Design Blog

The other day I came across an interesting website with tons of factual information about relatively unknown world-class designers that have created brand identities that have shaped the world around us. It got me thinking about some of my own favorite logos, so I did some research to find out who created them.

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Designers are always looking for new ways to make their portfolios stand out from the pack. One method that Adobe is promoting is the new feature in Acrobat 9 for PDF Portfolios which allows users to organize a variety of files and compress them as portable PDF documents.

What sets PDF Portfolios apart from other solutions like Powerpoint, Keynote, Illustrator and Word is the ease of navigation and customization it applies to ‘files’, where as most other solutions only let you embed content, offering little control over how it’s displayed once embedded. Click the image for a live demo.

When some people find a well-designed blog with a few neat tricks, they tend to automatically assume the owner is a CSS genius who’s the next big designer to hit the web. That very well may be the case but more often than not the designer is using ‘tools’ that you just haven’t discovered yet. Here’s five web generators that will make you look like Nick La!

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Wordpress is a CMS that was built for blogging but many people have repurposed it for magazines, newspapers, blog networks and all sorts of other goodies! But did you know you can hack your Wordpress blog to be a no-cost solution for a social network? Well you can, and here’s fifteen plug-ins that will let you do it.

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One of the hottest application suites to hit the design community since Adobe was born is now upon us. A.viay.com is a well executed visionary attempt at becoming the ‘CS3′ of web apps. And I’m not sure how it happened, but while Adobe wasn’t paying attention this group may have just snatched the market.

We all love web apps, as long as you’re connected they provide cheap, fast and less resource alternatives to desktop solutions. On top of that they store your data in the cloud, a good place for it if your computer ever crashes or is stolen.

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Image via Wikipedia

Are people getting spoiled?

In the last two years or so, the number of free design ‘instruction’ and resource sites has exploded. Unfortunately, a lot of people seem to think we live in the Matrix, where ideas can just be downloaded into their heads. Well, it’s 2008 and they haven’t invented that technology yet. Until they do we still have to work to come up with new ideas and to learn how to best execute them.

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Web applications are the commodity to deal in on the internet these days but what makes them successful isn’t always their function, often times design plays a huge role. Today I’m taking a look at five apps that exemplify various aspects of great Web App design.

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Web applications are a growing trend in cloud computing but what makes the most popular applications, popular? I believe the answer lies in good design.

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One critical factor many new start-ups forget is that half of creating a successful web app is making sure that its well designed and easy to use. In this part of our series we’ll continue looking at well designed web applications….

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Web applications are all the rage these days as cloud computing becomes the standard way of doing things. Whether it’s Facebook apps, Web clients, Flash, Adobe Air Apps or anything else that’s becoming ubiquitous, a huge part of the development of these applications is design and what you an learn from the design of quality web applications is priceless. In this series of posts, I’ll spotlight five well known web applications and share the design aspects that I think make each unique.

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