The Principle of Contrast in Web Design

This post goes into great detail about the importance good contrast can play in web design. It’s broken down into color, size and alignment.

A Few Steps Back

I love the honesty with which Jeff writes. In this article he calls out some of the design community for lack of originality and the commercialization of social media, amongst other things. This is a very thoughtful and interesting read that will certainly have bloggers looking in the mirror, myself included.

Unique Blog Posts and WordPress Tips

Some blogs have started to customize each and every blog posts that they create. It’s an awesome trend, that requires creativity and commitment. This post showcases a bunch of blogs that are using unique blog posts.

Yet More on the Unfolding Future-of-Flash-and-the-Web Saga

The drama that is unfolding between Apple and Flash is quite interesting. The politics and motives involved make it intriguing to follow. Get some perspective on the issue from this well-written article.

Lost in Space Typography in Photoshop

Another sweet typography tutorial from the folks at Abduzeedo. It includes a bokeh effect and some awesome lighting effects.

How to Build a Custom Wordpress Theme from Scratch

This tutorial walks you through creating an original Wordpress theme from start to finish. It’s well written and a great starting point for anyone who already has basic css/html knowledge.

Create An Editable Stitched Label Type Treatment

If you like Illustrator, and you haven’t already, you should definitely bookmark Vectips. They are a consistent source for awesome vector tips and tutorials. This tutorial shows you how to create a slick stitched label, that’s easily reusable.

CSS3 Dropdown Menu

Learn how to create a Mac-inspired menu using CSS3 attributes such as border-radius, box-shadow, and text-shadow. This is a terrific example of the proper use of CSS3 to create progressive enhancements in web design.

15 Excellent Splatter Typography Examples

This is a really sweet compilation of splatter typography that is sure to inspire you.

Designers Sketchbook Showcase + Win 10 Free Sketchbooks!

Wow, my sketchbook doesn’t look half as good as some of these. This is a cool glimpse into the sketching stage of the creative process for some designers.

BLANK WordPress Theme

When starting a Wordpress theme from scratch it’s nice to start with just the skeleton. I usually grab Starkers by Elliot Jay Stocks, but BLANK by Chris Coyier provides another nice option.

PV.M Garage CSS Gallery

PV.M Garage has added a css gallery that showcases only really great designs. I really like the colors and tags you can use to sort through the designs.

PSDFAN VIP Area Launches

PSDFAN has relaunched their members area. It’s stocked full of source files and member exclusive tutorials.

11 Most Popular Blog Design Styles

This post breaks down 11 popular blog styles, and has an exhausting showcase of inspiring examples.

The History of the Ampersand and Showcase

I’ve joked on this blog before that nothing says typography quite like the ampersand sign. This history of the symbol and showcase of examples should satisfy the inner typography nerd in most of us designers.

Curating Comments Threads

The most current versions of Wordpress include all kinds of awesome options to improve how you handle comments on your blog. This post covers much of that, and an interesting take on using a feature/bury plugin.

Principles of Great Design: Craftsmanship

This post speaks about quality craftsmanship as it relates to design. Then it shares practical advice about how to become a better craftsman.

How to effectively organize, manage and maintain your freelance design business

Brian Hoff discusses ways to increase your efficiency in an effort to make running a one person design business possible. The post is chock full of awesome advice, everything from syncing your files to writting contracts.

A Brief History of Eye-Tracking

Usability has always been an important topic of interest for me, that interest has grown now that I just finished reading the ever popular Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability. Of course we can improve the user experience only if we understand how users browse the web. This post takes a look at the history of eye-tracking, and how people utilize it.

Mastering Photoshop: Unknown Tricks and Time-Savers

I love keyboard shortcuts! This post lays out all kinds of Photoshop time savers, but mostly it’s a nice bookmark of useful shortcuts.

Design Trends (Predictions) in 2010

A look at some of the top trends in web design that are more than likely to take off in 2010. Not only are they good predictions, most of them are good suggestions for progressive, improved design.

