Web Design for Color Blind Users

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Original Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Colorburned/~3/xu7OS5kpUfY/

If you are not color blind, chances are you don’t think about this problem very often. People who live with colorblindness, on the other hand, have to think about it all the time. Before we get into ways for web designers to create better websites for color blind users, let’s spend a little time understanding color blindness better.

 

8% of men and 0.5% of women (of Northern European descent) are colorblind. This might make it sound like color blindness is a condition with identical symptoms between different cases. This is not the case. Color blindness has a whole range of color perception symptoms. For instance, some color blind people see almost normal ranges of color spectrum, while a small percentage see only in black and white.

 

Color blindness comes from a common flaw in the gene that causes the creation of color receptor Cones in the human eye. The cones are the color receptor bodies (rods detect blacks, whites, and shade contrasts). This gene is found on the X chromosome, meaning that for men (who have one X and one Y chromosome) if the gene on the one X chromosome is flawed, they will be color blind. Women have two X chromosomes, so if the gene on one isn’t working correctly, chances are that it is functioning properly on the other chromosome.

 

That’s why more men have color blindness than women. Color blind individuals usually have trouble telling certain colors apart, especially if they are at the same brightness level. One common sort of color blindness causes people to see greens, yellows, and oranges as basically the same color. The only way to distinguish them is to see that one color is lighter or darker than another (in terms of closeness to white or black, not saturation of the color itself). This last point offers clues about how to design for color blind users.

 

It is important for web designers to create websites that don’t use difficult colors right beside each other, especially if they are at similar levels of lightness/darkness. This is especially true of the color of text. Text that isn’t colored in a way that color blind people can see will be invisible, swallowed up by the background color is sits upon.

 

Variations in lightness and darkness are helpful, but there is another easy way to help color blind users navigate a website. Shapes and textures offer helpful clues when navigating a website. They offer clues that colors can’t, and which color blind users can perceive without difficulty. If you think that a color scheme may be problematic for a color blind user, consider altering the texture, not the colors.

 

If you are concerned about the usability of your website for color blind users, do some research on the topic. It is a surprisingly deep topic, and one that you will need to master if you are to create designs that become widely used. After all, if 8% (potentially) of your users can’t use your website, is it really a good website?

The post Web Design for Color Blind Users appeared first on Colorburned.

What Every Designer Should Know About Copyright

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Original Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/visualswirl/~3/Nzj9rTP0V5w/

With the advent of the Internet it has become easier than ever to steal, copy, or pirate another’s work. Because of this, it is more important than ever to have increased copyright knowledge and protection. And, since designers work almost solely in the world of creating original work, their very livelihood can at times rest upon their ability to defend themselves from copyright infringement.

Quick Disclaimer: The following is not legal advice. Legal advice deals with specific cases of law and legal action. I am not a lawyer and am not qualified to give legal advice. Instead, these are general facts about the law, which is ever evolving. For dealing with any legal matters, or legal advice, please contact an attorney.

What Copyright Is

The first thing every designer needs to know about the copyright law is just what copyright is. Copyright is the law protecting the exclusive rights of a creator’s original work. It sounds straightforward, but at times it can be rather confusing.

Essentially, copyright law in today’s realm is meant to protect original creative work from unauthorized copying, adapting, or publishing. It protects the sole right of the creator to copy, distribute, publish, and display, and sell the work as they choose.

The Difference Between Copyright and Trademark

Trademarks are used by companies for recognition. They are typically a word, phrase, symbol, device, or name used for recognition purposes. In effect, trademarks are a symbol used for quick recognition by a corporation or entity.

Copyright, on the other hand, deals with any original work, not just a company’s symbol.

What Can’t Be Copyrighted

Purely mechanical, clerical, or factual information.

Work that is not sufficiently original. General lyrics or poems like “Want you so bad baby” don’t pass the test.

Ideas, systems, operations, or procedures.

Works that have already had their copyright expire

Lastly, copyrighted items that are used in fair use conditions

Fair use

Fair use is an exception to copyright laws. Fair use was made to allow copyrighted material be used without the owner’s permission, in so called fair use circumstances. In the United States, these are mostly limited to education uses, new reportage, and satire/parody.

