It was so nice to have a little Christmas break. I feel re-energized to come back with some great posts and continue work on improving this blog into the new year. I’ve got some redesign elements to introduce, including a new logo which I plan to reveal in the coming months. This month’s MyInkTrail was relatively small, but its still packed with interesting design articles, tutorials, freebies and more.
Articles
Comic Sans: The Font Everyone Loves to Hate
I always cringe when I see comic sans in design, it’s just so rarely used correctly. This article dissects the reasons why so many of us designers dislike the font.
The Weaker Side of Usability Guidelines
This article contains very practical and common sense advice for usability. We would all benefit from knowing and applying these principles.
WordPress 2.9 Enhancements Every Developer Must Know
With WordPress 2.9 coming out recently this is a timely article that showcases 29 enhancement tips that will help you improve your WordPress site.
Make Your Mockup in Markup
Even though I do all my mockups in Photoshop, I really appreciated the benefits described with mocking your designs in code as shown in this witty post, plus you’ll learn some cool css3 tricks.
How to Develop WordPress Themes Behind the Scenes
This is a quick little article that explains the best ways to develop a WordPress theme behind the scenes.
Tutorials
How to Display Your Twitter Status in a Unique Design
This is a helpful walkthrough that shows you how to display your twitter status in a slick design.
Playing with CSS3
Here are some more CSS3 tricks to put into your design arsenal. Abduzeedo is one of the sites that have really started to add these practices on there own blog.
Compilations
15 Biggest Internet Controversies of the Past Decade
Revisit the 15 biggest controversies of the past decade. Everything from the Digg revolt to Facebook privacy policy changes.
The Best 40 Photoshop Text Effects from 2009
Check out the top 40 photoshop text effect tutorials according to Specky Boy.
Freebies
108 Mono Icons: Huge Set of Minimal Icons
This is a wonderfully simple black and white set of 32px icons for personal and commercial use.
Circular Social Media Icons Repack
This is an updated set of some well designed circular social media icons.
Featured Stuff
There Is No Page Fold
I’ve ranted about there not being a fold in webdesign for some time now. Although this opinion is not shared by all designers, it’s a common school of thought, and this site makes a clever attempt to further that point.
The Week Before Christmas! (a freelance parody)
This poem definitely put a smile on my face. It’s a clever little spin on “The Week Before Christmas” with a geeky designer spin.
If this post was helpful to you, please consider sharing it with others, it's a great way of saying thanks.
Contribute
Kamila - Darc Vanilla Design
December 28, 2009
I’m your fan and learn a lot from your articles. I like the way you choose between what can be useful for other designers. Thanks for it. You are doing great job :)
Dany
December 28, 2009
Thanks for sharing! Useful ressources!
For inspiration, I also recommand: http://dyvantity.com/category/inspiration/focus/ (amazing tribute to VW best creative ads)
Regards!
Autonomy
December 30, 2009
Andrew, this is a great resource – thanks for putting this together!
Renee
December 31, 2009
Freebies never get old. Thanks for the resources!
Matt
January 3, 2010
The first Featured Stuff should be http://arbent.net/blog/the-week-before-christmas-a-freelance-parody not http://arbent.net/blog/circular-social-media-icons
Andrew Houle
January 4, 2010
@Matt – Thanks for catching that. It’s fixed now.
Matt
January 8, 2010
Thanks for sharing these fantastic resources :)
teebee
January 8, 2010
The link for the title “The Week Before Christmas! (a freelance parody)” is missing the “h” in “http”! :)
Stephan
January 8, 2010
That’s good resource, keep going like this!