You suck at design (here's why)

An introduction to the Dunning-Kruger effect and how it changes how you perceive your work in relation to the presumed level of skill of your peers. Really interesting and goes a long way to explain why I might always be critical of myself and how comparison easily kills your mojo.

Responsive web design

And excellent article looking at how you can overcome the inherent problems faced by the web designer of today, more and more combinations of browsers, input devices and viewports present themselves and we’ve got to find a way to deal with them.

Support our sites

I’ve put this link to have a bit of good fun, clearly Apple doesn’t see it that way as since the last time I’ve visited they’ve had to blank over Steve Jobs’ face. I’m not really a fan of Flash but whatever.

WIRED on iPad: Just like a paper tiger...

As ever iA comes up with another excellent article observing the design of the recently released WIRED iPad app. It will be interesting to see iA put their money where their mouth is when they release their own iPad apps after lambasting most previous attempts. I’ve yet to go to my local Apple store and give the iPad a poke (I’m in the UK) so I can’t really judge but the WIRED app did look good from press releases.

HTML5 and Flash: Why it's not a war, and why Flash won't die

smashingmagazine.com

An interesting look into where Flash may be in a few years time. Instead of trying to create websites with it perhaps Flash should be used for the interactive Intranet applications it can pull off with ease while letting HTML5 take care of the website creation.

Web design trends for 2010

webdesignerdepot.com

A comprehensive look at current web design trends you will see in most places. I always find trend posts a bit odd really because they just seem to find a popular website, call it a trend and then find others like it…though I guess that’s what a trend is really.

IS Parade

isparade.jp

While a bit slow at loading it’s quite nice to see a parade of little people matching along with their tweets. Basically you use a trending topic and it displays the users tweeting about it as members of a parade.

Are magazines really dying out?

guardian.co.uk

Can the magazine concept ever really die out? Surely not but an intriguing article that looks at the future of magazines and how people are being perhaps a bit sensationalist.

The history of web design blogs

pelfusion.com

Ah, how far blogs have come in just a few short years. A lot of work must have gone into creating this post so it’s well worth a look at the history of your favourite blogs, if they were around a few years ago that is.

Zoomooz.js

This seems a pretty funky bit of Javascript, does exactly what it says, zooms and moves as you click on elements on your page, I’m sure there’s a great use for this.

Our thoughts on open markets

Adobe ‘hit’ back at Apple over open markets and giving the best possible to developers, but I’m not too sure who to root for really, I hate Flash, but I’m none too keen on Apple dictatorship over the App store. Still I support Apple in not supporting Flash, who cares for it?

Some things about Magazines

I wish all Border employees were as bright as this one but I guess that’s why Borders went bust which was a great shame. Seems to be the biggest mistake was the inventory system and putting all the magazines together in one place rather than near the books of relevant interest.

The real reason Apple and Microsoft are embracing 'HTML5'

Excellent article with some very interesting points about how HTML5 is being used as a group term for various technologies that have sprung and how Apple and Microsoft are pursuing it so they can control the H.264 codec that they’re pushing for heavily. Good read.

Five things IE9 is (actually) doing right

Microsoft is doing correctly with its latest Internet Explorer, who knew, but really, is it ever going to get rid of the bias we all have against it? I think not, but it’s nice to know they’re trying.

Geocities-izer

Does exactly what it says on the tin, give it a website and be transported back in time to the glorious days of Geocities, well maybe not so glorious but it’s all in good fun.

Javascript Tags

Easy access to the tags needed to call Google hosted Javascript libraries to make it all easy for you.

Nibbler

Enter your web address and it takes a taste of your website and gives you some form of rating back, to be honest I’m not entirely sure what it’s for but it gives your site a rating and that’s always fun.

Integrate @anywhere into WordPress

I was surprised by just how easy it was to integrate @anywhere into my WordPress install, you can see it in action by simply hovering over @craigbaldwin. Pretty neat right?

Users Don't Read

Another website tool, it replaces your text with ‘x’s so you can see what stands out without any text to distract, excellent way to test visual hierarchy and call to actions.

