Best of Web Design in 2012 – Web Design Ledger

About the AVA Awards

AVA Awards is an international competition that recognizes outstanding work by creative professionals involved in the concept, direction, design and production of media that is part of the evolution of digital communication. Work ranges from audio and video production- to developing websites that present interactive components such as video, animation, blogs, and podcasts- to interactive social media sites- to other forms of user-generated communication.

AVA Awards is administered and judged by the Association of Marketing and Communication Professionals (AMCP). The Association administers recognition programs, provides judges and rewards outstanding achievement and service to the profession. AMCP also oversees the MarCom Awards and the Hermes Creative Awards, two of the largest competitions in the world for marketing and communication professionals.

Emoticons turn 131

Emoticons made their somewhat discreet debut in the March 30, 1881 issue of Puck Magazine. Although they would stay dormant for over 100 years, they splashed back on the scene to stay during the late 1990s. For better or for worse, Emoticons made their debut 131 years ago.

Puck Magazine, March 30, 1881

Via Explore.

Percentage Loader

Percentage Loader is a nifty jQuery plugin to display progress in a visually engaging way. This format certainly beats the hell out of the run-of-the-mill animated gifs that are prevalent throughout cyberspace. Via Better2Web.com

Splurge on AppleCare?

Our friends at Gizmodo give you the rundown on when you should break bad and buy AppleCare and when to punt. The short version:

• Professional Machines – Definitely
• iPhones – Firm yes if you’re prone to breaking them, otherwise, save the cash. You’ll have to break it twice to break even.
• If you upgrade regularly – Nope
• If you’re buying a home computer – Probably
• If you’re buying refurbished – Maybe, but don’t buy based on the fact that it’s a refurb, only buy it if it’s an expensive professional machine or if you break stuff.

Via Gizmodo

WordPress 3.5 “Elvin” is released

Celebrity Chef Aaron Sanchez shares his digital side

If you’re a casual foodie, you’re probably well aware of Aaron Sanchez, Latin-American cuisine specialist and frequent judge on Food Network’s Chopped series. In this article on Lifehacker, Sanchez shares his love of Spotify, Google Calendar, his iPhone, as well as running 3 browsers at one time on his MacBook Pro.

Safari, Firefox, and Chrome open?

Via Lifehacker

CSS Baseline

In this in-depth article by the always insightful Smashing Magazine, author Espen Brunborg gives an incredibly deep look at the issues arising from vertical consistency with CSS Baseline. Since humans are especially good at pattern recognition, keeping consistency both horizontally and vertically can leave a user feeling in control and more receptive of the content you’re displaying. A must read for any web design or development professional. Via Smashing Magainze

About The MarCom Awards

The MarCom Awards is an international creative competition that recognizes outstanding achievement by marketing and communication professionals. Entries come from corporate marketing and communication departments, advertising agencies, PR firms, design shops, production companies and freelancers. The competition has grown to perhaps the largest of its kind in the world. A look at the winners shows a range in size from individual communicators to media conglomerates and Fortune 500 companies. The competition is so well resepcted in the industry that national public relations organizations, local ad clubs and local business communicator chapters are entrants.

MarCom Awards is administered and judged by the Association of Marketing and Communication Professionals. The international organization consists of several thousand creative professionals. The Association oversees awards and recognition programs, provides judges and sets standards for excellence.

23 Great Examples of Illustrated Elements in Web Design via WebDesignLedger.com

• The iPhone had yet to be announced
• Android was simply an idea in a lab
• Tablets, although available, weren’t mainstream
• Windows Vista was the dominant operating system with many still on XP
• No one knew who Bieber was
• Facebook had a mere 20 million users roughly 2% of what it has now (as of writing this, it has 955 million)
• Barack Obama was then candidate Obama
• Google Chrome had yet to be released

And now a rundown of the Evolution of O3…

O3 version 1.0 in Late December 2007. 800px wide… how cute.

This was our really strange, grungy, teenage years… Circa mid 2008.

And now we’re starting to look a little more grown up… This is us in 2010.

21 Beautiful Examples of Dark Colors in Web Design via WebDesignLedger.com

This time around, it’s much less “blog-y” and much more “news-y” with an emphasis on content readability. The underlying infrastructure is a fantastic commercial WordPress Theme – Currents – by the fine folks over at WooThemes.com. Check it out and – Go Pack!

The image was taken in 1987 as the group posed for a CD cover. The image became important in the history of the Web largely because Berners-Lee wanted to prove that the Web should be connected to the Internet and could be used for fun.

According to the photographer:

“The Web, back in ’92 and ’93, was exclusively used by physicists,” [Silvano] de Gennaro recalled. “I was like, ‘Why do you want to put the Cernettes on that? It’s only text!’ And he said, ‘No, it’s gonna be fun!’”

And fun it has been. Fast-forward 20 years later and the image created on Photoshop 1.0 is not much worse than some of the photoshopped images that lurk on modern day message boards. 20 years ago, the Web was transformed.

Read the history of this image over on Motherboard.