SpyreStudios

Web Design and Development Magazine

20 Best Designed Album Covers for Inspiration

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Album covers are a great source of fresh inspiration for your graphic design work. Not only are well-designed album covers artistic, but they’re effective at marketing as well.

The best designed album covers:

  1. Give you a clear representation of what the content will be
  2. Sell you on the content by looking great itself

In other words, what a great visual design should be.

Think about it: how many times were you intrigued by fantastic artwork, and when you put the music on, it was how you’d imagine it would be like? That was a well-designed album cover at work.

So next time you need a fresh source of inspiration for your design work, take a look at well-designed album covers. And the following list of the 20 best designed album covers will get you started.

Minimalist Design: A Brief History and Practical Tips

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Minimalist design is one of the most significant design movements of the 20th century and early 21st century. It isn’t the flashiest, or the most popular, but it arguably penetrated more fields than almost any other art or design trend. Everything from user interfaces, to hardware designs, to cars, to films and games, to the web and visual designs of today – all those fields and more were influenced by minimalism.

Your friends might not know what minimalism is, but chances are they’re currently using or viewing a minimalist design: a modern phone, a clean web or application interface, looking at a slick brochure or other graphically-presented information, sitting in a simple living space on a sleek sofa, and so forth.

Modernizing Scripts Every Web Designer and Developer Should Use

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Web development keeps getting better – there are more increasingly-standardized tools like HTML5 and CSS3, and their features let web designers and developers create advanced and good-looking websites more easily.

But some browsers – mainly Internet Explorer version 6, 7, and 8 – don’t support many of these features, like border-radius, gradients, text-shadow, transparency, CSS animations and transitions, and so forth…

Curing the Navigation-itis Syndrome

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More and more content is being published everyday and site owners need to find ways to categorize all this content. And with more content and categories comes greater navigation problems.

Sometimes navigation becomes a problem when there are simply too many options. Thus, it’s of great importance to cure the navigation-itis syndrome and make website navigation user-friendly and easy to navigate.

Hosted vs. Self-Hosted Blog Solutions – Pros and Cons

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There’s never been a better time to start or upgrade your blog. The tools available are fully-featured, polished solutions that make getting a professional and robust blog up and running ridiculously easy. Like, seriously – some of this stuff would’ve blown the minds of web developers in the ’90s.

But with so many options, which should you choose? This article will focus on the pros and cons of some of the most popular blog solutions: Self-hosted WordPress vs. Squarespace vs. WordPress.com.

The Ultimate 20 Usability Tips for Your Website

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Usability is ridiculously important to your website. It doesn’t matter how cool your website looks or how amazing your content is if visitors can’t quickly, easily, and enjoyably access and use it. Many of them will eventually just give up and look elsewhere.

So how do you make your website as usable as possible? Well, you’re in luck, because this article features 20 usability tips for your website. Technology will always change, thus changing the usability tips. So make sure you share your own tips and tricks with the rest of us.

Top 5 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Create Trendy Designs

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Following trends is a part of many creators in all creative mediums: design, fashion, music, film, whatever. It’s only natural: you see what people want, then you give it to them. What’s the problem, you might ask?

Well, that system, while fine for short-term gains and immediate profits, is fundamentally broken. In fact, there are 5 reasons why you shouldn’t create ‘flavor-of-the-week’ designs.

By choosing to instead hone in on and dominate your own style – even while following trends – you’ll set yourself up for long-term benefits.

How to Juggle Multiple Projects and Clients Without Going Crazy

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Let’s face it: it’s hard working on multiple things at once. Focusing on just one thing is much easier than trying to juggle multiple projects and clients. Yet the reality for most designers and firms is you’re working on many projects and with many clients, often simultaneously. Luckily, there’s ways to juggle multiple projects and clients without going crazy.

While some are pulling their hair due to feeling overwhelmed, others are handling multiple projects and clients with aplomb.

How to Overcome Common Mobile Office Problems

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An effective mobile office is essential for productive traveling designers. There are plenty of reasons why you need a mobile office: besides introducing more traveling into your life, you have easier mobility with your design work, increase your focus, get more quality work done, and simplify and enjoy your life more as a result of it all.

But there are no doubt problems that come up while using a mobile office: distractions, finding good places to work, no internet access when you need it, and so forth. How do you avoid these issues? Well, today’s your lucky day, because this article covers how to overcome common mobile office problems.

10 Reasons Why You Need a Mobile Office

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Did you know that a small, purposeful workflow change can make your life significantly better? Yep, that change is having a mobile office, and there are 10 reasons why a mobile office can improve your design work and life. So what’s a mobile office? It’s what it sounds like – your design-work office on the go. All of your essential tools in a bag, ready to take with you.

Whether on a commute, a flight to somewhere far, sitting outside and overlooking gorgeous nature, or simply popping into your local library or cafe, a mobile office is a trimmed down, simplified version of only the most important tools to get your design, web, and any other creative work done.