<pthe last panel of GDC 2010 day two, David Whatley of Critical Thought took the stage to talk about the App Store success he found with his games geoDefense and geoDefense Swarm, and almost dared other iPhone developers to follow his "guaranteed plan" to go from "zero to Time Magazine."… read more
The reader will give B&N customers access to more than a million eBooks, as well as selected newspapers and magazines.
The Barnes 7 Noble Nook, which competes with the Amazon Kindle, has only been out a short time, but if the iPad is a success a heck of… read more
Magazine advertisement visually describing how a company’s iPhone app can represent their mobile digital signage.
These details give the designer total control, allowing them to create beautiful and consistent typography in their designs. While these details can be applied across different types of media, in this articles we’re going to focus on how to apply them to web design using CSS. Here are 8 simple… read more
Continuing with a very source agnostic digital book strategy, Barnes & Noble has announced it will soon be offering an e-reader app for the Apple iPad.
The app will be designed specifically for the iPad’s tablet form factor, and will join B&N’s existing e-reader app family already available for Mac,… read more
Roughly 3-4% of our readers view this site via a mobile device and that percentage is growing week-to-week. They aren’t very high percentages but it was certainly high enough to prompt me into action – I started considering a mobile version of this site.
Let me start by saying that I… read more
Mobile forms tend to have significantly more constraints than their desktop cousins: screens are smaller; connections are slower; text entry is trickier; the list goes on. So, limiting the number of forms in your mobile applications and websites is generally a good idea. When you do want input from users… read more
There are two ways you can go when designing a 404 page for your website – you could go the sensible route and make it usable and try to help the reader find exactly what they were looking for or, you could design a 404 page that not only defines… read more
On the Make: magazine blog, they recently posted a piece about the evolution of a project. It was an iPod remote from last year that has gone from a “start and stop” only device to a full featured remote. It is a lovely piece of tech, powered by Arduino hardware…. read more
Since its emergence, the digital photography market has gradually supplanted the traditional one. APN and digital SLR cameras entered our lives, and some people announced the death of silver-based images. This is not all lie, and yet old-fashioned images have been particularly popular in the past few years. All we… read more
To find a career to which you are adapted by nature, and then to work hard at it, is about as near to a formula for success and happiness as the world provides.
One of the fortunate aspects of this formula is that, granted the right career has been… read more
Next Day Flyers has offered to give 1,000 business cards and $25 of printing credit to a lucky reader of Designm.ag.
If you’re not familiar with Next Day Flyers they provide offset printing services and specialize in quick printing, mailing and finishing marketing materials. They are available to print business … read more
<phe iPad, like the iPhone, used the Oscars to make its ad debut. As is typical with an Apple ad, the iPad's ad featured a montage of different uses for the device, all while set to the backdrop of a catchy tune.
In making his case for the iPad, Apple CEO… read more
Professor of architecture in Barcelona, Octavio Mestre, who has provided numerous services to the Catalan city, now has major projects in Spain and is already present in other European countries with homes and housing of high quality.
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Photos from site octaviomestre.com.
Octavio Mestre graduated with honors from the Higher Technical School of… read more
This is our weekly Twitter Design News Round-Up, a collection of fresh design related resources that we have shared via Twitter in the past week.
Just in case you are not one of our Twitter followers, click here: twitter.com/speckyboy, and you’ll be kept up to date with loads of design news… read more
I thought I could not be out-geeked. With a background in radio, and having dabbled in the demo scene on the Commodore 64 and hung out on BBSes and IRC for a long time and all the other things normal kids don’t quite get, I thought I was safe in… read more
Hey there, music fans! Thanks for joining us for Free Music Monday this week, where we offer you 10 free downloads for your eclectic listening pleasure. If you haven’t been with us before, we’re collating free and legal tracks in honor of the #musicmonday tradition on Twitter.
We happily accept… read more
If you’d like to download the images used in this tutorial to practice these techniques, visit www.layersmagazine.com and navigate to the Magazine section. All files are for personal use only.
