Establishing a site’s line height, and moving forward with that number as early in the design process as possible will help create a more unified and well-paced design. Once you’ve established that line height, writing all your base type styles should flow from there. More »

I’ve been using this workaround to deal with IE6’s lack of pseudo-class support. If, for example, I wanted to float the first news list item right, then I would use: More »

It’s been two years since the site’s been redesigned, but all of a sudden the editor wants to change the masthead. It would be your responsibility, but you’ve only come on board a year ago. Do you have the original PS files? Are they easy to find? Are they easily identifiable? For situations like this, it’s our job as designers to make sure the answers to all those questions are ‘yes’. We have to think of the designer who will be there after us, and always try to make his/her life easier. More »

It took me a long time to admit I was a designer. For years I would tell people “I build websites”, rather than saying I was a web designer. After all, I had an English degree and was the type of designer I assumed most art school graduates hated—the kind of person who, with a little Photoshop knowledge, suddenly becomes a graphic designer. It wasn’t until years later, after taking a step back and making time to learn the fundamentals that I felt comfortable calling myself a designer. More »

I like my CSS tidy. It just makes development and maintenance so much easier. At my job I’m typically working on large sites with multiple designers. Without some kind of system, a situation like that could easily lead to bloated, unwieldy files. To prevent that from happening, I use some standard organizational techniques, and encourage those who I’m working with to do so as well. I’ve picked up most of these tips from various resources around the web, but this is the combo that usually works for me. More »