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Abduzeedo 2010 in Review

abduzeedo — Fri, 31 Dec 2010 11:44:02 +0000

Another year has passed, 2010 is about to end and I will try to summarize the year in this post. I think that is a good way to share some experiences so we can learn with each other, as that has been the whole idea of Abduzeedo since the day one. There's also a post at Seth Godin' blog called “#YearInReview What did you ship in 2010?” which motivated me to do the same here in this article.

So what did I ship? Well I have to say it’s pretty hard for me to say what I shipped, I could list a bunch of sites I did, freelance projects and presentations I delivered, however I will share with you some things that happened in my life in consequence of the decisions I make in the beginning of 2010, it’s much easier since my whole idea for 2010 was stay on the road as much as I could and meet new people.

The last year started with a big change, I decided to go to San Francisco in mid January with the Wellknown.as team, which I barely knew them, in order to finish and released their app. It wasn’t an easy decision since I had just come back from another trip and the right thing to do was to settle down a little bit, but I decided to take the plunge.

The idea was that we would go and work on that project 24/7 in order to finish it, however I ended up doing much more than working, I’ve visited new places, met people I really admired and made new friends.

Meeting New People

In another post I wrote called What I have learned after almost 4 years of Abduzeed I mentioned about the importance of traveling in my life.

This year I spent 6 months away from home, I haven’t planned none of that the only thing I did was say yes to the opportunities I had and because of that, a whole new series of opportunities were created, and with them new things happened. I had the chance to meet some amazing people, guys like Vitor Lourenço (Designer at Twitter), Everaldo Coelho (Designer at Apple), the mighty James White, Bert Monroy, Trey Ratcliff, Zorana Gee (Adobe), Rodrigo Mazzilli and Divoxx (Wellknown.as), Demian Borba and family, Jacob Cass, Francois Hoang (AoiroStudio) and many others.

With James White in San Francisco at the FITC

Abduzeedo Meetup São Paulo

I also had the chance to speak in design conferences and universities in Brazil and USA, which was simply awesome!

I am really thankful for that because that led me to a whole new direction in my life and gave me much more motivation to do what I love, and everything only happened because I decided to go to San Francisco even though that decision didn't make much sense back in the day.

Future

Out goals for 2011 for Abduzeedo are the same as the day one, keep sharing things that inspire us and also share as much as we can about things we learn. We are also increasing our team of contributors with Nathan Weller and Marcos Torres now and others I’m sure in the near future. Besides that we have a big surprise scheduled to May, but we still cannot talk much about it, so stay tune.

Another goal for Abduzeedo is a revamp in its design, as you have already seen, I’ve been posting some new designs like the new logo that can give you a hint about the direction we are heading to, so we are going to a much more minimalistic approach in order to focus even more in the content.

2011 Poster

Google

When I started Abduzeedo 4 years ago I didn’t plan anything, I never imagined it would grew or have the amount of traffic it has today, I did because I love to talk about design and also I had to do something after losing everything in my office’s robbery.

Today I can say that what started as a side project has become the biggest promoter of my work changing my life completely. If I hadn’t started the blog I’m sure I would have never gotten the chance to work for the clients I worked, met some people I met and also gotten a job offer from Google.

Back to the beginning of this post, lots of things happened in my life in 2010 and with all this things came more decisions to make. One of them was a very important one, that was working for Google. So in 2011 I will be leaving Zee and moving to California where I will be joining Google as Senior Graphic Designer. I'm just waiting for my VISA :)

I’m sure this decision I made is just the beginning of a series of new things that will happen in my life and that is what makes life so exciting, I know I will love some and must regret others things that will happen but I will have to go through them in order to learn that.

So I'd like to thank all of you for the amazing support you have given to Abduzeedo and I wish you all a fantastic 2011 and don’t be afraid of change, embrace it. Follow your passion but always remember what Barry Schwartz says in his fantastic book The Paradox of Choice:

“The secret to Happiness is low expectations.”

Happy 2011 to all!

2010 in Images

San Francisco

Apple Event at Yerba Buena San Francisco

@amlight and my new baby, MacBook Pro 17 SSD in Raleigh, NC

Photoshop Battle

Abduzeedo Porto Alegre Meetup

Speech in Canela, RS

With Alexandre Keese at Photoshop Conference 2010 in São Paulo

Zorana Gee at Photoshop Conference 2010 in São Paulo

Pacific Highway 1

Waiting in line to get an iPad

After spending the night in line for the iPad launch in San Francisco

With Vitor Lourenço at Dennys in San Francisco

Visiting Adobe HQ in San Jose, give a little presention over there :)

With Vitor Lourenço, Rodrigo Mazzilli and Rodrigo Divoxx

Visitng Macworld

With the master Bert Monroy

Poster of the Photoshop Battle in Porto Alegre, Brasil

With my parents in San Francisco

With Everaldo Coelho in San Francisco

Speech at the Platt College in San Diego, big thanks to Demiam Borba

With Francois Hoang in NYC

Abduzeedo Meetup in Curitiba, Brazil

At the iSeminar in Recife, Brazil

San Francisco, the city by the Bay

About the author

Abduzeedo is a blog about design. There are all sorts of articles for those who want to look for inspiration. Also you will find very useful tutorials for the most used applications out there, with a special selection of Photoshop Tutorials and Illustrator Tutorials. You can get in follow us via Twitter at @abduzeedo

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DesignChat Guest - Kate Bingaman-Burt

abduzeedo — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 13:09:35 +0000

This Wednesday, July 28th, DesignChat welcomes Illustrator & Graphic Design Professional Kate Bingaman-Burt — Author of “Obsessive Consumption” and Assistant Professor of Graphic Design at Portland State University.

Bingaman-Burt’s career continues to light-up the DIY, twee-style, & craftism movements with sometimes colorful, but always beautifully-simple, illustrations — illustrations that really capture the feelings behind each image, whether that be guilt, envy, greed or sometimes lust. Think school notebooks full of lovingly-drawn spontaneous sketches. It’s a movement captured by her pen and embodied by current cultural touchstones like “etsy.com“, “Renegade Craft fair” and “ReadyMade” magazine; a magazine for whom she’s created several headers and titles in her recognizable style.

Her other works include illustrating the book “Handmade Nation: The Rise of DIY, Art, Craft and Design” as well as promotional materials for the documentary of the same title.

She continues to teach Graphic Design as an Assistant Professor at Portland State University as she shows her work with artist representation. Her illustration and much of her Obsessive Consumption works are available through 20×200.com an endeavor that’s “making art available for everyone” — worth a look for affordable contemporary artwork you CAN afford.

