Author Vitaly Friedman

April 23, 2024 — Scrolling, scanning, skipping: How do users consume content online? Here’s what you need to know about reading behavior and design strategies to prevent harmful scanning patterns. An upcoming part of Smart Interface Design Patterns. Read more…

March 20, 2024 — It’s here, and it’s shipping! Meet our newest Smashing book, ”Success at Scale”. It’s filled with practical insights and real-world case studies of how big changes can be made on projects of any size. Addy Osmani has curated finest examples, case studies and interviews to help you get successful at scale. Jump to the details and get the book right away. Read more…

March 8, 2024 — Our next book, “Success at Scale” is finally at the printer, which means we’ll be shipping books soon. It’s also your last chance to get the book at the presale price. Get your copy and save now! Read more…

February 20, 2024 — Color accessibility is more than just ticking boxes. Even with good contrast, some color palettes can make interfaces challenging for users. Here are some practical guidelines to ensure more inclusive design for colorblind people. An upcoming part of Smart Interface Design Patterns. Read more…

February 13, 2024 — How to design for children aged 3–12, with insights into user behavior, considerations for parents, and practical UX guidelines. Read more…

February 6, 2024 — With one billion people aged 60 or older worldwide, inclusivity is more important than ever. Learn how to create digital experiences that empower independence and competence for older adults while enhancing usability for all. An upcoming part of Smart Interface Design Patterns. Read more…

June 29, 2023 — The design process is messy. You might be following a structured approach, but too often, it takes a life of its own. And before you know it, you are designing in chaos, with last-minute changes and missed deadlines. So, what’s the “perfect” design process? Read more…

May 25, 2023 — Meet “Success At Scale”, our upcoming book with best-practice case studies from industry experts. Print shipping in early March 2024. eBook now available. Pre-order the book. Read more…

May 12, 2023 — Are sticky headers always a good idea? Best practices for designing sticky headers, with examples, UX guidelines and usability considerations. Read more…

April 27, 2023 — Practical guidelines to prevent rage taps and rage clicks with accessible tap targets for icons, links and buttons — on desktop and on mobile. With useful techniques and guidelines. Read more…

March 27, 2023 — Design handoffs are inefficient and painful. They cause frustration, friction and a lot of back and forth. Can we avoid them altogether? Of course we can! Let’s see how to do just that. Read more…

February 22, 2023 — Brand new conference on design & UX, for designers and UI engineers who love the web. On design systems, usability, product design and complex UIs. That’s SmashingConf Antwerp, taking place in magical Bourla on October 9–11, 2023. Read more…

January 25, 2023 — How do we design effective reviews and ratings? With a distribution chart, decimal scores, tags, recommendation score and unedited product photos. Read more…

January 11, 2023 — Captioning can be much more than text. Design patterns for better UX of subtitles, captions, video players, transcripts and on-screen text. Read more…

January 2, 2023 — That’s how people behave on the web in 2023. Some observations from real usability testing on what people do and what they don’t do on the web. From disabled copy-paste to magic link sign-in. Read more…

December 8, 2022 — “Understanding Privacy,” the new Smashing Book by Heather Burns, will help you create inclusive, safe and privacy-aware digital experiences. Print books are now shipping! Jump to details and get the book right away. Read more…

November 2, 2022 — When designing navigation on mobile, we don’t have to rely on slide-in-menus or nested accordions. We can also use the curtain design pattern, and show multiple levels of navigation at once. Read more…

October 19, 2022 — Meet Understanding Privacy, our brand new Smashing Book to make sense of privacy, and learn how to create inclusive, safe and privacy-aware digital experiences. eBook now available, print shipping in early December. Read more…

September 26, 2022 — SmashingConf NYC is back! A friendly, inclusive conference for designers and front-end engineers who can’t wait to learn and be inspired. October 10–13, 2022. Get your ticket! Read more…

September 21, 2022 — Live, or inline validation in web forms is useful when it works, but frustrating when it fails. Too often it leads to an endless stream of disruptive error messages or dead-ends without any chance of getting out. Let’s fix it. Read more…

September 12, 2022 — Meet “Smart Interface Design Patterns Checklists”, a deck of 166 checklist cards to help you design and build better interfaces, faster. With accordions, mega-drop-downs, data tables, carousels, and everything in-between. Read more…

September 8, 2022 — UX checklists with best design practices, accessibility guidelines, design system checklist, tables UX checklist, UX research methods, form design UX and flowcharts. Read more…

September 5, 2022 — Meet “Understanding Privacy”, our upcoming book on what data privacy is really about beyond scary headlines. Approx. 350 pages. eBook available in October, print shipping in early December. Read more…

August 25, 2022 — Error messages need to be easy to spot, but they also need to be helpful. Let’s explore when error messages should live above input fields and why toast error messages are usually not a very good idea. Read more…

August 16, 2022 — With the “Back” button, users often get confused and frustrated. How to design a better back button UX and where to put those “Back” buttons in our interfaces. Read more…

August 4, 2022 — How to improve authentication UX, with magic links, 2FA, better password recovery and relaxed rules for secure, accessible and usable passwords. Read more…

July 6, 2022 — Pricing pages can be complex and confusing. Let’s explore some design patterns, guidelines, real-life examples and best practices on how to design a better pricing page. Read more…

June 21, 2022 — Do you feel stuck in your company? Do you believe you deserve a raise but it never happens? Do you think you might need to quit the job? Let’s figure it out. In this article, Vitaly looks at some things he wishes he’d known earlier in his career. Read more…

May 4, 2022 — How difficult can it be to design a bulletproof language selector? It’s not as straightforward as one might think. We need to avoid redirects, decouple our language and country presets, allow for overrides, and use non-modal windows. Let’s dive in! Read more…

April 27, 2022 — We should be able to measure how well a particular design solves a particular problem. Let’s explore design KPIs that capture user’s experience, how to measure them and how to keep both users and business stakeholders happy, over time. Read more…

April 21, 2022 — In UX, we can use navigation queries, evaluation journeys, A-Z index and tap-ahead autocomplete to help users get where they want to be, faster. Let’s find out how. Read more…

April 13, 2022 — Carousels don’t have a good reputation, and rightfully so. But we can make them more useful. Best practices and guidelines to improve the carousel design with honest scrolling direction, labels, thumbnails and grouped prev/next-buttons. Read more…

April 6, 2022 — Breadcrumbs UX are often neglected, but they can be extremely helpful when designing a complex navigation. We can improve them with sideways navigation, clearer breadcrumbs paths and accordions on mobile. Read more…

March 30, 2022 — Infinite scroll can be designed well. Best practices and guidelines to improve the UX of infinite scroll with bookmarks, footer reveal and pagination. Read more…

March 22, 2022 — Good interface design shows the right things at the right moment. We need to understand when to display a call to action, and how to build a relationship with the user before promting them to act. Read more…

