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2020 has been one of the most memorable years in our history. Few of us have been alive long enough to experience a more turbulent time. But throughout the year, we saw design respond to challenging events with positivity, color, and a desire to elevate those people and projects working to make the world better.

As we head into 2021, there’s no denying that 2020 has changed our outlook on life and marked a major turning point in web design trends.

Here’s a collection of the websites we loved the most this year. Enjoy!

Looks Like You Need Iceland

On Looks Like You Need Iceland, you are invited to record a scream, which will then be broadcast into the Icelandic wilderness. It’s meant as a form of therapy. The idea is that you will one day visit Iceland in person. That might still be some way off for most of us, but we could certainly use a good therapeutic scream.

Black Lives Matter

Across 2020 there were major protests around the world in support of Black Lives Matter. The movement’s website is a central hub for news, resources, and civil rights information in 38 countries.

2º Earth

2ºC Earth takes the user to 5 locations worldwide and shows what will happen there if global temperatures rise by 2ºc. Sound is used really well here to create an immersive experience, along with some beautiful photography.

Github

Along with some new features announced earlier this month, GitHub has a glossy new homepage. It has a clean feel, with some nice scrolling animation and sparing but effective use of illustration.

I Weigh Community

Political and social initiatives were big in 2020, and non-profit activism initiative I Weigh Community is the brainchild of actress Jameela Jamil. It’s devoted to radical inclusivity, communicated with bold, expressive graphics.

UNREAL

Back in January, we clicked around UNREAL’s site for hours, enjoying the sharp transitions. The Swiss agency produced a wonderfully chaotic love letter to web animation.

Delassus

Delassus grows fruit, from citrus to avocados. The Moroccan company employs a cornucopia of 3D design to make its site bold, fun, and practical.

Lynn Fisher

We loved everything about Lynn Fisher’s site back in May. The homepage illustration was awesome. It was a humorous approach to RWD that we really appreciated. The site has since changed, with tons more to explore.

Minervo

The Minervo site feels distinctly Latin, with the hot pinks and sun-blasted desaturation feeling suitably South American. We love the cropping on the custom typeface.

Babord

Norwegians have an almost mystical connection with the sea, which is evident in the site for Babord, a Norwegian seafood supplier. We loved the brand font too.

Calexo

Calexo makes THC-infused beverages, and back in April, we loved the color and positivity of the site. The animated hamburger menu was a hit too.

Moooi

Moooi’s site layers illustration with a maximal effect that makes you feel like you’re chasing a white rabbit. There are tons of great UI details here, especially the bar that reveals the product videos.

Blind Barber Anniversary

The Blind Barber celebrates 10 years of success with this microsite. A deconstructed grid and an entirely black and white design, but with color photos, create energy and a sense of joy.

Zand Harirchi Architects

Zand Harirchi is an architecture firm based in Tehran, Iran. Its site features subtle references to architecture, like the delightful thumbnails reminiscent of small windows.

WFN

The WFN (Women’s Funding Network) is an international alliance supporting women’s foundations and gender justice funders. The sophisticated color palette and clean type are both confident and feminine.

Nathan Taylor

We loved exploring Nathan Taylor’s playful site all the way back in January. The different lighting modes were a firm favorite.

Käthe Kollwitz Memorial

A tribute to the life and work of Käthe Kollwitz, an Expressionist printmaker. There’s a catalog of her work, presented alongside large type and splashy color transitions.

Emotive Feels

Emotive Feels is a design manifesto from the Emotive Brand agency that illustrates an A–Z of potential brand emotions with simple animations that we likened to a Blue Note release.

A. N Other

A.N Other’s site for perfume highlights quality ingredients, materials, simplicity, craftsmanship, and the environment; in the process, it cleverly invokes a sense of luxury.

Playtype

Danish type foundry Playtype’s site fits its name perfectly. The playful site with bright blocks of color and the occasional animation shows off some pretty nice typefaces.

Feijoo Montenegro

All-text sites are always a thrill, and back in June, we were treated to this simple one-pager by Feijoo. Details like the numerals being replaced by words are delightful.

Wavering Stripes

Although this site’s subject matter is harrowing, it is presented in a very beautiful, thoughtful manner.

