Premium Linkage, pg. 2
Veer: Visual Elements for Creatives.Stock photography, type, and killer tees. Genuinely recommended by Authentic Boredom.
Forget all that fake worn/aged stuff. Try executing the real thing instead. Rumsey Taylor writes, “For the notcoming horror splash page I printed out the type in capitalized Bodoni on a sheet of paper, wadded it up several times, kept it in my back pocket for the larger part of a day, photographed it, inverted it, narrowed the levels and did a bit of brushing up, and voila: wavy, beat-up (and, hopefully, really scary looking) type.”
Registration now open for Web Directions North (Vancouver). Book between now and November 3rd and qualify for $200 off standard pricing. Can’t beat a conference with a ski trip included!
“I once had lunch with a gentlemen who, at the time, was the CEO of one of the largest freight companies in the world. Here is how he told me he set the foundation for his amazing growth. He took a look at his list of money he was waiting to receive from his clients and how long it was taking to get paid. He set out, himself, to visit each and every customer and tell them ‘We are not a bank. If you want to continue to be our customer then you need to stop treating us like one. You certainly do not want to start paying us like one.’” From “Pay Fast. Get Paid Faster.” by Howard Mann.
You so want a flying car for just over $3 mil.
Parallels tips: Don’t forget Parallels Tools and Bonjour.
An impressive list of CSS tutorials and techniques.
“The other consensus that seems to be emerging is that while people expect the web to deliver everything for free, when people access it on their phones they’ll expect to pay for the same thing. […] This isn’t going to work, particularly in the youth markets who are the early adopters here. Kids don’t see any difference between using their phone and the PC and woe betide you if your business model makes this unfounded and unproven assumption. They’re going to expect it for free and if you don’t give it to them on this basis, someone else will. You have been warned.” From “Web 3.0” by Russell Buckley.
From the Google blog: “If you visited [mobile.google.com] yesterday, you would have seen some pretty basic information presented in a fairly simple format. Today you’ll find a streamlined layout and some new ways to learn about Google’s mobile offerings.” You’ll need to visit with your mobile browser (you won’t see it with a desktop browser), and preferably something other than Opera Mini as device detection for this site fails on Mini. But once you get there, you’ll find easy access to Google’s mobile offerings, including a mobilized version of Google Maps compatible with most mobile devices.
Workshop: Mobile Web In Developing Countries.
Hey Floridians… psst.
Greenery Restaurant and Market. Nicely designed, Brandon.
Lucha del Gato. No further explanation required.
The inspiring work of Anthony Hurd lacks no color, creativity, or ingenuity. Love it. Prints also available.
iStock: search.php?text=grunge (vector and raster).
iStock: Concentric Corners (vector).
Paid Content and its network of sites soft launches a new design, powered by Expression Engine. Congrats Airbag and crew!
Drew McLellan: “Can Your Website be Your API?” This question was the catalyst for a recent presentation (PDF), which aimed to demonstrate “how the use of semantic markup and microformats on your public-facing pages could obsolete a lot of common read-heavy API methods.”
Andy Budd: “7 Habits of a Highly Successful Freelance Web Designer”. Among other sound advice in the article is this: “It’s important not to specialise at the expense of your other skills. Clients and agencies like well rounded people with a wide set of interests. Your skills should resemble an inverted T. Generally very broad but with one (or preferably more) areas of deep knowledge.”
A brief overview explaining proper web usage of en-spaces, em-spaces, thin-spaces, non-breaking spaces, zero width joiners, and zero width non-joiners.
“Our latest TV ad — featuring massive paint explosions — took 10 days and 250 people to film. Huge quantities of paint were needed to accomplish this, which had to be delivered in 1 tonne trucks and mixed on-site by 20 people.”
Keith Robinson has been eyeing the mobile web space for some time now, and shares 7 observations.
Expression Engine top 10 tips: Part One, Part Two.
Admittedly I’m late to the Beck party, but his latest release, The Information (iTunes), is actually pretty impressive, having given it several spins the last couple of weeks.
Flickr: Flipper.
Great site by Capital Corporate Commmunications. Love the blend of origami and hanging rope navigation.
