Nowadays whether you’re consuming or sharing content on the web, it is likely to be via a big website. Twitter, Youtube, or a Facebook-owned service are popular examples. Whilst this gives us the advantage of being able to participate in a larger conversation at almost no monetary cost, there is also the downside of potentially losing all our content if a company closes, as has happened in the past. There is an alternative to corporate bubbles online — it’s called the IndieWeb. Build your own personal websites, control your online presence, and learn on your own terms.
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Rather than do a round-up of the best deals available this Black Friday, we decided to do a round-up of the best independent products and makers. If you have money to spend, why not send some of this to folk creating great stuff in our community. We asked the Smashing community for their suggestions, and so here, Rachel Andrew brings you a list covering pretty much every kind of product you can imagine. We hope you can find something you need in these, and help support these hard-working folks.
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You don’t have much time to capture the attention of visitors to your PWA. Rather than waste that time with an overcrowded hero image or, even worse, disappoint them with a lackluster design, get creative with what little space you have above-the-fold. One of the best sources of inspiration for this? Movie posters. In this article, Suzanne Scacca will look at some examples of good and bad movie posters and see what sort of lessons we can use to help you with your PWA hero design.
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The feast or famine merry-go-round of freelancing can certainly be damaging to our bank accounts but more importantly it can deeply affect our self worth and mental health. This happens to everyone at some point or another. Even people who we assume are constantly over booked with work. Speak to people and be open and honest. It’s important to let people know you’re available for work. In this article, Liz Elcoate brings you some strategies she learnt the hard way to combat the quiet times.
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Do you have a sketch lying around and want to bring it to life? If you’re inspired by mid-century art as much as Manuela Langella, you’ll love the process and end result of this tutorial. Today, Manuela will show you how to create a beautiful cover design inspired by the 1950s. Specifically, the cover will be for a children’s book, so you’re going to create a well-known character: Little Red Riding Hood. Dig out your sketch and fire up Illustrator to get started!
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Does the word “influencer” make you cringe? If you’re paying attention to the right ones (i.e. digital influencers), you’ll find that their websites actually have some very valuable lessons for web designers. In this article, Suzanne Scacca will show you some of the tricks they use to establish authority through design. This post is about giving your website the same kind of clout as a digital influencer — and using that perceived expert status to consistently maintain high levels of traffic, engagement and referrals.
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The state of commercial web conferences is utterly broken. Setting up a conference isn’t an easy undertaking. It takes time and attention to all the little details that make up a truly memorable experience. It’s not something one can take lightly, and it’s often a major personal and financial commitment. But what lurks behind the scenes of such events is a widely spread, toxic culture despite the hefty ticket price. And more often than not, speakers bear the burden of all of their conference-related expenses, flights, and accommodation from their own pockets. This isn’t right, and it shouldn’t be acceptable in our industry.
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Did you know that there are three brain networks that are involved in creativity? In this article, Susan Weinschenk explores what creativity is, the recent brain science on what is happening in your brain when you are being creative, and the role of creativity in UX design. Is creativity something you can just turn on? Are some people just creative and others aren’t? And if so, which one are you? Let’s explore.
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A roundup of Advent Calendar sites of interest to web designers and developers. From accessibility to UX, coding challenges to Perl, there really is something for everyone this December. Today, Rachel Andrew brings you calendars which are true community efforts, often with the bulk of the work falling to an individual or tiny team, with no budget to pay authors and editors. So, please join us in supporting these efforts, share the articles that you enjoyed reading, and join the discussions respectfully. Whether you celebrate Christmas or not, you can certainly learn a lot of new things over the next 24 days.
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Rachel Andrew writes about her involvement with the CSS Working Group, and why she feels it is important that web developers understand what is being worked on in CSS, and have a way to offer feedback.
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