terrytoledo.com - web design, graphic art and illustration

Responsible responsive design demands responsive images—images whose dimensions and file size suit the viewport and bandwidth of the receiving device. As HTML provides no standard element to achieve this purpose, serving responsive images has meant using JavaScript trickery, and accepting that your solution will fail for some users. Then a few months ago, in response [...]

We’re better connected than we’ve ever been, but we’re not always connected. ApplicationCache lets users interact with their data even when they’re offline, but with great power come great gotchas. For instance, files always come from the ApplicationCache, even when the user is online. Oh, and in certain circumstances, a browser won’t know that that [...]

Browsers can do terrible things to type. If text is styled as bold or italic and the typeface family does not include a bold or italic font, browsers will compensate by trying to create bold and italic styles themselves. The results are an awkward mimicry of real type design, and can be especially atrocious with [...]

What does content strategy mastery look like? As in any field, it comes down to having master skills and knowing when to apply them. While there are different styles of content strategy (from an editorial and messaging focus to a technical and structural focus), the master content strategist must work with content from all angles: [...]

The content model is one of the most important content strategy tools at your disposal. It allows you to represent content in a way that translates the intention, stakeholder needs, and functional requirements from the user experience design into something that can be built by developers implementing a CMS. A good content model helps ensure [...]

Co-founder of Mule Design and raconteur Mike Monteiro wants to help you do your job better. From contracts to selling design, from working with clients to working with each other, his new book from A Book Apart, released today, is packed with knowledge you can’t afford not to know. A List Apart is pleased to [...]

There are hundreds of devices out there right now that can access the full web, as Steve Jobs once put it. They come with different capabilities and constraints, things like input style or screen size, resolution, and form. With all these devices set to overtake traditional desktop computers for web traffic next year, we need [...]

How do you involve your client in a successful design process? Many of our processes date back to print design and advertising. It’s time we evolved our deliverables to make clients a more active participant in the process. The style tile is a design deliverable that references website interface elements through font, color, and style [...]

Pimpin’ ain’t easy; neither is self-critique. If you are passionate about what you create, it is impossible to completely disassociate yourself from your work in order to objectively evaluate and then improve it. But the ability to achieve “artistic distance”—that is, to attain a place that allows you to contemplate your design on its own [...]

The web as we know and build it has primarily been accessed from the desktop. That is about to change. The ITU predicts that in the next 18–24 months, mobile devices will overtake PCs as the most popular way to access the web. If these predictions come true, very soon the web—and its users—will be [...]

This may be of some interest to folks interested in tech and web development so I’m cross-posting from my personal blog. I am going to embark on a personal crusade in 2011 to scale back my reliance on Cable TV in favor of the HTPC approach. If you’re interested in that sort of thing check [...]

Recently I was listening to an Economist podcast (embedded below) where the discussion centered on where things would stand 25 years from now. When talking about what types of things would and would not exist 25 years from now the gentleman speaking said he was certain that books would exist but many current high tech [...]

Holy tablets Batman! CES 2011 was flooded with companies promoting their soon-to-come tablet computers including Toshiba, Vizio, Acer, Samsung, Motorola, Blackberry and more. Most will run some version of Android but a couple will have other operating systems like Blackberry or Windows 7. Two major players who didn’t announce anything tablet related, but probably will [...]

I have seen a lot of blogs posting their favorite iPhone or iOS apps which seems to make sense since there will be a lot of new owners of iPhones and iPads after the Christmas and Hanukkah holidays. So in the spirit of sharing I decided to post links to a few of the apps that [...]

I have been watching the discussion about the Google Chrome OS with great interest. Since there hadn’t been much news on the OS in the past year I thought maybe that Google had decided to focus more on Android and continue to develop Chrome as only a web browser. But then Google launched their Chrome [...]

If you listen to the shows This Week in Tech and This Week in Google on Leo Laporte’s TWiT network you hear lots of interesting commentary on tech topics. Unfortunately from time to time you also hear some ridiculous hyperbole, most of which references News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch. Murdoch is famous for many things [...]

When big companies such as Yahoo acquire small companies like Delicious or Flickr they usually do so with the best of intentions but almost always seem to end up messing it all up. The world of Web 2.0 has seen more than their fair share of these situations. Think News Corp’s acquisition of MySpace. Or [...]

Well, this isn’t what Google hoped for when they released their very hyped Google TV software. The “this” I’m referring to is the blocking of the software by major television networks. Since Google TV supports Adobe Flash in the browser (Chrome) included with the software many assumed that they would be able to access sites [...]

There are major changes afoot in the world of computer operating systems. Since the original iPhone was released in 2007 many people and companies have altered their expectations about their mobile device experiences. For many years cell phone operating systems were expected to be just utilitarian enough to easily manage a few basic tasks such [...]

It has been busy week for web conglomerates shutting down services that are not performing. Six Apart decided to shutter their Vox blogging service. Amazon is folding Amie Street into their current music download service. Finally, IAC Interactive is killing web-based RSS reader Bloglines. None of this is earth shaking news but it serves to [...]

My absolute favourite style of motorcycle is the custom “bobber”. I love the stripped down appearance and the raw vintage styling. It’s my plan to chop up a bike of my own one day, but for now I have to settle with designing custom motorcycle posters instead. Follow this step by step Photoshop and Illustrator [...]

If you’ve found the collection of design resources from the Access All Areas section here on Blog.SpoonGraphics useful, you might be interested in the FanExtra Network’s premium membership. With over 2000 downloadable resources and advanced members-only Photoshop tutorials being added weekly it’s definitely worth checking out. This week Access All … Log in to your [...]

One way to create an absolutely unique logo design is to craft the lettering by hand, as opposed to selecting an existing font. This allows the designer to create the perfect logo with their own custom ligatures, tails and loops. This post showcases 20 inspiring examples of custom lettering logos, each featuring the designer’s initial [...]