February 28, 2022 — As a design community, we all can’t be silent in these times. We need to be united in our fight against the war, for democracy, for those dreams that children are entitled to have when they are growing up. It’s our obligation to help as much as we can. We are donating all proceeds from “Interface Design Checklists” PDF to support Ukraine. Read more…

February 1, 2022 — It’s shipping! Meet “Touch Design for Mobile Interfaces”, our brand-new guide with guidelines and best practices to improve usability and accessibility on mobile. 400 pages. For designers and developers working with mobile UIs. Read more…

November 16, 2021 — Meet “Touch Design for Mobile Interfaces”, our brand-new guide on designing for mobile with proven, universal, human-centric standards. 400 pages. Shipping starting in mid-January 2022. Read more…

September 24, 2021 — You’ve seen them before. Confusing and frustrating design patterns that seem to be chasing you everywhere you go, from one website to another. It’s time to fix them for good in a free Smashing online workshop next week. Read more…

September 22, 2021 — We love little useful tools and techniques to help folks get their work done better and faster. Today, we’d love to shine the spotlights on a little helper that helps spot common performance bottlenecks easily: ct.css. Read more…

August 5, 2021 — How can we make disabled buttons more inclusive? When do they work well, and when do they fail on us? And finally, when do we actually need them, and how can we avoid them? Let’s find out. Read more…

July 14, 2021 — Too often dealing with filters can be frustrating. Let’s get them right. That means never freeze the UI on a single input, provide text input fallback and never auto-scroll users on a single input. Here’s why. Read more…

June 8, 2021 — It’s here! For the last year, we’ve been working with Addy Osmani on a new Smashing Book all around image optimization. And now it’s here. Meet “Image Optimization”, our deep-dive guide to understand how to deliver high-quality images on the web fast. Read more…

May 19, 2021 — Everything to keep in mind when designing and building a mega-dropdown, common pitfalls, hover entry/exit delays, trajectory triangle technique and SVG path exit areas. Read more…

May 12, 2021 — In this new series of articles on UX, we take a closer look at some frustrating design patterns and explore better alternatives, along with plenty of examples to keep in mind when building or designing one. Let’s start with an infamous birthday picker. Read more…

May 12, 2021 — Today marks the day we sent out our 300th edition of the Smashing Newsletter. This article is a little celebration in which we share little Smashing stories from people working behind the scenes. Read more…

April 28, 2021 — The cat is out! For the last year, we’ve been working with Addy Osmani on a new Smashing Book all around image optimization. And now it’s here. Meet “Image Optimization”, our practical modern guide to delivering high-quality images on the web with the best performance. Read more…

April 15, 2021 — At Smashing, we’ve been busy over the last few months. We’ve set up new workshops, redesigned our navigation, refined performance and improved accessibility. There are subtle UX changes coming in, and we’d love to share what we’ve been cooking. Read more…

April 12, 2021 — A complete guide to HTML email templates, tools, resources and guides. Everything you need to know about designing and building HTML Email in 2021. Read more…

April 5, 2021 — A guide to vanilla JavaScript code snippets — with resources and lightweight libraries to help you solve a problem without a large overhead or third-party dependencies. Read more…

March 22, 2021 — An up-to-date collection of accessible front-end components: accordions, form styles, dark mode, data charts, date pickers, form styles, navigation menu, modals, radio buttons, “skip” links, SVGs, tabs, tables, toggles and tooltips. Read more…

March 19, 2021 — Wondering what’s happenin’ at Smashing? Well, we’ve been busy. Here’s a little story of how we removed floating labels, improved performance on mobile, and launched a new series of articles. Oh, and how you can contribute to Smashing, too. Read more…

March 10, 2021 — Meet our new workshops on front-end and UX — on web performance, interface design, psychology and modern CSS. With Lea Verou, Harry Roberts, Stephanie Eckles, Dan Mall and so many others. Jump to all online workshops ↬ Read more…

February 16, 2021 — DevTools is very advanced and helpful, but can also be very intimidating and overwhelming. Let’s fix that. In this article, Vitaly reviews useful features and shortcuts for debugging in Chrome, Firefox, Edge and Safari. Read more…

January 21, 2021 — In this article, we’ll take a close look at some of the changes we made on this very site — running on JAMStack with React — to optimize the web performance and improve the Core Web Vitals metrics. With some of the mistakes we’ve made, and some of the unexpected changes that helped boost all the metrics across the board. Read more…

January 12, 2021 — Let’s make 2021… fast! An annual front-end performance checklist with everything you need to know to create fast experiences on the web today, from metrics to tooling and front-end techniques. Updated since 2016. Read more…

January 12, 2021 — Let’s make 2021… fast! An annual front-end performance checklist with everything you need to know to create fast experiences on the web today, from metrics to tooling and front-end techniques. Updated since 2016. Read more…

January 12, 2021 — Let’s make 2021… fast! An annual front-end performance checklist with everything you need to know to create fast experiences on the web today, from metrics to tooling and front-end techniques. Updated since 2016. Read more…

January 12, 2021 — Let’s make 2021… fast! An annual front-end performance checklist with everything you need to know to create fast experiences on the web today, from metrics to tooling and front-end techniques. Updated since 2016. Read more…

January 12, 2021 — Let’s make 2021… fast! An annual front-end performance checklist with everything you need to know to create fast experiences on the web today, from metrics to tooling and front-end techniques. Updated since 2016. Read more…

January 12, 2021 — Let’s make 2021… fast! An annual front-end performance checklist with everything you need to know to create fast experiences on the web today, from metrics to tooling and front-end techniques. Updated since 2016. Read more…

January 12, 2021 — Let’s make 2021… fast! An annual front-end performance checklist with everything you need to know to create fast experiences on the web today, from metrics to tooling and front-end techniques. Updated since 2016. Read more…

January 12, 2021 — Let’s make 2021… fast! An annual front-end performance checklist with everything you need to know to create fast experiences on the web today, from metrics to tooling and front-end techniques. Updated since 2016. Read more…

January 12, 2021 — Let’s make 2021… fast! An annual front-end performance checklist with everything you need to know to create fast experiences on the web today, from metrics to tooling and front-end techniques. Updated since 2016. Read more…

January 12, 2021 — Let’s make 2021… fast! An annual front-end performance checklist, with everything you need to know to create fast experiences on the web today, from metrics to tooling and CSS/JavaScript techniques. Read more…

January 4, 2021 — Smashing Magazine’s primary goal is to deliver quality content for the web development and design community. If you have valuable tips, tricks, ideas or techniques to share, then you’re more than welcome to write for us and help provide others with solid articles and useful insights. Read more…

January 4, 2021 — This guide is for current and prospective authors of Smashing Magazine and details the process articles go through in order to be published in our magazine. Read more…

December 7, 2020 — Do you like building relationships and exploring creative options? At Smashing, we are looking for a team member who’ll take good care of advertising and sponsorships across the range of everything we do at Smashing — from the magazine to our conferences. Interested? We’d love you to join us. Read more…

