http://help-developer.com Help Developer - Graphic and Web Design Blog with Collections, Freebies, Tutorials and Forums Fri, 01 May 2009 16:00:09 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en In a time when there are literally thousands of CSS galleries and new ones being born into the world every day it's nice to see one that really stands out. Simplistic design is very big at the moment, with a focus on layout and typography its a fresh release from the web 2.0 era of gradients and curved edges which I think we're finally getting out of. I've being visiting Daniel Howells' siteInspire everyday for just over a week now in my daily quest for inspiration and out of all the galleries I visit, it stands out like a penguin in the middle of a city. Take the site's design itself, its minimalist and clean, makes great use of spacing and typography and is so easy to navigate.]]> http://help-developer.com/index.php/2009/05/siteinspire-a-great-source-of-inspiration/ Hi guys, today I am officially releasing a new website, Review My Design. Review My Design is a community based site where designers can help out other designers by providing constructive criticism on their work in order to help improve it. ]]> http://help-developer.com/index.php/2009/04/new-site-review-my-design/ How you display your latest blog posts is very important. A good use of spacing to separate each post, the right amount of lines in the excerpt and what data is needed (date, comments, author etc.) are just a few things that need to be considered when deciding how to list the posts. In this post I'm going to showcase some of the layouts I have used to inspire me when designing for blogs. As always if you have some other great examples please post a comment below. ]]> http://help-developer.com/index.php/2009/04/10-great-ways-of-listing-blog-posts/ I have been running Codethatdesign for about 9 months and in that time I have built up a number of regular clients and am continuing to get new clients on a daily basis so it has been a triumph. However, the site has remained pretty much the same in all that time, so over the past month or so I have been working on a facelift. As it is a coding service, it was imperative that it followed coding standards and the code itself and the items in the portfolio were top notch, so I have spent a lot of time developing it to ensure that it as effective as possible to potential clients. As many of you will know, I am an avid user of jQuery and this doesn't change on this site, I have used it on the homepage to create a tab like section so that it makes good use of screen real estate and on the portfolio so I can demonstrate my best work in the best possible way. However, when using JavaScript, you should always think of the users that don't have it enabled, for this reason the site is fully functional without Javascript. I inevitably coded the site for non-Javascript users and then added CSS through the Javascript for the people that have it enabled, this way the site will work perfectly either way.]]> http://help-developer.com/index.php/2009/03/design-case-study-codethatdesign/ When I look for inspiration I mainly turn to two places, CSS galleries and other designer's portfolio's of which I have a lot saved in my bookmarks. In this post I will bring to you my top 10 based on the design of the actual portfolio and the work that the portfolio is showcasing. If you have some others then please leave them in the comments and I'll be sure to check them out. I am a strong believer in making your portfolio design the best it possibly can be and to have a strong selection of your best work showcased correctly. I also like to see the use of modern technologies like jQuery and SIFr, you will come across some great examples of this in these portfolio's.]]> http://help-developer.com/index.php/2009/03/my-10-favourite-web-designer-portfolios/ http://help-developer.com/index.php/2008/12/simon-northcom-my-personal-blog/ http://help-developer.com/index.php/2008/12/introducing-simnorwp/ http://help-developer.com/index.php/2008/12/create-an-archives-page-in-wordpress/ http://help-developer.com/index.php/2008/12/are-templates-dying-out/ http://help-developer.com/index.php/2008/11/redesigns-galore/