Exclusive Rights

The exclusive rights granted by copyright are temporary. However, that is a matter of decades rather than days or months. Copyrighted work will eventually move into the realm of public use, but typically the author/creator maintains their exclusive rights for an extended period of time, often as long as they are alive.

Owner of Copyright Work

As a designer, it is important to know when the work you create should fall under the protection of copyright, and whether you own the rights to the original work.

Typically speaking, it is always the creator of the original work who owns the copyright, even if allowing the work to be used commercially. However, if the designer is employed by a company and specifically designs something for the employer, the company typically owns the copyright.

Whether the designer keeps the copyrights while self-employed is largely the designer’s decision. The designer has to legally assign the copyright over to the client in order for the client to legally get full control of the copyrighted material. However, most clients typically expect the copyright as part of a package deal with their payment.

The Need to Register

In the United States original work doesn’t need to be registered to enjoy the protection of copyright. However, there are some very serious benefits to registering any valuable, unique, or original work with the US copyright office.

Although all original works are protected under copyright law, whether or not they were registered, it is the registration that makes copyright infringement easy to prove. To this end, the US government will cover the legal fees for a copyright infringement case if the original work is registered with them.

So, the creator of original work could press a copyright infringement suit against someone violating their copyright protections. However, an unregistered creator would have to pay the legal fees themselves, and wouldn’t be awarded any money as just compensation. The registered owner would have their fees paid by the US government, and would more than likely receive statutory damages in the form of money, which isn’t something an unregistered owner can expect.

So, in effect, no one ever needs to register their intellectual property. In practice however, it makes real fiscal sense, along with granting peace of mind.

Again, I’m not a lawyer. If you have any legal questions I would urge you to seek legal counsel.

Hopefully this will help educate designers about the generalities of copyright law. In this day and age there is a very real need for designer to be well informed and prepared against copyright infringement. What experiences have you had as a designer with copyright infringement? Is there anything you would recommend to designers out there concerning copyrights?

The post What Every Designer Should Know About Copyright appeared first on Visual Swirl Design Resources.

If you really dislike FOUT, `font-display: optional` might be your jam

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Original Source: https://css-tricks.com/really-dislike-fout-font-display-optional-might-jam/

The story of FOUT is so fascinating. Browsers used to do it: show a “fallback” font while a custom font loads, then flop out the text once it has. The industry kinda hated it, because it felt jerky and could cause re-layout. So browsers changed and started hiding text until the custom font loaded. The industry hated that even more. Nothing worse than a page with no text at all!

Font loading got wicked complicated. Check out this video of Zach Leatherman and I talking it out.

Now browsers are saying, why don’t we give control back to you in the form of API’s and CSS. You can take control of the behavior with the font-display property (spec).

It seems like font-display: swap; gets most of the attention. It’s for good reason. That’s the value that brings back FOUT in the strongest way. The browser will not wait at all for an unloaded font. It will show text immediately in the best-matching-and-available font in the stack, then if/when a higher-matching font loads, it will “swap” to that.

@font-face {
font-family: Merriweather;
src: url(/path/to/fonts/Merriweather.woff) format(‘woff’);
font-weight: 400;
font-style: normal;
font-display: swap;
}

body {
font-family: Merriweather, /* Use this if it’s immediately available, or swap to it if it gets downloaded within a few seconds */
Georgia, /* Use this if Merriweather isn’t downloaded yet. */
serif; /* Bottom of the stack. System doesn’t have Georgia. */

}

The people wanted their FOUT back, they got it. Well, as soon as font-display is supported in their browser, anyway. Right now we’re looking at Chrome 60+ as the only browser shipping it (which means it won’t be long for the rest of the Blink clan). It’s behind a flag in Firefox already, so that’s a good sign.

But what if you don’t particularly like FOUT?

One option there is font-display: fallback;. It’s slightly weirdly named, as it’s a lot like the default behavior (auto or block). The difference is that it has a really short waiting period (“font block period”), ~100ms, where nothing is shown if the font isn’t ready to go in that super short period, a fallback will be shown instead. Then the font has ~3s to get loaded and it will swap in, otherwise, it never will.

