How to Teach Someone Graphic Design
“Do you have a friend, family member or colleague who is considering design as a profession and looks to you for guidance? Your instruction could mean the difference between a meaningful career and a non-starter.
Today we’ll offer up some basic advice that everyone should consider before attempting to teach someone to be a graphic designer.”
50 New And Crazy Cool jQuery Plugins From Year 2011
“With 2011 a little over half over it’s the right time to look at, and uncover, the current trends of web design and development. It’s sure been a helluva ride for jQuery and it’s growth just doesn’t stop. With more than 40% of websites using jQuery now it’s no longer possible to ignore this efficient, powerful and lightweight tool.
jQuery gives developers the chance to enrich websites with amazing elements without the need to write dozens of lines of code. This article presents 50 advanced, cutting-edge yet simple jQuery plugins that will enhance your web experience drastically.”
20 Ways To Promote Yourself As A Web Designer
“Web Designers can often find it hard to get their name out there, and begin getting clients. Promotion doesn’t always have to cost money. I have compiled a list of how web designers can promote themselves, and get their name out there. Some of the ways require little to no effort, whilst others require much time. Either way, you will still receive more clients.”
6 Ways to Improve Quality in Your Projects and Reduce Stress
“If you’re like me, each new web design project looks like a fresh adventure to spin your creative wheels on. There are new challenges and ideas that get the mind buzzing. Sadly, this momentary bliss falls apart as I start thinking about everything it’s going to take to finish the project. My mind stops buzzing and goes into shut down mode. All of a sudden, I don’t even want to look at the project anymore.”
How To Target Devices Using CSS Media Queries
“Media queries are a way to serve different css rules to different devices and device characteristics. They’re the final piece in allowing us to create designs that are truly responsive to our audience and how our visitors choose to view our sites.
The last few weeks we’ve been building up toward responsive layouts, first by creating flexible girds and then by adding flexible images and media inside those grids. Today we’ll add media queries to the mix.”
Common Issues and Workarounds for Web UNSAFE fonts
“It’s almost possible to feel the wave of euphoria rolling around the Internet that’s been generated by the arrival of Web fonts. Finally, website designers can unshackle themselves from the limited range of fonts that’s available once you aggregate down the common typefaces on Windows, Mac, Linux and so on.
I can’t be the only one who sighs in desperation each time the words font-family: Helvetica, Arial, Geneva, sans-serif; are keyed into a stylesheet.
When you read the marketing pages from suppliers of Web fonts and font delivery services, you get the impression that with just a couple of lines of code you can transform a site with no hassle; all the issues taken away from you. The reality is somewhat different: there are actually quite a few gotchas, some of which are easy to miss if you’re not testing thoroughly.”
Are You Ready For Google Swiffy?
“Google’s Swiffy can convert basic Flash applications to HTML5. Unlike similar projects before it, Swiffy appears to emulate the ActionScript Virtual Machine, which suggests that conversion of complex Flash apps to HTML and JavaScript is actually viable.
Recently, Twitter went a-fury with Google’s announcement of Swiffy, a tool to convert compiled Adobe Flash files, or SWFs, to HTML5 animations. If you keep a search open for HTML5 game-related material like I do, you might have been overloaded with mentions about Swiffy being a game changer in the war between HTML5 and Flash. Sensationalist terms like war aside, Swiffy is indeed an important creation.
But wait, you might say, didn’t Adobe release something just like this? Sure Adobe released a similar experiment, Wallaby, in March of this year, but it only supports the most basic Flash features. Swiffy has taken an important step further: emulating the ActionScript Virtual Machine.
Why is this important?”