Squarespace Design Articles, CSS Guides and Web Design Tutorials
Design Trends vs Timeless Principles: How to Tell the Difference
Every year, design publications release their trend predictions. Bento grids. Glassmorphism. Brutalist typography. AI-generated imagery. 3D elements. Kinetic text. Dark mode. Anti-design. Each trend...
UI Design Patterns That Every Website Uses (Whether You Know It or Not)
A visitor lands on a website they've never seen before and immediately knows how to use it. The logo in the top left is clickable and goes to the homepage. The hamburger icon opens a menu. The search...
Image Composition Rules Every Web Designer Should Know
You don't need to be a photographer to build beautiful websites. But you do need to understand composition, because every day you're making decisions about which images to use, how to crop them,...
Brand Identity vs Visual Identity: What Every Web Designer Needs to Know
These two terms are used interchangeably across the design industry, and the confusion costs designers money, credibility, and client relationships. A client asks for "brand identity" and receives a...
Grid Systems for Web Design: The Invisible Structure Behind Every Good Layout
Every well-designed website is built on a grid, whether the designer consciously defined one or not. A grid is the underlying structure that determines where elements sit, how they align, and how the...
Visual Hierarchy: How to Control What Visitors See First, Second, and Third
A visitor lands on a webpage and their eyes move. Not randomly. Not consciously. Their gaze follows a path determined by visual weight, position, contrast, and the hardwired tendencies of the human...
Colour Psychology in Web Design: What the Research Actually Says
Colour psychology is one of the most discussed and most misunderstood topics in design. You've seen the infographics: red means passion, blue means trust, green means nature. These...
The Design Principles That Make Websites Work (Not Just Look Good)
Design principles aren't rules imposed by an authority. They're observations about how humans perceive and process visual information. They describe what happens in the brain when someone looks at a...
What Makes a Good Logo (And What Makes a Bad One Unfixable)
A logo is the most scrutinised, most debated, and most misunderstood element in any brand identity. Clients spend more time agonising over their logo than over their entire website content, and...
Every Type of Font Explained (And When to Use Each One)
Fonts are the most visible design decision on any website. They're the first thing visitors process, often before they consciously register colours, images, or layout. Yet most designers work with a...
Animation: The Line Between Delightful and Annoying Is Thinner Than You Think
There's a site I revisit every few months as a cautionary tale. I won't name it, but it's a creative agency portfolio. When you load the page, the logo animates in with a bounce effect. Then the...
The Dark Art of White Space
I once redesigned a site where the only change I made was increasing the padding. Same content. Same images. Same fonts. Same colours. I added space between sections, space around text, space between...