The Oyster & Fish House

Sophisticated typography, the wave textures, the nostalgic feel of the photography, and even the cookie notice’s on-brand styling all show attention to detail, which gives this site its appeal.

Who Cares

Find and ‘photograph’ the endangered species to learn about them in this delightfully illustrated game.

Curbed

When Curbed came under the umbrella of New York magazine earlier this year, it got a makeover. Neon highlights and a distorted grid give an edge to the classic magazine layout.

Yolélé

The carousel of fonio (it’s a West African grain) products on Yolélé’s landing page is a good example of horizontal scrolling that works well. There are some great page transitions too.

Pantheone Audio

Pantheone Audio’s site employs elegant scrolling to enable seamless navigation of an extremely luxurious site, underpinned by a complex grid.

Aelfie

Bright color, an irregular grid, illustrations, and a display type that feels almost hand-drawn perfectly captures the aesthetic of this NY-based home furnishing brand.

Highcourt

This site for private membership leisure club Highcourt uses subtle background color changes and simple line illustrations to create a sense of calm. Black and white are softened to dark blue and ivory, and gentle animation adds interest.

Kate Jackling

Kate Jackling’s site takes a step back and allows the content to bask in the glow of attention, placing her photography at center stage.

Treaty

While there is less hustle and bustle outside than we were used to pre-pandemic, we could certainly all use some calm. Treaty’s site for CBD oils reflects that calm with a combination of video, whitespace, and botanical drawings.

Ukrainian Railroad Ladies

Ukrainian Railroad Ladies is a book of photographs of women, and some men, who work on the Ukrainian railways. The site is basic, even brutalist, but it has charm, and the photographer’s fascination with his subject comes through.

Year & Day

Year & Day is an ecommerce site that sells tableware, from glassware to ceramics. The colorful collection is designed to complement different types of food, and the site’s color scheme reflects that perfectly.

Juan Mora

Juan Mora’s ‘under construction’ holding page has probably been crafted with more care than many full-blown sites. This showcase cleverly manages to demonstrate its subject’s skills without showing a single piece of work.

Lucciano’s

Lucciano’s homepage hero video alone will have your mouth watering for some of their gelato. Much of the appeal of food is visual, and the photography here does not disappoint. Circular text boxes in ice cream colors complement the product shots nicely.

Bored Solutions

Back in April, we were already a little weary of lockdown — if only we’d known how long it would last! The amazing color blobbing of bored.solutions was the ideal distraction.

Grand Matter

Grand Matter is an artist agency representing illustrators. There is a wealth of talent on show here and a broad enough range of styles to keep the web interesting for a good while.

Dunderville

This site for Dunderville motion design studio features a paper fold detail, which adds tactility to the virtual. Some superb type and vector animations showcase an impressive portfolio.

Album Colors of the Year

Album Colors has taken the covers from 150 albums released this year and arranged them by dominant color. The hex code for each color is provided if you want to copy it.

Mammut Expedition Baikal

Mammut uses stunning photography and a strong narrative to present its Eiger Extreme outdoor clothing. Longing for the great outdoors will either be alleviated or exacerbated by this one.

808303

808303.studio is a virtual Roland TR-808 drum machine and TB 303 bass synthesizer. You can program, record, and share your very own 80s techno masterpiece.

Bliss

Humor can be hard to get right, especially when you want to be taken seriously at the same time. Here, it works, and the result is a memorable site, oozing with confidence.

Jazz Keys

Type your message into Jazz Keys, and you’ll hear it in sound. You can send the message to anyone and let them hear your words — the web lives for side-projects like this.

Érika Moreira

The fabulous, simple site for Sao Paulo-based Érika Moreira has some awesome big type and creative case studies. It’s an excellent example of a non-visual portfolio.

G.F Smith

Earlier this year, the site for leading paper supplier G.F Smith got a redesign. It is a simpler design than the previous site and keeps the visual focus on the products and the colors.

Abbotsford Convent

Abbotsford Convent is a creative arts venue in Melbourne, Australia, based in a former convent. The UI for its site blends architectural forms to acknowledge the building’s heritage.

