User Experience is a topic I have covered in other blogs but I recently read the book “The Elements of User Experience” by Jesse James Garrett and found out that I was really only scratching the surface. Garrett breaks down the overall process of designing for user experience into 6 pieces that flow together. Using these 6 checkpoints can ensure...
Designing a logo can be difficult. You must convey what you want to say about your business or organization in a tiny graphic without making it overcomplicated or too literal. The perfect logo has to balance simplicity while still representing your business. Getting Started When first starting a logo design it is important to get a full and clear understanding...
WordPress plugins are some of the most exciting aspects of WordPress for me. Through plugins, developers and designers can add interactivity and functionality to a website beyond the static content displayed on a page. Whether it’s as simple as a contact form, a spam-blocker, a mini-game, or a featured-content slider, plugins are amazingly powerful tools for adding value to a...
In this post I want to go over a conglomeration of short tips and information on fonts and typefaces. First off, many of you are wondering what is the difference between a “typeface” and a “font”. The typeface is the design of the alphabet, the shape of the letters, numbers and punctuation. The font is the digital file that contains...
Step 1: Gathering Information Your very first step in designing a logo for a client is getting some direction about what they want and how they want to brand their business. Some clients will be extremely specific about what they see for their logo, and some will hand over all creative control to you. Even if your client does not...
I watched tutorials on Layer Masks and Smart Filters in Photoshop, and I thought it would be helpful to share what I learned about them. Both allow you to control the amount of visibility of a certain aspect of a layer, but the difference lies in what aspect they allow you to control. First off, the reason why you would...
Adobe is rolling out some brand new, highly requested updates for their Creative Cloud users. One software that is really benefitting from the update is Photoshop CS6. It seems that Adobe has heard the voices of its many users and has finally given us what we want! With the coming changes, it is important to familiarize ourselves with the new...
What is Negative Space? Negative space is areas within your design that are not being used. Some may refer to it as “white space” but that is misleading because it doesn’t necessarily have to be white. Negative space is open, unused territory that allows your design to breathe. Why have Negative Space? In web design (and most other forms of...
I love working with CSS in front end development both on personal projects and at Blueprint. Most things in CSS are pretty straightforward. However, one thing that can confuse developers, from beginners to even seasoned veterans, is the CSS box model. It is a concept that could be hard to grasp, just like the CSS z-index property or different units...
When redesigning a website, styling can be important but the key part is really the structure underneath. The color scheme and graphics on a website are like the outer shell that draw people in, but if the user can’t find what they are looking for or don’t understand the main goal of the site then all of its beauty is...