November 17, 2020 — Meet our new practical guide on everything you need to know about TypeScript, its type system, and all its benefits in 50 lessons. Jump to table of contents and get the book right away. Read more…

October 28, 2020 — In this article, CEO and co-founder Vitaly Friedman shares how Smashing runs online workshops and online conferences these days, and the lessons learned along the way. Read more…

October 21, 2020 — SmashingMag is running a lil’ giveaway among its Smashing newsletter subscribers until Tuesday, Oct. 27, with some exciting goodies to win. Make sure to join in and good luck! Read more…

October 7, 2020 — Meet our new practical guide on everything you need to know about TypeScript, its type system, and all its benefits in 50 lessons. Jump to table of contents and get the book right away. Read more…

September 7, 2020 — Meet our Smart Interface Design Patterns Checklist Cards, a deck of 100 cards with common questions to ask when tackling a common interface challenge — carousel, table, date picker, autocomplete, filtering, sorting, search, configurator, slider, timeline, map, web forms, reviews and testimonials, onboarding, pricing plan, authentication and many others. Get the PDF deck right away. Read more…

August 4, 2020 — Meet our Smart Interface Design Patterns Checklist Cards, a deck of 100 cards with common questions to ask when tackling a common interface challenge — carousel, table, date picker, autocomplete, filtering, sorting, search, configurator, slider, timeline, map, web forms, reviews and testimonials, onboarding, pricing plan, authentication and many others. Get the PDF deck right away. Read more…

June 4, 2020 — We stand firmly behind the Black Lives Matter movement. We have always stood strongly behind introducing a wide range of voices to Smashing publications and conferences. Positive change is difficult, but it’s possible. It takes work, time, and dedication. We are fully committed as a team to see it through. Read more…

June 2, 2020 — Meet our new practical guide on how to build trust, increase conversion and boost business KPIs effectively — without alienating people along the way. Written by Paul Boag. Coming up in June. Jump to table of contents and get the book right away. Read more…

May 12, 2020 — Meet our new practical guide on how to build trust, increase conversion and boost business KPIs effectively — without alienating people along the way. Written by Paul Boag. Coming up in June. Jump to table of contents and pre-order the book right away. Read more…

May 5, 2020 — The cat is out of the bag! Meet SmashingConf Live (Aug 20–21), a friendly online conference. With interactive live sessions, practical insights, accessible speakers, collaborative notes and fireplace chats with like-minded folks. Read more…

March 10, 2020 — Meet “Ethical Design Handbook”, our new practical guide on how to help companies grow sustainably with honest digital products. Without dark patterns, with ethics in mind, and ready for GDPR and CCPA. Read more…

February 4, 2020 — Meet Ethical Design Handbook, our new practical guide on how to influence a positive change in your company and help your business grow sustainably. Without dark patterns, with ethics in mind, and ready for GDPR and CCPA. Read more…

January 6, 2020 — Let’s make 2020… fast! A front-end performance checklist (PDF/Apple Pages/MS Word), with everything you need to know to create fast experiences on the web today. Read more…

December 10, 2019 — Today, Rachel Andrew spoke about how to build a CSS layout. Follow along and learn how to use Grid and Flexbox, as well as why Rachel makes certain decisions as she builds out the layout. Read more…

December 3, 2019 — Heydon Pickering’s new book Inclusive Components is now shipping worlwide. The book explores accessible and robust solutions for the UI patterns we use every day. Read more…

December 3, 2019 — Today, we broadcasted a live session on privacy UX, highlighting privacy UX patterns and strategies to consider when designing and building privacy-aware websites and apps. Read more…

November 7, 2019 — Heydon Pickering’s new book Inclusive Components explores more accessible and robust solutions for the UI patterns we author, plug in, and use every day. Read more…

November 7, 2019 — Today, Heydon will talk about the relationship between accessibility and design systems, and introduce his brand new book: Inclusive Components. During the session, he will explore how to create an accessible accordion using progressive enhancement, and answer your questions about inclusive interaction design. Read more…

July 24, 2019 — Trends come and go, but smart ideas and strategies linger for a while. Meet the pilot issue of Smashing Magazine Print, our brand-new printed magazine for designers and web developers. Free for Smashing Members. Read more…

July 24, 2019 — Join us for an informal get-together, moderated by Vitaly Friedman, exploring questions you have, and the problems that we all need to address. With Trine Falbe, Laura Kalbag, Heather Burns, Cennydd Bowles, Stuart Langridge and Morten Rand-Hendriksen. 1.5h conversation. Free for everyone. Read more…

July 10, 2019 — The web is wonderfully diverse and unpredictable because of wonderfully diverse people shaping it. In this new series of short interviews, we talk to interesting people doing interesting work in our industry and sharing what they’ve learned. Read more…

June 20, 2019 — The web is wonderfully diverse and unpredictable because of wonderfully diverse people shaping it. In this new series of short interviews, we talk to interesting people doing interesting work in our industry and sharing what they’ve learned. Read more…

June 3, 2019 — The web is wonderfully diverse and unpredictable because of wonderfully diverse people shaping it. In this new series of short interviews, we talk to interesting people doing interesting work in our industry and sharing what they’ve learned. Read more…

May 27, 2019 — The web is wonderfully diverse and unpredictable because of wonderfully diverse people shaping it. In this new series of short interviews, we talk to interesting people doing interesting work in our industry and sharing what they’ve learned. Read more…

May 13, 2019 — In this new series of interviews, we try to highlight interesting people doing interesting work and sharing some of the challenges and lessons they’ve learned along the way. Read more…

April 25, 2019 — In this final article of the series, we’ll look into notifications UX and permission requests, and how we can design the experience around them better, with the user’s privacy in mind. Read more…

April 24, 2019 — Art direction has been part of advertising and print design for over 100 years, but on the web art direction is rare, and there have been few meaningful conversations about it. “Art Direction for the Web” by Andy Clarke changes that and explains art direction, what it means, why it matters, and who can do it. Read more…

April 18, 2019 — This third article of the series explores some of the respectful ways on how to deal with cookie consent prompts, push notifications, and third-party tracking. Read more…

April 10, 2019 — In this second part of the series, we’ll look into notorious GDPR cookie consent prompts, and how we can design the experience around them better — with our users’ privacy in mind, of course. Read more…

April 4, 2019 — This is the first part of a four-part series in which we’ll explore some of the respectful ways to approach privacy and data collection. Read more…

January 7, 2019 — Let’s make 2019… fast! A front-end performance checklist (PDF/Apple Pages/MS Word), with everything you need to know to create fast experiences today. Read more…

December 17, 2018 — The state of commercial web conferences is utterly broken. Setting up a conference isn’t an easy undertaking. It takes time and attention to all the little details that make up a truly memorable experience. It’s not something one can take lightly, and it’s often a major personal and financial commitment. But what lurks behind the scenes of such events is a widely spread, toxic culture despite the hefty ticket price. And more often than not, speakers bear the burden of all of their conference-related expenses, flights, and accommodation from their own pockets. This isn’t right, and it shouldn’t be acceptable in our industry. Read more…

