November 10, 2014 — People make all sorts of visual notes. An army of sketchnoters is out there, and everyone has their own style. Some do amazing sketches and lavish letters. Some translate complicated concepts into easy-to-grasp diagrams. But for the sake of this article, let’s keep it simple. Making your notes more interesting doesn’t have to be a huge undertaking. It’s not like learning to play the piano or taking up diving. If you think sketchnoting looks fun, Elisabeth Irgens has some tips to get you started. Read more…

November 7, 2014 — Sometimes, despite your careful planning and best efforts, a project will fail. And preparing to deal with failure is as important as planning for success. The important thing to do when a project goes bad is learn from it. Once the dust has settled, sit down with your team and take an honest look at what went wrong. Own up to your own failings, and do what you can to make sure they do not arise again. Articles and tips on how to kick off a project right and build a long-term client relationship are helpful in this industry, but if you only focus on what to do when things go right, then you will be ill-prepared for when things get so off track that you are unable to complete a project. Read more…

November 6, 2014 — This icons are completely free to use for commercial as well as your personal projects, including software, online services, templates and themes. You may modify the size, color or shape of the icons. No attribution is required, however, reselling of bundles or individual pictograms is prohibited. Please always provide credits to the creators and link to the article in which this freebie was released if you would like to spread the word. Thank you to Amie Andrews and the creative minds behind Whoishostingthis — we sincerely appreciate your time and efforts! Keep up the brilliant work! Read more…

November 5, 2014 — For many of us, the idea of doing formal user testing, is a formidable challenge. There are many reasons why: you don’t have enough lead time; you can’t find enough participants, or the right type of participant; you can’t convince your boss to spend the money. User testing is the best way to improve your designs. If you rely on anecdotal data, or your own experience, you can’t design a great solution to your user’s problems. User testing is vital. But how do you make the case for it and actually do it? Read more…

November 4, 2014 — A diagnostic can be done during design and development to ensure that the mobile website or app adheres to best practices and guidelines. It also serves as a great starting point for a redesign to identify particular opportunities for improvement. In this article, Lyndon Cerejo will describe a process you can follow to evaluate a mobile UX, be it for an app or a website accessed on a mobile device. Alongside the explanation of each step, you’ll illustrate the step using the United States Postal Service as an unwitting real-world example. Read more…

November 3, 2014 — In this article, Sara Soueidan will go over the prerequisites and techniques for working with CSS in SVG. She’ll also go over how to export and optimize SVGs, techniques for embedding them and how each one affects the styles and animations applied, and then we’ll actually style and animate with CSS. Make your SVGs accessible! You can do several things to make that happen. In addition to accessibility, don’t forget to optimize your SVGs and provide fallbacks for non-supporting browsers. We hope you’ll find this article to be useful. Read more…

October 31, 2014 — 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 post features free desktop wallpapers created by artists across the globe for November 2014. Both versions with a calendar and without a calendar can be downloaded for free. This creativity mission has been going on for almost seven years now, and we are very thankful to all designers who have contributed and are still diligently contributing each month! Read more…

October 30, 2014 — We’ve set up a couple of new adventures for SmashingConf 2018 — just practical sessions, new formats, new lightning talks, evening sessions and genuine, interesting conversations — with a dash of friendly networking! Taking place in London, San Francisco, Toronto. To give everybody a chance to buy ticket in time, we are releasing all tickets in batches this time! Read more…

October 30, 2014 — What does knowledge of the brain and personality have to do with creative work? As a lifelong brain geek, Ann Holm has taken on the mission to help others tap the secrets of the brain to uncover personal potential. Oftentimes we have habits that seem to work, so we are unaware that there might be better, more brain-efficient ways to do things. Other times, we feel exhausted and stretched, so our creativity suffers. In this article, she’ll share some facts and insight on brain functionality, as well as tips on how to get the most out of your creative energy. Some of these suggestions might be very different from what you are doing right now. Read more…

October 29, 2014 — Mental health is just an illness, like any other. When we talk about mental health, we do so in hushed terms. it shouldn’t be a stigma. If more of us address it, openly, we’ll be able to address some of the problems we face collectively. Mental health is an issue. It affects our industry, in particular and confronting it head on is important. We need to talk about mental health more openly, and Christopher Murphy is happy to be one of a growing number of people in the industry who are helping to bring this subject out into the open, where it should be. Read more…