Most importantly, Kate Bingaman-Burt seems to be living and documenting her life as a statement about consumerism. Not really preaching about it, but instead just observing her own consumerism and taking us along for the ride. Screen printing, education efforts, illustrations, zine workshops, and soon-to-be museum exhibits, all seem to hold a mirror up to society. Bingaman-Burt truly embodies the quote “An unexamined life is not worth living.”

Join us, and Kate Bingaman-Burt, this Wednesday at 7pm CST here at

http://designchat.info/chat, for a live video and text chat.

We’re already “obsessing” over what to talk about first.

Other places to learn about Kate Bingaman-Burt:

Limited editions of “Obsessive Consumption” that include an original drawing are available via PayPal from her website for $35 here.

Join DesignChat every Wednesday night.

About the author

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Brian Hoff talks about the redesign of TDC

paul0v2 — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 12:33:18 +0000

In this exclusive interview, the designer from Philly, Brian Hoff talks about the redesign of his blog TDC (The Design Cubicle). It will open your eyes to his goals on the redesign, the process on the making and much more that beyond a pretty interface design.

For those who don't know him Brian Hoff is a graphic designer from the always-sunny Philadelphia. He collaborate mostly on web design and brand identity, but he's experienced in building all kinds of quality, strategic design, both on the web and in print.

Brian recently redesigned his blog The Design Cubicle with changes that made me drop my jaw, the quality of the redesign is intense, with a lot of attention in details I just lovely and satisfying to navigate through the new design.

Why did you think a redesign was needed for you blog and when do you think other bloggers should consider working on a redesign?

Having started the Design Cubicle almost two years ago, I was more looking for a place to record my thoughts and processes and choose a standard, free Wordpress template which I customized and tweaked at the time. It really didn't reflect my design sensibilities but at the time it served its purpose. However as the blog took off, my work was maturing, and business was growing because of the exposure, it was in dire need of a matured look, reflection of my passion for design and functionality of how the website should look and needs of the readers. This was my first ever blog, so I had a lot of extra elements that did not need to be there and were of no interest to my readers.

Blogs should consider redesigns or realignments when things need to be polished matured or just all around updated for the better of functionality. Also, you should pay close attention to your readers and the purpose of the blog and bring the focus and design to those elements. When I started my redesign process, I kept seeing my designs turning out similar to the "more traffic driven" blogs, which I feel are often flooded with too many ads, buttons, widgets, and other distractions. My focus was to bring back the attention to what people visit my site for: to read, learn and interact.

What was the goal of the redesign?

It sort of touched base with this question above, however the functionality was most important when considering my redesign was placing emphasis back on the content and improving readability and experience. I wanted to redesign to reflect my design sensibilities, which are heavily inspirited by print design, typography, and small detail. I also wanted to focus on sharing more valuable, quality information from others by adding the new Notebook section, which replaced my weekend round-up called "Sweet Tweets." I now update the Notebook "on-the-fly" and mostly everyday as I discover a great, informative article or resource.

Tell us about the process of making this happen, how did you turn this idea into reality and how long did it take?

The entire process started about a year ago which underwent countless revisions and restarts. I even put it aside for a few months to let my thoughts digest. The color palette was inspired by a book cover I saw while browsing a book store in Princeton, New Jersey. Also, I wanted to replace the old logo with more of a masthead to reflect a more editorial sense of the site. The detail surrounding the outer edges of the content area (the cross-hatching pattern) was inspired by a neighbors fence and how the grates interlaced one another in a rounded fashion. I decided to remove a lot of sidebar clutter and focus more on important elements such as, social media, work availability and navigating around the site. This decision was based on analytical research by discovering what my visitors were clicking on the most.

What was the biggest challenge you faced while creating the redesign?

The biggest challenge was knowing that I wanted to go a bit different from the standard, redundant blog aesthetics / layouts / etc. While I could have went with the easy route and took a similar approach (many of my earlier renditions took this approach), I wanted to push my own boundaries and levels of where I would like to see my work. Challenging because it can be a bit nerve-racking knowing that because something that is often "unfamiliar" might not be approved of by others. In the end, the amount of positive feedback I received was overwhelming though, so it helped to later calm the nerves.

The details on the new design are incredible, in which part of the process do you start applying these details and how important you think they are for the overall result?

The tiny detailing was held off until the vary end mostly. I fully attest to the small details that make a huge difference. Other's work I admire always have the right details in the right places that take a good design and make it great. Paying attention to minor details often helps to push your work over the edge, although it's important to note that sometimes too much attention to detail can do the exact opposite. Finding the right balance is the science behind the art form.

You are a typography lover and as we can see the new design has some typography improvements with the use of fonts from TypeKit. Why did you decided to go with that and how did you select these typefaces?

I'm a huge supporter of what the folks over a Typekit are doing. Coming from a traditional print design / fine arts background, typography was always a passion of mine and for a while always felt restricted on the web. There are so many type foundries out there with beautiful, quality and suitable typefaces and it's amazing to see companies like Typekit and Fontdeck supporting this.

The font used for the body copy, FF Dagny Web, was selected based on readability mostly. It works extremely well at very small sizes, renders extremely smooth since it was reformatted for specific use and legibility on screens, plus it went well with the rest of the type on the page. I, along with friends Trent Walton and Dave Rupert, spent a few hours one day going back and forth with a few different options deciding which worked the best. In the end, Dagny was the best fit.

The result of the redesign is simply beautiful, and the new look has been on for a few weeks. How was the acceptance by the viewers and looking back would you change anything?

To be honest, the amount of positive criticism has be astounding – much beyond my expectations – and I am extremely humbled by all of it. Site's that I admire, such as Unmatched Style, Cameron Moll's website, and Web Standardistas, all shared really kind feedback and praise, while the amount of comments on my 'Launch post' was all well taken in for the most part. I've also received good word on Twitter and email that the Notebook section is a new favorite, so that makes me extremely happy as well. It's great to be able to easily share other valuable information with my readers. From a direct standpoint, I guess I can say the acceptance has been mostly positive.

From an evaluation standpoint, It appears that I am receiving more visitors and more importantly, more comments per post than previously. [I think] it's due to placing emphasis back on the content and having the number of comments butting out on the left side helps to draw more attention and encourage participation. Beyond the good, my readers have also provided me with valuable feedback, such as adding a 'Back to top' link (in the back bottom footer). One thing I recently changed is the wording of the blue 'Contact me' link at the top (used to read 'Email'). I've probably received around 10–15 emails with a link to my article and nothing else. It appears that some were getting confused and thinking the 'Email' link would email the reader my article for future reading / reference. I've since changed it to read 'Contact me' and it seems to be taken for what it is now.

