design tips

Two weeks ago, Ashan Jay released LifePress to the WordPress plugin directory. It is an interactive, front-end calendar for tracking past events — a journal of sorts. For a version 1.0 launch, it has enough features with just the right touch of simplicity to show promise. This is not Jay’s first rodeo when it comes…

One of the most important early design decisions you will make is what kind of background will carry a project. Should it be a single color, colorless, use trendy elements such as geometric shapes, gradients or wood grain patterns? Or would a solid background design can help make a project shine? Staying on trend with…

WordPress.org has officially launched its new “Learn WordPress” platform, a free educational resource that includes courses, workshops, quizzes, lesson plans, and discussion groups. The material spans the spectrum of WordPress experience from beginners to advanced, and and allows users to learn asynchronously at their own pace. After a successful beta launch in August, the platform…

90% of all the information on the web is in writing. That means that typography is a skill that dictates that 90%. That’s a staggering figure that highlights just how important typography is. It’s absolutely everywhere: blog posts, social media, magazines, reports, books, and so much more. What this means for you as a designer…

With over 500 hours of video content being uploaded every minute, it’s now tougher than ever to build a successful channel on YouTube. Creating quality content is not enough, you also need to market your videos effectively to get more views. Using high-quality video thumbnails is one of the best ways you can use to…

Block-based themes are not complicated. Their structure is almost simple enough that developers are unlikely to need a tool to generate a blank theme. However, for those unfamiliar with how themes are built for the upcoming full-site editing (FSE) feature, a boilerplate is a good place to start. The Theme Experiments repository now has a…

Highlight your skills and improve your branding with the right domain name. The right .design domain is waiting for you. Some of the biggest names in design, including Adobe, Spotify, and Airbnb already use a .design domain for creative projects. Now is the time to grab one for your business while you can get the…

Mapbox GL JS, formerly an open source JavaScript library for interactive, customizable vector maps, has adopted a proprietary license in its recent version 2 update: mapbox-gl-js is no longer under the 3-Clause BSD license. By upgrading to this release, you are agreeing to Mapbox terms of service. Refer to LICENSE.txt for the new licensing terms and details.…

Designing a magazine from scratch can be a lot of work. You have to come up with unique layouts for multiple pages, design the covers, format paragraphs, and much more. Did you know that you can get a great head-start by simply using an InDesign magazine template? That’s right! With a magazine template, you get…

All hands on deck. 2021 will be the year of the Site Editor. Anne McCarthy announced the official start of the Full-Site Editing (FSE) Outreach Program last Friday on the Make Core blog. The program is primarily geared toward end-users. With few channels for average users to communicate with the development team, this offers an…