If you’re going to use color effectively in your designs, you’ll need to know a few color concepts, as well as color theory terminology. A thorough working knowledge of concepts like chroma, value, and saturation is key to creating your own awesome color palettes (which we’ll get to in Part 3). [Content update: August 2017] In Part 1: The Meaning of Color of this color theory series, we covered th

Every now and again we take a look around, select “fresh” high-quality free fonts and present them to you in a brief overview. The choice is enormous, so the time you need to find them is usually the time you should be investing in your current projects. We search for them and we find them, so you don’t have to.In this selection we’re glad to present you PT Sans, FF Celeste Sans Offc Black, Secca

In this article, we will look at various uses of progress trackers and see how they’ve been implemented, what they are doing well, and what they are not doing well. When designing a large website, especially one that contains a store, you may be required to design a system for ordering online, or a multi-step process of another sort. Walking users through this process by making it easy and intuiti

Stock photography is often used in print and web design and has been around since the 1920s, when it was utilized by the newspaper industry. Stock photography is often used in print and web design and has been around since the 1920s, when it was utilized by the newspaper industry. It has turned out to be such a common element to use now when designing, and has become more and more available, so th

Every now and again we take a look around, select “fresh” high-quality free fonts and present them to you in a brief overview. The choice is enormous, so the time you need to find them is usually the time you should be investing in your current projects. We search for them and we find them, so you don’t have to. In this selection we’re glad to present you Chunk, Titilium, Amputa Bangiz, Serif Beta

Going to web conferences is a great opportunity to make new contacts and exchange business cards. Unfortunately, we have an industry filled with creative people who have no creative marketing for themselves. Sure, many have business cards, but one in a hundred have something really cool. These unique treasures, cards and items get kept, talked about and usually photographed and shared. This articl

In January last year (2008), we put together a list of 100 Excellent Free Wordpress Themes, over a year has passed and Wordpress development has progressed very fast and gained even more in popularity. We felt it was the right time to put together an updated post and offer our readers the best free themes that Wordpress can offer. High quality free Wordpress Themes have become harder and harder to

Compared to conventional navigation patterns tag clouds don’t necessarily offer a more convenient and intuitive navigation. However, used properly, they can provide visitors with an instant illustration of the main topics, giving a very specific and precise orientation of the site’s content. Since human beings tend to think in concepts and models, it’s easier to get an idea of presented content if

Desktop wallpapers can serve as an excellent source of inspiration. However, if you use some specific wallpaper for a long period of time, it becomes harder to draw inspiration out of it. That’s why we’ve decided to supply you with smashing wallpapers over the next 12 months. And to make them a little bit more distinctive from the usual crowd, we’ve decided to embed calendars for the upcoming mont

Flash enabled designers and developers to deliver rich content over the browsers, creating motion, interactivity and an impressive visual experience. Good Flash-sites do not require too much bandwidth, load fast and allow for a smooth interaction; besides, beautiful Flash-based sites are Photoshop masterpieces, transporting some kind of reality and fantasy to the Flash movie. In the showcase below

We continue to collect most beautiful high quality freefonts, which can be used for both private and professional projects without any restrictions whatsoever. They are hard to find, but the search is definitely worth it. We continue to collect most beautiful high quality freefonts, which can be used for both private and professional projects without any restrictions whatsoever. They are hard to f

Structure and hierarchy reduce complexity and improve readability. The more organized your articles or web-sites are, the easier it is for users to follow your arguments and get the message you are trying to deliver. On the Web this can be done in a variety of ways. Structure and hierarchy reduce complexity and improve readability. The more organized your articles or web-sites are, the easier it i

35 designers. 5 questions. 5 precise answers. Result: 175 professional suggestions, tips and ideas from some of the best web-developers all around the world. In March we’ve selected over 35 prominent designers and design companies, contacted them and asked to answer five design-related questions, sharing their knowledge and experience with fellows developers. Here on Smashing Magazine. 35 designer

CSS isn’t always easy to deal with. Depending on your skills and your experience, CSS coding can sometimes become a nightmare, particularly if you aren’t sure which selectors are actually being applied to document elements. An easy way to minimize the complexity of the code is as useful as not-so-well-known CSS attributes and properties you can use to create a semantically correct markup. We’ve ta

Do you feel like you’re wasting time learning the ins and outs of all of the browsers and working around their issues? Well Chris did, too. Doing this back then secured his career and ensured that he had a great job. But we shouldn’t have to go through this trial by fire any longer. I’ve been writing JavaScript code for much longer than I care to remember. I am very excited about the language’s re