Helping to improve the design process, critiques, examples of good design, and tool and tips to improve your designs.
Since the age of dinosaurs (1990’s) when the web was new, web typography has lagged way behind print. From the fonts used, to ligatures and special characters, setting up columns and grids, kerning, leading, tracking and pretty much all other aspects of type design, web typography just couldn’t compete.
Read More »As a web designer, choosing the right content management system can be a difficult task. Some of the CMSes out there are pretty difficult to learn and may require the knowledge of a programing language like PHP. For designers you want a cms that is simple, functional and does what…
Read More »ExpressionEngine is a great content management system to develop with but can use a little help making it as client-friendly as possible. So here is a list of add-ons for making your clients experience working with ExpressionEngine as easy as your experience developing with it.
Read More »Designing responsive website can take a little while to get used to because some of the layout techniques and the ways we’ve created mockups over the years are no longer practical. If you are accustomed to using Photoshop or Fireworks to build layouts you may quickly realize that responsive designs…
Read More »So here is a sneak peak at what I put together yesterday. What I was thinking may be the new design for Couchable. My other design got deleted so I figured I'd try something a lot different.
Read More »Everyone starts their design career in the same place. We might have an inclination of what good design is, but we suck at the execution. But we go to school or teach ourselves the software, the rules, the techniques and we improve dramatically. If you don't believe me, open up…
Read More »Most of us learn about critiques in design school, where a design is judged by how it adhers to design principals and the person giving the critiques’ personal opinion. In the real world a design is judged on how it stacks up against the competition. When you are designing for…
Read More »For all the great thing that happened in the web design world this year, there are some that I would rather see stay in 2011. Some were new, while others were remnants of the past that just don't have any purpose anymore.
Read More »If you are a web designer looking for a job or for inspiration here are some great studios to take a look at. If you are a business owner in need of a website, I did some homework for you. In either case, you're welcome.
Read More »Every website has a purpose. Depending on the type of website you have and your goals, your design needs to provoke your audience to act in some way. Buy a product, sign a petition, read an article, share with friends, and so on. One way of doing this is with…
Read More »Well, 2011 is winding down, and for web designers, it has been a pretty good year. Here are some of the good things that happened this year and a little bit about what is going to be happening in 2012.
Read More »If you thought developing websites that work in IE6 was bad, wait until you start working with email templates. If you were developing websites 10ish years ago, the markup you were using then is what you use in email templates today. Table based layouts, inline styles, et cetera. It make…
Read More »After this recent group of site hacks to some of the popular design blogs, it is time to think about our own website's security. Most of the sites that were targeted were pretty popular but it is still important to take what precautions we can.
Read More »If you don't believe content is king, than you haven't been around the internet much. There are tons of websites that are very popular with designs that make you want to tear your eyes out. As a web designer it can be hard to swallow, but the fact is that…
Read More »With CSS media queries it is simple to put together a responsive website design. One of the drawbacks of using a responsive design over a separate mobile site, is the large file sizes of image designed for a desktop browser.
Read More »It is a great feeling when you finally get that ExpressionEngine site live. You set up Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools, and submit your Sitemap. And when the site gets crawled and you see the results and are confronted with a slew of HTML Suggestions that need to be…
Read More »One of the biggest hassles of working with Photoshop is dealing with text. Especially when doing a web interface you may have lots of different text layers. And say you want to change the color of all the text to blue, normally that would mean selecting each layer individually and…
Read More »Couchable is a web design blog created by Tyler Herman. Not really updated anymore because I'm busy doing freelance design work and busy launching my little WordPress theme shop Real Theme Co. You can read a little more about my at my personal site Tylerherman.com