The first thing you have to do in order to choose a typeface is form a strong impression in your mind about how you want your audience to react to the text. This is your goal, and it will guide the process. You might provide this impression, or it might be dictated to you by your client, or it may be determined by your audience. Whatever the case, your choice of typeface needs to strike a good combination of both legibility and readability, while remaining appropriate for the audience and the message. Each of these characteristics requires some degree of independent consideration. As you may already know from experience, it’s easy to go about this the wrong way and get overwhelmed. This problem can be compounded as a design evolves.

Perhaps the hardest part of breaking down the typeface selection process is understanding which parts are more subjective and which parts are more objective. After reading and digesting your client’s text, it is easier to start with the objective aspects of typeface selection because they — by default — make subjective decisions for us. There are no fixed positions on the spectrum from subjective to objective. However, we know that legibility is more easily quantifiable than a mood. Let’s start with the two most objective attributes — legibility and readability.

Grids can be a massive help when building websites. It provides both a visual structure for laying site elements out and a framework for its content. Think about all the different objects needed to make up a typical layout design. There’s text, images, videos, adverts plus all the standard elements like banners, navigation bars, footers etc. A grid is often the logical solution for making sense of the task at hand. It’s the simple way of creating a balanced and unified website.

We’ll start by deciding what a grid is (or can be). In general terms it’s a series of lines, rules and guides used within a layout where design elements should be placed or positioned. Potential grids can sometimes be simple and sometimes very detailed. Like any design aspect, the grid used should be determined by the aims of a website. Content is determined by factors such as site purpose, intended users, advertising requirements etc. It’s this content that should determine the shape and structure of the grid. So before starting to design, clarify the different types of content to be used.

Typography is the most valuable asset of your blog. It doesn’t matter if you have a colorful design blog, an awesome web magazine or a plain simple blog. The main focus always stays on the content and the readability of your text. And that’s where the importance of good typography comes. Well, in this article, I’m not going to give you tips upon good typography (as we already have some good tips on that thing) but, I’m going to explain and implement a rather new and innovative concept from Google that aims at providing a helping hand to all web designers and web masters out there.

The thing which I’m going to tell you about is, Google’s new fonts API. For those of you, who don’t know what an API is, have a look. After you are done with the concept of API (it isn’t that hard to grasp). The new font API is all about CSS magic. And that too, without overloading your web server. Let’s see how its presently done and how Google API attempts to change it.

If you use Google’s Open Font’s API, you have many advantages like:

• 1. Huge collection of Font Typefaces to choose from Google’s Fonts library.
• 2. All the bandwidth load is on Google as you are only using their resources in the API.
• 3. The speed is blazing fast as Google’s CDNs are faster than your site.
• 4. You can hotlink the font file so that there is a less file and bandwidth request.

Typography is the heart of design. It makes your website look tremendously better, be it graphic typography or type typography all can make the looks better.

Visitors don’t care about the colors, images and sounds, there main focus is always on text. How does it look, and does it solve there purpose by reading what they are looking for?

But how to make your web typography better? We are here to discuss some of the key points which you should keep in mind before setting up your website typography. To make it more interesting we have used few images to elaborate further.

1. The paragraph should be short and sweet : Its always advisable to write short sentences or paragraphs. Visitors tend to get bored very quickly if the lines are too long.
2. Use colors that match and visible with your light or bright backgrounds : The easiest fix for this situation is to make sure that the color of your type is very different from that of your background. Black and white work so well because they are as drastically different as you can get, but there are some color combos that work well.

Combination’s like Dark blue on light Pink, Light blue on Deep Blue, Black and Green etc work very well with each other...

Some elements of the design are more important and you want to make sure they’re seen right away, and some elements of the design are best seen after having first seen a different part of the design.

You also want to do what you can to keep people inside your design and not let their eyes fall of the page or screen. Just like a river carries what’s in it along it’s path, you want your design to carry your audience through it and guide them where you want them to go.

What is Design Flow?

Design flow (also referred to as movement or direction) is the way the eye moves or is led through a composition. It’s a way for you to control where someone viewing your design looks first and a way to guide their eye where to look second and third. It gives you a mechanism for making sure key information is seen.

Typically in a design you’ll create what’s known as an entry point. Something that stands out from everything else so that most people looks at it first. From there you’ll create lesser focal points that stand out, though not as much as the entry point. These points will be the most important information in your design and through different techniques you lead people from entry point to focal point to the next focal point.

Done well your audience will flow from point to point with a momentary rest to absorb your key information.

How to Control Flow in Design

Our design elements offer visual cues about the direction the eye should follow. Some of these cues are obvious. It’s hard to see an arrow and not look in the direction it’s pointing. Some of these cues are not so obvious. Repetition in color, shape, and size create a path that can pull you to move in a certain direction.

