Design Tips : Copy & Print Center

When Typography Speaks Louder Than Words

Posted by Carolyn Knight, Jessica Glaser on April 13, 2012 · Comments Off

Clever graphic designers love to use typography to explore the interaction between the look of type and what type actually says. In communicating a message, a balance has to be achieved between the visual and the verbal aspects of a design. Sometimes, however, designers explore the visual aspect of type to a much greater extent than the verbal. In these cases, [...]

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Smashing Special: What’s Going On In The WordPress Economy?

Posted by Siobhan McKeown on April 13, 2012 · Comments Off

In a post on her blog last year, WordPress designer, business woman and author Lisa Sabin Wilson, talked about how thankful she is to be part of the WordPress economy. It’s an economy that thousands of people, the world over, are benefiting from (including me!). It is an economy built on free, open source software. In this article I’m going to talk [...]

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Not Just Pretty: Building Emotion Into Your Websites

Posted by Sabina Idler on April 12, 2012 · Comments Off

Emotional design has become a powerful tool in creating exceptional user experiences for websites. However, emotions did not use to play such an important role on the Web. Actually, they did not use to play any role at all; rather, they were drowned by a flood of rational functionality and efficiency. We were so busy trying to adapt to the World Wide Web as a new [...]

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CSS Sprites Revisited

Posted by Niels Matthijs on April 11, 2012 · Comments Off

I’m pretty confident that I won’t surprise anyone here by saying that CSS sprites have been around for quite a while now, rearing their somewhat controversial heads in the Web development sphere as early as 2003. Still, the CSS sprite hasn’t truly found its way into the everyday toolkit of the common Web developer. While the theory behind CSS sprites is easy [...]

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UI Patterns For Mobile Apps: Search, Sort And Filter

Posted by Theresa Neil on April 10, 2012 · Comments Off

Editor’s Note: Smashing Magazine is happy to present this sample chapter from Theresa Neil’s new book Mobile Design Pattern Gallery: UI Patterns for iOS, Android and More, which provides solutions to common design challenges. We’re certain you’ll find the information useful for your next mobile project. As I was waiting for a table at a local [...]

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Manage Events Like A Pro With WordPress

Posted by Daniel Pataki on April 7, 2012 · Comments Off

If you’ve ever tried working with, coding for or just thinking about anything to do with events, you know they are a total nightmare in every possible way. Repeating events, schedules, multiple days, multiple tracks, multiple prices, multiple speakers, multiple organizations, multiple payment options — the list goes on on for quite some time. Today [...]

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The Art Of Launching An App: A Case Study

Posted by John Casey on April 5, 2012 · Comments Off

You’ve made your first app! Now what? Anyone in the app business knows that marketing an app is tough. And according to a recent article on TechCrunch, “Getting a mobile app noticed in the increasingly crowded mobile app market is more difficult than ever.” Some titles and concepts are truly unique. Angry Birds? Its title and screenshot alone were enough [...]

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Drop Caps: Historical Use And Current Best Practices With CSS

Posted by Laura Franz on April 3, 2012 · Comments Off

The practice of using a large letter to mark the start of a text has been around for almost two thousand years. Illustrated caps increased usability by marking important passages and guiding readers through the text. Unlike their historic counterparts, drop caps on the Web don’t add value in terms of usability or readability—and they are hard for Web developers [...]

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Keep Your Analytics Data Safe And Clean

Posted by Daniel Waisberg on April 2, 2012 · Comments Off

Whoever works with analytics on a day-to-to-day basis knows how important it is to have a continuity with the data. Any slip might be fatal: data can disappear, trends misunderstood and jobs lost. Losing data can have long-lasting consequences, as very often it isn’t possible to reprocess the data—so what is lost cannot be recovered. For this reason, [...]

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Desktop Wallpaper Calendar: April 2012

Posted by Smashing Editorial on March 31, 2012 · Comments Off

We always try our best to challenge your artistic abilities and produce some interesting, beautiful and creative artwork. And as designers we usually turn to different sources of inspiration. As a matter of fact, we’ve discovered the best one — desktop wallpapers that are a little more distinctive than the usual crowd. This creativity mission has been going [...]

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