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  • Winning User Interface Design Battles

    There are a number of poor user-interface patterns that have cropped up over the years: Flash intros, music or videos that play automatically (and don't care that your speakers were accidentally left on full-blast), animated GIFs, pop-up ads, cursor trails, hearts falling down across the screen, and...well, you get the idea.

    Many of these anti-patterns were developed in the early days of the web when any interactivity beyond the hyperlink was novel, even if it was unfriendly to users. Even today from time to time, clients, colleagues, and family members all get that telltale gleam in their eyes and somehow you just know what is going to come next.

    "Hey, what if we...", they start to say as your eyes gloss over and you silently wonder how you arrived in your current situation.

    In this brief article, I'm going to give you the winning argument for most of these impending design battles. You won't win every battle, but you'll have a lot better chance at avoiding having to implement anti-patterns in your designs.

    Learn How To Win Your Design Battles

  • Free Rounded Social Media Icons For Your Website

    Sign up for our newsletter for designers and get a free social media icon set. Get 15 high-quality rounded social media icons from the most popular social networking and social media sites.

    Included in this pack are the following social media sites:

    • Facebook
    • Twitter
    • Digg
    • Reddit
    • LinkedIn
    • Delicious
    • StumbleUpon
    • MySpace
    • Technorati
    • Yahoo Buzz
    • Google Buzz
    • Slashdot
    • Plus icons for email and RSS.

    Each button comes in full color and grayscale versions and is 50px X 50px. Download format is a layered .png file.

    Get Free Social Media Icons For Your Website

  • How To Choose A Color Scheme For Your Website

    Choosing a color scheme for a website, a graphic, a software package, or any type of advertising can be difficult, especially if you don’t have a strong background in art or design. In this quick post, I'll show you a suggested workflow for choosing colors and will also give you some great resources that will teach you more about color theory, color pyschology, and the proper application of color so that your project will be accessible to all users.

    There are many places on the web that will help you mix-and-match a color palette. Everything from color wheels and color pickers to hex color charts and lists of all named HTML colors. In fact, there are entire design communities that revolve around and celebrate color. Adobe Kuler, ColourLovers, Color Scheme Designer, ColorMatch5K ColorJack, and ColorStream (iPhone app) are just a few of those communities and tools that you can use to look for inspiration or for creating that perfect color scheme.

    Learn How To Choose A Color Scheme For Your Website

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