Thank you Brian for taking the time to for this interview and keep up the great work!

Here are some exclusive screenshots from the previous design and the new design with the process in between.

Old Design

Process of Redesigning

Final and current Design

Now make sure to check out The Design Cubicle

About the author

Hi there! I'm Paulo Canabarro, 26 year old web designer - paulocanabarro.com I'm from Brazil currently living and working out of Providence RI, USA. I'm truly passionate about design of all kinds, finding and sharing inspiration here has become part of my life. If you like to know more about me or get in touch visit my website paulocanabarro.com Stock me at Twitter and Dribbble

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Public Question: Dealing with Creative Block

abduzeedo — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 11:59:40 +0000

This post is part of our new series of articles in which we will be answering questions related to design, inspiration and creative process sent by our readers via email. If you have any questions, let us know. Send them via email to abduzeedo@abduzeedo.com with Public Questions as subject.

Question

What is your top recommendation for avoiding uninspiration in graphic design as a job?

Amanda Macedo

Avoid having days too rigidly planned. I hate routine and try to steer from it as much as I can. Of course that's not always a realistic goal, but I think it's important to dedicate some time whenever possible to doing nothing and letting your mind wander. You'll come to find that often times that's when creativity flows best and you'll be most inspired. I get hit with the best ideas when I'm in the shower. Try it.

Be active in the design community. Sharing links and discussing ideas is vital to being constantly inspired. Load up your Twitter feed with designers and bloggers and engage them in conversation. If not that, then simply listen to what they have to say and the interesting things they share. You're connected to so many people on the Internet; take advantage of it.

Subscribe to RSS feeds. This is probably your best bet to avoid being uninspired. I often start off my day with a cup of coffee, a poptart, and a solid hour going through my Google reader. These mornings make all the difference because they get my creative juices flowing. Also: use Feedly (thanks, boyfriend).

Surround yourself with passionate creative people. My social circle once consisted of people with a wide range of interests and hobbies. While this in part is great because it opens you to different things and new ideas, it can also at times be a little discouraging because you have no one to fuel your passion or talk design over coffee with. Get out and meet new people! (Keep your old friends too. Nobody likes a fickle friend…)

Fabiano Meneghetti

I believe it's really important to have good design briefing about what will have to be done, either for a client's project or personal. If we can get as much details as possible about the project and expectations it will be easier to achieve the goals and the best result.

Besides that a good search for references for inspiration, sketches on paper, which is faster and easier to make some ideas come true, and experimentation will definitely help you to overcome the lack of inspiration.

Another thing I believe is really important is a good workspace, with nice music playing and that you feel comfortable, that definitely makes a lot of difference because makes you want to stay in there working and will help you get inspired :)

Fabio Sasso

I talked a little bit about that in my last post in wich I share my thoughs on creativity and design process. In my opinion the most important thing before starting anything is talk with the client, ask as many questions as possible about the project and the target audience. That will give you the clues to search for inspiration. The same goes for personal projects, ask yourself what you want to do and have a clear idea in your mind, then stick to it otherwise you will be having cool ideas all the time and none of them will turn into real results, you will get frustrated and that's not good.

I also believe that we need to have a good set of skills and visual references so we can automatically start brainstorming ideas. That comes from art and design books, magazines, movies and the web. Inspiration is everywhere, as cheesy as it might sound it is totally true, the secret is how to find the right now.

Image inspired by the movie Clash of the Titans

Another thing I do when after a few hours working on a project and not getting satisfied with the results is stop everything and go to the GYM or to run a few miles. That really helps me to freshen up my mind and ideas. Most of the times I will get some answers or new ideas.

Paulo Gabriel

I think one must avoid all preconceived notions on the subject you're designing for. You must be set free of these strings, so that your design is not tendentious. Along with that, it's important to learn the subject and see it as an insider.

Your answer

We really want to hear from you as well and we believe that sharing opinions and knowledge is the best way to evolve not only as individuals but the whole industry, so please, leave a comment with your answer for the question above.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.

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Thoughts on Creativity and Design Process

abduzeedo — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 09:11:34 +0000

I will start this post off by saying that everybody is creative and for some that might come as a surprise, but I believe in the idea of creativity as a means of solving problems; the easiest and most efficient way possible. When I say easy I'm referring to the timeframe that it takes to complete the task, and efficient to how well received the work is from the target audience. But the question is what to do when we cannot come up with any good idea or the so terrified creative block.

The creative process is something unique because it’s personal, we cannot teach someone how to come up with ideas but we can learn how to organize our thoughts in order to make our ideas easier to achieve in the form of a good design. At least in my opinion and let me explain why.

Overflow of Inspiration

We are bombarded with information all day long and even when we are sleeping we might dream and have ideas and therefore inspiration. That is good in terms of having lots of resources available but it’s really bad as well because with that amount of information it’s pretty hard to make a decision.

That’s why I believe that our decisions have to be made with goals in mind and these goals alongside with a clear idea of our target audience will help us filter this avalanche of ideas and inspiration.

...designers give form to products, interiors, and visual communications, and satisfy the functional, psychological, and aesthetic needs of users... http://design.osu.edu/dept_what.html

Create Constraints

In order to overcome this problem it’s really important to define some constraints. If we have too much freedom again it’s hard to make a decision because it tends to fall to our personal opinion and we can't rely that everybody will like the same things we do.

The book Making Ideas Happen covers this topic really well saying that in a specific research with designers, they were much more productive when they had more constraints in a project than those who had more freedom.

My suggestion to creating these constraints is to fall back to the importance of having a good design briefing before starting any sketch or firing up the computer. Talk with the client, try to understand exactly what you have to do and for whom you will do it. That is key.

Before starting anything I asked all questions I had and defined the constraints, that made the whole process a lot easier

Try, try and try some more

I've already said this in some speeches I gave, but it’s true. The only way to come up with something cool is by trying, testing, and evolving ideas. If you just wonder and never do, you will have nothing to evolve upon. It’s like the fear of the blank page. Once you start adding things to it, it's not that complicated anymore…it’s all about playing with the elements, right? Or like the inertia principle, once we get the object moving it’s hard to stop.

When I was in college I had an amazing professor and he used to make us sketch at least 150 variations for a logo project, he used to say that the first ideas we have are always based on something we saw and it’s already known and popular, that’s why we did it. Only after we run out of ideas is when we will start innovating.

Delivering

I tend to think that the next idea will always be better, which in reality most of the times is and that’s why I had so many projects that were never finished. As I mentioned in the last post we have external factors that might make us unsure and insecure of our ideas.