The Art & Design Inspiration Fix pulls together a collection of my favourite graphical images that I’ve come across over the past week to give you a fix of creative inspiration. This week we have designs from Rubens Cantuni, Félix Ajenjo, Dariusz Markiw, Matthew Reilly and Ruel Jun Andaya. Nike T-Shirt by Rubens Cantuni Authority [...]

Every year since the start of Blog.SpoonGraphics in April 2007 I have created a special anniversary post celebrating the growth and success of my little blog. Despite being a pretty big milestone this year I had forgotten all about my little tradition. Thankfully I remembered just in time to bring you my 5 years of [...]

Awwwards, the online showcase of the world’s best website designs, recently released an awesome book full of design inspiration, titled The Best 365 Websites Around the World 2011. As the title suggests, it’s filled with the best CSS website designs from last year and includes 365 designs from various designers … Log in to your [...]

Follow this step by step tutorial to create a cool abstract lines design with awesome vibrant lighting effects. We’ll use Illustrator’s easy tools to create the vector linework then add a range of glows, colours and effects in Photoshop to finish the design with a cool grainy but luminous style. It’s difficult to describe this [...]

The Art & Design Inspiration Fix pulls together a collection of my favourite graphical images that I’ve come across over the past week to give you a fix of creative inspiration. This week we have designs from Andy Gilmore, Mads Berg, Gerrel Saunders, Mats Ottdal and Roberto Ortiz. 08-20-2009 by Andy Gilmore Franks Originale by [...]

Logos don’t always have to feature perfectly designed abstract icons or devices, sometimes a basic hand drawn sketch or doodle can express the casual or fun values a brand is aiming for. This post rounds up a huge collection of over 50 cool logos all based on a hand drawn style. Piccolo by Matt Vergotis [...]

This week Access All Areas members are being treated to a fantastic Light Web Element/Button Kit from PremiumPSD.com. The kit features a range of crisply designed buttons, icons and interface elements to help speed up your workflow when designing websites and web apps.PremiumPsd.com is the premiere resource for anyone looking … Log in to your [...]

Mat Marquis keeping us up to date on the responsive images hot drama. Good reminder at the end about not picking sides. Direct Link to Article — Permalink Responsive Images and Web Standards at the Turning Point is a post from CSS-Tricks

“Which CSS preprocessor language should I choose?” is a hot topic lately. I’ve been asked in person several times and an online debate has been popping up every few days it seems. It’s nice that the conversation has largely turned from whether or not preprocessing is a good idea to which one language is best. [...]

With ol’ Mean Gene Crawford! We talk about crazy clients, responsive images, health, and all kinds of other shoptalk. Thanks to Mijingo for sponsoring this episode. Direct Link to Article — Permalink ShopTalk Episode 18 is a post from CSS-Tricks

There are a bunch of techniques going around for dealing with responsive images lately. That is, solutions to help us serve the right image for the occasion (e.g. size of screen and bandwidth available). They all do things a bit differently. To keep track, Christopher Schmitt and I have created this spreadsheet of techniques. The [...]

I recently heard Chris Eppstein give a talk (slides) about creating better stylesheets and using SASS to do it. There were a couple of surprising bits in there, one of which was about “opt-in typography.” The idea was that instead of setting global styles for typographic elements like p, ul, ol, h1, h2, etc that [...]

Another RAPIDFIRE show where Dave and I answer as many lister questions as we possibly can. Direct Link to Article — Permalink ShopTalk Show #17 is a post from CSS-Tricks

Most address fields on web forms ask for city, state, and zip code (or city and post code, outside of the US). But as us nerds often lament, city and state are redundant with zip code. Or at least they can be inferred from a correctly entered zip code. That’s the kind of thing computers [...]

CSS3 has some new values for sizing things relative to the current viewport size: vw, vh, and vmin. It is relevant to bring up now, because it’s shipping in Chrome 20 (canary at the time of this writing). And not behind a flag, it just works. Production usage isn’t quite there, but it will be [...]

Jeremy Keith has a great article on his journey to allowing JavaScript to load in content based on the currently active media query. This allows you to keep media queries only in the CSS (DRY!). The article was sans-demo, so I made one. Direct Link to Article — Permalink Conditional Content via CSS Media Queries [...]

Dave and I were joined by Ian Stewart, a Theme Wrangler at Automattic for WordPress.com (he’s probably thinking about WordPress themes right this very minute). We talked about WordPress multisite, training clients in WordPress, database syncing, team productivity, and more. Direct Link to Article — Permalink ShopTalk Episode 16 is a post from CSS-Tricks

Advertise here via BSA Javascript lacks complete string manipulation operations. Underscore.string attempts to fill that gap. Underscore.string is JavaScript library for comfortable manipulation with strings, extension for Underscore.js inspired by Prototype.js, Right.js, Underscore and beautiful Ruby language. Underscore.string provides you several useful functions: capitalize, clean, includes, count, escapeHTML, unescapeHTML, insert, splice, startsWith, endsWith, titleize, trim, [...]

Advertise here via BSA FnordMetric is a highly configurable (and pretty fast) realtime app/event tracking dashboard based on ruby eventmachine and redis. You define your own plotting and counting functions as ruby blocks. FnordMetric gives you a live dashboard, that shows who is using your app in realtime. You can select a single user and [...]

Advertise here via BSA jQuery Knob is powerful jQuery plugin that helps users to create beautiful circular switches like volume controls. It works by transforming any given input fields according to the values defined in its attributes and can be drag-and-dropped to change the value. It also facilitates users to define the min-max values, default [...]

Advertise here via BSA Crossfilter is a JavaScript library for exploring large multivariate datasets in the browser. Crossfilter supports extremely fast (<30ms) interaction with coordinated views, even with datasets containing a million or more records; it was built to power analytics for Square Register, allowing merchants to slice and dice their payment history fluidly. Since [...]

