Designing the Dreaded Form
In Articles by Patrick Cox
As much as they are dreaded, forms play an important role in many websites and designing them should involve careful planning of their layout.
best-practices
Line That Up: Proper Alignment in Web Design
In Articles by Carrie Cousins
Proper alignment techniques for text and other elements can add punch and readability to your website.
Visual Hierarchy in Mobile Design
In Articles by Patrick Cox
Basic design principles, like visual hierarchy, are very important in web design. Unfortunately, many of the new mobile apps are not designed with visual hierarchy in mind. Mobile (web) apps need an ordered and visually appealing design for a comfortable and enjoyable user experience.
7 Elements of a Well Converting Subscription Page
In Articles by Patrick Cox
We’ve all seen them, we’ve all navigated through them, we’ve all made those painful subscription choices, and we’ve all had some pretty bad experiences with them. But more and more sites and services are focussing attention on their subscription pages and discovering that a well-designed page is very important to new user sign ups.
Book Review: “The Designer’s Web Handbook”
In Articles by Carrie Cousins
“The Designer’s Web Handbook: What You Need to Know to Create for the Web” is a great guide for first-time and even more advanced web designers and developers.
Understanding the Rule of Thirds in Web Design
In Articles by Carrie Cousins
Intentional or not, the rule of thirds comes into play with most visuals, including images and in almost any web design.
Overcoming the “User Designer” Disease
In Articles by Patrick Cox
I constantly struggle with design, it’s sort of a never ending three sided war: my imagination vs. design knowledge vs. design tool proficiency. But I came to a realization a while back that most of us rely too heavily on the last part — the tools — and forget what actually makes a quality design.
Keys to Email Creative Success: Marketing and Design
In Articles by Patrick Cox
Let’s talk about some ways to design and build better email creatives and campaigns.
Modular front-end development with LESS
In Articles by Delwin Campbell
I am constantly looking for ways to make my work as a front-end developer easier and more efficient, but it is only recently that I have paid my good friend CSS any real attention. This article will explore the benefit of organizing your code efficiently while keeping it reusable and modular.
Be Less Annoying: Reduce Bounce Rates through Better Web Design
In Articles by Patrick Cox
A properly designed site can reduce bounce rate and increase engagement significantly. In this article, six important elements are introduced that are important for reducing a site’s bounce rate.
5 Things Every Mobile Design Should Have
In Articles by Patrick Cox
As much as we think mobile web design is very different from full screen web design, it really isn’t. There are some considerations that you may wish to take when designing for mobile browsers. I’ve tried to boil it down to 5 main elements that every mobile site MUST have.
Jumping the Hurdles of Brainstorming
In Articles by Patrick Cox
Usually, brainstorming sessions happen within a group so that individuals can feed off each others ideas. However, for the majority of us, brainstorming and creative innovation is a solitary task.
How Often Do You Try New Things?
In Articles by Patrick Cox
Web design in complicated and requires a lot of time and knowledge — and patience. It’s no longer just embedded text background images and slices; it’s interactivity and dynamic content, it’s HTML5 and mobile development, it’s JSON objects and Local Storage.
Design It to Build It: What to Consider When Designing for the Web
In Articles by Patrick Cox
For me, Photoshop is becoming more and more of a prototyping or blue printing tool: it’s basically just a canvas for creation. When it comes to the actual construction of the site, the only things I really take from the mockup is anything that I can’t create with CSS, the rest is just a map to guide me.
6 Questions You Should Ask Yourself When Choosing Fonts
In Articles by Patrick Cox
If you’re like me, selecting fonts for your web design is going to be either easy or the most difficult task you’ll face. Fonts are a huge, powerful part of any design and they should be taken seriously so that your design can communicate its meaning and purpose correctly. Great font selections can make a web site, they can enhance your design and effectively communicate the message and goals of the web site to the user. Bad font choices can drastically alter your design and affect how your site is perceived by users.
Top 10 Reasons to Use HTML5 Right Now
In Articles by Patrick Cox
In order to further demystify HTML5 and help these knuckle dragging designers and developers to jump on the bandwagon I’ve put together a top ten list of reasons why we should all be using HTML5 right now.
Communication, Mood and Meaning: Lines in Web Design
In Articles by Patrick Cox
Lines, lines, lines. Lines are everywhere in design, they are used to divide space, direct the user’s eye, create flow, create emphasis and organize all design elements into form. Generally, we don’t think about lines that much, but we make use of them quite often to visually communicate our objective to the user.
Be More Creative through Design Constraints
In Articles by Patrick Cox
For a lot of designers constraints are kryptonite or a barbed wire fence that is a prison for their design freedom. But design constraints shouldn’t be viewed as problems to be overcome, rather, constraints or restrictions are probably the best tool for creativity. Constraints are good: they give you direction and they challenge you to be better. Constraints force you to try new things and to experiment more.