Sharpness is an important element in any photograph, but a creative use of blur—whether from shallow depth of field, motion blur,… read more
The design profession is full of happy folks, and understanding why so many designers enjoy their work is not hard. But not all are so happy. If you’re not careful, the joy of getting paid to pursue your passion can be tainted by the less joyous realities of the professional… read more
For complete SXSW coverage, check out Mashable’s SXSW channel.
Popular music magazine SPIN is going geeky for South by Southwest’s music festival, integrating custom Foursquare badges into its event presence and rewarding the most adventurous users of the location-based game with free tickets to their annual music showcase at Stubb’s.
Festival… read more
It’s time for our best news of this week, the first one of 2010. We have a lot of graphic and web design, a bit of architecture, ads, tech news, awesome reads and other crazy stuff! So take a look at the links we’ve selected for your inspiration and to… read more
Running an e-commerce website is a never-ending task, from trying to squeeze that extra bit of conversion rate out of the check-out page to figuring out which referrers give you the best traffic. There’s also a plethora of tools out there to help you achieve your goals. But which ones… read more
Although much valuable information for all sorts of web and print professionals can be found online, it is often difficult to weed through all the noise and find good quality content. I believe it’s vital that professionals in different creative fields supplement their online learning and research through well-edited and… read more
In Fortune Magazine’s annual ranking of “most admired companies”, Apple has once again walked away with the top spot. Apple was voted #1 for the third year in a row in a poll of executives, industry analysts and company directors. This year, Apple actually took pole position by its… read more
If you’re seeking a job in social media, we’d like to help out. For starters, Mashable’s Job Lists section gathers together all our resource lists, how-tos and expert guides to help you get hired. In particular, you might want to see our articles on How to… read more
Recently, I attended a seminar taught by wedding photographer David Ziser. While I learned a lot of good photography tips, one thing that caught my attention was an app David showed for laying out wedding albums. Typically, a wedding photographer has to narrow down his shoot to about 100 photos… read more
paidContent:UK has an article on a presentation by Penguin Books’ CEO John Makinson gave here in London on Tuesday. Makinson presented ideas on how publishers might approach Apple’s iPad and the iBookstore. Makinson revealed “We will be embedding audio, video and streaming in to everything we do. The .epub format,… read more
Adobe Illustrator is a powerful software for illustrating that allows users to produce beautiful artwork, technical illustrations, and even graphics for both print and the web. Adobe Illustrator is a multipurpose vector illustration tool and its versatility makes it the most preferred choice among many professional artists and designers.
In the… read more
At some time or another we have all seen it – neighbourhood walls with old and deprecated graffiti or, just as common, you may have seen some flyers or posters that have been stuck for so long on these walls that they start to peel and hang on by their… read more
Recently, the notion of killing the design community has come up on a few blogs (sometimes indirectly), creating many intense conversations on the direction the design community has taken over the past couple of years, and what can be done about it.
The possibility that such discussions… read more
App Store is a competitive environment. Against more than 140,000 apps, all screaming for attention, how do you make sure your app gets its time in the spotlight? What does it take to get good media coverage? How do you get people to talk about your app—and, ideally, how do… read more
The market for freelance web design is huge. Being able to design a beautiful site in Photoshop is one thing. Programming a website is a whole other story.
So when clients come knocking at your door asking for web design services, what do you, the non-programmer but rockstar designer,… read more
Web design is a relatively young field. It’s youthful, growing and made up of people from all kinds of backgrounds, many of whom lack formal design training. We have learned, and still are learning, as we go.
I came into my first job as a Web designer for Boeing back in… read more
Shea Murdock and Robert Young are the creators of office Murdock Young Architects. With a little more than 10 years behind them they have an interesting portfolio of work in the United States, with highlights on residential projects and art galleries.
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Photos from site murdockyoung.com.
Founded in 1999 by Shea Murdock and… read more
This is my weekly Twitter Design News Round-Up, a collection of fresh design related resources that I have shared via Twitter in the past week.
