Web Design Company Creativity breeds innovation

In this presentation, Ryan Singer, designer at 37Signals walks you through some useful steps on creating usable, intuitive forms in your web apps through effective use of copy and design. This session is from Future of Web Design London 2007, hosted...

When I was a lad, I remember being wowed by an effect in Sonic the Hedgehog known as parallax scrolling. Moving my little spiky friend to the right caused the foreground to move past the camera to the left faster than the background, creating a faux-3D...

In this presentation, Denise Wilton, designer at Moo.com talks about how to build web apps that not only work well, but have their own special character and personality. As well as sharing tips from her design experience, Denise discusses the important...

The subject of usability generates a dichotomy between what we think and what we do. We know it is good to focus on usability. We need only look at Apple and the iPod to know that it provides tangible beneï¬

Space is important in layout. Space can be created by content, such as text, images, lists, logos etc, or it can be created by the space in-between content, called negative space, or whitespace. Space can be passive; a by-product of the layout process....

With FOWD (Future of Web Design) London only a couple of weeks away we thought it would be a good opportunity to look back to the last Future of Web Design event which took place in New York in November 2008. Mike Kus, designer at Carsonified, gave a...

We’re really excited to announce a brand new Carsonified event: Stack Overflow Dev Days. It’s a 1-day conference for programmers, in five different cities, and it’s only $99. As you probably know, Joel Spolsky is one of the founders...

We live in hectic times. As information professionals we regularly have to battle overflowing email inboxes, monitor a flood of Tweets, craft attention-grabbing blog posts and on top of all that, remember to buy some milk on the way home. I’ve...

I’ve noticed that when I get stressed at work, it’s often because my email inbox is out of control. I’ve got hundreds of unread emails, with no idea which ones are important. I finally decided I needed to learn how to be much more effective...

We’ve compiled six useful tips for all you web designers and developers out there. They cover various topics including: accessibility, SQL, web developer plugins for Firefox, HTML emails, design and jQuery. Feel free to disagree or add your own...

Silhouette photography is a wonderful way to convey drama, mystery, emotion and mood in a picture. A silhouette is defined as a view of an object or a scene consisting of the outline and a featureless interior, with the silhouetted object usually being...

Going to web conferences is a great opportunity to make new contacts and exchange business cards. Unfortunately, we have an industry filled with creative people who have no creative marketing for themselves. Sure, many have business cards, but one in...

Floral typography is the technique that combines typography, calligraphy and lettering to create dynamic, “flourishing” designs. With the help of floral elements you can create very tempting and vivid artworks in which the typography seems...

Art and science. The two are more known to be near opposites in the world. Yet, when creativity collides with a logically inspired motif, the results can be spectacular. With a mixture of creative graphics, illustrations, 3D models, trendy typography,...

Concepts of the future for the way we live our lives have been expressed in forms of art, design, movies, comics, and even cartoons. For many decades before man even landed on the Moon, people have been fascinated with space and the endless possibilities...

In the U.S., most outdoor signs made between 1890 and and 1950 were constructed of a base of heavy rolled iron, which was die cut into the desired shape, then coated with layers of colored powdered glass and fired in a kiln. This process made them durable...

Posted by rebecca "The time has come," the Walrus said, "To talk of many things: Of shoes--and ships--and sealing-wax-- Of cabbages--and kings-- And why the sea is boiling hot-- And whether pigs have wings." We can talk about the...

Posted by great scott!This week's Whiteboard Friday addresses everybody's new favorite topic: Google's "new" treatment of nofollow and how it creates a massive reservoire of lost link juice.  Everybody under the sun has...

So you want to add some sweet savory flavor to you website, but you can’t place your cursor on what is lacking in your design and what needs to be added. May I suggest something I call Auroral Background (A.B. for short). It’s a great way...

Last week I was presented with a design brief. It was to design and build a site to promote our new Stack Overflow DevDays event that’s happening this October. Ryan gave me a rough wireframe detailing the content that needed to be included. The...

At the Future of Web Apps Expo 2008, Tim Bray was the keynote speaker on the second day. Unlike many keynotes (which generally tend to be upbeat), Tim spoke about the economic tough times ahead, and what you can do to get though them. There’s some...

So you’re a skilled developer or design freelancer who has established a handful of customers who pay your bills and provide you with an income. That’s great. You may wish to keep things just the way they are or you might want to build on...

Possibly the biggest mistake in any development project is failure to plan. Recently, the owner of a prospective start-up told me that planning was unnecessary and a good developer could just start coding. This, I promise you, will end in tears. Wireframing...

Starting an eCommerce business is becoming easier by the day. More business owners are looking to expand their online efforts to include eCommerce and build a true online business. Unfortunately, this presents a large set of challenges, not least of...

