MyInkTrail: Best of the Design Community, November 2009

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MyInkTrail1009Large Introduction

MyInkTrail, is my trek through the articles, tutorials, freebies and general news from the design community for each month. November was a fast moving month filled with quality design articles, resources, and plenty of turkey and family. There was also a couple of good looking books from familiar names in the design blogging world.

Articles

Selling Ad Space: Tips from Top Design Blog Owners 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 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? 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 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 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 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? 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 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 Stories behind your favourite blogs

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

 

Tutorials

Mega Drop Down Menus w/ CSS & jQuery 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 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 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 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.

 

Freebies

Free Hi-Resolution Paint Stroke Photoshop Brushes 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 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.

 

Featured Stuff

Workstation Setups 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 Myows

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

 

Digging Into WordPress 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 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 Logo Design Love

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

 

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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  • Angie Bowen

    Great roundup Andrew, quite a few articles I missed and am on my way to read now :)

  • http://interactiveblend.com Louis Gubitosi

    nice list! my favorite is “If You Had To Marry A Browser…Which One?” haha.

  • http://www.littleboxofideas.com Sneh Roy

    Nice little roundup :) Thanks for all the wonderful links Andrew!

  • http://www.designfollow.com designfollow

    great list

    thank you

  • http://myows.com Myows

    Thank you Andrew for the feature. It’s a true to honor to be mentioned amongst such great resources.

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

    @Angie – It’s impossible to catch all the good design community stuff in a given month, glad I could showcase a few that you missed :)

    @Louis – That may very well be my favorite as well.

    @Myows – No problem. Thanks for working on a logical solution to the copyright issues. You are providing a much needed service!

  • http://www.theroxor.com Kevin

    Nice list. The article about selling ad space is particularly interesting, thanks for sharing.

  • http://www.gracesmith.co.uk Grace Smith

    Great roundup Andrew, as always! Thanks so much for including The Freelance Feed as well, it’s super appreciated.

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

    Thanks for including my article on transparency :).

  • http://www.migratedesign.com Laurent Jouvin

    Nice list Andrew. I loves those articles… “If You Had To Marry A Browser…Which One?” Very funny!

  • http://izdelava-spletnih-strani-1a.blogspot.com/ Spletne Strani

    Interesting list. Found exactly what i was looking for, thanx

  • http://software-forex-trading.com Trading soft

    Very good and informative roundup Andy, thanks for this!

  • http://www.homesecuritysys.co.cc Jacquline Jay

    My friend referred me to your blog, so I thought I’d come have a read. Very interesting material, will be back for more!