Must Design

Great TechMagnate.com Post
Agree with all 8 of these TechMagnate.com Great Web Design tips and would add two more:

2. Creative (Develop A Process)
3. Organization (Wireframes & Nav)
4. Innovation (Include Some)
5. Responsive Design (Get Some)
6. Simplify, Simplify, Simplify7. Don’t Stop Testing
8. Type

& Scenttrail's 2 Additions

9. Calls-To-Actions & Keywords are your friends.
10. Know your 80:20 Rules.

Here is our Curagmai.com post on how to find your website's 80:20 Rule: http://www.curagami.com/magica-thinking/new-seo/finding-80-20-rule/

"I spent a lifetime learning to draw like a child." Picasso

This is an interesting post from Thomas King about the complex nature of simplicity. Picasso's point about spending a lifetime learning to draw like a child seems important for web designers too.

The hardest thing to do is do less. The hardest mind to recover is the exploratory mind, the mind before judgement. When we recover the playful mind, the simple easily rewarding routine of play, our designs run free like Picasso's bull. 

Marty Note
Wow, you don't get much more money than Chuck Longanecker's 2012 predictions for web design's almost immediate future. 

Chuck is CEO of Digital Telepathy and boy does he have a copious amount of telepathy based on just how TRUE each of these trends is turning out. Talk about hitting the NAIL directly on its head.

We all need to get into Chuck's head (lol) because understanding how our design tectonic plates are shifting doesn't get any better:

* Lean Design (YES).
* Animation and more sophisticated HTML5 party tricks (YES).
* Less is More (YES).
* Multi-screen, multi-platform (YES!).

Great stuff every web designer and Internet marketer should walk and talk.  

Why keeping up with web design trends is vital In today’s fast-evolving trends, people’s interests are being influenced briskly by the web, wherein onlin

Marty Note
Like #7, use of Neon Colors as accents. Color is so tricky online its use as "accents" is the best idea. Will see if I can find a "neon color accent" example and shsre it, but sounds like a cool trend I've only read about from this Chinese social agency.

Other trends noted include ones we've seen in several of these "what's up for 2014" posts including:

* Simple.

* Flat.
* All in one.

* Responsive.
* scrolling.

Like the World Wide Web itself, the world of website design is constantly in flux as technologies change and design standards evolve. What worked in 2013 may

Minimalism has been a popular website design style for years. It has so many benefits; minimalist sites load faster, take fewer server resources, and are often faster to develop than more graphically complicated designs. Plus, they give a professional, clean impression to visitors. Many people still view minimalist designs as ... Continue reading »

When starting any website project, it's natural to want to concentrate your design efforts on the homepage and the header. As a result, the footer often becomes an afterthought - relegated to a poorly designed dumping ground for copyright information, legal disclaimers and spammy SEO links. But it shouldn't be this way.