It’s New Year’s Eve 2009, time to look forward to 2010 but also to look back and be inspired by some of the design goodness (and greatness) of 2009. This is a list of some of the design and photography eye candy and useful resources that I came across during the year. It’s informal and covers...

In previous posts I’ve written about the importance of using contrast to create eye-catching designs and bold typography. The concept of contrast in design is to avoid using elements that are similar, but to make them look very different. This is what catches the eye. However, there are of course...

Where did the last 10 years go? At the end of 1999 we were living in fear of the millennium bug and the dotcom bubble was about to burst. This decade has seen the web mature from an awkward precocious child in to a competent but unpredictable teenager. Original and innovative technologies emerge on...

Lets be honest, most of the form buttons that you come across are ugly, they work as intended, but really, really look awful. There are reasons for this, firstly form buttons, as with almost anything to do with forms, are notoriously tricky to style with consistency, and secondly, styling can cause...

I was speaking with a colleague recently about our individual business goals for 2010, and she shared that one of her goals for the New Year is to generate more business from prospects who call her directly to get information on her services. This seems like a great goal, especially when you consider...

With the holidays and the end of the calendar year, it seems that the last few weeks of December are universally slower-than-normal in terms of work. It’s a popular time for vacation as we spend time with family, close out the current year and start gearing up for the new one. If you’re...

With it being Christmas in the past week, design articles have been a little thin on the ground, making today’s Twitter round-up fairly sparse. Don't be put off, though, there are still a few high quality articles being published around the community, and we have highlighted them below. Just...

The “rule of thirds” is a guideline that can help you create interesting photographs when you’re the photographer or to create a more compelling composition if you’re using someone else’s picture in your design. The rule is one of the most fundamental in creating appealing compositions in...

There are professionals in every industry that are tagged as experts. They are highly experienced and usually well respected, have an ability to understand all aspects of the work they do, and frequently lend a hand to help others out. They are the people we turn to for instruction, to get new business...

VirtualBox has supported virtual machine (VM) snapshots for a while. However, until version 3.1, it was only possible to revert back to a previous state which destroyed snapshots lower in the hierarchy. VirtualBox 3.1 introduces a great new feature that could help web developers manage multiple virtual...

Using illustration in web design gives the designer the opportunity to convey there own personal and unique style, and be able to say “this site is mine, and look what I can do”. Very few web design styles give an artist this opportunity. What makes the examples below stand out are not...