Radium Icon PSDs by gakuseisean

20. Office Cork Board Version 1 by jakekimpton

21. Refraction Sphere by gusti-boucher

22. World orb icon PSD by keitaru-san

23. PSD Avatar Pack by eupholic

24. iVista Icon PSDs by gakuseisean

25. Globe Resource PSD by sneakytomato

26. Iconica Icon Set by dangeruss

27. Glass Video Playback Buttons by birofunk

28. Login Panel PSD by sundox

29. Free Brush Illustration by lorddarq

30. Paperbag Template PSD by mangion

31. Icons PSD by igorka

32. FREE Sponsor Advertise Buttons by grafon

33. Windows Button PSD by vicing

34. Free PSD Icons (24 Icon Sets)

35. DezinerFolio: On-Stage: Free Vector PSD Icon Set

36. DezinerFolio | Freebies

Actually there are a lot more freebies, good quality icons, themes, Photoshop styles to find.

37. Computer Icon + Tutorial by gakuseisean

38. Free Web Templates/Elements in PSD for Photoshop!

Offers really good quality icons, buttons, badges, backgrounds, templates and so on. Worth checking out.

39. Sweetie

Cute and clear icons to use in your nifty web application. Two icon sets with totally 219 icons, free to use for commercial purposes.

40. Honeycomb Patterns by c130

41. *Deleted

42.IconsPedia

Site is totally dedicated to free icon collecting, however You should stick to license agreement too.

43. Developer Icons by sekkyumu

44. 135 Vector Icons

45. Web 2.0 Badges

And lastly I got this website with badge generator and also wide range of already premade badge collection.

By Dainis Graveris

84 Amazingly Useful CSS Tips & Resources

admin — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 18:59:22 +0000

Feast your eyes over this collection of super useful CSS resources:

Source: http://www.gracesmith.co.uk/

What’s New to CSS3?

admin — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 16:02:46 +0000

Wondered what’s coming next? In CSS3 terms, here are the new features available for the latest browsers like Firefox and Opera. We’ll be looking at the border-radius, opacity and outline command.

Border-Radius

CSS Code: -moz-border-radius: 10px; -webkit-border-radius: 10px;

Works in Firefox 3 and Safari 3

Opacity

CSS Code: opacity: 0.2;

Outline Offset

CSS Code: outline: 2px solid orange; outline-offset: 4px;

Works in Firefox, Safari and Opera

Source: http://www.edturtle.co.uk/

5 Simple Ways to Improve Web Typography

admin — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 23:15:02 +0000

Type is one of the most-used elements of the web. Think about it. Unless you are YouTube or Flickr, chances are your site visitors are coming for your text content – not the fancy packaging that surrounds it. So why are web designers still treating text like a secondary element?

Good typography brings order to the page and increases legibility. It allows people to process information faster.

A more scannable, readable site means happy visitors. Happy visitors return often, buy products, leave comments, and share the site with friends. See why it might be worth thinking about?

I could blather on forever about how far typography has come on the web, and how far yet it has to go. I have frequently bounced between web and print design. When you’re going from InDesign to TextMate, the limitations of web type are crystal clear.

But plenty has been said about what web type can’t do. This isn’t going to be another rant. Instead, let’s focus on a 5 easy fixes for the typographic eyesores that abound across the Web.

1. Use A Reset Stylesheet

Stupid, but true: No two browsers use the same presentation defaults. Differences in padding, margins, headings, and indentations are rampant. If you want your page layout to be more consistent across browsers, it pays to start with a CSS Reset stylesheet.

Two I recommend:

Yahoo’s CSS Reset Stylesheet
Eric Meyer’s CSS Reset Stylesheet

2. Watch Your Measure

Measure refers to the length of a single line of type. A longer line = a longer Measure. Studies have shown that for optimal readability, running text columns such as your main body copy should be somewhere between 45 – 75 characters (30 – 50 ems) including spaces. This is one of the reasons that fluid designs (ones in which the columns expand and contract to fit the browser width) are harder on the eyes.

Additionally, your leading should increase with the length of your Measure. Leading is the amount of white space between lines of text, and is controlled via the CSS line-height property. If you need to use an extra-long Measure, make sure your leading opens up.

