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Veer: Visual Elements for Creatives.Stock photography, type, and killer tees. Genuinely recommended by Authentic Boredom.
AppleInsider claims “Apple has drastically surpassed analyst’ Q4 iPhone sales estimates, and reached its goal of selling 10 million iPhones in 2008 three months early.” Gruber, can you verify?
NYT: Design Is More Than Packaging. “…a growing cadre of advocates say the world of design has much more to offer corporate America. They are proponents of ‘design thinking,’ which focuses on people’s actual needs rather than trying to persuade them to buy into what businesses are selling.” Having a marketing degree and growing less and less fond of traditional “marketing” (selling a product rather than the product’s utility selling itself), I couldn’t agree more with what’s quoted here.
Sumo Paint, a web-based, Photoshop-esque graphics editor. Via Swiss Miss.
Mustang Typography. Bliss, especially this one.
400+ floral brushes for Photoshop.
NYT: Gawker Cutbacks an Early Indicator of Ad Slowdown. Many of us in technology industry, specifically dotcoms, have been largely shielded from the economic woes suffered by other industries the last couple months. I’ve said before that as soon as we start getting hit too, we’ll know things are getting pretty serious. This article, coupled with downturns in AAPL and GOOG stock among other things, may be evidence that we’re finally at that point.
Suzanne gifted me a copy of Live/Work: Working at Home, Living at Work last week as part of our anniversary. Awesome book. Nothing but pages and pages of inspiring home offices.
Sweet. Work on the Tiger Woods EA Sports website in sunny Orlando, Florida.
I sheepishly admit that I’m a big sucker for a good ballad. For nearly every year we’ve been married, I’ve created a mix titled “Songs for a Starry Night.” This iTunes iMix pulls together some of the better ones from 10 volumes of mixes. Go have a listen.
For the LDS folks out there, give the new Move Player a try this weekend. You might be surprised how well it works. The technology is from Utah-based Move Networks and is probably the most functional, hi-def (and low-def) streaming media player available today.
Google AdWords keyword suggestion tool. The great thing about this? It’s external. Back in the day, Overture (now Yahoo Search Marketing) offered a similar external tool. Yahoo has since restricted access to it for only users with Yahoo Search Marketing accounts.
Flickr Mobile now has an iPhone-friendly version. Go to the m.flickr.com address to access it. Nicely done.
The KOR ONE hydration vessel is available for purchase later today. Credit card in hand.
Marta Strickland, What Makes A “Digital Native” Different? “For many children that are growing up with early adopters for parents, they have never known a time without cell phones, they have never known a time without wireless internet buzzing through the walls of their home…. We are reaching a new baseline for culture. It’s a baseline where ‘online’ is no longer a technical state. ‘Online’ just is.”
Coldwell Banker Real Estate releases an iPhone-friendly adaptation of their website for property listings search and home value estimates. Of course, the timing of the release is rather ironic given the current state of the housing market…
Swiss graphic designer Mirko Humbert’s Designer Daily is a little under-appreciated. Give it a read and you might agree.
Apple: “We have decided to drop the non-disclosure agreement (NDA) for released iPhone software…. [T]he NDA has created too much of a burden on developers, authors and others interested in helping further the iPhone’s success, so we are dropping it for released software…. Please note that unreleased software and features will remain under NDA until they are released.”
Kiva, to which Authentic Jobs donates 1% of total revenue each month, is one of five finalists in the American Express Members Project. If you’re an AMEX card member, go vote now for Kiva or for one of the other four noteworthy projects.
Peter Schilling, director of IT at Amherst College, compiled some rather interesting statistics based on incoming students (438) and the total student population (1680+). 33% applied online in 2003 vs. 89% last year. 432 of 438 incoming students have Facebook accounts. 1 in 2 incoming students predicted to own an iPhone or iTouch. 94% of incoming campus mail is spam.
Dan Benjamin’s helpful Podcasting Equipment Guide includes three tiers: entry level, midrange, and prosumer. I’ve bought a few items similar to those on the list following a tweet asking for recommendations. Perhaps I’ll share more about this soon.
Dave Matthews using Twitter? I’m always suspicious of these things, but it appears this may be the real DMB. (via Emily Lewis)
Oddica releases new tees, blog too. I’ll take Exploded Explosion, please.
iPhone calendar icon tees, any day of the year. Birthday and newborn gifting just got a little bit easier.
Microsoft and Nokia are adopting jQuery as part of their official application development platform. “This means that jQuery will be distributed with Visual Studio (which will include jQuery intellisense, snippets, examples, and documentation)…. This [also] means that jQuery will be distributed on all Nokia phones that include the [WebKit-based] web run-time.”
Tube, Nokia’s response to iPhone, rumored to be announced next week. S60 Touch operating system, 640 x 350 3.2-inch touchscreen display, 3.2 megapixel camera, GPS, 3.5mm headphone jack, etc.
The Back of the Napkin by Dan Roam argues that visual thinking is one of the most effective ways to “tackle tough business problems.” (Video ‘C’ on the home page is particularly interesting.)
Jeff Barry, former IT manager for a university, on the reality of allowing university employees to attend conferences: “University budgets for travel are just not very extensive, sometimes no more than $1,000 per year per professional…. What a developer employed by a univ can do is to offer to pay their own air fare and hotel and skip the per diem so that the univ only covers registration and provides days off with pay…. [N]o amount of persuasive talk about mission statements is going to work to fully cover travel expenses to pricey conferences.”
Chris Coyier’s screencasting setup for Mac. Mic, software, XML, and other recommendations.
Museo Sans, a free typeface by Jos Buivenga. Probably one of the most quality-looking typefaces I’ve seen released for free.
Seeing the UI in this product tour of the G1 reminds me of Microsoft’s response to Apple in the early 80s 80s and 90s — let’s do the same UI stuff as Apple, but let’s make it different so it doesn’t appear we’re copying their UI. Apple: Files on desktop aligned right, Apple menu upper left. MS: Files on desktop aligned left, Start menu lower left (though ergonomically these were bad choices). Apple: Enter PIN on home screen, incoming SMS front and center. G1: Draw pattern on home screen, incoming SMS in top toolbar (will I even see that?).
Two sites I’m filing under “Good Use Of…”: MoyToy (grid), Take The Walk (color).
It’s all over the internets by now, but Reverie, an independently-produced video by Vincent Laforet shot with a pre-production Canon 5D dSLR, is really impressive.
Jared Spool: What Goes into a Well-Done Crititque. Fantastic article. I can vouch for much of what Jared observes here, and I’ve learned a few things I can improve on myself, too. “A well-done critique is a way to step away from the specifics of the design process and better understand how to create great designs…. A critique is different from ‘proofing’ the design. When we proof, we’re looking for those little details, like typos and inconsistencies, that distract us from reaching perfection. Proofing is about polishing, whereas critiquing is about reaching understanding.”
Some of what’s new in Adobe Creative Suite 4 from a UI perspective mostly, directly from John Nack, Principal Product Manager of Adobe Photoshop.
The first commercial phone to use Google Android has been announced: T-Mobile G1. Available in the U.S. October 22 for $179. “How will the G1’s Gmail differ from Gmail on other non-Android phones, as well as from the Mail service on Apple’s iPhone, one reporter asked. The two key differentiators Brodman mentioned were a much quicker search function, and the first-ever mobile implementation of Google Talk Presence — a function which currently enables Google’s Talk IM users to determine each other’s availability and location.” Don’t know that I’d call those “key differentiators”, but rather “nice features”.
DePo Masthead WordPress Theme by Derek Powazek and Noel Jackson. (Speaking of WordPress, I’ll be speaking at WordCamp Utah next Friday Saturday.)
⌘C ⌘V Character. Aye! Added to me locker o’ bookmarks.
Griffin AirCurve, an acoustic amplifier for iPhone. “AirCurve’s waveguide has been engineered to deliver amazing amplification — you’ll swear there are full-sized speakers in there.” Available next month(?) for $20.
Planika Fires has some stunning indoor “mobile fire solutions”, such as this, this, and this.
Need a good cymbal cleaner? Groove Juice works really well. I can vouch for this review, having just cleaned mine with it. (Available at Amazon.)
Today, Jason Santa Maria’s Articles Archives page is my newest favorite page. A beautiful layout, both functionally and aesthetically.
Apologies for the dust and silence around these parts. I’ve been completely consumed by a pretty substantial project the last 4 weeks. Regular programming to resume (hopefully) soon.
Wikipedia has more information about the history of Mrs Eaves (typeface and person), a follow-up to the tweet I made yesterday.
