Here we go with the biggies…

1. SmashingMagazine.com

Packed full of daily web resources from desktop calendars to tips on learning CSS. They have also recently had a redesign massively cleaning up the content (which was pretty bad on my opinion) and also aggregating content from websites such as spyrestudios.com, buildinternet.com and webdesignerwall.com. All of which are also great resources…

2. WebDesignerDepot.com

Not specific in it’s content, Web Designer Depot seems to feature everything from Illustrator spotlights (like the recent one on the amazing Archan Nair) all the way to freebies such as the nice RSS icon set. I do however recommend they remove the horrible “I WAS a fat slob” adverts on the right as it’s pretty dire to see (see screenshot to the right)…

3. Spyrestudios.com

Is very good at eyeing up great web designs and showcasing them on their site. They are a small design agency in Canada but have a great blog. They also recently showcased my website because of it’s use of cufon, the amazing javascript text replacement (towards the bottom of the list).

4. BestWebGallery.com

Not a brilliant resource per se but it does feature some amazing modern designs. Not to be used as a starting point for designs but rather as “subliminal inspiration”.

5. BuildInternet.com

Build Internet is managed by twins Sam and Zach Dunn and is a great place to read more about the business side of website design. It’s packed full of jQuery tutorials, graphic design resources, CSS information and HTML tips. Give it a look.

Now for the smallies, generally sole developers who blog about their industry, not necessarily “small”…

6. Adii Rockstar

Now Adii is quite a little celebrity online. He’s known well for his work on the WooThemes project which sells premium wordpress themes but makes for a very interesting read.

7. Fabio Sasso

He’s the guy behind abduzeedo.com and seems to be in deep in the website design world. He has some great work to check out and is involved in a large number of successful websites packed full of resources and inspiration.

8. Veerle Pieters

A graphic/web designer from Belgium, Veerle has tons of posts from over the years covering stuff from html to illiustrations. It makes for an interesting read if you dig deep into the older content. You’ll also see just how much a great designer knows about their industry when you read Veerle’s blog.

9. Collis

Probably should reside in the biggies list but because we aren’t talking about his amazing success story, Envato, he slots into the smallies. He’s the CEO of one of the largest and greatest design marketplaces on the web. He has his own blog called the Netsetter which covers mainly covers the business side of the design industry. (he also features a lot of guest writers too)

10. Chris Spooner

Because he’s a local boy! Chris was born and raised in Sheffield, UK, and runs his blog over at Spoon Graphics. He posts some great content covering mainly graphic design but it a great source of inspiration.

There are many more people to check out in the web design world, you just have a dig, and when you find them either subscribe to their RSS feed or follow them on Twitter like a stalker. Either way you’ll get great resources and good reads!

Also see @liammckay @kevinrose @shauninman @jasonfried

Update 6th Nov 09: My panoramic wembley photo has been used in Main Event Magazine (Thanks Ky for sorting this)
Update 12th Oct 09: This photo is now part of the Wikipedia page on Wembley Stadium as the header image

The game was full of controversy, foul play, substitutions and of course, goals. Chelsea finished up beating the Champions 4-1 on penalties and I took along my trusty SLR to photograph some of the action and I got some pretty good shots! Note: all the photos are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales licence which means they are free to use along with attribution to this site! Enjoy!

So University is done and dusted for 2009. I won’t be returning until September 2010 which makes for a nice break. In the end I got my grades (A,A,B,B,B,C) which I was very happy with. To top all this off I thought I’d showcase some of the work I did to receive these grades.

Visual Design (B Grade)

I’ll start with a Module I didn’t thoroughly enjoy this year due to boring briefs, however, I did a little bit of illustration for it which included some postage stamps, posters and even included some Video in After Effects. You can see the video, the illustrations and the posters over at http://turnitoff.info/ (the posters reside in the footer of the page)
The site was built using the latest in Javascript and jQuery technology so check it out, hover over the elements, play with the buttons. Your probably better off using FireFox too, as IE couldn’t really handle it’s superior web modernness. Make sure you check out the video at the bottom of the website too (yes that is me speaking sounding common as muck).

For Visual design I also illustrated the stamps shown in the header image. It’s based on Music Technology over the years and I think I captured the best four from the past century or so. You can see them in all their vector glory too.

Multimedia Product (C Grade)

This was a complex one, which also means I can’t demonstrate it online. The idea was simple, Unique Bidding auctions.

