Frontend & Web Design Blog

I recently came across an article by Shannon Noack in which she wrote about common misconceptions about web designers. She mentioned how people have the misconception that designers are living large based on how much they charge. After reading that, I began to think about how in our industry we’re forced to prove ourselves in ways that wouldn’t ever be asked of in other industries.

Last week the amazing Andy Clarke put out a call to designers to create a fictitious business card for an upcoming book he is working on entitled “Hardboiled Web Design”. The idea was to create a business card for a fictional detective agency and to be as creative as possible. After a week of submissions and 81 designs being submitted, Andy has announced his favorite designs!

As I get back to work today after enjoying the holiday season and a bit of time off, I am thinking of how glad I am that 2009 is finally behind us. The past year was a rough one for a lot of people, myself included. Don’t worry, I won’t depress you with the details. Instead of looking back to the rough year that’s now over, I am going to try and focus on the insanely busy year that is ahead.

The people over at Smashing Magazine have really outdone themselves with the release of their new book! This book is hands down one of the best web design-related books I have personally read. The amount of information that is covered is outstanding and I would highly recommend this one to anyone that is involved in the web design industry or web development.

December 1st kicks off another year of 24ways! I am super excited to see what they have to offer this year and who has been selected to write the always amazing articles. If you don’t know what 24ways is all about, it’s an advent calendar for web designers/developers that offer articles/tutorials which are released daily for the month of December.

Downtime for me usually occurs around the time I have just finished a project or right before a new project is about to begin. Over the years I have learned that this time is actually very valuable and can be used to improve myself as a web designer. The following are a few suggestions of things that I do to keep myself productive during this time.

I have just finished reading Handcrafted CSS by Dan Cederholm and all I can really say is WOW! As a big fan of Mr. Cederholm’s work, I have read, re-read, and enjoyed all of his books and I had high expectations for his latest release.

Of course, my expectations were blown away and once again Mr. Cederholm hasn’t let us down!

As an advocate of web standards and accessible web design, I recently submitted my application to become a member of the Guild of Accessible Web Designers. I strongly believe in building websites that are as accessible to as many users as possible, despite the type of technology being used to view a site.

I do not write about web design industry news or designers. There are plenty of sites out there that supply plenty of web design news along with a plethora of top 10 to 100 lists of everything design related.

Today though I wanted to give back a little something to a few designers that have been outstanding and very helpful recently.

I am a little late in getting this posted due to being away in San Francisco for 6 weeks. In issue #191 (Aug. 2009) of the .net magazine, my website was featured in the Readers’ sites section. I was pretty excited to find out!

I just thought I would share and give big thanks to the .net magazine for a bit of exposure in their awesome magazine.