Now, I believe that we have to think of design as an evolving process that means once we have an idea and have gone through the creative process with the right constraints and we know that we did our best we must deliver.

Once we deliver we can start thinking on improving upon it. Seth Godin mentions that he is successful because he delivers more while other people keep postponing the delivering in order to finish a master piece which might never happen. He also talks about the last minute questions before delivering what he calls the Lizard Brain calling.

Amazing talk about delivering by Seth Godin

You don't need to be more creative, all of you are too creative.... what you need is a quiter lizard brain... - Seth Godin"

Creating something is always exciting, and having ideas is super easy that is why I am sure that everybody is extremely creative. Now the secret of success is making these ideas come true.

The most comforting thing is that we start a project with at least 50% chance to succeed without even doing anything. Now try to imagine if we give it our best, how much that percentage would chance in our favor.

Top image courtesy of Shutterstock.

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Question? We want to hear from you!

amanda — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 15:36:11 +0000

Lately we've been talking a lot about ways we can get closer to you, the readers and members of our community. A few weeks ago we did our very first livestream, which might have lacked a bit in organization since it was, after all, our first go at it, but hopefully you guys enjoyed it as much as we did. We hope to incorporate these streams into our regular schedule to give you guys some insight into why we do what we do and to let you get to know us a little bit more.

In efforts to further bring us closer to you, we've decided to start a weekly installment of posts in which we will answer one question you might have per post. We receive a lot of emails with your questions, and often times most are the same. By publicly posting and answering these questions directly on the blog, it helps not only you but also others seeking similar answers. Realizing that most of your questions are opinion-based, instead of offering you one straight answer, each one of us will give you an individual answer based on our own unique experiences.

So, if you have a question, we want to hear from you!

Send your questions to abduzeedo@abduzeedo.com with "Public Questions" as the subject and every Tuesday you'll get an answer.

About the author

Amanda Macedo is a designer and blogger by passion and profession. Living and working out of her backpack, she can now be found in San Francisco, CA, biking, writing, dancing, and tweeting .

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Psychological Study of Web Designs

guest — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 10:11:33 +0000

A website is the window to the soul of an Internet business as well as the people behind it. It may have a positive or may be a negative effect on your end result. If you take the time to think about what your visitors want and how they want to get it, then you’re already on the right track to creating a site that will tap into the psychological drives of your target audience.

There are somethings more important to a successful website than its design. A good website is noticeable to not just designers, but to everyone who will visit your website. When you see a website for the first time, you tend to make an instant judgement on its quality and relevance. Even if it is done subconsciously, we are able to take a fairly accurate impression very quickly. Web designs busy with too many elements fail. In that, they attempt to express too much, confuse visitors and make interaction stressful. On the other hand, those which are too barren or sparse fail to build trust or convey purpose.

Important Factors in Website Designing:

There are some factors which act like determinants for making a good website. These actually contribute a lot in enhancing the usability and experience of the visitors on the website. The factors are listed below:

You need to be very particular about images that suit your website the best.
The focus of the page— the area where your eyes tend to look when you visit a page for the first time.
Be particular about the object you tend to focus on— a single wrong move can ruin the expected traffic
Get a hold of your competitors— what their website look like.
Simplicity is the best policy and there is a need to create a balance between quantity and quality— be concise and qualitative.

This is where psychology helps you!

Psychological principles are either looked upon as unnecessary, or too complicated. The human mind is able to recognize a combination of general human psychological and website design factors in the same way where you are able to recognize several letters jumbled together as a specific word and assign meaning to it. When you break it down, web design is simply the manipulation of content and images on a website to appeal to the perceptions of a target audience.

When you are trying to make a website that stands out amongst the rest, that has a high conversion rate and performs well, you need to get more specific with your designs. To help you with all this, here we load you with some of the best psyches of humans, which can actually help you to create not only a website that stands out but, the one which leaves a deep impression in the minds of the visitors.

Don't let them think that they have landed up in a Wasteland

There are certain things that someone naturally, or to put it in other words, have already made a perception that they would see certain things right away when landing to a page. The only things that people expect is the purpose of the site and the form of navigation menus.

The designs compliment and reinforces the message. They even expect certain things to be at certain places. People expect blog posts on the front page of a blog. They expect products on the front page of an e-commerce site. And in most cases, they expect some kind of “about” information and a contact page.

Trust, is What is In Demand

Trust doesn’t come easily, especially in this age of scams, schemes, and unsavory characters, which are readily available online. No matter how recommended the website is, one becomes really suspicious if they visit a website and then, it asks for any personal information.

Internet is often considered as a black hole of personal information and creates a terror in the minds of the users, be it clients or the clients' client.

With this in mind, try and inculcate that trustworthy design in your website by making use of design psychology.

Symbolism of Colours

Colours are the non-verbal communicators and go beyond the limits of ink. It all depends on how our mind perceive and associate meanings with each colour. But the colours have a deep impact on how your visitors perceive your site, reinforcing the message you want to portray, only if the selection of the colours is right.

Red

Fiery and passionate, strength, boldness, excitement, determination, desire, courage. It stimulates people to make quick decisions.

Orange

Enthusiasm, cheerfulness, affordability, stimulation, creativity, and is highly accepted among young people.

Yellow

A warm, happy color. It is attention-grabbing, comfort, liveliness, intellect, happiness, energy. It stimulates mental activity.

Green

Durability, reliability, safety, honesty, optimism, harmony, freshness. Green can sometimes represent inexperience. On the flip side, green is sometimes associated with envy or jealousy. It has been known to drive people away, so in most cases, unless the website is associated with nature, it is better to use it only for website accents.

Blue

Depth, stability, professionalism, loyalty, reliability, honour, trust. It proves to be calming and cool, but too much can be depressing. It is often associated with corporate images.

Purple/Violet

Long associated with royalty and wealth. It’s also a spiritual colour— power,nobility, luxury, mystery, royalty, elegance, magic are its phenomenal characteristics.

Black

Elegance, sophistication, formality, strength, mystery, with a bit of chameleon touch.

White

Cleanliness, purity, newness, virginity, peace, innocence, and simplicity.

Brown

A wholesome and down-to-earth colour that denotes stability and reliability.

Grey

Neutral and balanced. Conservatism, traditionalism, intelligence, seriousness depicts “Grey”.

Colours make us feel a certain way, so they can and should be used to support the purpose of a website.