Just in case you are not one of my Twitter followers, click here: twitter.com/speckyboy, and you’ll be kept up to date with loads of design news… read more
Showcasing the Design Work of Our Readers
Would you like to gain exposure by having your work featured in an international design magazine? Of course you would!
The staff at Layers magazine appreciates the time and effort involved in the creative process, no matter how large or small the project. With… read more
An excellent article by Inayaili de Leon for Smashing Magazine. There were a lot of new things that I learned in this article about web typography and CSS. You definitely need to read through this article. I guarantee, there will be little bits and tips that you will learn.
Related posts:Typography… read more
We’ve collected the top five reviews, roundups and how-to articles from across the AppStorm network in February. Whether you’re interested in Mac, iPhone, or Web apps, there’s bound to be something you didn’t spot over the course of the month.
Now would be a good time to explore a part of… read more
<p GQ
Vanity Fair
Wired
Glamour
The New Yorker
Expect GQ to be the first one available, either at or directly after the iPad's launch. Vanity Fair and Wired should be available in June, while launch schedules for Glamour… read more
February was a great month full of awesome tutorials, interesting articles and interviews, and stunning showcases for inspiration.
Quick Nav:
Photoshop TutorialsIllustrator TutorialsWeb/Blogging TutorialsFreebies, Inspiration, & ResourcesPhotoshop TutorialsSuper Easy Typographic Portrait in Photoshop
This tutorial, from Abduzeedo, will show you how to use the Displace filter and some Blend Modes to a great… read more
There has been an increasing and sincere interest in typography on the web over the last few years. Most websites rely on text to convey their messages, so it’s not a surprise that text is treated with utmost care. In this article, we’ll look at some useful techniques and clever… read more
When the iPad was announced, some media partnerships were announced with it, but it wasn’t hard to guess that, in the period before the device actually comes to the market, we’ll see many more.
We already know that Condé Nast is working on an iPad version of Wired magazine,… read more
This post is part of our daily series of posts showing the most inspiring images selected by some of the Abduzeedo’s writers and users. If you want to participate and share your graphic design inspiration, just send us, via email, the image with the link from where you found it,… read more
Desktop wallpapers can serve as an excellent source of inspiration. However, if you use some specific wallpaper for a long period of time, it becomes harder to draw inspiration out of it. That’s why we have decided to supply you with smashing wallpapers over 12 months. And to make them… read more
The wallpaper of this week is another super cool artwork from the young self taught freelance Illustrator and Art Director Saad Moosajee. We have already featured him in the past but he has some new works that are definitely worth checking them out.
Since Saadart.com was established in September 2008, Saad… read more
Fans of Vectortuts+ are certainly familiar with the vector tutorials of Jonathan Patterson. He’s obviously a talented vector illustrator, there is however a wide variety of work he produces in addition to his vector artwork. Jonathan is a Michigan native working as a Senior Art Director at an advertising agency…. read more
When it comes to Image editing or photo enhancement, Adobe Photoshop is usually the primary option to consider. However, the software package itself is a quite hard to learn — and extremely hard to master.
Display beautiful images is a potent element in web and graphic design, where there is less… read more
Today we are glad to release Free SEO Icons Set, a set with 16 original SEO-icons in .png (64×64px). This set was designed by Andrea Austoni and released for private use for Smashing Magazine and its readers.
Download the icon set for free!
You can use the set for your projects private… read more
Over the years designers have pushed themselves to create unique and inspiring designs. Companies have yearned to have websites which are innovative and make them stand out against their competitors. Yet charity websites have not progressed along with trends and expectations — they seem to have been designed for launch… read more
Inspiration can be a fickle thing. Most designers, when lacking ideas, turn to design galleries to find ideas. But there are a few problems with that approach. The most obvious is that when taking inspiration from similar mediums, there’s a fine line between “inspired by” and “copied”. To some extent,… read more
Business Web application design is too often neglected. I see a lot of applications that don’t meet the needs of either businesses or users and thus contribute to a loss of profit and poor user experience. It even happens that designers are not involved in the process of creating applications… read more
The importance of a unique, memorable and well designed blog, especially within the design community, should not be underestimated – First impressions will always count and your blog gives you an opportunity to showcase your skills and highlight how professional and serious you are as a designer.