Two utility typefaces from Emigre: Dalliance Flourishes and Puzzler Pattern Elements.
iPhone-controlled RC car. Cue phrase “a little too much time on hand…”
BriefCrate, the briefcase made from milk crates.
Joel Spolsky says he’ll take the new Nokia E71 over iPhone. “For many people, the iPhone 3G is perfect. I thought that it meant ‘game over’ for all the other handset makers. But Nokia is a fantastic company and they weren’t going to give up that easy. Their new E71 is a fantastic phone, clearly inspired by the competition, and the game is not over.”
New Apple Accessibility mini-site, most likely launched to coincide with spoken menus on the new iPod nano.
Has the Large Hadron Collider destroyed the world yet?
John Gruber’s Notes and Observations Regarding Yesterday’s ‘Let’s Rock’ Apple Special Event. Thorough and educated, as usual.
New Veer Kern Zip-up. “Embroidered arrows point inward, cuing you to tighten the letterspacing. A shaped zipper pull points down, asking you to widen the gap.” Love it.
Two resources have just popped up, both celebrating “rejected designs”: Flogged Magazine and Project Never.
Co-worker Gilbert Lee unveils Around Shirts, “offering t-shirts about countries and cities around the world.”
FontShop has created a mini-site for FF Meta Serif, one of my favorite new faces, and it includes a thorough history from artists Erik Spiekermann et al., OpenType examples, and an “In-Use Gallery” (includes one of my designs). I’d love to see similar mini-sites for some of my other fave typefaces — Avenir, Bickham Script Pro, etc.
Alissa Walker, Core77: Eight Ways to Save Design Conferences. “Lately, design conferences have begun to feel less like intellectual retreats and more like conspicuous consumption…. [W]e organizers, speakers and attendees have to start demanding more meaningful conference agendas. Together we can make a difference. And maybe without having to actually get together.”
Logos by Saul Bass. For those stateside, bet you recognize nearly every one of these.
A few notable designs worth visiting, courtesy of CSS Import: The First Twenty, The Art of Richard Fang, and Mopa.
Coming soon: Photoshop.com Mobile. This sounds more exciting than it really is. “As you probably noticed by reading this list, there seems to be no photo editing functions, so the service’s name is lame and totally misleading. My advice: stick to Flickr!”
In “Illustrating lifestyles from the developing world”, Stephanie Rieger gives first-hand accounts of actual persons from Philippines and Thailand and how they use mobile devices in everyday life. (The persona stuff for the first two-thirds of the article is great, but I wish she would have spent just as much time talking about how they use mobile technology.)
Co-worker Ted Boren offers some pretty thorough advice on designing in a team. “Customer happiness is highly correlated with whether they feel “listened to,” and that in turn has a high correlation with whether they can see their ideas filtered through your design process and manifested in the product. That doesn’t mean that the customer designs the product, but it does mean that they can see their concerns and ideas have been addressed. Good communication skills help, but you must also be able to transform what you hear into what you design.”
BBEdit 9.0 released. A very long-time BBEdit user, I’ve been seriously contemplating switching to Coda. This release is making me think twice about that.
“jParallax turns a selected element into a ‘window’, or viewport, and all its children into absolutely positioned layers that can be seen through the viewport. These layers move in response to the mouse, and, depending on their dimensions (and options for layer initialisation), they move by different amounts, in a parallaxy kind of way.”
Introducing Ubiquity for Firefox. Pretty neat stuff (video). This hints at a prediction I made last year, that perhaps the next wave of web development are experiences derived by the user rather than simply for the user. Ubiquity is also another great case for microformats.
Poolga: iPhone and iPod Touch wallpapers for the rest of us. (I’ve linked to this before, but they’ve added a ton of new ones since last time.)
Philips “iCables”. Also gorgeous. “It fits snugly in your ear, easily loops together around your neck when not in use, and prevents bacterial growth which is 700 times more concentrated in regular ear buds.”
Quiksilver “The Ray”. Gorgeous. Limited edition (1,000), hand-crafted from ebony wood.
The LinkedIn iPhone app. I’ve not used it yet, but ReadWriteWeb praises it.
Dear Lulu. “My plan for the workshop is to investigate the visible and tangible parameters of graphic design — type specimens, halftone screens and, in particular, colour tests and calibration charts — and make a book of our own self-produced tests which we will send to print on Friday afternoon using the online print-on-demand system Lulu. The book project will therefore act as a colour/type/pattern test of the very system with which it is produced.”
Tyler Thompson, Creative Director at Squarespace, has a terribly well-done personal site. Attention to detail = non-fail.
Quiksilver is seeking a Graphic Designer. Huntington Beach? Where do I sign?
Aaron Cannon’s Web Accessibility Checklist in German.
IDEO’s 20 Questions is a nicely creative way of presenting the company’s culture, knowledge, and opinions.
Jeremy Keith live blogged Liz Danzico’s presentation at An Event Apart, The Framework Age, and from the sound of it her presentation was not to be missed. “It’s time for a new way of working: designing for improvisation (but remember that no one single process will ever be successful). Our design process should reflect the trend towards user participation that we’re seeing on the web. People’s tolerance for improvisation is increasing and our role as framework providers should reflect that.”
Convertible Compact Desk by Crate and Barrel. Yes please.
In the ornate style one expects from Marian Bantjes comes a poster for the Academy for Educational Development. “But also, the poster, of course changes, depending on how you view it, and what you view through it, as these images will attest. These are all the same poster, shot in different locations.”
Contrast.ie. Love the ingenuity of this site. Can’t say enough about the vibe it gives off. (Though I would like to see portfolio links.)
Mint.com’s new site is a little disappointing. I have to tread carefully here because I may know the person/firm who designed this, but this a good example of a design gone too far in terms of shadows, number of typefaces, and a little too much going on visually.
Earlier today I was interviewed live on CouchCast, an internet radio talk show. Archived audio available here.
Dan Cederholm: Use the Best Available Ampersand. A little late linking to this, but a good primer on using elegant ampersands in HTML text. “We can use CSS to cleverly specify a list of our favorite ampersands, with the reader getting the best one available…. We can weight our list, putting our favorites near the front, understanding that the reader may get one or none, depending on which operating system they’re on, and if they have the font installed.”
Antonio Lupetti’s Tech Blog has some lovely design details throughout the site.
Disassembled household appliances, a Flickr photoset. Via 37signals.
The third of three must-reads: Deafness and the User Experience. “Captioning by itself oversimplifies the matter and fails many Deaf people. To provide better user experiences for the Deaf, we need to stop thinking of deafness as simply the inverse of hearing—we need to understand deafness from both a cultural and linguistic perspective. Moreover, to enhance the online user experience for the deaf, we must understand how deafness influences web accessibility.”
The second of three must-reads: Divide. “The idea of design divorced from engineering is laudable, but the way it so often plays out makes it implausible. Yes, in theory, the design team should come up with a perfect solution and the engineering team should be smart enough to figure out how to pull it off and neither should ever have to talk to each other. The resulting product would look exactly as designed and would work perfectly. Keep on trucking you radical dreamer. Here’s a quarter for the jukebox.” (Love the minimalism of the site, btw.)
The first of three must-reads: Why Apple doesn’t do “Concept Products”. “It turns out that when capable designers are given real constraints for real products they can end up creating great results. In Apple’s case, groundbreaking products like the iMac, the iPod and the iPhone. Constraints have a wonderful way of focusing the mind on the fundamentals, whereas concept products can often have the opposite affect.”
Veer: Flora by Corey Holms. Gorgeous.
Veer: Modern Interiors. I don’t know that’ll use any of these photos in a project any time soon, but they provide plenty of interior design inspiration.
This is interesting. Drew Wilson’s content management app, Firerift, will soon be available to the public. For now, Drew, who doubles as a film producer, has created a teaser “commercial” for the app. The first of these two commercials are available on the site’s home page. (Aside: Drew Wilson is easily one of the most well-rounded, talented creatives on the planet.)
Liz Danzico: Misforgivings of the Mobile Signature. “You can spot the novices immediately. Any expert emailer knows when to (and when not to) use a proper email signature when composing a mail…. But unlike desktop sig files, mobile sigs have emerged as a method to excuse and educate, rather than to provide a curriculum vitae. Mobile sigs report from the field, bringing information and apologies.” Via Airbag.
Type treatments by Joshua M. Smith. Inspiring.
The beautiful work of furniture designer Timothy Schreiber.
“I was going through some old magazines the other day when I came across this: Design Matrix of the 20th Century,” which was then translated (I believe) by the author, “Johnny Strategy”. Via swissmiss.