Some obvious directional cues include:

• Arrows – again it’s difficult not to visually follow the direction an arrow points
• People/Faces looking in one direction – similar to arrows when we see a person facing or looking in a given direction, we tend to also look to see what they’re looking at.
• Perspective – creates strong visual cues to follow. By it’s nature perspective creates a direction that begs to be followed. If all roads lead to Rome, you’re going to end up in Rome at some point.

Twitter has progressed so much in past few years and now it has been used almost by everybody – let it be freelancer designer, programmer, social media company, printing company, everybody evaluates Twitter power and actually try to make their brand more powerful with it.

A lot of tools has been developed over time and some of them can really  relief your Twitter experience and automate some time consuming actions. That’s why I collected some great tools sorted in categories, which you might find extremely useful for using Twitter – find more targeted followers, track visitors – who is following, not following, deadbeat users, clean your account – ah..check what we have on table this time yourself!

Follower Tools

1. Mr Tweet

Mr Tweet is your personal Twitter assistant. Discover great people you might want to follow, join communities and share your Twitter buddies.

As the web has matured, design has come along with it, but there are still a number of issues that affect usability and user experience that haven’t matured at the same rate as design.

If we want to be ahead of the design curve: get more satisfied clients, and happier users, we need to make sure that both we and our clients understand what these points are, and how to solve them.

When designing and developing a website, there are many different things that we focus on:

• Design
• Compatibility
• Content
• Usability
• ..and I am sure you could keep counting down a lot more here, but let’s keep reading.

Remember, as Jacob Neilsen once said:

A bad website is like a grumpy salesman.

The inverse is also true, a good, well designed website is a great way to represent your brand, and to get your message out there.

Read on for a brief list of some of pitfalls that can bring your site down, and how you can solve these issues just below.

1. Hard To Find Content You Are Interested In

These sites are known, but design is outdated and what about usability?:

• irs.gov
• boink.com
• reddit.com

Hacker attacks across the web are getting more sophisticated every day – after all, they have to. With the increased sophistication of anti-virus protection, firewalls, and application-based updates, hackers who want to stay in business have needed to get more creative. And they have, responding with increasingly sophisticated attacks that have forced the online security industry to scramble to keep up.

So how do the hackers stay ahead of the security experts? One reason is obvious – if they didn’t, they’d be out of a job. Another reason is institutional – a lone hacker working in a basement will be more innovative and faster moving than a large software company, thus more likely to come up with effective hacks.

Website Security Tips

Here are 10 effective ways to thwart the best efforts of hackers:

Keep Your Versions Updated

This is one of the simplest ways to stay a step or two ahead of the hackers. By downloading the newest versions and updates of Windows, WordPress, and your antivirus platform, you can make your applications or website just tough enough to crack. That way, hackers won’t bother with your site and instead move on to some other site whose owner hasn’t been as vigilant.

check out other useful security tips...

We all have an increasing number of sites and online services we’re members of, and sometimes it all gets a little overwhelming. At times, we just need to delete our memberships to some sites, either in an effort to simplify our lives or just because we’ve grown tired of a particular site or service.

What we often don’t realize when signing up for all these accounts, though, is how difficult it can be to permanently delete our accounts when we’ve had enough. Some require complicated, multi-step processes that can stretch over the course of days (or weeks). Others take less time, but still require multiple steps by the user.

Below we’ll take a look at the account deletion processes of popular websites and services, and how easy or difficult they make it. Then we’ll discuss why sites make things so complicated, and some things to consider when designing your own deletion policies.

Facebook

Deleting a Facebook account is a bit more complicated than many other services. There are two options for getting rid of your FB account, one that’s permanent and complete, and one that lets you change your mind later.

Designing your own logo doesn’t have to be too hard as long as you have some guidelines to stick to, some decent software, a huge portion of creativity and a few hours to spare. In this article I’ll try provide you with the guideline part and give a couple of tips on how to get the rest.

Logo-design is an art form, there’s no doubt about that. There are own websites, forums and communities dedicated to the logo creation process.
This article is for those who aren’t necessarily experts of logo design but want to learn a bit about the basics of the process. Maybe you’re a new freelancer or want to design a logo as part of a bigger project. Either way this article is for you.

A logo is supposed to be something that sticks to the minds of everyone your business is in contact with. It’s in many ways a part of your face outwards and should not be underrated in any way.
A logo can and should be used actively in your marketing.

First, let’s have a look at some common questions.

What is a logo ?

A logo is a graphic mark/emblem used to promote your company or brand towards the public. It can be a symbol only, a symbol combined with text or text written in a certain way (font, color etc). This leaves you with an extreme amount of creative freedom.

Where can and should I use my logo?

• Website
• Brochures
• Business cards
• Social media (Facebook, Twitter + +)
• Business signs and stickers
• Invoices
• Fax forms

Basically you can and should use your logo everywhere you represent your firm/brand. This means everywhere from online to car stickers and t-shirts + all kinds of print.

What software do I need?