Beautiful Designs with Smoke Typography

Smoke typography is an awesomely unique niche. Predictably so, this is a roundup of inspirational examples of smoke typography.

Gorgeous Typography Examples in Advertising Design

I must have been on a typography kick this month because this post features more cool typography examples, this time within advertising design.

7 Hi-Res Bokeh Textures

The bokeh effect seems to be here to stay, and rightfully so, it’s a beautiful effect. Here is a collection of 7 bokeh textures that can help your next design.

Woven Fabric Social Media Icon Set

I love to add icons to my design arsenal. This is a unique set of social media icons made of woven fabric.

Vector Social Media Icons

It’s one thing to make an awesome set of social media icons, but it brings it to another level of awesomeness when you realize these icons are designed in vector format, meaning that you can use them at any size you wish.

How To Create Depth And Nice 3D Ribbons Only Using CSS3

This is a great example of the sort of graphical elements you can create using just CSS 3.

Create a Gnarly Snowboarding Themed Web Design

This tutorial is rockin’ cool no matter how you slice it, but you add ‘gnarly’ to the title and it just goes off the charts.

Create a Cool Typography Effect in Photoshop

Wow, I was really into the subject of typography this month. This tutorial show you how tor create a cool typography effect using layer styles, color blending and images.

Art in My Coffee

I’m not sure what to think of this art style other than it’s really unique and clever. This site is a gallery of coffee art images.

Why It’s Better To Pretend You Don’t Know Anything About Computers

Anyone who works with computers can definitely relate to this hysterical comic about why it’s best to keep you computer know-how a secret.

Design Instruct

This is a new design site created by the folks who brought you Six Revisions. Design Instruct is a web magazine that aims to teach designers and digital artists useful techniques by way of detailed and step-by-step tutorials.

Readability

I’m not sure I’ll use this all that often, but I like the idea and it’s ease of use. Basically it’s a bookmark you can add to simplify a website to just display the content you’re reading rendered in simple nice fonts.

iPad

Yeah, I’m featuring the iPad on MyInkTrail. Love it or hate it, it was a huge event. I’ll leave a review up to the talented pen of Rob Bowen for an upcoming post.

Dummy Image

I could see myself using this now and again when I mockup web designs. Basically the site takes in width and height values and dynamically creates a dummy image for you to use in your design. Sort of the Lorem Ipsum of images.

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.

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.

40 Outstanding Typographic Poster Designs

Check out these awesomely inspiring typographic posters.

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.

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.

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.

Selling Ad Space: Tips from Top Design Blog Owners

A design community interview that reveals tips for selling ad space on your blog. The interview questions cover: what type of services bloggers use, how they set their pricing, solicitation methods, and what are their best performing ads.

How To Become A More Effective, Proficient and Informed Designer

In the never ending search to discover ways to make more time in a day, finding ways to be more effective and proficient are invaluable. This post explores ways to organize some of your daily tasks.

If You Had To Marry A Browser…Which One?

This is a comical design community interview that looks into what browsers people like. I love the answers that revolve around IE’s many short comings.

How To: Successfully Launch a Web Design Startup with Social Media and No Budget

This article is chocked full of practical advice for launching a web design startup. The best piece of advice from this post, may very well be… “The real cost is time.”

Grunge In Web Design: Samples And Best Practices

This is a really well put together article about the best practices for using grunge in webdesign, it includes lots of great inspiration.

Bold Web Predictions for 2010

David Walsh makes some bold predictions for 2010 about social media, browsers, operating systems and more.

Color: The Next Limited Resource?

This is an interesting and quite frightening article about the potential of big businesses owning the rights to certain colors.

Transparency: Benefits and Best Practices

I’m trying to be more transparent and personable here on MyInkBlog, so this article about the benefits and best practices came at a good time for me.

Stories behind your favourite blogs

Get the story behind a lot of the top blogs in the design community and how their name originated.

Mega Drop Down Menus w/ CSS & jQuery

These huge dropdown menus are getting more popular by the minute, and they are a great way to handle navigation for large sites. Learn how to create one with the use of css and jQuery.