October 5, 2018 — In this article, Vitaly Friedman brings you the videos from our Toronto Smashing Conf, which are now available! Toronto was our all live-coded conference. Take a look at what our speakers got up to without their usual slide decks. The speakers had been asked to present without slides. And it was brilliant! Read more…

September 13, 2018 — Smashing Book 6 is now shipping worldwide. With everything from design systems to accessible single-page apps, CSS Custom Properties, CSS Grid, service workers, performance patterns, AR/VR/XR, conversational UIs and responsive art direction. Check table of contents and get the book now. Read more…

August 8, 2018 — Today, Vitaly Friedman brings you the following pairing of talks from 2018 SmashingConfs, which will help you to assess the third party scripts you might be considering adding to a site. Taking into account business goals, user experience and performance you can make good decisions about what to include and how to do it. Read more…

August 3, 2018 — Today is a very important day for us. We’re incredibly honored to have crossed our first milestone of 1,000 Smashing members today. In fact, with Membership, sometimes it feels like walking around a small town in which everyone knows each other and their friends, and so we know many members by name, and we’ve also met some of them at Smashing Conferences. In this post Vitaly Friedman highlights some of the members, how much money we’ve earned and how we spent it, and a bit of a feel about what Membership is like. Read more…

August 1, 2018 — How can we design in a way to help visitors rather than frustrate them? How do we know that a great user experience is really working well? In this pairing of videos from 2018 SmashingConfs, we think about UX — from two very different angles. Read more…

July 20, 2018 — With so much going on in the web industry, it can be difficult catching up with everything — especially with font loading and webfonts that greatly affect web performance. Search no further — we’ve got your back. Read more…

July 19, 2018 — We’re pretty excited by tools such as SVGator, which really speed up the process when you’re making simple SVG animations. Animated SVG files have become very popular, because they are entirely scalable, small and 100% code-based, which allows for so many transformations and tweaks. This, however, comes at a price: the steep learning curve for complete beginners. In this article, Vitaly Friedman will show you how easy it is to use and how you can get a great-looking animation in no time. Read more…

June 14, 2018 — In times when everything is generic, how do we stand out without spending too much time and resources on elaborate art direction? Let’s explore a strategic guide for bringing back personality to the web, in regular real-life projects. Read more…

June 13, 2018 — Smashing Book 6 is here with everything you need to know to tackle the new adventures web design and development are bringing along. No theory, just things that worked in practice. This book is dedicated to the challenges and headaches that we are facing today, and how to resolve them. In this article, Vitaly Friedman tells you everything about it! Read more…

May 29, 2018 — SmashingConf is heading back to New York! SmashingConf NYC 2018 will explore how new web technologies, findings and emerging front-end/UX techniques can make us all better designers and developers. Today, Vitaly Friedman invites you to join us for two days full of front-end adventures and UX practices — highly practical techniques and strategies that you can apply to your work right away. Read more…

May 29, 2018 — SmashingConf is heading back to New York! Join us for two days full of front-end adventures and UX practices — highly practical techniques and strategies that you can apply to your work right away. Oct 23-24. Read more…

May 18, 2018 — Looking for an icon set that’ll take you on a journey through AR and VR technology? Augmented and virtual reality are changing the way we experience and interact with the world around us — from the way we consume media and shop to the way we communicate and learn. And today, Vitaly Friedman has got your back with these funky icons and illustrations brought to you by the Vexels team. Read more…

May 3, 2018 — SmashingConf Toronto is coming! Join us for a conference without slides, and see how experienced designers and developers work live. With lots of time for deep dive-ins. June 26–27. All talks will be live coding and design sessions on stage, showing how speakers, including pattern libraries setup, design workflows and shortcuts, debugging, naming conventions, and everything in between. Read more…

April 24, 2018 — Today, Vitaly Friedman invites you to join us at SmashingConf Freiburg and explore failures as well as lessons learned from real-life web projects. With Aarron Walter, Tammy Everts, Seb Lee-Delisle, Josh Clark, and many others. Happening September 10–11: Mark your calendars! Read more…

February 27, 2018 — Today is the 200th issue of our precious li’l Smashing Newsletter, and in this issue we’d love to highlight the people behind this little project — the entire team, writing and editing and proofreading and pushing that damn “Send” button. 200 newsletter issues, thoroughly researched, written and edited by the SmashingMag team. We’re celebrating today’s issue by highlighting a part of the team behind this magazine. Read more…

February 19, 2018 — How would you design a responsive car configurator? How would you deal with accessibility, navigation, real-time previews, interaction and performance? Let’s figure it out. In this article, Vitaly Friedman dives deep into the dos and don’ts of designing a perfect configurator. As designers, we might try to make our configurators advanced and sophisticated, but too often we overwhelm customers with too many non-trivial options. Read more…

January 30, 2018 — The past years have been remarkable for web technologies. Our design process is systematic and efficient. And after so many years, accessibility and performance have finally become established, well-recognized pillars of user experience. It’s a truly wonderful time to be designing and building for the web, and Vitaly Friedman couldn’t be more excited and honored to be a part of these developments. However, as designers and developers, we focus on beautiful interfaces and fast experiences, but there is one side often missing: respect towards privacy, security, inclusivity, authenticity, personality, and ethics. It’s about time we change that. Read more…

December 29, 2017 — This style guide includes details of the Smashing Voice and Tone, as a guide for anyone writing a Smashing article. Read more…

December 15, 2017 — You know how sometimes during one of those late conference evenings somebody brings up a seemingly ridiculous topic and then the entire conversation seems to circle around it? That’s exactly what happened at SmashingConf Freiburg when suddenly the entire conversation was about how famous books and movies could be represented in an emoji, and it turned out to be a pretty decent cliffhanger for this particular Emoji Riddle. These riddles can be quite addictive and annoying, can’t they? With seven mischievous riddles published over the last few years, we’ve learned a few lessons along the way. At this point, you might be used to endless, mischievous, tricky, mean, time-consuming and intricate Mystery Riddles, and the latest one wasn’t any different. Read more…

December 12, 2017 — To celebrate the relaunch of this little website, we’ve prepared something special yet again — a Smashing Emoji Mystery Riddle. Below you’ll find the first of a few animated GIFs that contain a hidden key. The key is always exactly one emoji. Your job is to find these emoji as fast as possible. Once you’ve reached the last level, just tweet out all the discovered emoji in one single tweet at @smashingmag. Read more…

November 22, 2017 — This article is a part of the series about how we work and design and build and play. Today is the day when everything changes. Meet Smashing Membership, a community effort dedicated to support and highlight new and old voices of the community side by side. And you can be a part of it. A safe, friendly place where together we can share, learn and decide on the future of the web. But also an effort to move away from an ad-ridden, noisy, clicks-driven web to a friendlier, cleaner and calmer place. Read more…

