My design team told me about this wonderful site today. Design Meltdown talks about colors, design, trends and problems in web designs today. It’s insightful. And it’s beautifully organized. The examples and organization of the site is impressive. Just looking at what other people are doing, what are the good and bad things, and spotting the trends in this, helps you learn a great deal about how you should design your next UI. And sites like this, allow you to keep on top of the things, and learn much without the labor!
Patrick McNeil is the guy behind the site (doing all the labor!). The design meltdown articles are also carried in the .Net Magazine. Another interesting thing Patrick does is the Daily Slurp – a list of beautiful sites updated every day.
An interesting note about dates from The Design Melt Down:
Attention to detail is one of the most important aspects of a successfully designer. Following through on the final details of a sites design can transform it from something ok, to something great. Believe it or not, some slick styling on an element as simple as the date stamp on a blog post can really add a lot of life to a site. It basically creates an additional way to establish a unified design. The date could just be a string of text, instead these sites have turned into a beautiful aspect of their design.
Consider the importance of dates in your hierarchy and design. Style them appropriately and get the most out of this simple element.
It’s something I would like to visit once a month of so! (that’s considered very good by the way!)