That seems pretty reasonable. What you’re preventing there is a late-term swap, which is when it’s the most awkward. Still that risk of FOUT though.

If you’d prefer that if the web font isn’t immediately available, to just show the fallback font and not ever swap to it, even after it’s downloaded. You can! That’s what font-display: optional; does. It still gives the ~100ms font block period (giving the font a fighting chance to show up on first page view), but after that, the fallback is shown and will not swap. Chances are, the font did ultimately get downloaded, and next page view it will be cached and used.

This is font-display: optional; in Chrome 60. With a clean cache, the page loads with the fallback font. The font is downloaded, but not used. Then with the cache primed, the second page load uses the font.

I’m fairly open minded here. I can see how font-display: swap; is ideal for the best accessibility of content. I’m no big fan of FOUT, so I can see the appeal of font-display: optional;. I can also see how font-display: fallback; kinda splits the middle.

Aside from the browser support being vital in making use of this, there is also the matter of web font providers supporting it. For example, when using Google Fonts default font loading methods, you don’t have an opportunity to use font-display because the @font-face blocks come from the Google-hosted stylesheets. There is an open discussion on that. There are ways to use Google Fonts with your own @font-face blocks though. Definitely consult Zach Leatherman’s guide.

If you really dislike FOUT, `font-display: optional` might be your jam is a post from CSS-Tricks

50 User-Friendly Website Designs That Work

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Original Source: https://line25.com/inspiration/user-friendly-website-designs

We’ve rounded up a massive collection of 50 user-friendly website designs to inspire you. These user-friendly website designs are gathered from various niches, from popular websites such as National Geographic, Marni or The Winter Olympic Games, to website concepts or small web design projects we found featured on Behance.

All web designers should create their websites with usability in mind. This feature keeps your visitors more engaged, making sure they will stay longer on your website.

But what makes your website more user-friendly? A fully responsive design, make your content visible, for instance, the menu, important buttons, be careful of what fonts you use, colors etc. Also, you should keep in mind to put your contact information, social media, use a fixed menu which is visible at all times. Moreover, you should consider accepting online orders or including a search bar, all to make your visitor’s job easier when navigating through your site.

These great user-friendly websites are not only beautifully designed but also have some key features which are beneficial to the overall design.

Browse through these awesome user-friendly website designs and study them! They will surely inspire you to create beautiful and functional web designs.

National Geographic

This is a gorgeous website which has a clear structure, a visible menu, beautiful typefaces, and a unique homepage slider.

National Geographic Channel Website Design

Uncrate 2.0

This wonderful website concept has a fully responsive design, includes a search bar and the content is well-organized and visible. All these features make it more user-friendly and appealing to the visitors.

Uncrate User-Friendly Website Concept

Madewell

Here’s a beautiful website concept design that has a user-friendly layout. Get your inspiration from this stunning design and see what neat features your discover.

Madewell User-friendly Website Concept

Sikora Ibizan Hounds by Brandon Termini 

This website has a clear structure with concise information and beautiful high-quality images. The logo and the contact information are visible and at reach.

Sikora Ibizan Hounds by Brandon Termini

Aquawa on Behance

This is a fully responsive design which will automatically adapt its content to perfectly fit any screen size.

Aquawa User-Friendly Website Concept

WAVERIDER

This is another user-friendly website design which includes user-friendly features. These include visible menu and logo design, 100% responsive layout, big headings with precise information, etc.

WAVERIDER User-Friendly Website

Kara

This is a stunning web design concept which has an eye-catching design that will surely keep your users engaged.

Kara User-Friendly Web Concept

Drew Watts

This website has a fixed header and footer which include all the necessary information to navigate through your website.

Drew Watts Website Cocept

STP – Simple, Clean, Masonry

This design includes a neat feature which brings back the header, with the menu and the logo, each time you scroll up. Also, it has a well-thought overall design with beautiful high-quality images.

STP User-Friendly Website Concept

Nike: Tights of the Moment by Mariola Bruszewska

This is a beautifully colored website which includes neat features and an eye-catching design. The homepage slider is unique and has some great transitions.

