9 Fresh & Diverse Web Design Resources in January

I got a new mac mini about this time last month.  (It’s great by the way).  The new computer finally meant I could download Google’s new browser, Chrome (which is also great btw).  Having a new computer and browser means that all of my old bookmarks and such were thrown to the wind and I had the chance to start totally fresh.

After a month, I’ve put only a small handful of new ‘favorites’ in Chrome.  I thought you might find it interesting to see what they were.

So here’s my unadulerated and unedited list of favorites from my browsing over the last month…  (ps:  I encourage all of you to leave some of your favorite bookmarks in the comments section below, too!)

{Note:  Most of these bookmarks have to do with design, esp. Wordpress related.  If I’m running out of ideas for a new design, my bookmarks are the first place that get a look}

1. Peter Michaud: I saved this link because the design was really simple, I enjoyed the colors, and his writing is pretty good too.
2. Cabel.Name: This site is very cool and simple.  I saved it in my favorites, however, because for some reason they text rendered REALLY nicely on my mac.  It didn’t look quite as good on the Windows version though…
3. Panic Blog: The company that makes a ton of my favorite tools, Panic, has a new-ish blog.  Their design is absolutely first class and a hell of a unique take on what a blog should be.
4. jQuery Tutorial on Sliding Divs:  jQuery is super cool and I really want to learn more about using it.  This is a good tutorial on making a slide-out div… and if you have more interest in jQuery then by all means read up at Brian Cray’s blog.
5. User Color Picker:  Another slammin’ good design.  So simple, so elegant… just good.
6. 50 Minimalist Designs:  A list of… you guessed it… 50 minimalist designs.  I love this list and reference it a lot.
7. Good Thesis Navigation:  Not sure how I came across this Thesis Theme modification, but I absolutely love the way they handled making the navigation a 100% across the site.  Nice job!
8. Custom Pages in Thesis:  Before Thesis theme, making a custom layout for a page in Wordpress was a sinch.  Now, Thesis is just too darn complicated to do it easily.  Well, it WAS too darn complicated.  This guy has a method for making different layouts in Thesis so you can have  a 2-column design here, or a 3-column design there without having to hide something in CSS as a nasty fix.
9. 37 Signals Re-Work Sales Page:  Best use of light-text-on-dark-background I’ve seen in a long time.  But would you expect anything less from the makers of Basecamp, Campfire, etc.?

That’s it for now!  Leave some of your favorites in the comments below.

Thanks,

Tagged as: web design resources