Reinforcing Concepts

Psychological and emotional triggers are the most valuable tools in influencing visitors. The images you use on your sites can either help or confuse visitors. A well-chosen image can put your visitor at ease, making your intensions clear enough. Every page ought to have a focus. Your design needs to put the emphasis on the focal element of every page. Abstract images may prove helpful, and sometimes work quite well if they tend to focus on a vital subject. They may have different meanings to different people. Therefore, their use should be minimal.

That concludes us to by far the most important concept of white space and breathing room. If a visitor arrives on a page filled with every possible thing imaginable, there are possibilities that they are likely to become claustrophobic.

“Whitespace,” or “negative space” is the space between elements in a composition. More specifically, the space between major elements in a composition is “macro whitespace.” - MARK BOULTON - Whitespace article for A list Apart

Don't let your visitors experience the negative space on your site. Try and encourage your readers to focus on a thing and then, take the appropriate action.

Incorporating not so essential information within the 'Z' reading zone means your visitors may leave the site before they find what they’re looking for. People tend to read in a “Z” pattern on a website, starting across the top from the left and ending in the bottom right corner of their screen. So, try and follow this technique to be able to hold readers.

Now that we are well aware of the psychological approach behind almost each and every website design, it becomes important to avail you with the information regarding incorporating these techniques into your website designs — Its high time that you start figuring out who your target audience is. It can range from a tech-savvy, to a layman who just checks out a website for photos. Being well aware of the target audience helps you to aim right at bulls' eye and nothing can actually stop that bait or in other words, trigger.

Its advisable that you follow and act on customers' advices. Customer's satisfaction should be your soul motto and try and build up a strategy where you tend to interview customers and ask for their feedback and requirements.

A sitemap, is very important so that it gives the reader an idea that every single page consists a single objective and it rules out.

Try and make sure that you at least have a choice to figure out the best element.

Rather than merely being the production of online decoration, web design is an effort of direction and communication. The main goal of such a psychologically triggered web design is to strike a balance between client preferences, design principles, and trial-and-error tests based on end-user analytics data. It should be an on-going process incorporating all the essentials.

About the Author

Jenny Warner is from PixelCrayons, a creative web design and development agency that specializes in custom web design & development, markup services, CMS & ecommerce solutions.

What I have learned after almost 4 years of Abduzeedo

abduzeedo — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 11:15:58 +0000

It’s been almost 4 years since I started Abduzeedo and my life has changed in ways I could never imagine. In particular when it comes to meeting new people and learning new things.

Because of the blog and its visibility around the world, I have been invited to talk at many universities and conferences worldwide. I'll be the first to admit that I am far from being a good public speaker, but to get an opportunity like that is really cool. I'm always learning from these experiences, and that in itself is awesome enough. When I ask people what they want me to talk about at these events they always say, "Talk about how you made the blog popular", or "Talk about how you make money from the blog". That leads me to think that all everybody wants is fame and money. Well… what else might you want?

I can tell you one thing, if you do something just because of the money and the fame it’s pretty hard to get both because your decisions are made based on this logic and by this logic we sometimes close doors to greater good. There's this really good book by Malcolm Gladwell called Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking. It talks about this:

Gladwell's conclusion, after studying how people make instant decisions in a wide range of fields from psychology to police work, is that we can make better instant judgments by training our mind and senses to focus on the most relevant facts—and that less input (as long as it's the right input) is better than more. Perhaps the most stunning example he gives of this counterintuitive truth is the most expensive war game ever conducted by the Pentagon, in which a wily marine officer, playing "a rogue military commander" in the Persian Gulf and unencumbered by hierarchy, bureaucracy and too much technology, humiliated American forces whose chiefs were bogged down in matrixes, systems for decision making and information overload. But if one sets aside Gladwell's dazzle, some questions and apparent inconsistencies emerge. If doctors are given an algorithm, or formula, in which only four facts are needed to determine if a patient is having a heart attack, is that really educating the doctor's decision-making ability—or is it taking the decision out of the doctor's hands altogether and handing it over to the algorithm? Still, each case study is satisfying, and Gladwell imparts his own evident pleasure in delving into a wide range of fields and seeking an underlying truth.

Why do I bring this up? I have some examples in my life that might enlighten you further.

The Robbery

In 2006 I was just a graphic and web designer doing my best to deliver good quality work. I noticed that the blogosphere was getting bigger and that this social media thing was the future. But I always had some excuse to not get into it…usually external factors such as, I don’t have time for such a thing, or nobody will pay attention to what I say, or there are guys much better than I. My brother had a blog back in those days and he kept asking me why I didn’t and that I should start one. I was very stubborn until something happened.

Towards the end of November 2006 my office was robbed and with that I lost my laptop and backup disks. That was a key factor that led me to start Abduzeedo. This whole thing made me forget those excuses and simply do something…which is exactly what I did.

First logo

I learned that sometimes we have to think less and do more, because when we have too much information it’s pretty hard to make a decision. And also, this information might suffer the influence of other people’s opinions as well.

Doing what I love helped me improve my skills

Because of the blog some great opportunities started appearing. One in particular helped me to evolve a lot: writing for PSDTUTS. When Collis invited me I accepted on the spot and was pretty happy about it, but when I talked to some friends they always asked, "You're going to write tutorials for a competitor?"

Well, I didn’t even think about it that way. I just wanted a motivator to push me to explore and learn more about Photoshop. Plus, they were also paying me for those tutorials, so that was amazing.

I learned Photoshop so much in those days and it was so much fun. I loved writing those tutorials especially trying to simplify effects and share with the community.

Writing for PSDTUTS turned out to be one of the best things I’ve ever done for Abduzeedo. After the few months I wrote for them the traffic on Abduzeedo grew considerably and besides that, more people got to know me. As a result, I was invited to write for magazines and other publications as well.

Digital Arts Tutorial

Traveling

Well this is something that doesn’t make much sense at first, so let me explain. In 2008 I decided that I would go to the US for the summer. I told my business partner, Fabiano Meneghetti and he understood and totally supported me. However some people thought I was crazy simply leaving my company here and going out there. Even though I thought it was the right thing to do, those bad comments got me thinking and sometimes made me a bit unsure and insecure about my decision. Nevertheless, I went.

After those 3 months in the US I got the chance to meet so many people, and even got a job which ended up paying for all my traveling expenses. But the most important thing was that I learned so much from that experience. I also was able to improve a little bit of my english with the help of my amazing cousin Amanda Macedo AKA @amlight.

The same happened in my other trips, and in the last one it was no different. I had just gotten back to Brazil when some guys invited me to join them in this new venture: an american startup with a mobile platform project. So, we went to San Francisco. While planning the trip I was kind of scared after looking at rent prices. Nevertheless, I went…again. And thank God I did.