WSJ: How to Create a Successful Web Site For Nothing (or Almost Nothing). Honestly, this reads as if it were written in 1999. Unsubscribe. Via Jeff Croft.
The Future of the Internet—And How to Stop It. “This extraordinary book explains the engine that has catapulted the Internet from backwater to ubiquity—and reveals that it is sputtering precisely because of its runaway success. With the unwitting help of its users, the generative Internet is on a path to a lockdown, ending its cycle of innovation—and facilitating unsettling new kinds of control.” Interesting, to say the least.
Props How To: Beginner to Intermediate BMX Tricks (DVD). This is actually a pretty good video. Bought it for my son’s 8th birthday. Covers techniques on dirt ramps, flat ground, peg work, and even a how-to for building a ramp.
So, I’ve long wanted to be able to search for typefaces by look alone on occasion, not by name or style. FontShop’s TypeNavigator, a lucky find last night, fills that need.
Drum Rocker, a semi-realistic electronic kit for Rock Band. $300 price tag and currently pre-order only.
“skate” is a beautiful short video shot at 120 FPS with (I think) a RED camera, which employs a “35mm cine sized sensor … with wide dynamic range and color space in 12 bit native RAW.” The music featured is “It’s Alright” (iTunes) by Bang Gang. Props to Jason for the find.
AdMob, which serves banner and text ads on mobile web pages for more than 5,000 publishers totaling 3.5 billion ads monthly, publishes monthly usage reporst based on the the data in their network of publishers. The June 2008 report (PDF) has some interesting statistics in it: Percentage of handsets worldwide capable of streaming video is 49.6%, whereas in the U.S. it’s just 23.5% (lame!); top device used is still a Motorola RAZR V3, whereas in India it’s a Nokia N70. NOTE: This isn’t entirely accurate for the global market as it uses only their data and includes only phones that have web access, but it’s at least a decent snapshot of the market.
Jay Hilgert’s free high-res watercolor textures. Related: Photoshop watercolor brushes created from the same.
BgPatterns, a tiled background maker thingy.
If you like the Aaron Koblin stuff, see also Visual Complexity, “a unified resource space for anyone interested in the visualization.”
Aaron Koblin’s incredible illustrations showing “paths of air traffic over North America visualized in color and form.” Video and prints also available.
New from FontShop: Co Headline by Dalton Maag (OpenType). Love it.
More Photoshop brushes than you’ll ever need. Probably right.
Two noteworthy photography links: Boston.com’s The Big Picture continues to impress me with their stunning, large-format “news stories in photographs”; Blow Up is a Flickr plug-in(?) that, well, “blows up” your photos full-screen — enter your username and view on-site, or download and install on your own.
Dissolving Paper Shampoo. Yes, please. This would solve (one of) the space-consuming, liquid-spilling problem I currently have when backpacking with toiletries.
Keyboard Napkin (scroll down to #4). Yes, please.
2008 logo trends. Trend categories: supernova, fine line, foldover, global expansion, loops, jawbreakers, strobe, nimbus, stich, colorblind, amoeba, facets, doodles, flourish, fibrous.
A rare and in-depth look at Scott Hansen’s design process for his Obama “Progress” poster. Lots of full-res screens showing his Photoshop work. “When planning out an image I usually like to dive right into Photoshop as a first step, just to try and establish a color-scheme and basic structure…. I sometimes hear people talking about always using pencil and paper as a first step in design, but I personally find the computer a much faster and intuitive way to concept things out so I like to leverage that power right off the bat as a good way to kick-start the project.”
After changing the last of 14,000 diapers, The Wife gives some advice for those with children in diapers, and those transitioning to the tighty whitey.
Aaron Cannon’s screencast showing the importance of HTML headings for accessibility. Ars Technica, Google, and YouTube reviewed. (We’ve encouraged Aaron to create another showing why pages without headings are difficult to consume, as he doesn’t cover that enough in this screencast.)
Windows Mobile in the Dunk Tank. Really great write-up by Russell Buckley suggesting Microsoft get their mobile act together rather than going after search. “…it’s far more important that Microsoft gets their mobile strategy sorted out than worrying about Search — as it’s no less than a matter of medium-to-long-term survival. I’d suggest that Windows Mobile probably isn’t going to be the answer and they need to think of a radical and brave new direction to assure their future in a world where the mobile is rampant.”
Balsamiq Mockups. Not sure how to describe this, but it’s like sketching, really rapid prototyping, OmniGraffle with UI stencils, and Photoshop all in one. Worth a try, I suppose.
Fantastic commercial for the Zürich Chamber Orchestra. Notice such subtleties as the notes that look like roller coaster cars and passengers, and the actual notes of the music on the track. Via Carlos Segura.
Delicious redesigns. And when did they get rid of the periodness in the url? Obviously I missed that news.
Garfield Minus Garfield to become a book, and creator Jim Davis approves.
Mobile Web Europe 2008, London, 22-24 September. A strong line-up of speakers, and the agenda looks solid, too.
John Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme” (iTunes) is on sale, $7.99. Considered a must-have for Jazz aficionados and music appreciators in general.
Chad Mueller: “[B]elow are 50+ examples of what I have found inspiring in my quest to achieve typography greatness.” Probably the most inspiring thing I’ve seen this week. (Useless aside: “Müller” was my mother’s father’s real surname before his family emigrated from Switzerland, at which point they changed the name to Miller.)
The Grammar Cheat Sheet. For the astute grammarian. Or for the rest of us who mess up most of these half the time.
“Coasters for the typophiliac. These coasters are made from 4 mm Eurolite plywood, and treated with mineral oil to prevent water penetration. Each coaster is approximately 3.75 inches in diameter, and is done in the typeface Baskerville SemiBold.” $25 and free EPS artwork to reuse the design elsewhere. (thanks Amanda)
The date on the site is incorrect, but I’ll be speaking by invite from the Salt Lake City AIGA on August 14th at The Art Institute of Salt Lake City (Draper, Utah). Admission for members is $5, guests $10. Topic title is “Good vs. Great Design: Striving for design excellence individually and as a team.”
Design Bureau of Amerika’s Photoshop brushes, color swatches, and fonts, all free of charge.
Future of Web Design NYC is coming up this November. Speakers include Hillman Curtis, Khoi Vinh, and others.
The unofficial Beijing Olympic tee, designed by SCHOOL, an organization that helps “companies with youth ambition to connect better with youths.”
The 2008 Typophile Tee Battle winner, “Light, Regular, Bold & Bold Italic,” is understated but something I could see myself wearing. Great choice.
Numbers, a magazine by frog design. Issue 08 includes words with Erik Spiekermann.
AgencyTool’s Web Design Dashboard must have more than 200 links or so. One for the bookmarks. Via Gilbert Lee.
Cuil, a search engine launched by ex-Googlers. Via DF.
comScore report: “…8 percent of American mobile subscribers and 3 percent of European subscribers [access] maps from the mobile phone … a growth rate of 82 percent and 49 percent in the number of users, respectively…. 73 percent of mobile subscribers accessing maps are doing so via the browser in the U.S., and in Europe, 57 percent.”
IDC Digital Marketplace Model and Forecast: “IDC expects the number of mobile devices accessing the Internet will surpass the number of online PCs by 2012…. Roughly 40% of all Internet users worldwide currently have mobile Internet access.” Other statistics and predictions included.
Daring Fireball has openings available for its feed sponsorship. I saw great results from the ad I placed for Authentic Jobs. Positive ROI without question.
Howard Mann’s The Business Brickyard is now available for free in PDF format.
Speaking of conferences, the schedule for An Event Apart Chicago is now online. I’ll be speaking on a brand new topic, “The In-House Designer.”
Jeff Veen’s Start, a conference for entrepreneurs, is now accepting registrations.
The Mobile Internet for Dummies book site does what I had hoped to do when I published my book but didn’t have the time: A nice list of mobile-friendly websites and other mobile resources (see sidebar links)
“It is a well known fact that all inventors get their first ideas on the back of an envelope. I take a slight exception to this, I use the front so that I can incorporate the stamp and then the design is already half done.” –Roland Emett
John Allsop: iPhone native Apps - the great leap backwards? There is a lot I agree with here. If I had the time I’d do a full write-up echoing some of John’s thoughts. But in short, something I wrote in the book — before the first iPhone even hit the market — still stands today: “In all likelihood, most users will probably download a smart client or widget [or in this case, an iPhone app] for a couple of their favorite content providers, but beyond that a browser will be — or should be — sufficient for interacting with web content.”
GrandCentral doesn’t seem to be accepting new users right now, but its service seems pretty promising: Have one phone number forward to any phone (or phones) you’d like. A visual voicemail feature for mobile is also included.