For most web… read more
Rodolphe Simeon is a french photographer living in Canada. And this is not the only thing mixing cultures in his life: he speaks French, English and German.
The first time I saw his pictures was in the brazilian magazine Zupi,which I recommend to read or at least to visit its site…. read more
We all need a small spark to get going sometimes… What makes it easier to get going than some creative videography, editing & animation? Not much. Here are some creative videos some with mind blowing CG landscapes or an amazing look at what goes into a Macworld cover and some… read more
By Louis Lazaris
If you’ve been formally educated in marketing, more than likely you’ve learned about a marketing model called AIDA. AIDA is an acronym that represents the different steps involved in selling a product or service. Very often, the principles of AIDA are applied naturally when a useful product or… read more
It’s time for something brand new and exciting on Smashing Magazine. Actually, we have quite a few things in the works, and today we are happy to reveal one of them. Over the years, we have published many lengthy articles, and now we want to write some shorter ones for… read more
Whether you are reading a printed magazine or a web article it is very rarely the content that draws you in at first, the hook is always the title or the headline. A well written and thought out title or headline are fundamental, it has to not only describe with… read more
A growing number of resort and spa destinations are spreading their wings and reaching a wider customer base via social media. With the help of social networking platforms and niche bloggers, vacation spots are broadening their branding efforts from the sand to the slopes, and connecting with potential… read more
Showcasing the Design Work of Our Readers
Would you like to gain exposure by having your work featured in an international design magazine? Of course you would!
The staff at Layers magazine appreciates the time and effort involved in the creative process, no matter how large or small the project. With… read more
Israel is a young country with an old heart. It has been quickly built up over the last 60 years as an independent democratic Jewish state and is shockingly cutting edge for a country so new.
It is a tiny surreal sliver of land smack dab in the middle of the… read more
The supporting article (translated into English here) details how local free newspapers are killing the paid competition, and makes the case for online distribution and micropayments. It’s an idea we’ve seen before, but it is still untested on a large scale.
As for consumers, interest in go-anywhere, read-anytime digital… read more
Someone wake up the domain name admin at Rolling Stone — their website is currently rendering a Network Solutions landing page indicating that the iconic music magazine’s website is “coming soon.”
Typically, this is the type of page you see when someone has registered a domain name but not yet… read more
Longtime PC Magazine writer John Dvorak took the decidedly negative path in a recent post titled “Macworld Expo’s Iffy Future.” Based on a single quick walk through of the Expo captured on video, he concluded that the show is dead: “Last one? I think so.”
After spending a few… read more
Whether you work in some corporate office, small studio, or as a freelance designer, chances are you have a lot to do. As blog owners, we many times have multiple tasks to work on, content to manage, writers to handle, research to do, and more, to increase the productivity and… read more
Using JavaScript has become increasingly easy over the last few years. Whereas back in the day we needed to know the quirks of every browser, now many libraries such as jQuery, YUI, Dojo and MooTools allow someone who doesn’t even know JavaScript to spruce up boring HTML documents with impressive… read more
As we continue to wait out the aftermath of one of history’s worst economic disasters, it can be prudent to continue to cut spending where possible. The digital medium does mean shooting costs are substantially lowered, but equipment and accessory costs can be still high. We’ve compiled a few simple… read more
Name: James WhiteLocation: Halifax, Nova Scotia, CanadaField: Graphic DesignWebsite: signalnoise.com
With 11 years of experience, James has worked on an array of personal art projects and with clients including Toyota, Nike, Google, VH1, Armada Skis, Wired Magazine etc. and has been featured in Computer Arts, Computer Arts Projects and Advanced Photoshop… read more
Leandro Lima is a young brazilian Illustrator, Digital Artist and Interactive Art Director. Currently living in Milan, Italy, Leandro has done work for big clients such as Microsoft, Sony Ericsson, Braskem, Banco do Brasil, Arcor, Everlast, Capricho Magazine, BRAVO! Magazine, Época Negócios Magazine, Rmax Studio, GLOSS Magazine, Editora Positivo, Vespa… read more
The way you express yourself with words is a crucial extension of your creative identity. Professional designers are usually busy focusing on the visual aspects of their craft, but visual arts and literary arts collide and coincide regularly. The two fields meet not just in typography, but also in press… read more
In this post we are glad to release DesignPile WordPress Theme, a theme designed by Site 5 and released for Smashing Magazine and its readers. The theme comes with 3 color styles and a couple of jQuery-based goodies. It can be used for portfolios and blogs as well as corporate… read more
WordPress! is an award-winning CMS, which enables you to build Blogs, Web sites and powerful online applications. Many aspects, including its ease-of-use and extensibility, have made WordPress the most popular blog software available. Best of all, WordPress is an open source solution that is freely available to everyone.