Likewise, if you have a small column such as a sidebar with a short Measure, your leading should be tighter. I find the default value most browsers assign is a little too tight. A line-height of around 1.4em works well for most body content.

3. Tend To The Space Between

It’s not just about your text – its about the space that surrounds it. Too little space makes text hard to read, but so does too much. The key is to find a simple balance that guides the eye from one element to the next.

One of the common mistakes new designers make is to fill every inch of space. White space refers to the empty or “negative” space around your content, and it is crucial. Take a look at a well-designed magazine such as Dwell or Good and you’ll see that even though it costs the publisher money to print each page, they leave abundant amounts of white space around the text. The page will be in balance and your eye will move from space to space effectively.

In addition to adjusting your line-height (as mentioned in #1), try increasing your padding and margins. Unless you’re trying to pull of a crazy visual trick, there should always be a good amount of white space around your text. Don’t let it butt up against other elements, especially images. Let your content chunks (headings, paragraphs, sidebars, etc.) breathe.

Mark Boulton wrote a very informative article about White Space for A List Apart, check it out.

4. Don’t Go Font Crazy

A good rule of thumb for any designer is: use no more than two font faces in your design. Two font faces can look very stylish. A List Apart uses variations of Georgia and Verdana to create an elegant and polished look. But continuing to add font faces to your interface creates unnecessary confusion. Similarly, avoid using too many font sizes, colors, or treatments on a page or in a paragraph or they will compete with each other instead of adding emphasis as intended.

Although font stacks and technologies like sIFR and Typeface.js allow you to specify just about any font you want as the default, resist the temptation to go wild with the body copy. Decorative fonts are best kept to headlines because they affect readability. Think about it – when is the last time you picked up a paperback novel set entirely in Comic Sans?

When creating font stacks, pay attention to the size of your pairings. Some fonts that look similar render at very different sizes. Verdana and Arial are a great example of this. Typetester is a great tool for comparing core web fonts and creating a successful stack. Another useful tool called Font Stack Builder shows you what percentage of users will see each variation.

Regardless of what fonts you decide to use, make sure they are not teeny tiny. I know its hard… tiny text looks cool. But think about the poor, squinting users! Keep body text above 10 or 12 pixels. If you insist on teeny tiny, at least use relative sizing for all those IE 6.0 users who otherwise couldn’t make it larger. Read Wilson Miner’s article on font sizes for a great take on the debate.

5) Don’t Neglect The Details

The client provided the content. Adding it to the site is just a matter of copying and pasting, right? Wrong, wrong, wrong. This is a trap web designers fall into all too often.

Even those of us who diligently add heading tags, format each paragraph and organize bulleted lists with care forget some important typographic details. Many (including me) missed out on formal typography training, so you can’t blame us entirely. But the devil is in the details. Its time we embrace these basics:

Use smart quotes

What’s the difference between smart quotes and dumb quotes? Smart quotes (also known as book or curly) are curved and have both an opening and closing style. Dumb (straight) quotes are usually straight up and down. An apostrophe is typographically just a single quote so the same problem applies. A dumb quote (also called a prime) should only be used between measurements. For example, 6′4″ uses double and single prime quotes.

Unfortunately our keyboards default to prime quotes. Microsoft Word and other text editors just correct them for us as we write. Adding smart quotes to HTML pages requires more work from the web developer because you need to use markup to produce opening and closing quote symbols. I see the same problem with em and en-dashes, ellipsis, trademark and copyright symbols. Coders take the easy way out by replacing them with hyphens, multiple periods, a large TM and the infamous (C). Using the right symbols does make a difference visually. Do it right and make editors everywhere smile.

How to make smart quotes:

#8216; = opening single quote
’ = closing single quote
“ = opening double quote
” = closing double quote

I know – no one wants to spend all day hunting down quotes. Luckily, tools like SmartyPants and Textism can do much of the legwork for you by automatically formatting text that includes smart quotes and the like.

Read “The Trouble with EM and EN” from A List Apart for more detail on the subject and the UTF-8 character encoding for most common special characters.

One caveat – lots of CMS text editors (like the one this site uses) won’t let you implement smart quotes without extra plugins. Sad, but true.

Stop putting two spaces after a period. Please! It’s not necessary and its actually rather annoying.

