Ten Years of A List Apart

As far as online web design magazines go, A List Apart has been around for as long as I can remember. Their regular articles never cease to probe into new areas of design, or express existing techniques in a new and forward thinking way.

A new post today is celebrating A List Apart’s 10 year anniversary, looking back at how the project started out and evolved over a decade. It also gives an insight into how article submissions are processed and filtered, along with who edits and designs the site today.

If you’re a regular reader, or interested in contributing to A List Apart in the future, it is an article well worth a read.

Free WordPress Theme: Simple Balance 2

Alex, from Blogsessive, has released a minimalist WordPress theme called Simple Balance 2. Full information about the theme and download information can be found over at the release post.

Simple Balance features a whole host of customizable options, and it’s great to see a free WordPress theme offering what usually would be paid for features:

• Several colour schemes
• Different advertising layouts
• The ability to manage adverts from the backend
• Variable layout structure

Download Simple Balance

US Presidential Logo Design

DesignBay have a very interesting study of presidential campaign logos over the past few years. The results of this study can be used to analyse the logo designs of other 2008 presidential candidates, and gain an insight into what makes good logo design and what should be avoided.

Designing with GuiMags

GuiMags are a new concept, taking the idea of designing on paper down an innovative route. They comprise a set of magnets, created to stick to a whiteboard, made of material which allows you to write on them with dry-wipe markers.

I have been trying out a sample of these for a few days and am going to share the aspects I feel that work well, and the areas that still need improvement.

Free Gloss CSS Menu

Our partner site, 13 Styles have just launched a new addition to their range of free CSS menus. It comes pre-built in red, orange and grey, working in all major browsers. Best of all, it’s completely free for you to download and use!

Download the menu

Integrating Flickr with WordPress

WordPress is undoubtedly one of the most popular blogging platforms, so it’s no surprise that there are a huge variety of different plugins to allow you to integrate Flickr with your blog posts.

This article includes a review of iFlickr, but we’ll also be looking at other plugins available to mix these two online platforms together.

Becks Label Design Winners

The well known international beer, Becks, have recently run a contest in the UK to find a set of new artistic designs for their beer bottles. We’ve got an exclusive preview of the winning bottle designs, which you can pass your eye over as a designer to let us know what you think.

Interview with John Griffin of Cutcaster

This is a short interview with one of the minds behind the new stock photography startup – Cutcaster. It’s a great insight into some of the thinking behind a site such as this, as both a business concept and a well designed web application.