November 14, 2017 — With our third annual conference in San Francisco, we want to explore strategies for breaking out of the box: leaving behind generic designs and smelly code base. We’ll unlearn old habits and dig into strategies for breaking out: leaving behind the generic solutions, exploring new design workflows, understanding new performance techniques, and all the capabilities that we have at our hands already and in the near future. We’ll find out find out how we all can be more productive today and how we can make smarter decisions tomorrow. Read more…

November 3, 2017 — Before you can start to improve things, you need to convince management that things need improving. That can be challenging! Management is not always digitally savvy and don’t grasp how significantly things have changed. Creating a case for change can be hard when you are working alone. We want to help you with that. We have years of experience writing business cases and presenting to management. Let us guide you through the process.’ Read more…

October 31, 2017 — SmashingConf 2018 is all about learning new skills and making new connections. Practical sessions, new formats, new lightning talks, evening sessions and genuine, interesting conversations — with a dash of friendly networking! Taking place in London, San Francisco, Toronto. Tickets? Glad you asked! Read more…

October 24, 2017 — It’s time for a change. Smashing Magazine has been the heart of everything we’ve been working on throughout all this time, and with many new Smashing adventures scheduled for 2018, it deserves a stronger focus and support. Today, Vitaly Friedman is more than happy and honored to welcome the one-and-only Rachel Andrew as the new editor-in-chief of Smashing Magazine. Rachel will be helping us bring the focus back to the core of this little Smashing universe — this very magazine that you are reading right now. With her, we are happy to have a reliable and extremely knowledgeable editor on our side, the one we could only dream of! Read more…

October 10, 2017 — What are the key qualities of a well-functioning, enduring design system? Throughout the book, Alla will share an approach that will help you every day with your work. Read more…

September 19, 2017 — Uploading an entire folder or folders of files is usually quite a hassle, as files in each folder have to be selected manually. And then some folders might contain sub-folders as well. You can use webkitdirectory, a non-standard attribute that allows users to pick a directory via a file input. Currently supported in Chrome, Firefox and Edge. It’s important to note that the attribute is non-standard, so it will not work for everybody. However, it doesn’t break anything as browsers that don’t support it will just ignore it, so you can easily progressively enhance your file upload without relying on the feature being supported everywhere. Read more…

September 15, 2017 — While many of us are quite familiar with publications and events surrounding us, we often lack the global perspective on what’s happening in the web industry across the world. What about front-end events in Kuala Lumpur? What about the acceptance of UX-driven processes in Hong Kong? That’s exactly what we want to find out! Today, Vitaly Friedman is happy to announce that we have teamed up with our friends at Mozilla for the Developer Roadshow Asia, so we can connect and learn from designers and developers in southeastern Asia. Together, we’re planning on organizing a series of informal, free meetup-style events for people who build for the web. Do join us, won’t you? Read more…

September 6, 2017 — With CSS Grid being now supported in all major browsers, most of the hacks that helped to achieve complex layouts have become obsolete, and we’d love to invite you to a little contest to explore the possibilities and features of CSS Grid together. You create an interesting, accessible layout with CSS Grid, or use CSS Grid to rebuild an existing layout, and at the end of the contest, all templates and layouts will be made available to everyone for free download under the MIT license. The aim is to build a community repository full of CSS Grid goodness that inspires fellow developers and helps spread the wide adoption of CSS Grid. Read more…

August 15, 2017 — When designed properly, Feature comparison can aid in decision-making way beyond placing product specifications side by side. They can also add meaning to an otherwise too technical product specification sheet, explaining why a certain feature is relevant to the customer or how a certain product is better than the others. In this article Vitaly Friedman will look into all of the fine details that make a perfect, accessible and helpful feature comparison table. Read more…

August 4, 2017 — Every designer develops their unique style and workflow, and studying their artwork can all inspire us to look beyond our own horizon and try something new. Always remember to take a closer look at things around you; you’ll be sure to find inspiration in the little things. It really doesn’t take much to let your mind wander. Today, Vitaly Friedman brings you another collection of brilliant illustrations and photographs. Read more…

July 19, 2017 — In this article, Vitaly Friedman will look into the fine details of designing better slider controls for selecting a value or a range of values. A slider is helpful because it allows users to explore a wide range of options quickly. The main point of interaction with the slider is to display options quickly. This means not forcing the user to click on a button to see the outcome or wait until the result is displayed. Feedback should be smooth and continuous. However, sliders are just a bit too difficult to use, require just a bit too much precision, are a bit too confusing to navigate, and are a bit too difficult to grab and move around. After a close look at perfect accordions and date and time pickers, let’s turn our attention to sliders, with do’s and don’ts and things to keep in mind when designing one. Read more…

July 6, 2017 — If you don’t get out of your comfort zone, you may never discover something that you love doing, or perhaps even worse, never learn a whole lot about yourself. Even the most talented artists out there practice so much more than you’d ever imagine, and hone their skills by trying out copywork. The most important thing is to be confident and simply give it a try. For more encouragement, Vitaly Friedman has collected a good number of inspirational artwork that is bound to give you that spark you need to get started already! Read more…

July 5, 2017 — Vitaly Friedman has spent a lot of time working with various companies trying out various approaches and studying them in usability tests. This series of articles is a summary of observations and experiments made throughout that time. He’ll be exploring everything from carousels to car configurators. Let’s look into the design of date and time pickers today. With a date picker you can combine day, month and year into one input field, add a fancy calendar icon, and prompt a calendar overlay that exposes the main purpose of the calendar prominently. In fact, there are plenty of contexts in which date pickers matter! Let’s find out. Read more…

June 21, 2017 — Design patterns can be extremely helpful, mostly because they save time and get us better results, faster. We don’t need to apply them exactly as they are to every problem we encounter, but we can build on top of them, using our experience to inform our decisions because we know they’ve worked in other projects fairly well. Today, Vitaly Friedman brings you a summary of observations and experiments made throughout the time. Tighten up your seat belts: in this new series of articles on SmashingMag, we’ll look into examples of everything from carousels to filters, calculators, charts, timelines, maps, multi-column tables, almighty pricing plans all the way to seating selection in airline and cinema websites. Read more…

June 6, 2017 — Oh yes, it’s Summer alright! Nature is where Vitaly Friedman finds most of his inspiration as it sets his mind free. Hopefully, you’re enjoying some sunny days, too. Give yourself a moment of repose. Sit back, relax, have a refreshing drink and let the stream of inspiration come in. Read more…

May 4, 2017 — If we only looked closer, we would find gems of inspiration in the things around us. For Vitaly Friedman, nature is his personal and biggest gem. May is already here and spring has arrived in Belgium, bringing along its bright colors, the delicate odours of blooming flowers, as well as the cheerful chirping of birds. Read more…

May 3, 2017 — Design workflow changes, and it isn’t easy to keep up with all those changes, and that’s where our community conferences come into place! We are looking forward to seeing you in Barcelona, and perhaps months after the conference is over, you’ll look back at your projects and at this very article realizing that it wasn’t far off after all. Read more…

April 4, 2017 — It’s good to take a short break and go outside to try and empty your mind. Now the time has come to enjoy these moments even more as the spring season finally starts to show up in nature. Today, Vitaly Friedman brings you a new batch of illustrations will feed your creativity tank with extra vitamins to make sure those inspiration levels are up and running at its best. Read more…

March 22, 2017 —

Bunnies ahead! These fluffy little fellows are an unmistakable sign that Easter is here. Along with their companions in crime, yellow chicks, of course. But did you know that Easter bunnies can be much more than cute? Some of them have a secret passion for skateboarding, others take it up even with their natural predators to protect their easter eggs. Don’t believe it? Well, wait and see.

