45 Photoshop Tutorials for Better Navigation

Navigation is obviously one of the most crucial aspects of web design in terms of usability, but often it is also a focal point of the design. Navigational buttons, bars ans menus provide the designer with an excellent opportunity to be creative and add some style to the design. What better tool to use for this purpose than Photoshop?

Here is a collection of 45 tutorials that will help you with creating the perfect navigation. Some of them produce an end result that is fairly similar to another tutorial on the list, but you can learn something from each one as they take a slightly different approach.

21 Ways Your Audience Affects Your Design

If you look around at websites that are well-designed and are effective, you’ll see that the target audience of a website has a profound impact on the design of the site. Obviously, different audiences prefer different types of websites and they will also have different needs.

The term user-focused is commonly thrown around. In this article I’ll take a look at a number of different ways (in no particular order) that the audience of your site will affect they way it is designed. This is an attempt not to be all-inclusive, but rather to show just how many ways the audience of a site can impact its design.

Stepping Up Your Skills: Areas for Continual Improvement as a Web Designer

Being an effective web designer requires developing a number of different skills. Not all of these skills are limited to the technical and artistic aspects of web design. Communicating with clients, project management, and promotion are all important as well.

Freelancers and designers that work for small firms typically have to wear many hats, and being well-rounded in design and business is almost essential.

11 Ways to Gain Exposure as a Web Designer

As a web designer you may be faced with the challenge of getting your work and your abilities in front of others. If this is the case, here is a list of 11 different things you can do to get noticed.

1. Submit Your Designs to CSS Galleries

CSS galleries display high-quality designs, and you can submit yours to be considered for inclusion. The leading CSS Galleries (CSS Beauty, CSS Vault, CSS Drive, etc.) have huge audiences that will see your work if it is included. Additionally, there are a number of specialty galleries, such as Light on Dark, eduStyle, No Resolution, and The Horizontal Way.

10 Realities of Designing Websites for Clients

As a designer, working for clients is much different than designing a site for yourself. There are obviously pros and cons, but here are ten things that I have found to be true.
1. No Two Clients are the Same

Some clients will know exactly what they want and they will expect you to create it precisely in that manner. Others will have no clue what they want and they’ll leave most decisions up to you. Some clients will be a pleasure to work with, others will make you want to pursue a different career. Each client will be unique and will present new challenges and present new opportunities.

5 Steps to a More Engaging Website

The internet has become a very interactive environment for users. Websites need to be specifically built in a way that captures the attention of visitors and keeps them coming back, or they will quickly leave to go somewhere else. Here are 5 steps to creating a website that will effectively engage your visitors.

1. Avoid Clutter

By keeping your design free of clutter, you will make it easier for visitors to know what is most important, and there will be nothing else to distract them. Clutter can be excessive advertisements, images that don’t add anything to the page, text that is crammed in with very little white space, or anything else that unnecessarily causes a distraction for visitors.

Designing to Meet User Expectations

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. No design will appeal to everyone. In recent weeks I’ve published two different galleries of web designs of unique website layouts and minimalistic websites and the sites featured in these galleries take different approaches to providing an attractive site for users. If you spend much time looking at which designs successfully present the image of a business to visitors, you will notice that websites in various industries frequently take a specific approach. Certain audiences will have expectations of what they want in a design, and if they don’t get it, the site will be out of place and most likely unsuccessful.

21 Factors to Consider Before a Redesign

Redesigning a website can be a very involved process, and it is important to properly plan and consider the necessary factors that will make or break the redesign. Here is a quick look at 21 factors that you should be contemplated.

The Anatomy of a Minimalistic Web Design

Judging by the amount of interest created by two galleries, 25 Beautiful, Minimalistic Website Designs and 25 Beautiful, Minimalistic Website Designs – Part 2 , many of you have an appreciation for an attractive, yet simple, design. As a result, I’ve taken a look at what makes minimalistic designs successful and I’d like to share my thoughts here. I know that not everyone likes these types of designs, so your opinions of what is good design may differ from mine.

25 Beautiful, Minimalistic Website Designs – Part 2

A few months ago I published a gallery of 25 Beautiful, Minimalistic Website Designs. I received more feedback on that post than almost any other, so I decided to follow up with another 25 minimalistic websites.

CSS Globe

Recently redesigned, this community site for web designers uses a simple, effect design.