Dalex Epoxy Flooring is a Perth based company which provides high quality services around the Perth metropolitan area.
Dalex specialise in long term flooring solution made in Australia. Servicing the Industrial, Commercial and Residential markets.
To view the website go to: Dalex – Perth Epoxy Flooring
We designed the logo and built the website for the Perth Urban Runners, which is a social Perth running group that is open to all levels and completely free. We meet centrally a couple times a week with a common goal of running more and exploring Perth.
We recently designed and built the website for Kings Scrap Metal, a Perth Scrap Metal company, involved in the recycling of ferrous, non-ferrous and precious metals. Catering for businesses, trades, and the general public.
It’s the same routine every date night: “where are we heading for dinner?” To the web we go, looking for restaurants around us that whet our appetites. And the places we always seem to hit after this dinner search are the locations with websites that just make us hungry.
Certain techniques, from color to photos to imagery, are common among the best food-based websites. These sites employ a specific strategy designed to make you hungry. Today we’ll look at how photography, colors, shapes, vivid copy and simple design are used to make mouths of website visitors water.
Tips for:
For the full article, go to: http://designshack.net/articles/business-articles/food-based-web-design-tips-to-make-visitors-hungry/
With all the recent economic doom and gloom you may have decided to take matters into your own hands and go freelance. There are several hurdles you must overcome to be a successful freelancer, but here are some tips to get you started:
For the full article: http://spyrestudios.com/freelance-start-up-guide/
Trends in web design can change and fade almost as quickly as they become fashionable. But so far in 2013, a handful of trends have really seemed to take web design by storm, and seem to be sticking.
Today, we’re going to examine ten trends in modern web elements and showcase some great examples of each — everything from vintage typography and circles, to vibrant colours and handy vCards. Even better for you is that all of the examples below are available for download (some free, some paid).
For the full article, go to: http://designshack.net/articles/inspiration/10-popular-trends-in-modern-web-design-elements/
We’re always trying to find new high-quality freebies. Whether it’s PSD’s, patterns, or icons, we love finding free stuff and sharing it with you. We do the searching so you don’t have to. This saves you time and helps you focus on what’s important. So for this post, we’ve rounded up 8 new high quality fonts for you to use in your designs.
For all the links to download, head to the original article: 8 Fresh High-Quality Free Fonts
So I rethought everything.
The result was powerful: In 2004, I only worked 19 days, and made over $200,000.
The strategy change I’m about to talk about gave me the funds and the time to work on my startup. That startup would later become FreshBooks, which we were able to grow to over 5 million users.
So, how did I do this?
I wrote a book about how I did it (you can get the book for free) but essentially, I moved from billing by the hour, to billing based on the value I delivered to my customers.
Sounds like a simple enough change, right?
The truth is that value-based pricing did not mean slapping a bigger price tag on the services I delivered.
It meant thinking about my design business in a whole new way, and changing the way I worked with my clients.
Here are five ways I changed my thinking and the way I worked.
Read on: http://sixrevisions.com/business/earn-more-on-projects/
Good design is all around us. Not just in printed materials or on websites, but also in everyday items. What’s great is that you often don’t notice it — you just enjoy whatever item, tool or website you are using.
Nowhere is this more true than with mobile apps. Most of us use them every day, but do you ever stop to think how much they are shaping the way you approach design? Apps can be a great source of inspiration and also another reminder of time-tested design concepts. Here are ten of the great lessons I have learned (and re-learned) from iPad apps.
Clean lines and simple user interfaces are common among apps. It is something we are seeing more of in other types of design as well. The branding themes from Apple itself has followed a concept of simplicity for some time, and that has translated well into its products — something app designers seem to have embraced.
Simplicity is also important because of size – too much to look at or choose from on a small screen can be overwhelming. But this also works for the time-strapped user. Keep it simple, easy to use and quick to understand and people will likely embrace your design project.
And while we are talking about basic design principles, remember to make web designs responsive. Nothing is more annoying than an app that does not turn when you rotate the screen. The same is true for a website that does not adjust for browser size.