In this post, we compiled the best Easter wallpapers from our monthly contest for you. It all started back in 2008 and it’s still running today thanks to the love and patience that artists and designers from all across the globe put into creating unique, inspiring, and, well, simply beautiful, wallpapers each month anew. So without further ado, let’s dive right into the world of bunnies, cheeky chicks, blooming flowers, easter eggs, and — how could we forget — chocolate, of course. Happy Easter!

March 17, 2017 — Smashing Magazine is changing: a new design, a new layout, a new technical stack, a new printed magazine, a new Smashing Membership, and the same good ol’ obsession with quality content. Today, we are happy to announce the public open beta of the next Smashing Magazine, next.smashingmagazine.com, with a new design, but one with a few bugs and issues that have to be… you know, smashed first. The big-bang release is scheduled for later this year. Here’s a sneak preview of what’s coming up. Read more…

March 3, 2017 — Most of the time, the weather can’t quite make up its mind, and so the days pass by with half of the sky sunny while the other half gray. With springtime lurking around the corner, our need for extra inspiration is even bigger. So, today, Vitaly Friedman hopes that this month’s set will give you just that spark you need to cheer you up and boost your creativity. Read more…

February 3, 2017 — Gray days always are a great time we can use to reflect on our work and perhaps better decide what it is that we hope to improve or change in the next months. They are the spark that sets the process of creation in motion. It doesn’t take much; it can be any part of an element that catches my eye, be it a particular color, style, texture, or anything really. You’ll find a bit of everything in today’s selection: Architecture, colors, some of the best photographs from 2016, and more. We hope you’ll like Vitaly Friedman’s playground! ;) Read more…

January 31, 2017 — Don’t you feel like Wonderwoman or Superman when squishing that annoying CSS/JavaScript bug or improving front-end performance, or making the UX workflow smooth at your company? Well, we do! Now, we also love sharing. SmashingConf NYC 2017 won’t solve all complex problems, but once it’s over you’ll know how to conquer yours. With practical front-end and UX techniques, battles, fights, wins and losses, we’d love you to learn and share your special abilities and your experiences! So reserve that plane and meet us in New York City! Read more…

January 13, 2017 — The following set includes 40 icons with everything ranging from shirts, pants and dresses to a blazer, hat and even a scarf. Available in nine styles and four formats (AI, EPS, SVG and PNG). You may modify the size, color or shape of the icons. No attribution is required, however, reselling of bundles or individual pictograms is not cool. Please note that this icon set is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported. Read more…

January 9, 2017 — May 2017 bring you a healthy and inspiring adventure. As for that kick-start inspiration, Vitaly Friedman hopes this article will help get you back in the creative mindset. The above illustration has a style that I’m sure everyone will admire. The combination of colors used is simply marvelous — so simple, yet so complex. Read more…

December 31, 2016 — This monthly wallpapers mission has been going on for eight years now. In this article, artists and designers from across the globe put their creative skills to the test and created unique desktop wallpapers for you to indulge in. We give all artists the full freedom to explore their creativity and express emotions and experience throughout their works, because we respect and carefully consider the ideas and motivation behind each and every artist’s work. The following wallpapers all come in versions with and without a calendar and can be downloaded for free. Happy New Year! Read more…

December 21, 2016 — Are you using progressive booting already? What about tree-shaking and code-splitting in React and Angular? Have you set up Brotli or Zopfli compression, OCSP stapling and HPACK compression? Also, how about resource hints, client hints and CSS containment — not to mention IPv6, HTTP/2 and service workers? A front-end performance checklist of things to keep in mind when optimizing for performance. Read more…

December 16, 2016 — In this article, you’ll find an overview of all of the obscure little things that I forget about every year; so, I decided to gather them all in one place once and for all. The list below serves as a personal reminder for yours truly, and I thought that it might be useful for you as well. In fact, I set up a yearly reminder on December 28th just to have a couple of days to free the mind for the more important things in life and to start the next year without second thoughts or unresolved issues. Curious? Well, let’s dive in! Read more…

December 5, 2016 — Let’s refuel our inspiration for another month and start working on our New Year’s resolution list. Observe closely at the following techniques used, and how the colors have been applied to add contrast and character. As always, there is a lot to learn. Today, we hope that these illustrations and photographs will inspire you to get creative and get ideas which you can apply in your own projects. Go ahead, don’t let anything come in your way, and let your artistic juices flow! Let’s begin. Read more…

November 30, 2016 — Sketch lets you design interfaces, websites and icons with ease. To help you get the most out of this mighty tool, The Sketch Handbook will show you every aspect of it. Not in theory, but backed up by practical examples that you can follow along, step-by-step. Read more…

November 30, 2016 — In this post, Vitaly Friedman features desktop artwork for December 2016. Each Christmas wallpaper comes in versions with and without a calendar and can be downloaded for free. Now you only need to decide on your favorite! This monthly wallpapers mission has been going on for eight years now, so we added a little Christmas wallpaper best-of at the bottom of this post with some of the most cheerful, merry and Christmassy designs from previous years. We are very thankful to everyone who challenges their artistic skills and contributes to it each month anew. Read more…

November 18, 2016 — To those of you who celebrate Thanksgiving, we’ve got a nice set of 15 free icons created by the design team at ucraft for you today — all available in PNG, PSD, AI and SVG formats. You may modify the size, color or shape of the icons. No attribution is required, however, reselling of bundles or individual pictograms is not cool. Please provide credits to the creators and link to the article in which this freebie was released if you would like to spread the word in blog posts or anywhere else. Read more…

November 18, 2016 — Coming up in April next year, we have SmashingConf San Francisco 2017, featuring tasty front-end ingredients, UX recipes and neat design beats from the hidden, remote corners of the web. 1 track, 2 conference days, 8 workshops, 16 excellent speakers and just 500 available tickets, taking place on April 4–5, 2017. We’ve put aside 50 early-bird tickets, and if you book a workshop, too, you’ll save $100 off the conference and workshop price. That pretty smashing, isn’t it? Read more…

November 3, 2016 — It’s the season of hazy mornings, and beautiful warm color palettes. In this month’s collection, Vitaly Friedman gathered a couple of illustrations and photos that express this seasonal feeling. The illustration presented above shows a brilliant way of how to spend your days before winter arrives. It’s time to go outside and soak up all those warm colors nature has to offer, especially the vibrant golden-yellow leaves that can now be found almost everywhere you look! Read more…