There are… read more
Meet John the client. John runs a reasonably large website. He is a marketer who considers himself smart, articulate and professional. That said, he doesn’t know much about Web design, and so he needs your help. John comes to you with a clear set of business objectives and asks for… read more
There’s a very easy way to find out if someone is home or not: you phone their fixed phone number. If no one answers, chances are the house is empty. If you really want to make sure, you can simply check if the lights are on.
And yes, robbers actually… read more
Sales are robust for e-readers and there is no shortage of tablets yet to launch, including the new Apple iPad. But will strong sales translate into a boost for the media industry?
If media organizations do it right, the potential could be there for e-readers and tablets to become… read more
Once in awhile, we all need to step back and take stock of where we are and where we’re going. As readers of DPS, you probably do this periodically in pursuit of better photographic skills. Photography should be a fun, creative outlet and way to express yourself. Unfortunately it’s easy… read more
Although CSS is generally considered a simple and straightforward language, sometimes it requires creativity, skill and a bit of experimentation. The good news is that designers and developers worldwide often face similar problems and choose to share their insights and workarounds with the wider community.
This is where we come in…. read more
Most of the technologies that we have used in the past have been eclipsed by the remarkable technology that we use today.
Advances in their design have occurred in tandem with the advances in technology in this digital era, with many large products being redesigned and miniaturized into amazingly small sizes.
While… read more
Our readers have requested that Smashing Magazine conduct an interview with industry leaders on issues that are relevant to students and those just starting off in their design career. With the help of our panel of 16 designers, we’ll dispense advice that should help new designers get their career off to… read more
In this post Lisa Newton from Travelin’ Local shares some tips on planning, showing and promoting a photography exhibit.
I’m sure most, if not all of us, at one time or another have attended an art or other exhibit at a museum or art gallery that features photographs in an exhibition–artistic… read more
Most of us weren’t able to experience the firsthand look at Wired magazine on the iPad at TED last week. Video of the application (which is expected to launch this summer) in action has now hit the web, offering an inside look at Wired’s vision for the future of… read more
This is our weekly Twitter Design News Round-Up, a collection of fresh design related resources that we have shared via Twitter in the past week.
Just in case you are not one of our Twitter followers, click here: twitter.com/speckyboy.
As always, if you have any cool links that you would… read more
Movies, music, and games top a new list from Nielsen of the content types that consumers are most willing to pay for online. The data, which comes from a survey of 27,000 consumers across 52 countries, also indicates that content created online – like blogs, podcasts, and video… read more
In the last few months, you may have noticed some major changes happening on Smashing Magazine’s front page. Since November 2009, when we launched the Smashing Network, which features manually selected articles from the best design blogs, we’ve been working hard to improve the usability of our website and make… read more
Jobs told Wiley & Sons to halt publication of the unauthorized biography. Wiley & Sons refused to back down so Steve punished them by pulling every book by Wiley & Sons from all Apple retail stores. Talk about hitting someone where it hurts; some of Wiley & Sons’ biggest selling… read more
Apple hasn’t officially commented yet, but according to the New York Times, Steve Jobs may finally cooperate on an authorized biography.
