the graphic design blog that speaks the truth.
This WordPress tutorial will guide you through the process of displaying extra elements such as the featured image in the WordPress posts list. The default display A default list of posts in your WordPress admin panel will look something like the following: With tags, comments, and the date published normally displayed too. But what if we wanted to display the featured image of each of these posts in our list? The extended display To display our featured images in this...
The sad thing about trends, in any field, is that as they become overused they eventually turn into a cliché. A visual cliché in a logo is something that you should avoid at all costs, as one of the main characteristics of a good effective logo is that it should be unique. So if the world and his wife are utilising your same idea then it can effect not only your competitive advantage but also the way in which your...
Rest assured, it hasn’t! You are most likely reading this because you have received an email from what looks like Itunes that looks something like the following: This is just the latest in a long line of methods that hackers and phishers are using to lure in unsuspecting users. First we had hundreds of people winning Nigerian lotteries, then we had people being charged astronomical amounts on their paypal accounts. Now we have this new Itunes scam. I will admit,...
A common feature popping up on many WordPress websites and blogs is to have a landing page for the blog where the latest few blogs posts are displayed. Furthermore, these pages tend to only show the first few lines of text of said posts. This post will show you an extremely easy way to display a certain amount of the post content whilst maintaining any HTML tags (including links and formatting) that it might contain. The Code I wasn’t lying...
Our good friend Josh Hayes sent us a funny photo of what appears to be a similar brand name to our own. We love quilts too. Josh is a very talented designer living a million miles away in Australia. You can view some of his work on his website which leads to his latest pieces of work. Thanks again Josh!
This is the final excerpt from a free chapter from Smashing Logo Design. You can also read Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3. Promotion With the numbers of professional designers increasing every day, it’s more important than ever to promote yourself in order to remain competitive. Luckily, an abundance of methods and mediums are available to allow you to communicate with potential clients—locally or around the world—to let them know what you offer. Putting Together A Portfolio Ultimately, the...
In my second WordPress tutorial I will guide you through the process of creating individual options pages. First off, I think it is necessary to explain exactly what I mean by an “individual WordPress option page”. Whilst there are several tutorials available that tell you how to create a generalized WordPress options page, there seems to be nothing that tells you how to create standalone edits. By this I mean, say if wanted to add an extra menu item to...
This is an excerpt from a free chapter from Smashing Logo Design. You can read Part 1 here and part 2 here The Rise of the Web The Internet has changed our lives forever. Whether it has a positive or negative long-term effect on society remains to be seen, but it has certainly cracked open the world of logo design from the inside. Increased Opportunities The Internet has, in effect, reduced the size of the design industry—not in terms of...
Let me tell you a little story that is the inspiration for this post… A couple of weeks ago I received an enquiry asking for details of pricing guidelines for logo design. I responded asking for more details about the project in order to calculate a quotation based on the specifications of the project. It turns out that the company in question had recently launched a website but had ‘forgotten to sort out a logo’. In place of the logo...
The answer? VERY. One safe haven for web designers and developers in the past was the knowledge that their websites were always going to be viewed by someone using a desktop computer, with a mouse and a keyboard. This is not the case anymore. The wide-spread adoption of smartphones and tablets means there are now more mediums available for accessing web content than ever before. Furthermore, a recent study has shown that should mobile web browsing continue to grow at...
This is an excerpt from a free chapter from Smashing Logo Design. You can read Part 1 here Design Education One of the biggest debates within the design industry surrounds whether it is essential to have an official education in design to become a successful designer. Although design does have its theories, I believe that talent is a natural gift that can’t be taught; it can be encouraged and honed, though. Steve Douglas thinks that a formal education can help...
If you know a thing or two about web development, you’ll realize that the topic of this post is said somewhat tongue in cheek. Have you ever developed a website, got everything looking and working how you want it, and then decided to test it in Internet Explorer and it all looks different? You’re not alone. It is a well known fact that while popular browsers such as Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Opera are generally similar in their rendering of...
