In previous articles, we discussed seven types of designers and seven types of developers.

Designers and developers form two parts of the design trinity: the client completes it. You can have the technology to build something and the design to make it magnificent, but if someone doesn’t fund the project, it usually falls flat.

No one has the time to do such a thing for fun…

To get you really excited about CSS3, last month we announced the CSS3 Design Contest and encouraged designers to experiment and get creative with CSS3. As expected, we have received many creative and original submissions. To choose the winners of the contest, we considered the originality of the technique or approach and its uniqueness. The idea mattered more than the execution.

This process has taken a lot of time as it wasn’t easy, because we received quite a few creative submissions: however, a decision had to be taken and so we thoroughly went from one competition entry to another…

The content of any website is paramount to a site’s success.

High quality content, regardless of whether the site aims to inform, entertain, or sell a product, will increase the site’s likelihood of converting visitors. But beyond providing high quality content, a site also needs to organize that content in a way that makes it accessible to visitors.

Prioritizing your content is one of the best ways to make sure your visitors are finding the information you want them to find, and that they want to find…

Sometimes, a picture can be powerful enough to be inspirational material all by itself. To provide you with some inspiration for the upcoming week, this sunday we feature some truly beautiful and impressive images from talented artists and photographers worldwide.

Whether in black and white or in colors, they are all related by a strong sense of composition and an emphasis on lightening and colors work…

Every week we tweet a lot of interesting stuff highlighting great content that we find on the web that can be of interest to web designers.

The best way to keep track of our tweets is simply to follow us on Twitter, however, in case you missed some here’s a quick and useful compilation of the best tweets that we sent out this past week.

Note that this is only a very small selection of the links that we tweeted about, so don’t miss out…

Logos can convey many ideas in one simple design and as designers we need to be fully aware of any hidden symbolism.

You should be in full control of your design and use symbolism to convey messages to your advantage as this will further the impact of your logo.

For this post, we’ve compiled some great logos that carry hidden symbolism that you can use for inspiration in your own designs…

Web professionals have to be both flexible and creative to meet the needs of each client — and these characteristics often transcend the design and development process. Each of us has a unique approach to our work. The particular mindset and methods by which each of us turns a mental image into a delightful and usable website is worthy of investigation.

In this article, we’ll discuss three approaches taken by many Web designers and developers…

You’ve met with the client, done the creative brief and gotten some kind of written agreement or contract. Work has been creative and progressing nicely. The joy and hope for life slowly return as the scent of money looms. So, with an overdose of sleeping pills no longer your retirement plan, you start to delete your suicide note and dispose of the envelopes containing instructions on terminating your accounts on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn…

Lex parsimoniae is the Latin expression of what is known in English as Occam’s Razor, a philosophical rule of thumb that has guided some of the world’s best and brightest minds (including Isaac Newton).

It is named after the 14th-century logician and theologian William of Ockham.

But what the heck does Occam’s Razor have to do with web design? I’m glad you asked…

For the past 7 days we’ve been running a great giveaway from UPrinting. Many thanks to all those of you who participated and to UPrinting for a great giveaway.

UPrinting is one of the leading online printing companies in the world, with over  25 years of experience under their belt.

Each of the 10 winners has won a set of 500 free business cards of their choice with free shipping to anywhere in the world…

By Tim Mercer

Pixel art was brought to the mainstream with the release of gaming consoles in the early eighties. Those 8-bit graphics we all loved back then often evoke feelings of nostalgia and take us back in time. Nostalgia aside, pixel art is a beautiful art form on its own that many of us have come to love. With so few pixels to work with, pixel artist’s have to make each one count…

Despite its privacy issues, Facebook clearly has a key role in global Internet activity. It has become a kind of universal social network, being used for both personal and business needs. For many individuals, companies and organizations, Facebook has become an integral part of their branding strategy and promotional campaigns.

Facebook provides many tools for maximizing the effect of your presence on the social network, most of all by means of business pages, also known as fan pages…

By Rafiq Elmansy

Since the earliest days of Adobe Photoshop, designers and photographers have depended on it to edit images. Photoshop is perhaps Adobe’s most popular application. Professionals in our industry react with excitement and concern for every new version. They want to know about new features and how Photoshop can improve their editing and marketing (again!)…

Logo design has been a controversial subject in the design press lately. One branding professional recently claimed that logo design is “not that hard to do” and another said that “logos are dead;” some rebutted while others concurred. Why all the fuss?

We live in a Brand Era, where branding is in, and for some, aspiring to the Paul Rand style of logo craftsmanship is about as hip and contemporary as writing your invoices with a quill…

When a web page demands respect from readers, few type treatments give it dignity like “small capitals.”

This treatment makes all letters in a line of text uppercase, but retains hierarchy by making the initial letters of important words noticeably larger.