Nike Website Concept

Hireinfluence

Here you have an excellent website which has a wonderful eye-catching design and neat features.

Hireinfluence Stunning User-friendly Website

The French Cuisse

This is a minimalistic design with a well-organized grid layout. Also, it’s 100% responsible and it includes neat features that make it user-friendly.

French Cuisse User-Friendly Website Concept

The New Heroes & Pioneers

Here’s another outstanding website concept which you can use as an inspiration. Discover its full features and see what new things you can learn.

The New Heroes & Pioneers Web Design

Ok Kid – Grundlos Extended

The design of this website is minimalistic with subtle animations. The simple details and the creative design give it a unique appearance.

Ok Kid Website Concept

Onlab – Font for the HBC

Here’s an outstanding one-page design which has an eye-catching design that will get your attention. This design uses a fixed menu design which allows you to easily navigate through each section.

Onlab Website Design

The Woman

You can use this beautiful website design as an inspiration for future projects. This layout is fully responsive with neat features and stunning design.

TheWoman Website Design

SocioDesign

SocioDesign is an experienced design and strategy agency based in London. This is an excellent website with a well-organized layout.

SocioDesign Website Design

Tatte – Amanda Jane Jones

Get inspired by this outstanding website design concept and use what you learn in your future projects. The menu, buttons and minimalist style are perfect for this kind of website.

Tatte Website Design

Scotland Can Make It! designed by Graphical House

This is a beautiful website design with a user-friendly layout. It is fully responsive, has a minimalist design style and the typography is very well chosen.

Scotland Can Make It! Website Design

Ouur Collection

This website has a fully responsive layout which will automatically adapt its content to fit any screen size. It makes use of large images to increase the visual impact of the design.

Ouur Collection Website Design

And And Web Design

This website uses the ultimate trends in web design, animations, creative menus, high-quality images, and more.

And And Web Design Website Design Concept

Shotfolio PSD Theme by Julián Pascual, via Behance

Here’s a well-designed website theme which you can quickly customize to make it meet your requirements. This design has a user-friendly design and it includes powerful features.

Shotfolio psd Theme by Julián Pascual, via Behance

Marni

Marni is a user-friendly website with all the necessary functionalities of an online store. The designer included many great features which will ease the navigation through the website.

Marni Website Design

Frú Frú

There’s much to say about this wonderful website design. With a responsive design, well-organized content, and other neat features, this website has a user-friendly layout which will keep your users engaged.

Frú Frú Website Design

World of Swiss

Use this beautiful website design as an inspiration for your future projects. This layout includes an interactive design, high-quality images, and more.

World of Swiss User-Friendly Website Concept

Twiggy Bar 

This is a beautiful website which has well-organized content with a creative design that will surely get noticed. It almost has a magazine-style layout.

Twiggy Bar Website Concept

Lala Berlin by Stefan Schuster

Here’s an outstanding web design with also includes an online shop. Follow this link and see its full design and features.

Lala Berlin User-Friendly Website Design

Bureau of Visual Affairs

This website has a creative menu design, parallax effect, neat animations and a stunning design. These features make it user-friendly and accessible to all viewers.

Bureau of Visual Affairs Website Design

Johann Lucchini

Here you have an outstanding portfolio website with a user-friendly design. The works previews are showcased in an organized grid pattern which allows you to view them better.

Johann Lucchini Website Concept

Everlane

You can use this wonderful website design as an inspiration for future projects. This layout has a fixed menu navigation which eases your navigation through the website.

 Everlane User-Friendly Website Concept
THISISPAPER

This is an amazing website design which has many user-friendly features. These include a well-organized content, clean design, visible information, responsive design, and more.

THISISPAPER Website Concept

Brave People

This website has a professional design with powerful features such as parallax effect, animations, full-screen layout, etc.

Brave People Website Design

GC Watches

In this website, you’ll discover high-quality images, a sticky menu, 100% responsive, all used with great craftsmanship and attention to details. This is an overall elegant and luxurious design.

GC Watches User-Friendly Website Concept

Escape Committee

This website makes use of white space perfectly, the images being at the center of attention throughout the site. Its layout is fully responsive which allows you to view the content perfectly on any screen size.