How To Create Great Typographic Wallpaper In Photoshop

Check out how to create this clever, but simple typographic wallpaper in Photoshop.

Create Your Own Set of Multi-Colored Illustrator Paint Brushes

This is an awesomely detailed walkthrough of how to create a custom set of multi colored paint brushes for Illustrator.

How to Create a Crafts Inspired Vector Kids Illustration

This tutorial teaches you how to create clever kid illustrations with plaid textures and stitching in Illustrator.

Free Hi-Resolution Paint Stroke Photoshop Brushes

I realize I post a paint brush freebie almost every month, but they are awesome to use for design, and this is an exceptional set.

Glassical: A Free WordPress Theme

Hooray for high quality free Wordpress themes! They can be really helpful for time pressed design jobs, or they can just provide a nice starting point. This is a refreshingly simple and clean theme.

Workstation Setups

A new site to get inspiration for your home office. Check out the workstations of Chris Spooner, Jon Phillips, Andy Soward, yours truly and many others.

Myows

This is a new site created for designers, photographers, bloggers, writers, musicians and anyone who creates copyrightable work.

Digging Into Wordpress

Chris Coyier of CSS Tricks and Jeff Starr of Perishable Press team up to bring 400 pages of practical Wordpress information.

Freelance Feed

Grace Smith brings you this quality, hand-picked aggregator of the most valuable articles and resources for the Freelance community online.

Logo Design Love

An upcoming book from the very talented David Airey that will be stocked with great logo examples and best practices.

Mastering CSS Coding: Getting Started

A detailed overview of CSS that will help you master everything from padding to position. The end of the post features a thorough roundup of more tutorials to take your CSS skills even further.

Most Used and Abused Web Design Trends of All Time

I can’t say that I avoided all these, but I suppose that all of us, and how they became used and abused in the first place. Regardless, this is an entertaining look back at some of the trends we’ve seen come and go in web design.

How a design blog is attractive to clients

Brian Hoff goes into detail about the benefits of running a blog and how it can help you attract clients.

Spammers, Evildoers, and Opportunists

Man, I loved the satire of this article. Just to get your attention, the first line reads… “Search Engine Optimization is not a legitimate form of marketing. It should not be undertaken by people with brains or souls.”

Browser support for CSS3 and HTML5

Ever wonder what CSS3 and HTML5 techniques work in which browser? Look no further, this is an awesome bookmark that breaks it all down.

Freelancers Preparation for Vacation

This post serves as a nice checklist of things to think about if you are a freelancer planning to go on vacation.

Live and Let Die: A Creative Discussion #4 Wrap-up

This post is a wrap-up of an earlier design community discussion. I love the conversation that was generated.

Create a Cool Wet Ink Typography Effect in Photoshop

This tutorial shows you how to create a really cool wet ink text effect. Something that you know that I can really appreciate here on MyInkBlog :)

Really simple CSS trick for equal height columns

If you’ve ever tried to create equal length columns in CSS you know just how tricky they can be. This tutorial gives you an alternate approach that is pretty simple to create.

How to Create 3D Text Blocks in Photoshop

I wanted to make sure to include this tutorial in this month’s MyInkTrail because it is so unique. You’ll learn all kinds of cool techniques along the way.

Drag to Share

This is a technique that I first saw on the Abduzeedo redesign. It’s a great way to offer share links for your posts, check out how it’s done.

55 Adobe Illustrator Icon Design Tutorials

If you want to learn Illustrator this is a great list to start with. It offers 55 of the best Illustrator tutorials for icon design.

8 Hand Drawn Icon Sets For Bloggers

This handy bookmark features a roundup of 8 of the best hand drawn style icons sets for designers.

26 awesome Firefox add-ons for web workers

For me, the plugins are what separates Firefox from other browsers. Here is a list of 26 plugins, that will make your job as a web designer easier.

10 Free Original Hi-Res Fully Stained Paper Textures

Here is a quality set of 10 hi-res stained paper textures from the Max at Design Shard.

