Web designer Darren Hoyt recently redesigned his blog Darren Hoyt Dot Com.

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Today’s featured design is that of StylizedWeb.com.

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The first thing most people think when they turn a Mac on for the first time is something along the lines of “Wow. This looks cool.” Then the next thing you notice, or more accurately, don’t notice, is the act of using the OS. Once you get used to how everything works, which doesn’t take long if you’ve used another OS (read: Windows) before, you don’t have to think about it. It’s intuitive enough that you just do what you need to do without having to think about it much. You don’t have to worry about the OS itself much either, except when you need to do some occasional maintenance.

The Mac OS is

• Good-looking
• Intuitive/Usable
• Simple

Those three bullet points are some of the most important things to think about when it comes to web design. Obviously you want to have a good-looking design (don’t tell me you like GeoCities-style pages…). The other two points are very important. If you must have a horrible-looking design, the second two points are worth putting some thought into.

Simplicity doesn’t necessarily mean having a Google-esque design. You could classify Digg as a fairly simple design, though not to the point of Google. Ideally you want to simplify elements of your design, to make it more usable, but that doesn’t mean you have to not have any images or color. (more…)

Web Design From Scratch has a great article that I’ve read a few times in the past, and recommend for anyone who does more than just edit prefab templates for their website. If you make actual designs from scratch (I’m not sure if that was a pun exactly, but it was accidental…), then you should read this.

Web 2.0 How-To Design Style Guide

Even if you’re not into the whole “Web 2.0″ thing, it’s still worth reading. The “Web 2.0″ style of design is more than just gradients and shiny stuff. The important parts can go into any design, and are often good practices. Such concepts include

• Simplicity
• Big text
• Strong colors
• Simplicity
• Strong logos
• Simple, easy to use navigation
• Simplicity

If you want to make effective and usable designs, the article definitely worth a look.

Once again, I’ve been skimming through the design galleries and looking through notes and bookmarks in search of noteworthy designs. This time around, I’ve put together a collection of light designs. While more graphic-heavy designs may look great, simplicity and whitespace can go a long way as well.

Without further ado, 32 Lightweight Designs:

31Three

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Most design galleries showcase interesting/well-designed/etc web designs. Elements of Design is not like them. Brought to you by the Smiley Cat Web Design Blog, Elements of Design focuses on individual elements of designs.

Some examples include:

• Search boxes
• Comments and Comment Forms
• Pull Quotes
• Pricing Tables
• Headline Typography

It’s an interesting idea, and a welcome source for inspiration. I’ve often wished there was a place to find inspiration when working on a small part of a larger design. I think I will find this useful in the future, provided I can remember the site’s name, as I tend to forget when I most need a site…

If you do much design, or if you just appreciate good design, the site is worth a look.

Web Resources Depot has released a free Admin Template for use in web apps. It’s a three-column design with a row of tabs, for navigation, along the top. With some modifications, it would work well for a web application, if you were developing one.

Personally, I would use the design during development, and swap it out with a unique theme when all the coding work is done. But if you’re trying to put together a web app, and you don’t have any design know-how, and don’t want to hire a designer, you could conceivably use this. I’d just recommend customizing it a bit, so it doesn’t look like you have the exact same template as someone else.

You can view a live demo of the template, and download it here.

Matt Mullenweg has just redesigned his blog. First impression: “My eyes!” The oranges, greens, and blues are really shocking if you were expecting the old, more tame design.

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Smashing Magazine has recently released an interesting post on grid-based design.

Grid-Based Design: Six Creative Column Techniques.

Grid systems bring visual structure and balance to site design. As a tool grids are useful for organizing and presenting information. Used properly, they can enhance the user experience by creating predictable patterns for users to follow. From designer’s point of view they allow for an organized methodology for planning systematic layouts.

The post talks in-depth about grid design, and has plenty of screenshots to illustrate their points.

I haven’t looked closely at the whole grid-based design concept before, but it’s definitely on my to-do list. It looks like a good way to design certain types of sites (e.g. content-heavy ones), and I need to read more about it.

If you’re serious about blogging, and are trying to run a quality blog on a specific topic, you need a good design. Ideally, you want to have a unique design, built by a designer, though you can get away with a pre-made theme if you’re on a budget, or if you want to wait until the blog can pay for the design.

If you’re not ready to hire a designer, you can use a freely available WordPress theme, or a premium theme. Premium themes are pre-made templates for WordPress, which, though they are not free, cost much less than hiring a designer to make a unique theme.

Once you’ve picked-out a good theme, make it your own. Put your logo in the header, tweak the colors a little, and whatnot. Customize it so it matches your site’s personality.

Now that the introduction is out of the way, let’s get to the fun part. Following are a few WordPress themes that, in my opinion, are professional and well-done. (more…)