Escape Committee Website Design

Nixon

This is an elegant website with a store that was created for watches and premium accessories. Get inspired by the way this online store emphasizes its products while having a great UX design.

Nixon User-Friendly Website Concept

Doug Aitken: The Source

Here you have a beautiful website with a creative design. The layout includes multiple interviews which are showcased in a unique manner, on top of the web page.

Doug Aitken The Source Website Design

Crop the Block

This is an amazing full-screen website which has a user-friendly design. Also, you’ll find lots of eye-catching videos and beautiful fonts.

Crop the Block User-Friendly Website Concept

Catscarf

There are a lot of high-quality images on this online shop that will impress any animal lover. Besides having a great design, this website also has a fully responsive layout that adapts to any screen size.

Catscarf Website Design

Falve

This is a beautiful website design which has a user-friendly layout. This includes a responsive design, well-organized content with visible headings, buttons, and other neat features.

 Falve User-Friendly Website Concept
Intersection

The design of this website is fully responsive, which allows it to be displayed perfectly on any device. The headings blend perfectly with the full-screen image backgrounds.

Intersection Website Design

Harry’s

This is a full-screen website design with an user-friendly layout. You’ll discover stunning images, beautiful fonts, well-organized content, etc.

Harry’s User-Friendly Website Concept

Squarespace

You all have heard about Squarespace. Use this outstanding design as an inspiration for your future projects. This design uses interactive animations, beautiful images, and many customizable features.

Squarespace Website Design

Jonathan Decosta

This website uses an organized grid structure to display various images. Also, the menu has a fixed position and, when used, it enables an overlay which takes up almost all the page space.

Jonathan Decosta

IWC Schaffhausen

IWC Schaffhausen is an online store with a professional design and an user-friendly layout. There are multiple video backgrounds which will definitely get your attention.

IWC Schaffhausen Website Design

Spotify

Spotify’s popular website includes a fixed header design, with a transparent background. Also, this design has a beautiful colored background image. There are plenty of design tricks to learn from this website’s layout.

Spotify User-Friendly Website Concept

Google Glass

Google Glass website design is simple yet effective. See what features you discover and use in your designs.

Google Glass Website Concept

Jack Daniels

With a beautiful parallax effect, high-quality images and a well-known brand, this website attracts and keeps its users engaged.

Jack Daniels Website Design

Symbolset

This website has an eye-catching color-changing background and an animated typography. These are some neat features that add to the creativity of this website.

Symbolset User-Friendly Website Concept

Simone Marcarino

Here is an interactively animated homepage which encourages you to take action. This design has a minimalistic layout which comes to life when hovered over.

Simone Marcarino Website Design

Pulse

This is a complex website design which includes multiple neat features and a well-thought design with beautiful colors and stunning graphics.

Pulse Website Design

Creating a user friendly design is important for many reason. First, a cluttered design will frustrate your user, and they may leave – way before they have done whatever it is they were meant to do on your website (whether it is to purchase something, fill out a lead form, read an article, or anything else). Secondly, a well thought of and well laid-out design will keep your users coming back – something that every website owner will be happy with. So user these designs for inspiration when creating your next user-friendly website.

Which of these designs were your favorite and why?

The post 50 User-Friendly Website Designs That Work appeared first on Line25.

Integrate Your Wufoo Forms Everywhere

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Original Source: https://ad.doubleclick.net/ddm/clk/303181152;128762502;s

At its heart, Wufoo is a form builder. If you need any type of form, you can build it super quickly by selecting and customizing the fields you need in Wufoo’s fantastically easy to use form builder. I can hardly imagine a more useful web app for web designers and developers.

But what is a form, at its essence? Just a means to collect data. The important part is what you do with that data. You can do all the obvious stuff. You can have entries emailed to you. You can build reports from the data. You can explore the data inside Wufoo, or use the API to access the data outside of Wufoo.

Those things are just the tip of the iceberg of what you can do with data you collect with your Wufoo forms. There are built-in integrations! For example, say you have a form that includes an email address field, and you’d like to ship that email address over to MailChimp or Campaign Monitor into a particular mailing list. That’s just a few clicks away. Or say the form has some element of lead generation and you want to send the details to Salesforce. Or you want to tweet data from the form upon submission. Same deal, just a few clicks.