While chatting with some buddies in Starbucks the other day an interesting question came up. Should a company tweet as itself on Twitter (ie @carsonified) or should the Twitter account be written from a more personal perspective (ie @ryancarson)? If...

At the Future of Web Design in London, Ryan Carson grabbed Paul Boag for a quick chat. We covered the “demise of the website”, important tips for web designers and how to sell your design skills. Here are the major takeaway points from the...

I think we have a serious problem in our industry. I believe it generally started when Basecamp became quite successful and 37signals started to talk about their theories on the subject. Their basic mantra was “Don’t quit your day job to...

Google recently announced their most ambitious project to date called Google Wave. According to Google, Wave is “what email would look like if it was invented today.” If you haven’t made time to watch the one hour video, I’d highly...

Non profit websites share many of the same best practices as any website. They need to be user friendly, easily navigable, and use appropriate fonts, colors, and other design elements. But often a non profit website needs to offer more than your typical...

Web design is essentially the organization of information into a readable, usable, functional and accessible format. Good organization of content is crucial, and you need a strong layout that you can build a website upon. You can use numerous interface...

Website designs have so many different elements that work together to convey information in a usable and organized manner. For a website to be effective, every element on the page, from the header to the footer, needs to add to its overall usability...

Posted by rebeccaA couple weeks ago I went to Sweden to speak at IMC Stockholm. I had a really lovely time exploring the beautiful city as well as speaking at IMC and networking with marketers from all over the world. I thought I'd provide a recap...

Posted by great scott!MozPal and Local Search maestro, David Mihm, is back this week to continue our look at the world of Local Search.  This week David takes us through some of the fundamentals of performing SEO for Local Search by explaining how...

Posted by MichaelCThis post was originally in YOUmoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author's views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc.We...

Posted by Tom_CGoogle Authorization is a topic which crops up a fair amount in our day-to-day search wanderings. Not really because clients are asking if we're authorized but more because they always claim that previous SEO companies they received...

Posted by randfishThe blog post - PageRank Sculpting - from the head Google's Web Spam team is a critical read for SEOs worldwide: So what happens when you have a page with “ten PageRank points” and ten outgoing links, and five...

Posted by jennita Last Friday I attended and spoke at the Jane and Robot Search Developer Summit in San Francisco. The idea of the conference was to cover technical SEO topics and help train developers and others. The 100 attendees (or so) were a mixed...

Posted by Nick GernerLast night we rolled out our latest Linkscape index update (we call it "index13" internally).  From a data perspective we've got a few things wrapped in here that might interest you guys: 53 billion urls (our...

Posted by randfishMany years ago, when I first started in the search marketing industry, several instances of the debate around "themed links" flared up, cooled off and reared their head again. Nowadays, it makes infrequent, though periodic...

Posted by randfishThere are some very different schools of thought out there regarding 404 error code pages. Some SEOs recommend: Never allowing them - 301'ing every error page back to the home page or an internal category level page to preserve...

This is our fourth installment of Ask SM, featuring reader questions about Web design, focusing on HTML, CSS and JavaScript. In this post weâ

CSS Sprites are not new. In fact, they are a rather well-established technique and have managed to become common practice in Web development. Of course, CSS sprites are not always necessary, but in some situation they can bring significant advantages...

This is our sixth installment of Ask SM, featuring reader questions about Web design focusing on HTML, CSS and JavaScript. These entries are not all questions, but rather quick Twitter responses to the query, “What has been your most difficult...

The problem has boggled the minds of Web designers for years: fixed, fluid, elastic or a hybrid layout design? Each option has its benefits and disadvantages. But the final decision depends so much on usability that it is not one to be made lightly....

Fluid web designs have many benefits, but only if implemented correctly. With proper technique, a design can be seen correctly on large screens, small screens and even tiny PDA screens. With bad coding structure, however, a fluid layout can be disastrous....

Cascading Style Sheets were introduced 13 years ago, and the widely adopted CSS 2.1 standard has existed for 11 years now. When we look at websites that were created 11 years ago, it’s clear that we are a thousand miles away from that era. It is...

If you are a web designer, these 7 design movements haunt you. It‘s a love/hate relationship. You think to yourself, “I want to create something that‘s never been done before,” but you feel spellbound because you know “what...

Gone are the days when a footer merely ended the page. Now it is just as likely to be an all-encompassing launchpad to other areas of the site. Typically a footer will run the full length of the layout, and it is usually used to display information at...

Although often used in the wrong context, the motif of â

Having reviewed Microsoft Expression Web back in June 2006, giving it rating of 3 out of 5, I was glad of the opportunity to have a look over the final release version of the product, to see how well it supports designers in creating sites using CSS....