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Design Process

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Fade out surrounding content for attention. Transparency can be a handy tool when you want your users to focus on specific content.

Fade out surrounding content for attention

When I was creating my site I decided to put all of my latest tweets and songs I’ve listen to in the sidebars but adding all of this content really distracted from the main content of the page. My solution was to make the sidebars semi-transparent so you could still see the content but it doesn’t distract as much, then the sidebars become opaque if you hover over them. I recently saw a great use of opacity in a great (and free) WordPress theme called Splendio by Vlad and Elena Scanteie. In many sections of their theme if you hover over a specific section it will fade out the surrounding content. This gives a great visualization and interaction with your user that allows them to focus more on the content that they are hovering over.

Normal state On hover View demo Download example <aside id="recent-comments"><h3>Recent comments</h3><ul><li><span>Francois</span><a href="#">Facete audiam no vix. Very Useful Web Layout Tutorials. With hundreds of million web sites online today it is nearly impossible to create a 100% unique design.

Very Useful Web Layout Tutorials

And why even struggle to do it when everyone else borrow good ideas from others? Trends come and go but the fundamental structure of a website is still more or less the same except for a minority of websites that intentionally have challenged the ground rules. Designing web layouts is a very profitable job nowadays with so many marketplaces available. Designers have cashed big time from creating e.g. minimalist WordPress theme and selling them on Theme Forest, but it also works for simple web layouts and most kinds of design elements. To really get this up and running it is important for you to learn how to design websites the right way using Photoshop. Designing With Grid-Based Approach - Smashing Magazine. Advertisement The main idea behind grid-based designs is a solid visual and structural balance of web-sites you can create with them.

Designing With Grid-Based Approach - Smashing Magazine

Sophisticated layout structures offer more flexibility and enhance the visual experience of visitors. In fact, users can easier follow the consistency of the page, while developers can update the layout in a well thought-out, consistent way. However, it’s quite hard to find your way through all the theory behind grid systems: it isn’t easy at all. Some important notions and related key-facts can help to learn basics and keep essential techniques in mind. 50 Totally Free Lessons in Graphic Design Theory. 1,200+ courses and ebooks Design, code, video editing, business, and much more. Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesignGraphic, Logo and Print DesignSketch, Adobe XD & FigmaWordPressJavascript, PHP & PythonAdobe After Effects & Premiere ProMuch More Millions of creative assets Design templates, stock videos, photos & audio, and much more.

Graphic TemplatesStock PhotosMusic TracksVideo TemplatesWeb TemplatesDesign AssetsWordpress Themes & PluginsMuch More 1,200+ courses and ebooks. A List Apart. Inspiring Visual Identity Construction Guides. 19 Factors That Impact Compositional Balance. Imagine a boulder leaning too far over the cliff’s edge.

19 Factors That Impact Compositional Balance

Seeing that boulder you think it should come crashing down the mountainside. It’s out of balance and you feel the tension of the impending crash. A similar feeling happens in your visitors when the composition of your design is visually out of balance. In a couple of previous posts I talked about visual balance and in each I briefly mentioned the idea of visual weight in order to achieve visual balance. There’s more to visual balance than I mentioned in those previous posts and I thought the topic deserving of its own post. Composition 8 by Kandinsky (above) is a study in visual weight, direction, and balance. What is Visual Balance? Visual balance (PDF) results from 2 major factors, visual weight and visual direction. Consider the image below of a small block and a large block on a lever. You likely see the larger block as being much heavier than the smaller block. Optical Center. 10 Reasons Your Web Design Sucks.

Good web design is a difficult thing to achieve.

10 Reasons Your Web Design Sucks

A good web design is not only eye appealing, it’s usable, intuitive, simple in hierarchy yet complex enough to keep the user interested. The perfect balance of fonts, colors, whitespace and content can lead to a great looking design that keeps your visitors coming back for more. A bad web design, however, can send your users running from your site. When working on a web design, there are a number of places that many designers begin to go astray.

In this article, we’ll discuss 10 reasons your web design sucks and how to fix it. Need to see some good web designs? Let us know what you think, and if we missed any reasons your website design sucks, let us know in the comments! 1. Whitespace is arguably one of the most important parts of design. Understanding Whitespace on AListApart 2. Yes, I know you just bought that package of 5000 super-mega-awesome fonts, but for the sake of your web design, don’t use them all at once. My Design Process: Everything You Need to Know. A recent How Magazine article dealing with the creative process led me to think about my own process.

My Design Process: Everything You Need to Know

From what I can remember, I never went about trying to create a creative process for myself. I simply tried various techniques over the years and have come back to the ones that have consistently worked for me. For the most part, I start every creative project with words. To me, in the end, you are trying to put certain words and concepts into the mind of the person viewing a particular design solution. This could be a corporate identity, website, poster, email, etc. After listing out the primary words based on discussions with the client, I begin to work on alternative words by using the Thesaurus.