One of my favorites is that Wufoo works tremendously well with Zapier. That’s the whole point of Zapier, you can use it to connect services together! For example, the Ask a Question form over on the ShopTalk website not only emails Dave and I but adds the question to a Trello board for us to organize into shows. We could easily have it integrate into Evernote, dump into Google Sheets, or work with any of hundreds of other services. Wufoo is such a great source of data for integrations, it begs for playing with.

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Integrate Your Wufoo Forms Everywhere is a post from CSS-Tricks

Desktop Wallpaper Calendars for June 2012

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Original Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/visualswirl/~3/VkH0mdY42ew/

June is here and that means it’s time laying out by the pool, catching lightning bugs, grilling out, and downloading some awesome new desktop wallpaper calendars. These wallpapers have been hand-picked from talented artists and designers that you’ve come to know over the last few months. Feel free to share your favorites and check back next month for some great new desktop calendars. As always, if you’d like to include your own design in future roundups, let me know.

 6 Summer Fun Wallpaper Calendars for your Desktop
Wallpaper by Dave Hornsby

A vibrant and bright calendar with sun flares to boot. This beautiful design is available for download from Dribbble.

June 2012 Desktop Wallpaper Calendar

Wallpaper by iBrandStudio

This illustrated wallpaper design  shows off a fun color palette that is sure to brighten your desktop.

June 2012 Calendar Wallpaper

Wallpaper by Paper Leaf

A more contemporary and minimal design makes this calendar perfect for the clean desktop enthusiasts. Nothing but the view of the rolling hills disappearing into the horizon.

Wallpaper by Webgranth

Another illustrated wallpaper, this time with an important message. If you’re into conservation or just like the color blue, this might be your calendar of choice for June.

June 2012 Calendar Wallpaper

Wallpaper by Studio of Mae

Studio of Mae keeps rolling out the simple yet beaufitful wallpapers with what looks like “literally” wallpaper. Crafty indeed!

June 2012 Calendar Wallpaper

Wallpaper by Kriegs

Thinking of the beach? This purple-shaded wallpaper reminds us of one of the best joys of summer. Now if only we can get out from behind our desks for a few days.

That’s the roundup. Please let us know which calendar is your favorite by leaving a comment below.

The post Desktop Wallpaper Calendars for June 2012 appeared first on Visual Swirl Design Resources.

20 Great Examples of the Flat Trend in Web Design

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Original Source: https://line25.com/articles/20-great-examples-of-the-flat-trend-in-web-design

The flat trend in web design has recently gained a lot of popularity and we started noticing lots of website and interface designs springing up with this design style.

Flat design is a label the community has adopted for designs leaving behind drop shadows, subtle textures, and gradients in favor of solid colors, clean layouts and sharp typography, somewhat similar to the design of Windows 8 and the Metro UI.

This post showcases 20 great website designs that all exhibit popular traits of the flat trend in web design.

Want more? Check out these flat design freebies you can download!

Hell’o Baby

This is an interactive cross-platform baby album with additional services such as measurements, stickers, video stories, printed albums, postcards. They use a dynamic, flat design on their website, which we love!

Hell'o Baby flat trend in web design

It’s a Shape Christmas

Shape Christmas is an Interactive Advent Calendar themed raising money for charity. They use a dynamic flat style design for their website, with lots of subtle animations and transitions.

It's a Shape Christmas flat trend in web design

Buffalo

Buffalo is a small web design & development agency based in Brighton, UK. They use flat design elements on their website and a beautiful color palette.

flat trend in web design

Lorenzo Verzini

Lorenzo Verzini is an Italian designer & art director living in London, working in the field for more than 9 years and this is his portfolio website.

flat trend in web design website

oak.is

This is a studio that helps to build creative products, investing in new ideas, and helping companies grow. They use a bold color palette, nice typography effects, and almost no images!

Oak Studios

SpellTower

This is the presentation website of a game that lets you find as many words as you can in a jumble of letters. It uses flat design elements and beautiful transitions.

