Since 2004, a group of Russian typographers has been posting designs and visual experiments on the site DailyType. Their enthusiasm for the hand-drawn has led to an inspirational gallery of quirky lettering.

Web design showcase sites tend to be largely devoid of context or commentary. Design Meltdown goes the extra step and curates sets of examples built around specific trends or elements, ranging from simple color usage to atypical navigation.

Among the great gripes of many print designers working online is the current lack of multi-column layout. While the CSS3 specification—which will include properties for doing this—won’t be officially released for some time to come, browser vendors have already begun experimentally implementing some of its features. CSS3.info tracks these developments, as well as developments in the spec itself, and provides working examples for supporting browsers.

Mark Boulton’s Simple Steps series, which recently tackled the subject of typesetting on the web, provides bite-size tutorials on the small, often ignored details that make designs stand out.

Speaking of standing out, Darryl Ohrt of Visual Intelligence Agency observes how some of the most successful brands employ elements of punk-rock philosophy: “Adding ‘X’ to a razor’s name? Just a lame attempt at buying an audience with weak, non-genuine branding. Inventing a razor for shaving heads? Totally punk rock.”

Nothing is more punk than open source. activeCollab is a new, free, and happily, open-source project management system that provides the simplicity of similar tools such as 37Signals’ Basecamp but is installed on your own server.