Free Textures – 31 High-Res Grunge Remodeling Textures

This is a uniquely awesome set of 31 textures of grungy stripped walls.

Free Hi-Res Photoshop Brushes: Acrylic Textures

Be sure to add this fantastic set of acrylic texture brushes to your design toolbox.

Bidsketch

Bidsketch is a new design proposal service that allows you to create, track, customize, and design beautiful proposals.

Wordpress Custom Login Plugin

It’s often handy to customize the wordpress admin, this plugin makes it easy to change the look of the login page.

10 Ways to Customize and Personalize Your Wordpress Blog

Pro Blog Design takes a look at 10 possible ways to improve your blog through customizations. There is always something more that you can do to improve your blog, so I love posts like this.

From Client Contact to Design – A Group Interview

A design community interview that reveals the design process from contact to design. I love gaining insight like this from top designers.

10 Things to Remember Before Launching a Website

A quality check list from Niki of Design O’Blog of 10 things to remember when launching a site. It’s always wise to run through a checklist like this before you go live.

Top designers discuss why they blog

A design community interview that asks top designers “why they blog.” Answers from designers like Chris Spooner, Jacob Cass, and yours truly.

How to Get Noticed on Twitter

Some real practical advice about how to get noticed on Twitter. Everything from being conscience of when you tweet to not being shy.

Beautiful Post Thumbnails: Top Examples & Best Practices

Liam from Function puts together this wonderful compilation of best practices and quality examples of post thumbnails. Each example is features really helpful tips about what works.

How to Create Eroded Metal Text with Photoshop

The final result of this tutorial speaks highly enough for itself. In addition to designing something really cool, you’ll learn about patterns, channels, gradients and more.

How to Create a Golden, Vector Compass in Illustrator

Another cool result. This tutorial helps you learn technique, precision, and probably some patience.

Zee Logo in Illustrator

Fabio Sasso never disappoints with the tutorials he puts out. In this tutorial you’ll learn some handy illustrator techniques for creating a custom logo, plus be sure to check out Abduzeedo’s slick new design.

Quick Global Swatches In Adobe Illustrator

This tutorial teaches you how to create global swatches in Illustrator. I’m not ashamed to say that I never knew this trick, so I’m really glad I found this in my reader this month.

Sproing! – Make An Elastic Thumbnail Menu

This tutorial shows you how to make a cleverly interactive thumbnail menu with a little css and jQuery.

Freelancer Interview: Jon Phillips

An interesting interview with Jon Phillips of Sprye Studios. If for no other reason you should check out this interview to catch Jon’s rant on designers calling themselves rockstars (a nice perspective from someone in a rockband).

Twi-Birds Icons

I know, I know, there are more than enough twitter icons out there, but c’mon you have to admit this set has some character.

178 Free Icons: WooFunction Free Icon Set goes Live

Another killer icon set from Liam. This one features 178 professional quality icons for free… hooray!

How The Webs Most Popular Blogs Looked When They Launched

A look back at how a lot of today’s most popular blogs looked like when they first started. I can’t get over how far A List Apart has come, thankfully they went away from that orange.

40 Super-Neat JavaScript Plugins

This compilation makes for a handy bookmark for when you need to find some interactive javascript plugins.

20 Free High Quality Script Fonts

I found some fonts in this list that I hadn’t seen before. It’s definitely worth a browse to see if you can add anything to your designers’ toolbox.

22 Web People In Ten Years

A design community interview that asks designers what they think they’ll be doing in 10 years.

Tut Engine

A new tutorial search site that archives thousands of good design tutorials.

Building A Website – Time Lapse Video

This is a fun time-lapse video of Chris Spooner building a website. You won’t learn a lot because of the speed of the video, but you will get an idea of workflow and it’s always cool to see how other designers work.

Fuel Your Blogging

A new site from the Fuel Network. This one is run by Tim Smith and features good advice and inspiration on blogging.