Other biographers have attempted to tell Mr. Jobs’s life story without his express involvement or even consent, prompting him to respond by yanking books by the same publishers from Apple… read more
Norman’s experience (translated from Swedish) follows: “Unfortunately, the whole house and all things in there completely destroyed, so even the iMac. What’s funny is that it is still in operation. While damaged from smoke and dust and partially melted, but yet, however in operation.
After I plugged in… read more
African art represents one of the most diverse legacies on Earth. Though many casual observers tend to generalize “traditional” African art, the continent is full of peoples, societies, and civilizations, each with a unique visual special culture. Africa is well known for its wonderful art and culture that we are… read more
The email newsletter is a powerful marketing and communication tool that has various useful functions. It reminds your users about you; it informs users about your products; it tells them what you have been up to; and it helps you build a unique relationship with them. Users like email newsletters… read more
Today we are glad to release a Free Medical Icons Set, a set with 60 original medical icons in .png 32 bit in resolutions 32×32px and 128×128px. This set was designed by Thomas Immich and the design agency Centigrade and released exclusively for Smashing Magazine and its readers. The icons… read more
There is a debate about whether a makeup artist is a necessity or frivolity at a photo shoot. I know you can do amazing things with Photoshop, but c’mon people – no makeup artist?! Has the world gone insane? As a former professional makeup artist, I will tell you exactlywhy you… read more
50 Excellent Wordpress Themes For Starting an Online Magazine
<pn the last day of Macworld, I caught up with the guys from TypeDNA to take a look at what I soon realized was going to be a revolutionary bit of software magic for designers of any ilk. TypeDNA is a series of plugins for Adobe CS4 applications (Photoshop, InDesign,… read more
Wired Magazine Editor-in-Chief Chris Anderson showed off the iPad edition of Wired at the TED conference yesterday. He says it will be available by the summer; the iPad itself is expected to launch in late March.
Back in November, Wired publisher Condé Naste announced that it would be working on an… read more
Hitha Prabhakar is a retail industry expert and principal of The Style File Group, a retail consulting firm based in New York City. She has also written about fashion for Forbes.com, Time magazine, People magazine, People.com, ELLE India, Metro Newspapers, and is a contributor on CNBC. Follow her on Twitter… read more
Hyperlinks (or links) connect Web pages. They are what make the Web work, enabling us to travel from one page to the next at the click of a button. As Web Standardistas put it, “without hypertext links the Web wouldn’t be the Web, it would simply be a collection of… read more
As you may know, each Friday we do an informal poll to find out what Mashable readers think of a particular topic du jour. This week, since we’re at TED with some of the best and brightest minds working hard to change the world, we thought we should take the… read more
We recently reviewed real-time analytics provider, Clicky; which had a very positive review and is quite an exciting service. Last week we announced the giveaway of three, free for life, Clicky Pro accounts. Read on to see who the winners are or if you were one of them.
Clicky?
Clicky is a… read more
Upon first thinking about it, the idea of selling advertising on a website or blog with limited traffic seems a bit daft. After all, aren’t most advertisers interested in putting their product in front of the highest number of eyeballs possible? Approaching them with piddly visitor numbers seems like a… read more
Alex Dukal is a graphic designer and illustrator based in Buenos Aieres, Argentina. He has done works for popular magazines in Argentina such as Fierro, Lápiz Japonés and others. Also he has contributed with his illustrations to some childeren’s books, which it’s his currently job.
In 2000 Alex traveled to… read more
In recent years Internet Explorer 6 has become the browser web designers love to hate. Security issues, JavaScript errors and inexplicable CSS rendering quirks have made it the brunt of many jokes. With IE6 in its twilight and big companies like Google dropping support, it seems like a good time… read more