MyInkTrail: Best of the Design Community, July 2009

By Andrew Houle | Stashed in Compilations, MyInkTrail

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This month’s roundup focuses a lot on HTML 5 and CSS 3 techniques. Along the way I also found some quality write ups on logos, spec work, WordPress and much more. I hope this compilation helps you find some awesome content that you would have otherwise would have missed.

Articles

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.

Tutorials

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.

Freebies

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.

Interviews

Graphic Designer and Blogger Andrew Houle of MyInkBlog

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

Compilations

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.

Featured Sites

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.

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.