October 31, 2016 — We embarked on a special creativity mission eight years ago: to provide you with inspiring and unique desktop wallpapers every month. Wallpapers that are a little more distinctive than the usual crowd and that are bound to fuel your ideas. Both versions with and without a calendar can be downloaded for free. It’s time to freshen up your desktop! We are very thankful to all artists and designers who have contributed and are still diligently contributing to this mission. We respect and carefully consider the ideas and motivation behind each and every artist’s work. This is why we give all artists the full freedom to explore their creativity and express emotions and experience throughout their works. Read more…

October 18, 2016 — Accessibility has always been a slightly unsettling realm for web developers. Surrounded with myths, misunderstandings, and contradicting best practices, it used to be a domain for a small group of experts who would “add” accessibility on top of the finished product. With our new book, we get to the bottom of it all! Written by Heydon Pickering, a well-respected accessibility expert, the book includes dozens of practical examples of accessible interface components and inclusive design workflow, applicable to your work right away. With this book, you’ll know exactly how to keep interfaces accessible from the very start, and how to design and build inclusive websites without hassle and unnecessary code. Read more…

October 13, 2016 — When building a pattern library, we tend to focus too much on the modules, providing a structural view of the system, rather than showing how it can be used effectively — thereby undermining its usefulness to most team members. Finding the right way to architect a lasting pattern library is difficult. This article highlights some practical techniques and strategies to establish a pattern library that will be actively and consistently used by the entire team. Read more…

October 4, 2016 — Simple design is hard, since it requires much more thought and inspiration. Colors play a major role, and today Vitaly Friedman would like to show you a couple of illustrations that may motivate you to try out some new color combinations and techniques. Illustrating is creativity in its pure form. It is endless and that’s why Vitaly Friedman loves it so much. Read more…

September 30, 2016 — This post features designs of artists and designers from across the globe for October 2016. The collection is a mix of ideas and styles, of wallpapers that are a little more distinctive than the usual crowd. The themes of the wallpapers weren’t anyhow influenced by us, but rather designed from scratch by the artists themselves. A big thank you to all designers for their participation. Join in next month! Read more…

September 7, 2016 — Let these designs shine on you with their smart details, fantastic textures, and well-chosen color palettes that will undoubtedly help you start the new week with your creativity freshly nurtured. There isn’t a magic formula to rely on. Luckily, this year’s summer vacation was fruitful in providing us with many visual stimuli to get the creative process going. Nothing but design goodness. So please lean back and soak it all in. Enjoy! Read more…

September 2, 2016 — Today’s icon sets will come in handy forwWhatever project you may be working on. This exclusive icon pack was tirelessly crafted by the design team at Ecommerce Website Design, and come in various formats that can be used for personal as well as commercial purposes. It is licensed under under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license. You may modify the size, color or shape of the icons. No attribution is required, however, reselling of bundles or individual pictograms is not cool. Please provide credits to the creators and link to the article in which this freebie was released if you would like to spread the word in blog posts or anywhere else. Read more…

August 31, 2016 — Each month we challenge you, the design community, to get your creative juices flowing and produce some inspirational and unique desktop wallpapers. The result is a collection of desktop wallpapers that are a little more distinctive than the usual crowd. All of them come in versions with and without a calendar and are free to download. A big thank-you to everyone who shared their artwork! Now, which one will make it to your desktop? Be sure to check out the icy winter wallpaper and our best of wallpaper collection. Read more…

August 4, 2016 — We publish articles because we love sharing what we learn and what others learn, too; we love discovering unique points of view and surprising design strategies, as well as just understanding how our colleagues out there solve difficult UX and front-end problems. Every single Smashing article goes through a thorough editorial review, including multiple passes for editing and refinement, before being published. In this series dedicated to our upcoming 10th anniversary we will explain our workflow and introduce the people behind the scenes! Read more…

August 4, 2016 — Holiday or no holiday, our need for some fresh inspiration never stops! This month, Vitaly Friedman has found some real treasures! As a designer, Vitaly feels that there is so much that he can learn from the techniques and color combinations in these little gems. Let’s dive in, and get inspired to leave your comfort zones for your next designs! Read more…

July 31, 2016 — On a quest to cater for wallpapers that are a little more distinctive than the usual crowd, we challenge you, the design community, to get your creative juices flowing and produce some interesting and inspiring designs each month anew. This post features wallpapers to get your desktop ready for August 2016. They all come in versions with and without a calendar and can be downloaded for free. A big thank-you to everyone who tickled their creativity and contributed their ideas! Read more…

July 21, 2016 — Wouldn’t it be great to have a set of consistent icons for all sports-related activities? This set of 45 icons was created by the design team at Icons8. You may modify the size, color or shape of the icons. No attribution is required, however, reselling of bundles or individual pictograms is not cool. A big thank you to Icons8 — we sincerely appreciate your time and efforts. Keep up the brilliant work! Read more…

July 14, 2016 — This set of 40 icons was created by the design team at Printerinks.com. Please note that this icon set is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported. A big thank you to Printerinks — we sincerely appreciate your time and efforts. Keep up the brilliant work! Please provide credits to the creators and link to the article in which this freebie was released if you would like to spread the word in blog posts or anywhere else. Read more…

July 7, 2016 — There’s no doubt that there are a lot of great techniques out there — they just need to be discovered. Today Vitaly Friedman would like to share a couple of inspirational illustrations and photos which he hopes will help you daydream and relax. You’ll notice some pretty interesting and refreshing color combinations… Get ready to enter the summer with a big spark of inspiration! Read more…

June 30, 2016 — This monthly creativity mission has been going on for eight years now, and each month the enthusiastic work of the community brings forth interesting, beautiful, and unique results. Wallpapers that are a little more distinctive than the usual crowd. This post features designs for July 2016, and can be downloaded for free. A big thank-you to everyone who contributed their ideas! Now could there be a better occasion to freshen up your desktop? Read more…

June 23, 2016 — Every month of the year comes loaded with unique energy, so that it can give us inspiration and ideas, and then leave so many special memories behind. This background collection, dedicated to the charm and uniqueness of the twelve months of the year and its seasons, is available in PNG, SVG, AI and EPS and is all set to energize any project it becomes a part of. A big thank you to the team at GraphicMama — we sincerely appreciate your time and efforts. Keep up the brilliant work! Read more…

June 13, 2016 — The worst thing that can happen to your product is that loyal users suddenly aren’t able to use it in the same convenient way. Frustration and anxiety enter social media quickly and suddenly, and the pressure on customer support to respond meaningfully and in time increases with every minute. You can prevent this by being more strategic when rolling out new versions of our products. In this article, Vitaly Friedman will look into a strategy for product designers and front-end engineers to thoroughly test and deploy a feature before releasing it to the entire user base, and how to avoid UX issues from creeping up down the road. Read more…

