Content should precede design. It’s a basic and essential piece of advice that you’ll hear from me as well as countless other designers. But what about the situations where this idea breaks down? We’d like to imagine that it’s never the case that design must take place before certainty about content can be reached, but in truth this simply isn’t the case.

What circumstances are there that force designers to proceed with a lack of content? How should you respond to such scenarios? Keep reading as we explore these ideas.

 
How Is This a Problem?

So what’s the big deal? I just said that content-first design is the defining aspect of good design and now I’m complaining that people follow the idea! Isn’t that a bit two-faced?

Recently, it has occurred to me that there are in fact areas where this becomes a bit … Read More »

In the recent typography inspiration showcase a design by Jordan Metcalf particularly caught my interest, which reminded me of the design style used in the Mexico 1968 Olympics branding. I decided to combine these inspirations and create my own poster design artwork in a similar style. Follow this step by step tutorial to create a flowing composition of geometric lines based on the retro style of the Mexico 1968 Olympics branding. We’ll use Illustrator’s powerful vector tools to create the pattern, then switch over to Photoshop to weather the design for that awesome retro style appearance.

The design we’ll be creating features a series of flowing striped lines interweaving and looping around the page to form an intriguing composition. We’ll use a plain black and white palette to keep the design in check with the original Mexico Olympics … Read More »

In the next few tutorials posts we’re going to go through the process of building a WordPress theme, starting today with the initial design concept in Photoshop. Follow this step by step walkthrough of the creation of the design concept for my Ticket Stub theme, which is based on a movie review type blog. We’ll create a full page design ready for coding up into a fully working website.

The theme we’ll be building over the next couple of posts is named Ticket Stub. It’s a clean and simple blog layout that’s set up as a movie review blog, but is generic enough to be used for any kind of website.

View the large scale blog theme concept

We’ll start by creating the background texture tile. Open up Photoshop and add a spot from a subtle grunge brush in the … Read More »

Many people spend their time maintaining their websites these days. Some even consider this as their primary source of income. There are so many websites which deals with various topics. It is amazing that no matter how many websites there is, there are always thousands of visitors each day. This goes to show that most people worldwide are really into this technology. It is now up to you on how you will increase your traffic and subscribers.

When one makes a blog or a website, the next thing to worry about is how to promote it and how to let other people know you exist. Well, it would be worthless if others couldn’t see what you worked hard for. So, that is why we have given some tips to help you promote your … Read More »