Redswish (plus others) - web design blogs

After browsing through quite a few of the pages on ImgisEverything I came across a decent blogger and found his content to be suitable for me in Online Environments.

Redswish Give it a read, he covers more or less everything: design, markup, commerce, applications...

What I'd like to comment on is his post on Improving Yourself as a Designer.

As a student we have the time to experiment with all kinds of different methods/approaches to find what learning style we work best with. Redswish provides you with loads of different approaches, and the one that stood out to me was Reading, and more specifically telling us to 'have them open on your desk, read on the train, in bed, wherever…' It is so simple, but true. I buy the books, but then until I need them, tend to stow them away. So I'll now have that attractive PHP book by my side, whilst blogging! 

"My target" (as we used to set ourselves at the start of a new term) is to everyday find/follow sites of inspiration. Try out their tutorials, explore the news items they post. Basically, immerse myself in the world of web even more so.

I really liked his recommendation for inspirational site the Web Designer Wall.

All I can say is, what a beautiful site. It is so instantly striking. I love the use of colour, the flow and curves of the large ornate hand drawn background image. This hand drawn, craft like, paper look seems to be very a la mode in 08/09. 

What I perceive to be a great design decision is have further on down the page coloured hues behind each post title (&intentional or not, but colourful ad boxes, which feed into the chromatic visual style). This works well, it continues the styling. Some pages can have an ace header topping their page, but this then doesn't follow through once you scroll down. 

Also...

Courtesy of the Web Designer Wall this post  probably no web designer should go without looking at: The best CSS of 08. I could pick at least a handful of sites that I couldn't and wouldn't want to change (Viget Exchange, Design Disease, Tennessee...) 

However, I think I may have found my achilles heel for web design, my calling - large background websites. 

SURF. The hues of the sea make this site appear really vivid, strong. The large image instantly draws in the eye. You then walk in from the sea, to the sand which blends perfectly with the background colour of the content - an excellent example of effective imagery.

To me, the use of a large heading image provides an overall theme to which it is then much easier to add your individual design elements. 

We are told to find something that really interests us. I think I have.

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