The site featured a worlds first in online bidding. Live real time bidding in auctions. You could actually watch LIVE bidders placing their respective amounts on the page as it went along. This meant users could bid against each other based on other users’ bids. Clever eh! It was all jQuery and PHP grabbing the data from a database. It was awfully complex and also included a 10,000 word document explaing the process and research behind it. There was also a very fancy presentation which explains the fundementals if anyone wants to watch it. Its the branding, the functionality and the UI all rolled into a short few slides.

It also had it’s own iPhone web application which tied into the whole site shwoing live bids from anywhere in the world at any time.

Web Programming (A grade)

Another interesting one. And one which I actually really enjoyed.

Assignment one involved building a file based Guestbook with full admin features, the ability to edit posts and delete them, a swear word filter to stip out those naughty words and a slick simple UI. It also had AJAX editing of comments right in the page. No loading, no navigating, just click and change! I think you can guess what Lady Part and Ping Pongs were supposed to say! It maybe available as a free download if anyone is interested in the future.

Assignment two was a dog database website. Very similar to Battersea dogs homes website. It needed full admin controls and the ability to save dogs as favourites and have the ability to search the dogs too. The brief was very extensive, and I covered everything. Check it out online right now. I ended up building a commercial site based on this for Cliffe Kennels.

Authoring (B Grade)

It was basically Actionscript 3.0 work. For assignment 1 I had to develop an interface which included an animation, using the drawing API and the components within Flash 8. I ended up building a Spirograph kind of application which allowed you to colour it yourself and watch the application build it for you. Very nice! Have a look at it. I also built a flash gallery using XML and class files. But it’s not something I have online at the moment.

Multimedia Design & Production (A Grade)

This is a group project, and something which is a real challenge working with four different creative minds. My University chum Chris Kovalenko was part of our A grade group which created a chairty website and CDROM called the West Yorkshire Autistic Society (completely fake). Check out the site.

Intro to Video (B Grade)

My mate Adam Fisher helped me out with this one as I couldn’t star, edit and film the whole video. He rode the bike, I edited it, The Chemists supplied the music. It actually works quite well for my first every video. So I’m quite happy with it as a 2nd year project.

That’s it! I hope this gives someone some kind of inspiration either for university or for their next project. If it did help you in any way shape or form, drop me a comment!

Many developers struggle to use the basic tools in Adobe’s award winning software Photoshop when designing websites. It can help a lot to know some simple techniques and tools when building XHTML pages. You don’t have to use the very awful splicing function at all.

Let’s start with the idea of building a very simple design using a set colour palette and a set width. After these simple tips I will also supply a number of useful links to visit to help you further.

Let’s boot up Photoshop and start with a new blank file. Choose a preset width and height (I’m using 1024×768) and let’s get designing!

Initially we need a colour palette for inspiration. If you want help see Adobe’s Kuler application. It’s awesome. Once you have found your colour palette you can then download it (provided your registered and logged in) open it and your colours will jump straight into Photoshop (Window>Swatches)! How cool!

Pick your favourite background colour (I’m using #ff8548) and fill the background. Then create two guide lines 960 pixels apart (or any other distance apart) and place them in the center. (If your not sure how to do this simply download 960 Guides). We now have a simple layout. Next we need to setup our header and navigation.

It’s as easy as writing some text and placing it at the top of the page. Make sure you keep the margins your giving the text around the edges the same. You could do this by making small 10px x 10px boxes and using these as padding. You could also draw more guide lines by dragging them from the rulers around the page. (If you can’t see them tap Ctrl+R) Using rulers and guises to position all your elements on the page is the best way to keep everything aligned and tidy. This is a fundamental in website design.

You can also use Lorem Ipsum (dummy text) to help see how your layout looks on the page.

Stick to the colours in your colour palette and have a play. I drew up a quick dummy web page with some lorem ipsum, a title and a navigation bar. I also drew in some guides to position my content better and to keep everything tidier. If you would like to download this PSD file be my guest. Pull it apart and see what you like.

This simple design could be a the building blocks of your first website.

Check out the following links to help you further;

1. Lorem Ipsum
2. Adobe Kuler
3. 960 Grid System
4. Web Designer Wall
5. Best Web Gallery
6. CSS Based
7. Pixel2Life Tutorials