That line about good designers fixing problems, great designers preventing? Here’s an excellent example: Water damage stickers in mobile phones. “As a designer, I would much prefer to look at the problem as ‘How can we improve the sealing of phones so that water ingress is no longer a major problem?’ than ‘How can we design something to cover our backs and shift all the blame onto the user for our design fault?’” Via Kottke.
dotmobi has posted mobilized XHTML templates for download (free; see links at bottom). From what I see they’re mostly a cookie-cutter starter kit (of course), but perhaps a good place for mobile web dev newcomers to begin.
Shirt: “Google Is Ruining Everything”.
CNET reviews IE7. “The bottom line: IE 7 was Microsoft’s one chance to leapfrog ahead of the competition, but the company has only barely caught sight of the current front-runners. For more features and greater security, switch to Mozilla Firefox.” The other bottom line: Like it or not, most of your clients’ users will soon be using IE7. Via DF.
IE7 officially released (Windows XP SP2 users, English version).
Seeking a design degree? Consider reading “What the Industry Expects from Graduates”.
A preview of some pretty impressive drag & drop UI enhancements coming to Backpack.
“FTF Flama is a straightfull sans serif initially designed for signage mixing aspects of both, European and American sans serifs. With its ‘neutral’ flavour, FTF Flama proves to be highly efficient for signage, corporate as well as for editorial design.” (Thanks Jesse)
“No Ideas But In Things is a library of controls, animations, layouts, and displays that might be a source of inspiration for interaction designers. Dan Saffer is the curator.” (Thanks Coudal)
Media Temple unveils a site design update, including new data about the Grid-Server, which aims to eliminate “roadblocks and single points of failure by using hundreds of servers working in tandem for your site, applications, and email.” Update: Oops. Looks like the markup didn’t get an update…
Zeldman: Web 2.0 Thinking Game. “Web 1.0: Pointless Flash widgets. Web 2.0: Pointless ‘Ajax’ widgets. Now you try it!”
Not yet big in Japan? Try 10 ad tricks in Tokyo’s train stations.
UX Mag redux. New design, same great grid flavor.
piotr m’s Flickr photostream contains a wealth of fantastic canine photography: I, II, III, and IV.
Veerle’s archived tutorials are plenty rich in design how-to, including her latest: Creating a ribbon in Adobe Illustrator.
Roger Johansson: Opening new windows with JavaScript. Note this is a tutorial for those who need to generate new windows for one reason or another without the use of the target attribute, and not a discussion about the worth or value of popup windows.
Bulletproof Design with XHTML and CSS with Mr. Incredible himself, Dan Cederholm. Boston, November 2. [Insert pun about a target and not missing this workshop.]
A few good free fonts included in this font list posted at Smashing Machine.
Khoi Vinh interviews Jeffrey Zeldman in preparation for Tuesday’s AIGA NY appearance. “We solve really big problems and then we move on. I don’t think that�s a bad thing for anyone concerned. I think it’s a good thing. […] Once the big problems are solved, it makes sense to have their in-house people or a lower-profile (ahem, cheaper) agency take over. […] They will not be a ‘B’ team compared to us; they will be an ‘A’ team that does a different job from the job we do.”
Nokia WidSets, currently in beta, are much like Dashboard widgets for your mobile device. I downloaded it earlier this morning (thanks Christian) and have been playing with a bit since. Looks like there are 3 main parts: An app that sits on your phone (the dashboard), widgets that you or other people create for either mini versions of desktop sites or standalone web apps, and a desktop counterpart to enable you to manage your widgets. It’s way too early to tell if this is the “future” of the mobile web per se, but it could certainly become an integral part of it.
Daring Fireball: BBColors 1.0. “BBEdit’s text colors have been configurable ever since syntax coloring appeared in BBEdit 4.0 in 1996, but there’s no means to save or change them en masse. So, I’ve put together a little command-line tool called BBColors; it lets you save, load, and share text color preference schemes for BBEdit and TextWrangler.”
How-to: Show thumbnails on link hover using Javascript and CSS. (Demo)
Moo’s business card-like Flickr MiniCards. “These little beauties are ideal for sharing details of your flickr photostream, sets, groups and contact details when you’re offline.”
Etelka Light Pro. Haven’t used this typeface yet, but I’m somehow enticed to do so.
