BlogmyQuery – BMQ

Well, its official: social media is here to stay. While it can be difficult to keep up with the ever-changing social landscape, a basic understanding and implementation of the different platforms available can get big results. Companies of all sizes are taking advantage of the free publicity and word-of-mouth that social media can offer them.

One of the most logical ways for companies to capitalize on this trend is to integrate their social media campaigns with their websites. Unfortunately, some websites treat their social media links as an after-thought, and it shows. These sites will often use stock icons supplied by the social media outlets that do little to coordinate with the look and feel of the website itself. In other cases, the links might just be shoved into any blank space that was previously unoccupied. Either way, this is no way to treat such a potentially valuable marketing tool.

The following collection of websites, on the other hand, do a fantastic job of integrating their social media campaigns into the design itself. Through custom designed icons and typography, these social media elements fit into the page stylistically, and are easily accessible without overwhelming the user.

Websites With Seamless Social Media Integration

Trailer Park Truck is food truck based in Los Angeles, and they want to make sure their fans can always find their current location. They placed their twitter and Facebook links in the left margin of the site in what looks like an attached wooden sign.

Adventure World is a theme park in Australia with a fun, retro website. Rather than use icons that might clash with the site’s design, they opt for the typographic treatment. They chose a quirky script font that coordinates perfectly with the images as well as the other typography on the site.

Lefft is the portfolio site for Irish Illustrator and UX designer, Paddy Donnelly. The site as a whole has a very colorful, tactile feel to it, and the social icons complement this beautifully. A subtle hover effect darkens the icons as you mouse over them.

Brand designer Aran Down‘s portfolio site has recurring ribbon embellishments used throughout. This treatment works very well with the custom-colored social icons used.

No Leath is a women’s shoe company with a pretty slick parallax scrolling site. Not wanting their social links to be left behind as their customers scroll, they are in a fixed position, right underneath the main navigation. They have been subtly customized in black, with a slight bevel to match the black leather shoes of course. Gotta match the shoes.

Flint Boutique specializes in wedding invitation design, and that is translated very nicely into their website. Their oversized Facebook button includes a variation on the traditional Facebook “f” inserted into a heart. That combined with coordinating typefaces and a faux-stamped texture makes it feel as handmade as their invitations.

The portfolio site for Pixel Peak design is a study in simplicity. It follows a very grid-like structure and the attention to detail is spot-on. The social icons blend in with the header seamlessly, and the hover effect on each slides up to reveal a pop of color.

Carl Rosekilly‘s design portfolio site is layered, dark and bright all at once. His links to Facebook, Twitter and Flickr are meant to look like little discarded bits of paper, which may not work on other sites, but it fits this grungy, layered site very well.

Tigi Hair Products uses an ultra elegant black bird icon positioned above an equally eye-pleasing Twitter feed. It cycles through their most recent tweets, one at a time. It is just large enough and centered on the page for maximum impact.

The Rexona For Men site wants to know what makes you a superhero? Styled like a comic book, the social icons take on the shape of shields.

The Thomas Oliver Band doesn’t want you to forget to follow them, tweet them, or email them. That’s why they practically nailed their social buttons to the floor. As you scroll up and down their site, the simply styled buttons remain anchored to the bottom of the window.

The World Wildlife Fund’s Earth Hour 2012 site is simple, using cool colors, simple shapes and plenty of white space. They chose to use an oversized footer with a large Twitter call-to-action. It matches the aesthetic established for the rest of the site, while calling due attention to itself.

Blind Pig Design is the portfolio site for designer Aaron Awad. It has a hip, illustrated vibe with subtly distressed elements for character. He uses a halftone pattern for his social media icons, which lets them fit right into their surroundings nicely.

The portfolio site for Marco Rosella has one of the most interesting navigation concepts I’ve ever seen. Rather than scrolling up, down, or side-to-side, you zoom into the content on the z axis. When you zoom in far enough to get to the contact info, that’s where you will find links to his Linkedin, Twitter and Facebook, cut into interesting, organic shapes.

Moovents is a social media agency, so one would expect great social media integration in their website. Keeping it simple, but sophisticated and noticeable, their social icons are greyscale versions of the famous logos, presented front and center in the header bar.

House musician Ricky Ryan‘s website features small but mighty social links colored in shades of copper. Placed right under the musician’s logo, (which stays in place no matter where you are within the site’s horizontal navigation) they are not likely to be missed.

The site for Upward Creative has a very mod 1960s look, and the simple row of circular icons certainly lends itself to that era as well.

Pulp Fingers is a team of designers and developers that specialize in making apps. The overall look of the site is very retro and playful, with typography and images seemingly cut out of construction paper. The Facebook and Twitter icons have a similar look, with a slight paper texture.

The minimalist site for Tokyu Agency deserves minimalist icons as well. Breaking free of their usual enclosing shapes, these icons use only the familiar initials as links. Only a slightly darker color than that of the background, they are barely there, yet always there, as they are in a fixed position at the top of the window. A mouseover reveals a colorful circle background for each icon.