Waka Waka

Waka Waka designs and builds wooden furniture. The mid-century typography and the noise textures transport the site to the last century’s radical graphic design. There’s some clever disruption to the typical thumbnail approach.

Cone

Sites advertising apps always seem to want to box the design into a hastily de-branded mock-up. Cone takes a daringly refreshing approach by depicting a more expansive mobile experience.

Ride Out

Amsterdam’s Ride Out bike store teases the content with an intriguingly masked video. Plus, we love the wheel-inspired spinning links.

Puddle Sound

This site is a model of minimalism. Beautiful photographs and very little text, there is nothing to distract from the product on display.

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Source de l’article sur Webdesignerdepot

Every week users submit a lot of interesting stuff on our sister site Webdesigner News, highlighting great content from around the web that can be of interest to web designers.

The best way to keep track of all the great stories and news being posted is simply to check out the Webdesigner News site, however, in case you missed some here’s a quick and useful compilation of the most popular designer news that we curated from the past week.

Minimal CSS Loader Collection

 

Webdesign Toolbox: Find the Perfect Web Development Tools

 

Facebook: Free as in Bullsh*t

 

New Year Edition: Top UX/UI Design Trends Rushing to Us In 2021

 

Our 50 Favorite CSS Libraries, Frameworks and Tools from 2020

 

404 Page Inspiration – The Best 404 Pages from Around the Web

 

7 Best Instagram Tools for Designers in 2021

 

HTML New Tab for Chrome – Design your own New Tab Page

 

48 Incredible Ways Designers Responded to COVID-19

 

QR.New – Make a New QR Code with Text

 

Hotwire – HTML Over the Wire

 

Entry.dev – Entry-level Developer Jobs

 

The Dribbble Shots that Defined 2020

 

Convert Web Pages into PDFs with Puppeteer and NodeJS

 

Best Practices for Building Offline Apps

 

Axel – Powerful Rituals to Drive your Team to Success

 

Sorry, but We are not all Designers

 

Zecoda – The Easiest Way to Build Websites Without Code

 

Nebula – A Fully Featured Particle System Designer for the Web

 

Write Code. Not Too Much. Mostly Functions

 

How to Favicon in 2021: Six Files that Fit Most Needs

 

5 Years of Design – Time Travel Through Handpicked, Beautiful Designs

 

How the Web is Really Built

 

How to Be a 10x Developer

 

Why this Forgotten Punctuation Mark Should Be Revived for 2021

 

Want more? No problem! Keep track of top design news from around the web with Webdesigner News.

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Source de l’article sur Webdesignerdepot

Every week users submit a lot of interesting stuff on our sister site Webdesigner News, highlighting great content from around the web that can be of interest to web designers.

The best way to keep track of all the great stories and news being posted is simply to check out the Webdesigner News site, however, in case you missed some here’s a quick and useful compilation of the most popular designer news that we curated from the past week.

The Best Design Tool of 2020 is not What You Expect

 

14 Top Design Trends to Watch Out for in 2021

 

UI Trends for 2077

 

Firefox was Always Enough

 

Wavelry – Create & Customise Wavey Svg and Png Backgrounds

 

Design Documentation

 

The Best 25 Black and White Web Design Inspiration

 

2020 Design Tools Survey

 

Web Design in 2021 – What to Expect

 

How to Accelerate your Online Presence Using SEO

 

Email Signature Design Guide, Best Practices, and Examples

 

Lavender – Write More Confident, Effective, and Thoughtful Emails

 

Buy Don’t Build

 

Glorify 2.0: Create High-Quality Product Images at Low Cost

 

5 WooCommerce Design Mistakes to Avoid

 

15 Best Free Christmas Fonts to Design Gift Cards

 

How to Create a Full Width Page in WordPress (Beginner’s Guide)

 

For the Fans: How to Make and Sell your own Merch

 

How to Build a Strong Design Team Structure

 

A Designer’s Guide to Receiving Criticism and Managing Feedback

 

It’s Always Year Zero

 

How to Design Better Pinterest Graphics and Attract Clicks

 

Dropover – Easier Drag & Drop on your Mac

 

7 Fantastic Youtube Videos on Web Typography

 

Colour Contrast Checker – Check the Contrast Between Different Colour Against WCAG

 

Want more? No problem! Keep track of top design news from around the web with Webdesigner News.