On your links, use border-bottom: 1px solid instead of text-decoration: underline. Underlines can run through the descender characters (g, j, p, q, y) making them hard to read, especially when using smaller font sizes.

And while it has nothing to do with typography, running a quick spell check never killed anyone. Even if all you did was copy and paste, a spelling error that slips through to a live site reflects badly on everyone involved.

Pay attention to those 5 fixes and your site designs are sure to improve. Remember that these are just a starting point. Good typography is a learned skill just like anything else, and it requires study and practice. Always keep an eye out for sites that are getting it right and make note of what they are doing. Need inspiration? Check out the sites below for examples of great web typography and post examples you find to be inspirational.

Inspirational Type:

Written exclusively for WDD by Mindy Wagner.
http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/

101 CSS Techniques Of All Time

admin — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 18:38:32 +0000

CSS has fundamentally changed web design, it has provided designers with a set of properties that can be tweaked to make various techniques to make your pages just look right.

Today we are presenting a round-up of 101 CSS techniques designers use all the time. Definitely worth taking a very close look at! This is just the first series , the second part will be coming soon, stay tuned and Enjoy!

CSS Sprites

CSS sprites save HTTP requests by using CSS positioning to selectively display composite background images. To maximize accessibility and usability, CSS sprites are best used for icons or decorative effects.

CSS Sprites: Image Slicing’s Kiss of Death- Say goodbye to old-school slicing and dicing when creating image maps, buttons, and navigation menus. Instead, say hello to a deceptively simple yet powerful sprite-based CSS solution.
CSS Sprites: What They Are, Why They’re Cool, and How To Use Them – CSS-Tricks
CSS Sprites: How Yahoo.com and AOL.com Improve Web Performance- Learn how AOL and Yahoo! use CSS sprites to improve performance for their busy home pages

CSS Rounded Corners

Rounded corners is one of the most popular and frequently requested CSS techniques. There lots of ways to create rounded corners with CSS, but they always require lots of complex HTML and CSS. Here are easy ways to achieve this effect.

Even More Rounded Corners With CSS- Single-image, PNG-based, fluid rounded corner dialogs with support for borders, alpha transparency throughout, gradients, patterns and whatever else you could want.
Demo :
Rounded corners in CSS- Simple bordered div which contained four divs that each had a background-image and that were positioned in each of the corners.
Liquid rounded corners- For liquid design and transparent scrolling – tutorial and stylesheet
Mountaintop Corners- easier way for creating decent rounded corners.

Image Replacements Technique

Thierry Image Placement: Image Placement vs. Image Replacement (FIR)

This technique is mostly for headlines by using CSS to replace normal HTML text, with a background image in order to achieve a particular look.Several different image replacement methods have been proposed, each with their pros and cons.

when you need image replacement you can check the Gilder/Levin Method as described by Dave Shea or, if the replaced text is linked and CSS support for IE/Mac is required, the Gilder Levin Ryznar Jacoubsen IR method.

Sliding Doors

Sliding Doors of CSS introduced a new technique for creating visually stunning interface elements with simple, text-based, semantic markup.Beautifully crafted, truly flexible interface components which expand and contract with the size of the text can be created if we use two separate background images.

Sliding Doors” Box– Rounded Corners for All- The goal of this technique was to create rounded-corner boxes with visual flare and the absolute minimal amount of semantically correct markup. While making sure they could resize while keeping their backgrounds intact.

Image Text Wrap Technique

How many times do you have an image floated left in a block of content, but want to keep that content from wrapping around your image?

This technique allows you to wrap around image text flow control to emulate magazine style page layouts.

Equal Height Technique

One of the somewhat frustrating properties of CSS is the fact that elements only stretch vertically as far as they need to. So how can we make all columns appear to be the same height? Several techniques was introduced to solve this issue.

Faux Columns- The simple secret is to use a vertically tiled background image to create the illusion of colored columns.
Equal Height Columns – revisited- A method to make all columns appear to be the same height but without the need for faux column style background images.

Equal height boxes with CSS- The trick is to use the CSS properties display:table, display:table-row and display:table-cell to make containers (in this case div elements) behave like table cells. The basic XHTML structure looks like this:
```
            
    
     
    
    
    
```
Here is the CSS used to make this structure behave like a table:
```
     .equal {            display:table;    }    .row {            display:table-row;    }    .row div {            display:table-cell;    }    
```

Turning A List Into A Navigation bar

Why use a list? Because a navigation bar, or menu, is a list of links. The most semantic way of marking up a list of links is to use a list element. Using a list also has the benefit of providing structure even if CSS is disabled.

