Dear Smashing Magazine

According to Smashing Magazine, the sky is falling. Again. The web design community has heeled over, and is down for the count.

Starving Artist Slides

Thanks to everyone who braved the icky weather to come out to my presentation at Gallery Main Street this morning. I hope I was able to provide you with some useful information and if you have any questions know that I’m always open to you guys – just call me View more presentations from Justin [...]

Vert 2.0, A Redesign Case Study Close to Home

Welcome to the new Vert Studios website. Justin and I have been working on the redesign since we merged back in July 2010. It’s such a great feeling to know the world can finally see the product of your hard work. The project was dynamic, as our vision for Vert Studios changed quite frequently throughout the project. We’d like to share our thought process behind the redesign.

Silversoap Media Web Design Tutorial

Tired of your current job? Want to be a part of something new and cutting-edge? Look no further! After reading this simple step by step guide, you’ll be able to set up your very own web design company.

New Facebook Picture Chat – Facebook Thinks We’re Idiots

Two similar but significant changes over the past week highlight the direction in which Facebook is moving when it comes to User Experience (how the user interacts with a web-based environment).

Picturfication?

Facebook rolled out two separate changes to the extremely important chat interface. While some users simply log on Facebook and examine or comment other’s profiles, many people’s primary use of Facebook is its chat feature. Facebook chat consists of 3 main sections:

• The sidebar friends list available on your “Home” page
• The friends list always available on the bottom right portion of your screen
• The chat box itself

Facebook has “Picturfied” the sidebar friends list and the chat box. Let’s examine the changes in further detail.

Nondestructive Photoshop Techniques in Web Design

Every designer, at some point in their career, has had a project that just wouldn’t seem to end. Delays from photographers/illustrators, catastrophic failure of hardware or software, and the craziness of our personal lives are all factors that can make taking a web design from idea to finished product much harder than it should be. While sometimes these delays are beyond your control, one thing that is completely under your control as a designer is the edit-ability of Photoshop files.

Creating Forms: Pure CSS vs Table Based

While I have always been an advocate for table-less layouts with semantic HTML, designing forms with pure CSS has proven to be a complete pain in the butt. And apparently I’m only one in 10,000 to say so.

5 Essential Tips for Teenage Web Designers

More and more people between the ages of 15-19 are becoming interested in the world of web design and SEO. This is great news for the industry! By the time these young over-achievers mature into their 20s, they will contribute substantially to the web design community. However, if you are a teenage entrepreneur extraordinaire, there [...]

Should CSS be Trendy?

Anyone who keeps up with the development of CSS3 knows that CSS3 can do some cool things. Super Cool Web Design Things Cool things have been around in web design ever since someone got the stupid brilliant idea of using spacer.gifs. Among the cool things that have plagued graced the internet over its lifetime are: [...]

What Car Dealers Can Teach us About Portfolio Pages

I’ve noticed a trend on web design companies portfolio pages: They make it hard to view the work done for their clients live. Instead of letting the viewer actually visit the sites of the clients directly from the portfolio page, the page will just bring up an overlay to view a larger print screen. If [...]