Design Shack - Web design showcase, CSS tutorials and web standards





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Design Shack showcases inspiring web design, alongside resources and tutorials for you to succeed in the same way. It is carefully curated and edited by Josh Johnson and David Appleyard.


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Latest Articles

What To Do If Someone Steals Your Design

By Joshua Johnson, On 12th Mar 2010, 17 Comments

Protecting your intellectual property has always been a difficult task and the Internet has only served to complicate matters. The web has become an unoriginal designer’s one stop shop for endless material to shamelessly ripoff. Today we’ll take a look into some of the reasons design theft is so rampant online and explore some answers to the essential question of what to do if someone steals your design. A big thanks to Von Glitschka for providing much of the content and advice seen below!

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The Importance of A / B Design Testing

By Joshua Johnson, On 9th Mar 2010, 5 Comments

For many developers, launching a site is not the end of the design process. To continually improve the success of their design, these developers turn to A/B testing. This relatively simple process can teach you loads about what your users are looking for as well as what they ignore or find unimportant.

Today we’ll take a quick look at what A/B testing is, the benefits of implementing it, and some tools to get you going.
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5 Reasons Band Websites Suck (and some that don’t)

By Joshua Johnson, On 7th Mar 2010, 32 Comments

This post began purely as a showcase of well-designed band websites. Naturally, to begin my search I opened up my iTunes library and Safari and began checking out the sites of the bands in my collection. What I discovered shocked me; nearly every site I came across was profoundly lackluster or altogether horrid. I’m at a loss as to why record companies, who spend countless dollars promoting their big money makers, seem to be incapable of finding web designers that match the remarkable talent of their artists.

At this point the nature of the article changed entirely. Due to the wealth of ugly sites to choose from, today we’ll examine some of the reasons I think the band website industry really needs to step up and make some major changes. We’ll conclude by analyzing some examples to follow if you want to create a band site that doesn’t suck.

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7 Convincing Reasons to Try Designing in the Open

By Joshua Johnson, On 5th Mar 2010, 1 Comment

Designing out in the open can be quite intimidating.

You’re basically swinging the doors open wide and hanging up a huge sign that says “Harsh Criticism Wanted.” However, the benefits of utilizing this particularly transparent method of design can often outweigh the grievances.

Today we’ll look at eight reasons to consider designing your next project in the open.

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◀ Articles Archive

Community

How to Grow as a Web Designer

Techniques you can use to advance your talent as well as your career.

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CSS3 Generator

Just select your desired property and this handy tool will spit out the cross-browser code!

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Plasticine Art Showcase: Shape Your Imagination

A showcase of really creative ads that have a modeled clay look.

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Guiding Principles for UX Designers

Some great insight into the practice of good user interface design.

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15 Desktop and Online Wireframing Tools

A roundup of tools to help you accomplish step one of your next project.

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Free Stock File of The Week: iStock Vector Fish

An interesting illustration of a mechanical fish from iStockphoto.

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Video Tutorial: CSS3 Borders and HTML5 Sections

A tutorial exploring new border properties in CSS3 and breaking down a few of the two dozen new HTML5 tags, starting with sections, article, asides, headers, and footers.

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◀ Community Archive

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◀ CSS Gallery Archive