Turning a list into a navigation bar- The markup is very simple. It’s an unordered list, with each link in a separate list item.
Uberlink CSS List Menus
CSSMenus – Horizontal and Vertical 4 Level Deep List Menu
Listamatic
7 Advanced CSS Menu- A fresh round-up of 7 Advanced CSS Menus techniques, that might be useful for you in your next design project.

Making Headlines With CSS

Headers in Web pages–marked up with h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, or h6 elements–help the reader determine the purpose of sections in content. If your header is visually stimulating, the odds are better that the section will capture your reader’s eye.

Heading Style Gallery- Want something a little more stylish for your content headings (h1,h2,…) than a different font or color? Try one of the heading styles listed here to spruce up your content.
Typography for Headlines- Improve the typography in your headlines by being more creative, give them more ‘pop’, that sort of thing.
Making Headlines With CSS- With a dash of design, we can utilize CSS to stylize those Web page headers to catch the reader’s eye and encourage them to read on.

CSS Shadows Techniques

A technique to build flexible CSS drop shadows that can be applied to arbitrary block elements that can expand as the content of the block changes shape.

CSS Drop Shadows-Build flexible CSS drop shadows that can be applied to arbitrary block elements that can expand as the content of the block changes shape.
Fun with Drop Shadows- Most of the existing techniques use negative margins, while this one is a really simple version wich uses relative positioning.
Drop Shadows By Phil Baines- This set of tests are based on an article found on A List Apart’s technique, but with less CSS coding.
CSS Drop Shadows II: Fuzzy Shadows- Picking up where Part I left off, in Part II designer Sergio Villarreal takes his standards-compliant drop-shadow to the next level by producing warm and fuzzy shadows.
An improved CSS shadow technique- A very robust and easy-to-use technique for applying snazzy looking shadows using only Web technology and a few little image elements prepared beforehand.

CSS Transparency

One of the trickiest things to control, in a CSS-driven design, is the transparency of the interaction between foreground and background content.Below is a list of the best examples of the differing transparency approaches possible with CSS.

Partial Opacity- Placing text over an image can sometimes make it difficult to read, but with Stu Nicholls’s methods the background for the text is made ‘opaque’ using various methods of opacity (including css3) and the black text is then quite readable.
Cross-Browser Variable Opacity with PNG- How to overcome flaky browser support for PNG so you can take advantage of this graphic format’s lossless compression, alpha transparency, and variable opacity.
Two Techniques for CSS Transparency

Various Link Techniques

Showing Hyperlink Cues with CSS- The CSS Guy shows us how to get the little icons next to hyperlinks that signify if that link will take you offsite, open a popup, or link to a file (as opposed to another html page). Here’s how to do it in a way that’s supported in IE7, Firefox, and Safari.
The ways to style visited Links- CSS offers various possibilities to make links more usable and preserve text readability at the same time. We need to differentiate visited and unvisited links, but we must keep text scannable and readable.
Link Thumbnail- Shows users that are about to leave your site exactly where they’re going. When that curious mouse pointer hovers over a link pointing to somewhere outside of your site, the script displays a small image of the destination page.
Iconize Textlinks with CSS- If you’re looking for more icons to implement, Alex provides a nice start.

Source: http://www.noupe.com/

60+ Unusual WP Blog Designs

admin — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 16:12:31 +0000

Source: http://www.noupe.com/

12 CSS Tools and Tutorials for Beautiful Web Typography

admin — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 23:37:51 +0000

Achieving beautiful typography with CSS on the web is no easy feat, and there are many limitations to what can done with type on the web. However, there are generous people out there that have taken the time to build tools and write tutorials to help you overcome these limitations and create websites with beautiful typography.

