I will be re-designing a site in the next week or so, the SuperbHosting.net and HopOne.net sites are being updated, and shortly thereafter, we’ll be looking at doing a major update to the control panel used for dedicated and shared hosting customers, as well. I was doing a bit of poking around, and I came across an article from April 2006 about designing user interfaces - Designing for People Who Have Better Things To Do With Their Lives, by Joel Spolsky. It starts off:

When you design user interfaces, it’s a good idea to keep two principles in mind:

1. Users don’t have the manual, and if they did, they wouldn’t read it.
2. In fact, users can’t read anything, and if they could, they wouldn’t want to.

These are not, strictly speaking, facts, but you should act as if they are facts, for it will make your program easier and friendlier.

The article raises some interesting points about taking a minimlist approach to design, and how that improves usability. It’s actually a great look at some of the common mistakes people make when designing and documenting their products and applications, and the author is quite blunt in his delivery. A good read for those who might want some tips, and a little humerous for those already in the know.

One of the toughest searches seems to be for good icons. It’s usually easy to find standard icons, but to find a larger or broader set of icons to be used throughout a site or to find an icon set with a specific look and feel can be a bit more difficult. I’ve scoured some of the usual suspects for icons, like Smashing Magazine or famfamfam, both of which are great resources, but today I saw an article for the 50 Most Beautiful Icon Sets Created in 2008. It’s a great package of icon sets that can come in handy for designers and developers alike.

Couple other links from PSDTUTS that are worth mentioning (should’ve caught these last week, but c’est la vie!):

Best of the Web - November 2008: From custom brushes and fonts to tutorials on effects and finding inspiration, a great collection of design resources. Interested in the Slow Motion Bullet photoshop tutorial - just seems really cool!

Best of TUTS - November 2008: Web development screencasts (who wants to look at code when they’re coding?!), 10 CSS mistakes to avoid, and a collection of must-read web development books.

I’ve made my own informal checklist of do’s and don’ts for web design, but I will always rely on the top-of-their-game professionals and their wisdom to help each individual project. While I consider myself a near expert on the subject, it’s often difficult to explain if for someone else to truly understand. An article on PSDTUTS does a great job of breaking down web design into 3 components: aesthetic design, information design, and interface design:

Good design isn’t just about good looks, and nowhere is this truer than in web design. In fact it makes sense to think of web design as being made up of three major non-technical components: aesthetic design, information design and interface design. If you want to be a great web designer it’s essential that you have a firm grasp of all three.

View the full article here: The 3 Components of Good Web Design.

UPDATE: The above article is part of a week-long series of articles on good web design. The rest of the articles in the series are linked to below:
9 Information Design Tips to Make You a Better Web Designer
8 Ideas, Techniques, and Tricks for Your Web Toolkit

I keep telling myself that I’m going to finish an online portfolio, but for whatever reason, I never really seem to get too far on it - see what I mean? (I look at that now, almost a year later, and it makes me cringe!) Feeling ambitious, I decided to at least look for some inspiration, and not surprisingly, Smashing Magazine had a recent article with some really creative portfolio designs. Probably worth checking out for design inspiration in general, not just creating a personal portfolio.

I’m always trying to improve my prowess in the area of graphics/graphic design, and at some point I stumbled upon an Spoono’s photoshop tutorial for changing photos to colour sketches. Most of the tutorials that deal with photos to sketches are only for black and white (pencil) sketches, so I thought I’d share this.

It’s one of those tutorials that has to be used properly, or at least you can’t overuse it, and I’ll admit, it’s a bit difficult to find a perfect use for it, but the other day I was creating a landing page for an ad and used it to put a server configuration diagram graphic onto a ripped piece of paper to fit in better with the landing page. You can see the original image here.