Advertise here via BSA Faye is a publish-subscribe messaging system based on the Bayeux protocol. It provides message servers for Node.js and Ruby, and clients for use on the server and in all major web browsers. It also includes a solid set of tools for easily building plain WebSocket servers and clients, compatible with a [...]

Advertise here via BSA PremiumPixels has just released an uber handsome set of 41 Free Social Media Icons in both 16px and 32px in PNG format by Prekesh Chavda. We all love social media icons, no matter how many sets we have already got. They are pretty useful if you would like to integrate some [...]

Advertise here via BSA Brunch is an assembler for HTML5 applications. It is a lightweight approach to building HTML5 applications with emphasis on elegance and simplicity. It’s agnostic to frameworks, libraries, programming, stylesheet & templating languages and backend technology. To simplify app development, brunch watches your files for changes and automatically wraps your scripts and [...]

Advertise here via BSA Countdowns can be a great way to build up anticipation when launching a new website or web application, it gives users a clear indication of how long they need to wait before they can get access to your site. jQuery Countdown is a handy and pretty jquery countdown plugin for you. [...]

Advertise here via BSA First of all, thank you very much for all of your opinions and suggestions about the redesign. You guys have pointed out some of the most important things I missed when designing. Most of them are very useful and helped me improved the new design dramatically. Sticky Navigation Menu No Longer [...]

Advertise here via BSA Fixie.js is an open source tool that automatically adds filler content to HTML documents. When designing and developing websites, it’s often useful to add lorem ipsum text to see what your page will look like without worrying about your final content. Unfortunately, adding lots of filler content involves lots of copy-pasting [...]

After The Great Vendor Prefix Hullaballoo of April 2012 comes The Great Responsive Images Brouhaha of May 2012. Adaptive images are the next unsolved mystery of Responsive Web Design. Do you send large high-res images suitable for retina dispays, which are scaled down on smaller, lower res devices and which therefore waste bandwidth? Or do [...]

This is a follow up to my 2009 article Native Audio in the Browser, which covers the basics of HTML5 audio. It may well be worth reading if you want to get a feel for the <audio> element and associated API. Now, two and a half years later, it’s time to see how things are [...]

It’s time we had “the talk”. I could get you a book or recommend some sites from Dr Mike’s special bookmarks folder, but the best way to make sure you get the right idea is to do it myself. I’m talking about HTML semantics. Understanding the thinking behind the naming of elements will help your [...]

I realised (when looking myself) that there are a lot of demos and tutorials that show you how to drag-and-drop a file into the browser and then render it on the page. They’re often labelled as “drag-and-drop and upload”, but they actually don’t upload. This tutorial will take you that final step. I’ll walk you [...]

Modernizr is a JavaScript library that detects which HTML5 and CSS3 features your visitor’s browser supports. In detecting feature support, it allows developers to test for some of the new technologies and then provide fallbacks for browsers that do not support them. This is called feature detection and is much more efficient than browser sniffing. [...]

Hello! I’m Doctor Peter and I’m here to treat you with a dose of complementary CSS3. Don’t worry, this won’t hurt a bit. Contrary to what HTML5 Please and the W3C would have you believe, CSS3 is not part of HTML5. “But this is HTML5 Doctor,” I imagine you saying. “Why are you talking about [...]

The <ol> element has a new attribute reversed in HTML5. In addition, a couple of related attributes purged in HTML 4 have made a return, namely start and type for <ol>, and value for <li>. Making things more interesting, the returning attributes were removed from HTML 4 for being presentational. So why are they back? [...]

True story: I was tasked by the lovely Mrs Lawson to buy some curtains that match our carpet during the January sales. I dutifully did so — and had to return to the shop straight away because they didn’t match at all. Mrs Lawson accompanied me, and with a withering glance at her incompetent mate, [...]

We’ve already had a glimpse at Server-Sent Events (also known as EventSource†, and I’ll switch between the two to keep you on your toes) in my Methods of Communication article from last year. In this article, I want to delve in to more detail about the SSE API, demonstrate its features, and even show you [...]

For some time now, we’ve been using various technologies to edit and store text within a web browser. Now with the contenteditable attribute, things have got a whole lot easier. In this article, I’ll tell you what this attribute is for, how it works, and how we can take things further. The Basics # First, [...]

Today we're going to explore JavaScript style guides, specifically: their importance, style guides worth reviewing and tools that can assist in automated code beautification or style enforcement. What exactly is a style guide? Before we begin, let us remind ourselves … Continue reading →

I was lucky enough to be on the JavaScript Jabber podcast this week, discussing JavaScript Design Patterns. It was a fun hour and we talked through a number of architectural patterns, TodoMVC and one or two other topics. If you'd … Continue reading →

MVVM (Model View ViewModel) is an architectural pattern based on MVC and MVP, which attempts to more clearly separate the development of user-interfaces (UI) from that of the business logic and behaviour in an application. To this end, many implementations … Continue reading →

Pagination is a ubiquitous problem we often find ourselves needing to solve on the web. Perhaps most predominantly when working with back-end APIs and JavaScript-heavy clients which consume them. On this topic, today I'd like to announce the pre-release of … Continue reading →

Today, I’m going to present solutions for easily backing up all of your GitHub repositories in just a step or two. Minimal knowledge of GitHub fundamentals are assumed but if you have experience with writing in Ruby that'll be a plus. … Continue reading →

Introduction In this post we're going to explore writing Backbone.js applications with a Ruby back-end. To assist with this, we're going to use Sinatra – a DSL (domain specific language) for rapidly creating web applications in Ruby. Similar to the … Continue reading →

Some exciting news to share today! I'm joining Google as a Developer Programs Engineer on the Chrome team. I'll be lucky to join an incredibly talented team of developers including Paul Irish, Eric Bidelman and Paul Kinlan (to name but … Continue reading →

QUnit is a powerful JavaScript test suite written by jQuery team member Jörn Zaefferer and used by many large open-source projects (such as jQuery and Backbone.js) to test their code. It’s both capable of testing standard JavaScript code in the … Continue reading →

Hey guys. Here are the slides for a talk I gave at jQuery Conf (Europe), where I presented a number of effective design patterns for scaling and decoupling your JavaScript (and jQuery) powered web apps. If you've watched my videos … Continue reading →

Over the past year or so I've been actively trying to encourage more developers to invest time in learning about the benefits of design patterns and how they can be applied to JavaScript. To help with this, I wrote a … Continue reading →

YouTube is already hosting lot many hindi movies which are available to watch  for free. Few weeks ago, YouTube showcased the blockbuster movie “Dabangg” and now they have launched the YouTube BoxOffice which premieres with the latest blockbuster from Yash Raj Production named “Band Baaja Baaraat“. YouTube BoxOffice will showcase one blockbuster movie per month. [...]