Artua features a lot of very high quality icons free of charge. They also offer design services, their portfolio will do the talking.

This new site offers up a bunch of interviews from top designers. (Insert shameless self promotion here… ) For one of their posts they asked me a series of questions, To Tweet Or Not To Tweet.

This is a slick typography site that aims to promote open-source type that will improve the selection of useful webdesign fonts.

20 Tips on How to Write for the Web

This is a quality list of writing tips for bloggers and content managers — sort of a mix between English 101 and simple web writing pointers.

Hiring a designer: a client’s perspective

David Airey often effectively takes a step back to look at things from the client’s perspective. This post focuses on the expectations of a client when hiring a designer.

10 More Typography Mistakes You Might Be Making

I always like reading posts like this, they remind me of things not to do, and things I could improve on. This post serves a helpful list of 10 common typography mistakes I should be avoiding.

6 Ways To Improve Your Web Typography

This is an excellent resource of typography tips as they relate to CSS and webdesign.

Ask A Freelancer #4: Dealing with Scope Creep

Liz from Cmd + Shift Blog is doing a series called “Ask A Freelancer”. This time the question explores the issue of scope creep. What should you do when a client’s expectations for a project continue to grow bigger than the original agreement?

Five Things You Didn’t Know About Me

Be sure to check out this entertaining post from Grace Smith. She asks a bunch of folks in the design community to tell us 5 things you probably didn’t know about them.

Inappropriate Uses

A simple list of things you should not be doing in webdesign. Chris reminds us that databases are for content, HTML is for describing and displaying content, CSS is for design, and JavaScript is for functionality.

5 Habits to Help You Complete Your Project in Record Time

Everyone in the field of design wants to be more productive. This post showcases five ways to get the most out of your time.

Semi Web Safe Fonts to Spice up Your Web Designs

Unfortunately designers are generally limited to the 10 or so truly web safe fonts, but with a good font-stack you can experiment with semi web safe fonts. Chris of Line25 puts together this nice list of 13 such semi web safe options (try saying that five times fast).

36 Beautiful and “NEW” Free Wordpress Themes

A huge compilation of 36 new, awesome free Wordpress themes.

How Popular Website Designs Looked Like In Late 90’s

Check out the look of some of the popular sites in the late 90’s. You’ll be amazed how far they’ve come in about ten years.

65 Popular And Professional Free Fonts For Creative Typography

A huge compilation of professional looking free fonts. Definitely some good fonts to add to your collection.

16 Great Photoshop Light Effect Tutorials

A collection of 16 great photoshop tutorials to learn how to create cool lighting effects.

Sticky (Fixed) SideNav Layout with CSS

A simple, but detailed explanation of how to create a sticky side navigation layout.

Coding A HTML 5 Layout From Scratch

This tutorial walks you through all the details of creating a website from scratch using HTML 5.

Creating Editable Letterpress Styled Text

Letterpress designs are still quite popular. This tutorial shows you how to create a sleek non-destructive letterpress design in Illustrator.

In-Field Labels: A Better Way + jQuery Plugin

It looks cool to use in-field labels on forms, but sometimes the usability is poor when the user clicks on a field and the label disappears. This tutorials attempts to solve that issue with a little help from jQuery.

How To Create A Sexy Vertical Sliding Panel Using jQuery And CSS3

Be sure to check out this elegant tutorial which shows you how to code up a vertical sliding panel using jQuery in a fixed or absolute position.

CSS3 rounded corners for every browser? An alternative quick solution without headache

The title pretty much says it all with this tutorial. You’ll learn how to add a quick javascript snippet to easily add rounded corners to your site for any browser.

Smoke Brush Set

You can tell by the thumbnail over there on the left that this is a really cool looking set of smoke brushes for Photoshop.

Free Vectors – 7 High-Quality City Skyline Vectors

Check out this set of 7 city skyline vectors. They are definitely a good addition to your designer toolbox.

Concept Feedback

Getting honest and helpful feedback is an invaluable tool for any designer. Concept Feedback is a free site that strives to help designers get feedback on their concepts.