When used properly, small caps make things look stable and reliable. They can appear official or solemn; stately text is never rushed…

Vodka, pickled cucumbers and Pope John Paul II might spring to mind when someone mentions Poland. Obviously there’s more to Poland than that. On the world map of design, Poland is marked by creative agencies that produce high-level design and employ some of the best programmers in the world. There’s also a crowd of freelancers and visionaries who have received worldwide recognition…

Some designers view frameworks as constricting and limiting in their creative efforts. They look at a framework as something they have to bend their work to fit.

And for a lot of designers, that’s just not something they want to do. But with the dozens of frameworks available out there, why not look at it the other way around: why not find the framework that fits within your design projects?

To that end, we’ve compiled 30 of the best design frameworks out there…

Every week we tweet a lot of interesting stuff highlighting great content that we find on the web that can be of interest to web designers.

The best way to keep track of our tweets is simply to follow us on Twitter, however, in case you missed some here’s a quick and useful compilation of the best tweets that we sent out this past week.

Note that this is only a very small selection of the links that we tweeted about, so don’t miss out…

Almost all of us listen to music. We listen at home, while working, on the subway, while driving, while running. Yet many of us don’t think of music as much more than entertainment. Did you know that you can use music as a tool? With the right music, you can increase effectiveness, create better stuff more easily, get into your creative zone quickly and kick-start a productive day…

We who work on the Web live in wonderful times. In the past, we did of lot of trial-and-error learning, and the biggest hurdle was getting people to understand what we were on about. Over time, companies like Google, Yahoo, Skype, Facebook and Twitter managed to get the geeky Web into the living rooms of regular people and into the headlines of the mainstream press.

Now more than ever are there opportunities on the Web for you, as a professional, to be seen and to be found…

The world cup in South Africa continues to be one of the hottest events of the summer and the fascination for this event continues strong as we approach the finals.

Last week we featured the best website designs for the 2010 World Cup (check it out if you haven’t done so yet) and this week we continue with this theme.

In this post, we’re featuring some great ads made for this worldwide event that you can use for fun and inspiration…

Security has always been a hot topic. Offline, people buy wired homes, car alarms and gadgets to bring their security to the max. Online, security is important, too, especially for people who make a living from websites and blogs. In this article, we’ll show you some useful tweaks to protect your WordPress-powered blog.

[By the way, did you know we have a brand new free Smashing Email Newsletter? Subscribe now and get fresh short tips and tricks on Tuesdays!]

1…

A design may have impact. It may have style. But having these isn’t enough.

To work well, a design has to have elements that play off each other’s strengths. Fortunately, every piece of content has inherent guidelines.

Layout, or the arrangement of content on a web page, is critical to a design’s success. Among other things, layout prioritizes content to lead people from one element to the next…

Desktop wallpapers can serve as an excellent source of inspiration. However, if you use some specific wallpaper for a long period of time, it becomes harder to draw inspiration out of it. That’s why we have decided to supply you with smashing wallpapers over 12 months. And to make them a little bit more distinctive from the usual crowd, we’ve decided to embed calendars for the upcoming month…

Sending postcards to your old clients to remind them of your services, or to prospective new clients, can be a great and often overlooked way to generate more business.

As you probably know by now, UPrinting is one of the leading online printing companies in the world, with over  25 years of experience under their belt.

They’re truly a great company to work with when you need to get something professionally printed, whether it’s a business card, brochure or postcard…

No matter where you go in the known universe, there is design-by-committee. It has become a pecking order of disaster for the society that used to pride itself on being a mover and shaker and that allowed its mavericks and dreamers to innovate their way to success. In a business climate fueled by fear and the “Peter Principle,” as it is today, a decision not made is a tragedy averted…

Photoshop is powerful tool that can add wings to your creativity. With Photoshop manipulation tools, you can create and edit images for Web and print. Every industry needs poster designs for promotion of their products and services. Advertisement is of utmost importance for building a brand and thus increasing the sales. So every time you have to come up with out-of-the-box ideas…

Almost every major web designer faces this dilemma at some point: either continue working with “mom-and-pop” style businesses, enjoying effortless marketing and relatively simple projects, or transition to working with larger businesses and reap the benefits of bigger budgets.

It’s a question of experience, and with enough design work under your belt, new opportunities start to present themselves…

Being web designer is not easy. Not only do we need to have a good understanding about visual design, typography, information architecture, psychology and a plethora of other disciplines; in our work, we need to take care of so many details, so that our job becomes more and more time-consuming, requiring dozens of tools, attention span and an effective workflow for beautiful, timely and functional results…

With virtually any WordPress release (or the release of any open-source software, for that matter), there are bound to be bugs.

In a lot of cases the bugs are minor, and are just annoying. In other cases, these “bugs” can completely disable your site. Kind of like the difference between a mosquito bite and being attacked by a swarm of wasps.

WordPress 3.0 is no different…