9 Characteristics of Well-Designed E-Commerce Websites

E-commerce web design and development presents some unique challenges that you won’t always face with other types of web design. For sites that exist primarily to sell products, it’s very easy to look at sales and have a measuring stick to use when evaluating the success of the website. However, there are any number of factors that can influence the success of an e-commerce site, and identifying areas of strength and weakness is not always so simple.

In this article we’ll look at nine specific factors that are generally present on well-designed e-commerce websites.

25 Photoshop Tutorials for Creating 3D Text Effects

With some creativity you can create amazing text effects with Photoshop. In this post we’ll feature 25 of the best tutorials for creating 3D text effects. There are a variety of different types of effects, so hopefully you can find some new tricks to learn.

If you’re looking for examples of inspirational uses of text, please see our new gallery site, TypeInspire.

Awesome Milk Typography Effect in Photoshop

Keep an Inspiration Notebook to Retain Offline Design Inspiration

Finding inspiration is important to designers of all kinds. For web designers there is plenty of design inspiration available online through gallery sites and design blogs that compile posts for inspiration. This abundance of potential inspiration makes it quick and easy to browse through these sources, but unfortunately it also tends to make many of us forget that there are limitless sources of inspiration all around us in every day life that don’t involve the internet.

Photoshop Tutorial Hall of Fame

Many of the most popular posts on this blog are collections of Photoshop tutorials in specific categories. I thought it would be helpful to also do a post that features the best tutorials of all kinds. This post links to more than 60 excellent tutorials and they are categorized by type. Some of these have been featured here at various points, and others are new.

Lighting Effects

The O Series

30 Text Effect Tutorials for Adobe Illustrator

Adobe Illustrator provides designers with an excellent opportunity for creating amazing effects with text. This post features 30 of the best tutorials on the subject. While there are more tutorials available for working with text in Photoshop, I think you’ll see from this selection that there is plenty to be learned for text effects in Illustrator.

Blueprint-Style Text in Adobe Illustrator

25 Photoshop Tutorials for Working with Textures

Being able to work with texture in Photoshop gives you endless possibilities for your design. There are a variety of different approaches when it comes to adding texture, some are simple and others are more advanced. The 25 tutorials featured in this post will help you to learn a number of different techniques that can be used in your own design.

Add Visual Texture in 3 Easy Steps

20+ Tutorials for Working with Photoshop’s Tools

There are a lot of great Photoshop tutorials online that will teach you all kinds of techniques and tricks, but sometimes you may find that the basics of the tools are not always covered in the tutorials. If you’re looking to step up your Photoshop skills, understanding the basic tools and knowing how they work will make a huge difference in your work.

This post features more than 20 tutorials that will teach you essential techniques in Photoshop. In addition to tools, we’ll also showcase some tutorials that cover the Photoshop basics of layers and actions.

Pen Tool:

Photoshop’s Pen Tool: The Comprehensive Guide

12 WordPress Plugins for Theme Development

One of the great things about using WordPress as a content management system is the huge community of users and all of the resources that are available. While all plugins could be used by theme developers, the ones featured in this post have features that can be especially helpful for various aspects of theme development.

If you design and develop themes for you own use, custom themes for clients, premium themes for sale, or free themes to distribute, I think some of these plugins will be very useful to you.

Theme Switch

When you’re designing and developing a WordPress theme, you obviously won’t want the public to see your theme until it is ready. However, it’s helpful to also be able to test the theme in a live environment in attempt to find any flaws before officially changing over to the new theme. The Theme Switch plugin will allow you to control what theme is seen by logged in users with specific access privilege, and what theme is shown to regular visitors. This is a great way to test your theme before going live. It’s especially useful when you’re designing a new theme for an existing site or blog.

30 Photo Manipulation Tutorials for Photoshop

With Photoshop, amazing results are possible for photo manipulations. In this post we’ll feature 30 tutorials for creating your own photo manipulation. The tutorials shown here will teach a wide variety of techniques and will work towards end results of all kinds.

Combine Photo Elements to Create a Surreal Photo Manipulation

40 Photoshop Illustration Tutorials

While Adobe Illustrator is the preferred tool by most designers for illustrating and drawing digitally, Photoshop can also be used for some types of illustration. This post includes a selection of tutorials that cover the process of drawing various objects in Photoshop.

Creating a Cartoon Hot Air Balloon Scene