The next version of Windows operating system i.e. Windows 8 is getting ready for the first beta release. Microsoft is very much excited about this version and few days ago, they released the first preview of Windows 8 build (demo video attached below). On the lock screen, an icon of a webcam was visible where [...]

Are you active on Twitter? If yes, then go ahead and add official “Follow” button on your website or blog to let visitors follow you on single click. Twitter has released a Follow button with counter to show number of followers and one click follow option. This post “How to Add Twitter Follow Button on [...]

Do you want to have your desktop’s Google Chrome bookmarks available on Android device browser? I think if you have maintained a nice list of pages in computer’s Chrome bookmark then this free app will prove pretty useful. This post “Access Synchronized Google Chrome Bookmarks on Android Browser” first published on Internet Techies. Related posts: [...]

Earlier we shared a list of 5+ online services to send fax for free and also shared couple of services to send fax trough email. Now adding to the list of online services to send fax for free of charge, we are going to provide you couple of more links. This post “Few More Free [...]

Are you planning to start hosting your website’s data on managed hosting servers? Are you confused whether you should go for shared hosting, VPS (Virtual Private Hosting) server or Dedicated one? These questions should be answered before making the final decision. Compare and find best hosting provider for your requirements. This post “Find Best Possible [...]

Windows 7 Ultimate is having BitLocker application which can encrypt and password protect USB Flash drives and other drives on disk. Learn how to carry important data with peace of mind. This post “Encrypt and Password Protect USB Drive with BitLocker in Windows 7” first published on Internet Techies. Related posts: Protect USB Flash Drive [...]

If you are facing common problems on Windows 7 Computer like Iphone not syncing with PC or Aero Effect not working etc. then you should take a look at the Infographic attached in this post. This post “Solution for Common Problems on Windows 7 Visualized [Infographic]” first published on Internet Techies. Related posts: How to [...]

This is a temporary post that was not deleted. Please delete this manually. (4a296314-6e2d-432f-b0e4-3c47e971fbf4 – 3bfe001a-32de-4114-a6b4-4005b770f6d7) Related posts: Get Temporary and Disposable Email Address To Avoid Spam in Inbox Why Not To Post Any Article With Administrator Account As Author On WordPress Q/A : How To Put Adsense Ads Between Post Content And Related Posts [...]

Whether you installed Windows 7, XP, Vista or any other version of Windows OS, it starts to slow down after few months or years of installation. With the same hardware configuration and similar usage, you always like the Windows to operate as fast as it does in earlier days of installation but it slows down. [...]

Advertise here with BSA Vantage is the latest theme from AppThemes which allows you to turn WordPress into a full featured business listings directory such as Yelp.com which allows businesses to add themselves and let customers rate them and leave comments. The theme has built-in monetization options so you can charge for listings, featured listings [...]

Advertise here with BSA Once again, the brilliant theme designers have been busy and we have loads of great free WordPress themes for you this month, nice clean business theme, portfolio themes, responsive, sliders – you name it and we have you covered. Visit Source Advertise here with BSA

Advertise here with BSA This film is a new 36 min sleep music addition to “Caribbean Lounge” 2 hour long collection of exotic HD landscapes with sounds of nature and peaceful melodies. Some of the sweetest lullabies with romantic guitar and soothing waves will softly surround you with peace and harmony. The full version of [...]

Advertise here with BSA Mobile web browsing has never been more popular. It goes without saying that iOS, Android, and other mobile platforms are here to stay. At this point if you don’t have a mobile version of your blog then you are behind the times. Here are 30 of the best mobile WordPress themes [...]

Advertise here with BSA One page WordPress themes are awesome. They’re perfect for anyone who loves simplicity and clever design. The following roundup of 30 one page wordpress themes can be used by photographers, designers, freelancers, businesses, or anyone craving a unique blog/website design that stands out. Visit Source Advertise here with BSA

Advertise here with BSA I remember how popular web design was even 5 or 10 years ago. Kids in high school were teaching themselves HTML and building small web pages from scratch. And nowadays this is possible because of the thousands of free tutorials and code online. Open source has dramatically shaped an industry of [...]

Advertise here with BSA There’s no denying that WordPress has become the leading CMS on the market. Anybody looking to launch a simple website would be foolish not to consider WP. It has the largest amount of free themes and plugins – not to mention the huge base of developers working to push out bug [...]

Advertise here with BSA Freelancing seems like one of the most lucrative job titles. And it’s true that setting your own hours and working on interesting projects can be a lot of fun. But there is also the matter of looming deadlines and touchy clients you need to keep satiated. One of the most important [...]

Advertise here with BSA In this post we have put together some high quality free fonts. If you like these fonts you might also want to check out our previous posts below. 30 Free And High Quality Fonts 50 High-Quality Free Fonts for Professional Design Silverfake  Metropolis Intro Graduate  Bobber Typeface Grammatica Nougatine Font GEARED [...]

Advertise here with BSA Using jQuery we can build some incredible web-based applications. The animations and manipulation of DOM elements using jQuery are much more intuitive than coding regular JavaScript. Because the syntax is so minimalist it’s possible to scale a very complex idea within a few hours time. In this tutorial I’ll demonstrate how [...]

