Blog of Alex Cican
Blog feed of Alex Cican. All posts written by Alex Cican.
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Latest posts
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How my app got 455K users in the first week
In my free time, I enjoy working on cool small projects that help me, or others, in some way. I came up with the simple idea of a TV show time calculator that ended up being a smashing hit. The stats After just one week of releasing the app, it got 455,826 unique visitors,…
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Personal websites
I often browse personal websites of freelance designers & devs. After you visit a few sites, you start seeing patterns. Their “personal” websites become homogenised, stripped of personality, almost identical to the previous or next site. There’s nothing personal about it…
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How to code a Teehan+Lax navigation
This type of navigation was first seen on the Teehan+Lax website, then it became quite popular and got adopted by several other websites ( MailChimp , Wunderlist ). The navigation bar works as follows: it’s being hidden once you start scrolling. As soon as you scroll up a few…
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Design for the future, not the past
In the summer of 2013 I visited my birthplace, Romania. I rented a 2012 Dacia Logan (Dacia cars are made by Romanians), because it was the cheapest car available. I hated it. There were hundreds of usability flaws, mainly with the positioning of the buttons. One that stuck out…
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Designing the experience
It doesn’t matter if you have a beautifully designed button in the wrong place—it will frustrate the user and curse your decision of placing the button there. It is important to think how the user will experience that button, interface, website, product, and in what context.…
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Creative freedom
Designers are creative people . We are messy. I’m not talking about your design process. You might have a factory-like process, be very organised, note everything in your Moleskine notebook, draw perfect wireframes, keep your layers organised, and stuff like that. This depends…
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Burnout
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. You know that feeling when you’ve been working a long time on something and you get burned out. You don’t have the energy to keep going, and you need a break. Some say that as long as you work normal hours, and not push yourself you’ll…
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Inspiration
“Inspiration is for amateurs—the rest of us just show up and get to work” - Chuck Close I need my Muse Relying your ability to create great work, and to sustain such, on a website that showcases cool designs daily, the movement of the stars, a beautiful song, whether it’s sunny…
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Doing the work
Everything you’ve learned so far, won’t matter unless you pick up your pencil, your guitar, your mouse, and start doing the work. Period. You have to do the work because nobody else will do it for you. You need to be disciplined, have a strong work ethic, and show up every day…
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The experience should justify design aesthetics
Whether you are an advocate of flat design or skeuomorphic design, you must acknowledge something: these are aesthetics . They depict how something looks. But design is more fundamental. It goes beyond flat vs skeuomorphic, golden ratios, “clean” UI, Pantone colour palette, 960…
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Fuji X100S camera review
I recently bought the Fujifilm X100S camera. I was on the lookout for a smaller camera as my Canon 5D MKII with L lenses setup and all the extra gear was slowing me down. Fujifilm X100S camera. Click image above for bigger view. So far I like this camera a lot. There isn’t much…
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Standing out from the digital crowd
Have you noticed? The most popular websites nowadays be it Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, revolve around a feed. A feed consisting of status updates, photos, videos, posts, what have you. Alongside that content you also find your name, and your avatar. That small square…
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Must-have OS X apps for designers and developers
Yep, it’s the post every Mac user has to publish at least once in their lifetime. But hear me out now; If you’re a designer or developer, you might this list useful. Efficiency is the root of all evil I like efficiency. It gives me a sense of clarity and makes me productive. An…
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Design a pixel-perfect website
Pixel perfection. Every designer worth its salt strives to make its designs pixel perfect. Unless they’re designing for the web. The web is diverse, fluid, overwhelming, even chaotic. You can browse the web from a tablet, a mobile, on Apple iOS 4 or Android Ice Cream Sandwich, a…
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Making your website look pretty on retina devices
I thought I’d mix it up a bit and instead of writing a tutorial, I decided to make a video screencast. In this video tutorial I’ll show you some modern practices on how to make your website look great on retina devices, such as an iPhone 5 or a retina MacBook Pro. What you’ll…
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Displaying recent posts on Scriptogr.am
In the previous design of this blog I used to show a list with my latest three articles. There is no option to do that in Scriptogr.am. People kept asking me how I did it and if I could share with them the script that shows the latest articles. When I responded that I do it…
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Landing a job during an economic crisis
It’s depressing to see almost all of my friends being unemployed. Some of them, even with a Master’s degree, they struggle to make ends meet. You could blame your education, your family, people not acknowledging your brilliance, the economic crisis, the country you live in, and…
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Life Lessons
Note: The following article contains my own bullet-points and conclusions from the book “ Five Secrets you must discover before you die ”. I recommend you read the book if you enjoyed this article. The lessons you must learn in life are: Be true to yourself Leave no regrets…
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How I moved my blog to Dropbox
A few months ago I cancelled my hosting accounts and moved all my websites to Dropbox and GitHub . The only problem I was left with was where I should host the blog. I decided to use Tumblr. Regretting the decision after only two months, the solution was right in front of me the…
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How I moved my websites to Dropbox and GitHub
A few months ago I cancelled my hosting and server accounts and moved all my websites to the cloud. I tried it as an experiment ; never for a second I thought it would work this well. I did the switch out of impulse: I was pissed. I was pissed at the hosting companies charging…