Smashing Magazine

College and university websites have a lot of roles to fill. They need to provide information for prospective students (both new and transfer), parents of students and prospective students, current students, and alumni. In many cases, they're also the gateway to the school's intranet and the public face for both academics and athletics. They often need to include reams of information in a way that makes everything easy to find. It's a huge challenge.

And the truth is: most collge and university websites are horribly designed. Either they look like they were designed fifteen years ago and then forgotten about, or they're so overloaded with information that it's almost impossible to find what you're looking for.

But not every college or university website is horrible. There are some excellent sites out there, and below are some of them. If you know others, please share them in the comments to this post!

A Pattern Language is a book about architecture that was written in the 1970s, before the Web as we know it was even conceived. But the book provides hundreds of valuable patterns for community planning and architectural design, many of which can easily be applied to online communities and social networking websites.

Niche social networks are popping up online all the time, with many designers and developers taking advantage of pre-built social network platforms and making little modification. It makes sense, after all: why reinvent the wheel when perfectly good ones are available?

But if you step back and really consider how your social network or online community is set up, you might be able to improve the user experience and overall user satisfaction by leaps and bounds. Looking to other fields, such as architecture and civil engineering, is one way to gain new ideas without having to reinvent the wheel.

So many articles explain how to design interfaces, design graphics and deal with clients. But one step in the Web development process is often skipped over or forgotten altogether: content planning. Sometimes called information architecture, or IA planning, this step doesn't find a home easily in many people's workflow. But rushing on to programming and pushing pixels makes for content that looks shoehorned rather than fully integrated and will only require late-game revisions.

On day one things are great. You've landed a new job, the client is excited, you're stoked and the project will be great. First things first: you have to collect the main materials to begin the design. You send the client an email asking for what you need.

It’s important to promote your design business. This is especially true when economic times are challenging, you’ve got news to announce, or you’re simply hungry for growth. Many forms of promotion are available to the modern designer – with banner ads and Google AdWords among the most popular. In this digital age, it’s easy for web and graphic designers to overlook one of the most effective and fun forms of promotion: the mail campaign. In an era when people are accustomed to communicating electronically, the value and meaning of something you can hold in your hands is greater than ever before.

The promo mailer is perhaps most popular among illustrators and graphic designers working for editorial clients, which means that it is a powerful, untapped resource for some web designers. Likewise, it was probably a much more common practice ten years ago than it is today due to the rise of online promotion techniques – but those who ignore its potential are missing out on a tool with the power to gain new clients, increase web traffic, and attract publicity for your business and events.

China is a country with five thousand years of civilization. It is a multi-national entity extending over a large area of East Asia. China's cultural influence extends across the continent, with customs and writing systems adopted by neighboring countries including Japan, Korea and Vietnam.

China has gone through numerous ups and downs and twists and turns, from wealthy and prosperous (as during the Tang Dynasty back in 618–907 AD) to powerless and colonized (as during the Qing Dynasty, just around 100 years ago). Now China is reopening its door to the world again, embracing the latest trends, concepts and technologies, the World Wide Web being one of them.

In our interviews with six well-known designers in China, each of whom wears different hats, the recurring theme was that China's Web design industry is rising like a spiral from imitation to innovation and user-centered design.

Every now and again we showcase fantastic favicons, those tiny pieces of art that you’ll find in your browser’s address bar or when rifling through your bookmarks. These little gems are important because they serve as visual indicators to help visitors easily identify content in their browser. That aside, favicons are just nice to look at, and way too many websites don’t make use of them. We want to change that, which is why we are presenting what is now the ninth episode in our favicons series: a small article with tiny images and fast loading time… for a change.

Any picture's merit is debatable. But notice that these favicons were chosen not simply for their beauty and originality; it was important to us also that each fit the overall website design and logo. Pay attention to the details of the design.

All favicons are linked, of course, to the websites from where they were taken (if they still exist). Click on them to get more insight into how favicon design relates to overall layout design. The order here does not indicate any ranking.

Do you remember?.. The first time you played with pieces of modeling clay, melting them in your hands and going deeper and deeper into the colourful plasticine world where your imagination was the only limit. Since the 19th century, when Franz Kolb and William Harbutt independently of each other invented plasticine (modeling clay), it has been used in almost all fields of art: illustration, web design, typography, claymation, installation design.

