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Pick of the Links #4

January 29th, 2010 at 2:54 pm | Posted by Jordan

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Some really good articles coming out of the blogosphere this week including an interesting take on the new Apple iPad.

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Pick of the Links #3

January 22nd, 2010 at 10:22 am | Posted by Jordan

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Time for this weeks best design links, fasten your seat belts!

Time for this weeks best design links, fasten your seat belts!

We’ve got a good mix of design, free stuff and photography this week so have a gander below…

Web Design – Pricing Tables

25 New High Quality Free Fonts

33 Absolutely Free E-Commerce Icon Sets

40 Inspiring Single Page Websites

25 of the Best Photography Portfolio Sites – Part III

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/01/18/25-new-high-quality-free-fonts/

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10 of the Best Free WordPress Themes

January 21st, 2010 at 12:11 pm | Posted by Jordan

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There are an absolute ton of free WordPress themes out there for all kinds of bloggers, experienced and beginner. Lets take a look at some of the best free WordPress themes available.

There are an absolute ton of free WordPress themes out there for all kinds of bloggers, experienced and beginner. Lets take a look at some of the best free WordPress themes available.

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What’s going on at Union Room in January

January 20th, 2010 at 1:18 pm | Posted by Jordan

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It’s the first Union Room catch up of 2010 and we’ve got some exciting things on the horizon for the next few weeks.

It’s the first Union Room catch up of 2010 and we’ve got some exciting things on the horizon for the next few weeks.

After launching Otter Recruitment last month, we’ve been hard at work on some of our biggest projects to date as well as keeping up our usual blogging activities at our web design blog.

We’re currently beginning work for the National Apprenticeship Business on a range of web solutions. We’ll be working closely with the NAB over the next few months on a huge project that will hopefully bring a whole new face to the National Apprenticeship Scheme.

We’ve worked closely with Projector on this project. They created a fantastic brand for the NAB and it’s been a great help when coming to design the various web work.

We’ve also been working hard on one of our long-term projects for Skyrocket, a sneak peak below…

Another project that’s in its early stages is Proform, which we’re hoping to launch sometime in February. We’re not quite ready to show any designs yet but we’ll be updating the blog when the site is near to launch.

We should be starting work on our own brand new website sometime this month as well, so keep an eye out for updates!

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Pick of the Links #2

January 15th, 2010 at 12:52 pm | Posted by Jordan

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A great mix of links this week crossing graphic design, web design and development.

A great mix of links this week crossing graphic design, web design and development. Take a look below at some of our favourite links this week and as always, let us know if we’ve missed any great links by leaving us a comment!

53 Promotional Websites To Gain Traffic Quick And Easy

Top 33 Best Logo Design Processes of 2009

20 Super Clean Fonts Perfect for Minimal Style Design

Gorgeous Typography Examples in Advertising Design

225+ Free Adobe Illustrator Patterns

jQuery 1.4 Released: The 15 New Features you Must Know

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Approaches To Testimonials In Web Design

January 15th, 2010 at 11:58 am | Posted by Jordan

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Testimonials can reinforce customer trust, and according to an Intelliseek survey customers are becoming increasingly reliant on the ‘recommendations of other consumers’. Lets take a look at some of the different approaches to testimonials.

Testimonials can reinforce customer trust, and according to an Intelliseek survey customers are becoming increasingly reliant on the ‘recommendations of other consumers‘. Lets take a look at some of the different approaches to testimonials.

Speech marks

As well as drawing attention to quotes and testimonials quickly, quotation marks can give the designer an additional element on which to design upon.

Logos

Using logos within a testimonial can give the user an instant view of clients the company has worked with or received reviews from. 37Signals use this to good effect (below) with the Time and BusinessWeek logos featured on their homepage.

Video

Although not a massively new trend, video testimonials are becoming more and more prevalent in all types of website and according to Speak Out Media are a “very powerful tool to showcase customer confidence in your company to a prospective buyer“.

Other Uses

More Resources

How to Get (and Leverage) Glowing Testimonials

The importance of client testimonials

Testimonials: Friend or foe?