Going to San Francisco was incredible and once again the experience I had was gold. If I had stayed here and done the right thing in terms of logic, I never would have visited Adobe and talked about my work to the Photoshop engineers or shaken hands with Russ Brown. I never would have met Trey Ratcliff and seen him speak at Google, or hang out with Vitor Lourenço one of the mighty designers behind Twitter.

Rodrigo Mazzilli (wellknown.as), Vitor Lourenço (Twitter) and I at Twitter HQ

With Bert Monroy, the master of the masters :)

As you can see a lot happens when you make a decision. Of course there’s always a downside. Nothing after-all is perfect. Life would be boring otherwise. Also, everything takes time. It’s sort of like planting…you'll never get results right away, because you need to get experience, learn and be prepared. We have to persist if we believe in what we’re doing. At least it was like that with Abduzeedo. It took over one year for the results to start appearing.

I believe the most important thing in life is to do what you like and make decisions based on your own opinion and not based on what other people think. I know that's pretty much what Steve Jobs said in his commencement speech at Stanford and it makes so much sense. Or perhaps it makes more sense now after these almost 4 years of blogging, because that is the most important thing I have learned. In other words, put yourself out there, have passion, confidence, and persistence.

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Garage Project by IdeaFixa

abduzeedo — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 14:34:19 +0000

IdeaFixa is a super cool Brazilian project based on collaboration of visual artists to promote ideas, talents, initiatives and professionals for all the creative fields: Photography, Design, Arts, Illustration, animation, 3D and others. So, IdeaFixa and Inesplorato are launching a new project called Garage Project.

About the Project

Garage Project is really cool initiative to encourage us, artists and designers, to do and promote our personal projects. Pretty much all ideas or sketches that are authentic and innovative will be accepted.

For more information visit http://www.projetosdegaragem.com/

IdeaFixa inspiration

About the author

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2010: A Creative Year

abduzeedo — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 10:10:24 +0000

Another year is closing and a new one is on the way. The start of every new year is filled with planning and goals for the next 365 days that follow. It's not any different for me. I have some crazy resolutions for the next 12 months, and I believe 2010 will be a creative year. One for the books.

I was reading some articles online. One in particular was a really interesting post by Mike Kuz (one of my favorite designers) for 24ways.org called a New Year’s resolution, where he talks about trying more and not limiting yourself to the web when designing for the web.

“A key factor in creating something original and fresh for the web is to stop thinking in terms of web design. The first thing we need to do is forget the notion of headers, footers, side bars etc. A website doesn’t necessarily need any of these, so even before we’ve started we’ve already limited our design possibilities by thinking in these very conventional and generally accepted web terms.” - Mike Kuz

Besides reading articles I love listening to podcasts when I’m running. I've listened to some really great ones, but there's two in particular that I want to mention. The first is from the IA Summit 09 called Creating Magic Kingdoms: User Experience Lessons from Disney’s Imagineers by Mike Atherton.

Mike talks about passion when doing something and how that helps us to achieve our goals. He uses Disney and their engineers or as he calls them- "Imagineers" as an example. It’s very motivating with great insights about the importance of trying and believing in what you’re doing.

“Our greatest asset was ignorance. We didn’t know we could fail” - Marty Sklar, Imagineer.

You can see the slides and listen to the podcast below.

The second podcast that I found useful was a great episode from the SpoolCast, podcast from the UIE.com by the mighty Jared Spool, called Innovation Beyond the Buzzword. It was an interview with Scott Berkun and he talked about the meaning of the word innovation and how we can bring it into our projects.

The part that I enjoyed the most was the discussion about how to be creative. He says that everyone is creative but somehow we deny that because it is something very particular of each person, there’s no right or wrong, but instead only points of views. We simply don’t want to expose ourselves or get into discussions or arguments about our thoughts and we end up choosing the logic fields like math or science where there’s one right answer.

“True innovation starts with you allowing yourself to be creative and recording your ideas religiously in a safe place like a notebook or sketchpad. Don’t self-censor, either. Initial precision and “getting it right” are the antithesis of creativity. It’s essential to let the ideas flow, and your ideas will improve as you continue to record them. Your journal is an incubator of ideas. Not every idea will be a success, and some will be terrible! But Scott says that’s OK. When an opportunity for change arises, you’ll have a treasure trove of ideas to pick though.”

They go on to talk about the importance of group trust when you have an idea because that's what's necessary in making the idea come true. This leads to one of the most important topics for us designers that is how to provide useful feedback, or honest and constructive criticism among teams and individuals.

“Good critiques take practice and trust within your team. This usually requires time and commitment.” - Scott Berkun

I highly recommend that you listen to this episode. You can do so below

Great design by Glennz, one of the most creative t-shirt designers out there. Glennz simply plays and tries different concepts for well known things like this one.

When I said in the beginning of the text that 2010 would be a creative year I meant that the best way to be creative is practicing and exercising creativity. There was a time where I believed that good ideas would come out of the blue. I later found out that there's always a lot of thought involved. Nobody simply comes up with a good idea if there's not a problem to solve, a question to ask, or a desire to fulfill.

I want to propose that we all make 2010 a great and creative year by sharing our knowledge and not being afraid of experimenting. Let’s be less critical about the outcome of our experiments and more cheerful about our discoveries in the learning process and the evolution path in the design skills. That's what's most important after all.

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Abduzeedo Anniversary - 3 Inspiring Years - Giveaway

abduzeedo — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 08:26:51 +0000

Back in 2006, end of November to be exact, my design studio was robbed and as you guys might already know the story, I lost my computer and my backup drives with all my files and endeavors in the design field... A long time has passed since then-- 3 years to this date, and today we can fortunately celebrate the day that I lost everything but gained even more in return.

Because of the robbery I created Abduzeedo, and what started as a simple means of backup turned into what is today my main job. The most important thing though is that I got the chance to meet up and interact with so many fascinating people, first with the guys who became contributors and now with of course all of you guys who read the blog everyday.

We love design. We're crazy about it. Eat, sleep, and breathe it. I guess a less cheesy way to put it would be that we're big design enthusiasts over here at Abduzeedo. We believe in good design and we've been doing our best to come up with inspiring posts for you guys every day. In turn, that constant search for inspiration has given us the chance to discover new and incredibly talented artists and designers. And because of that, we thank you all for these three amazing years.

We're going all out and making a big party out of this, and we want to personally extend the invitation to all you guys. Join us in spreading design cheer around the world! We figured there's no better way to party and thank you guys more (and kick-off the holiday season!) than to giveaway some amazing gifts. A very special thanks to James White, Vitaly Friedman, Ryan Cash, Simonas Bastys, Andrew Follett, Simon Page, and our sponsors for all their kindness in helping us make this happen!

