TTI COM Visual Media

As a web designer, I try to stay active in the web design community. Apart from going to conferences (SXSW, Webmaster Jam Session, etc) the easiest way to do this is to follow fellow designers through RSS.

On my Netvibes page I have a Web Design tab where I keep up with a handful of designers I think are legit. Some of them update their websites more than others, but the updates are all solid. I definitely recommend subscribing to their RSS feed or at the very least check them out.

Here is the list of designers/sites I actively follow (in no specific order).

• Meagan Fisher
• Smashing Magazine
• Webdesigner Depot
• Matt Brett – a true wordpress ninja
• Andy Rutledge
• Bryan Veloso
• Garrett Dimon
• Webdesigner Wall
• Blue Flavor
• A List Apart
• Ordered List
• Dan Rubin
• Signal vs Noise (37signals blog)
• Jonathan Snook
• NetTuts

I’m sure I am missing out on a bunch of other good blogs, so by all means leave a comment with suggestions.

Another good way to keep up with the community is with Twitter, but that’s an entirely different post.

Smashing Magazine has two great articles: Web Design Trends for 2009 and More Web Design Trends for 2009.

A bunch of trends are described and shown: rich UIs, PNG transparency, big typography, one-page layouts, huge illustrations and vibrant graphics (a fave: Versions for Mac), more white space than ever, etc. etc. etc. They’ve identified 31 distinct trends/design elements, most ranging from pretty cool to very very.

While things like all-Flash sites can be considered passé, here’s a new one that I love: the 2010 Prius site. Great sound design, and it helps that it’s finally a good-looking car.

Your picks?

Well known web designer, Jonathan Snook, made a quick screencast explaining how to use the slice tool in Photoshop and Fireworks.

I often find myself often skipping the slicing in PS and just doing it manually. However, after watching the screencast you will see it can be a true time saver – especially when dealing with sending the file (psd) between multiple designers.

Enjoy.

Designing websites for state agencies prevents you from getting to crazy in Photoshop. Sure you can try and do something “outside the box” here and there, but the design elements can only be pushed so far.

That doesn’t mean we can’t appreciate others’ free reign. The article 40 Beautiful and Creative Website Footers is a great example of this. While the vast majority of the websites featured are blogs, they are still amazing never-the-less.

Stumbling through today’s most popular bookmarks on Delicious I found this gem, 15 mac apps webdesigners should have in their dock.

Jump to the article for pictures and descriptions of each app, but the 15 apps that made the cut were:

• Adobe Creative Suite
• Transmit
• Coda
• Textmate
• CocoaMySQL
• MAMP (MacOSX Apache MySQL PHP)
• Things
• CSSEdit
• Transmission
• MarsEdit
• Skitch
• Parallels Desktop
• MS Office
• Paparazzi
• Twitterriffic

If you using OSX it’s a worthwhile read. All the applications they recommend are solid – in fact I have 12 of the 15 mentioned installed on my computer right now.