Another week filled with exciting and informative design related web content has fallen by the wayside, and we here at Arbenting have plucked a few examples from the aether of posts we feel helped made this week such a great one. It is with that intention at heart, that we present Arbenting’s Weekly Inspiration and Best of the Web #2. As you may have noticed the title has once again undergone a little re-working, so please continue to bare with us as we attempt to capture the essence of these weekly posts in a more concise and creative way. As always, let us know in the comments if you think we missed an important contribution to the community from the past week that you would have included.
Using Prado - A PHP Framework - “Holger walks us through a little introduction of the PHP framework Prado. He gives a great example on how to get started with this little-known framework.”
How to Extract the Facts with a Web Design Client Questionnaire - “I recommend using this questionnaire before you write a Web design proposal. You should reserve your proposal-writing time for the best-qualified prospects, rather than everyone who asks for one.”
Creating Consistently Colorful User Experiences: Part 1, Theory - “Color is one of the most important parts of your website. However, far too often color enters the equation as an afterthought, or worse, not all all. ”
10 Social Bookmarking Websites for Non-Stop Visual Inspiration - Designers can never have to many sources of inspiration
Weekly Vector Inspiration #15 - There are some gorgeous vectors in this week's collection!
Secret Sauce: 10 Game-changing Tips from the World’s Top Freelancers - “In this article we try to discover what separates the best from the rest. What are the world’s top freelancers doing that the rest of us aren’t?”
Create a Sneeze Page for Your Blog - Another great installment of ProBlogger's 31 Days to Build a Better blog
5 Tips For Design Students - “This past Saturday I participated in the AIGA 2009 Portfolio Review. Its sort of strange to see the tables turned so soon ( I graduated in 2007). This time I was not a student, but a reviewer. I saw some great design work and have some suggestions for all the design students out there.”
Guide to Completing Projects On-Time - Some helpful tips for keeping yourself on schedule
Thoughts on Design Integrity. Getting what you want from your client - “You’ve just been given a project and the client has made a list of demands that will surely result in a total design failure. Your integrity as a good designer is on the line… …WHAT DO YOU DO? Manage the client’s expectations BEFORE the project brief is even written.”
18 Seriously Helpful Cheat Sheets for Easier Coding - Covering Wordpress, ExpressionEngine, PHP, MySQL, Ruby on Rails, JavaScript, XHTML, CSS and more.
How To Retweet And Be Retweeted - “One of the fastest and most effective ways of spreading information through Twitter is to retweet somebody. One of the most common questions I get asked is, “what are some guidelines for retweeting, and how can I get retweeted more?” I want to address both of those with some simple guidelines and suggestions.”
What is Vertical Align? - Chris Coyier does a terrific job of answering this question
50 Totally Free Lessons in Graphic Design Theory - “While many of us can create something that looks good in Photoshop or attractive when spliced into CSS, but do we actually understand the design theory behind what we create? Theory is the missing link for many un-trained but otherwise talented designers. Here are 50 excellent graphic design theory lessons to help you understand the 'Whys', not just the 'Hows'.”
The Monster List of Freelance Job Sites - 2009 Update - A must bookmark post for any freelancer who wants to work in 2009 ;P
10 Creative Minds of the Design Industry - Short bios on 10 of the most creative people in design
9 Foggy Mirror Textures - Dark and Brooding - This is a fabulous texture pack if you are looking to achieve a dark and smokey or dreamlike feel to your design.
New York Concrete: 10 Free Hi-Res Textures - “The latest texture pack contains 10 high resolution concrete textures taken during my last trip to New York City.”
10 Awesome Free Serif Fonts - “This is the second part of a five part series featuring my favorite free fonts for design. This compilation will focus on ten very useful serif fonts. These fonts are perfect for print copy and large headings.”
27 Grungy Film Photoshop Brushes - “Destroying your designs can sometimes be more satisfying than creating it in the first place. Like you guys, I’m always searching for good Photoshop brushes to use to distress or destroy my artwork. ”
Free Vectors - 15 Grunge Vectors - I love grunge elements and am always on the lookout for them. Grunge vectors are a rarity and a plus.
Found #1 - Your Source for Weekly Textures - A new addition at Lost and Taken featuring the best free textures from the week
600+ Free Design, Twitter and Social Media Icons: A Collection Motherload! - “Whether it’s those little Twitter birds, social media or website icons, we all love and need them from time to time. Over the past several months many other blogs have compiled their list of website, social media, Twitter and other icons, so in case you missed them here is the motherload collection!”
Spray paint: a collection of 9 hi-res textures - “Here is a nice and colorful collection of hi-res spray paint textures on different metal surfaces. I found these on several garage doors on my way home from my first skateboarding photography session, when I had take a detour with my bike.”
Interview With David and Marc Perel of From the Couch - “If you aren’t familiar with them David and Marc run From the Couch, a video blog about graphic design where they regularly post interviews, tutorials, and informational videos about the world of design.”
Calvin Lee Interview - A great interview with self proclaimed twitter whore and massive retweeter Calvin Lee
An Interview with Designer and Blogger Steven Snell - “Steven Snell is a web designer and blogger widely known across the design community from his blogs at Vandelay Design, DesignM.ag and Traffikd as well as his range of quality articles published on some high profiles design blogs.”
