Design Resources

There are several good design resource websites to be found throughout the Internet; websites for stock images, design tutorials, articles and more. In this post I’ve included some of the best ones I’ve found so far. Whether its for business use or personal, I hope some of it can be of use to you.

Stock Photography and Images

stock.xchng
stock.xchng is an excellent website providing thousands of royalty-free photos, designs and other graphics covering almost every subject. The website also offers several other services, such as paid-for access to professional grade stock images, tutorials and much more.

iStockphoto
Another good stock photography website, iStockphoto provides a range of paid-for images. Although they don’t offer a free service, what they do provide is high quality.

Tutorials and Guides

NETTUTS
NETTUTS offer a wide range of Web Development and Design tutorials for any experience level.

PSDTUTS
PSDTUTS similar to NETTUTS, provide tutorials for many different Photoshop techniques and projects.

Other Resources

Logo Design Love
Logo Design Love is resource for various logos and branding covering almost any business model.

Smashing Magazine
Smashing Magazine is a comprehensive resource for all kinds of Web Development and Design articles.

Web Standards

In my last post I mentioned something called web standards. For anyone unfamiliar with this term, this post is for you.

The term web standards refers to a set of standardised best practices used when building websites; some benefits to using them include virtually eliminating in most cases problems encountered when a website doesn’t display correctly in different Internet browsers, reducing website loading time and so on. For a fairly brief overview on some of whats involved, see below.

Separation of Structure and Presentation

The first step is the separation of the structure of a web page (the foundations of a page, usually written in HTML or XHTML, which define where each individual section and element appears on the page in relation to eachother) from the presentation (the design and appearance, such as colours, sizes and shapes and over-all design of the structural sections. This is written in CSS as a separate document and linked inside the web document.)

This might sound like a lot of extra work than putting everything in one document, but the benefits are worth any effort involved. The main benefit is that this method means that any future editing, updating or error fixing becomes totally painless; I’ll give you an example:

Lets say I have several different paragraphs of text all over my website, on different pages, all told in each individual paragraph on each page, to be coloured red. Now for some reason I have to go and change the colour of these paragraphs from red to blue; this would mean wading in page after page of code to look for each part of the coding which tells the text to be red and change it all by hand - a lot of unnecessary time and energy wasted!

Now, if I had decided to keep one single entry on a separate CSS document that tells every paragraph all over my website how to appear (a sort of ‘master control’ that can issue orders to everything under its authority), I now only have to change one small line of code and have every single one of these paragraphs all over my website change with it instantly. As you can see, if I had hundreds of these paragraphs scattered all over hundreds of pages, it would involve a massive amount of work.

XHTML and CSS Validation

The next step is to validate your newly separated structural documents and presentation documents; validation involves entering the URL of the document through a validation service such as the W3C Markup Validation Service. This is in some ways similar to running through your word processing documents through a spell checker, in that it points out any errors, conflicts or omissions present in the document and informs you of whats required to address the problem.

All of the things and other techniques used to bring a website up to standard mean that the finished product will be more polished, professional and complete from the very beginnings of its creation to the final stages of design and implimentation; it will also be more reliable to visitors and end-users, no matter what browser they decide to use or whatever settings they may have in place on their computer.

Conclusion

In short, implimenting web standards on your old website or having a new site produced with them in mind is a decision that benefits both customer and business alike, also being a decision which takes into account the future of the Internet and what users are coming to expect from modern websites.

Cascading Style Sheets

CSS, Cascading Style Sheets, are by far the simplest and most popular way to define the stylistic elements of modern websites, and rightly so; CSS allows you to separate the design elements from the structural elements inherent to the web document by placing the design elements in an independent CSS file - making creating and maintaining a complex and standards-compliant website that much easier.

The CSS used throughout the Internet is currently in its second version but there are now plans for a third; CSS3 aims to go beyond its previous version by including a whole host of new features and techniques which will revolutionise the ways in which content can be presented asthetically. Some of the new features currently under development include the ability to change the opacity of colours displayed on the web page, the possibility of adding shadows to text purely with CSS and without using graphics software such as Adobe Photoshop and much more.

The new CSS is also being developed in individual modules, breaking up the workload involved into manageable and precise chunks; more information on the module system can be found at the W3C’s Introduction to CSS3 (Why Modules?).

CSS3 is expected to offer a whole host of exciting new possibilities for web designers and anyone interested in keeping their website current. For anyone else eagerly awaiting information on new developments in the CSS3 project, please take a look at the links provided at the end of this post.

For further reading on the subject or a more comprehensive list of proposed features and information for CSS3 can be found here:

CSS3 . Info - All you ever needed to know about CSS3

W3C - Introduction to CSS3

Credit Crunch - How is it effecting you?

With attention currently being focused on the state of the world-wide financial climate and the imposing credit crunch, everyone is looking for ways in which to secure their investments and cut back on unnecessary spending; but where does it leave businesses wishing to update or re-launch their web presence or branding?

Although immediately it would seem wiser to cut back on these apparently unessential items first, looking deeper into the matter reveals a strong need for businesses, especially small businesses or start-ups, to remain competitive; with the general public more reluctant to part with their cash now more than ever, the most well-presented company is often the most likely to gain the upper hand in gaining new business and consumer confidence.

Presentation of a businesses’ website is key. With more and more people turning to the Internet, especially Search Engines and Search Engine Advertising when choosing to research a business or potential product purchase, having that one website which stands out in the crowd in a positive way can sometimes make the difference between a making sale or not.

Other important factors to consider as well as the general design are the usability and ease of use when navigating the site, and speed with which it loads on the average computer; I’m sure we’ve all noticed that the most successful companies’ websites (Google, Amazon e.t.c.) are also the simplest to use - and fastest to load. With people having an increasingly smaller amount of spare time, speed and ease of use are often some of a visitor’s top priorities.

Most importantly, design companies and those providing these services to businesses must also tighten their belts for hard times and provide that added value for their clients and their future needs - concessions and discounts to small businesses and start-ups are always welcomed enthusiastically, as an example.

We’re all going to suffer to some degree in the near future, so its always a wise idea for us all to pitch in and support eachother as much as possible; especially in a business-to-business environment.

I’ll be updating the blog with new posts and content as regularly as possible, so please check back often for some interesting stuff!

- Ben