Bluefaqs

Showcase Of Popular Articles From Our Favorite Design Blogs

Posted on 14. Jan, 2010 by Shawn Ramsey in Design

Occasionally certain blogs will write articles that manage to receive a little bit more attention than the rest of the herd. Maybe because it’s stirs up a controversy, brings up some great tips or just happens to be a well-executed article. Whatever the case, these are the type of articles that peak the interest of many and are usually beneficial to a large number of readers.

I decided to swing by a few of my favorite blogs and hunt down some of their popular articles. These are articles that have received slightly more feedback than others and deserve a fresh breath of air for the design community. Some are for fun in the form of lists, a few are tutorials that we could all benefit from and others are just exceptionally well-written articles that speak for themselves. Enjoy!

Noupe

Article Title: The Ultimate Ugly Showcase of Current Government Websites

Comments: 287

Excerpt: Having very out-dated websites representing an entire country can’t be a good thing – at all. They are difficult to use, the text is usually difficult to read, they have ridiculously slow loading speeds (depending on the country, of course), some of them are so bad they hurt your eyes.

WebDesignLedger

Article Title: 20 Do’s and Don’ts of Effective Web Typography

Comments: 41

Excerpt: In a previous article here on Web Design Ledger, I broke down 20 do’s and don’ts of effective web design and today I would like to keep up with that topic and go over 20 do’s and don’ts of effective web typography. It’s an important part of designing for the web, yet it’s often overlooked (even by me previously). Below are the 20 do’s and don’ts and in the comments section, you’re free to let us know of any of the items we might have missed.

Onextrapixel

Article Title: The Importance Of Wireframes In Web Design And 9 Tools To Create Wireframes

Comments: 146

Excerpt: Designing wireframes the right way the first time, cost no more than doing it the wrong way. Creating a paper prototype adds no cost, either- simply print out the wireframe diagrams for the pages a visitor will use to complete the tasks most closely related to achieving his goals and meeting the site’s business objectives.

WebDesignerDepot

Article Title: The Difference Between Art And Design

Comments: 184

Excerpt: The subject of what separates art and design is convoluted and has been debated for a long time. Artists and designers both create visual compositions using a shared knowledge base, but their reasons for doing so are entirely different. Some designers consider themselves artists, but few artists consider themselves designers.

WebDesignerWall

Article Title: Coding Clean and Semantic Templates

Comments: 172

Excerpt: If you are the guy who uses <div> tag for everything, this post is for you. It focuses on how you can write clean HTML code by using semantic markups and minimize the use of <div> tag.

Tutorial9

Article Title: 9 Things You Can’t Forget When Designing Blogs

Comments: 145

Excerpt: Designing a blog can be quite a daunting task, to be sure. To-do lists alone could fill pages if you were to include all the minor details that accompany the project. Which is why most designers shy away from logging that in-depth of a laundry list of items, indispensable and not so much, to get done by the launch date of the blog.

Hongkiat

Article Title: Evolution Of Microsoft Windows: 1985-2009

Comments: 85

Excerpt: Despite the criticism on stability and constantly being compared to their rivals Apple Macintosh, Microsoft Windows is still the most widely used operating systems in the world. In this article, we’ll bring you back to 1985 where the very first official Microsoft Windows 1.0 was announced, and then we take a trip down memory lane to see all boot screens and desktop interface of all Windows operating system possible.

Naldz Graphics

Article Title: 60 Useful Photoshop Actions to Enhance your Photos for Free

Comments: 40

Excerpt: Photoshop Action is a series of tasks that you play back on a single file or a batch of files menu commands, palette options, tool actions, and so on. Sometimes, editing pictures could take a lot of time especially if you’re a beginner in photoshop. That’s why I collected some of the best photoshop actions that can help turn your photos look more professional in just a few clicks.

Design Informer

Article Title: The “Wow” Factor in Web Design

Comments: 156

Excerpt: Everyday, we go through hundreds of different websites. With Twitter and RSS feeds, we are able to see an excessive amount of sites in just a short time. Most of the websites that we visit are forgettable, they don’t leave a lasting impression.

