10 Blogs to Help You Become a Photography Expert

Posted by on Nov 20, 2009 | 25 Comments

Photography often plays a major role in web design. So It’s no surprise that many web designers have an interest in it. However, there are so many aspects to photography such as lighting, composition, and equipment features that can make it difficult to master. In this article I’ve rounded up 10 of the best blogs that consistently produce valuable tips and resources to help you with your photography. (more…)

Read More

14 Free Mac Apps for Web Designers on a Budget

Posted by on Nov 19, 2009 | 19 Comments

We all know that Macs aren’t the most affordable computers on the market. Purchasing one can take a big chunk out of a web designer’s budget and leave little to purchase software. Thankfully, there are alternatives to the expensive software that we need to do our job. Here are 14 Mac applications that will have you doing everything from editing images to writing code, and they won’t cost you a dime. (more…)

Read More

The Best Photoshop Tutorials of 2009

Posted by on Nov 18, 2009 | 29 Comments

In our “Best of 2009″ series, we’ve already shown you the best free fonts and the best free icon sets. So as this year is getting closer to it’s end, we’re going to continue in this article and present to you our picks for the best Photoshop tutorials of 2009. There were so many amazing Photoshop tutorials written this year, but unfortunately we couldn’t pick all of them. Below you will find the tutorials that we felt stood out from the rest within several different categories. (more…)

Read More

WDL Premium: Sketchbook Vector Pack from Go Media

Posted by on Nov 18, 2009 | 4 Comments

Here’s another high quality vector pack for our WDL Premium Members. Sketchbook, from the amazing designers at Go Media, has 40 really useful deign elements like sketchy halftones, cross-hatching, gradients, sketch line brushes – everything you need to soften the digital side of your designs. (more…)

Read More

12 Excellent jQuery Plugins for Enhancing Forms

Posted by on Nov 17, 2009 | 24 Comments

Forms are part of almost every website. Whether it’s a simple contact form or a complex sign-up form, filling one out is usually a mundane task. When possible, you should try to make form completion for the user easier and more enjoyable. Here are 12 jQuery plugins that can help you enhance your forms. (more…)

Read More

10 Useful Tools for Finding the Perfect Domain Name

Posted by on Nov 16, 2009 | 27 Comments

Finding the right domain name is an important step in creating a successful website. Luckily there are tools out there to help you in this process by not only helping you find available domain names, but also helping you in the creative aspect by giving you suggestions. Here are 10 of these tools to help you find that perfect domain name. (more…)

Read More

deCasa: A Premium WordPress Theme for Real Estate

Posted by on Nov 13, 2009 | 6 Comments

Today we’re releasing another amazing premium WordPress theme from ThemeShift to our premium members. deCasa is a light and elegant real estate theme. A lot of handy features like a search panel, multi-agent support and a professional property exposée let you easily setup your real estate website. (more…)

Read More

The Best Free Icon Sets of 2009

Posted by on Nov 12, 2009 | 30 Comments

In 2009 we’ve witnessed many talented and generous designers creating tons of amazing stuff and giving it away for us to use. We’ve already shown you all of the best free fonts from this past year. Now we’re going to show you the best free icon sets. There were plenty of free sets created this year, but these stand above the rest in terms of quality and usefulness. (more…)

Read More

The Design Evolution of Popular Websites

Posted by on Nov 9, 2009 | 31 Comments

It seems like only yesterday I was designing my first website. The year was 1997 and apparently I had an affinity to blue lightning bolts and animated gifs of my initials. When the project was complete, I had created the most beautiful design I’d ever seen. At least that’s what I believed at the time. Looking back at that design now is quite embarrassing. I’m sure most of us have been there, but what about popular websites today? Do you ever wonder how they looked in the early days?

In this article, we’re going to travel back in time and see how some of the most popular websites today looked in their beginning, and how their design has evolved through the years. (more…)

Read More

10 Useful Text Enhancing Plugins for WordPress

Posted by on Nov 9, 2009 | 15 Comments

Out of the box, WordPress is an amazing product and comes loaded with tons of features. However, one area that might be lacking is text formatting. There’s not really any tools built in to do things like dynamic image replacement, code highlighting, and other styling to improve the look of your text. Luckily there is a community of talented developers that have created plugins to fill this need. I’ve listed here 10 of the most useful text enhancing WordPress plugins. (more…)

Read More