Forms, forms, forms: so often overlooked in design. In this post, we are pleased to release the Form Design Cheat Sheet, created by Joe Leech and released for Smashing Magazine and its readers. This crib sheet contains an Omnigraffle template, as well as Photoshop (PSD) and PDF examples for you to download and use as you wish. Print out the sheet, stick it to your wall, send it to clients, and just generally help make everyone’s forms a bit better.

The designers of the crib sheet have spent years designing and testing forms, and they’ve decided to summarize the most common problems and issues that come up in their projects.

As usual, this goodie is absolutely free to use in private and commercial projects. The crib sheet is released under a Creative Commons license.

Form Design

Form Design Cheat Sheet: Full preview

Features

The crib sheet presents best practices for a variety of Web form issues:

  • Variety of fields (simple, optional, etc.);
  • Layout and examples;
  • Page-level error handling;
  • Password strength;
  • Currency values;
  • Inline validation;
  • Buttons.

Download The Crib Sheet For Free

The crib sheet is released under a Creative Commons license. You can use it in all of your projects for free and without any restrictions. Please link to this article if you would like to spread the word. You may modify the theme as you wish. We know you’ll find it useful in your next project!

Thank you, guys. We appreciate your work and your good intentions!

(al) (fi) (il)

© Joe Leech for Smashing Magazine, 2011.