Redmark

I wrote about Redmark back when it was in beta mode. It is now officially launched and can boast an even better interface. Be sure to bookmark this handy free proofing tool.

Flickroom

Flickroom is an Adobe Air app that offers up a cool interface for you to browse your Flickr photos.

Slicejobs

There are a lot of slicing services out there, so making a decision on that sort of thing can be incredibly difficult. Slicejobs offers a place to compare services and get testimonials of many of the top slicing service providers.

Phototuts+

This is the latest addition to the tutsplus website family by Envato. Tutorials on all things photography — this should be a good one.

Good Logos Are Flexible: Tips to make sure yours is

Brian goes over five helpful tips that make your logos more flexible and generally more professional. Really, these are the type of things that separate an amateur logo from a professional one.

A Designer’s Guide To Accessibility and 508 Compliance

This article takes a stab at explaining accessibility and 508 Compliance as it applies to a designer. It also features simple tips and some common mistakes to avoid.

“Should I do Spec Work?” – Six Top Designers Sound Off

Spec work is a dirty word in the world of web design. Digital Artist Toolbox asks six designers, including myself, for their thoughts on the subject.

The Power of HTML 5 and CSS 3

Perishable Press looks at the possibilities of what can be achieved using HTML 5 and CSS 3. I love how much cleaner the code will be when this is more widely used!

Web fonts — where are we?

This article dives into the progress of non web safe fonts in web design. It looks at where designers want to be and solutions to get there.

Combining Hand-Drawn and Digital Illustration Techniques

Hand-drawn style websites are quite popular these days, here’s a look into the creative process of how it can be achieved.

HTML 5 and CSS 3: The Techniques You’ll Soon Be Using

This tutorial looks at the HTML 5 and CSS 3 code that will soon be more widely used. It’s a cool example of how much cleaner the syntax will be.

Advanced Tutorial: Creating ‘Broken Link’

This tutorial breaks down the whole process from sketch to final illustration. The final result of this tutorial is so amazing.

Tutorial: Create A Retro Cosmic Design in Photoshop

This awesome tutorial walks you through a really cool design. It’s inspired by the unique style of James White of Signal Noise.

Horizontal Subnav with CSS

Soh has a way of making CSS techniques look easy. This is a nice approach to creating a horizontal subnav dropdown.

Display Thumbnails For Related Posts in Wordpress

I’ve been wanting to add thumbnails to my related posts for quite sometime so this tutorial should really come in handy.

Text Blocks Over Image

Chris from CSS Tricks shows you how to create a simple text effect to place over an image. This is a very nice technique to have in your css arsenal.

Text Rotation with CSS

This tutorial walks you through a simple technique to rotate text using CSS. It even works in IE!

Animated Navigation with CSS & jQuery

Learn how to create a really slick looking navigation using jQuery and CSS.

Free Desktop Wallpaper: Smoke On The Water

I love keeping my background fresh, it makes for great inspiration. This is such a cool effect, I definitely had to add this to my library.

10 Free High Res Coffee Stains Textures

This is a nice set of 10 high resolution coffee stain textures.

Graphic Designer and Blogger Andrew Houle of MyInkBlog

A little bit of a shameless plug of my interview over at Inside the Webb.

15 Stunning Typography Portraits

These typography portraits really are stunning. Some of the best typography inspiration I’ve seen in a while, be sure to check these out.

15 Essential Wordpress Plugins for Aspiring Designers

A handy compilation of 15 useful Wordpress plugins for designers. Some of used and some I’ll have to try.

Designmoo

Another design social media site, but this one should have staying power; it’s well designed and already starting to gain quite the following.

Brush Pilot

This is a new project by Jay over at Bittbox. It looks to be quite a handy app for organizing your Photoshop brushes.

10 HTML Crimes You Really Shouldn’t Commit

Chris puts together this list of 10 HTML issues to avoid. It’s a simple list, but a great reminder. A must read for newer web designers.