Build Internet

Article Title: Making an Interactive Picture with jQuery

Comments: 80

Excerpt: In this tutorial I will be showing you how to piece together an interactive picture – aka an image that contains tooltips and popup boxes. This can be useful for showing off a particular aspect of a photo (ie items or people).

CSS-TRICKS

Article Title: What Beautiful HTML Code Looks Like

Comments: 264

Excerpt: I can’t help but view source on every nice looking website I see. It’s like if you had x-ray glasses that allowed you to see any person you ever saw in their underwear at will. How could you not? It’s just so tempting to see if a beautiful website is built with beautiful code as well, or if its beauty if only skin-deep.

Smashing Magazine

Article Title: Zen Coding: A Speedy Way To Write HTML/CSS Code

Comments: 216

Excerpt: In this post we present a new speedy way of writing HTML code using CSS-like selector syntax — a handy set of tools for high-speed HTML and CSS coding. It was developed by our author Sergey Chikuyonok and released for Smashing Magazine and its readers.

Speckyboy

Article Title: 40 Free and Essential Web Design and Development Books from Google

Comments: 76

Excerpt: Google Books is perhaps one of the most untapped design and development resources…time to change all that. In this post there are over 40 web design and development books freely available from Google, they range from CSS, HTML, XHTML, DHTML, Actioscript, Javascript, Ajax, Perl, Ruby, MooTools, jQuery, Firefox and evem iPhone development. Not all books are complete, but offer plenty of information to help with your development.

Six Revisions

Article Title: The History of the Internet in a Nutshell

Comments: 196

Excerpt: If you’re reading this article, it’s likely that you spend a fair amount of time online. However, considering how much of an influence the Internet has in our daily lives, how many of us actually know the story of how it got its start?

Blog.SpoonGraphics

Article Title: 20 Handy Photoshop Tips For A Faster Workflow

Comments: 83

Excerpt: We all use Photoshop on a daily basis, but I bet there’s at least one tip in this post that will give you the old ‘Why didn’t I know of this before’ moment! It’s tips like these that make the most common of tasks quicker and easier than ever to help speed up your Photoshop workflow.

Fudge Graphics

Article Title: Tutorial: Create A Retro Csomic Design in Photoshop

Comments: 97

Excerpt: This tutorial will teach you how to recreate the Retro Cosmic designs made popular by James White of Signalnoise. All you need is a copy of Photoshop and some time on your hands. In this particular example we’re going to create a retro cosmic rainbow but the techniques explained can be used in combination with any shape and colour.

[RE]ENCODED

Article Title: 29 Web Design Blogs You Must Follow

Comments: 70

Excerpt: Looking for new Ideas and inspiration in the design industry? Here is a list of the 29 best web design blogs to subscribe to. The web design industry is always changing, so as a web designer, it is important to always be ahead of the curve. These blogs are always coming up with cutting edge new ideas and providing free tools for web designers such as wordpress themes, templates and icon designs. Follow them on RSS or check them out on Twitter. Enjoy!

Vandelay Design

Article Title: 50 of the Best Free Icon Sets of 2009

Comments: 49

Excerpt: A few weeks ago we launched IconFever, a site dedicated to helping designers find the icons they need. Today we’d like to feature some of the best free icons that were made available throughout the year, from a wide variety of designers. These high-quality, free icons can be tremendous resources for designers like you and me.

Spyre Studios

Article Title: 40 Sexy And Creative Typographic Logo Designs

Comments: 121

Excerpt: I have always loved looking at well-designed logos and I like it even more when they feature great typography (hey, after all typography is sexy!) So, lately I’ve been looking for some inspiration for a new project and thought I’d check out some logo galleries to get those creative juices flowing.

1stwebdesigner

Article Title: 33 Must Read CSS3 Tips, Tricks, Tutorial Sites and Articles

Comments: 93

Excerpt: Since previous article about CSS text effects got really big attention I decided to research and find more interesting articles and websites just focused on CSS3, teaching you how to use it, showing pros and cons and much more.