“Posterous is the place to post everything. Just email us.” I’m not sure I see the value in this service, but linked to FWIW.
Words Are Pictures, the lovely and well-stocked portfolio of Craig Ward.
tap tap tap. Nicely designed, simple site for a few simple iPhone apps.
Bamboo office chair mats. Sure beats those plastic poky things.
Mobile experts reply to the question, Will the mobile web dominate the future of the internet?. I’m surprised how many of us say something similar, that the future of the web is ubiquity, which includes mobile but isn’t necessarily limited to “mobile.”
Sound advice when working from home. “There’s also the ‘closed-door’ policy, in which your family understands not to bother you if the door to your office is closed. James Higginbotham’s policy means, ‘If the door is closed, please don’t interrupt unless [there is] a fire or loss of limb,’ which says a lot to his five year-old…”
What happens when the Columbus Society of Communication Arts assembles for a Pinewood Derby race? Magic, that’s what. Love the Typemobile. Via Coudal.
FreezeCrowd is seeking a freelance Ajax developer based in the U.S. Bonus reward for great work.
John commented: “I suggest to use Bryton Media Group’s iCode Reader for barcoding on the iPhone. This shiny little app will be available in the AppStore soon…”
PhoneSaber. How’d I miss this one? A duel will be in order between Suzanne’s and my phone.
New York Times: “Does Iran’s state media use Photoshop?” Or, the story of a possible photoshopped missile in a recent Iranian news image.
Getty Images partners with Yahoo to monetize Flickr images. “Getty plans to offer the images as part of a new Flickr branded collection of royalty free, rights ready and rights managed photographs.”
If you missed the news like I did, the iPhone 2.0 OS is available (unofficially) a day early. Follow the download link, read the instructions, and you should be ready to go.
Ars Technica is arguing the mobile web has reached “critical mass.” I don’t know that I fully agree (yet), but we’re definitely getting there. Which, incidentally, makes it hard for me to not slip in the occasional “told you so.” (thanks Aaron)
New and old AT&T iPhone plans compared, cost increases detailed. Again, the reason I’m not upgrading. That’d be an extra $30/month for the wife and me.
James White: “Forge is a simple Flash application I developed about 3 years ago to help me generate random assortments of shapes and patterns. As simple and clunky as the program is, Forge has helped me create quite a lot of useful vector assets I use in a lot of my art…. The piece above is just a sketch of it’s capabilities, with effects and colors added in Photoshop.”
“The handwriting of typographers intrigues me because it raises so many questions, big and small: Do typographers exert some extraordinary control of the pen that laypersons don’t? … So, to satisfy my own curiosity I asked a number of prominent typographers to send me a scan of their handwriting. This is the result.” (thanks Sam)
iPhone 3G lines started forming at the NYC store on July 4. My heavens, I’m glad I’m over the hype this time around. Courtesy warning: There will be PLENTY of phones after the lines die down, if last time is any indication.
Mediaslap, “Photoshop brushes of the highest standard.”
“Every time an Adobe application misbehaves I upload the error message.” Via JSM.
According to the quotations in BusinessWeek’s “Welcome to the Weekend Web”, mobile browsing was up by 89% last year, with mobile page views up by 127% (both U.S. figures, I believe). Most of that is probably attributable to iPhone, but the numbers bode well for mobile in general.
Google Talk for iPhone. I’m not certain this is a good thing, as I’d rather text than IM with my phone. JiveTalk has been around almost since iPhone’s launch, and yet I rarely use it. (thanks Clifton)
Veerle’s Inspiration series: Posters. Visually inspiring. Subscribe to Scott Hansen’s ISO50 blog to stay inspired.
Moleskin Pouch. 100% wool felt with elastic accessory holder.
Typographic cutlery by Kathryn Hinton. Via Swissmiss.
Jakob Nielsen: Reduce Bounce Rates: Fight for the Second Click. “To measure site success, you should count only loyal users who return repeatedly…. Chasing higher unique-visitor counts will undermine your long-term positioning because you’ll design gimmicks rather than build features that bring people back and turn them into devotees and customers.” As much as the industry gripes about The Jakob for whatever reason, you have to admit he still puts out a lot of relevant, helpful data.
PUMA v1.08 Trainer. Doubles as a street shoe and training boot. Cannot. resist. it.
YouTube: Top 10 long-shot goals. They’re all crazy insane, but the (lack of) angle on #8 is incredible.
Carlo Longino on the Symbian OS news from earlier this week. This inevitably will put Symbian in a position to pit itself against iPhone and Android.
Andy Rutledge: The Employable Web Designer. A must-read. “Almost daily I receive one or more emails from design students and aspiring Web designers unsure about their current education. They’re concerned that what they’re learning will not sufficiently prepare them for the real world…. Unfortunately, I think most of them are right to be worried.”
An original sketch of the Twitter UI. Too bad nobody ever sketched the database and scalability plans…
BusinessWeek: Moving to the Mobile Web. Jessie Scanlon’s article on the current state of the mobile web and iPhone’s influence on it. (Somehow my name slipped into this article a few times.)
Design Observer’s Summer 2008 “Books Received” list. Lots of interesting titles to consider reading, such as The Designer’s Toolkit 1000 Colors, Letter by Letter, and Graphic Thought Facility.
TwitPic. Share photos on Twitter.
AdaptD.com. Love the color and semi-retro feel of this site.
Time: The Long Odyssey of the Cell Phone. The first recorded experiment with mobility and phones was actually in 1910 by Lars Magnus Ericsson, mentioned in Jon Agar’s Constant Touch: A Global History of the Mobile Phone.
Jon Tan’s The Paragraph in Web Typography & Design is one of the most well-written (and thorough) articles I’ve read in some time. Includes a history of the paragraph element, thoughts about print and web usage, and several examples with code.
Tyler Tate’s Visualizing Color is a good, brief history on color theory.
Firefox 3 brings ugliness to the Mac. “Using Firefox 3 is really a different experience from using OS X. It’s not Windows, it’s not OS X and it’s not Linux. It’s something else. It’s too much apparent that there is no overall design team involved in Firefox development, and for me personally it’s enough reason to not want to use Firefox at all.”
Adam Polselli’s iPhone wallpapers.
Inspiredology: Web Typography At Its Best. Plenty of inspiring work to peruse. Via Coudal.
Golden Ratio Calculator. For fun, a 960px layout results in columns of 593px and 367px. (thanks Ty)
MagCloud. It’s like Lulu for magazines. Additional details from Derek Powazek.
In light of JSM’s new EE-powered site, consider Ryan Irelan’s Learn ExpressionEngine with the EE Screencast Series.
Video excerpt from my talk at An Event Apart New Orleans.
Jason Santa Maria flips the switch on his new design. Be sure to read in full the post on the home page. Your experience will likely be similar to mine: “This is nice” when you first visit, and then after reading the post and understanding the approach, “This is brilliant!” is likely to follow.
Daring Fireball: The iPhone 3G Upgrade Question. It’s been a week since the WWDC, and for me it’s no longer a question: I won’t be upgrading to iPhone 3G for the very reasons John explains in his write-up, those reasons being I can do without 3G and GPS while still getting the 2.0 OS upgrade.
Video snippets from An Event Apart New Orleans. More please!
Tim Russert died today. Wow, that’s terrible news. I’m with Greg Storey: Who didn’t like Tim?
Versions, a Mac Subversion client. I haven’t tried the software yet, but the site is a beautiful blend of Apple and SlideShowPro-esque styling.
“I just used your fix on Engadget’s IE6 (per)version,” writes Mark Priestap, Senior Designer for Engadget. “Thanks a ton man! It’s working like a charm.” Note to self: Engadget uses a resolution-dependent layout. Awesomeness.
Campaign Monitor’s Guide to CSS Support in Email is by far the most comprehensive I’ve seen. Also available in PDF or Excel formats.
Oops. In addition to the new AT&T/iPhone plans costing an additional $10 for data (U.S.), you’ll also now pay $0.20 per text message or $5 for 200, bringing the new total to $35 (up from $20 currently).
Doug Bowman’s level-headed response to the whole Photoshop vs. HTML/CSS debate. “I have advocated in the past that HTML and even CSS are not design tools. They are tools used to implement design. There’s a big difference.”
Freelancer / Agency Design Survey. Let’s give Andy Rutledge a hand as he gathers data to support a large personal project needing the widest response possible.
emerils.com mobile recipes. B**! (thanks Tim)
Liz Danzico and Steven Heller announce NYC School of Visual Arts’ Master of Fine Arts in Interaction Design, coming Fall of 2009. Expect *many* schools to follow suit the next couple years. (thanks Emmy)
The illustrious car door handle. Via Coudal.