Plasticine artworks can be found just everywhere: advertisements, book/magazine as well as CD/DVD covers, movies / TV series, music videos, computer / console games, and even web design elements. Below you will find a collection of beautiful plasticine artworks that hopefully will inspire you and give you an idea about how this material can be used in your next design project.

Yes, this is another round-up of fresh and useful Javascript techniques, tools and resources. But don't close the tab yet, as you might find this one very useful. In this selection we present calendars, forms, buttons, navigation, debugging, optimization and compatibility tables as well as handy resources and tools. We also cover various jQuery-plugins that will help you extend the functionality of your website and improve user experience with ready components or coding solutions.

The last section also covers a number of useful educational resources such as a compilation of useful JavaScript coding practices, a detailed comparison of JavaScript frameworks and general JavaScript programming conventions. We are looking forward to your feedback.

You may be interested in the following related posts:

• 50 Fresh JavaScript Tools That Will Improve Your Workflow
• 45 Powerful CSS/JavaScript-Techniques
• 70 Useful AJAX And JavaScript Techniques

Mobile forms tend to have significantly more constraints than their desktop cousins: screens are smaller; connections are slower; text entry is trickier; the list goes on. So, limiting the number of forms in your mobile applications and websites is generally a good idea. When you do want input from users on mobile devices, radio buttons, checkboxes, select menus and lists tend to work much better than open text fields.

But constraints breed innovation, and mobile forms are no different. The limitations of mobile devices have forced developers and designers to find new ways to allow users to input data faster and more easily. Thanks to the modern solutions covered in this article, the mobile space may not be a place to avoid forms much longer. Instead, it may become the place to encourage them.

Since its emergence, the digital photography market has gradually supplanted the traditional one. APN and digital SLR cameras entered our lives, and some people announced the death of silver-based images. This is not all lie, and yet old-fashioned images have been particularly popular in the past few years. All we do seem to do now is try to recreate the atmosphere of those bygone times anyway. Blurry, distorted and over-saturated images are not just a fad anymore. People have became familiar with the style and even consider it a full-fledged photographic genre.

And this is where toy cameras play a role. These devices, made entirely of plastic, including often the lens itself, are not only toys. Sure, they cost next to nothing and have no controls to speak of, but this is what people like about them: they create unpredictable pictures, with equally unpredictable vintage effects. Once you understand this, the rest is a beautiful game. Take them anywhere, anytime, and photograph whatever you like.

I thought I could not be out-geeked. With a background in radio, and having dabbled in the demo scene on the Commodore 64 and hung out on BBSes and IRC for a long time and all the other things normal kids don't quite get, I thought I was safe in this area.

Then I went to my first WhereCamp, an unconference dealing with geographical issues and how they relate to the world of Web development. Even my A-Levels in Astronomy did not help me there. I was out-geeked by the people who drive and tweak the things that we now consider normal about geo-location on the Web.

Pulling out your phone, find your location and getting directions to the nearest bar is easy, but a lot of work has gone into making that possible. The good news is that because of that effort, mere geo-mortals like you and me can now create geographically aware products using a few lines of code. So, let's give the geo-community a big hand.

The design profession is full of happy folks, and understanding why so many designers enjoy their work is not hard. But not all are so happy. If you’re not careful, the joy of getting paid to pursue your passion can be tainted by the less joyous realities of the professional world. You see, no matter how skilled you are as a designer, unless you are equally prepared in professional matters, your prospects will be limited and your circumstances compromised. This is true whether you work freelance, for an agency or in-house with a company.

Every week I hear from designers who are struggling to come to terms with these realities. Unhappy with their current circumstances, they write to ask for advice on improving their lot. Usually, they either claim not to understand how things got so bad, or they lay the blame somewhere other than at their own feet. In every case, however, the sole cause is their poor choices and lack of professional acumen. It needn’t be so.

Although much valuable information for all sorts of web and print professionals can be found online, it is often difficult to weed through all the noise and find good quality content. I believe it's vital that professionals in different creative fields supplement their online learning and research through well-edited and high-quality print publications.

