Tuts+ Wants You: We’re Looking For Two Specific Tutorials!

Tuts+ Wants You: We’re Looking For Two Specific Tutorials!

on Nov 25th 2011 with 17 comments

Calling all web design gurus and writers! I’m looking for two tutorials on specific subjects. Maybe the topics just happen to be within your areas of expertise? Maybe you’d like to earn a few hundred extra dollars before the end of the year? Read on to find out if you’re who I’m looking for!

Between now and the new year I’d like to publish:

Topic 1: A rock solid tutorial on the LESS CSS framework.

You’ll be explaining the use of variables, mixins, nested rules etc. and all within a real-world scenario. Aim for beginners, cover the foundations, then throw something extra in for those with a bit more know-how. This needs to be the post to check out for anyone interested in starting out with LESS.

This one-off tutorial will earn you $250.

Topic 2: A series of tutorials which walk through designing and building a kick-ass responsive theme.

Whether you favor a magazine, blog, portfolio, landing page, app promo site, whatever, you’ll begin the series by laying out your design on a solid grid. You’ll discuss the decisions, the hurdles, the solutions, and at the end of the first part, you’ll have a brilliant design ready for interpreting in the browser.

The second (and possibly third) parts will concentrate on taking your design and translating it into a flexible, responsive web design. You’ll need to know your way around relative measurements and media-queries, offering advice for some of the pitfalls of responsive design.

These tutorials will earn you $250 each, with the added bonus of being able to sell the final result on Themeforest!

Excellent! Where do I Sign Up?

Send an email over to webdesign[at]tutsplus[dot]com, with the following details:

  • Your name.
  • A short bio about yourself, also listing your strengths and interests in the field of web design.
  • A single link to an article/tutorial you’ve written, or really like.
  • Any other relevant work, portfolio pieces, experience.

I won’t be able to reply to all submissions, but expect an email very soon if you’ve made the grade :)

 
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Hi there! My name's Ian Yates. Welcome to Webdesigntuts+ :)  

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  • larz conwell

    I’m gonna work on making a Less tutorial! I love it!

  • http://arundadhwal.com Arun

    and I’m gonna work on designing and building a kick-ass responsive theme, Sweet :)

  • sheena

    Would be fantastic if you guys could also cover the topic of using the:

    - Golden Grid System (http://goldengridsystem.com/) or the
    - Less Framework 4 (http://lessframework.com/)

    I’d think a lot of people would love to know how to effectively implement these methods!

    Look forward to the screencasts :)

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  • http://www.designtodevelop.com Steven

    Your sister site Nettus already covered a few Less tutorials http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/php/how-to-squeeze-the-most-out-of-less/

  • http://www.justinhubbard.me Justin Hubbard

    This is a great idea although I’m not really a fan of LESS for various reasons that I won’t go into here. Whoever picks these tutorials up, good luck to you :)

  • dj

    @ian – can one hope that part of your “deliverables” would be to make the coding part of the tutorial be in “WordPress”? If you look at the current state of the web, as far as tutorials are concerned, it is a bit of an outdated mess; which is extremely difficult for even an experienced beginner (let alone a novice for which most of Envato is geared) to put together. For example, Chris Coyiers brand-new skin to “CSS tricks” is one of the most complete “responsively designed” sites there is on the web now using WordPress. The techniques he uses, if explained, would be a godsend to us intermediates trying to put a little finesse to our bumblings around in WordPress. However, almost no tutorial I can find even discusses how to take advantage of all the different built-in link types (links, videos, audio, gallery, status, quote, image) and new “menu” capabilities and how to use them in a site.

    And, even at the 10,000 foot level, the mere layout of your site determines naming and breadcrumb structure – hence, SEO placement. All of which should be considered at the very earliest stages; but which I rarely even see discussed on tutorials. And, perhaps there could be a bit less “this is how you use Photoshop” button pushing – we’ve seen that a lot on WD Tuts, and it often tends to drag.

    • http://Psdtutorials.co.uk Peter sawyer

      To be fair WPtuts has some damn good WordPress tutorials.

    • http://www.snaptin.com Ian Yates
      Author

      Hi Dj,

      Well, as Peter pointed out, we have Wptuts+ to specifically deal with the WordPress side of things, though we do have some collaboration posts planned for the near future.

      Your second point is valid, and it’s always a question of finding that balance between workflow/tech/theory/walk-through tutorials. Thanks for your input, I always take readers’ opinions on board.

      You might be glad to hear that we have a cool responsive screencast tomorrow (from a new contributor), which outlines quite a nifty trick :)

  • http://www.ait-themes.com/ Martin

    LESS is fantastic, we use it in our most recent themes and love it.

    • http://www.snaptin.com Ian Yates
      Author

      Great to hear Martin – and I think we have just the guy to do it justice :) Watch this space…

      • Gavin

        I’m reading up on Sass and Compass at the minute. Is there a definative reason you are only going for LESS?….. Should I be going for Less? lol

        • http://www.snaptin.com Ian Yates
          Author

          No, not necessarily! I opted to make a LESS tut appeal because a colleague of mine had expected something on the topic to be found on Webdesigntuts+, but couldn’t find anything. This is just a jumping-off point and I expect we’ll cover the alternatives (including Google’s closure-stylesheets) at some stage in the future.

          They’re all very similar, the main differences being the platforms they run on, so it’s often a question of usual workflow or personal preference. If you’d like to check out Sass, JW covered it on Nettuts+ earlier this year :)

          • Gavin

            Thanks Ian. Both Sass and LESS have their learning curves, so I was just wondering if there was a leader in the realworld development area so I know which to invest the time into.

            I think I’m gonna go with Sass for now and might have to learn LESS later anyways.

            Now I know where to come to get it!
            Cheers again

  • Amie

    PLEASE!! Whomever picks the Responsive theme web design, do it from scratch!! No boilerplate templates or 960 grids. I like Jeffrey Ways’ 30 Days to CSS series and went through the whole thing until Day 26. At which point, he killed me when he went into the 960 grid. From there, I had no idea what CSS action did what and why the grid fell the way it did because everything was already preset. I noticed Jeffrey rushing through the code the last few days. For a beginner or even an intermediate like me brushing up on CSS, this was highly confusing and a little disappointing too. No offense Jeffrey…you did great on everything else.

    I’m still waiting on a killer kick-ass theme, full of bells and whistles (how to do big background images, illustrations, killer-typography, @font-face or embedded svgs, forms, multiple columns etc…) done from the ground up. If you do use a template or preset code, please go into a quick explanation of why’s and what’s…Oh hell, I would even go premium just for one tutorial!

    Can’t wait! Good luck folks!

    • Amie

      Actually, it’d be great if someone can combine both (LESS framework + Responsive theme).

  • Marvin Gordon

    Is this competition still open?

    • http://www.snaptin.com Ian Yates
      Author

      Hi Marvin, it’s not a competition as such, but we have filled these two particular topics (soon to be published). We’re always open for tutorial concepts though, so if you have something pitch away!