How To Approach Categories and Navigation in Blogging

I love articles that go into depth on the proper way to handle navigation. It’s something that I need to improve on and will do so in my next design iteration of MyInkBlog. A lot of good points are made about the common misuses of categories within blogs.

CSS Beginners Do’s and Dont’s Part 2

This article covers 5 important tips to help you write cleaner, more optimized CSS. And if you’re thirsty for more, be sure to check out the first part.

4 Tips for Creating an Effective Poster Design

This article features helpful design tips when working with large poster designs. And 3 of the tips are ideal for pretty much any graphic design that you do.

Take Your Design To The Next Level With CSS3

I love the new features in CSS3. I plan to use a lot of progressive enhancements in this site’s redesign. So anything CSS3 related I’ve been reading up on.

Defending Your Offense

Kyle makes a ploy for designers to know their weaknesses and to improve on them. He offers some great advice on how to take your designs from good to great.

Web Nerd Terminology (Explained)

The web nerd dictionary; I love it! Check out this post out and learn up on terms like “Borked”.

Five Minute Upgrade – Making Your Design Pop

Paying attention to the small details can really help you improve your designs. This post features quality tips about how to make your designs pop.

How to Create a CSS Menu Using Image Sprites

This is certainly not the first time css sprites have been covered, but this is a clear, concise explanation that features cool Apple-inspired menu example.

Displaying Author Meta Information in Wordpress 2.8

This tutorial covers some of the new features of the author meta information that you can utilize in Wordpress 2.8.

Turn Any Font Into a Sketch Font

The handwritten font look has become really popular lately in web and graphic design. This tutorial shows you how to create a cool sketched look on any font in just a few steps.

Free Hi-Res Old Grunge Paper Textures

Textures are an awesome addition to almost any photoshop design project. These hi-res grunge paper textures are a fantastic addition to your texture library.

30 Different Flying Birds Vector Freebie

A cool set of 30 free vector birds. I love having this type of file in my designer’s toolbox.

30 Photoshop Brushes: ‘Drippy Sprays’

This is a nice set of spraypaint style dripping brushes that are sure to help you grunge up your designs.

20 Spray & Splat Brushes for Photoshop

As long as we are on the subject of grunge brushes, here is another great set of spray, splatter brushes.

50 Alluring Typography and Grid Focused Websites

A compilation of beautiful typography and grid designs in websites. This post makes for a great bookmark to go back to when you are in need of quality web design inspiration.

14 Invaluable Tools To Check The Real Worth of Your Design Work

It’s always fun to find out the estimated value of your blog. This post showcases a bunch of estimators, and some other tools to help you estimate design costs.

26 Beautiful Photoshop Tutorials on Designing Posters

A collection of 26 poster design tutorials. A really good list, that was made even better by including a MyInkBlog tutorial :)

My Web Design Toolbox

I talk a lot here on MyInkBlog about having a designer’s toolbox. Liz from Cmd + Shift Design Blog shares the tools that she uses the most.

My Web Design Toolbox

A great new texture site that is well organized and beautifully designed. I love that the site showcases a good use of texture within it’s own design and offers texture inspiration and texture tutorials.

Flippa

This is the spin off of Sitepoint Marketplace. A cool new design with great new search features. Clearly, this is the best blog auction site available.

FontEx

A beautifully designed site that showcases a collection of hand-picked quality fonts. The site features easy to use categories and the fonts are also indexed by letter.

Morgue File

A newer and free stock photography site. You can never have enough of these resources.

The Designed

A cool new design blog. Quality roundups, tips and resources.

SSbits

This site is updated often and features tips on all things Silverstripe. Which is an awesome open source CMS.

Digging into Wordpress

Chris Coyier of CSS Tricks and Jeff Starr of Perishable Press have teamed up to bring you this new Wordpress blog that will also serve as the home for an upcoming book by the same name that they are working on.

Fuel Your Photography

Another new site for the Fuel Empire. A nice bookmark for cool photography inspiration, news and tips.