June 8, 2016 — Simple design is hard, since it requires much more thought and inspiration. Colors play a major role, and today Vitaly Friedman would like to show you a couple of illustrations that may motivate you to try out some new color combinations and techniques. From 3D illustrations to artwork created with ink and watercolors, Vitaly is sure there’s something that’ll spark your inspiration. Be warned though, some of them may even give you wanderlust from just looking at them. Read more…

May 31, 2016 — This creativity mission has been going on for eight years now, and we are very thankful to all designers who have contributed to it and who are still enthusiastically continuing to do so each month. We give all artists the full freedom to explore their creativity and express emotions and experience throughout their works. This is why the themes of the wallpapers weren’t anyhow influenced by us, but rather designed from scratch by the artists themselves. It’s time to give your desktop a makeover! Read more…

May 30, 2016 — When we design responsive websites, we tend to see responsive design merely as a collection of slightly differently sized rectangles, with a slightly different layout, sometimes with slightly different content poured into them. In this article, Vitaly Friedman features some of the slightly more obscure design patterns, such as responsive car-builder interfaces, mega dropdown navigation, content grids, maps and charts, as well as responsive art direction. Read more…

May 12, 2016 — There’s so much to explore in the world of astronomy, and it’s about time we did. In this article, we bring you an icon set created and designed by the team at Iconshock, No attribution is required, however, reselling of bundles or individual pictograms is not cool. Please provide credits to the creators and link to the article in which this freebie was released if you would like to spread the word in blog posts or anywhere else. So, dear space troopers out there, what are you waiting for? Read more…

May 9, 2016 — Let these designs shine on you with their smart details, fantastic textures, and well-chosen color palettes that will undoubtedly help you start the new week with your creativity freshly nurtured. This time Vitaly Friedman has collected a potpourri of styles ranging from delicate and subtle to bold and playful. Nothing but design goodness. So please lean back and soak it all in. Read more…

May 6, 2016 — In his article on Selling Design Systems, Dan Mall suggests to illustrate how fractured an organization is by printing out its different presences online and putting them on a large board as an example of all the wasted money and effort that goes into making sites from scratch, one-by-one, needlessly reinventing the wheel every time. What Vitaly Friedman learned from his experience is that trying to focus on the workflow or the process is never as helpful as focusing on tangible benefits that the client will get as a result. Read more…

May 5, 2016 — Designed by the team behind IconCrafts, this music instrument icon set is dedicated to all music lovers. Feel free to modify the size, color or shape of the icons. Please note that the set is released under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license. We kindly ask you to provide credits to the creator and link to this article if you would like to spread the word. A big thank you to IconCrafts for designing this wonderful icon set — we sincerely appreciate your time and efforts! Read more…

April 30, 2016 — We discovered the best source for inspiration: desktop wallpapers that are a little more distinctive than the usual crowd. The wallpapers all come in versions with and without a calendar for May 2016 and can be downloaded for free. This creativity mission has been going on for eight years now and artists and designers from across the globe got their creative juices flowing to produce desktop wallpapers for you to indulge in. A big thank-you to everyone who contributed their works! Read more…

April 28, 2016 — This wonderful hotel and spa icon set can help you to design a visually delightful holiday experience for the customers of your tourism clients. Designed by the team behind IconCrafts, this icons come in five styles different styles. Feel free to modify the size, color or shape of the icons. We kindly ask you to provide credits to the creator and link to this article if you would like to spread the word. A big thank you to IconsCraft for designing this wonderful icon set — we sincerely appreciate your time and efforts! Keep up the great work! Read more…

April 11, 2016 — We are in urgent need of inspiration.Some people simply have the magic touch for digging up design goodness. Today, we are proud to present the brilliant gems that Veerle Pieters has dug out, letting us explore a fresh breeze of photography, art, type, print as well as web design projects.  Sit back, relax, and feed your appetite. Here’s your monthly dose! Read more…

March 31, 2016 — It’s time to get your desktop ready for spring! Designers and artists from across the globe shared their creations with us for April 2016. The result is a collection of desktop wallpapers with a unique mix of ideas and styles, eye candy that is bound to cater for new idea sparks. We are very thankful to everyone who has contributed to this challenge and who keeps the steady stream of wallpapers flowing by sharing their artworks each month anew. The wallpapers all come in versions with and without a calendar and can be downloaded for free. Read more…

March 24, 2016 — We proudly craft affordable, practical books for pros like yourself who want to improve skills and make a difference. No fluff, no theory — just actionable insights applicable to your work right away. In this article, we bring you a quick overview of the last ones! We take pride in the time and efforts we put into creating our Smashing Books. We sincerely appreciate your support and trust — without you, we wouldn’t be able to release the books, and you should know that. Read more…

March 22, 2016 — If you’re looking for some great ways to improve your WordPress workflow, read on for a massive collection of free themes, plugins, tools and tutorials. These resources were all linked via the Smashing Magazine Twitter stream, Facebook stream, and other social-media streams around the Web. Read more…

March 21, 2016 — Finding little techniques and tricks to help you get to results faster can immensely improve your productivity, so you don’t have to waste time on solutions that will never see the light of day. Vitaly Friedman loves finding those little useful front-end goodies that make our lives easier. Since technologies emerge and evolve permanently, keeping track on what’s going on is often difficult, especially since specifications change and so does the browser support. Read more…

March 14, 2016 — As Veerle Pieters explores print and web design, photography, art and type, she uncovers a lot of brilliant design gems. She has compiled a selection of inspirational examples for you in this showcase, and the plan is to bring out a new one every month, so let us know in the comments if you like what you see. But for now, please lean back and enjoy! Read more…

March 11, 2016 — Vitaly Friedman believes that blocking loyal readership isn’t a reasonable option for any website. Relying on donations for an “ad-free experience” is unlikely to work either. Publishers should figure out a way to initiate an honest, direct conversation with their readers and find a respectful and profitable way of dealing with the ad revenue gap. Fighting against ad-blocking extensions is a fight against windmills. Ad-blockers have the upper hand, and while advertising will evolve, and it will become less disturbing and annoying, it remains to see if the trust users lost in traditional display advertising can be regained. Read more…

February 29, 2016 — It’s time to freshen up your desktop! This post features desktop wallpapers for March 2016. Each wallpaper comes in two versions — with and without a calendar — and can be downloaded for free. It’s time to freshen up your desktop! Please note that we respect and carefully consider the ideas and motivation behind each and every artist’s work. This is why we give all artists the full freedom to explore their creativity and express emotions and experience throughout their works. This is also why the themes of the wallpapers weren’t anyhow influenced by us, but rather designed from scratch by the artists themselves. Read more…

February 11, 2016 — When we started out with riddles, we wanted to have an entertaining yet challenging game that wouldn’t be easy to crack, and would keep our dear readers busy for quite some time. So, let’s get to the bottom of this! It was quite a journey, but we hope it was worth it. Also, a kind “thank you” to all the friends who sent out quite ridiculous, spammy and unrelated tweets at just the right time, so that this game would become possible in the first place. Read more…