Gifts

1 Apple Macbook - http://www.apple.com/macbook/ *

2.26GHz : 250GB, 2.26GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 2GB DDR3 memory, 250GB hard drive1, 8x double-layer SuperDrive, NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics, Built-in 7-hour battery2, Polycarbonate unibody enclosure

3 Smashingmagazine books http://www.smashingmagazine.com/

The Smashing Book is a printed book about best practices in modern Web design. The book shares technical tips and best practices on coding, usability and optimization and explores how to create successful user interfaces and apply marketing principles to increase conversion rates. It also shows how to get the most out of typography, color and branding so that you end up with intuitive and effective Web designs. And lastly, you will also get a peek behind the curtains of Smashing Magazine.

For more information about Smashingmagazine visit http://www.smashingmagazine.com/

3 James White Posters - http://blog.signalnoise.com

James White has been drawing since the age of 4, scribbling down his favorite characters such as Superman, Batman, the Dukes of Hazzard, etc. Being from a military family, he made 3 big moves through childhood but never strayed from his colored-pencils.

Today, James creates personal posters and art prints for sale on his website, Signalnoise.com, while working with select clients looking to add new creative to their campaigns. He has worked with such clients as Toyota, Armada Skis, VH1 Latin America and MTV, and has been featured internationally in Computer Arts andAdvanced Photoshop magazines.

For more information about James White visit: http://blog.signalnoise.com

3 Billings Copies - http://www.billingsapp.com/

Billings is an excellent example of a highly usable localized application, designed specifically for Mac OS X and small business users. Billings is designed to manage time-tracking and expenses for small business users and produce gorgeous invoices. Billings is built on Cocoa, and integrates with Mail, Google Maps, and iCal. It supports F-Script for invoice design, produces cross-platform PDF invoices using Quartz, and leverages the Address Book framework. Billings is localized in English, French, German, Japanese and Dutch. A companion iPhone app is on the way.

For more information about Billings visit: http://www.billingsapp.com/

3 Copies of Pixelmator - http://www.pixelmator.com/

Pixelmator, the beautifully designed, easy-to-use, fast and powerful image editor for Mac OS X has everything you need to create, edit and enhance your images.

For more information about Pixelmator visit http://www.pixelmator.com/

3 Premium Accounts at ConceptFeedback - http://www.conceptfeedback.com/

Designed specifically for small and medium business marketers, graphic designers, and web developers, Concept Feedback provides a simple tool to get quality feedback on marketing concepts

For more information about ConceptFeedback visit: http://www.conceptfeedback.com/

2 International Year of Astronomy 2009 Posters - http://www.astronomy2009.org/

"I initially designed these as self-promotional works but word gets around and last week I received an email from the IYA 09 that they thought the posters were great and would like to use them for their promotional work - this was awesome and I of course said yes." Simon Page

For more information about the International Year of Astronomy visit http://www.astronomy2009.org/ and to see the posters check out this post.

3 Abduzeedo t-shirts - http://abdutees.bigcartel.com/

"Goddess of Abduction" is the first tee for the Abductees Limited Edition Series designed by Draco. The shirt is printed on American Appeal color black, if you have any doubt about your size please check Guys Size Chart and Girls Size Chart

1 PSD to XHTML Conversion by shopHTML

ShopHTML is a team of XHTML/CSS specialists that have provided conversion services and expertise in XHTML/CSS, Wordpress, and Joomla for the past 5 years. The services guarantee (or full refund is issued) w3C validated code for XHTML 1.0 strict and CSS validation which is tested across Internet Explorer 6/7/8, Firefox 2/3, Safari 3/4, and Opera 9. — and they do all of this in a 24 hour turnaround time without compromising quality.

For more information about shopHTML visit http://shophtml.com

Rules

The rules are simple. Our goal is to promote and share design related links (photography, illustration, product design, graphic design, 3d...), so to be in the running for the prizes all you have to do is:

1 - Leave a comment here on this post with the title of the design link you are sharing and you believe it's really cool.
2 - Follow Abduzeedo on twitter - http://twitter.com/abduzeedo
3 - Share the link with the title on Twitter using the hashtag #design at the end.

Example: "50 Beautiful Free Icon Sets For Your Next Design: http://bit.ly/7A3ruO #design

You can leave as many comments you want, but you will have to tweet them as well.

Winners

The winners will be selected at random and the last one to be selected will be the Macbook winner. Of course we'll also check out the shared link to determine whether it's valuable to the design community or not.

We will announce the winners on December 24th, so start looking for good design links to share and let's get abducted by design!

*The winner of the Macbook will be responsible for the taxes and other legal fees. The product will be sent from the US.

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Abduzeedo Gets a Facelift

abduzeedo — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 12:16:35 +0000

After almost a year, we have a new design! As web designers we’re always thinking about what to change in order to make the site more friendly for those who are looking for inspiration and tutorials.

Our main goal was to simplify the design and also add more white-space. The images of the articles have and always will be the main asset of the blog so we wanted to drive the user’s attention to the images and text, and less to the interface itself. That’s why we have removed the stars on the header but still kept them on the footer. Also we were very inspired by magazine designs, that explains the text overlapping the images.

New Features

Among the main changes on the new design we could list:

Bigger images
Preview image at the top of the articles
More white-space
Thumbnail view on the home-page
Threaded conversations on the comments
CSS 3 for effects (sorry IE users)

Big preview image with text overlapping

Thumbnails view

Reply to comments

Navigation

In terms of navigation, we split the menu in two. The main menu consists of the most important categories on the blog:

Tutorials
- Photoshop
- Illustrator
- Pixelmator
- Fireworks
- Quick Tips
- Case Studies
Inspiration
- Architecture
- Illustration
- Photography
- Daily Inspiration
- Sites of the Week
- Best of the Week
- Popular Post
Wallpapers
Inspiration

Meebo Bar

Another great feature we added (and that we're really excited about!) is the Meebo Bar! The Meebo Bar allows you to drag and share any images of the site via Twitter, Facebook or email. Also we will be able to chat while navigating on Abduzeedo. That way we might even be able to help you guys on tutorials or any questions you might have regarding posts and so on.

Meebo Bar

It doesn't just stop there. Abduzeedo is always under development. We try to learn as much as we can from you and we’re always open to suggestions. Our idea is always to make the experience as better and simpler as possible. We still have some features up our sleeves that will be released very soon! One thing I can reveal right now is that our iPhone app is 95% done ;)

iPhone app is coming

Also we want to mention and thank our hosting (mt) Media Temple for the great support during the redesign process, we were working with the 2 versions and sometimes doing crazy things but they guys over at Media Temple kept Abduzeedo up and running.

