This article provides you with 5 guidelines you can use as a designer to “speak business”:
1. Pretty doesn’t mean effective: statistics are your friend!
2. Every design should have a measurable goal
3. Your site should have one clear path
4. Remember the swiss army knife
5. Provide performance metrics
If you have a project coming up that requires a vintage, weathered or retro type of design, here is a long list of textures and Photoshop brushes, courtesy of deviantArt:
http://designreviver.com/freebies/300-vintage-style-textures-and-photoshop-brushes
From an interview on Jools Holland (2001), Brian Eno discusses his method for keeping creativity fresh during the process of developing an idea:
Read more about Oblique Strategies »
Download a PDF of Oblique Strategies cards [PDF] »
A well designed trick shot using multiple pool tables.
The site http://leidorf.blogspot.com is a collection of interesting aerial photographs. Here are some that caught my eye:
- Aerial of lumberyard
- Aerial of tires in dump
- Trees in snow
There's a nice collection of theme park maps from yesteryear at www.themeparkbrochures.net/mainmaps.html.
Here are a few examples:
An article about the value of features by Don Norman:
"Make it simple and people won’t buy. Given a choice, they will take the item that does more. Features win over simplicity, even when people realize that it is accompanied by more complexity. You do it too, I bet. Haven’t you ever compared two products side by side, comparing the features of each, preferring the one that did more? Why shame on you, you are behaving, well, behaving like a normal person."
Nice list of tools at Six Revisions site:
"Stylesheets can get large real quickly, both in terms of length and file size. To ensure that your web pages render correctly and quickly, here’s a compilation of some of the best free, web-based CSS optimizers/compressors, code formatters, and validation services."
http://sixrevisions.com/css/css_code_optimization_formatting_validation/
Wondering how to create a YouTube site for your school? There is some good info about how to apply for a YouTube University site at collegewebeditor.com.
This is cool. An online services that make publishing your own magazine a breeze.
Take a look here:
http://magcloud.com/home
82 sites picked by Web Designer Wall showcasing design trends and styles:
Notes about the first album cover. Designed by Alex Steinweiss, the first art director for Columbia Records, where he invented the concept of cover art.
"It looks exactly like a hardcover book when closed. Like they say, with any truly new medium the first thing people usually do is crank out simulacra of old, familiar media."