Tuesday, October 3 2006 (photo) by Rob Bernhard.
A couple more fonts from TheTypeTrust that you certainly won’t be fired for using: Ezzo and Boycott.
Dave Rau, whom you might recognize as Mr. Red Labor, just released The Peace River into the wild - a beautifully worn site for the Southwest Florida Water Mgmt District.
Great photography work from Jeremy Cowart: Flickr | Portfolio. Photosets: Album Covers, Random Abstractions. (Thanks, John)
Vitamin: Redefining Content Management. “When most of us think (or talk, or read) about content management we are quick to associate it with a specific technology - the CMS. That, my friends, is our first, and probably our biggest, mistake. ‘CMS’ should in no way define content management. If you’re currently in content management = CMS mode you should really take the time to step back and look at what you’re doing.”
Natalie Jost’s lovely Pink for October design. (Mouseover issue on logo in FF/Safari?)
Nice big list of AJAX, DHTML, and JavaScript libraries. In German, but no translation needed.
O’Reilly eBook: Using Microformats.
CSS Globe. Member-contributed news and resources.
“10 Things That Will Make Or Break Your Website” based on AU Interactive’s perspective at the recent Future of Web Apps Conference 2006 in San Francisco.
Kathy Sierra’s vintage 1966 Silver Streak (Airstream) office. “I [wanted] a space that matches my enthusiasm. All that changed when I learned that Dori Smith had rented a 1957 Airstream office. I’d lusted after Airstreams for years, and when I went to visit her, I knew it was exactly what I’d been looking for. Finally, after two years of looking (and saving), I found and bought a vintage 1966 (recently restored) 23-foot Silver Streak trailer.” Via Airbag.
Happy Cog Philadelphia. Congrats all!
I feel ashamed admitting it, but it had been a little while since I hit up Andy Rutledge’s site with a browser, and I like what I see. Some interesting layout techniques, and a good blend of fresh content on the home page.
Lovely new design over at The Morning News. The Deck ad is nicely placed, too.
Jason Santa Maria dons his Halloween costume right on schedule (though I’m a bit late to make note of it).
Kate says, “I noticed all the little ‘frilly’ bits (for lack of better word) around the site; I’m wondering whether you made these yourself, or if you found them somewhere else.” Love the term, Kate! I get asked this question quite often. The canned answer is it’s a blend of clip art and the Nat Vignette and Type Embellishments One font families. The uncanned answer has not yet been approved by the FDA.
Matt P. says, “I was just wondering if there would be any way to get a vectorized
version of page 56 of your ‘Nine Skills’ presentation (the one with the Good Designer vs. Great Designer table). I’d like to hang a copy on my wall.” I would love to do this myself but regrettably I’m way overbooked this week. Anyone care to do the honors?
(4)
Airbag: Scab. “Look, design doesn’t just happen. It’s a process of creation and deconstruction that can take days-to-months before every element, color, and bit of typography is in the right place. […] When someone ‘borrows’ my work s/he is cheating because they didn’t have to go through the love and hate process that it took for us to create that layout or element detail.”
2Modern. Contemporary home furniture and decor. Favs: I, II, III, and IV.
Undeniably inspiring work by Seth Weisfeld. Via Newstoday.
New site design by Travis Beckham, aka Squidfingers, purveyor of fine pixel patterns but also of some extremely impressive portfolio work. Via Croftie.
UC Berkeley isn’t taking this interweb thing lightly. First came UC Berkeley on iTunes a few months back, and now there’s UC Berkeley on Google Video.
Jason Gaylor releases another round of Photoshop brushes: Tasty Tattoo. Vector files are now available for purchase for the same set, as well as Fresh Foliage II.
ALA: 12 Lessons for Those Afraid of CSS and Standards. “There are plenty of excellent books and articles out there, […] few of them acknowledge that using CSS to create standards-friendly sites requires a mindset that is alien to many experienced developers. […] I’m writing to convey the most important lessons I�ve learned so far.”
Web Directions North, Vancouver, Feb 6-10. Three days of instruction, two days of skiing… Perfect.
Goggles, the Google Maps flight simulator. Crazy!