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Source de l’article sur Webdesignerdepot

Every week users submit a lot of interesting stuff on our sister site Webdesigner News, highlighting great content from around the web that can be of interest to web designers.

The best way to keep track of all the great stories and news being posted is simply to check out the Webdesigner News site, however, in case you missed some here’s a quick and useful compilation of the most popular designer news that we curated from the past week.

Web Typography Rules: What You Need to Know

 

How Microsoft Crushed Slack

 

Graphic Design Trends for Social Media in 2021

 

UX Christmas

 

Traxr – Monitor Links with 100% Accuracy

 

Hexometer 2.0: Monitor Website Issues and Performance Actively

 

Designing Data Science Tools at Spotify

 

Cow Pilot – The Deadline Driven To-Do List

 

Roy – A Simple & Delightful Color Picker for Designers

 

5 New SEO Tools for Marketers

 

21 Unique Web Design Trends for 2021

 

Newsletter Spy – A Database of 20,000+ Substack Newsletters

 

Visme 2.0 – All-in-one Design Platform

 

2020 Year in Review

 

How to Build a Web App: Key Steps for Starters

 

How to Create a Style Guide to Enhance your Brand’s UX

 

WordPress 5.6: New Features, Changes, and What Else to Expect

 

The Dos and Don’ts of Creating your Product Roadmap

 

Pantone Reveals Two Choices for its Colour of the Year 2021

 

Headlime 2.0 – Professional Marketing Copy for Anyone

 

Design for Sales: 10 Creative UI Designs for Ecommerce

 

How to Build a Strong Mobile App Brand

 

10 New Rules of Design

 

Remake 2.0: Make Web Apps with Just HTML and CSS

 

A Step-by-step Guide to Designing a New Feature for a Popular Product

 

Want more? No problem! Keep track of top design news from around the web with Webdesigner News.

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Source de l’article sur Webdesignerdepot

Every week users submit a lot of interesting stuff on our sister site Webdesigner News, highlighting great content from around the web that can be of interest to web designers.

The best way to keep track of all the great stories and news being posted is simply to check out the Webdesigner News site, however, in case you missed some here’s a quick and useful compilation of the most popular designer news that we curated from the past week.

Sidekick Browser – The Fastest Browser Built for Work

 

Why is Apple’s M1 Chip so Fast?

 

Two Color Combinations – A Curated Collection of 164 Two-color Palette Combinations

 

5 Tips to Build a Stunning Website that Stands Out from the Crowd

 

10+ Bootstrap Newsletters

 

Text Fish – Get Just Text

 

Ecommerce Website Designs: 27 Best Online Shops and Why They Work

 

SpaceHey – MySpace Reborn

 

State of CSS – 2020

 

5 Overlooked Mobile Experience Design Best Practices

 

Modern Blackletter Inspired Fonts and their Use in Web Design

 

Internxt Drive – Secure & Private Cloud Storage Service

 

Spline – 3D for the Web (Preview Release)

 

Nots – A Free Beautifully Designed Note-taking App for your Desktop

 

Google Play’s Best of 2020

 

Beacon – Run SQL Commands in Slack

 

Designing for the New Reality: Getting Rid of Pre-COVID Assumptions

 

Undoing the Toxic Dogmatism of Digital Design

 

Color Theory: A Beginner’s Guide for Designers

 

Atkinson Hyperlegible Font

 

11 Tips for Creating a Usable Website Contact Page

 

The 7 Secrets to a Great Conversation

 

Checklist Generator – Create Checklists for Free and Host Them Wherever You Want

 

Empathetic Design: The First Stage of Design Thinking

 

Handy Guide to Networking for UX Designers

 

Want more? No problem! Keep track of top design news from around the web with Webdesigner News.

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Source de l’article sur Webdesignerdepot

2020 has been an interesting year, to say the least. And although I’m sure many of you can’t wait until the calendar flips ahead to 2021, it doesn’t look as though we’re going to be able to say goodbye to 2020 so easily. Many of the changes we’ve had to make this year are now expected to stay with us — a least for the following year.

The latest research gives us some hints about what’s to come.