Layout Lab‘s website is light and breezy with lots of negative space and a healthy dose of lime green for flavor. The links to their Twitter and Dribble accounts look right at home in fixed tabs on the upper left side of the window.

The site for Fancy Rhino uses triangles as a recurring design element. Team member photos, and portfolio work all appear in triangular shapes, so why not their social links? A simple row of triangles on their contact section communicates the different ways you can follow their work.

Friendly Gents is a Cincinnati web design studio with a vintage barbershop-inspired site. They use a lot of distressed fabric textures, and their social media links look like they are literally embossed into the fabric.

Ghosthorses‘ website is another with a quirky retro style. It uses a lot of mid-century typography, and textured ribbon embellishments. Their custom styled Twitter feed and follow button fit the rest of the page’s style like a glove.

Fringe Web Development goes even further back in time, with a turn of the century look and feel. The main navigation is in a left sidebar with a row of simple, elegantly styled social buttons right beneath it.

Liechtenecker is a “superfresh” web agency in Germany. Their site is fun, colorful, and textured, and the honeycomb-shaped social links are no different. They stand out in contrast to the neutral beige background, yet they complement the visuals on the rest of the site perfectly.

Share Your Thoughts

That does it for our list, but now its your turn to get social and share some of your own favorites. Which did you like on this list? Do you have any others that we missed that should to be included? Take a moment and give us your opinions in the comment section below.

(rb)

I see more and more devices that have a pixel ratio bigger than 1.5, even 2. My Galaxy Nexus for example has a pixel ratio of 2 and so do the latest versions of the iPhone and iPad. Retina display seems to be the next evolution and next challenge for us as designers.

Native mobile app designers have already learned how to take advantage of those devices with high pixel ratios to display bigger images with better quality, so as to enhance user experience. They are used to creating the images in both normal and retina @2x sizes for the iPhone, and creating 4 sets of drawables in 4 different sizes for Android devices.

With the iPad 3 also having retina display, it is definitively something that will be harder to avoid from now on. In this article, you will see how to use some CSS3 tricks in the field of image replacement to serve images with better quality to those high resolution devices.

Story Behind the Code

It all began when I was creating a jQuery Mobile application for the iPhone. The idea was to make a full HTML5 jQueryMobile app, and to embed it in a “native shell�, using Phonegap.

For this application, I created a bottom tab-bar that was imitating the native iOS tab-bar, and also a header with a logo image in it. Both the header and footer were HTML elements that used image replacement techniques to display the icons and logo.

When I tested the application on the iPhone 4S, I saw that the logo and the icons were highly rasterized and looked pretty ugly.

The Demo

I re-created a fake application page similar to the iOS native style so you can see what is going on. Whether you have a retina device or not, you can test it here with your phone. You can see the demo here. You can also download the code here.

As I said, if you load the page on a non retina device, it will look good. If you load it on a retina device, the images get rasterized.

This is due to the pixel ratio being 2, so the image is multiplied by two and stretched by the device, creating this unclean rendering. Here are some screenshots of the demo on iPad 3, iPhone 4 and Galaxy Nexus with the images being rasterized:

Galaxy Nexus:

iPhone 4:

iPad 3:

CSS Image Replacement Techniques

In this demo, I used different techniques for replacing images that will have varying consequences when we will want to change for retina images.

The first image we replace is in the logo, being sure to only set the height of the element. The HTML looks like this:

<div class="ui-header"> <h1> My logo </h1></div>

The CSS like this:

.ui-header h1{

color:#fff;

display: block;

outline: 0 none !important;

overflow: hidden;

margin:0;

text-align: center;

text-overflow: ellipsis;

white-space: nowrap;

text-indent:-9999px;

background:url(img/logo.png) no-repeat center center;

height:33px;

}

Again, what’s important here is that we give it height, but no width.

The second technique is to use the delete button. We want to keep the text for this one, so we will add the icon in the :before pseudo class. The HTML looks like this :

<p> <a href="#"> Delete item </a> </p>

And the CSS code like this:

.delete:before{

content: " ";

display:block;

width:20px;

height:20px;

position:absolute;

left:6px;

background:url(img/delete.png) no-repeat;

}

Note that in this case, we gave the element both a width and a height but no padding.

The next element to which we want to add an icon is the download button. The HTML looks like this:

<p> <a href="#"> Download </a></p>

And the CSS like this:

.download {

background:rgb(222, 227, 232) url(img/nuage.png) no-repeat 8px 6px;

border:1px solid rgb(199, 206, 212);

padding: 25px 0 25px 120px;

font-size:20px;

color:rgb(144, 160, 176);

text-shadow: 0 1px 1px rgb(239, 242, 245);

}

This is what we will call the third technique: assigning some padding, but no height or width. You will understand why below.