Examples: Apple iOS, Kindle, Next Issue
Have you ever noticed how much of the iPad (and iPhone) interface has rounded edges? If not, go take another look. The simple curvature reminds us as designers that it is OK to not always be perfectly square.
What’s great about the icon shape is that it is quite simple, a bit unexpected and un-dramatic. Effects do not need to shout at a user to be appreciated. They are often most effective when they just fall into the overall design scheme.
Things really do have to look polished. And complete. There are just too many choices out there, and people are not going to spend time with things that look bad or are hard to understand.
A few years ago you might have been able to get away with a hint of sloppiness or a beta release of a site with some issues, but no more. In this no-holds-barred-world, everything is critiqued, criticized and analyzed. Make sure your project is completely finished and functioning properly if it is online. And then make sure it looks amazing — people have come to expect good design.
Examples: Weather HD, Fanhattan
Sometimes you have to scream to get your message across. Whether in print or online, calls to action, such as buttons or phone numbers need to carry some weight. Show users where to click online. Don’t make them look for it.
Provide immediate facts such as contact info, pricing or event information in online material so readers don’t give up before understanding what you want. In printed media, also consider a digital component, such as a QR code, to keep people engaged.
Examples: Pimp Your Screen, Skype
The joy of a good app is that you keep going back to it, whether it is a game, a tool or just a daily diversion. Treat your design projects with that in mind – you want people to come back.
But how can you engage them? There are a lot of tricks out there from gamification to contests, but the best way is with a quality product. Think about your projects, what can you do to really make them great and encourage people to come back to them again and again?
Examples: Angry Birds, Nike+
This has always been a goal for designers, but apps really brought it back into focus. Sticking to a minimal color scheme is of utmost importance.
What really strikes me about some of the best apps is the use of a single color and tints to create a really distinct design – Food on the Table is a great example. It creates a perfect sense of what app you are looking at from the minute it opens, which can be great for those who often tap the wrong item.
But other apps work great with just a color or two. The balance is lovely. And there is a lot to be said for keeping things like type simple — black and white never goes out of style.
Examples: Food on the Table, Business Card Designer
Apple is often seen at the other end of the spectrum from flat design, but more and more iOS apps are employing a more flat design interface. Forget all the fancy shadows and effects; elements are just displayed on the screen. And it looks good.
This design principle falls very much in line with the theme of simplicity and is a great tool for ways to try something different with design projects.
In smaller spaces, spacing becomes more and more important. It creates a mood – from open to cramped – and can dictate readability. Moreover space is key to usability when it comes to tapping apps, if you touch too many things, it will not work properly.
Sometimes as designers – especially when dealing with limited spaces in print – we will try to cram too much information in a space. But what we really need to do is work to use that space more efficiently. Design with open, white or negative spaces to create a better feel and make readers more comfortable while processing your information.
Examples: Band of the Day, The TUXedo Builder
Navigation is paramount in a mobile app — it has to be fast. Apps often use only a few options to direct users – think of a this-or-that model – which can translate well to other types of projects. Too many options can be a bit overwhelming.
So how do you create clean navigation for non-web projects? Use weight to establish a clear hierarchy for the eye. Tell readers where to start, and then how to move through the creative material. Remember that bigger, bolder items will likely be the first things that will cause the eye to stop.
You can’t get away with a poor visual in an app – ever. Think about the sharpness of the iPad retina display or the zoomability of any object on the screen. Poor images will ruin an otherwise solid design in a minute.
We’ve all done it – snuck in a poor quality image at some point – but apps have really made me remember how bad of an idea this truly is. Every little pixel will jump off the screen. Every person looking at it will question your commitment to quality.
Poor images are poor images. Stay away from them. It is actually better to forego an image than use a bad one just to fill space.
Examples: Snapguide, Fantastic Dinosaurs, Popsugar
What’s great about apps is they have taught designers (myself included) a whole new appreciation for great design. They’ve also made us much less tolerant of poor design.
The biggest lesson any of us can learn from them is to get back to the basics. Quit decorating and start designing. Think about the principles that make something great and go with it.
Now that we’ve got you thinking, what are some things you have taken away from apps?
