A Closer Look Inside Smashing Magazine

July 11th, 2009 | 14 Comments | Posted in Various

Smashing Magazine sets the industry standard for web design. The site has published over 650 articles which have received more than 114,000 comments. One article alone received 9,000 comments. The site currently is ranked 1,500 on Alexa. Given the enormous popularity of the website, it seems as if many aspects of Smashing Magazine are not very well known. Who started Smashing Magazine? How did it rise to popularity so quickly? What else are the founders up to? These are just a few of the questions I hope to answer in this article.

The logical first place to look for these answers is their About page. A look at the top of Smashing Magazine shows that there doesn’t seem to be one. The categories include “Home, Graphics, Showcases, Inspiration, Fonts, How-To, CSS, Tools, Freebies, Tutorials, Jobs and Forum” but no About. The link to their About page is actually on the very bottom of the site, and it does not read “About” or “About Us” but rather “Smashing Media GmbH”.

Not a very prominent location for their About page. The page is actually very informative and gives a brief history of Smashing Magazine. Smashing Media GmbH, it turns out, is the company that owns Smashing Magazine. The blog was founded by Vitaly Friedman and Sven Lennartz, but is now run by several people.

I found it interesting that their About page has only 12 comments, significantly less then any article on their website. Reading their About page left me wanting to know more about Smashing Magazine, its founders and everyone involved with the operation. To learn more I went to Smashing Magazine’s first article, written by “Smashing Editorial”.  More »

Prototyping a web layout in illustrator: tips and tricks part 1

July 10th, 2009 | 4 Comments | Posted in Tutorials

Two out of three times when I’m approached by a client to build them a website, I ask for prototype images to give me an idea of what they want. This is always met by baffled and suspicious looks of my true intentions as they assume a website is built off the top of the developers head. This couldn’t be further from the truth.

For that top-notch, breath-taking website you have in mind with 3-D like effects, drop shadows on starry background, round corners and flickering flash images, you need to put that into still images called prototypes. These are high-resolution pictures, usually JPEG for its fantastic pixels that capture screenshots of the proposed website. They are used to quickly communicate visual ideas between a web designer/client and the developer about the proposed website’s layout and design before coding. The devil is in replicating the images details painstakingly in HTML code.

Illustrator is probably the best graphic design software I’ve encountered so far. Other major contenders for this coveted position are FireBuilder , Balsamiq, MindNode, and OmniGaffle which use a combination of wireframing and rapid prototyping to generate the layout and designing of a website.

Coming back to illustrator, drawing web concepts is so practically simplified that, save for the creativity aspect, one would credit it for the picturesque art it facilitates a designer to create! Below are some cunning, behind-the-scenes tricks I use to make web design a lesser nightmare than coding:

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10 Interactive Websites for Inspiration

July 9th, 2009 | 4 Comments | Posted in Inspiration

Interactive websites, when done intuitively, can inspire. The best ones leave a mark in our memories, compelling us to return to them time after time. From portfolio websites to all-out fun, Flash design for websites and webspaces can sometimes be complicated, as the freedom of designing with Flash poses newer and more challenging facets of web design to face. However, the end result should always be fun and/or awe-inspiring, as seen below. (Click on the images to go to their websites.)

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