If you want to start preparing for 2021 now, then these reports and surveys from organizations like 99designs, Upwork, Content Marketing Institute, and McKinsey & Company are a must-read:

1. 99designs Reports on the Common Challenges Freelancers Faced in 2020

I don’t want to make 99designs’s Design Without Borders 2020 report sound like it’s all doom-and-gloom. Because it’s not.

That said, 2020 has been a rough year and it would be irresponsible for me not to acknowledge the challenges that all of us freelancers have encountered this year. This report is one of the few I’ve found that includes data on the major challenges freelancers have dealt with this year, including:

  • 36% have struggled to maintain a steady flow of work or a stable client base;
  • 27% had clients who cut their business budgets and, consequently, their freelancers’ workloads;
  • 26% had at least one project cancelled or indefinitely paused;
  • 22% have been ghosted by at least one client.

Beyond working more hours and hustling to find new clients all the time, what else can freelancers do to weather a business disruptor like COVID-19? There are a number of things.

For starters, it would be really helpful to have a crisis management plan for your finances. It would also be beneficial to refocus your efforts on finding clients who pay for the value you provide and not for the hours you spend building websites. Clients who see the value in what you do will be less likely to ghost or drop you at the first sign of trouble.

2. Upwork’s Survey Reveals Educational Opportunities for Freelancers

Upwork commissioned Edelman Intelligence to put together its very first Freelance Forward survey. The goal of the ensuing report was to shed light on the state of freelancing, how the pandemic has changed it, and what we can expect in the future as a result.

One of the data sets I think web designers should pay close attention to is this:

According to this survey, freelancers only spend about 52% of their time on billable work.

Now, one of the reasons why entrepreneurs and enterprise companies make so much money is because tasks are relegated to different team members. For instance, if a design agency owner is good at building relationships with prospects, they’re going to spend time on sales calls and managing social media. The day-to-day admin tasks would then get offloaded to virtual assistants and billable project work would go to designers, developers, writers, and so on.

But as a freelancer, you don’t have the ability to delegate and scale when you’re working solo.

Rather than burn yourself out trying to handle all these things yourself, the report suggests there’s something else you can do:

Although freelancers recognize how important soft skills and business skills are, the first data set suggests that not enough attention might be paid to them.

What I suggest is that you take a look at the division of your work hours. If you’re spending less than half of your time on billable work, it might be a good idea to strengthen your non-design skills. That way, things like marketing, contract preparation, and client management won’t consume so much of your time in the future and you can bill more.

3. CMI’s Annual Report Reveals Profitable Opportunities for Web Designers

Content Marketing Institute’s annual B2B Content Marketing Report is, once again, chock full of useful tidbits about the state of content marketing.

While a lot of the data is focused around marketing organizations and how they’ve pivoted during the pandemic, I thought this bit of info would be really helpful for web designers:

For those of you who design B2B websites, take note of where these companies plan to invest in 2021. If 2020 has been particularly hard on you, or you simply want to expand your horizons, there are some other opportunities worth jumping into:

B2B Marketing Investment => Web Designer Opportunity
Content creation => Blog graphic design, infographic design, and schema markup creation
Website enhancements => Website redesign, website audits
Content distribution => Social media ad design, Google ad design, schema markup creation
Getting to know audiences better => UX research, UX design
Customer experience => Chatbot/live chat development, support portal creation

4. McKinsey B2B Analysis Suggests That Digital Is Here to Stay

For those of you who’ve worked for a B2B sales organization before, you know how important in-person interactions are to them. It’s not as though they can just sell their products or services online the way B2C ecommerce companies can. The key to B2B success is through customer (and partner) relationship building.

Prior to 2020, this meant lots of in-person meetings, phone calls, and emails. But something has changed this year, on both sides of the fence.

This chart from McKinsey suggests that digital relationship building and customer service aren’t just a temporary solution for COVID-19. B2B decision-makers are coming around to the idea that this is going to be their “next normal” (as McKinsey refers to it).

These new “go-to-market models” include the following:

  1. Talk to prospects, customers, and partners via video calls;
  2. Digital self-service options for customers who prefer the DIY method.

As a web designer, you can help your B2B clients level up their efforts to achieve this next normal.

