Designers are visually literate creatures. We use visuals to express our ideas, whether by building wireframes, sketching interfaces or pushing pixels. As a result, the majority of knowledge captured when we design a product is some form of “corporate memory”: a combination of assets and documentation. This creation of visual artifact is widely regarded as our most effective means of communicating thought through a product. However, creating a product takes...

   Converting images or files by hand can be a hugely time-consuming process. But how often do clients send us files in formats that can’t be directly used on their website or project? If you’re like most designers, your answer is probably “pretty often.” Batch processing takes a lot of the headache out of converting, resizing, or otherwise manipulating image or document files. There are some fantastic tools and techniques out there that can make performing these batch processes nearly painless. In most cases, you want to choose the most...

   Layer Styles are nothing new. They’ve been used and abused again and again. Despite their ubiquity, or perhaps because of it, many designers do not yet realize the full potential of this handy menu. Its beauty lies in our ability to create an effect and then copy, modify, export, hide or trash it, without degrading the content of the layer. Below we present, step by step, several practical techniques to help you refine your designs, increase productivity and reduce layer clutter. You will find more useful Photoshop techniques and tutorials in our hand-picked...

   Back in January, we published an article on responsive design, “Responsive Web Design: What It Is and How to Use It.” Responsive design continues to get a lot of attention, but considering how different it is from the “traditional” way of designing websites, it can be a bit overwhelming for those designers who have yet to try it. To that end, we’ve compiled this round-up of resources for creating responsive website designs. Included are tutorials, techniques, articles, tools and more, all geared toward giving you the specific knowledge you need to...

   With the wide variety of CSS3 and JavaScript techniques available today, it’s easier than ever to create unique interactive websites that delight visitors and provide a more engaging user experience. In this article, we’ll walk through five interactive techniques that you can start using right now. We’ll cover: Animated text effects, Animated images without GIFs, More engaging drop-down menus, Fancier slideshow navigation, Animated icons for the hover state of buttons. Besides learning how to accomplish these specific tasks, you’ll also...

   There are many ways to design sign-up and log-in forms. Most designers are familiar with the conventional ways. But understanding and applying a few innovative techniques could make your forms simpler and more efficient to fill out. In this article, we’d like to present a couple of new ideas that might be useful for your next designs. Please notice that before using these techniques, you should make sure that they make sense in the context in which you are going to use them. We’d love to hear about your case-studies and usability tests that affirm or dismiss the...

   The hard work of front-end designers never ceases to amaze us. Over the last months, we’ve seen Web designers creating and presenting a plethora of truly remarkable CSS techniques and tools. We have collected, analyzed, curated and feature latest useful resources for your convenience, so you can use them right away or save them for future reference. Please don’t hesitate to comment on this post and let us know how exactly you are using them in your workflow. However, please avoid link dropping, but share your insights and your experience instead. Also, notice that some...

   Ever since the latest revision of HTML has launched, internet marketers have switched to HTML5 due to its several new features which facilitate Web development distinctly. It has opened new doors to designers and developers and as you may have already noticed, the use of Flash in Web and internet applications has significantly dropped. In today’s post, we’ve gathered some very useful tutorials that will help you achieve a good command of HTML5. Please feel free to share with us other useful tutorials that have kept you busy! HTML5 Tutorials and...