Android GUI Starter Kit, a set that comes with several button elements as well as different interface options for Android GUI.

This set was designed by Pavel Maček and released especially for Smashing Magazine and its readers. Android GUI PSD is based on elements of Android 1.5 GUI and was made to help open-source community with Android applications mock-ups.
Most of the elements and phone illustration are made in vector path so they are easily resizable.
For text Android Sans was used.

Before getting started with Photoshop, we all should have first visited the “Edit > Preferences” menu and change the “Performance” settings to fit our personal taste and computer specifications, but this isn’t always the case – in many situations designers simply forget these aspects.

If you never changed the default performance settings in your Photoshop or you just want to double check them to improve the Photoshop performance, here are 10 important and useful points that you may want to consider.

Continue reading »

Creativity breathes life into successful websites. However, creative ideas and solutions can sometimes seem like guesswork—and guessing is risky business. So what can designers do to show clients they’re using a solid strategy and have the best intentions? The following exercises are a great way to start discussing and documenting aspects of design to help clients shed their fear of creativity and encourage them to join the design process.

Continue reading »

According to W3C News Archive, XHTML 2 working group is expected to stop work end of 2009 and W3C is planning to increase resources on HTML 5 instead. And even although HTML 5 won’t be completely supported until 2022, it doesn’t mean that it won’t be widely adopted within the foreseeable future.

So in the spirit of the upcoming change we decided to release a handy printable HTML 5 Cheat Sheet that lists all currently supported tags, their descriptions, their attributes and their support in HTML 4.

Please notice that the specification is an ongoing work, and is expected to remain so for many years, although parts of HTML 5 are going to be finished and implemented in browsers before the whole specification reaches final Recommendation status. We’ll do our best to update the cheat sheet when new changes will become known. The cheat sheet was created by our friends from Veign.com and released exclusively for the readers of Smashing Magazine.

• download the pdf (76 Kb)

Pablo Picasso, the first living artist to be featured in the Louvre, influenced the artistic world in a uniquely original way. So why is he known for saying “Good artists copy, great artists steal”?

It’s true. Picasso really said, “Good artists copy, great artists steal.” Or at least, since his death in 1973, everyone believes he said that.

But why? Why would someone as original as Picasso say something as ironic as that? And what did he mean? Google Picasso’s quote, and you’ll find plenty of opinions and interpretations as to what he really meant.

My intent here, then, is to uncover one possible interpretation. This interpretation involves three levels of design, each of which:

1. involves some aspect of copying or stealing,
2. shows increasing design maturity, and
3. adapts Picasso’s quote to modern graphic design.

Continue reading »

Let’s face it. Some days, you want to just fire your clients. You go through one too many comps, iterations or edits and you’ve had enough. It has happened to everyone at least once and I’d be lying if I said it won’t happen again; you get to the end of a project and realize that you would have made more per hour flipping burgers at McDonald’s. Thankfully, as with most common problems, there are a few simple guidelines that you can follow to help make sure that you’re never working for below minimum wage.

Continue reading »