When HTML 5 finally becomes available and all new tags become fully compatible will be a good day. Front end development will become much more efficient to designers and will result in quicker and more clearer builds. New tag elements are in place to make the site more readable and understandable to anybody who undertakes the project.
Many designers will work on their own PSD’s and then pass these onto other designers. Due to this it is a good idea to keep your files organised, clean and maintainable so the person working on your PSD can productively complete their task in your absence.
So what is a good way of doing this?
The first approach is to keep your project files organised. For every project you should only need a maximum of three folders; 1. PSD Files 2. HTML Files 3. Client Info Files. These three files are quite explanatory however I will quickly mention the elements that can be contained within. Continue reading
They just cant help it can they.
Microsoft will once again be back up in front of the courts for self promotion as they were 12 years ago with the promotion of IE4. Only this time it is IE8. Continue reading
I have just had the previous week off. With much needed decorating to be done and also having my mam and dad up at the weekend I managed to go a full week without using the PC. At the end of the week I checked over all my emails and there were actually no emails of importance that I missed and no notifications that I needed to address. I then realised that the pc is not as important as what it is made out to be. Unless you need a pc for work, or you wish to use it for gaming it is my opinion that you maybe do not need one at all. Continue reading
If you ask graphic and web designers about image file formats most will give you the same response: if you’re working with line-art and/or flat colours, stick with GIF; for photographic content, use JPEG. However, a third format’s been present for quite some time and quite a few designers now reckon PNG’s day in the sun is finally here. Continue reading
Since the start of the year I have been looking at emerging trends and new tricks that are becoming popular within the web design industry. With download speeds always increasing and browser/display resolution on the up, the web industry is one of many beneficiaries. 3D web sites, flash and jQuery are all starting to make the most of this and are moving forward and setting new levels in web design.
So what design trends are emerging?
Large Font Face
One of the first things I have noticed is everything is bigger. We are starting to see larger typography. This is emerging from personal portfolios, agencies and product websites. To put in perspective how big font has become I have seen many sites where font size exceeds 36px/em. Big font started to emerge late in 2008 and I predict it will continue for 2009.
For me this week has all been about email marketing. A campaign has been launched with the objective of increasing leads to one of our most successful clients. I must confess at the start of the campaign I knew very little of how to create a successful campaign and how to avoid such issues as spam filters and how to create a design that would be compatible with all email clients.
However, after sending about 30,000 test emails to my project manager and researching numerous email campaigns that have been conducted by some top agencies I discovered many ways in how to create a successful campaign.
Now I will share with you 3 aspects you should consider when creating an email campaign. Actually you can have 2 as I’m on my lunch and I only have 20minutes left to write. Continue reading