A redesign can be worth its weight in gold if you get it right. There is a thin line between freshening up your design, and taking a step backwards with a redesign.  Sometimes a redesign can be subtle and simple, and other times it can be a huge re-vamp of a company and it’s goals. [...]

Demo & Info That’s right, we’ve worked on a Joomla Theme. Although we love WordPress we realize it’s not everybodies’ first choice of CMS. So we felt it was only fair to make something just as pretty as our WordPress themes for the Joomla people. The result, Hallmark, a premium Joomla theme ideal for running [...]

Everyone knows that WordPress is one of the most, if not the most, popular blogging systems on the internet today. With its out of the box features, plugins, and great theming community, its no wonder WordPress has been accepted as today’s standard. However, sometimes you just want to add a little more. It seems the [...]

Another collaboration between ourselves and WooThemes, the result: this stunning theme with optional layouts. We’ve realized, that while a lot of people no doubt love magazine style themes – there are still a lot of people who would like the option of having something a little more personal. So here you have it! As always [...]

A while ago we had the pleasure of working with DreamTemple for a WordPress Theme which they’ve given away for free on Smashing Magazine. That means you can get this beautiful and unique theme for free, from the king of freebies Smashing Magazine. We’re very happy to once again have some of our work featured [...]

This set of free characters is ideal for adding a little personality into your designs. With a variety of actions and poses to chose from you can easily adapt them into your designs anywhere you feel needs it. Inject a little fun into your dull and boring help pages, emphasize a feature or a button [...]

Creating a website is no easy task. WordPress is an easy solution for creating a Blog, but sometimes something a little more, in terms of functionality, is needed. After trying many other platforms, I have found WordPress to be the easiest to use. Because of it’s wide array of themes, great plugin system, and easy [...]

Ahh yes, the Design Community. I love it! This is the topic of a recent guest post I wrote over at MyInkBlog. Below is an extract from the article, but you can read the full the article here. Please leave your feedback and comments on the actual post rather than here. Why I love the [...]

Demo & Info To celebrate the launch of Theme Forest and our new theme Evo, we’re giving away 5 sets of $25 credit to be used on any theme on the site. Find out more at the end of the post. The theme is ideal for either being used straight out of the box, or [...]

Demo & Info First off, I’d just like to introduce myself. My name is Spencer, and I am the lead developer here at Function. I’m the guy that takes Liam’s awesome designs, and turns them into working sites. Liam had this design laying around, and I knew I couldn’t let it go to waste. So, [...]

Ask A Pro at the 2012 WMC Fest This year’s WMC Fest will feature an “Ask A Pro” table where students, young designers and freelancers can have their design industry questions answered. The table will feature a number of local creative leaders that have years of experience and insights to share with you. So, bring [...]

Weapons of Mass Creation Fest: J-25 Ladies and gentlemen, Weapons of Mass Creation Fest 3 is less than a month away! This means that the frequency of Fest-related content published here will slowly but surely increase in the next couple weeks. We’ll be introducing the speakers, designers and bands that will be part of this [...]

We recently had a chance to talk with one of our clients, Textile Republic, about their business and their experience with web design. We thought you might like to read their responses… Tell us about the history of Textile Republic and how it was started? The concept came about from Kim’s merchandise development experience. She [...]

A little bit of background What’s Old and New? Old & New is a collaborative design project based on Biblical passages. The project was created and is curated by Jim LePage and Troy Deshano. — From the Old and New about page That’s the quickest way to present Old and New. If we read more [...]

April 2012? Already? Yep, it’s already April 2012. And the end of the month with that. You probably noticed that we didn’t get a Flickr pool showcase in March. Which leads me to ask you, the readers, a few questions about the showcases. Should we keep the showcases? When I see the always positive response [...]

A quick thanks to Josh Bunts who suggested this post on Go Media’s Facebook page. Technically, he asked for advice on “…document set up and color pallets.” I thought I should expand the post to speak generally about all things Illustrator pre-work. 1. When setting up your document specs, keep the end in mind When [...]

Hello out there! We here at Go Media are searching for interns both for summer and fall of 2012. We are looking for designers experienced in branding, print and web design. Additionally, we are also looking for front end developer interns as well. Our internships are unpaid and require the student will receive school credit, [...]

We have been working like mad men/women over the past month and we have made some amazing progress towards our goals for the year. WMC Fest 2012 is just around the corner so keep a lookout for the new site which will be launching in no time at all. The Go Media Arsenal team is [...]

Greetings & Salutations My name is Wilson Revehl, Co-founder, CTO, and Vice-President of Go Media. When William Beachy and I founded the firm in 2003, merging our respective freelance businesses, I would not have imagined we’d become a publisher. And lord knows I haven’t done much to advance that cause. Jeff Finley, our first principle [...]

Written & Designed by: Raji Purcell Edited by: Jon Savage After spending the latter half of my friday at Go Media helping set up for WMC, and seeing where everything was to take place, I was beyond excited. Later that Friday night the other interns and I went to the Happy Dog for the WMC [...]

There are dozens of JavaScript testing frameworks, but most of them function in, more or less, the same way. However, Douglas Crockford’s JSCheck is considerably different from most. In this tutorial, I’ll show you how it’s different and why you should consider using it! Crockford describes JSCheck as a “specification-driven testing tool. Crockford describes JSCheck [...]

This tutorial will help you prepare a Magento install for high traffic, better load times, and simpler ongoing site management. Ready? Requirements You can download the finished code for this tutorial, or launch the “magento-basic” Quickstart from your Pagoda Box account to test a working site. A Pagoda Box Account (free) A functional local Magento [...]

As Tuts+ Premium continues to sky-rocket, our ability to post better, more frequent, content has improved dramatically as well. This week, we have a variety of fun new things available to members! Course – How To Be A Terminal Pro In this fifteen-episode course, you’ll learn how to take advantage of that scary app you [...]

