MyInkTrail: Best of the Design Community, December 2009

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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

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.

 

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.

 

About the Author

Andrew is a primary contributer for MyInkBlog. He is a full time web developer for Niagara University. When he's not working there, he's a blogger, twitter'er, wordpress'er, silverstripe advocate, blessed father and husband.

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  • http://www.darcva.com Kamila – Darc Vanilla Design

    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 :)

  • http://dyvantity.com Dany

    Thanks for sharing! Useful ressources!

    For inspiration, I also recommand: http://dyvantity.com/category/inspiration/focus/ (amazing tribute to VW best creative ads)

    Regards!

  • http://autonomywebdesign.com/ Autonomy

    Andrew, this is a great resource – thanks for putting this together!

  • http://ocgames.com Renee

    Freebies never get old. Thanks for the resources!

  • Matt
  • http://www.myinkblog.com Andrew Houle

    @Matt – Thanks for catching that. It’s fixed now.

  • http://www.glendelmdesign.co.uk/blog/ Matt

    Thanks for sharing these fantastic resources :)

  • teebee

    The link for the title “The Week Before Christmas! (a freelance parody)” is missing the “h” in “http”! :)

  • http://www.filmgauge.com.au Stephan

    That’s good resource, keep going like this!