Flat Trend website design

The Gently Mad Podcast

The Gently Mad is a podcast about life, business & entrepreneurship. This monochromatic blog has a simple, minimalist, flat layout.

The Gently Mad Podcast Flat Trend

Brewery

This website combines illustrations with the flat design trend. It is beautifully created and will surely inspire you.

Cybeer Bar - Pour Beer With Your Phone Flat Trend

Lunar

This is another flat presentation website, this time for a digital-minded studio focused on designing high-end experiences. What we liked about this is the combo between the flat style and the dynamic video background.

Lunar Gravity Flat Trend

Helbak Ceramics

This is the combined brand site and web shop for the Danish ceramist Malene Helbak. Bold, flat colors blend beautifully with high-quality images in this website design.

Helbak Ceramics Flat design

450 GSM

This website helps you print online 450gsm business cards, flyers, leaflets, greeting cards, stickers, postcards, pull-up banners, and posters. It is a perfect example of how flat style can be used in web design.

450-GSM Flat design

Crafting Type

Crafting Type workshops teach font design beginners how to create their own original typefaces. This is their presentation website.

Flat design

Friends of the Web

Friends of The Web designs and develops custom web and mobile applications with Ruby on Rails, React, Solidus, and Swift. They use a simple, clean, minimalist flat design for their website.

Friends of the Web

Dropbox Guide

This website helps you learn how to sync, share, and manage your files with Dropbox Business. It uses a simple but effective flat design with beautiful illustrations.

Dropbox-Guide

Lab21

This website has a simple, responsive design with lots of flat design elements added to it.

Lab21

MetroTwit

This is a made-for-Windows software to access Twitter with simple Metro-style design and features. While the software itself is no longer available, the website can still be used as flat design inspiration.

View the full website design

Semplicelabs

This website design combines large typography with flat colors and flat design elements. Check it out!

Semplicelabs Flat design

Etch

This is the website of a small team of Designers and Developers who help startups build new products.

Flat design inspiration

R+Co

R+Co is a collective of some of the most forward-thinking, rule-bending hairstylists in the business and this is their awesome website.

The Culture of Hairdressing Flat design

Quincy Réquin & Associates, lawyers

This is the presentation website of an independent lawyers office based in Lyon and Paris.

Quincy Flat design

The post 20 Great Examples of the Flat Trend in Web Design appeared first on Line25.

New & Upcoming Course Highlights: Data Visualization in Excel & Using Create React App

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Original Source: http://blog.teamtreehouse.com/new-upcoming-course-highlights-data-visualization-excel-create-react-app

Every week, new courses and workshops are published to the growing Treehouse Library! Here’s a short list of what we’ve added recently, upcoming course highlights, and our weekly video update of What’s New at Treehouse.

NEW COURSE

Data Visualization in Excel– Michael Watson (60 minutes)

This overview of Data Visualization in Excel is designed for absolute beginners, but can also benefit people who have already been using Excel to create charts. You will learn about the fundamentals of data visualization, how create types of charts in Excel, and tips on how to get the most of the charts you make.

screen-shot-2017-07-27-at-1-29-25-pm

NEW WORKSHOP

Using Create React App– Guil Hernandez (22 minutes)

Create React App is a tool built by developers at Facebook to help you build React applications. It saves you from time-consuming setup and configuration. You simply run one command and create react app sets up the tools you need to start your React project. Learn to quickly set up React projects using Create React App.

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UPCOMING

Data Visualization with Bokeh– (July 2017)

Learn how to use the Bokeh library to generate interactive charts, graphs, and other visualizations using Python. We’ll explore a world population data set and see how to generate different charts using this powerful library.

.NET Core CLI Quick Start– (July 2017)

In this quick start workshop, you’ll learn how to use the .NET Core CLI to create a simple .NET Core console application.

Start learning to code today with your free trial on Treehouse.

The post New & Upcoming Course Highlights: Data Visualization in Excel & Using Create React App appeared first on Treehouse Blog.