For the footer however, we also assign a width and height for the element, padding too. The HTML:

<a class="bubble button" href="#"> bubble </a>

The CSS:

.ui-footer .button{

background-color:rgba(187, 185, 185, 0.2);

border:1px solid rgb(22, 22, 22);

box-shadow: 0px 1px 2px rgba(22, 22, 22, 0.5) inset ;

text-indent:-9999px;

padding:10px 15px;

width:40px;

height:40px;

background-position: center center;

background-repeat:no-repeat;

margin: 0 5px;

}

.bubble{

background-image:url(img/bubble.png);

}

At this point we have different case scenarios for the image replacement that will load non retina images for all devices, for now.

Media Queries Pixel-Ratio to the Rescue

The next idea was then to find a solution to make those devices load better quality images. I remembered the media query device-pixel-ratio (vendor prefix needed). I never used it before, and decided to give it a try. You will need some vendor prefixes here (Mozilla is the strangest one).

The idea was pretty simple: I decided to try to serve those devices an image that would have twice the size of the desktop one. I chose a @2x notation for the retina image because I’m used to doing so when I create images for native iOS apps. I ended up doing something like this:

@media only screen and (-webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio: 2),

only screen and (min--moz-device-pixel-ratio: 2),

only screen and (-o-min-device-pixel-ratio: 2/1),

only screen and (min-device-pixel-ratio: 2) {

#myelement{

background:url(myicon@2x.png) no-repeat;

}

}

You would think that this works good. True, the retina image is loaded, but the problem is that the image is now twice the size. Still not displaying properly. Here is what it looked like on my Galaxy: the icons are nice and sharp, but not quite right.

Background-Size Property Lends a Hand

Now that we have the high resolution images loading, we need to ensure they are the right size. To do this, we will use the super useful CSS3 background-size property that is actually able to resize backgrounds as needed. You can either use pixel properties for width first then height, use percentages, or set the value to “auto�.

It’s simple to see it in the code. (Note that I used the id #retina for the demo purpose to only target the second part of the demo, but you can of course omit it in your code)

For the header button you remember that we did set the height but not the width, to do the trick here, we will then set the background height to the same value (we can leave the width at auto).

#retina .ui-header h1{

background:url(img/logo@2x.png) no-repeat center center;

-webkit-background-size: auto 33px ;

-moz-background-size: auto 33px ;

background-size: auto 33px ;

}

For the delete button technique it’s a bit easier, since we did set both width and height AND since it has no padding, we can set the value to 100% for each, meaning that the icon will use the whole container space:

#retina .delete:before{

background:url(img/delete@2x.png) no-repeat;

-webkit-background-size: 100%  100% ;

-moz-background-size: 100%  100% ;

background-size: 100%  100% ;

}

For the download button, it gets trickier. Since we did not give it any width or height, we will then have to set the exact sizes of the non retina image for this one:

#retina .download {

background:rgb(222, 227, 232) url(img/nuage@2x.png) no-repeat 8px 6px;

-webkit-background-size: 70px 68px ;

-moz-background-size: 70px 68px ;

background-size: 70px 68px ;

}

For the footer icons, we did set width and height, but the element has some padding. So here we will have to set at least one of the two values to make it work:

#retina .bubble{

background-image:url(img/bubble@2x.png);

}

#retina .loupe{

background-image:url(img/loupe@2x.png);

}

#retina .folder{

background-image:url(img/folder@2x.png);

}

#retina .ui-footer .button{

-webkit-background-size: 40px auto ;

-moz-background-size: 40px auto ;

background-size: 40px auto ;

}

And this is what it now looks like:

What About HTML Images?

I only base this article on the CSS images, but of course there are also images directly in the HTML. For this, you will have to take a look at some responsive image techniques. So far I tested retina.js and have to admit that it’s pretty simple to use, you just have to put a @2x image in the same folder as the normal one and include the script. There is also the Retina Images plugin that seems to do the same job, but needs more server side configuration.

Limitations and Conclusion

As you can see, each case is different and you will have to play with the background-size values to get exactly what you want. The other limitation would be browsers downloading two images for this hack: first the normal, then the retina. I’m not an expert in this particular domain and did not run tests for the demo so if you want to, feel free to do and you can post the results I’m curious to know the browser used and if the images are downloaded twice.

The techniques used in this article are based on a lot of CSS3 code, so might not be supported by all browsers. Also, having to create all the images in two sizes can be hard for maintaining the code, and take more space on the server side. So you will have to think carefully before you use such techniques. Forcing devices to load images twice the size, and then to resize them can also be bandwidth consuming.

In conclusion, I would advise that even though this is a good technique for creating sleek pixel perfect nice interface for devices that support it, there are considerations to be made before using such a technique. Naturally, this won’t be the solution for everyone.

Going further

If you are interested in displaying nice icons without having to create the files twice, you also can take a look at the iconic font technique and at SVG images. There is also this article you can look to, but here again, this is not widely supported.

(Credits for the monochromatic icon set)

(rb)

In the following Adobe Illustrator tutorial you will learn how to create a semi-realistic lifebuoy graphic. We’ll start with a bunch of concentric circles and some basic vector shape building techniques. Once we create the starting shapes we’ll continue with some Pathfinder options, several Warp and Gaussian Blur effects plus some basic masking techniques.