This tutorial will cover the process of creating a basic Joomla module from an existing widget. We’re going to take a widget from Mixcloud, learn how to convert it into a Joomla module and, finally, distribute the extension to JED (Joomla Extension Directory). If you’ve never created a Joomla module before, this article is the [...]

There’s a new player in town, and he brought new toys: The PHP World welcomes FLOW3, an enterprise application framework written and backed by the community of the TYPO3 CMS. FLOW3 can be used as standalone full-stack framework for your applications. It’s interesting, because it introduces some concepts of software development that haven’t been adapted [...]

We’re planning our next few Tuts+ sites, and would love your opinion and advice on which topics you think we should cover next! We’d be really grateful if you could take a minute to answer our quick poll and share your thoughts… Have Your Say Nettuts+ Readers: Which Tuts+ Site Should We Launch Next? We’ve [...]

When you define a function within JavaScript, it comes with a few pre-defined properties; one of these is the illusive prototype. In this article, I’ll detail what it is, and why you should use it in your projects. What is Prototype? The prototype property is initially an empty object, and can have members added to [...]

With so many folks developing jQuery plugins, it’s not uncommon to come across one that just plain – for lack of better words – sucks. There’s no examples or documentation, the plugin doesn’t follow best practices, etc. But you’re one of the lucky ones: this article will detail the pitfalls that you must avoid. jQuery [...]

Each month, we bring together a selection of the best tutorials and articles from across the whole Tuts+ network. Whether you’d like to read the top posts from your favourite site, or would like to start learning something completely new, this is the best place to start! We’ve Been in Kuala Lumpur! This month we’ve [...]

Over the course of these last two weeks, I had the pleasure of attending an Envato meetup/conference in Malaysia. As you might expect, Envato is composed of ridiculously smart and talented folks…folks so smart that it quickly becomes intimidating! But I’m not here to talk about the conference specifically; instead, I’d prefer to ramble a [...]

Ask five designers how they handle client design presentations and you’ll get five different answers. Some like to do their presentations in person, accompanying their designs with printouts detailing specific highlights. Others prefer utilizing an online screen sharing experience and talking their clients through their design in real time. And then there are those who [...]

Many designers prefer to outsource some of their coding work in order to free up more of their own time, or maybe to get a higher quality of coding than they can produce on their own. Outsourcing PSD to HTML conversion can be done on a regular basis with the majority of your web design [...]

Finding the right color scheme for a website design can often be a real challenge. Bright colors are sometimes not favored by designers, but in the right situation they can be very effective. In this post we’ll showcase examples of 21 different bright and colorful websites. Hopfully, seeing these examples will give you some inspiration [...]

Check out our new Exotico UI Set. Free and premium versions available. With the free Simple Style WordPress theme you can showcase your photos on a clean, professional website. The theme was designed in a minimalist style to allow for your amazing photos to take center stage. With either color scheme (light or dark) you [...]

Check out our new Exotico UI Set. Free and premium versions available. In this tutorial, I will show you how to draw a notes icon for an iPhone app using Photoshop. We will combine the power of Layer Styles and traditional drawing to achieve a realistic result. Preview Here’s a preview of icon we are [...]

Check out our new Exotico UI Set. Free and premium versions available. New freelancers and students who are just coming out of school are often faced with the challenge of gaining exposure for their work. The exposure is often needed for securing new client projects, but it can also be needed to help with landing [...]

Check out our new Exotico UI Set. Free and premium versions available. This set of textures was created by staining brown paper multiple times with ink and bleach. They combine the always-popular paper texture with splatters and stains to create interesting results. The set includes 4 free textures that we hope can be put to [...]

Check out our new Exotico UI Set. Free and premium versions available. In recent years the possibilities for using a wide variety of fonts and typefaces in web design has come a long way. There are now several different options for approaches that you can take when you want to use a font other than [...]

Check out our new Exotico UI Set. Free and premium versions available. Navigation menus are an important part of any web design for usability purposes, but they can also serve to improve the look and feel of the website. When designing navigation menus there are any number of different approaches that you can take, and [...]

Check out our new Exotico UI Set. Free and premium versions available. When you’re building a website it’s all well and good embracing a fancy design and making plans for strategic SEO, however what’s also vital is that you ensure your site is built to convert. Below we take a look at five high-converting sites [...]

Zazzle is one of those totally awesome online brands that has just about everything you could wish for on one website. Aside from offering so many different products, Zazzle also gives you the chance to customize your own. Make sure you check out their selection of goods.

Did you all enjoy creating iPad cases for our Zazzle contest? I hope so. There were so many fabulous entries, you guys are great at creating some inspiring pieces. So thank you for entering.

Today we are here to announce the winners of the Zazzle contest.

• Grand prize winner will receive $500 + a copy of their winning iPad Sleeve
• 1 Runner-up will receive $100 Zazzle gift certificate + copy of their iPad Sleeve
• 2 Honorable mentions will receive $50 Zazzle gift certificates + copies of their iPad Sleeves

The runner-up who will be receiving a $100 Zazzle gift certificate + copy of their iPad Sleeve is: Vintage Flowers iPad Sleeve by HazelAgnes.

The 2 Honorable mentions who will be receiving a $50 Zazzle gift certificates + copies of their iPad Sleeves: PATTERN {chevron 011} by Schatzibrown

And finally, Vintage Floral by pinkinkstudio

Congrats to all the winners! Thank you so much to everyone who entered the Zazzle contest. I hope you had a lot of fun with this contest and we are excited to keep bringing you more.

I’m excited for the return of floral prints. From fashion to design, this print has grown back into our lives and secured a very special place in current trends. These print pieces are so simple and sweet and will definitely add extra sunshine to your home office.

Today we are going to take a look through all the various uses of such a trend. So get your pinning buttons ready, as you are in for a treat.

