Choosing the right color scheme for a web design is extremely important. It will set the mood of your design probably more so than any other component. Sometimes it’s appropriate to go big with an assortment of bold colors, while other times it’s better to play it safe with a minimal color palette. For today’s inspiration, we’ve gathered 30 web designs that make excellent use of color. Enjoy! (more…)
As a professional designer, it’s important to push ourselves daily to be the best that we can in order to create outstanding work. To be successful in our industry, we must continually grow and try new things that will enhance our design skills, and just as important, our leadership abilities. There are tons of ideas on the internet on how to become a better designer through Photoshop tutorials, HTML best practices, and new jQuery techniques. There aren’t as many about becoming a better leader in the design community, although it’s an important trait to have as a professional and a necessary skill to possess in our competitive industry. (more…)
It’s been over a month since we’ve posted any freebies here on WDL, but hopefully now we can get back on our regular schedule of one “freebie” post per week. Over the past few days, I’ve been on the lookout for fonts, and I’ve managed to find some very good ones. So, here they are: 8 Fresh and Free High-Quality Fonts. Enjoy! (more…)
For our WDL Premium Members, here is a pack of super nice Photoshop Pixel Patterns from Vandelay Premier. This set includes 100 repeating patterns for Photoshop. The patterns are mostly basic in nature and will allow you to easily create backgrounds for your own designs. Some use a transparent background so they can be applied on top of any color, and others use white, black, or gray backgrounds. (more…)
Our friends at Designious.com are at it again. They just launched another mind blowing design bundle. Design Cocktail 5 includes an awesome collection of high-quality resources for creative professionals at an unbeatable price! They’ve been kind enough to provide us with 10 bundles to give away to our readers. To be eligible to win, all you have to do is leave a comment on this post before March 21, 2011. (more…)
When first launching your own website, it can be troubling deciding how to handle the first few weeks. This is generally a time when your website may not be ready to go live online but you own the domain name and branding rights.
In these scenarios a properly designed coming soon page can affect the culture of your site tenfold. Visitors to your website have the option of reading a bit about your company and possibly opting into an e-mail newsletter. I’ll be sharing a few techniques below to consider when first building your website’s home page.
Single page websites have been a hot trend for a while now, and their popularity doesn’t seem to be losing any momentum. Going this route isn’t right for every project, but there are times when it’s fitting and just makes sense. For instance, when a site doesn’t have a lot of content, and you know the content won’t be growing very much in the future, it might makes sense to go with a single page design.
So what about your upcoming projects? Is taking this approach an option? If so, here are 30 fresh examples of single page websites to inspire you. (more…)
When I first sat down to write this post my idea was to compile a list of the best business books for designers. However, as I found books claiming to fit this niche, I began to notice something that got me asking questions. It was the publishing dates. Some were 2009, others 2008, and others were dated as far back as 2003 or even older! I immediately thought to myself, “How could these books possibly be valid today?” I mean, Facebook and Twitter didn’t even exist then! When I’m searching for posts online, if I come across a blog post or news story from 2005 or 2006 I don’t even read it. It’s old news, outdated, irrelevant. But is that just the nature of internet content ? Have I somehow been programmed to disregard possibly helpful material just because of a date? (more…)
You hear it time and time again: content is king. It’s king because it’s what users want, and it’s king because of SEO – i.e. if you don’t have good content, you’re not going to rank.
Of course, not all content is created equal. While over-optimizing content for search will make it less than user-friendly, focusing too much on usability can compromise its searchability.
So how can your content walk the line between SEO and usability? Well, there are 5 easy tips you can follow when trying to walk your content down that fine line between SEO and usability. (more…)
Here’s a new set of vectors for our WDL Premium Members. This pack from Designious contains 16 high-quality floral flourish vectors. These are perfect for giving your design an ornate feel. The smooth, curly strains with large, wide open leaves will sure give your artwork a nice look. (more…)