For the highlights we will use some simple blending techniques along with a set of linear gradients. Finally, we’ll need a simple, dashed stroke, the Rounded Corners effect and some discrete Drop Shadows. The final illustration is easily editable so it won’t be difficult for you to pick different colors for your lifebuoy.

As always, this is the final image that we’ll be creating:

Step 1

Hit Control + N to create a new document. Enter 600 in the width and height box then click on the Advanced button. Select RGB, Screen (72ppi) and make sure that the "Align New Objects to Pixel Grid" box is unchecked before your click OK. Now, turn on the Grid (View > Grid) and the Snap to Grid (View > Snap to Grid). Next, you’ll need a grid every 5px.

Go to Edit > Preferences > Guides & Grid, enter 5 in the Gridline every box and 1 in the Subdivisions box. You can also open the Info panel (Window > Info) for a live preview with the size and position of your shapes. Do not forget to set the unit of measurement to pixels from Edit > Preferences > Unit > General. All these options will significantly increase your work speed.

Step 2

Pick the Ellipse Tool(L) and create a 255px circle. Fill it with black, lower its opacity to 30% and go to Object > Path > Offset Path. Enter a -60px Offset and click OK.

Step 3

Reselect the two concentric circles created in the previous step, open the Pathfinder panel and click on the Minus Front button. Fill the resulting compound path with R=241 G=242 B=242, increase its opacity to 100% and move to the Layers panel. Double click on it, name it "Body" and make a copy in front (Control + C > Control + F).

Step 4

Pick the Ellipse Tool(L), create a 195px circle and place it as shown in the first image. Select this new circle along with the copy created in the previous step and click on the Divide button from the Pathfinder panel. Move to the Layers panel and you will find a new group with three simple shapes. Open it, delete the small circle then ungroup (Shift + Control + G) the remaining two compound paths.

Step 5

Focus on the two compound paths created in the previous step and fill them with the linear gradient shown below.

Step 6

Disable the Snap to Grid (View > Snap to Grid) then go to Edit > Preferences > General and make sure that the Keyboard Increment is set at 1px. Reselect "Body" and make two copies in front (Control + C > Control + F > Control + F). Select the top copy and hit the up arrow three times (to move it 3px up).

Reselect both copies and click on the Minus Front button from the Pathfinder panel. Select the resulting group of shapes and turn it into a compound path (Object > Compound Path > Make). Fill it with R=134 G=139 B=145, lower its opacity to 30% and bring it to the front (Shift + Control + ] ).

Step 7

Reselect the second compound path edited in the fifth step (the large one) and make two copies in front (Control + C > Control + F > Control + F). Select the top copy and move it 5px up. Reselect both copies and click on the Minus Front button from the Pathfinder panel. Select the resulting group of shapes and bring it to the front (Shift + Control + ] ).

Open it, select the top shape, fill it with white and go to Effect > Blur > Gaussian Blur. Enter a 3px radius and click OK. Keep focusing on this group, select the bottom shape, fill it with R=134 G=139 B=145 and go to Effect > Blur > Gaussian Blur. Enter a 5px radius and click OK.

Step 8

Reselect the first compound path edited in the fifth step (the small one) and make two copies in front (Control + C > Control + F > Control + F). Select the top copy and move it 5px up. Reselect both copies and click on the Minus Front button from the Pathfinder panel. Select the resulting group of shapes and bring it to the front (Shift + Control + ] ).

Open it, select the top shape, fill it with R=134 G=139 B=145 and go to Effect > Blur > Gaussian Blur. Enter a 5px radius and click OK. Keep focusing on this group, select the bottom shape, fill it with white and go to Effect > Blur > Gaussian Blur. Enter a 3px radius and click OK.

Step 9

Reselect "Body" and make two copies in front (Control + C > Control + F > Control + F). Select the top copy and move it 10px down. Reselect both copies and click on the Minus Front button from the Pathfinder panel. Select the resulting group of shapes and turn it into a compound path (Object > Compound Path > Make). Fill it with white, lower its opacity to 30% and bring it to front (Shift + Control + ] ).

Step 10

Reselect "Body" and make two new copies in front (Control + C > Control + F > Control + F). Select the top copy and move it 5px down. Reselect both copies and click on the Minus Front button from the Pathfinder panel. Turn the resulting group of shapes into a compound path (Object > Compound Path > Make), fill it with white, lower its opacity to 70% and bring it to front (Shift + Control + ] ).

Step 11

Select all the shapes created in the last five steps and group them (Control + G). Reselect "Body", make a copy in front (Control + C > Control + F) and bring it to the front (Shift + Control + ] ). Fill it with white and open the Transparency panel. Select this white compound path along with the group created in the beginning of the step, open the fly-out menu of the Transparency panel and click on Make Opacity Mask. In the end your masked group should look like in the fourth image.

Step 12

Re-enable the Snap to Grid (View > Snap to Grid), pick the Ellipse Tool(L), create a 195px circle and place it as shown in the first image. Fill it with none but add a 30pt stroke. Set its color at R=150 G=150 B=150 then go to Object > Path > Outline Stroke. Select the resulting path and change its blending mode to Overlay.

