21 Resources Especially for Lovers of Minimalism

Minimalism a popular style of design because it keeps things simple and user-friendly. In this post we’ll look at more than 20 websites, blogs and books dedicated to minimalism. Not all of them are related to web design – minimalism can also be applied to other aspects of business and life.

Minimal Design Showcases:

If you want to find great and inspiring examples of minimalist design, these sites will be excellent sources.

Minimal Exhibit

10 Keys to Effective Non-Profit Organization Websites

Non profit organizations tend to have limited budgets and limited involvement from members for planning, designing and maintaining websites. This often results in a site that doesn’t really achieve everything that it could for the organization and the people involved. In recent years there has been an increasing number of organizations that are doing great things with their websites and truly making them valuable and effective.

In this article we’ll look at the keys to an effective non-profit organization website, while showcasing some examples from specific sites.

1. Clear Description of the Organization’s Mission/Purpose

Many of the visitors that will be arriving at the website will not be familiar with the organization. Upon arriving, they should be able to quickly get an idea of why the organization exists and a basic picture of what they do.

The full mission statement or purpose statement is sometimes part of an About Us page, but first time visitors to the home page should have an idea of why the organization exists without even visiting another page. The About Us page can of course provide more details, but visitors should not need to navigate through the site in order to understand the basic purpose of the organization.

There are a number of different ways to help convey a message of mission or purpose on a home page. In some cases there will be a brief one or two sentence statement that is located in a prominent position. Photos and images can also help to communicate purpose.

One-Page Portfolios: Trends and Showcase

One-page portfolios are certainly a popular trend among web and graphic designers. Many designers have created one-page portfolios that use a lot of creativity, but there are also some elements or characteristics that are very common among them.

In this post we’ll look at ten trends of one-page portfolios with examples of each. At the end of the post we’ll include a showcase for your own design inspiration, plus some resources to help you if you’re interested in creating your own one-page portfolio.

Trends of One-Page Portfolios:

1. Focus is on the Work

One-page portfolios tend to keep the work of the designer as the focus of the page. More traditional portfolio sites may include screen shots of some work on the homepage, but generally the work in the portfolio will be displayed on a separate page.

Because one-page portfolios include all of the elements of a portfolio site (the work, biographical information, services information, contact, etc.), the contents of the page are often arranged to emphasize the work from the portfolio.

James Lai Creative
James Lai Creative uses a prominent location on the page to display items from the portfolio. Click on a thumbnail and you’ll see a larger image above.

Showcase of Floral Typography

If you frequently browse through sites like deviantART and the Behance Network you’ve no doubt come across a number of designs that use typography and floral effects. In this post we’ll showcase some excellent works of this kind from various designers. If you would like more inspiration from typography and text effects please see our gallery site TypeInspire.

Butterfly

35 Tutorials and Guides for Working With Wacom Tablets

Wacom tablets are preferred tools for many graphic designers because they can be much easier than working with a mouse for some types of design. Learning to work effectively with a tablet can be a little tricky, but fortunately there are a number of tutorials that can help. In this post we’ll feature a selection of tutorials that will help with learning how to design specific things, and some that will help you understand the Wacom tablet and to get the most out of it.

Draw a Windy Sunset Illustration

65 Resources for Nature-Inspired Design

A current trend is web design inspired by nature. I’m sure you’ve seen sites with illustrated backgrounds or headers of a sky or horizon, or maybe a large background picture of something from nature. In this post we’ll feature 65 resources that can help you with your own nature-inspired design. The post includes Photoshop tutorials, Photoshop brushes, textures, and vectors.

Photoshop Layout Tutorials:

How to Create an Illustrative Web Design in Photoshop

Best Photoshop Website Layout Tutorials of 2009

As a final post for 2009, let’s take a look back at the best tutorials for creating website layouts in Photoshop. There were a number of great tutorials of this kind throughout the year, many more than in years past, making it a great year for anyone who wants to improve their design skills. Here is a look at 25 of the best.

Create a Company/Business Web Layout Using Photoshop

The 50 Best Adobe Illustrator Tutorials from 2009

Since the year is winding down, we thought it would be helpful to go back and pick out the best Illustrator tutorials that were published in 2009. The year was full of great tutorials, and 50 of the best are featured here. For more Illustrator tutorials please see:

• 30 Text Effect Tutorials for Adobe Illustrator
• 40 Tutorials for Working with Shapes in Illustrator
• 25 Tutorials for Using Illustrator and Photoshop Together for Outstanding Results

Smoothly Shift Winter Colors While Creating an Icy, Vector Landscape

50 of the Best Free Icon Sets of 2009

A few weeks ago we launched IconFever, a site dedicated to helping designers find the icons they need. Today we’d like to feature some of the best free icons that were made available throughout the year, from a wide variety of designers. These high-quality, free icons can be tremendous resources for designers like you and me.

Quartz Icons

25 Photoshop Tutorials for Designing Portfolio Sites

Designing a quality portfolio website is a must for any aspiring designer. In this post we’ll look at 25 tutorials that will lead you through the process of designing a portfolio site in Photoshop. Hopefully these tutorials will teach you some new tricks and techniques that will be useful to you in your own work.

Awesome Tutorial Portfolio Design