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Pick of the Links #1

January 8th, 2010 at 11:57 am | Posted by Jordan

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In a new set of articles here at Union Room, we’re planning on publishing a list of the best things we’ve came accross every Friday. Hopefully this will help highlight some of the best news, articles and tutorials that some of our favourite people are posting.
Here’s our very first pick of the links, let us [...]

In a new set of articles here at Union Room, we’re planning on publishing a list of the best things we’ve came accross every Friday. Hopefully this will help highlight some of the best news, articles and tutorials that some of our favourite people are posting.

Here’s our very first pick of the links, let us know if there’s anything you think great we’ve missed this week!

16 Popular Website Redesigns Of 2009

10 New Year’s Resolutions Every Freelancer Should Have

Getting Started with jQuery

22 Design Freebies to Kick-Start the New Year

13 Simple CMS Options

What’s In A Price: The Guidelines For Pricing Web Designs

200+ Big and Beautiful Highly Detailed Icons

Great Reads for 2010

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5 New Web Icon Sets For 2010

January 5th, 2010 at 5:07 pm | Posted by Jordan

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A great web icon set can help inspire a tired designer, and help transform a good design into an exceptional one. We’ve already highlighted some amazing icon sets last year, so lets take a look at some of the best new web icon sets to take us into 2010.

A great web icon set can help inspire a tired designer, and help transform a good design into an exceptional one. We’ve already highlighted some amazing icon sets last year, so lets take a look at some of the best new web icon sets to take us into 2010.

1. Once

2. Admin Panel

3. Mini Icons

4. Little Box of Ideas Icons

5. 8 Icons

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Trends in Modern Web Design Portfolio Websites

January 4th, 2010 at 4:45 pm | Posted by Jordan

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Trends in web design are hard to get away from, one minute we’re all web 2.0, the next we’re scrolling jQuery galleries and textured backgrounds. Lets take a look at some great trends implemented by web design agencies and freelancers on the web today.

Trends in web design are hard to get away from, one minute we’re all web 2.0, the next we’re scrolling jQuery galleries and textured backgrounds. Lets take a look at some great trends implemented by web design agencies and freelancers on the web today.

Big text

I’ve always been a big fan of big text on websites, the bigger and bolder the better. With this in mind, it’s been great to see more and more websites using not just large titles but also large body text as well.

While the websites above showcase some nice big typography, it’s rare that you come across a website that has it pretty much bang on when it comes to typography. A great example of this is the personal portfolio of Kyle Steed…

I very love all aspects of a website, be it colours, type, content, layout, use of whitespace and so on, but I think Kyle Steed gets it all right. It’s also a very nice WordPress integration to boot.

Illustrations

While illustrations on the web aren’t particularly a new thing, they are becoming more prevalent in the actual designs of the sites themselves, rather than being used sparingly.

A great example of this fully blown approach is IndiFolio. The site uses gorgeous illustrations throughout and has some great multi-layered effects when navigating.

Some other websites use illustrations a little less in there designs but still use them to great effect.

Prevalent Blog Work

With blogging and social media in general becoming an important part of a web design agencies day to day activities, it’s no surprise to see agencies making blogs a more important part of their websites. Lets take a look at a few examples of web agencies putting their blogs front and centre.

We’ve also tried to make our web design blog more prevalent on our own site, putting the feed of our blog on our homepage. A lot of web design agencies are beginning to run a blog, even if it’s just information about what’s going on work-wise.

Individually designed pages / articles

This is a fairly new one, and a trend that’s causing a little bit of controversy in the community. Rather than having a set design and fitting the various content into that design, you design the page around the content.

The first real example I saw of this that I liked was Gregory Woods portfolio, using a new design and layout for each topic he chooses to speak about. Although this approach certainly isn’t for everyone, it’s a very refreshing approach to shaping design around content and will certainly have me checking back frequently for new updates.

Another website that uses this trend is Yaron Schoen:

Smashing Magazine also featured a blog post by Paddy Donnelly, which showcased the trend perfectly.

We haven’t covered every trend in here but hopefully we’ve gone some way to showcasing some trends in web design portfolios currently showing on the web. Think we’ve missed anything obvious? Let us know by commenting below…

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