MyInkTrail: Best of the Design Community – May 2010

By   |  Stashed in MyInkTrail
13

MyInkTrail: Best of the Design Community - May 2010

The more MyInkTrails that I do, the more I am convinced that less is more. I’m now much more focused on quality over quantity. Plus, I’m frustrated with the lack of creativity with some blogs in the design community. Regardless, I dug deep and found some quality reads, and I’m sure I missed a few others. I hope you enjoy my favorite articles, tutorials, freebies and featured stuff from my trek through the design community for May 2010.

Articles

Grid Based Web Design Simplified Grid Based Web Design Simplified

I absolutely love these uniquely styled posts by Design Informer. This post covers the importance of grids in webdesign and some tools and tips for how to create them.

 

Usability Testing: Don't Guess Test Usability Testing: Don’t Guess Test

I don’t think the design community focuses quite enough on usability. I love the quote that this article begins with, “Remember, just because nobody complains, it doesn’t mean all parachutes are perfect.”

 

Complete Guide to WordPress 3.0 Awesome New Features Complete Guide to WordPress 3.0 Awesome New Features

WordPress 3 is currently in public beta and should be released very soon. This new version brings with it all kinds of exciting new features, here is a breakdown of quite a few of them.

 

Beginners Guide to Using the Power of Color in Web Design Beginners Guide to Using the Power of Color in Web Design

This post covers how to make smart color decisions in web design based on harmonious combinations. Complete with inspirational examples for each of the 6 color combination categories.

 

The dawn of the redesign The dawn of the redesign

The new Design Cubicle looks so sweet! Awesome typography, great color choices, and amazing attention to detail. This post covers Brian’s design process.

 

Redesigning The Boarding Pass Redesigning The Boarding Pass

Tyler Thompson gets fed up with how ugly airplane boarding passes are so he takes it upon himself to design something. The result is strikingly better!

 

18 Great Examples of Sketched UI Wireframes and Mockups 18 Great Examples of Sketched UI Wireframes and Mockups

Sketching is so important to my design process. It helps me think clearly and get my ideas down without limitations. This post showcases 18 great examples of sketched mockups. Not that your sketches have to be this good, but it’s nice inspiration.

 

Tutorials

Designing an Infographic with HTML, CSS & jQuery Designing an Infographic with HTML, CSS & jQuery

Infographics have been getting all kinds of pub lately in the design community. And that’s just fine by me. I love to see quality design incorporated into otherwise mundane numbers. This tutorial shows you how to create a slick infographic, then takes it a step further by coding it into HTML.

 

Quick Tip: Highlight Current Category Menu Item for WordPress Single Post Quick Tip: Highlight Current Category Menu Item for WordPress Single Post

As the title indicates, this is more of a quick tip than a tutorial, nonetheless, highlighting the current category is a nice usability enhancement for a WordPress site. Something I should add to MIB very soon.

 

Freebies

Hand Drawn Sketchy Icons of Your Favorite Social Sites Hand Drawn Sketchy Icons of Your Favorite Social Sites

Not much needs to be said about these awesome hand-drawn icons. Just take a look.

 

Featured Stuff

Our Solar System Our Solar System

This is a cool attempt to recreate the solar system using CSS3 features such as border-radius, transforms and animations. Be sure to check this out in a webkit browser (Chrome or Safari).

 

Google Font Directory Google Font Directory

Google has joined the web typography revolution with a new open source font directory. It’s a small list now, but it’s sure to grow, and awesome to see web typography progressing.

 

Wireframe Showcase Wireframe Showcase

I think I’ve probably told you a few too many times that I love sketching and think it plays an extremely important role in the design process, needless to say, I like this new sketching showcase site.

 

SpiderOak SpiderOak

I love Dropbox, but SpiderOak seems to be another great option for online backup and file sharing.

 

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.

More posts by

Website      

  • http://www.uxbooth.com Matthew Kammerer

    Thank you very much for including a link to UX Booth. I agree, the design community still has much to learn about usability. Gone are the days of designers just whipping up what looks good and hoping it works.

    On a side note, you have the same title on the last two links :).

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

      Well there’s some bad usability for ya :) All fixed now.

  • http://designinformer.com Design Informer

    Hi Andrew, first of all, just wanted to thank you for featuring our article about grids in web design. It’s an honor to be part of “the best of the Design Community.” :)

    Also, I took a look at the other articles, tutorials, freebies and featured posts on this list and you’ve really done a great job in compiling them. Keep up the great work with MIB and I just wanted to say again that I really like your design. Great job with all the details!

  • http://www.yoomark.com yoomark

    Hello matthew,Thanks for sharing different useful url

  • http://smashingeeks.com SmashinGeeks

    Nice Roundup, Google”s font directory is awesome for using external fonts.

  • http://www.kchains.com Keychains

    Thanks, great list.

  • http://www.lucascobb.com Lucas Cobb

    What a great list. Top notch blog posts and useful url’s. I had not heard of spideroak either – just might give dropbox a run for its money.

  • http://phiredesign.net AJ Troxell

    Hooray for Google Font Directory! Great roundup Andrew!

  • http://www.crearedesign.co.uk Amelia Johnson

    I had not heard about a lot of these sites before reading this article. It’s a lovely list to put together, I especially like the page with the mockups and design cubicle. I will definitely be looking back to these in the future.

  • http://proiecte-de-case.blogspot.com Proiecte case

    Nice round-up. very helpful resources

  • http://www.inferno.co.in Dhiren vyas

    wooo…a gr8 resource for designers …Thanks a lot for sharing friend ..

  • http://lingerieaustralia.net.au/ Ben

    Legend Andrew! An awesome round up The Google font directory is awesome I didn’t even know it existed. going to slowly make my way through the rest, my main problem is not bookmarking them but remembering that I’ve bookmarked them so I can re-visit them when needed!

  • chef

    Wow this is such a great list, thanks for putting it together! I’ve not used SpiderOak, only Dropbox, thanks for pointing that one out.