Resources for Friends of Design
A couple of days ago I had the honor and pleasure to Skype with this year’s senior class in the University of Florida Graphic Design program. Next month, these smart and talented students will present Ligature 23, this year’s installment of the student-run design symposium. If you find yourself in Gainesville, FL on February 7, you can see Frank Chimero and Kate Bingaman-Burt speak for free. Plus a gallery of hand-selected student work!
Anyway, the seniors asked me which blogs I read and which development resources I’d recommend. I’m actually working on a longer blog post series for the dev stuff, but here’s a few links to get everyone started:
A sampling of the blogs I follow:
- Boxes and Arrows: UX
- BP&O: Branding, Packaging, & Opinion
- CSS Wizardry: CSS best practices
- Design Work Life
- Feature Shoot: photography
- Fast Co. Design: there’s so much of this that I usually just swipe through Feedly really fast to see which posts grab my attention
- For Print Only
- Kottke: liberal arts
- A List Apart: THE WEB
- Manhattan Nest: hilarious home reno blog
- MoCo Loco: industrial/product design
- Plenty of Colour
- Remodelista: interior design
- September Industry: doesn’t update much, but it’s always really good stuff
- Quipsologies: assorted stuff
Those are the more general blogs; if I’m into someone’s work or the stuff they say on Twitter, I’ll follow their personal blog as well.
For learning web development:
- 24Ways
- A Book Apart
- Can I Use: check browser support
- Codecademy: walkthroughs/exercises for several web languages
- CSS Box Model explanation
- CSS Tricks: Chris Coyier knows the answer to any CSS question, possibly
- Five Simple Steps: lots of design manuals in there, too
- SiteLeaf: I recently interviewed Jessica Harllee, who built her portfolio site using the SiteLeaf CMS, and loved it.
- SitePoint
- Smashing Magazine
- W3C: the guys that lead the internets. Not to be confused with W3Schools, which is frowned upon.
- Web Platform Docs: The “Beginners Guide” has a lot of great info on web fundamentals
Two related tips: always check the date on blog posts with code examples in them. There may be more up-to-date information. And if you’re the book-learning type, I’d recommend eBooks over print books. Development changes so quickly, so it doesn’t make sense to invest more money into something that will at some point be outdated and taking up physical space.
There’s also a fledgling resources page on my Badass Lady Creatives project. It’s a bit sparse right now, but I’m hoping to update that continually—including a new category soon. One of the best links on there is Jessica Hische’s resources list. Also check out Jessica's personal projects and blog posts, because she is so incredibly generous with her knowledge. Even with pricing.
Thanks again, guys! See you at Ligature.