As May 1st approaches I wanted to give everyone a reminder to get their sites redesigned and give them a Standards Reboot.
You don’t have to wait until May 1st to get your site rebooted, but be sure to add your pre and post thumbnails as soon as your done, so your site appears in the reboot gallery.
Making your website standout can be as simple as adding a interesting background, but where do you find these interesting backgrounds?
Essential Keystrokes has collected a list of 13 sites you should check out when you need a little background inspiration.
Tags: backgrounds, textures
Everyone thinks they have a wonderful website right? Sometimes its nice to get the opinion of others…
I recently launched a new little website, that asks a simple question Who Should Redesign?
Visitors to the website are presented with a website as asked to vote as to whether it Should Redesign or stay as is.
Go ahead and Cast Your Vote Now!
Tags: projects
Sites like Digg prove that user generated content works, but aggregating news is one thing, can they inspire you?
Below you’ll find a list of the best user generated sites to visit when you’re looking for a little inspiration.
Allows you to organize and share your photographs with others. A great source of visual inspiration (like my collection of inspiring cityscapes), and also a good place to find some free photographs to use in the your next project, but be sure to check the license first.
One of the largest art communities where you can submit your art, collect favorites, and track your friends and favorite artists.
Users build a portfolio of their work for you to view — always good to see what others are doing.
Users select and vote for their favorite colors and color palettes.
More logos than you can shake a stick at. Although the users don’t get to select what appears on the homepage (yet — hint, hint!) all the logos that are added to the gallery are viewable. A great place to visit if you’re looking for a little brand inspiration.
http://www.coolsitecollection.com
User powered Web design gallery. Members submit and vote on these submissions to select which designs are featured on the homepage.
A thriving community of people who love to make and share video.
A user-controlled web design showcase, mainly focused on CSS/XHTML (Web Standards) and Flashed-based designs. The members decide which websites are showcased on the front page and which websites aren’t.
Users share their free web design templates.
Yes it’s a lot like Digg, but it’s for designers, with plenty of user submitted inspiration to go round.
A gallery of beautiful illustrations submitted by users.
Open source vector art design showcase where the community gets to pick the best designs to be showcased on the front page.
Which user generated sites do you get inspiration from?
Tags: user generated
As anyone who builds websites knows one of the biggest problems is getting this to look the same across the many different browsers and operating systems. IE6 has long been a pain in neck for all. Even though newer versions of IE have been available for a long time, IE6 continues to dominate in terms of usage.
Come help Save The Developers!. The more sites that no longer support IE6, the more incentive users will have to upgrade their browsers.
Say no to IE 6! Our current campaign focuses on assisting users in upgrading their Internet Explorer 6 web browser. This campaign will result in former IE 6 users having a more enjoyable experience on the web while (hopefully) creating a less stressful and complicated environment for web developers by hastening the retirement of an outdated browser.
I plan on getting this setup on Most Inspired soon, you have been warned!
Working online, sometimes I get stuck into the old routine of seeking inspiration online, browsing the web looking for cool new things, or spending hours clicking thru the many design galleries out there.
There is a whole offline world that can act as a great source of inspiration, from magazines covers, to cd & dvd jackets, movie posters, newspapers and many more.
Sometimes it can better to turn off the monitor and take a look around.
Tags: inspiration, offline
I was going to write an post on the subject, but Smiley Cat beat me to it.
Yes, it’s great to get your article on the front page of Digg’s design section — you get a huge traffic spike; hopefully your site stays up; you get a bunch of snarky comments — but it’s not exactly easy to do.
Fortunately, there are alternatives. Here are 17 web design-related social media sites that are easier to rank well on and will keep sending quality traffic your way.
Tags: social news, traffic
When inspiration strikes you want to move as quickly as possible, dragging that mouse all over the screen can drain you of your creative juices. Learning these Photoshop shortcuts will help you be more productive and more focused on your designs not the tools.
Knowing my shortcuts in Photoshop is probably the most important thing to me and probably to any professional artist! It definitely has increased my work output rate a lot by cutting down on my time looking for these tools. Most of these tools are used in 90% of the artworks that I do on a daily basis.
Tags: photoshop
Looking for some new icons to spruce your your next web design project?
Smashing Magazine has collected 35 incredible free icon sets which you can use for your web designs or your desktop, yes free icon sets. You’ll need to check the license for the icon set you select, as some are not free for commercial use, but would be fine for any personal projects.
My personal favorite has to be the Dino Icons, now if I could only figure out how my next website could benefit from some dinosaur icons.
Tags: free, icons, smashingmagazine
Smashing Magazine, or rather its users have created 45 beautiful header designs that you can use for free.
38 of Smashing Magazines users contributed over 100 designs, which were then whittled down the top 45. The designers have provided details on their designs, along with their intentions, and some examples of how the headers could be user. Nice to see that you can download the PSD files used to create the headers, so you should be able to adjust the headers to your needs.
Tags: blog, headers, psd, smashingmagazine
