(This post is for Sayz from Sayzlim.net who wants to know more about website design. Sayz is an aspiring professional blogger and already has a good grasp of what comes with a great blog design. Of course if you’re a bit more direct feel free to hire a designer.)

Every designer has their “toolbox” of sites, programs, etc. that gets them through their tasks. In this post, I’d like to list my links for getting designs done.

Designer’s Blogs

The following are some blogs by interesting designers, which might not necessarily always carry design-related posts.

• Niki’s DesignO’Blog
• Eco Design Blog
• Design Observer
• darkmotion – Animation & Illustration

Design Related Blogs

Here are some design related blogs that carry posts about design theory, tutorials, and general design tips.

• A List Apart: A List Apart
• Creadiv Blogging
• Photoshop Tutorials – PSDTUTS
• Web Design Ledger | A Publication for Web Designers
• Design and Creative News – Creattica Daily
• Web Development & Design Tutorials – NETTUTS

Design Galleries

Part of every great designer’s toolbox is inspiration. I get my inspiration from web design galleries.

• CSSREMIX
• LogoMoose – Logo design inspiration gallery and showcase
• Best Web Gallery – Flash + CSS Gallery

Code Snippets and Collections

I don’t code everything by hand. Sometimes I use code snippets.

• Code Snippets – Snipplr Social Snippet Repository
• Little Boxes
• The Ultimate Collection Of Photoshop Custom Shapes | Developer’s Toolbox | Smashing Magazine
• Free Photoshop Brushes at Brusheezy!
• 1001 Free Fonts – Download Free Fonts – Free Windows and Mac Fonts

What are your resources for website design? What do you find is your most frequent challenge in learning new things or designing for the web?

Every designer has a “design process,” or a series of steps from idea to completion for creating a design. Knowing exactly what the design process consists of will help you to form your own.

The process of design can be broken into four steps: brief, inspiration, compilation, review. Though there are many variations on this process from many designers, every designer goes through these essential steps.

Brief

The “brief” refers to a set of instructions or information given by the prospective client. This could be anything from color ideas to company policies, to photographs of the team. You want to have as complete of a design brief as possible. The tools in your brief will allow you to move on to generating possible solutions.

Inspiration

Inspiration, research, information gathering, etc, is the next step to completing your design process. This involves looking at examples of sites you like, asking your client to come up with examples, getting inspiration from other places, and so on and so forth. Once you’ve gathered all of your resource material, you can move on to creating the actual design.

Compilation

Compilation is the process of putting all of your materials together into a product. This is the actual designing part of the design process. Throughout the compiling stage, you’ll be communicating with your client, making changes, seeing what does and doesn’t work, and sometimes making compromises. This is the most difficult step.

Review

The review stage is when you decide whether or not the design is good enough, and then send it to the client. This could mean celebrating success, or going back and making more changes. The review is the final process of the design process.

What is your design process? How do you go from concept to completion?

Design is an outline, sketch, or plan of the form and structure of a work of art, an edifice, or a machine to be executed or constructed.

What does this mean for you? Well, anything you create and sell online is designed. However, a large part of how well your product does is encompassed in its appearance and usability.

As Timeless Information has talked about, much of what you see is engineered. However, there seem to be few resources for getting down to the basics and structure of engineering. That is why you’ve come to Diligent, to learn from the ground and move up. And believe me, you aren’t too late in the game to learn.

How do you go about learning design? Well, that completely depends upon your personality, style, and goals. There are various ways to learn a plethora of techniques, and on Diligent, I hope to cover them all.

Let Me Teach You How to Design Professionally

Learn from Diligent Design

Diligent is here to provide you with straight ideas about design, and give you quality information that has been tailored to help you succeed.

If you’re new to Diligent Design, then my name is Corey Freeman, and I’ve been designing websites since 2004. I will show you my techniques, tools, and other such ideas to help you develop a unique style and design professionally and productively. So please take the opportunity to subscribe to the feed now.

What does design mean to you? What would you like to learn about design? Leave your opinions and comments below!