The first battle ended. Now it’s time for single-elimination tournament in which teams play each other in one-off matches. It begins with the “round of 16″ in which the winner of each group plays against the runner-up of another group (A/B, C/D, E/F, G/H). This will be followed by the quarter-finals, the semi-finals, the third-place match and the final. In this stage you’ll decide the winner of each match through the express poll.

Below there are the blogs and magazines that will “fight” for the final victory.

Group A: Web Designer Wall, Francesco Mugnai’s Blog;
Group B: Web Designer Depot, Woork.Blogspot;
Group C: Css Tricks, Design Mag;
Group D: Tutorial9, Build Internet;
Group E: Psdtuts+, Soh Tanaka Web;
Group F: Abduzeedo, Nettuts+;
Group G: Blog.SpoonGraphics, The Web Design Ledger;
Group H: Smashing Magazine, Noupe;

In case you missed the first part of the Web Design Blog World Cup 2009, Following The Community Heroes, read the post.

Vote for your Heroes, The Round of 16

Now you can vote for your favourite blogs, the polls expire on 20 October at 6:00pm (UTC+1 – CET – Central European Time – Rome).
I repeat, this is only my way to suggest useful Web Design Blogs written by high-skilled authors. I hope you’re thinking this post is only a nice method to share, once again, the best resources of the web. It isn’t a “real battle”, but just an enjoyable tournament between “super-heroes” (the minds behind the blogs).

I’d definitely suggest checking them all out and subscribing to each of their RSS feeds and bookmarkings their url.

Match 1: Web Designer Wall – Woork.BlogSpot

Web Designer Wall is designed and maintained by Nick La. He has been designing for several years and his work has been published on numbers of magazines. He loves sharing ideas and design techniques.
Woork.Blogspot is maintained by Antonio Lupetti, an italian engineer, pro blogger, Mac user, Web addicted. In his blog you can find really useful tutorials and resources about Web Development.

Match 2: CSS Tricks – Build Internet

Css Tricks is a Web Design Community curated by Chris Coyer, a web designer from Madison, Wisconsin currently living in Chicago, IL and working for Chatman Design. In this website you can learn more about the web designer techniques.
Build Internet Build Internet is a blog centered around web design, development, and business. The BI staff want to help you build internet, and make sure that it’s phenomenal.

Match 3: Psdtuts+ – Nettuts+

Psdtuts+ is a blog/Photoshop site made to house and showcase some of the best Photoshop tutorials around. They publish tutorials that not only produce great graphics and effects, but explain the techniques behind them in a friendly, approachable manner.
Nettuts+ is a site aimed at web developers and designers offering tutorials and articles on technologies, skills and techniques to improve how you design and build websites. They cover HTML, CSS, Javascript, CMS’s, PHP and Ruby on Rails.

Match 4: Blog.SpoonGraphics – Noupe

Blog.SpoonGraphics acts as the digital playground of Chris Spooner, a frelance Web and Graphic Designer. In this site he presents Illustrator and Photoshop tutorials, articles around the subject of design and a bunch of free vector and resource giveaways.
Noupe passionately delivers stylish and dynamic news for designers and web-developers on all subjects of design, ranging from; CSS, Ajax, Javascript, web design, graphics, typography, advertising and much more.

Match 5: Francesco Mugnai’s Blog – Web Designer Depot

Francesco Mugnai teachs Graphic Design in a renowned Italian institute of Art and Design in Florence, where he also work as Web Manager… In his blog he share awesome graphic design resources.
Web Designer Depot is an exciting new platform designed to explore different web and graphic design techniques, great examples and best practices.

Match 6: Design Mag – Tutorial9

Design Mag is a community-based website for web designers and developers. The site includes a popular blog, a user-submitted news section, a design gallery, and a design job board.
Tutorial9, a collection of teachers, experts, and caring folk from around the world, all gathered in one place to pass along their knowledge to absolutely anyone interested in learning.

Match 7: Soh Tanaka Web Design Blog – Abduzeedo

The Soh Tanaka Web Design Blog is the place where the Web Designer and Front-End Developer share his tutorials and articles.
Abduzeedo was developed by Fabio Sasso, a brazilian designer from Porto Alegre. In this blog he writes and shares good stuff about graphic design.

Match 8: Web Design Ledger – Smashing Magazine

The Web Design Ledger is a publication written by web designers for web designers. The primary purpose of this site is to act as a platform for sharing web design related knowledge and resources. Topics range from design inspiration to tips and tutorials and everything in between.
Smashing Magazine delivers useful and innovative information to Web designers and developers. The aim of this magazine is to inform the readers about the latest trends and techniques in Web development.