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Inspire Me, Now!

paul0v2 — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 15:39:47 +0000

Inspire me, now is a little inspiration blog created by Szymon Blaszczyk that I have been following for a while now and every time I go to check it out I am sure to be inspired with some great stuff. So I decided to share with you guys some great and crazy inspiration.

Make sure to visit Inspire me, now!

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Just for our german readers: Deutsche Hilfe gesucht

aloa — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 17:28:00 +0000

Abduzeedo gibt es nun schon seit fast 3 Jahren. Wir haben tausende von Menschen inspiriert in Kategorien wie Design, Fotografie, Illustration & Film. Durch den grossen Erfolg den wir derzeit geniessen wollen wir etwas an die Leser zurückgeben. Nun soll es eine deutsche Seite geben bei der wir reichlich Unterstützung brauchen können.

For English please scroll down

Unsere Seite hat bahnbrechende Ergebnisse gezeigt. Zur Zeit besuchen uns ca. 70.000 Besucher täglich und es wächst ständig weiter. Das verdanken wir unserem grossartigem Team & den vielen Webseiten im Netz die unsere Artikel linken. Nach den Staaten, Brasilien & dem UK - deren Sprachen wir schon unterstützen - kommen unsere Top User aus dem grossartigem und Medieninteressiertem Deutschland.

Wir freuen uns sehr nun ein neues Projekt vorzustellen bei dem wir die Seite auch nun für deutsche öffentlich machen wollen. Zu diesem Projekt brauchen wir einige fleissige Helfer, die uns beim Uebersetzten unterstützen. Wenn du Interesse hast dann beantworte folgende Fragen ausreichend und schick sie per Mail an Aloa@Abduzeedo.com .

1. Wer bist du & was hast du bisher gemacht?

- Name
- Alter
- Karriere
- Und alles was du denkst, was mich interessieren könnte.

2. Auf welchem Niveau sind deine Englischkentnisse?

- Wie lange lernst du schon & wie hältst du dich frisch?

3. Was ist deine derzeitige Arbeit ?

- Welchen Job machst du gerade
- Bist du Interessiert in Design
- WENN JA: Schick einige Werke aus deinem Portfolio mit.

4. Welche working-station nutzt du und wieviel Zeit nutzt du im Internet ?

- Alten Pentium 2 oder MacBook Pro
- Nenne ein paar der Webseite, die du gerne besuchst.

Die Antworten schickt ihr an Aloa@Abduzeedo.com . Ich freu mich auf viele nette Mails.

Read here if you're english:

Abduzeedo made a great progress in just 2 years. We worked hard to improve the quality of our articles & keep on serving you world's best in design, photography, illustration & film. Because of the huge success we want to push Abduzeedo to a higher level.

Our most reader come from the States, Brazil & the UK. Because we serve them nice inspiration in their language the next step would be to translate the site into german. In the text on the top we look for good german helpers and hope in this way to pick the best writer

About the author

Aloa is the moniker of the german/greek graphic designer/filmmaker & musician Alexis Papageorgiou. Im glad to share great artistic work with the readers on Abduzeedo. Contact me on aloa@abduzeedo.com or follow my Twitter and Facebook page

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10 Impressive Portfolio/Blog Websites

paul0v2 — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 14:36:49 +0000

Everyone tries to be different when creating their own website where their portfolio will be displayed, and lately it seem that more and more people have been choosing to have a little blog together with their portfolio. The trend of blogging got to designers and artists and here are some great samples of it.

Having a blog on your portfolio website can help in many ways, you can use it just as a 'news' so every time you want to let your visitors know about something you have that little blog there to tell them, you can use it as just a simple blog to share your thoughts with your visitor, or even go further and boost up the blog content to attract people that will fortunately end up looking at your portfolio.

No matter what reason fits you, it's always a good option to have it. Here are some good samples with really good use of it. Enjoy!

blog

Abduzeedo 2010 in Review

Meeting New People

Future

Google

Happy 2011 to all!

2010 in Images

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DesignChat Guest - Kate Bingaman-Burt

This Wednesday, July 28th, DesignChat welcomes Illustrator & Graphic Design Professional Kate Bingaman-Burt — Author of “Obsessive Consumption” and Assistant Professor of Graphic Design at Portland State University.

Other places to learn about Kate Bingaman-Burt:

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Brian Hoff talks about the redesign of TDC

In this exclusive interview, the designer from Philly, Brian Hoff talks about the redesign of his blog TDC (The Design Cubicle). It will open your eyes to his goals on the redesign, the process on the making and much more that beyond a pretty interface design.

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Public Question: Dealing with Creative Block

This post is part of our new series of articles in which we will be answering questions related to design, inspiration and creative process sent by our readers via email. If you have any questions, let us know. Send them via email to abduzeedo@abduzeedo.com with Public Questions as subject.

Question

Amanda Macedo

Fabiano Meneghetti

Fabio Sasso

Paulo Gabriel

Your answer

About the author

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Thoughts on Creativity and Design Process

Overflow of Inspiration

Create Constraints

Try, try and try some more

Delivering

About the author

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Question? We want to hear from you!

So, if you have a question, we want to hear from you!

About the author

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Psychological Study of Web Designs

Important Factors in Website Designing:

This is where psychology helps you!

Don't let them think that they have landed up in a Wasteland

Trust, is What is In Demand

Symbolism of Colours

Red

Orange

Yellow

Green

Blue

Purple/Violet

Black

White

Brown

Grey

Reinforcing Concepts

About the Author

What I have learned after almost 4 years of Abduzeedo

It’s been almost 4 years since I started Abduzeedo and my life has changed in ways I could never imagine. In particular when it comes to meeting new people and learning new things.

The Robbery

Doing what I love helped me improve my skills

Traveling

Recommended reading

About the author

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Garage Project by IdeaFixa

About the Project

IdeaFixa inspiration

About the author

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2010: A Creative Year

Another year is closing and a new one is on the way. The start of every new year is filled with planning and goals for the next 365 days that follow. It's not any different for me. I have some crazy resolutions for the next 12 months, and I believe 2010 will be a creative year. One for the books.

About the author

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Abduzeedo Anniversary - 3 Inspiring Years - Giveaway

Gifts

1 Apple Macbook - http://www.apple.com/macbook/ *

3 Smashingmagazine books http://www.smashingmagazine.com/

3 James White Posters - http://blog.signalnoise.com

3 Billings Copies - http://www.billingsapp.com/