There are a lot of social networks available for every niche you can think of, some of them aren’t as good as others and the good ones always need a little attention. I’m sure a lot of you have been to a few of these but should be members of all of them. Interaction is important when it comes to social networks. Ensuring that you do your part as a member and contribute to them by voting on content or contributing to a conversation.

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Popularity: 100%

The year is getting close to an end and it seems that in these last couple of weeks of the year only the most dedicated bloggers are taking time to write posts. Which is great for those that are looking for content, but difficult for those of us that want to be sure to get all of the great stories we have read throughout the week out to those looking for great design content. At any rate, I have compiled a pretty good list of content. Thanks for everyone’s submissions for this week also. Be sure to submit your submissions by the end of day Friday this next week, and only submissions for posts that happened between Monday-Friday will count. I got a lot this time dating before last weekend.

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Popularity: 15%

We all have our different practices that we use for starting a design of any kind. Sometimes we start with paper and pen or sometimes we may even jump right into Photoshop or Illustrator and begin tossing around ideas. One step we can’t skip though is choosing the right color scheme for our design. It is always important to ensure that we understand the color we use in our design. Whether our design be a web site design or print work the color combination we choose is one of the most important choices. In order to ensure that we have a combination that will work well there is always some research that may be done. Especially when it comes to designing a logo or doing branding for a company.

There are several web sites available for designers from Oklahoma to Japan to find color schemes that will match their client’s or own design ideas. There is even color software available for web designers to use for pulling color from images.
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Popularity: 11%

Most designers don’t like spending a lot of money on stock photography or font discs, so there are numerous web sites available that offer quality, free stock images, fonts, icons and more. You have to be careful with some of the sites, you don’t want to get yourself in a legal mess by using something copyrighted in a commercial project. The sites I have listed here claim to adhere to copyright laws. (more…)

Popularity: 7%

It is an interesting topic, most of us consider ourselves the masters of our field or talented enough to be able to figure everything out on our own. this just isn’t the case for any of us. We have to be sure to infuse our lives with a little modesty otherwise we risk becoming pompous and stuck in creative ruts.

It is important to understand how other people are doing things, if you can take some time out of your day to possibly even watch someone else work in Photoshop or in CSS you may find that you learn something completely new by just watching someone else work. (more…)

Popularity: 5%

I have recently been looking for a good e-commerce solution for a web design client and have had the opportunity to go through several of the most popular ones that I could find through Google. I was looking for a solution that was open source, preferably in PHP and MySQL and that was standards compliant.

It was also important to have a product that was expandable so I could add features easily to it for this client and any others that would need a shopping cart. I wasn’t looking for a shopping cart solution that would require hacks to get it where I needed it but something that would be as flexible as the web design business demands. (more…)

Popularity: 5%

LinkedIn, the professional social networking tool is said to be adding photos to its network on Friday. The social networking software for the professional industry has had a very conservative point of view in the past. However, recently Facebook has become very popular amongst industry professionals because of its less locked down approach.

LinkedIn has decided to go ahead and allow 1 photo per a user. Currently the network reports it has 14 million users and adds 250,000 new users every week. There are also reports of the service opening up its API to developers to custom design widgets inside and outside of the social networking service.

Popularity: 4%

Many of you have been asking, “What fonts are safe for me to use on the web?” and “Is there a list of web safe fonts for reference?” Well I am here to help. Web safe fonts are ever important but a lot of designers I have seen lately are forgoing this important step in their design creation. Some are taking the steps to use a font similar to a web safe font but because it is not in fact web safe they inevitably have to default back to a font that isn’t quite the same. Their design loses a little of itself and at this point they typically struggle to find a font that is close and web safe. There are plenty of web safe fonts available it just takes some creativity in using them to your advantage. I have a list of web safe fonts available in the article to help everyone out. (more…)

Popularity: 8%

There are a lot of extensions out there, most of them are unnecessary because of their limited worth to more advanced users. The big downfall for some of the extensions is that they are a full toolbar and take up entirely too much screen real estate for their total worth as a tool. Just like a Swiss Army Knife you have to be able to conceal the smaller tools until you are ready to use them — hence Swiss Army making it pocket worthy and not made for a lanyard. (more…)

Popularity: 6%

These are the top design podcasts that i frequently watch/listen to throughout the week, they are all updated weekly and have a ton of useful information for the seasoned professional designer and for the new designers whether freelance designer or just starting an entry level design job. I wish I could separate these into the top 5 design video podcasts and top 5 design audio podcasts but unfortunately there just aren’t that many out there and a lot of the podcasts available just aren’t any good or updated enough to be worth your time or mine. (more…)

Popularity: 6%