Step 13

Reselect "Body" and go to Effect > Stylize > Drop Shadow. Enter the data shown in the left window, click OK then go again to Effect > Stylize > Drop Shadow. Enter the data shown in the right window and click OK.

Step 14

Pick the Ellipse Tool(L) and create a 265px circle. Fill it with black, lower its opacity to 30% and place it as shown in the first image. Pick the Rectangle Tool(M) and create a 65 by 75px shape. Fill it with R=255 G=30 B=45, lower its opacity to 30% and place it as shown in the second image.

Step 15

Focus on the red rectangle created in the previous step. Pick the Direct Selection Tool(A), select the bottom, left anchor point and move it 10px to the right then select the bottom, right anchor point and move it 10px to the left. In the end your red shape should look like a trapezoid (image #2). Make sure that it’s still selected and go to Effect > Warp > Bulge. Enter the data shown in the following image, click OK and go to Object > Expand Appearance. Select the resulting shape along with the circle created in the previous step and click on the Intersect button from the Pathfinder panel.

Step 16

For this step you’ll need the Round Any Corner script. You can find it here. Save it to your hard drive then return to Illustrator and grab the Direct Selection Tool (A). Focus on the red shape edited in the previous step, select the four anchor points highlighted in the first image and go to File > Scripts > Other Script.

Open the Round Any Corner Script, enter a 5px Radius and click OK. In the end your shape should look like the second image. Reselect it and got Effect > Warp > Arc Lower. Enter the data shown below, click OK and go to Object > Expand Appearance. Finally, select the resulting shape and increase its opacity back to 100%.

Step 17

Select the red shape created in the previous step and go to Object > Transform > Rotate. Enter a 180 degrees angle and click on the Copy button. This will create a vertically flipped copy. Select it, drag it down and place it as shown in the second image. The Snap to Grid should ease your work. Reselect both red shapes and go again to Object > Transform > Rotate. This time enter a 90 degree angle and click on the Copy button. In the end you should have four red shapes placed like in the fourth image.

More on Page Two

This new Adobe Illustrator tutorial isn’t quite finished yet! There is more waiting for you over on page two.

Poster design is a true art form. Often the best posters will be bold, eye catching and visually intense, yet minimal and elegant at the same time. As with logo design, often a great poster will be great for what it omits, as well as what it features.

Really the effectiveness of a poster’s design depends upon it’s purpose. Whilst some posters require a basic typographic treatment, others may suit an elaborate visual design. When designing your own posters always try to bear in mind the poster’s audience, and what you are representing.

Often poster designs will need to be pixel perfect, and very carefully designed as they will be printed at very high resolutions. The smallest details will become more obvious in this medium, so it is important for the designer to take extra care in their process.

Today we have featured a wide range of poster designs, each demonstrating a different style, purpose and agenda. We were also lucky enough to speak with James White, and receive permission to feature his inspired poster designs.

The Poster Designs

James White’s Poster Designs

Whilst this post showcases a variety of artist’s and styles, with James White’s permission to feature his poster designs as part of this article, we had to load up on his works. As James is such an inspiration in the design community, and has become hugely successful, largely due to his unique poster designs, a mini-feature was not out of order.

Alejandro de Antonio’s Minimal Movie Poster Designs

Minimal posters are very trendy, and Alejandro de Antonio has produced an excellent set of minimal movie posters in this vein. He has an uncanny ability to capture the essence of a popular movie and represent it via a simplistic, but elegant illustration.

His designs showcase how strong the brand is behind the movies, as we instantly connect with the represented protagonists.

Grzegorz Domaradzki’s Vector Posters

Polish digital artist Grzegorz Domaradzki produces some awesome vector designs, including a large collection of vector movie poster designs. It’s really interesting to see how he adapts the original visuals of these films into totally original works of art. Each movie poster is super detailed, mixing complex drawings, lighting effects and typography.

Inspiring Poster Designs

Retro Vector Poster by Fabio Sasso

DAM Poster by Project GRAPHICS

Vintage Swissair Travel Poster by Colaja

Reservoir Dogs Minimal Movie Poster by Doaly

Rooney and the Minglers Gig Poster by Doaly

Addictive Stuidios Promo Poster by Addictive Studios

The Joker Typographic Poster by Doaly

Tokyo 2016 Poster by Andreas Leonidou

Poster Design Tutorials

If you’re looking to design your own poster then there are some great tutorials out there to walk you through the process step by step. The following tutorials cover a wide range of techniques and outcomes, which should give you a great foundation in digital poster design:

Dark, Moody Movie Poster

Minimal New Years Poster by Abduzeedo

Abstract Fan Poster by Constantin Potorac

Slick Club Poster

Furious Pink Panther Poster by Alex Beltechi

Dark and Surreal Poster by Constantin Potorac

Poster with Handdrawn Elements by Alex Beltechi

What Do You Think?

