The Design Gnome

The only web publication run by a garden ornament. Yeah.

Max Luzuriaga

is a young web designer based in Philadelphia. Blah blah blah follow me on twitter, & check out my portfolio.

Is Web Design a Gated Community?

Recently, I’ve noticed something. There are a ton of “web designers.” No, really! There’s a lot of people who design for the web nowadays! More and more people are discovering for themselves the joy of making something for all the internet to enjoy.

So what’s up with the title of this post?

Embracing the Dreaded “Default”

Recently I was working on a design in Photoshop, and I needed some text. I did what any experienced Photoshop user would do in that situation: wait for the program to reopen after it crashed. All jesting aside, I grabbed the text tool and typed out some text. Then (wait for it), I stopped. That’s right, I left the text exactly as it was with the default font, tracking, and even size. And you know what? It looked great.

Is This the End of Good Design?

Our industry has changed dramatically within the last few years. It used to be you had to actually be able to make good design choices. Now, with the advent of CSS3, it’s even easier to copy trends than ever before. 1px white shadows? We got them. Let’s explore this dramatic change in design on the web. Are you ready? Then let’s go!

The New Design Gnome

As I’m sure you’ve noticed if you’re reading this on the website, The Design Gnome is sporting a brand new look! That’s right, everything from the logo to the search bar has been completely overhauled. In lieu of a normal post this week, I want to talk a little bit about the new design, my [...]

Working Offline?

See if this sounds familiar to you: you start work designing a website, writing an article, writing some code, whatever it is you work on. Soon, a notification pops up on the screen from your Twitter client. You instinctively open it up and follow a promising link. Having read said article, you decide to see [...]

Why Don’t We Question Popular Designs?

If you’ve been active on the online web design community, reading articles and what not, for longer that a few months, you’ve likely heard people talk about Craigslist. Specifically, the design of Craigslist. Designers everywhere are amazed about how popular and often-used the site is given the amazingly simple and some would say, unusable design. [...]

Why Typography Does Matter

In my last post, I gave a few reasons why typography doesn’t matter, and in this one I’ll be arguing why typography does matter. A lot. If we take this argument and reduce it to its simplest form, basically what I’m asking is: does design matter to the average user? Yes. They may not realize it, [...]

PHP For Web Designers: Part 2

Last time on PHP for Web Designers: We learned the basics of PHP syntax and learned how to assign variables and work simple if – else statements. In this edition I’ll be talking about data types and functions! Let’s get started. Data Types There are many different types of data in PHP. These includes strings [...]

Why Typography Doesn’t Matter

People use Comic Sans in real life. Typography doesn’t matter. If someone can read your text, chances are they don’t care about the font. Typography doesn’t matter. I dare you to find one non-designer that knows what kerning is, much less why it is important. Typography doesn’t matter. Not to non-designers anyway. How long do [...]

5 Different Ways to Approach a Redesign

How do you redesign? I guarantee that at some point in your web design career you will be asked to redesign an existing site. It’s a fact of life in the web industry: more often than not a new website will simply be an iteration of an old website. So how do you approach this [...]

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