Video showing how Aaron Cannon, blind web developer, uses the web.
Blue Note album cover archive. I also recommend the book. Via Scott Hansen.
Dave Shea: “calling a design ‘clean’ seems to be a new shortcut for ‘I like it, but I have no idea how to critique design’.”
The new/redux’d Veer Ideas launches. Really liking what I see so far, strong typographically as well.
dConstruct 2008. Registration begins 24 June for the “affordable one day conference” held on 5 September, Brighton, UK.
Web Standards Design + Development: “As of today, Sunday, June 8th, there are four-thousand WSD+D members. The member roster is made up of a wonderful collection of skills sets and levels of talent. We’ve got everyone from the big names in the business to students and professionals to amateurs who would love to quit their day job and become a full-time designer or developer.”
A Genealogy of Pop/Rock Music, Tufte-approved. (thanks Fosters)
Business Week: “Some analysts say Apple may sell 40 million or more iPhones by the end of 2009. If that prediction pans out, iPhones will outnumber BlackBerry devices…. That track record would make the iPhone the most successful single product in Apple’s history, based on adoption rates. It took the vaunted iPod four years to break the 20-million-unit mark.”
CrunchGear: iPhone 2 photos leaked? One never knows if these things are real, but linked up FWIW.
Resist Today: Remix. “Download high-res, layered Photoshop files of our products, remix the images and email us your design.” Winning entries to be printed as tees, and artists get 50/50 split on sales.
Contextual search in “real-life” environments? This is eerily similar to an exercise I use in all-day interviews: What device or technology would you create to make a printed book searchable by keyword?
Remember Segregation. Love the impact of this site’s entry pages. How appropriate. (thanks Chris)
Dave Shea’s latest incarnation for Bright Creative is up and looking lovely. Note the subtle rollovers on the nav (jQuery, I believe, not Flash).
Currently enjoy Keith Robinson’s latest Muxtape.
Architecture in Switzerland. Wishlisted.
“Last week, I was in Chicago for the TechCocktail Conference…. Gary and AJ Vaynerchuk and I headed to a nearby Borders to pick up a few board-games for post TechCocktail activities. While in the Borders, AJ and I hunted down Gary’s freshly minted book and then called Gary over. As soon as he came over, he grabbed my pen and started writing in one of the books. I quickly grabbed my video camera and started recording.”
m.cnn.com. Same as ABC Mobile: Nothing terribly exciting, but nice to see another major mobile site added to the list.
mobile.usaa.com. Mobile web banking (and done well, I might add).
Appa Sherpa, world record holder for the most ascents to the top of Mt. Everest, lives just two streets from me. He just returned from his 18th ascent. Incredible. (And congrats!)
grain edit, “inspiration from vintage kids + rare graphic design books.” Bookmarked. (thanks Rick)
Lots of mobile linkage today, here’s one more (though its merit is questionable): “Mobile Web 2.0” revenues to reach $22.4bn by 2013, up from $5.5bn currently. The research defines Mobile Web 2.0 as “social networking, … mobile search and mobile IM,” which is about as vague as “Web 2.0.” Nonetheless, we can probably deduce that the mobile space is continuing to grow considerably as many of us predicted.
Android prototype demos at Google IO. The compass demo (2nd video on the page) is pretty impressive.
iMatrix enables iPhone to scan matrix codes, supporting several popular 2D code formats. (Yes indeed, matrix codes are covered briefly in the book.)
Alltop, a new venture by Guy Kawasaki. Think of it as popurls organized by categories of content.
Refurb’d MacBook Airs are now just $1,549.
Overcoming creative block. Helpful advice from Eric Karjaluoto. “Just like you’ll eventually become accustomed to the tacky wood-veneer in your basement, you will lose objectivity for your project if you work on it for too long. So, do something to change your way of looking at it. If you are writing something, read it out loud to a small audience. If you are designing something, look at it in the mirror. If it’s a video on a high quality monitor, watch it on a tiny, old television. Trust me; it’s amazing how this will help you see where the weak points are.”
m.abc.com. Nothing terribly exciting here, but at least another mobile-optimized site to add to the pile.
The Ampersand. A blog entirely devoted to… yup.
Early Intervention Support. A beautiful, relevant design that houses what appears to be helpful parenting advice for children with “challenging behavior, a disability or developmental issue.”
Free vector world maps. Like it says.
msnbc.com’s Spectra Visual Newsreader is a pretty fascinating visual experience. I don’t know about the long-term utility of something like this, but I love that msnbc.com continues to explore the outer boundaries of the online news experience.
I’m a big fan of all things Thymes. Of course, not for me, but the significant other. Thymes now has a new collection called Red Cherie, with extraordinary package design by Duffy & Partners.
This is another of those oft-asked questions by email: “Recommendations for affordable, quality printing, Cameron?” 48hourprint.com. I’ve used them for many projects over the last few years. Highly recommended. (Ex: The Selectors Cheat Sheets were printed as rip cards.)
Mobile Browsing Report, courtesy of Opera Software. Highlights: Nearly 40% of mobile web traffic worldwide is to social networks; “full Web surfing” comprises more than 77% of all traffic, compared to 23% for “WAP and .mobi sites”; nearly 12 million people used Opera Mini in March, which, according to the claims of the report, makes it the world’s most popular mobile browser.
Currently enjoying Typefoundry, what appears to be very advanced type geek speak, in journal format. Via Rebecca.
NY Times: XO laptops to begin shipping soon with Windows XP. Fantastic. Let’s perpetuate poor computing experiences to new computer users throughout the world. This news comes only as my displeasure for the OLPC effort is growing. (Anyone need a NIB XO laptop? I’ve got a spare…)
“I am really noticing people are not posting to their blogs anymore. Like everywhere.” Yes. And oh the irony that I’m posting to my site by linking to a tweet.
I can’t always keep up with Andy Rutledge’s redesigns, but when I do, they’re usually well worth a visit.
Jeff Veen has left Google. “So what’s next for me? I’ve got a couple of small projects in the works, but mostly I’m going to take a little break, travel a bit, and catch up on some serious miles on my bike. It’s been a crazy couple years … I could use a nap.”
I’m here this week and next. Naturally, updates around here are likely to be infrequent. (Chances are greater that I’ll be posting to Twitter occasionally, so follow me over there if you’d like.)
Office mate John Dilworth attempts to answer the question, What is the one skill that can most positively impact your profession? “Great designers must perform many different tasks throughout the course a design project. Great designers need to be generalists. They need to have the right attributes, broad knowledge, and good skills in all the areas that they might be required to work. In general, the work that designers are expected to do falls into one of the following three categories…”
Typotheque’s OpenType features list works pretty well as an OpenType cheatsheet.
Sean Klassen’s personal site has a well-stocked portfolio and engaging blog. Did I mention it’s superbly designed?
“All Streets” by Ben Fry. “All of the streets in the lower 48 United States: an image of 26 million individual road segments. No other features (such as outlines or geographic features) have been added to this image, however they emerge as roads avoid mountains, and sparse areas convey low population.”
An interview with Guy Kawasaki. “What concepts are you tired of seeing? A fill-in-the-blank version of Facebook. That is, Facebook for guinea pig owners, Facebook for senior citizens, Facebook for Loch Ness monster believers. I’m getting anti-social in my later years.”
I’m a little behind on this, but Massimo Vignelli’s 1972 New York subway map is now available as an updated, signed print.
“Hello. This is a website. It’s for fauborg, a New Orleans Creative Community. In order to move around click and drag me.”
Ask H&FJ: The ampersand. “Though it feels like a modern appendix to our ancient alphabet, the ampersand is considerably older than many of the letters that we use today…. As both its function and form suggest, the ampersand is a written contraction of ‘et,’ the Latin word for ‘and.’” Via Daring Fireball.
Mobile browser concurrency test. “With mobile devices, the speed of web pages is even more important given bandwidth, processor and memory constraints…. To our knowledge, this it the only public test that attempts to determine the number of concurrent http connections by observing the behavior from the server instead of the client. This is useful for any browser, but it particularly useful for mobile browsers where it is more difficult, if not impossible, to implement client-side network sniffers….”
I Love Typography: The Rather Difficult Font Game.
How do you begin designing? I was hoping to do this live in my AEA presentation but ran out of time. Feel free to cast a vote or view the results thus far. (Note: Don’t take this too literally, as the “Sketches” option is checked by default and therefore could very well be skewing the results. Fixed now, but previous results still may be skewed.)