I hope that you enjoyed this article. Did you have any favorite designs that stood out to you? Perhaps you know some epic poster designs that weren’t included? Let us know in the comments below.

(rb)

The new Smashing Books have finally arrived—freshly printed, neatly packed and ready to be shipped to you, our dear reader. We believe this is by far the best book we’ve produced so far. We are very proud and excited, and the initial verdict has been thoroughly positive, yet in the end it’s up to you to decide how valuable and useful they really are. Get your books now!

Why the Theme of “Redesign�?

In recent years, the Web has changed—a lot. The Web designer’s tools are now advanced, and browsers are highly capable. Designers have established clever coding and design techniques, and they face new challenges and are embracing new technologies. These changes are fundamental and require us to reconsider how we approach Web design. It’s time to rethink and reinvent: it is time to redesign the Web. The new Smashing books will change the way you design websites for the better.

But are we all prepared for this? How does responsive design fit into your workflow? What UX and mobile techniques do you follow when designing websites? And if you have a redesign project on the horizon, how do you approach it and work your way through it? The books explain what you need to know in order to create effective websites today, and what you need to know to be prepared for the future. Well-known experts share practical know-how and introduce a whole new mindset for progressive, future-proof Web design.

Smashing Book #3 (Printed & eBook)

With over 40 people having worked on the project, a lot of thorough editing and consideration needed to be done to fine-tune each chapter’s content and order to make the most sense. In the end, 11 of the most outstanding articles made it into the Smashing Book #3, covering topics ranging from the business side of design to mobile approaches and responsive design.

The Smashing Book #3 covers innovative coding, design and UX techniques and discusses the peculiarities of the mobile context and emotional design. It also presents practical HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript techniques, as well as a bulletproof workflow for responsive Web design. The book challenges you to think differently about your work, your code and your designs.

