web design

My Brand New Logo

There are numerous tools online that help companies and teams with their design and branding. But I don’t remember seeing anything as simple and as impressive, in terms of both the process and the result, as My Brand New Logo.

Pick a company name, a slogan, provide three keywords describing the company, and you’ll instantly get a rich selection of automatically generated logos. You can further customize the ones that you liked with layouts, colors, and more.

If you are a startup on a budget, give them a try – no need to spend big coin on a designer just yet.

WordPress 5.0

WordPress 5.0 has been released today. It is by far the largest update to the system since … since I can remember. In fact, to some, it might look like a completely different system, thanks to a totally new editing experience – Gutenberg.

I have already upgraded this blog to the new version, and I’m writing this post with the new editor. It is awesome! It’ll take some getting used, but not because it’s difficult, rather because I’ve been using WordPress for too long.

I also can’t wait to see what all the creative people will come up with in their themes and plugins, pushing WordPress websites to the new high.

Great work and huge thanks to everyone involved!

Having fun with link hover effects

Any web developer knows how to apply CSS rules to style web page elements. Including links. Including hover effects (on mouse over). But I think most have never went far enough to explore the limits of this styling. “Having fun with link hover effects” goes exactly there, with some really cool techniques that tend to leave people with “why didn’t I think of that” thought hovering over their head.

The Alternative Dictionary of Web Design Terms

Webdesigner Depot runs “The Alternative Dictionary of Web Design Terms“. It’s simple, yet pretty funny and accurate. I liked all of it, but a few of my favorites are:

Agile: A development methodology that advocates self-organizing teams and flexibility, allowing startups to more efficiently realize they’re building something that no one wants.
Backlink: Before experimenting with dogs, Pavlov trained online marketers to salivate whenever he said “backlink”. It still works.
Code: The stuff they show on computer screens in the less-offensive Hollywood representations of hacking.
Comments (in Code): In-jokes and clever insights that only total nerds will ever see. One day, someone will achieve true enlightenment, and the secret will written down as a code comment, and lost to an obscure GitHub repository.
Navigation: The quickest and easiest way for a customer to get lost.
URL: U R Lost.

Design for Blockchain

“Design for Blockchain” is a collection of articles about user interface and user experience design for blockchain and cryptocurrency projects and tools. Blockchain, due to its nature, is quite a technical subject, so making it friendly for non-technical users is a challenge. These articles are exploring the domain problem.