Topic: Graphic Design
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Mountaintop Corners
Most of us have experience creating “rounded” corners by erasing pixels. It’s a rudimentary web design technique — or so we always thought. But in the hands of Dan Cederholm, author of Web Standards Solutions, this seemingly simple technique paves the way for boxes and borders that can change sizes and colors at your whim.
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Reading Design
With so many specialists working so hard at their craft, why are so many pages so hard to read? Unabashed text enthusiast Dean Allen thinks designers would benefit from approaching their work as being written rather than assembled.
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A Better Image Rotator
The first image rotator made it easy to generate a random image on a web page, even if you had never worked with PHP before. The new, more powerful (but still dead easy) version uses a simple configuration file to create custom links, alt tags, titles, and even CSS styles for each image. Plus it handles differently sized images without a hiccup. Enjoy!
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Big, Stark & Chunky
You’ve designed for the screen and made provision for blind, handheld, and PDA browser users. But what about low-vision people? Powered by CSS, “zoom” layouts convert wide, multicolumn web pages into low-vision-friendly, single column designs. Accessibility maven Joe Clark explores the rationale and methods behind zoom layouts. Board the zoom train now!
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The Bathing Ape Has No Clothes (and other notes on the distinction between style and design)
Why has the level of discussion in “design forums” degenerated so quickly? Maybe because they’re not populated by “designers.” Greenfield explains the difference between Stylists and Designers—and why that difference matters so much.
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CMS and the Single Web Designer
Content Management Systems free designers from the gruntwork of individual web page production. They may also free companies from the need to retain design staff. How do content management systems work, and what impact will they have on a web designer’s job?
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Information vs. Experience
The conflict between presentation and structure reveals two views of the web. Which one’s winning?
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The Flash Aesthetic
Scaling, 2-D style, cycle-free motion, and heavy strokes. They’re not just web design trends any more. Join Olson on a cultural scavenger hunt as he tracks the ways Flash design techniques have crept into non-web media.
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Fragments (of Time)
The best web interfaces take time – the one asset that seems to be in perpetually short supply. Leading Scandinavian web developer Pär Almqvist presents a time-based perspective on web interfaces and the network economy.
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The Declination of Independence
Three web designers discuss trendiness and innovation in design, and list 15 sites that made a difference in the year 2000.
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Experience Design
It’s time for web designers to peek over the cubicle and start sharing ideas with their peers in related design disciplines. Jacobson suggests one way to do that in this overview of the emerging Experience Design paradigm.
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Time to Close the Web?
Focusing on presentation at the expense of content, and invasive money-making schemes at the expense of everything else, designers must take some of the blame for the trashing of the web. Herrell wonders if it’s time to call it a day and close up shop.
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Why Are You Here?
Whether we’re designing experimental sites or keeping an online diary, we go to the web in search of meaning. Will we find it? Or will we build it ourselves?
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A Design Method
In a high-powered production environment like the web, a design method can help you get more done faster ... and provide you with rules to break. New ALA writer Ross Olson shares his company’s game plan.
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Much Ado About 5K
A full-fledged website under 5K? Some of the brightest people in the industry swore it could not be done. Yet hundreds of developers not only came in under the 5K budget, they built great sites in the process. Zeldman explores how the 5K Awards rocked the web.
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How to be Soopa Famous
Become a famous web designer. Or ... just look like one.
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Usability experts are from Mars, graphic designers are from Venus
Usability mavens like Jakob Nielsen think the web is an ill-used database. Graphic designers like Kioken think it is a fledgling multimedia platform. Could both groups be right? New ALA author Curt Cloninger explains why usability experts are from Mars, graphic designers are from Venus. This one's a hottie.
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The Creative Process
Ideas are like policemen — they're never around when you need them. Mattias Konradsson sketches a campaign to seduce the Muse.
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CSS Design: Custom Underlines
While web designers generally have a great deal of control over how a document should be presented, basic CSS doesn’t provide many options for the style of underlines below the links on a page. But with a few nips and tucks, you can take back creative control of the way your links look. Frequent ALA contributor Stuart Robertson shows how.
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CSS Design: Creating Custom Corners & Borders Part II
Part I showed how to create fluid, dynamic CSS layouts with customized borders and corners. Part II advances to the next level, extending the technique to work with more complicated backgrounds such as gradients and patterns.