Table of Contents

AUTHOR	CHAPTER	DETAILS
Elliot Jay Stocks	Preface
Elliot Jay Stocks introduces the new Smashing Book #3 by making us think about our workflow, the quality of our work, our industry and our community. Working in an industry that evolves at an incredible speed takes a lot of effort—at the same time, it’s what keeps us going.
Paul Boag	The Business Side of Redesign
A redesign is the best thing that a Web designer can experience. Yet before leaping head on into a project, we must consider the business behind the redesign. By its nature, a redesign has the potential to make a website successful, but it also has the power to destroy a perfectly good idea. Important considerations to keep in mind before engaging in a redesign project include common dangers, required research, the working process with the client and testing. Paul Boag leads you through this process step by step. Chapter keywords: business model, redesign timing, scope of redesign, redesign considerations, realignment, project pitfalls.
Rachel Andrew	Selecting a Platform for Redesign
Once you have understood the business side of the redesign project, the next step is to choose the right platform. Understanding all of the requirements of a project will save you valuable time in aligning the new functionality with the technological circumstances. Take stock of existing structures such as the CMS, e-commerce system and payment gateway. Beware of the project constraints, including the budget and wishes of the client. Only then will you be able to concentrate fully on the project, without encountering unpleasant surprises ahead. Chapter keywords: technical requirements, CMS, eCommerce, payment gateway, refactoring, platform choice, redesign project constraints.
Ben Schwarz	Jumping Into HTML5
Ben Schwarz takes away the fear that many Web developers suffer when confronted with a new technology—by encouraging experimentation. The chapter guides you through the new HTML5 elements and discusses the possibilities that come with the adaptation to these elements. This is a practical, compact guide to HTML5, with everything you need to know today in order to create flexible and maintainable websites for the future. Chapter keywords: HTML5, semantics, semantic outlining, ARIA, client-side storage.
Lea Verou, David Storey	Restyle, Recode, Reimagine With CSS3
Some CSS workarounds that have hung around from earlier days prevent us from becoming better, more efficient designers. Learn how to recode CSS to reduce the number of images, HTTP requests, presentational JavaScript and wrapper divs on the page, while making the style more flexible and maintainable. Learn about the rem unit, Flexible Box Layout, source-order independence with flex order, multiple backgrounds and gradients, background clipping, border images, transforms, transitions, box sizing and new CSS3 selectors. Restyle, recode, reimagine: because CSS3 is here to stay! Chapter keywords: CSS3, techniques, Flexbox, multiple backgrounds and gradients, transforms, transitions, box-sizing, selectors, layout.
Christian Heilmann	JavaScript Rediscovered
Even though jQuery is written in JavaScript, it is not the same; nor is it native to browsers. The large jQuery library abstracts away a lot of issues that Web developers face, yet sometimes it’s used without a real purpose. Christian Heilmann takes us back to its origins and shows us how to implement simple JavaScript solutions without resorting to jQuery, achieving the same result in a slimmer and less process-intensive way. Chapter keywords: JavaScript, jQuery, CSS selectors, classlist, localStorage, tutorials.
Dmitry Fadeyev	Techniques for Building Better User Experiences
User experience means good design, and the central aim of design is not to decorate, but to solve problems. Whether that means getting more sign-ups, inviting users to post more content or making the interface easier and faster to use, this is ultimately the sort of design that delivers a great user experience. This chapter features powerful UX techniques that you can easily apply to your products and websites. Make sure users stay on your website for the right reasons, and get an edge over the competition by improving user-targeted processes. Also, explore experimental approaches and avoid some misleading design techniques. Chapter keywords: UX design, forms, good defaults, customer service, copywriting, storytelling, experimental techniques, design pitfalls.
Marc Edwards	Designing for The Future, Using Photoshop
Because good design and user experience are almost mandatory for success today, the lines between desktop software, mobile software and the Web are increasingly blurry. We have to continually change our tools and techniques to meet new requirements. Marc Edwards addresses some of the challenges that Web designers face today and will in the future when using Photoshop. Realism, scale, screen sizes, resolutions, formats, techniques—this chapter touches on all of it. There is no reason to surrender to scaleability and liquid image requirements when using Photoshop! Chapter keywords: Photoshop, screen sizes, pixel density, scale, gradients, shapes, color profile, mobile, Retina display.
Aaron Walter	Redesigning With Personality
Any design that does not effectively establish a connection with its audience has missed its goal. Getting to know your user is just as important as knowing yourself and the personality behind the brand; this will set you apart from competitors. This chapter describes how to develop your own design persona and define the key characteristics to guide your project’s path. New technologies and techniques are not what build connections with users, but rather the empathy evoked by the personality behind them. Aaron Walter explains how to bring out the personality at the heart of your work. Chapter keywords: personality, brand sympathy, engagement methods, design persona, voice and tone.
Aral Balkan	Mobile Considerations in UX Design: Web or Native?
The native vs. Web debate is meaningless and counterproductive. All products nowadays have high demands for UX design. Web designers turn into UX designers by gaining specialized knowledge of the Web and by mastering auxiliary frameworks and their components. Not only do the aesthetics of an interaction object count, but also how the object behaves upon contact. Designing documents and designing applications requires knowledge of basic responsive design principles and progressive enhancement. This chapter helps you understand your medium, explains what exactly it means for an application to be “native,� and goes over how to choose the right tools and technologies for the job. Chapter keywords: mobile, user experience, native applications, native as culture, interaction design principles, responsive Web design.
Stephen Hay	Workflow Redesigned: A Future-Friendly Approach
Web design changes quickly. In multiplatform design, where websites and apps are used on many and varied devices, we are confronted with multiple destinations. How do you go about integrating as many devices as possible? Is targeting as many different platforms as possible really important? In this chapter, Stephen Hay suggest a new design workflow for responsive Web design. A new way of thinking leads to a new way of design—the sooner you get the hang of it, the sooner you will be ready to discover what works best for your projects. Chapter keywords: responsive Web design, device-agnostic approach, content inventory, future-friendly approach, breakpoint graphing, designing in the browser.
Andy Clarke	Becoming Fabulously Flexible
There are significant upsides to responsive Web design for designers, especially in workflows that embrace flexibility. Responsive Web design still asks more questions than it answers, and it challenges the working relationships and interactions between everyone involved in every process. Andy Clarke gives you some insight into the techniques that helped him become fabulously flexible when developing responsive designs. Learn his approach to designing atoms and elements of a design first and see if it works for you. It might enable you to create many facets of the same experience within a single workflow. Chapter keywords: Responsive Web design, design challenges, style tiles, design atmosphere, flexibility, designing components first.

Well-respected professionals have poured their heart and expertise into these contributions. To ensure quality, every chapter of this book has been thoroughly reviewed by experts, including Jon Hicks, Tab Atkins, Paul Irish, Russ Weakley, Josh Clark, Anders M. Andersen, Bryan Rieger, Joshua Porter, Ryan Carson and Elliot Jay Stocks.

Technical Details

• 340 pages, 16.5 × 24.0 cm (6.5 × 9.5 inches).
• Download a free sample (.zip, in PDF, EPUB and Kindle)
• Quality flexibound cover, with stitched binding and a ribbon page marker.
• Delivery from Berlin, Germany, only via air mail (3 to 15 working days).
• $5 worldwide shipping (check worldwide delivery times).
• Also available as an eBook (PDF, EPUB, Kindle).
• Get your Smashing Book #3 today!

Our new books: the Smashing Book 3 and Smashing Book 3⅓—The Extension. Both are available as a print bundle, as eBooks and as a complete print + eBooks Bundle.

Smashing Book #3⅓ — The Extension

With Web design, we can do much more than inform the audience. The power of storytelling and content strategy is in creating engaging, emotional connections that transcend their platform. In this book, we will review emerging navigation design patterns and understand how to employ a content strategy—which is an important process, often underestimated, and dependent on many factors.

Smashing Book 3⅓, otherwise known as “The Extension,â€� presents practical applications of storytelling to Web design, reviews emerging navigation design patterns and helps you understand how to meaningfully employ content strategy on your websites. A case study of Smashing Magazine’s responsive redesign illustrates how this approach could look like in practice.