“GRAVITY FREE is a truly unique multidisciplinary design conference. Each year we pick a theme. Then we select 22 of the most passionate designers, design thinkers and innovators on the planet from 20 different design disciplines to help us explore the theme. The result: an experience like none other — a remarkable cross-fertilization of ideas and inspiration that only happens when such a remarkable variety of design influences interact.”
GridFox, a Firefox extension that overlays a grid on any website. (Default width? 960, huzzah!)
Creating tiles in Photoshop, a brief tutorial by Sadhana Ganapathiraju.
JetBlue is twittering. Of course, so are many other companies (including Auth Jobs), but as John Gruber points out, this one comes across as more humanistic than some.
The Design Observer Playlist. The comments are chock full of music suggestions if you’re seeking to expand your work music library.
Though Authentic Jobs’ partners have already made mention of this, it’s worth repeating here: A shiny new API is now available, along with an Affiliates Program and the chance to earn up to $75 per referred listing. (Apply and I’ll personally review and approve your application.)
Huzzah! Mobile Web Design is *finally* listed on Amazon.
Volkswagen: Enjoy the Everyday (video). Word. (thanks Dave)
FontShop: Lamar Pen by Three Islands Press. Lovely.
Departika brushes are available for purchase as Photoshop brushes, Illustrator vectors, or PNGs.
Let it be said I really respect Russell Beattie, but I have to agree with Carlo Longino’s assessment of Mowser’s fallout. Any service that hangs its business model on a dying segment of the mobile market — low-end handsets that can’t render web content well — is destined to fail, IMO.
Tips on entering the field of illustration, from none other than Kevin Cornell. “Ninety-percent of illustration work out there is freelance work, and you make a living in freelancing by keeping your eye out for good opportunities, and pouncing on them. So don’t worry about doing things ‘right’— the only things you can do wrong is curling up into a ball and whimpering when the path forks.”
Wow, not sure how I missed this: Veer Type City Gallery. Fun.
Stellar design work from Jesse Bennett-Chamberlain, as usual: myfamily.com design ideas and eWedding redesign. (Love myfamily 3a, Jesse.)
ALA: Accessible Data Visualization. Great tutorial by Wilson Miner on creating charts and sparklines that are not only aesthetic but accessible too.
Walther NightHawk Air Pistol. “Honey, um, birthday next month, mine, just thought I’d…”
Twisted Intellect. Yup, it’s very well-designed.
How computers worked in ye olde tymes.
Brian Fling has left Blue Flavor to revive Fling Media full-time. Lots to love about the one-pager he’s put together — static footer, Send Us A Note widget, and solid design overall.
NYT: IPhone Users Love That Mobile Web. “84.8 percent of iPhone users report accessing news and information from the hand-held device. That compares to 13.1 percent of the overall mobile phone market and 58.2 percent of total smartphone owners.” (thanks Clifton)
CSS Naked Day is today. Ironically, this comes precisely as I was intrigued by Typesites’ review of Twisted Intellect, the likes of which appears to be very well-designed, and the likes of which I cannot view until Naked Day concludes.
Gruber: “We should settle for nothing less than beautiful and accessible currency. This isn’t it.” Couldn’t agree more, John.
Oldstyle figures (OSF), lining figures (LF), and tabular and proportional widths: When to use which. A really straight-forward primer for typesetting numerals properly.
“Typorganism is a web-based project focused on interactive kinetic typography and communal interactivity in the web environment. This project was started with my metaphorical belief that ‘Type is an Organism.’”
FancyBox, a jQuery lightbox plugin.
Amazon Kindle packaging. The product may have a questionable future, but the packaging sure is hot.
Early Morning, April 4. Another anniversary, another opportunity to remember Dr. King.
New UK coins unveiled, designed by 26-year-old Matthew Dent. These not only look really sharp but also function as one design when pieced together. “The Shield of the Royal Arms has been given a contemporary treatment and its whole has been cleverly split among all six denominations from the 1p to the 50p, with the £1 coin displaying the heraldic element in its entirety.” Via Kottke.
The User-Needs Gap, a snippet from Bryan Lawson’s How Designers Think, excerpted by yours truly. “The traditional image of the designer establishing a personal relationship with a client/user is grossly misleading…. Frequently communication between designers and their users is both indirect and, as John Page has argued, filtered by organisational politics….”
“This year, in keeping with the 2008 TED conference theme, IDEO posed a series of questions to TED attendees…. Created in conjunction with the 2008 TED conference, this widget supports questions that are important to IDEO and to the extended TED community.” Via Airbag.
Cottonseed Oil Tour. Nice design.
Basecamp: Reply to messages via email. As much as I absolutely detest email, I find time and time again that any collaboration software that doesn’t consider email a critical part of the collaboration process blatantly ignores a simple fact: Email, like it or not, is by far the most prevalent form of communication in business today.
I seem to be into enjoying “textured” sites lately; two that fit the bill: Inspire by Vigit Labs, and Bryan Veloso’s latest Avalonstar incarnation.
Design for Mobile 2008, September 22-24 in Lawrence, Kansas. Put on by the very knowledgeable and experienced individuals at Little Springs Design, “this will be a two-day conference focused on strategy and tactics for user research, product definition, interaction and other design, and usability testing.”
Interactive Vietnam Veterans Memorial, from the good folk at Footnote.com. (Incidentally, Footnote.com’s headquarters are just over the hill from me.)
Bronwyn Jones, Apple copywriter: “Let me preface this by saying that some of my best friends use moodboards. I just don’t care for them. Moodboards, that is, not my friends…. Moodboards are Paris in Las Vegas. They are a bad cover version of your favorite song. They are carob chip cookies. They are pale imitations of true inspiration.”
This alphabet popup book by Marion Bataille saw plenty of linkage on the web last week, and rightly so.
For the wife: Puma ‘Sabadella’ Flat.
Spotted on an office mate’s desk: The Incredible Book-Eating Boy by Oliver Jeffers. Beautifully illustrated. Off to order one for the boys…
Photoshop Express, a web-based Flash app for photo editing and storing.
Häagen-Dazs: Help the Honey Bees. Appealing site, engaging content.
“MethodIzaz is a unique photography experience. Subjects are unaware of the exact moment they will be photographed and of the photographer’s identity. Instead, the subject is photographed completely naturally, living life as normal. MethodIzaz will provide you with a portfolio of pictures representing the fleeting moments of an authentic lifestyle.”
I’m not typically one to buy Nikes, but the Nike Trash Talk is beautiful. And environmentally responsible, to boot.
I kid you not, when Suzanne and I were returning from SXSW I was telling her of an idea I’ve been mulling over for literally years with the amount of traveling I’ve done. The premise was simple: An app that could centralize all my travel plans (hotel, air, car, etc) for ease of printing, mobility, etc. Somebody finally built it: TripIt, as spotted in Luke Wroblewski’s “Sign Up Forms Must Die.” The implementation is sheer brilliance — just forward your travel plans by email and they take care of the rest.
960.gs. A 960px-width grid system (framework) that appears to be akin to Blueprint. I didn’t have any involvement in the creation of this but suppose I had some influence on it nonetheless.
45+ fresh out of the oven jQuery plugins.
Continuing to feed my penchant for pillows, the Inhabit Bamboo pillow by 2Modern is an easy target.
“The designer, Rian Hughes, was researching old wood type, but instead found the lettering at the beginning and end of each reel of microfiche far more appealing. Based on the intro and outro messages, Dukane (named after a Microfiche reader) has the battered and scratched quality of mistreated film stock.”
“With a cover made from pages of braille editions of magazines like Seventeen and Rolling Stone, the 32 pages inside each notebook are made from reclaimed paper which is smooth for writing, doodling or working out life’s complex mathematical formulas.”
Scott Hansen’s gorgeous new Northern Lights poster is, well, gorgeous.
Video from the Jeffrey Zeldman / Michael Lopp (Apple) discussion at SXSW 2008.
A day in the life of… A few snippets from conversations around the Moll household, as captured by Suzanne. “Edison: I smell donuts. Everest: That’s my bum.”
Jason Santa Maria on, among other things, the impact Twitter had on blogging and Flickring at SXSW (and the impact in general, I’d add). “Twitter really became the story and storyteller of the conference.”
A triumvirate of design folios: Bart-Jan Verhoef, Dan Noe, and Maciej Rakowski.
iHole. “I even left the serial numbers [of the iPhone box] intact, so if my roommate ever needed to return it he could.”
Got a built-in iSight or webcam? Choose webcam mode and enjoy.
Typesites, “a weekly look at sites that have great typographic design.”
Wired: Top 10 amazing chemistry videos.