Thoughts on Flash

Steve Jobs writes an open letter on why he hates Flash so much. Pretty good points raised and it’s nice that he’s answering the questions directly. Everyone knows their platform is proprietary but it just seemed strange to hear Steve Jobs admitting it so openly, maybe it’s just me.

Frank Lloyd Wright & the digital design paradox

An interesting look into how we might be creating ‘disposable design’ when working digitally, why can a website not stand the test of time yet a building last for decades?

Ten graphic design paradoxes

Adrian Shaughnessy talks through common misconceptions about being a designer, dealing with clients and running a studio all pretty vital information with plenty more in his book I’m sure.

Like buttons falling from the sky

Well this is an interesting development for Facebook and with the number people who use Facebook I wouldn’t be surprised if in the future we can never get away from Facebook.

So you need a typeface

Superstar

A campaign designed to drop sales: Movie 3

Inspiration Feeds

Designing for iPad: Reality check

An excellent round up of advice for developers considering the iPad as a platform and an interesting concept at the end; I really like the sound of a time remaining alongside the text you’re reading, seems so much more intuitive than an arbitrary page number or progress bar.

CS5: An evolution of the designer's toolbox

So last week CS5 was announced and personally I found the most interesting thing about the launch was the change of identity and what Adobe have done with it. Really liking the splash screens, nice colours as well.

How to create an intense aerial action movie poster in Photoshop

So I don’t usually include tutorials nowadays but this tutorial caught my eye in not only the end result but the amount of detail and work that’s gone into it. You’re bound to learn something new along the way.

maxImage: jQuery image scaler

So this jQuery code has been out for quite a few months now but I only recently discovered it and after using Supersized this is simply loads better with easier application of the code and smoother scaling it’s all round a lot better.

iPhone 4G: Is this it?

No. Or at least I certainly hope not, Apple have made me see how ugly seams are and the seams round the side just seem completely non-Apple like. That and the removable back, after all they’ve said about building the battery in to improve battery life it would seem odd to do a 180 after making all their MacBooks the same. Though they were equally adamant about Multi-tasking to be fair.

Yes, add subpixel-hinting to your Photoshop text layers

Well I was never really aware of this problem but I thought this would be handy to those affected by it, subpixel-hinting is particularly useful for mocking up websites in Photoshop.

Why Apple changed section 3.3.1

As I mentioned in my post on Friday one of the biggest changes to iPhone’s OS wasn’t announced, it was the banning of 3rd party code compilers, the biggest casualty perhaps being Adobe’s Flash CS5 compiler. I’m stuck in the middle really, sure preventing compilers prevents the platform from being watered down but I’m more concerned about it preventing a magazine platform for the future if they’re turn out to be popular.

Steve Jobs' response to section 3.3.1

Also see this link for Steve’s reply to the concerns of developers.

The basics of business card design

I really enjoy blogs with unique post designs and hadn’t realised Design Informer had started doing it, this post is an excellent example and serves as a primer on business card design, though it’s perhaps short in the details it’s a good start.

Twitter for iPhone

I feel this is great news but it does make me wonder how other developers feel, though there was quite a lot of concern about Google making their own branded phone but that seemed to turn out all right, other companies are still making Android phones.

Two design communities you should care about (because I do)

Although I don’t have an invite to Dribbble so I don’t know what it’s like I certainly idea with the notion that having a sense of community is a great thing for design.

One hundred dollars

I love this design and the reason it isn’t the weekly inspiration collection is because he goes pretty deeply into the thoughts behind it, including advice on how to create Guilloches, the wavy lines of a bank note, which I never even knew the name of.

Contrast is king

An interesting article on the idea of colour contrast and how to best design for people who have any form of colour blindness and see how it affects their vision. Includes links to several useful websites to evaluate how usable your website is for the colour blind.

Emphasthising colour psychology in web design

Another look at colour psychology and how different colours can influence the website viewer, don’t go combining red with a difficult sign up process, that won’t work well. Also includes best examples.