“These pictures are from a web standards workshop (taught by me) in Seoul last thursday and friday,” writes Suman Park. “It was a very good time. Many web developers in Korea are paying attention to building web standards-based websites.”
.mobi general registration begins today. Here’s a list of accredited registrars.
Three seats just became available for the previously sold-out Designing Elegant CSS Interfaces — grab ‘em quick!
Milton Glaser: Ten Things I Have Learned. Part of an AIGA talk in London, 2001. I’m particularly intrigued by #5, “Less is not necessarily more”, as I made a similar argument in Friday’s “Essential Web Skills” presentation.
Booreiland.nl. Filed under “Good one-page portfolio sites”.
Dust off those old floppies and build your own Floppy Disk Bag.
Ma.gnolia Roots bookmarklet shows Ma.gnolia community info for any website.
@media 2007 will convene in San Francisco and Hong Kong(!), in addition to its home town in London.
Your office space needs wall decals, you say? Blik.
The HP Diet Plan: Buy our cameras. “Can you believe this? HP is pitching a new ‘artistic effect’ called the slimming feature.”
Miles Davis and John Coltrane performing “So What” live in 1958. Noted for those of you attending my session this Friday at Webmaster Jam Session (come and you’ll see what I mean).
Igor Falecki, 4-year-old drummer. Sheesh, they keep getting younger. Pretty soon they’ll come out of the womb with sticks in hand.
Wilton Foundry. Some solid fonts here. Favs: Petronella and Duet 2 with Flourishes.
Maciej Hajnrich, Graphic Designer. Very inspiring, to say the least. Lots of distressed/worn stuff, too.
COBA Hair. Ginormous photos. That Text Box Look. Nice.
Some Javascript and CSS geekery: Automatic pullquotes with JavaScript and CSS and Crossfading animation effect.
Search the works of Shakespeare. The results are incredibly contextual, just as you’d expect. Well done.
JPG reborn, with 8020 Publishing under the hood.
General registration for .mobi begins Sept 26 — only one week from tomorrow. FYI.
“One second I’m enjoying my late night breakfast, the next thing I know there was a nasty stinky sock on my plate.”
“Please, No Blogging in line.”
Jon Hicks knocks out a CSS file to highlight microformats in Safari, Camino, or Omniweb (for those of us without access to the Firefox Tails extension). I’ve been using this for a few days now and it works beautifully — it’ll really open your eyes to just how many sites are already using microformats.
New Chameleon icon sets. Dan upgrades the popular icon set with Chameleon Graphite and Chameleon Mini.
Imagine trying to explain the world in which we live using only 3x5 index cards and (mostly) Venn diagrams. Behold Indexed.
“Designing Elegant CSS Interfaces” is now sold out. Rumor has it we may see it come to the states, so hang in there if you aren’t able to attend this time around.
Fusionfox redesigned. Clean, light-text-on-dark design by Clifton Labrum.
Collylogic: The importance of window-width. An older journal entry, but still relevant given the fluid vs. fixed-width discussion ‘round these parts.
The Rachel Ray Show debuts here in the US beginning today. I’m not really into this kind of thing, but I am into cutting out useless communication jargon. The 9/11/06 issue of TIME magazine reports: “Ray — who has no teleprompter, earpiece, cue cards or even write — has a finely honed sense of what is and is not Rachel Ray. When the Vegas affiliate wanted a promo in which she would say, ‘Join me for an entertaining and unpredictable hour of television,’ she refused. Instead, she blurted out, ‘What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, but if you want to know what happens on my show, you’ll have to check it out at 10 a.m.’ The audience went nuts.”
DF: Showtime: The Big Picture. On overcoming digital movie issues, why Jobs’ on-stage enthusiasm varies, and state of the iPod/iTunes empire. Couldn’t agree more with this: “Vaporware pre-announcements distract customers from currently available products, but in this particular case I think Apple felt they had to reveal [iTV] now, because if they hadn’t, the lack of an answer to the ‘But how do I play these videos on my TV?’ question would been more of a distraction.” Precisely my thoughts too — iTV was likely announced to encourage users to buy movies now rather than wait.
“That Old Piece of Cloth” from this morning’s NPR broadcast was undeniably genuine.