Abduzeedo

Article Title: Reader Tutorial: Create Vintage Traveler Diary in Photoshop

Comments: 95

Excerpt: In this reader tutorial Nikola Lazarevic aka Colaja from Nis, Serbia will show us how to create a very stylish vintage traveler diary in Photoshop. We will mix brushes with stock photos and blend modes to achieve the effect.

Design Bump

Article Title: If Content is Really King, Then What is Design?

Comments: 43

Excerpt: If you’ve spent any time online in the past 5 years, you’re bound to have heard the phrase content is king. Heated debates have gone on for years to see if it truly is or isn’t king - I will not be entering that debate. My goal in this article is to shed light on the discussion and also show a different side of the topic in general.

Designm.ag

Article Title: 50+ Fonts for Big, Bold Headlines

Comments: 104

Excerpt: Font selection for headlines on websites can be critical to achieving the right look and drawing the proper attention with the headlines. Here is a look at more than 50 fonts that will give you some options for creating strong headlines that communicate a message.

psd.tuts+

Article Title: How to Create Cityscape Concept Art

Comments: 261

Excerpt: In this tutorial, I will teach you how to easily create a successful piece of cityscape concept art. We’ll be using a very basic 3D scene as a foundation for the piece, then taking it into Photoshop for some creative photo manipulation of reference photos, basic painting and adjustments. Let’s create this urban scene!

Colorburned

Article Title: Stunning Smoke Effects: 42 High Resolution Photoshop Brushes

Comments: 51

Excerpt: Creating realistic-looking smoke in Photoshop can be tough to do. There are several ways to achieve a smoky look but most involve the use of the liquify tool, third-party plug-ins, or some creative photo manipulation. Either way, achieving a smoky effect can take a considerable amount of time. That’s why I decided to create a set of high resolution Photoshop brushes to help you achieve a stunning smoky effect without a lot of effort.

bittbox

Article Title: Free High-Res Texture Pack: The Anatomy of a *Really* Old Book

Comments: 173

Excerpt: I have to admit … These textures were really fun to make. I went to a little book store over the weekend that you can’t even find on Google Maps, bought a book that is about 50 yrs old, dissected it (literally), and scanned all the parts. It took a while, but I have a very cool free high resolution texture pack for everyone to download.

Fuel Your Creativity

Article Title: 18 Tools I use as a Designer & Blogger

Comments: 81

Excerpt: I’m always sharing what tools are useful to me via Twitter, but just incase you don’t use it – I wanted to share here! I always get asked what productivity tools and apps I use on a regular basis and I pretty much open all of these everyday.

Designrfix

Article Title: Web Layout Designs: 60 Must Have Tutorials

Comments: 42

Excerpt: Once or twice a week I like to come up with articles that really expose my viewers to the various types of tutorials that they need to get their latest designs off the ground. I have rounded up an amazing collection of high quality web layout tutorials that you will definitely benefit from. In this post, you’ll find everything from creating a clean, colorful web layout to designing an amazing 3d hosting layout in Photoshop.

PV.M Garage

Article Title: Nice And Simple Toolbar For Your Website With CSS3 And jQuery

Comments: 54

Excerpt: Often it’s an hard thing to interface a website with the many available social services, but recently there are some famous blogs, like Abduzeedo and Mashable, that are using a fixed toolbar on the bottom of the page with useful button for the sharing. There are services, like Wibiya, that allow to add a toolbar in a few steps, but why don’t you create a really custom panel using your CSS and jQuery skills? In this tutorial we’ll learn how to build a nice toolbar for our website using some CSS3 properties and basic jQuery techniques.

AEXT

Article Title: Perfect signin dropdown box likes Twitter with jQuery

Comments: 50

Excerpt: Twitter’s running a new homepage with clean and easy design. Look at the top right of Twitter’s homepage, you’ll see the sign in button which will drop down the login form. Today, I will make an entry to show you how to create a login drop down with Twitter style using jQuery.

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Tags: Misc