We were lucky enough to recently receive a batch of Google Wave invites and we thought it’d be a good opportunity to offer our readers the chance of winning one!
We were lucky enough to recently receive a batch of Google Wave invites and we thought it’d be a good opportunity to offer our readers the chance of winning one!
We have three invites to give away, to win one simply post a comment below and we will pick the winners at random sometime early next week.
Inspiration is a big thing for most designers and it can come in many forms. Some of us read books and magazines, some visit CSS galleries and others use image bookmarking services but here at Union Room, we love subscribing to and reading a number of great design blogs.
Inspiration is a big thing for most designers and it can come in many forms. Some of us read books and magazines, some visit CSS galleries and others use image bookmarking services but here at Union Room, we love subscribing to and reading a number of great design blogs.
Chris Spooner posts some fantastic tutorials and freebies over on his blog making it an invaluable source of design inspiration. He also runs another design blog Line25 which contains similar high quality content.
Selected posts:
20 Handy Photoshop Tips For a Faster Workflow
10 Solutions to Easily Create Your Online Portfolio
Create a Trendy Galactic Poster Design in Photoshop
Designm.ag is a great, community-based design blog with a jobs board, news submission section and some great daily articles that range from web design to photography.
Selected posts:
Showcase of Big, Bold Typography
15 Tips for Breaking in as a Part-Time Freelancer
Although obviously targeted towards freelancers, Freelance Switch has some great articles that can help improve the skills of designers in all kinds of employment. It also contains the fantastic Freelance Freedom web comics.
Selected posts:
Leveraging Your Blog to Promote Your Services
Are Freelancers a Commodity or a Profession
To Share or Not to Share, That is the Question
InstantShift posts some of the best roundup-type posts around and contains such a diverse range of content that it’s suitable for designers, developers and bloggers.
Selected posts:
Super-Clean and Minimal Web Designs: 70+ Stunning Examples and Resources
36 High-Quality Latest Free Fonts To Enhance Your Designs
50 Interviews of Popular Web Designers, Developers and Founders
Just Creative Design is ran by graphic, web and logo designer Jacob Cass and features a mix of Jacobs personal work as well as some some useful tutorials and articles.
Selected posts:
How much to charge for design work?
The Top 100 Best Fonts of All Time
This blog is made up of some really original posts and has some good information for developers as well as designers.
Selected posts:
Best Relational Database Management System?
Color: The Next Limited Resource?
10 Free Server & Network Monitoring Tools that Kick Ass
This one is obvious but this kind of list would look odd without a mention of Smashing Magazine. The blog has gone from strength to strength in the last couple of years and is home to some of the most unique and widely-referenced articles in the design community.
Selected posts:
The death of the boring blog post?
Getting Started With Content Management Systems
As well as having one of the most unique designs of any design blog, Webdesigner Depot contains a really varied mix of content.
Selected posts:
Preparing and Planning for a Redesign
In Defense of The Jack of All Trades
Not mentioning the fantastic content, You The Designer features one of the best layout designs for any design blog on the internet. It uses large images and big titles to draw attention to posts and it’s understated colour scheme really help draw attention to posted content.
Selected posts:
Although we sang the praises of colourful web design a week or two ago, we are equally fans of sparse colour schemes that use lashings of black and white throughout their design.
Although we sang the praises of colourful web design a week or two ago, we are equally fans of sparse colour schemes that use lashings of black and white throughout their design.
Some of these sites use a little colour and some nice shades of grey as well but the colour palettes are kept to a complete minimum, here are a few of our favourites:
There are a ton of great articles around that concentrate on nice footer designs such as the ones by Hongkiat and instantShift, but sadly there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of posts highlighting the amazing work designers are doing with website headers right now.
There are a ton of great articles around that concentrate on nice footer designs such as the ones by Hongkiat and instantShift, but sadly there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of posts highlighting the amazing work designers are doing with website headers right now.
Although there’s nothing more I like than an elegantly made footer (web designer wall and iprimidieci are two of my favourites) it’s the header of a website that makes that first, all-important impact on a user, making it perhaps the most vital aspect of your websites design.
Let’s take a look at some of the best website headers and introductory graphics currently around…
Have you seen some great headers that we haven’t mentioned? feel free to mention them below!
Back in February, Smashing Magazine announced they would be producing a book for release later in the year and asked readers for input on what they’d like to see in terms of content, layout and design.
Back in February, Smashing Magazine announced they would be producing a book for release later in the year and asked readers for input on what they’d like to see in terms of content, layout and design.
Fast forward to the 5th of August and Smashing Magazine finally released details of the books contents, pricing and release date (which would change a couple of times due to a number of reasons).
A final newsletter was sent off on the 10th of October telling people who had pre-ordered the book the shipping date, the 23rd of November. Attached to that email was a PDF preview of the first chapter by Dmitry Fadeyev, User Interface Design in Modern Web Applications.
We thought, for those that weren’t aware of the book or hadn’t pre-ordered, it’d be interesting to give a little overview of the first chapter so you can gauge the quality of the content.
Firstly, the design of the book is just what you’d expect from a high-quality outfit like Smashing Magazine. Well spaced out typography, minimal but effective use of colour and well thought out use of images are prevalent throughout the chapter and make it very easy on the eye.
So, what about the content? Unsurprisingly it’s of a very high standard. The author breaks down the topic into several sections meaning the user is never far away from a new set of examples, giving the content a great flow which keeps the user reading.
One of my favourite sections is the ‘Use verbs as labels’ section, which explains why people using applications expect verbs as opposed to the standard ‘OK’ and ‘Cancel’.
It’s not too far away from the shipping date now and there are a few members of Union Room that are eagerly awaiting a small parcel dropping through their doors sometime next month. This small taster has done nothing to dampen the excitement in the office.
The book is priced at $23.90 for pre-orderers and $29.90 for those that wait until after the release. You can pre-order Smashing Book from the Smashing Magazine shop.
While the sky is busy displaying dull shades of grey at this time of year, web designers are trying their best to inject some colour into peoples lives with some beautiful eye-catching and colourful websites.
While the sky is busy displaying dull shades of grey at this time of year, web designers are trying their best to inject some colour into peoples lives with some beautiful eye-catching and colourful websites. Below is a pick of our 20 favourite eye-catching and colourful websites.
It’s always interesting to see how designers approach a new website design and which techniques they implement to achieve that perfect design. Below we have compiled a roundup of some of the best website design tutorials available to help inspire both beginner and experienced designers.
It’s always interesting to see how designers approach a new website design and which techniques they implement to achieve that perfect design. Below we have compiled a roundup of some of the best website design tutorials available to help inspire both beginner and experienced designers.
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Union Room Ltd. Studio 9, Maling Studios, Hoults Estate, Walker Road, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2HL.
Tel - +44 (0) 191 228 9444, Email - info@unionroom.com.
Company No. 4648894 | Web Design Newcastle
