Design posts

  Small businesses need websites. But not just any old website will work. Try to avoid these 10 Web design mistakes so your site will help your business succeed instead of slowing it down.   1. Poor navigation tools Your site’s visitors need to know how to find information. Without good navigation tools, that’s nearly impossible. Make sure that you divide your content into sections that visitors can identify easily. Ideally, you want a site that branches from big ideas to small ideas. Your homepage identifies your business and who you are. Then links within the page take the visitor…

It’s a digital age. The worlds of advertising, branding, and art are all flooded with creative people trying to make their mark in the realm of graphic design. How can one tell whether they have what it takes to join this world? In the flowchart below by Sikich, the answer to that question becomes a little more clear. It’s the type of profession that requires many small decisions to be made before one can make an accurate big decision. Can you visually translate a concept or idea? Do you manage your time well? Do you even like people? These are just some of the questions that you should answer before making…

Adobe Systems is well known for its graphic design, video editing, and web development applications. Whether developed or acquired, all the applications are collected in the San Jose-based company’s “Creative Suite”. Since its initial release in 2003, millions of people have come to rely on the applications in Adobe Creative Suite (CS) and for many they has become an essential tool for their daily lives. Adobe has released new versions of Creative Suite every one to two years; their latest release was Adobe CS6 in 2011. Because of its popularity and importance, it came as a shock to many…

Many major companies are going flat. No, it’s not just the economy or consumer sentiment, but rather in design. Flat is in and it’s sweeping across the internet, but how long will this trend last? Facebook made headlines last week with their move to a flat logo. Apple is rumored to be flattening their interface on iOS 7. Sabina Idler at Usabilla asked the question of whether this was a trend or a revolution. We’re going to go with trend. Flat design has many advantages including speed of design, simplicity of usability, and the sheer vintage trendiness of it all, but there’s something about stunning…

iOS 7 is rumored to be doing many things. First, it’s rumored to be launched in June. It’s rumored to be flatter much like the Windows Phone interface. It’s rumored to be able to predict earthquakes up to a day ahead of time. Okay, so we made the last one up, but it’s not far off from the types of rumors that seem to surround everything that comes out of Cupertino, even something fairly insignificant like the iOS 7 release. The thing that makes it so important, perhaps more important than previous releases, is that they’re coming off an embarrassment with their last operating system release due to the…

The ebb and flow of design trends always seems to navigate towards and away from simplicity. Today, simple is hot. Flat is hot. Depth, texture, and complex are all out and Facebook is following the trend with their new logo release. They removed the lower bar that gave it a sheen for a minor 3D effect and are now bleeding the “f” off the bottom edge. It’s also a little larger than before. It’s clean, plain, and simple. It’s very 2013. The new logo can be downloaded from the site. Reactions have been positive from around the blogosphere. While beveling and depth are often used to denote a clickable button,…

As you may or may not know, cars these days are getting fancier and fancier with technology by the year. Remember when automatic windows and a CD player were considered amazing car technologies? Now you can talk to your car, have GPS built in, and see exactly where you are when backing up, without having to turn around! I compiled 5 more features we will see in the future of cars.   1. Gaze Control Imagine wanting to change the radio station or adjust the temperature of the car, and not have to use your hands. With the gaze control feature, the controls would appear on the windshield and the car would…

So, you’re considering building a new website. You have an idea for a product, you’re starting a new company, or you’ve been charged with taking your 2002 antiquated website and modernizing it. The challenges you’ll face are many. The list of consolidated resources are few. There are schools dedicated to helping people to develop a website but you simply don’t have the time to go back to school. There’s nothing to worry about. Pixaal has a checklist for you. Granted, it doesn’t actually show you how to do any of the things you need such as creating a site map or deciding what sort of buttons you need,…

3D printing holds the promise of allowing people to take something they envision and turn it into a tangible object, whether as a prototype for a design or as something that can be useful in and of itself. The biggest problem today is logistics. Despite a low demand for 3D printing, availability is even lower, making the queues for 3D printers at schools and companies long. As the demand goes up, there will need to be a better solution than having a university 3D printing lab trying to keep up. The guys at Dreambox think they have a solution. What if all you had to do was build a design or pick one out of a library,…

At nearly every auto show, there are ambitious visions that automakers play with which tickle the imagination and present an extremely unlikely possibility for better transportation options in the future. The majority of cars on the road today are unsustainable. The question that these concept vehicles try to answer is, “When will humans accept the challenge of traveling better?” It’s not an easy question to answer. In most cases, the roadblocks to entry for more efficient vehicles are insurmountable. Logistics, infrastructure, safety, style – they are all relatively embedded in the current…