3 Reasons Why Customer Satisfaction and a Well Designed Website Are Related

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Original Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Colorburned/~3/9Ye6cPeBBJs/

You may think of your website as something that’s a promotional tool and a representation of you or your business but might not have stopped to think about how it’s directly associated with customer service. Keep reading to learn about that important connection and why it matters when you’re building a well-designed website.

People Get Frustrated When They Can’t Find What They Need

Think back to the last time you were in a grocery store and had trouble finding a certain item you wanted to buy. That event caused you to waste time and may have even made you so fed up that you were close to deciding not to shop there again.

The same thing could happen if you build a website that’s poorly designed and badly organized. If people go to your website to fulfill a certain purpose and are not able to accomplish that task, they’re likely to leave quickly before ever giving your website a chance and may not return to it.

Word Spreads Quickly Online

People are usually quick to tell others about especially good or bad experiences they’ve had. For example, they might rave to friends about good movies, tasty restaurants, and skilled hairdressers. However, if they have experiences they’d rather forget, they’ll often warn others so they don’t make the same mistakes.

If your website has lots of errors or isn’t optimized for mobile devices, those are two things that could cause people to tell their friends it’s not worthwhile to spend any time at your website. If you upset the customers who do decide to visit your site, it’ll be a lot harder to get new traffic because a lot of potential visitors will have probably heard from others that their time is better spent elsewhere.

Bad Websites Make It Hard to Build Long-Term Relationships

If you’re lucky, you may be able to entice people to stay on your website long enough to do one thing, such as read a blog post, look at your online portfolio, or purchase something, despite having a poorly designed website. However, it’s too risky and foolish to assume those people will keep coming back even though your site isn’t serving them well.

However, once you depend on a professional website builder to craft a site that meets your ideas and is representative of your goals, it’ll be much easier to enjoy long-term relationships with site visitors. Before long, they might bookmark your page so they can come back to it quickly and may even sign up for your newsletter or another type of periodic correspondence.

When your website looks nice and is easy to navigate, people are much more likely to return to it because they actually enjoy spending time there. Another way you could make it easier to create long-term relationships with visitors is to ask for feedback and actually listen to it. That’ll make people feel they’re truly valued.

Hopefully, you now understand the strong links between a beautiful, highly functional website and favorable levels of customer satisfaction. Without your customers, it’d be hard to thrive, so make sure your website accounts for their needs.

The post 3 Reasons Why Customer Satisfaction and a Well Designed Website Are Related appeared first on Colorburned.

How to Create a Spring Header in Adobe Muse

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Original Source: https://webdesignledger.com/how-to-create-a-spring-header-in-adobe-muse/

Creating a Spring Header in Adobe Muse - Adobe Muse CC - Muse For You
How to Create a Spring Header in Adobe Muse. No Coding Skills Required.

 Muse For You - Adobe Muse CC Adobe Muse CC Logo

The warm weather is finally here! Being a resident of Wisconsin you have no idea how grateful I am for that. Yes the days can be muggy and humid at times but I’ll take that over 12 inches of snow any day :P. With that being said I’ll segue into today’s article.

Lately, I’ve been creating different headers in Adobe Muse to showcase how to use Adobe Muse and to give ideas for building your own headers. The theme of this week’s header is Spring.

Creating a Spring Header in Adobe Muse - Adobe Muse CC - Muse For You

The tutorial is composed of 8 steps. They are:

1. Setting Largest Breakpoint

2. Adding Spring Text 1

3. Adding Spring Text 2

4. Masking Image in Photoshop

5. Adding Paragraph Text

6. Adding Contact Button

7. Adding Logo and Menu

8. Finishing Touches

We use various tools in Adobe Muse to create this header. For the fonts we use the text panel to set the font type, size, alignment, tracking, leading, and line height. These options are very useful when getting the text just how you want it.

For the image we use Adobe Photoshop to mask the image within an abstract looking image. This lends itself to a unique visual for the header.

We also use other tools, like stroke, the built-in menu widget, along with the Adobe Muse pinning options.

Adobe muse is very powerful tool and my goal is to make it easier to use by demonstrating fun, easy to create headers :).

 

For more video tutorials and widgets for Adobe Muse visit http://museforyoushop.com.

Happy Musing!

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