Print magazines, more often than not, are well-researched and are headed by top-notch editorial staff, usually containing information and resources on the cutting edge of their respective industries' trends and happenings. To that end, to help you fulfill part of your offline research needs, I've compiled a list of print magazines that are of interest to professionals in three different categories: Web Designers, Digital Artists, and Photographers. And be sure to comment so you can tell us your personal favourite print magazine, if you don't see it listed here.

Adobe Illustrator is a powerful software for illustrating that allows users to produce beautiful artwork, technical illustrations, and even graphics for both print and the web. Adobe Illustrator is a multipurpose vector illustration tool and its versatility makes it the most preferred choice among many professional artists and designers.

In the past, we've published a collection of Beautiful Photoshop Illustrations By Artists Around The World, and this is the latest post that will showcase the power of Adobe Illustrator. We present here hundreds of brilliant illustrations by artists from around the world that will surely mesmerize you and stir your imagination. Have a look, and feel the power of Illustrator!

We recognize that there are many more highly-talented illustrators that may not be mentioned here. We can't cover them all, but with your help we can try to showcase them in future posts. Please feel free to comment on this article and mention the name of your favorite artist.

App Store is a competitive environment. Against more than 140,000 apps, all screaming for attention, how do you make sure your app gets its time in the spotlight? What does it take to get good media coverage? How do you get people to talk about your app—and, ideally, how do you get them to buy it and show it to their friends?

Following the simple rules laid out below, you will increase your chances in the battle for fame and glory. These tips might seem rudimentary or in-your-face obvious, but they are so often neglected in the heat of the moment.

Web design is a relatively young field. It's youthful, growing and made up of people from all kinds of backgrounds, many of whom lack formal design training. We have learned, and still are learning, as we go. I came into my first job as a Web designer for Boeing back in the mid-1990s, with no formal design training. I was lucky to get some training on the job, and I would guess that my experience there was similar to that of many who are reading this article.

I had the opportunity to work with some very talented and highly experienced designers who all had made the jump from other design fields to the Web. It was there, as part of that training, that I learned about critiquing, both giving and receiving, through regular design reviews.

There has been an increasing and sincere interest in typography on the web over the last few years. Most websites rely on text to convey their messages, so it's not a surprise that text is treated with utmost care. In this article, we'll look at some useful techniques and clever effects that use the power of style sheets and some features of the upcoming CSS Text Level 3 specification, which should give Web designers finer control over text.

Keep in mind that these new properties and techniques are either new or still in the works, and some of the most popular browsers do not yet support them. But we feel it's important that you, as an informed and curious Web designer, know what's around the corner and be able to experiment in your projects.

Desktop wallpapers can serve as an excellent source of inspiration. However, if you use some specific wallpaper for a long period of time, it becomes harder to draw inspiration out of it. That’s why we have decided to supply you with smashing wallpapers over 12 months. And to make them a little bit more distinctive from the usual crowd, we’ve decided to embed calendars for the upcoming month. So if you need to look up some date, isn’t it better to show off a nice wallpaper with a nice calendar instead of launching some default time application?

This post features 50 free desktop wallpapers, created by designers across the globe. Both versions with a calendar and without a calendar can be downloaded for free.

Please notice:

• all images can be clicked and lead to the preview of the wallpaper;
• you can feature your work in our magazine by taking part in our desktop wallpaper calendar series. We are regularly looking for creative designers and artists to be featured on Smashing Magazine. Are you one of them?

So what wallpapers have we received for March 2010?

Over the years designers have pushed themselves to create unique and inspiring designs. Companies have yearned to have websites which are innovative and make them stand out against their competitors. Yet charity websites have not progressed along with trends and expectations — they seem to have been designed for launch and then only updated with minor tweaks to suit the content.

It has become a recent trend for charities to look at their online identities and branding; spending money on creating user experiences which suit their user base, and over time getting people involved with their campaigns and messages.

Below we look at charity websites which have successfully developed their online brand using modern and creative ideas. We will also discuss how each charity website can be improved because, as we all know, not every website is perfect. There are always improvements to the design or usability that may have been overlooked by management, designers, or developers.