For starters, you can integrate scheduling into their websites. This’ll empower prospects to schedule video meetings (for demos, discovery calls, etc.) with your clients’ sales teams.

Another thing you can do is build out self-service elements like live chat or chatbots, FAQs pages, knowledgebases, and support portals. As consumers become more confident with doing business online, these self-service options will make a world of difference in their experience with brands.

Wrap-Up

I know, I know. 2020 sucked. But at least we have a good amount of research and experience that gives us a much clearer idea of what we’re getting ourselves into with the coming year. (At least, I hope so.)

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Source de l’article sur Webdesignerdepot

Every week users submit a lot of interesting stuff on our sister site Webdesigner News, highlighting great content from around the web that can be of interest to web designers.

The best way to keep track of all the great stories and news being posted is simply to check out the Webdesigner News site, however, in case you missed some here’s a quick and useful compilation of the most popular designer news that we curated from the past week.

15 Best Illustration Tools in 2020

 

Slidepage 1.0 – Create Engaging and Swipeable Stories-on-the-Web, for Free

 

Notion Timeline – More than Gantt, for all your Projects

 

Unslack

 

UX Lessons from Big Sur

 

Pattern Collect

 

Apple Silicon M1 Chips and Docker

 

Difference Between UI and UX Design

 

How Many WordPress Plugins Should You Install?

 

5 Things I Wish I’d Known Before Starting a Design System at Spotify

 

8 Pure CSS Games You Can Play in your Browser

 

We Can do Better than DuckDuckGo

 

Fulljar – Simple and Privacy Focused Analytics

 

Accessibility in User Experience: How to Include People with Disabilities

 

9 Common WordPress Myths Debunked and Explained

 

Impressive Pure CSS Drawings

 

I Took 21 Online Courses, Here’s What I Learned

 

User Experience: Insights into Consistency in Design

 

How to Use Emotion to Make your Brand’s Content More Compelling

 

25 Free Icon Sets You Can Download and Use Today

 

6 Ways 2020 has Changed the Landscape of Design

 

25 Inspirational Quotes for Web Designers

 

9 Tips to Keep You Sane When Working with Multiple Clients

 

Write Code like You Write a Recipe

 

UI Coach – UI Design Challenge Generator

 

Want more? No problem! Keep track of top design news from around the web with Webdesigner News.

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Source de l’article sur Webdesignerdepot

Every week users submit a lot of interesting stuff on our sister site Webdesigner News, highlighting great content from around the web that can be of interest to web designers.

The best way to keep track of all the great stories and news being posted is simply to check out the Webdesigner News site, however, in case you missed some here’s a quick and useful compilation of the most popular designer news that we curated from the past week.

Quarkly – Design Tool for Creating Websites and Web Apps

 

Create your Personal Branding Strategy in 4 Simple Steps

 

How to Design a Landing Page

 

No Code MBA – Learn to Build Real Apps and Websites Without Code

 

Your Computer Isn’t Yours

 

Swatches – Generate Colors for Every Purpose

 

Markabaly – Cross-platform Markdown Editor

 

12+ Bootstrap Hero Image Examples

 

The UX of Among Us: The Importance of Colorblind-friendly Design

 

No, your Clean Code won’t Save the Planet

 

My Side Project Rocks – Share and Discover Side Projects

 

How to Test Content like a Pro: A Step-by-step Guide

 

MacOS Big Sur is Here

 

Free Fonts for Prototyping and Wireframing

 

Gamification: The Broken Way of Carrot and Stick

 

Everything You were Wondering About Apple’s New M1 Chip

 

Please Unsubscribe – Fwd Emails to Unsubscribe from Marketing

 

The Fonts in Popular Things Identified Vol. 2

 

How to Become a Self-taught Graphic Designer

 

Using PowerPoint’s Animated GIF Function

 

Scribbble.io – A Blogging Platform for Developers

 

How to Work with WordPress Block Patterns

 

The Power of Happiness: Being Safe, Free, and Supported

 

How to Handle Scope Creep in Web Design

 

Building Products

 

Want more? No problem! Keep track of top design news from around the web with Webdesigner News.

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Source de l’article sur Webdesignerdepot