Business - Page 27

Learn how to run your design business, work with clients, manage expectations, and handle your finances.

Business / 3 Nov 2009

The Ultimate Guide to CSS Gallery Inclusion

Design Shack started out as a simple CSS gallery, featuring well designed websites that caught my eye. Tens of thousands of designs have been submitted over the past few years, and each one has been considered carefully for inclusion. The sad fact is that only around 5% of submissions stand out from the crowd.

This could be due to any number of factors; the site didn’t get the basics right, didn’t have anything remarkable to show, or (occasionally) was let down by content. This guide will walk you through how to make sure you stand a great chance of inclusion, avoiding all the pitfalls so commonly stumbled into by designers. At each stage, we’ll take a look at one great example, and one that’s not so good.

Articles / 17 Apr 2009

Defend Your Design

We all know that acute rush of adrenaline experienced before submitting a design for review or approval all too well. You click down on that “Send” button, take a deep breath and look at the design one more time before releasing your mouse. It’s gone.

You’ve sent your design out into a cruel, critical world. Will it succeed or will it fail? Perhaps that depends less on the design itself and more on whether or not you’ve set it up to succeed. As designers, we need to be advocates for the craft by explaining what we do and educating clients on our method.

Business / 11 Mar 2009

Good Design, Now What?

Here at Design Shack, we’ve built up a solid archive of the best designs the web has to offer. When browsing through the 3,000+ sites featured, it’s hard to fully grasp the amount of time and effort put into the design and development of each one.

That’s why it breaks my heart when I see a brilliant site screenshot taken the day it was launched, but when clicking to visit the live version, I find a shell of what it used to be.