Freebie: Winter Texture Pack
by Steven Snell on December 31, 2009
Today we’re releasing a set of 14 textures. The photos were taken in a park after some snow. The textures can be used in your personal or commercial projects, not attribution is required. They cannot be re-distributed or sold.
Free High-Res Heavy Watercolor Spatter Photoshop Brushes
by Jacob Gube on December 31, 2009
In this freebie, we are giving away 7 High-Resolution Heavy Watercolor Spatter brushes to add to your design resources.
The Best of Copyblogger 2009
by Brian Clark on December 31, 2009
You didn’t think we’d close out the year without a “Best of 2009” post, did you? Well, you’re not getting off that easy.
Here’s the best Copyblogger content of the year, based on your enthusiasm via comments, links, retweets, and gratuitous offerings of produce-based holiday desserts. We thank you all for your continued support (but we [...]
Agnesswart
by Blog Design Heroes on December 31, 2009
Looking for more design inspiration? See our other galleries: CartFrenzy, Folio Focus, Minimal Exhibit, TypeInspire.
Yoast: Checking Blog Privacy Settings
by Yoast - Tweaking Websites & The WordPress Podcast on December 31, 2009
As a result of last nights post, I dove in and added a check to my Robots Meta plugin that checks whether you’re allowing search engines to spider your site.
If not, it’ll throw an ugly warning on each and every page until you fix it:The code for it is easy, and as I’d like other [...]
Checking Blog Privacy Settings is a post from Joost de Valk‘s Yoast – Tweaking Websites.A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don’t want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on WordPress hosting!
10 Keys to Growth as a Designer
by Steven Snell on December 30, 2009
One of the most significant challenges that designers face is the need for continual improvement and development. The industry and technology can change very quickly and staying on top of things and working to improve your skills is necessary in order to have a successful career in web design. Fortunately, learning and improving will naturally occur to some degree as you continue to work on different projects and in different scenarios, but there will be times when you will have to make an effort to work on your own development.
In this post we’ll look at 10 keys to growth as a designer. This list and discussion should serve as a reference or guide for any designer that wants to improve. Focus on these areas and you will become a better designer. Please share your own thoughts and experiences in the comments.
1. Solid Foundation of Knowledge
There are plenty of different things for aspiring and improving designers to learn, and more than enough resources and tutorials to make it happen. One of the temptations is to jump ahead and try to learn too many specifics before having a firm grasp on the essential fundamentals of web design. Some tools, such as Adobe Dreamweaver, can lead designers to think that they don’t need to be proficient in HTML and CSS. However, having a solid knowledge of HTML and CSS, plus basic design principles, is necessary and trying to learn too many other things at once can lead to confusion. If you have not already reached this point, make it a priority to attain the foundational knowledge first before you try to build on it.