Professional Tips for Improving Photoshop’s Performance - “There’s nothing worse than being detained from your workflow because of performance deficit. That’s why you should check out this tutorial to work more efficiently without wasting your time and improve your workflow and designs!”
A Crash-Course in WordPress Plugin Development - “Despite an extensive codex, many WordPress users remain unfamiliar with how to create their own custom plugins. In today's screencast, we'll start from scratch and build our first usable plugin. For this example, we'll write a simple "tuts formatting" function that allows a blog editor to more easily format articles. ”
20 Excellent Tutorial Sites for Web Designers - “In this post you will find 20 best website where you can learn web programming and development languages that are dived into beginners and advanced category.”
A Guide to CSS and WordPress: Part 1 - “In this tutorial we’ll review the basics of CSS and WordPress, such as image alignment and useful classes.”
Ruby on Rails for Designers - “Ruby on Rails is an open-source web framework that's optimized for programmer happiness and sustainable productivity. It lets you write beautiful code by favoring convention over configuration.”
How to Create a Sleek and Textured Web Layout in Photoshop - “In this Photoshop web design tutorial, you’ll learn how to create a full web page layout that combines the sleek and textured look-and-feel using a combination of beginning to intermediate Adobe Photoshop techniques.”
Create a Glossy Volt Icon in Photoshop - “In this tutorial you will create a glossy thunder logo using a few layers and some white shapes that will make the thunder more interesting and glossy.”
Create CSS pin balloons with ease - Need we say more?
30 Essential Twitter Tutorials for Newbies and Experts - “We decided to do a round up of some of the best Twitter related tutorials out there to help you out. This list includes tutorials on everything from how to change your Twitter background to how to use the Twitter API.”
A Comprehensive Introduction to the Type Tool - “Who doesn't know the Type Tool? This is maybe one of the most powerful and useful tools of Photoshop. That's why I decided to write a comprehensive guide about Photoshop's Type tool, including do's and don'ts of the most important features of this tool.”
Showing links while hovering using CSS - “Here's a simple little CSS technique that could be really useful in your next webdesign/webdevelopment process when adding links to a HTML page.”
Creatives Are Community - “The Creatives Are Community Toolbar is a browser toolbar add-on for Firefox / Flock / Camino and Internet Explorer / Maxthon. It was built to empower, inform, and connect creative professionals like you. The Toolbar puts–and keeps–the most important design-related information and resources at the fingertips of graphic designers, Web designers, illustrators, and other creative professionals.” - I installed the toolbar last night and have fallen in love with it. So much design information at my fingertips!
Rob Gonsalves
Rob Gonsalves, is an amazing digital artist, with a playfully Escher-esque style and perspective. His imaginative work will entrance you for hours… well, it did us anyway, making Rob an easy feature in the inspiration segment of the post.
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Hey, thanks for the link (How To Retweet and Be Retweeted), I appreciate it! I’m glad you found it useful. Have a great week!
Matt Singleys last blog post..mattsingley: Triond finds way for B-list bloggers to make money http://bit.ly/jMLvL
Thanks for Including my post in this list.
Great Compilation!
Regards,
Nikhil
Nikhils last blog post..10 Creative Minds of the Design Industry
great round-up! and many thanks for including my spray paint texture pack in this list. much appreciated!
2lips last blog post..Spray paint: a collection of 9 hi-res textures
A huuuuge list with great resources. I like the work of Rob Gonsalves, it’s amazing!
Thanks for including my tutorial :)
Jankos last blog post..Create CSS pin balloons with ease
Thanks so much for including one of my posts :) Cool list!
great round-up! thanks for nice resources..
joyoge designers’ bookmarks last blog post..40 Logo Design Tutorials
excellent list of web
Great resource list, the list goes on and on ;)
Love the work of Rob Gonsalves! Great mind and thought behind the amazing work!
Man, it’s like sensory overload — you guys assemble some awesome lists!! Keep it up.
Brandon Coxs last blog post..Inspiring Design Links for Creatives for 09–04-25
“I installed the toolbar last night and have fallen in love with it. So much design information at my fingertips!”
:-) I’m glad you like it!
Thank you very much for including the CreativesAre.com Community and Toolbar!
Pariah Burkes last blog post..Bookmarks Reading 24 April 2009 Through 26 April 2009
@ Matt — No problem, man. Thanks for putting the post together!
@ Nikhil — It was a great post and our honor. Thanks.
@ 2lip — It’s a great texture, man, so thank you.
@ Janko — Thanks for the praise, not to mention the awesome tutorial. I agree, Gonsalves work is amazing!
@ Andrew — Thanks, man. And how could we not?
@ joyoge — It’s our pleasure.
@ pelfusion — We’re blessed to be surrounded by greatness to bring together.
@ Kev — Thank you. It is a long list this week. And it’s true, you can see the depth of thought Gonsalves puts into his work.
@ Brandon — We do what we can! Thanks, man.
@ Pariah — It’s us who should be thanking you for the awesome toolbar and community…in fact, thank you for the awesome toolbar and community! :)