Source: http://designshack.net/articles/inspiration/10-things-i-learned-about-design-from-ipad-apps/
When working on a new site, most web designers are no stranger to all-nighters, copious amounts of coffee and even repetitive strain injury (ouch!). No surprise then that the best coders are lazy coders that are always looking for anything that makes coding quicker, less tedious and more fun.
To make your life easier, we have put together the following “cheat sheet” full of must-know time and effort saving tips for the lazy coder.
Before you even think about writing your first head tag, download an HTML code editor such as Sublime Text 2. With useful features such as the Quick Add Next command, allowing you to quickly jump between tags to select the one you want, it also highlights problems in your code as you write, saving you from searching for a needle in a haystack later on.
Coined by programmers Andy Hunt and Dave Thomas in their book, The Pragmatic Programmer, DRY (sometimes called Single Source of Truth) is an important principle in web design. In theory, DRY means that you can apply document changes in just one place, saving you the time and effort of changing every file.
If you currently rely on copy and paste, do yourself a favor and start using ‘includes’, either with PHP or using a code generator such as Hammer for Mac. The ‘include’ command simply allows you to insert one PHP file into another. A basic example:
Image by <?php include(“filename.php”) ;?>This ‘Russian Dolls’ technique is particularly handy if you have a header or menu file that you want to use on every page without typing out the script every time.
You can also use variables or mixins to reuse chunks of CSS, properties or selectors over and over without repeating yourself.
Sass (Syntactically Awesome Style Sheets) is a meta-language that you can use on top of your flat CSS to simplify and ‘clean up’ your script, making it instantly more manageable and lightweight.
Sass and Compass, an open-source CSS authoring framework, can take the headache out of responsive design by automatically creating cross-browser friendly script. They also allow you to create multiple, small files, which are more manageable than a single, behemoth file!
Don’t forget, you will have to deal with the code you write. Will you still understand it in 6 months’ time? Make it easy for you (or a colleague) to find, change or update things by writing with humans in mind. Keep files small and name your files and folders consistently for easy location later on.
Ultimately, however, it is the machines that need to understand your code. Save yourself the extra hassle and use Codekit (Mac) or Mixture (Mac/Windows) to convert it automatically into computer-friendly language.
HTML software Emmet allows you to write an entire chunk of flawless HTML with just one line of code. Among its many useful features, it will automatically convert a CSS-like abbreviation into HTML, let you jump quickly between elements and allow you to “comment” a full tag with just one click.
No matter how good your coding skills, there will always be a time when you need a little help. Rather than scrolling through endless forums searching for answers, you can count on MDN for useful tutorials and references, and Quirksmode for the most reliable cross-browser compatibility information. Add both to your Favorites now.
Wireframing the layout of your site is an important part of the web design process – you wouldn’t build a house without first laying down good foundations, so why do the same for a website? A lightweight wireframing tool such as GoMockingbird is an easy way to ensure your ideas are pixel perfect and translate to the screen.
As every web designer will know, it can be difficult for clients to visualise how their website will look when it is finished. GoMockingbird creates professional looking wireframes that you can use to reassure even the trickiest of clients in the early stages. With a wide range of widgets, including sliders, checkboxes and social buttons, GoMockingbird gives your wireframe a level of detail that can make all the difference to client perception (and your own clarity).
Let’s face it, who can be bothered to memorise lines and lines of ‘Lorem Ipsum’ dummy text? The Latin words, which are taken from Roman Philosopher Cicero’s De finibus bonorum et malorum (On the Boundaries of Goods and Evils), have been used since the 1960s (possibly earlier) as placeholder text in design. Lorem Ipsum provides ‘natural’ looking text without the distraction of actually having to read and understand it. Although most designers are well-acquainted with dummy text, the handy Lorem Ipsum generator saves you the time and effort of copy and paste, providing you with anything from a few words to multiple paragraphs and even lists, all ready to use at the touch of a button.
We hope that you will find these tips useful and that they will make you even more lazy – and therefore more efficient – as a web designer. Happy coding!
Source: http://webdesignledger.com/tips/the-web-designers-cheat-sheet
Image by 
Image by