Source: Tags, Journal

Logo design? Using Florals? You better believe it!

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I love the use of watercolor + free hand floral drawing in this logo. This is one fun logo overall, and just check out how she plays with it in her branding.

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Floral print in fashion is coming back fast! It is important to find those modern floral patterns as opposed to those your grandma used to own. But if you can find something vintage modern, you’ll be golden in pulling off this trend.

Source: Shoes, Skirt, Outfit, Pants

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I wasn’t aware that the floral print trend had hit the seating market so heavily. But I stand corrected by these images that shed a whole new light on floral print seating. Which one is your favorite?

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Source: Chair, Etsy

I loved this floral pattern that one blogger created.

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And it looks like you all are creating your own floral patterns on COLOURlovers as well! There are pages and pages of floral patterns for you all to explore on the site.

Source: hana*, ksantipa, Skyblue2u, Skyblue2u 

My challenge of the day is to create some awesome floral patterns on COLOURlovers. Once you have created something you love, comment them all below. Let’s help get everyone else inspired with floral patterns too!

It has been quite a fun week over here at COLOURlovers. Between our iPad contest with Zazzle, book review on the new Smashing Magazine book, Redesign The Web and so much more!

FAVORITE BLOG POSTS:

Some of our favorite blog posts from this week are crafty projects you can do with magazine pages and some fabulously colorful digital art by Andy Gilmore! Also, Zazzle is hosting a COLOURlovers iPad Design contest! If you haven’t entered, now is the chance, the winner will receive a $500 cash prize.

CMYLK by DESIGN MILK

Design Milk (one of our fave blogs over here at COLOURlovers) has created a brand new column called “CMYLK”. Each week, they round up some images – products, interiors, and art – and their associated COLOURlovers color palettes to inspire and delight. This week, features some fabulous paintings by Kristy Gammill. Check out the blog post for more palettes!

Do you “like” us on Facebook? Well you should be because we post awesome photos like those below all week long!

A few weeks back we held a Betabrand sock design contest! The 3 winning designs are now listed for pre-order on the Betabrand website! Pre-order your pack now!

LINKS FROM AROUND THE WEB

LINKS FROM AROUND THE WEB:

• The entire process of creating and building this colorful little room is posted on Design Milk Megan Geckler for Bobble.
• House Beattiful shows us 6 Cheery Yellow Bathrooms. This is great inspiration for those of you looking to spruce up your bathroom for the summer.
• If you haven’t had the chance to get yourself a few Pantone Coffee Mugs, now might be a good time to go grab them.

Have any colorful posts you have seen yourself? Share them in the comments below! See you next week with some more colorful round-ups!

A bit ago we posted about crafting with paint chips. Today I wanted to post about another product you probably have laying around your house that you could turn into totally awesome art.

Have you ever tried to find a use for magazines and catalogs that you finished looking through? Throwing them away feels like such a waste sometimes, doesn’t it? Well today we are posting about various art projects you can do with those old magazines to repurpose them and bring those pages to life, for the second time. These projects are also a great way to give your kids something to do, using only products you already have in your home.

The magazine sunburst is probably my favorite piece of magazine art yet. All you have to do to create such an art piece is a roll up magazine pages and paste them together. Check out how she did it. Next to this fun DIY is a cool magazine clock that you can get off Etsy.

Source: Sunburst, Clock 

I know the holidays aren’t upon us for quite a while, but here are some fun things you can create for the season. Creating bows from magazine pages is super easy and a fun touch that you can’t find anywhere else.

Source: Ornaments, Bow

Magazine jewlery! Want to find something unique to wear? This is definitely a good route to take, and you can even make it yourself which is even more impressive.

Source: Bracelet, Necklace

Here are a few fun ways to add a little bit of magazine crafting into your home.

Source: Frame, Coaster

 Now this is one incredibly awesome vase! Even without flowers, this is such a statement piece for you home.

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This is a fun craft project for you and your kids! And they make for great storage after the fact.

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What are your favorite pieces? I would love to see the color palettes and patterns you all can create with such fun inspiration. And if you have the chance to craft with magazine paper, I would love to see pics of what you are coming out with.

We are very excited to review the brand new Smashing Magazine book, REDESIGN THE WEB.  I’ll start by saying that I would not only recommend this book to every designer, but it is a must for any person who is in the position to make decisions about their website. Why do I think this? Understanding the how and why behind design allows you to learn the types of questions you should be asking about your website and will help the entire design process immensely.

Let’s start by taking a look at the table of contents:

Chapter 1, The Business Side of Redesign, was my favorite chapter in the book. Focusing on the business of design is by far the most important part. This concept can sometimes be overlooked when you get caught up in “making it pretty”. “The most powerful defense against fashion is simple: we must ask why.” Great tip to try next time your clients wants a “make my website look like that” design.

Another great point brought up in this chapter is the designer-client relationship. I agree that many of these relationships are broken. Without the client understanding the how and why behind your work they tend to focus on the looks, not the purpose. Here are some pointers to create a better relationship.

Chapter 2 dives into the technical needs of a company and offers some basic advice for clients when it comes to exercising their options and choosing the right platforms for their needs. This includes everything from choosing the right content management system to your commerce platform.

The following chapters cover the basics of HTML5, the great advantages of using CSS3, and some of the new features and benefits both of these languages have to offer. It also touches upon Javascript and some tricks to replace complex JQuery. If you are familiar with both HTML + CSS, you will understand the tips and pointers these chapters have to offer. Here is just an example of what you will find:

Source: Page 107

Chapter 7 goes over a variety of Photoshop tools at your disposal. Most of these techniques are pretty basic if you are a Photoshop know-it-all, however there might be a few that you didn’t know about. If you are new to photoshop, this chapter is a perfect way to learn some new techniques. Here is an example of  from the book:

The chapter, Designing With Personality, was another stand out chapter of this book. Personality really is what sets brands apart. Below are some examples listed of the benefits of creating a personality.