Table of Contents

Technical Details

• 160 pages, 14.0 × 21.0 cm (5.5 × 8.3 inches).
• Quality flexibound cover, with stitched binding and a ribbon page marker.
• Delivery from Berlin, Germany, only via air mail (3 to 15 working days).
• $5 worldwide shipping. The book will be shipped separately, starting from 15 May 2012. (Check worldwide delivery times.)
• Also available as an eBook (PDF, EPUB, Kindle).
• Get your Smashing Book #3⅓ alone for $14.95 or as a part of a bundle.

Cover Design by Veerle Pieters

The Smashing Book series has gotten a rather eye-catching facelift. The well-respected Belgian artist Veerle Pieters has taken on the significant task of putting together an innovative, bold cover design. And the result is bold indeed. Veerle’s styling of Smashing Magazine’s “S� reflects the many aspects that make up a Web designer’s workflow today.

An excerpt of Veerle’s final cover design for the Smashing Book #3.

Veerle’s final sketches for the cover of the Smashing Book #3.

Exclusive Artwork by Kate McLelland

If you have the Smashing Book 2, you’ll know that animals play a distinct role—forming almost a tradition for the series. This time, we have asked the talented young illustrator Kate McLelland to illustrate the introductory pages for all of the chapters. Kate has been impressively creative in her designs; the theme of redesign has obviously shaped the tone of her artwork. Each chapter begins with an elaborate drop cap.

A detail of a chapter illustration, designed by Kate McLelland.

Each illustration employs a different metaphor that relates to the accompanying chapter. See what they all are once you get your hands on the book. Appropriately enough, when strung together, the drop caps spell out “Redesign the Web.� The composite style of the illustrations points to how so many components have to come together for a successful redesign.

Reviews and Testimonials

We’re looking forward to honest, objective reviews of the brand new Smashing Books. Please share your photos, opinions and feedback on Twitter using the hashtag #smbook3. The first feedback has been throughout positive and, in fact, we’ve discovered the first reviews of the books as well:

“The entire book is wonderfully balanced between theoretical and practical, with each author contributing a strong point of view on their area of expertise as well as a thorough explanation of how to execute it in a way that is useful. [...] curating the most cutting edge perspectives on the Web and offering the tools and information that the rest of us need to build upon them. If you’re into that, check out this book.”

— Christopher Butler, Book Review: Smashing Book #3

“This book is worth buying and reading for yourself. It really covers many aspects of modern website production in eleven in-depth chapters. There will likely be a few you don’t care for—we all have our own tastes—but I’d be surprised if any genuinely leave you disappointed given the chance. I was quite prepared to write something less positive, the first Smashing Book didn’t excite me, but this one very much did.”

— David Bushell, Smashing Book #3

“The Smashing Book #3 is an invaluable resource for Web designers, regardless of skill level or experience and we highly recommend it.”

— Cameron Chapman, Review: Smashing Book #3

Please feel free to submit a link to your review in the comments to the post and we’ll add your testimonial into this article. Feel free to provide criticism or praise: we’d love to hear your honest opinions!

A quick peek into the Smashing Book #3. Yes, we do like animated GIFs.

The Smashing Anthology

If you haven’t purchased Smashing Books #1 and #2 yet, we’ve prepared a couple of complete bundles for your convenience. Even though the first two books were published a couple of years ago, they remain relevant and valuable, because they were designed by our editorial team to be timeless. Save 20% off the price and get yourself the Smashing Anthology, a collection of all of our books as of today:

• complete Printed Smashing Books Bundle with all printed books for $84.90 (i.e. 20% off the price) or
• complete Digital Smashing Books Bundle with the digital versions of the books for $44.90 (i.e. 15% off the price) .

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

We want to make it as easy as possible for everyone to buy the new Smashing Book. We welcome all suggestions and advice that could improve Smashing Magazine’s user-friendliness. Here are answers to some frequently asked questions about the Smashing Books #3 and #3⅓:

Please Spread The Word!

These new books took seven months of production time, from brainstorming to delivery; 43 people worked on the content, design, layout, editing and proofreading of the book; 623 animals are hidden in various places in the Smashing Book #3; and the production costs for initial circulation, excluding marketing costs, required a six-figure budget. That’s what it took us to ensure that our Berlin warehouses are stocked with these new valuable books, waiting to be shipped right away as soon as you place your order.

The authors of the new Smashing books.

Here at Smashing Magazine, we do our best to support and enrich the design community. Yet we also rely heavily on community opinion—in fact, the magazine would not be what it is today without the constant feedback of the community. That’s where you come in: we now pass the book onto you. Use it, enjoy it, test it, read it, rate it, evaluate it, criticize it or praise it—and share your honest opinion of it with the rest of the world.

Feel free to take as many pictures of it as you like and to use the Smashing Book #3 media kit (.zip, 9 Mb), which is full of interesting facts, figures and images related to the book. Be one of the first to give the community a critical view of the book; stir the discussion, and encourage feedback on your website.

Your criticism helps us further improve future projects, shapes the selection of topics and enables us to stay close to the pulse of the community. We sincerely appreciate your support.

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