CategoryDesign

March 29, 2014 — Gestalt principles are important to understand. They sit at the foundation of everything we do visually as designers. They describe how everyone visually perceives objects. This article is part of a new series about design principles that can serve both as a refresher for seasoned designers and reference for newcomers to the industry. Hopefully, the content covered here isn’t too obvious and self-explanatory, but it’s always great to have a nice quick refresher every now and again, isn’t it? Read more…

March 27, 2014 — The Mystery continues! To celebrate the launch of Paul Boag’s Digital Adaptation book, we’ve prepared a new riddle, and this time it’s a bit different and a bit easier. Below you’ll find three animated GIFs that contain a hidden message. Once you’ve resolved the mystery, please tweet the full sentence @smashingmag using the hashtag #smashing. Read more…

March 14, 2014 — Writing a book is a scary experience. And when it is published, you can be certain of only one thing: You will be criticized. Paul Boag’s book Digital Adaptation will soon be officially released, and he knows a lot of people are going to disagree with what he has written. They are going to argue that he focuses too much on digital and its characteristics and its impact on business, when ultimately digital is just a tool. But… is it just a tool? Read more…

February 7, 2014 — As graphic designers, you’ll often have to work with off-the-shelf material created by others. Also, you’ll often have to follow the branding already developed by someone else, and that’s ok because it’s part of the job. But the part of a project that almost every graphic designer likes and is proud of the most is something that you can do from scratch. That’s why Anna Shuvalova loves illustration projects so much. Read more…

January 28, 2014 — The Mystery continues! To celebrate the launch of the SmashingConf NYC, we’ve prepared a new riddle, and this time it’s not going to be any easier, but the reward is worth the effort. In this piece, you’ll find an animated GIF that contains a hidden message. Once you’ve resolved the mystery, you’ll see a Twitter hashtag displayed in plain text. Read more…

January 17, 2014 — In this interview of the “How I Work” series, Jacob Cook is speaking with Andres Glusman, of Meetup, a company that uses the efficiency of the Internet to conveniently connect people offline. Andres works as the VP of Strategy, Product and Community in Meetup’s New York City office. In this piece, he tells us how the company uses User Experience, Lean Startup methods and innovative ways of organizing teams to fuel the company’s growth. Read more…

January 8, 2014 — Here at Smashing Magazine, our aim is to highlight topics that inspire, challenge, and motivate us to do more and do it better. The design-related content that is published in the Design category of the magazine is dedicated to our cherished community of designers (developers and other are welcome too, of course!) who want to help each other as well as learn from each other. Read more…

December 18, 2013 — Online shopping is about convenience and comfort, and those of us who have ventured into the realm of online shopping know how time-consuming it can be. The online stores that stand out from the rest are those that go the extra mile for their users. In this article, Shavaughn Haack will look at some small and big e-commerce websites that create pleasant online shopping experiences. You’ll consider the experience from the very start to the very end, right through to the checkout process. Read more…

November 28, 2013 — Today, Vitaly Friedman reveals the Smashing Book Mystery riddle and announces the winners! (in case you want to figure it out first, close this window since there are spoilers in this post. Read more…

November 11, 2013 — If customers can’t find a product, they can’t buy it. Therefore we invested eight months conducting a large-scale usability research study on the product-finding experience. We set out to explore how users navigate, find and select products on e-commerce websites. Throughout the test sessions, the subjects would abandon websites because they were unable to find the products they were looking for. All of these usability issues have been distilled into 79 concise guidelines in a report titled “Homepage & Category Usability.” In this article, we’ll go over seven of the guidelines. Read more…