Nancy Dickenson On UX Design — Category "Inspiration" on Smashing Magazine

Category: Inspiration

Fresh inspiration, portfolios, galleries and new showcases of remarkable web design and artwork in general is what every creative head needs to refuel. Break your creativity block by exploring galleries of art, design and photography or showcases of web designs (blogs, portfolios and online-shops) and design elements (search box, back-to-top-link).

Popular tags in this category: Photos, Showcases, Portfolios, E-commerce, Blogs, Navigation, Logos, Favicons.

Nancy Dickenson On UX DesignCopying Others Is Not The Answer

Recently, we had the pleasure of sitting down to pick the brain of Nancy Dickenson, talented UX designer and the Executive in Residence for Bentley University’s HFID Graduate Program.

With a bit of back and forth, we got some wonderful insight into the UX field from this long-time field participant and shaper, who looks back over her time in UX design.

Campaigning With PersonalityHow To Raise Your Email Above Inbox Noise

If we look at email from a signal-to-noise perspective, then one-to-many emails are undeniably in the “noise” category; people are exceedingly good at ignoring them. Even Gmail and Hotmail are helping us ignore them by providing smart inboxes that sort incoming messages.

Emails from our families, friends and coworkers, however, are “signals.” We go out of our way to read them. But those emails aren’t the only ones — on occasion, we’ll happily read messages from businesses or complete strangers. Why? Because these emails are interesting, engaging and, most importantly, full of personality.

Mobile Is Not An Add-OnHow To Sell The Value Of Mobile To Clients

As Web designers and developers, we see the value in supporting mobile devices every day. We’re well-versed in tactics and techniques for adapting our work to mobile. Our challenge is to be equally well-versed in selling our clients on that value as being something in which they need to invest precious budget dollars.

I’ve been describing what I call the “mobile imperative” for a few years now when talking to clients or advocating support for mobile devices in Web design projects. The mobile user experience is not an add-on. It’s now a major part of the Web as we know it, and our clients’ content and tools will appear on an increasing number of devices, screens and contexts.

Desktop Wallpaper Calendar: April 2013 (Easter Edition)

We always try our best to challenge your artistic abilities and produce some interesting, beautiful and creative artwork. And 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 creativity mission has been going on for over five years now, and we are very thankful to all the designers who have contributed and are still diligently contributing each month.

This post features free desktop wallpapers created by artists across the globe for April 2013. Both versions with a calendar and without a calendar can be downloaded for free. It’s time to freshen up your wallpaper!

Please note that:

All images can be clicked on and lead to the preview of the wallpaper,
You can feature your work in our magazine by taking part in our Desktop Wallpaper Calendar series. We are regularly looking for creative designers and artists to be featured on Smashing Magazine. Are you one of them?

When Traditional Solutions Fall ShortNavigation For Mega-Sites

By Paul Boag
March 27th, 2013
Content, Web Design
47 Comments

For most websites, navigation is not particularly challenging. A primary navigation bar, supported by sub-navigation, is often enough. Typically, sub-navigation displays the parent, siblings and children of the current page.

A persistent primary navigation bar shows top-level pages, allowing users to move between sections. However, there is one class of website for which this traditional form of navigation falls short. It is what I refer to as a "mega-site".

What's Your Comic About?Communicating Complex Ideas With Comics

Comics are known to be one of the most powerful communication tools, and are a unique way to communicate — using both image and text to effectively demonstrate time, function, and emotion.

Today's article is an excerpt from Kevin Cheng's "See What I Mean" — a book that walks you step by step through the process of using comics to communicate, and providing examples from industry leaders who have already adopted this method. Enjoy!

The Smashing ConferenceVideos And Interviews With Brad Frost, Andy Clarke and Nicole Sullivan

Today we are happy to release three more exclusive interviews as well as two Smashing Conference videos featuring Brad Frost, Andy Clarke and Nicole Sullivan. You can check out even more conference interviews and talks by Jeremy Keith, Rachel Andrew and Stephen Hay.

In case you are wondering whether Smashing Conference 2013 will take place or not, the answer is a definitive "yes!", so please make sure to stay tuned to not miss it this year!

Desktop Wallpaper Calendar: March 2013

We always try our best to challenge your artistic abilities and produce some interesting, beautiful and creative artwork. And 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 creativity mission has been going on for over five years now, and we are very thankful to all designers who have contributed and are still diligently contributing each month.

This post features free desktop wallpapers created by artists across the globe for March 2013. Both versions with a calendar and without a calendar can be downloaded for free. It’s time to freshen up your wallpaper!

The Power Of TypographyCreating Exciting And Unusual Visual Hierarchies

Layout, for both print and screen, is one of the most important aspects of graphic design. Designs that extend across multiple pages or screens, whether containing large or small amounts of type, must be carefully controlled in a way that is enticing and is easy for all to access.

Careful control of visual hierarchy is a key aspect of the design decisions we have to consider. In this article, we will look at how frequently type needs to be broken down into different levels, such as topic, importance and tone of voice.

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