The concept below is extremely valuable. Copywriting isn’t always taken into account in design, but in terms of building a brand with personality, it is a very key element that must be given some thought.

A great example quoted from Chapter 10: “GE made its giant corporation feel more humanly by sharing the individual personality of its workforce. It showed us the passion and pride it has for its craft. and we felt it.

There is a landing page strategy that can absolutely benefit you, further than getting early access sign-ups, that is brought up in this book. This is known as the “hidden survey”. You can gauge interest and demand of a product that hasn’t even been built yet just by monitoring the number of early-access sign ups. Another great way is offering a short “Help Us Build Something You Want” survey asking them a few short questions geared toward getting valuable information that you can use. Getting to know the people that use your product is the best way to build a product.

If you are just starting in the field of design, this book is definitely for you. It will quickly get you up to speed and give you some great pointers that will most improve your current workflow.

If you are well into the field of design this book might not offer entirely new concepts. Still, there is always an opportunity to learn and overall, it is definitely worth reading to see what new ideas you can take away from it.

Get your copy of the new Smashing Magazine book, Redesign The Web.

An influential designer that I would like to shine the spotlight on would have to be Jessica Helgerson of Jessica Helgerson Interior Design. Several years ago I stumbled across her work, which I found to be organic as well as aesthetically pleasing. Looking through her impressive portfolio, you can see where she is very versatile as opposed to sticking to just one style or look. Also, the fact that Jessica works in an environmentally conscious fashion does not hurt either.

Being able to work with a wide range of styles,  being earth friendly at the same time, while executing such timeless and tasteful spaces is a skill in itself and is something that should be commended.

The wood that is used for the floors and cabinets of this bathroom are of reclaimed tobacco-barn oak and the

color palette was inspired by the surrounding land of this beautiful home.

Dining room and living room done in Jessica’s signature organic style. A combination of whites and browns were

used in this palette.

Loving the use of orange to add a nice taste of color in this bright and airy kitchen that was inspired by Swedish design.

A dining room with great large windows that allow plenty of natural light to come in while that are great for viewing that serene ocean. Greens and beiges were used, definitely inspired by the nearby beach.

Source: All photos by Jessica Helgerson Interior Design

A serene living room with a charcoal gray fireplace and smart built-ins.

What do you think of these bright and fresh designs? Is this your style or would you go for something a bit more bold?

When lots of people gather in a park and fly kites together, the outcome is one incredibly colorful sky. Here are some  photos from Kite Fest in Austin, Texas.

What colors do you see when you look at these shots? Woud love to see what color palettes and patterns you COLOURlovers come up with!

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Has anyone attended any fun and colorful activities recently? Would love to see what you are all doing!

I posted one of Andy Gilmore’s pieces on the COLOURlovers Facebook page a few weeks back. While digging deeper into the site, I found myself in awe over every single piece. I don’t have enough space to feature them all on this blog post, but I would highly recommend checking out his entire collection of work if you are as impressed as I am by this small feature.

Creating magazine covers is nothing new for Andy. He shows plenty of them in his body of work. I do however remember this Wired issue which I thought was great when I saw this. Opposite of Wired is the cover he created for the New York Times Key Magazine.

Here are a series of excellent pieces using bright colors and some very modern shapes.

Source for all images: Andy Gilmore

What do you think of this art? Would you use these patterns on something fun such as your iPhone case or throw pillows? Let us know what you think.

Today we are here with a really fun iPad sleeve design contest brought to you by Zazzle. Have you taken the time to play on  Zazzle yet?

The site is filled with so many awesome products from iPhone + iPad cases, office products, clothing and accessories and just about everything else you could want. What’s more, they have an option for you to go ahead and design your own pieces. Want to put your artwork on t-shirts? Zazzle can do that!

We are excited to announce the Zazzle iPad sleeve design contest. We are calling upon the COLOURlovers community to design the coolest sleeve you can through zazzle.com. Once you have created something you love, submit the design and share it so you can get lots of votes on your submission.

Source: 1, 2, 3, 4

How it Works:

Participants will be designing an iPad sleeve using the design tool on zazzle.com. Here is how to enter:

• Create a Zazzle Account (It’s free!)
• Download our iPad Sleeve Templates and use them to create your design.
• Go here , select the sleeve you’d like to create and use your design to finalize your entry.
• “Post for Sale” (red link towards the bottom right) your iPad Sleeve with the tag colourloversipadcontest in the Zazzle Marketplace

For the official rules, find out more on zazzle.com. You’re done! Now you can go vote for your favorites but clicking the “like” button below the entry!

The Prizes:

• Grand prize winner will receive $500 + a copy of their winning iPad Sleeve
• 1 Runner-up will receive $100 Zazzle gift certificate + copy of their iPad Sleeve
• 2 Honorable mentions will receive $50 Zazzle gift certificates + copies of their iPad Sleeves

We will be announcing the winners on May 14, 2012. Good Luck to all and happy designing!

Did you know that adding foods to your diet that are high in pigmentation is one of the best things that you could do for your health and creativity? Broccoli, carrots, beets, peas, blueberries, raspberries, cherries, etc. all contain whopping doses of antioxidants, the super-hero of the super-fit, chasing away free radicals that cause disease and degeneration.

Every runway supermodel knows that the key to staying slim and shiny is to avoid foods that are white, or pale in color—potatoes, breads, pastas, white rice, sugar—and to eat fabulously colorful foods that are ALIVE and JUICY.

Not only will brightly colored foods make you a brightly colored person, (add a rosy glow to your cheeks, bring the sparkle and shimmer back to your eyes) they become a cheerful accent splash of color to your kitchen when stacked in a bowl near the Kitchen-Aid or french press, and make a lively center-piece for the dinner table.

Dust off that brightly painted Mexican-ceramic bowl and fill it up with the season’s best apples and oranges and color your world from the inside out.