Here are some that I find most useful:

Tools

CSS Type Set

Typetester

Typechart

Tutorials

Typographic Contrast and Flow

How to use headings in HTML

10 Examples of Beautiful CSS Typography and how they did it

Advanced Typography techniques using CSS

Secrets of Magazine Style

of Magazine Style" />

Better Pull Quotes: Don’t Repeat Markup

CSS Gradient Text Effect

CSS Pull Quotes

CSS Pull Quotes" />

How to Size Text in CSS

How to Size Text in CSS" />

Source: http://webdesignledger.com/

Gifts From Designers To You: Best Of 2008

admin — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 23:33:08 +0000

Since this year is coming to a close, I wanted to take the time and look back at all of the giving that was done by the web design community. I’ve hand picked some of my favorite freebies from 2008. In this post you will find goodies ranging from icons to web apps that should all be of help to you in your upcoming projects.

BB Free Font: Conglomerfont

A beautiful and cleverly named free font.

Free Icons: Function Icon Set

A large collection of 128 icons that are of the highest quality.

Color Paper Wordpress Theme

Free Hand Drawn Doodle Icon Set for Bloggers

Free Vector Pack 9 Sampler

A sampling from one of the amazing vector pack from GoMedia.

Notepad Chaos: A Free Wordpress Theme

Free High-Res Texture Pack: Grungy Watercolor

These are some of the best watercolor brushes I have ever seen.

Infinity: A Free Wordpress Theme

Free High Res Rough Textures

Circular Icons

Smashing Freefont and Wordpress-Theme

T9 Creative Doodles

BgPatterns

A very useful free web app that makes it easy to generate lovely background patterns.

Dirty Spray Photoshop Brushes

BB Free Vectors: Birds in Flight

Free High-Res Texture Pack: The Anatomy of a Really Old Book

A gorgeous texture pack made up of a dissected old book.

Blog Headers For Free Download

Swirl Mania

Source: http://webdesignledger.com/

10 Easy Steps to Become a Better Web Designer

admin — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 23:21:14 +0000

A great designer is one who can create great designs long after the latest trends have passed. When in doubt always go back to basics & the fundamentals you learned when starting out. Here are some steps I personally take that have helped me become a better designer. My hope is that this will remind you of the little things we sometimes take for granted. Please feel free to add to the list if you have tips – interacting with the community & sharing the knowledge is what it’s all about.

1 . Trends

Keeping up to date on the latest trends is important – however “trends” does not mean “copy”. Get inspiration and create your own style. See this highly effective post of 2008 Design Trends.

2. Learn & Develop

Great designers are always learning and stay fresh on the latest styles. A great resource for finding specific collections for interface design on the web is PatternTap.

3. Think on Paper

Sketching should be your best friend, especially if your in the beginning stages of a wireframe or even simple list ideas. Getting away from the computer and onto paper gives you less distraction. Check out The Importance of Sketching.

4. White Space

Sometimes less is more. Don’t clutter your designs – readability is key to the success of a website. Minimal or Simplistic does not mean boring. For some great examples check out MinimalSites.

5. Technology / Applications

Keep up on the latest programs in your field (But Don’t Upgrade to CS4!) and if your looking for online training I suggest checking out Lynda.

6. Read

These are some great Magazines I recommend flipping through: .Net, Communication Arts, Computer Arts Magazine

If your having an inspiration block check out: Feeling the need for some Inspiration.

7. Know your Audience

Revisit the original creative brief, just because your designing something you like – doesn’t mean the client will like it. You have to look at the age group and demographic target your trying to reach, all these things are very important and you should take extra steps to not lose site of this.

8. Ask others Opinions

Recently I was redesigning a logo and simply “tweeted” on Twitter. I received over 45 replies as well as in depth detailed comments on my Flickr page where I posted the comps. You don’t have to show everyone either depending on the content, ask a colleague you trust. They may point out problems or errors that didn’t cross your mind.

9. Build a “Toolbox”

I keep a harddrive full of assets, code, old work & forms that I made need to grab someday. I organize it by the type of work (ex. CSS, Flash, Vectors, Forms). When your searching for something while working on a project it’s a lot easier when your organized. Trust me it will save you time!

10. Competition

Take a look at what other web designers are doing. Being aware of what’s happening in your industry is a must. There is not a shortage of gallery sites around but these are the ones I visit most: (http://screenfluent.com/) (http://www.lightondark.com/sites/) (http://bestwebgallery.com/) (http://www.faveup.com/) (http://www.webcreme.com/) (http://www.designbygrid.com/)