The Smashing Cartoons
Smashing Cartoons was a regular section on Smashing Magazine in which we used to publish a new cartoon every Friday illustrated by the one and only Ricardo Gimenes.
We all have our favorite client stories, embarrassing design flaws and never-ending user requests which are all just a part of what we, as designers and developers, encounter very often in our daily work routine. In this new post series on Smashing Magazine, we’d like to put some of these situations into the spotlight and discuss them with you. The cartoons are all dedicated to Web design and also have a comic twist about everything happening around the Web and latest trends.
Further Reading on SmashingMag:
- Drawing A Cartoon In Illustrator
- The Celebration Of Cartoons and Comic Strip Art
- The Life, Times (and Death?) of Internet Explorer 6 (Comic Strip) of Internet Explorer 6 (Comic Strip)‘“)
The main character of the cartoons is Fleaty, a talented, hard-working designer with big ambitions yet not that much luck when it comes to clients. Hopefully, Fleaty will put a smile on your face and maybe remind all of us of the flaws we have, and help us finally get rid of them.
All of the cartoons are dedicated to design and Web development, but also have a comic twist about everything happening around the Web as well as give you some insights behind the curtains of Smashing Magazine. We hope you enjoy them as much as we did, and still do!
Cartoon #61: Sluggish Computers

Cartoon #60: Back To Home
Cartoon #59: Last Minute Ticket

Cartoon #58: Access Restricted? VPN Is Your Friend
Unfortunately, today the Web is not as open as it used to be. Access to some websites (especially website offering video and audio content) is restricted due to licensing constraints. This is especially annoying when you are on vacation and would love to use the services that you have paid for in your country. There are workarounds to make all services work from anywhere. The solution is VPN, Virtual Private Networks.

Cartoon #57: Tyranny Of The “Like” Button
This cartoon is referring to the article The Insidious Evils of ‘Like’ Culture in which the “Like” culture in our society is criticized. The article discusses how in our age of online view counts and retweets, conformity is unfortunately becoming the rule.

Cartoon #56: “Exclusive” Social Network

Cartoon #55: Responsive Design By Default?
This cartoon is referring to the observation which Vitaly, the editor-in-chief of Smashing Magazine, has made on one of his trips. You can follow the discussion which inspired the cartoon below.

Cartoon #54: UX Design
This cartoon is referring to the discussion in the community about the meaning of terms ‘UX’ and ‘UX Design’. Andy Budd presents an interesting perspective on this issue in his article “What’s in a name: The duality of user experience”.

Cartoon #53: The Interface
This cartoon is based upon Oliver Reichenstein’s article “Why and how Google+’s interface is kicking ass” in which he discusses the qualities of a good user interface and how they are applied in the Google+ design.
Cartoon #52: Back Button
This cartoon is based upon Jared Spool’s presentation “The Secret Lives of Links”, as summarized in Luke Wroblewski’s conference notes.
Cartoon #51: Making The Web A Better Place
Cartoon #50: Mobile First
Cartoon #49:They Just Don’t Care
Cartoon #48: They Just Don’t Care

Cartoon #47: Online Reading Experience

Cartoon #46: Mobile Design Strategy

Cartoon #44: Responsive Web Design

Cartoon #43: Web Design Trends

Cartoon #42: How To Start a Blog and Make Money

Cartoon #41: The Fleaty: Relations With Clients

Cartoon #40: The Fleaty: The Geek Bug

Cartoon #39: Web Battle

Cartoon #38: Designer's Conscience

Cartoon #37: Modern Jobs

Cartoon #36: Back to work

Cartoon #35: Happy New Year

Cartoon #34: Wishes

Cartoon #33: The Beatles

Cartoon #32: iPhone 4, White

Cartoon #31: Cookies

Cartoon #30: Children

Cartoon #29: Search III

Cartoon #28: Search II

Cartoon #27: Search

Cartoon #26: New Experiences

Cartoon #25: Evolution (Some Things Never Change)

Cartoon #24: Food Delivery

Cartoon #23: Ping Without Pong

Cartoon #22: Open Standard Live Streaming

Cartoon #21: Face and Places

Cartoon #20: The Smashing Cartoons

Cartoon #19: Forbidden Apps

Cartoon #18: Twitter Birds II

Cartoon #17: Twitter Birds

Cartoon #16: Crime Scene

Cartoon #15: Hell's Meeting

Cartoon #14b: Summer Holiday

Cartoon #14: Summer Holiday

Cartoon #13: How To Choose a Smartphone

Cartoon #12: Comments

Cartoon #11: The Flash Guy

Cartoon #10: Adobe vs. Apple

Cartoon #9: Jessica Talk Show (Cont.)

Cartoon #8: Jessica Talk Show

Cartoon #7: Smashing Team and Ricardo Gimenes

Cartoon #6: The Intern

Cartoon #5: The Intern

Cartoon #4: How to make money from iPad

Cartoon #3: iPhone OS 4

Cartoon #2: iPad

Cartoon #1

Pilot

