designart

If there’s one thing I’m addicted to about my iPhone, it’s the camera-taking experience. I love Instagram . When I do creative work, it’s the place I share my progress with my friends and followers (so long as the client allows it). It’s also where I share photos my other loves: coffee, technology, and more coffee. (I promise I have real friends; I just keep most of my relationships private.) Some apps make the Instagram experience a little better, though. One of my favourites (apart from the indisputably excellent   VSCO Cam ) has been around a long time, and it’s called   A Beautiful Mess . I’ve been meaning to review it for a while, but I decided to let the developer finish up the iOS 7 update. It was worth the wait. Read on to find out more about what makes this a great, and fully-featured, photo editor for picture sharing. Feature-packed A beautiful mess isn’t quite like VSCO or Instagram, in that it’s not all about features. There are certainly features in the app (peop

all the major forms of digital communication, email is, perhaps, the most flexible. Yet, for the website owner, it still can’t be relied on, in its purest form, as the sole method of communication. Visitors still like the reassuring guidance of specified text fields, and in some cases, pre-defined options can make for a better user experience, not to mention more streamlined correspondence. It is for this reason that form builders are as popular now as they’ve ever been. Veteran   Wufoo   has held the top spot for many years, thanks to its drag-and-drop design suite and elegant output. Other platforms —   Gravity Forms   ( WordPress   only), for example — carve out their own market share by providing special features, such as payments and multiple-input guards. However, one new form-building service, named   Formbakery , wants to keep things simple. It, too, offers drag-and-drop design, as well as a form-by-form price. But can it match up to the long-established giants of form cr

Website design that generates leads and sales does more than look pretty. Websites that affect the bottom line understand how site visitors are interacting with their website.  The following five mistakes are simple to correct and aren’t a matter of my opinion. They’re backed by   recent research and eye-tracking studies . Let’s dive right in. 1 – Not enough emphasis on headlines This information is revealed to us in a recent study called   Eyetrack III , and the results may change the way you look at your homepages forever: big, bold headlines capture more attention than even  images . It’s strange to think that this is the case, but the research was conclusive.  Not only are headlines the   most   viewed component of any homepage, they are typically the  first   things viewed as well, capturing attention quicker than pictures and even navigation bars. Many companies are now embracing this with their homepage designs, emphasizing the benefits of their product in one co

Creating great typeface combinations   is an art, not a science. Indeed, the beauty of typography has no borders. While there are no   absolute rules to follow, it is crucial that you understand and apply some best practices when combining fonts in a design. When used with diligence and attention, these principles will always yield suitable results. Today we will take a close look at some the   best practices   for combining typefaces — as well as some blunders to avoid. Combine a Sans Serif with a Serif By far the most popular principle for creating typeface combinations is to pair a sans serif header typeface with a serif body typeface. This is a classic combination, and it’s almost impossible to get wrong. In the example below — a typical article layout — we have Trade Gothic Bold No.2 paired with Bell Gothic on the left side. They are both sans serif typefaces. However, they have very different personalities. A good rule of thumb, when it comes to header and body copy desig