Typographica: Our Favorite Typefaces of 2007. Undeniably worth the wait. Each typeface includes detailed commentary by the person who selected it.
Mobile Web Development by Nirav Mehta. I’m curious to see how the content compares to mine.
I passed up presenting with the Design Eye team this year at SXSW, but you can view the big reveal for this year’s site at designeye.org/sxswi. Coincidentally, they overhauled the SXSW website, and the reveal appears to be very content- and community-centric. Nicely done, guys!
Debbie Millman: How to Think Like a Great Graphic Designer.
Filed under “rad jobs”: U.S. Banknote Designer (Apprentice). “The incumbent develops designs in whole or in part; assisting and preparing models of various designs for use in determining approved and adopted designs for the production of United States currency and miscellaneous security items produced at the Bureau.” (thanks Adam)
23-year-old Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook CEO, becomes world’s youngest self-made billionaire. What in the world is this based on? I’d love to know how one becomes a billionaire with $150 million in total revenue in 2007.
ALA #254: On Creativity by Andy Rutledge, and Design is in the Details by Naz Hamid. Amen to “Beautiful Mistakes.” All too familiar (and welcome!).
I’ve long contemplated penning an article titled, “Bizarre musical instruments worth knowing.” One of these is the theremin, an early electronic instrument whose “alien-like” sounds were popularized in sci-fi movies. A recent TED talk features Pamelia Kurstin, theremin virtuoso. And if the theremin really becomes a bizarre thing worth knowing for you, there are several home-made models available on eBay.
Jon Tan. A recent discovery, not sure how I’ve missed this one. Lovely layout and type treatment.
“This table re-creates the beloved classic game Pong, introduced by Atari in 1972. The tabletop has 2,400 LEDs and two track pads embedded in its surface, turning the white Corian into a digital gaming board.”
iPhone guitar and piano hacks.
This Is Where I Write The “Hey Internets, I Redesigned Teh Site” Post and You All Pretend To Be Excited. Beautiful redesign, Jared.
jesuschrist.lds.org. Designed by colleague Chris Mayfield. Very nicely done, Chris.
Measuring the state of mobile Ajax performance. “This thesis evaluates the presentational capability and measures the performance of five mobile browsers on the Apple iPhone and Nokia models N95 and N800…. By far, the fastest browser is Opera Mobile on the N95.”
Engrave’s laser-engraved Moleskins and MacBooks. Absolutely stunning.
Alberto Cerriteño: Tres. Me encanta. (How completely coincidental that I’m typing this while listening to “Descarga de Hoy”.)
Flickr pool: Every chair at the Visual Studies Workshop.
Yahoo! Go. Saw a friend playing with this the other day. I’m not exactly sure how to describe it, perhaps “a package of mobile widgets for email, weather, stocks, etc.” Or perhaps, “make your candy bar phone work sorta like an iPhone. Sorta. But not really.”
Designing for Disagreement. This is a brilliant diagram. A must-review for anyone involved in iterative design.
An Event Apart New Orleans is just two months away. Use discount code AEAMOLL for $50 off registration. With Andy Clarke, Dave Shea, Jeffrey Zeldman, Eric Meyer, Jason Santa Maria, and several others, you’d be remiss to pass up this opportunity to enjoy great content, as well benefit the economy of New Orleans. (And not that you’ll be coming only to see me, but I’ve restricted my speaking this year to a very few select events. This is one of them.)
Internet Love Song. LOL and all that. Via The Noob.
Nathan Borror’s iPhone-optimized mobile version of Playground Blues, built with Django in 2.5 hours. Alas, I can’t view this with iPhone for another couple days… (almost done!)
Jeff Croft redesigns and it’s beautiful. Half blog, half tumblelog. Details about the redesign. (Nice use of the new Authentic Jobs API, too.)
Fonts I’ll probably never use for client work but wish I could: Retrozoid, Brubecks Cube, Glow Gothic, Infilto.
50+ “amazing” jQuery examples.
Satsu Design, “Isle of Man Web Design Agency.” Nicely designed.
Singapore’s beautifully architected School of Art, Design and Media at Nanyang Technological University.
Stunning iPhone wallpapers by artist James White. Too bad I can’t install these for another couple days sans iPhone…
Keith Robinson: How I GTD.
2008 web conferences calendar. Where is the Web 3.0 app for this kind of list? (thanks Randy)
Brusheezy. “Stupid name, cool brushes.” …and vectors.
Netdiver’s Best of 2007. I’m a little late posting this, but worthy of thumbing through nonetheless.
Trust me, do this.
Happy Cog Philadelphia is seeking a Creative Director. No doubt an incredible opportunity.
I have a feeling this manila envelop sleeve meme is likely to continue growing: AirMail, Wonder Threads, Timbuk2…
Backpack updates #2: Messages & Newsroom. Very much looking forward to the new Backpack updates, but Command+F+”basecamp” confirms the same concern I have: How much longer will — and should — Backpack and Basecamp remain separate apps, despite 37signals’s descriptions about their unique features? (Photoshop and ImageReady come to mind here.)
Is Adobe Flex Really Accessible? Penned by blind colleague Aaron Cannon. “Hopefully, Adobe will put some more time into making Flex truly accessible. It would also be nice if they could get Freedom Scientific (the company which owns and maintains Jaws for Windows) to bundle the scripts with the program as has been done for many other applications. However, until that happens, I can not recommend Adobe Flex.”
Brian Fling: The Immutable Laws of Web Design and Development. A good compilation of several “laws” and theorems related to software engineering. This list could easily be twice as long.
Icon Design Explained (Quickly). Mr. Hicks shares a brief slide deck showing his approach to icon design.
“Uncredited is the first book to offer a general and historic insight into the role played by graphic design in films…. It presents a critical analysis of the opening title sequences, thus throwing a light on the typographic work and composition of anonymous designers or of those rarely accredited.” Pardon me, but can you expedite the order I just placed?
The Rolling Bench. “Turn the handle on the side of the bench and the seat will rotate to expose the dry side of the seat.” Say it with me: I can’t number the times I could have used something like this.
I’ve been frequenting Design*Sponge for some time now, and their latest redesign (launched a few months ago) continues to impress me. It isn’t standards-based, but lovely nonetheless.
“There are a lot of books about the Enlightenment, but none of them actually provide light. Studiomeiboom has combined this idea into a lamp which is in the form of a book.” Beautiful.
HOW Magazine has redesigned its site. I’m not terribly impressed with the aesthetics, especially given how respectable HOW is in print. But the content seems much more accessible, and it’s a measured improvement over the aesthetics of the last iteration. (Thanks Jason)
iPhone 16GB now available. ‘bout time.
Amazon.com: 19-0: The Historic Championship Season of New England’s Unbeatable Patriots (Paperback). Oops.
Sneak peek at the Vans Finger Fracture skateboarding game for iPhone. Sweet!
wapedia.mobi, mobile-friendly access to Wikipedia.
Advancing Advanced Search. Good advice here about considering progressive disclosure of functionality.
FontShop’s Ten Typefaces of 2007. Grab a free copy of Anziano Small Caps while you’re three (scroll to the bottom).
AirMail, an actual manila folder (well, vinyl) sleeve for your MacBook Air.
“People come to Google. We don’t so much take from other employers.” What every employer seeking to hire this year should strive for, IMO.
January ‘08 iPhone update (video). This is an exhaustive update. Location awareness in Google Maps, SMS broadcasting, drag-n-drop customization of the home screen, and more. (Love the icon wiggle.)
Today’s the last day to take advantage of 50% off at Authentic Jobs.
“The ‘Mosquito’ chair [by Michaël Bihain] is the result of a thought about humanism and the autonomy of furniture…. It may be piled up in two ways: pragmatically or graphically.”
Bell glass domes by Smith & Hawken double as elegant terrariums.
The SANYO Solar Ark (gallery), “a unique, ark-shaped, solar photovoltaic power generation facility, offers activities to cultivate a better appreciation of solar power generation, and thereby of both ecology and science.” Beautiful. Via Notcot.
Derek Powazek, half photographer half web geek, suggests a CSS technique for better photo copyrights.
Studio MIKMIK. Great design. Lots of inspiring stuff within.
omspace.cn. I wouldn’t necessarily say this is something I could see myself designing, but the sheer fact this appears to be a Chinese design blog fascinates me.
Высокий берег. I’ve no idea what the site says, but the layout is solid.
“In a mild/medium/hot scale, where mild is a lame keynote that’s mostly a ‘state of the Apple Union’ address and hot is a major new product along the lines of the iPhone, my gut feeling is that we’re looking at a medium — spicy enough to be enjoyable, but not one for the ages.” John Gruber’s prediction for the upcoming Macworld Expo Keynote.