5 Disciplines of Successful Design

This article contains great perspective about how to be a successful designer. Aaron does a fantastic job of communicating how to best handle client relations. I love the advice on setting boundaries.

9 Tips For Brand Building With Web Design

I feel like the importance of branding is understated far too often. Giving your brand a consistent personality can elevate your site to a higher level. Webdesigner Depot dissects 9 ways that you can improve your branding.

Universal Internet Explorer 6 CSS

I’m sure you’ve already read your fair share of articles on how to deal with IE6 specific issues. This concise and well-written post focuses on 6 different approaches to this common dilemma.

How to manage a small web project: a simple approach

Antonio shares his thoughts on a simple project workflow. There are helpful diagrams and advice throughout. Without a doubt, this approach will help you optimize your time.

Can Anybody Be A Freelancer?

An interesting take on what it takes to be a successful freelancer. Sort of a checklist of prerequisites to see if you’d have what it takes. And to answer the question… no, not everyone can be a freelancer.

Can Designers Predict Design Trends for 2010 – Part I

A group interview with the design community about some of the trends we may see in 2010. Some great insight from a talented group of designers.

Creating Consistently Colorful User Experiences: Part 2, The Medium

This article thoroughly discusses color as it relates to web design. Andrew at UX Booth covers everything from file types to color definitions in CSS3.

Busting the myths: what Graphic Design ISN’T

I’ve often read articles on what graphic design is, but I can’t recall reading an article on what graphic design isn’t. The points are spot-on and are cleverly detailed.

Create A Clean Modern Website Design in Photoshop

One of reasons I really enjoy tutorials by Chris of Line 25 and Blog.SpoonGraphics is that he shares his entire design process and doesn’t skip right into the Photoshop steps. This tutorial starts with a sketch, a wire frame, and then builds off the 960 grid template. The final result is clean and eye catching.

How to Create an Identity Package in Illustrator

This tutorial focuses on how to create a branding identity through common business printed materials. The post highlights many of the smaller details that can be overlooked by young designers.

Simple Page Peel Effect with jQuery & CSS

The page peel effect is a fairly common technique used on websites. Soh Tanaka breaks down how to achieve this using jQuery in a couple of easy steps.

How to Create an Imaginative, Magical Painted Scene

This tutorial is beautifully designed. It covers a plethora of common Photoshop techniques that are sure to sharpen your skill set.

45 logos that utilize negative space effectively

If you’ve ever spotted the arrow in the FedEx logo then you are familiar with a good example of negative space used effectively. This post showcases 45 awesome examples.

Designers Creative Solutions for Necessary Error Pages

404 error pages can be quite generic, boring, and a tad intimidating. But if done properly, they can be helpful and amusing. Check out the prime examples in this compilation.

30 Untypical WordPress Sites

Wordpress can be used for so much more than just a blogging platform. This post showcases 30 examples of other ways to utilize it.

36 Eye-Catching Jquery Navigation Menus

This is a useful bookmark of 36 jQuery navigational menus. Definitely nice to keep in your designer’s toolbox.

3 Social Media Grungy Watercolor Brushes

I love these watercolor style photoshop brushes for social media sites. They would add a really cool touch to a lot of hand drawn style websites.

10 Free Hi-Res Dripping Circle Photoshop Brushes

Angie over at Arbenting put together this cool set of 10 dripping circle brushes that are sure to come in handy.

Fuel Your Coding

The Fuel empire continues to expand. This new site from the Fuel Network is targeted for developers. Judging by the posts already up, it’s a must have in your RSS feed.

Background Labs

This is a nifty little site that offers up free backgrounds and textures. It’s easy to navigate and organizes things by color and category.

The Creative Lab

The Creative Lab is a new design blog by Timothy Smith. You may have read a few of his articles right here on MyInkBlog.

The Drifting Creatives

Considering that the main things you need to be a graphic designer are creativity, a computer and an internet connection the Drifting Creatives have decided to take their act on the road. They are going from town to town to, as they put it, “leave a sweet little wake of awesome design.”