Moneygami. Radness.
A couple links related to recent articles on this site: The Brothers Brick (LEGO blog) and the Incase Vertical Sling Canvas.
Decluttered. Mount peripherals and hardware under the desk, not on top. Via 37signals.
Phil Renaud has written 52 essays during six semesters at university. On average, those with Times New Roman or Georgia have garnered an A- or better, while those with Trebuchet have garnered a B-. There’s something to be said here about statistical correlation, but this is an interesting observation nonetheless.
Sir Edmund Hillary, the first to climb Everest, has died. There’s a personal connection here, given we named our oldest son after the mountain he scaled.
Raphael Pontual, interactive designer. Lots of inspiring work here. (Note: Scroll up, not down.)
An incredible drum solo by Joe Morello in this 1961 recording of Take Five (Dave Brubeck), around the 1:45 mark. Such subtle restraint, and then some serious speed to top things off.
ElanChicas. Lovely design. Fewer lightboxes and some alt attributes would make it even lovelier.
Dharma Lounge Chair, whose seat, constructed entirely with letters, reads “Stand, Forget, Breathe, Acknowledge & Observe.”
Xerox gets a brand makeover. What was wrong with the current one? Oh right, it didn’t have a spherical Aqua-like mark.
15 great examples of web typography.
MyFonts: Top fonts of 2007.
How to escape microcar-attacking ninjas on roller skates.
An Event Apart: New Orleans. April 24–25, Hilton New Orleans Riverside. I visited New Orleans for the first time about a year before Katrina hit. I anticipate seeing just how much has changed since. (And of course, hopefully meeting some of you!)
Flickr: Subindo ao Céu.
“Chyrp is a blogging engine designed to be very lightweight while retaining functionality. It is driven by PHP and MySQL (with some AJAX thrown in), and has a pimpin’ theme and module engine; so you can personalize it however you want.”
Each year the Mobile User Experience (MEX) conference publishes a manifesto prior to its event, and the MEX08 Manifesto is worth skimming. #3 is particularly notable: “Fragmentation is the enemy of innovation. The structure of the mobile industry is killing application developers. There is a tidal wave of innovative content and services waiting to be unleashed if we can build a business environment which enables new companies to make money from mobile.” Amen.
“2008 is the year of the mobile internet, right? We hear that every year. Let’s forget about predictions and focus on what’s available right now. We bring you over 20 mobile internet applications that you’ll actually use.”
I’ve got a penchant for pillows lately. A few recent finds: Green Lady & The Nerve Turtle, Urban Outfitters, and Resist Today.
Fool.com’s 4 Predictions for 2008. Topping the list is Microsoft acquiring Yahoo!.
Wear Palettes. Color palettes extracted from clothing photos by The Sartorialist.
Interested in seeing how the XO (OLPC) browser renders without needing an XO? Try Liam McDermott’s tip for OLPC virtualization.
I think I’m getting a handle on this Twitter thing. You can now follow Authentic Jobs listings at twitter.com/authenticjobs.
Drew Wilson’s redesign is gorgeous. I’m envious, Drew.
Garr Reynolds has taken the idea of his popular blog Presentation Zen and turned it into a book: Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery.
2008 mobile predictions from MobHappy’s Carlo Longino and Russell Buckley (part 1, part 2). Predictions include year of the mobile web, 3.5 billion phones, projection screen phones, Android overhyped, and more.
Fortune Magazine lists Radiohead’s “In Rainbows” album as #58 in their 101 Dumbest Moments in Business. “Can’t wait for the follow-up album, ‘In Debt’.” Right. As in $3 million in revenue kind of debt, oh wise Fortune Editors?
30 of the best AJAX tutorials.
Beautiful new release from TypeTrust: Epic. I might have to gift myself an early Christmas present…
Flight of the Conchords performing live: “Jenny”.
37signals: Mobile web app interfaces linked up.
Trailer: The Dark Knight, sequel to Batman Begins.
Rock Band Logos, a running critique of, well, you can probably guess.
Airbag as seen from around the world.
Phonofone II, essentially a gramaphone for your iPod. “Without the use of external power or batteries, the Phonofone inventively exploits the virtues of horn acoustics to boost the audio output of standard earphones to up to 55 decibles* (or roughly the maximum volume of laptop speakers).”
The Potters. Header elements play well together, a touch of snow. Nice design, Ben.
A must-watch for any designer: Helvetica, the movie. Perfect Christmas gift, too. (Today’s the last day to order for Amazon two-day shipping to U.S. addresses.)
Fluid. Give your favorite web apps a site-specific browser and home on your Mac OS X Leopard dock.
Blind colleague Aaron Cannon writes on the inaccessibility of CAPTCHAs and possible solutions to make them accessible. “I believe the best and most secure option currently available is to create an audio captcha with human read characters…. CAPTCHAs are currently one of the biggest barriers to accessibility. Unfortunately, there appear to be no perfect solutions.”
Google announces “Knol”, Wikipedia competitor. See? WorldDomination™ is indeed just around the corner…
In an apparent attempt to stay current with the rest of us, Merriam-Webster crowns “w00t” word of the year, precisely four years after most of us began using it.
2007 Was The Year of Social Media. 2008 is the Year of Mobile Media. “Whether or not Apple corners the mobile market is irrelevant. Apple has proven that the mobile experience doesn’t have to suck and in fact can be delightful.” (thanks Chuck)
Tomorrow is the last day to take advantage of holiday pricing on Mobile Web Design.
Lifehacker: Top 10 Quicksilver plug-ins.
Google SketchUp, a 3D software tool that’s extremely easy to use. Admittedly I’m growing more and more concerned now with 1-800-GOOG-411, Android, this… is WorldDomination™ next?
Good URL Bad URL, a photo journal of URLs in the wild.
A really thorough list of in-jokes and self references in Pixar’s films. Via Kottke.
Veer Merch: Fancy Corduroy Bag. “Rich chocolate brown corduroy outside, embroidered with the Fancy logo. Inside, a decorative blue lining lovingly patterned with Fancy images. $65”
Kevin Cornell’s “Peoplemals” letterpress set is ridiculously beautiful (sample). Includes Penghim, Manther, Ladger and Eagirl letterpressed on Classic Crest 130# Natural White stock.
BootB. Plenty to love about this site, even the small details such as background treatment & repositioning.
CommandShift3 also launches today. “It’s like Hot or Not. Except, instead of clicking on hot babes, you click on hot websites.”
Jason Gaylor tells me the new Songpull went live today. “Many of the Songpullers adhere to a 30 day rule - performing a song in which all aspects have been written within 30 days prior to the Songpull event.”
DryIcons, free icons available as PNG in sizes 16x16 through 48x48, including 128x128 PSD source files.
Currently enjoying Drew Wilson’s Muse, a more thorough collection of inspiration with interviews and not limited to web work.
I’m not usually one to make gift recommendations for women, but if you’re looking for an extra something for the wife this Christmas, go with any of the Thymes Kimono Rose products. Trust me on this one guys, she’ll adore the scent.
Tennessee Winter. Another great site in the Tennessee Vacation family. (Who’s behind all these?)
Ping pong pro Wally Green schools Veer’s Jon Parker using his mobile phone.
Plotting in jQuery. “Drawing on inspiration from Plotr and PlotKit, software developer Ole Laursen wanted to bring the same plotting functionality to jQuery. So he built his own jQuery plugin and called it Flot.”
A bench with a seat cushion made entirely of upright pencils.
Remember Crayon Physics? How about an iPhone version. (thanks Aaron)
Designing For Flow. “The goal should not necessarily be to create a simple site. The goal should be to create a site that feels painless to use no matter how complex it really is…. Designing for flow requires an enlargement of empathy and a deepening of emotional and intellectual subtlety. It is the difference between creating chapter markers and telling a story.”
“On Monday November 19th, Amazon released something called Kindle, the latest ‘e-book’ reading device. I’ve been asked to comment on what effect I think this will have, if any, on book design as we know it. Here goes. None. Sincerely, Chip Kidd”
The 9513. Solid grid design, nice design details throughout.
Two sites to file under “big fat colorful header”: Adrianlbs and X3 Studios.
Borrowed linkage, courtesy of Coudal: Typographic Decay photoset, Helvetic NOW Poster Contest (entries).
Global mobile phone subscriptions reach 3.3 billion, a figure equivalent to half the human population. “‘The mobile industry has constantly outperformed even the most optimistic forecasts for subscriber growth,’ Mark Newman, head of research at Informa said in a statement.”
Speaking of the book, a review of Mobile Web Design by Dave Wi