Looking for someone to transcribe the audio from my W3C mobile seminar (slides here). Needs to be delivered by Thursday morning, Sept 15. Pay $100 by PayPal, delivered as RTF or Word document. Contact me if interested. Found someone. Thanks.
JPG to be 8020 Publishing’s first magazine.
iMockups, Wired’s roundup of “the best and most entertaining [Apple product] ideas floating around the net.”
Seconds 1:17 through 1:24 (slow-mo) make this robot dance worth watching. Crazy cool.
Lego Star Wars II. My boys love the first one… but no Mac version this time?
In memorium, from the archives: The Fallen Will Forever Stand. Incidentally this was written as a chiasmus.
Atari 2600 plug and play keychains actually play games. Sweet! Via Dan C.
Google AdWords hit cellphones.
One of the very first books I read on web design was Web Sites That Work by Roger Black. Earlier this week Roger unveiled a new website. Bold design, but I’m with everyone else on this one — the white drop-shadowed text on red is painful to read.
Crazy as it sounds (6+ months away), it’s time to begin thinking about booking a hotel for SXSW 2007. The good ones go incredibly fast, and usually by November or so they’re filled. Don’t say I didn’t warn y’all!
Top 10 best presentations ever. Couldn’t agree more about Dick Hardt’s presentation. I’ve seen that several times now and I’m amazed every time I see it — totally unlike most presentations you’ve seen.
Coudal’s In Real Tight winners revealed. Now it’s your turn to identify the objects in each photo for a chance to win some Coudal swag.
Blue Flavor gets new office digs. Usability lab included.
Not easy to get a direct link to it because of frames, but here’s one showing wicked gorgeous bamboo and leather inset helmets by Indigo Snow and Bogner. A mere $650 takes one home.
Mint: A Year in Green. “Mint has been a competent source of income for a household of two for the larger part of the past year. It has survived Measure Map, Crazy Egg and two brushes with Google Analytics. Mint is still selling strong into its second year. There have been ups and downs and there will always be alternatives and detractors but it doesn’t look like Mint is going anywhere anytime soon.”
“These days, there are a lot of options to close [off stairs] using very ugly devices called baby gates. You rather put chicken wire on it and I guarantee it will look better than any of the options that Babies R Us offer. That’s why I decided to take matters in my own hands.”
Stunning advert from Ariston with clothing as if it were sea life.
An Event Apart Austin. November 6th.
Photos of Todd Dominey’s recently completed home office: I, II, and III.
draft.media. The smell of wood grain fused with magenta is undeniably succulent.
The Big Picture on Microformats. Still plenty of time to board this train if you haven’t done so yet. “It may come as a surprise […] that the level of adoption by tool developers, publishers, and aggregators is significant, and that you probably visit sites with microformatted content all the time, without even knowing it.”
Veerle: Creating grunge brushes.
“In case you were wondering how much money you have to spend to get Apple to bend over backwards, that number is $12,718.19” and other observations as Greg Storey returns from an extended leave from blogging oops, writing, that is.
The Morning News: Drumroll Please. For a former marching band quad player who grew up in Blue Devil country, this is a fascinating read. “Five hours of drumming and dancing and bugling is, it turns out, not for everyone. And yet, according to the proud simulcast announcers, more than 20,000 people nationwide purchased tickets to watch the quarterfinals in their local theaters. Meanwhile, ESPN2 is predicting over a million viewers for tonight’s [Tuesday] airing of the DCI finals.”
New k10k.net.
Keith Robinson’s new site, of which I become immersed in the color scheme, among other wonderful details.
A few more typefaces, all from TheTypeTrust, you probably won’t get fired for using: Diego, Sneakers Script, and Musee.
popurls mobile. See also Tracking the web with Single Page Aggregators, which I shamelessly stole from popurls.
So You Want to Be an Interaction Designer, 2006 edition by Dan Saffer of Adaptive Path. “And if you are good enough, you’ll work with companies whose technology and/or influence is so great, you can make a significant difference in the world. But in order to do this, I think there are three essential traits you need: temperament, training, and experience.”
popurls. Huge one-page aggregation of sites such as Digg, Flickr, Newsvine, YouTube, and more.
Philips Readus Prototype has a flexible roll-out screen for increased viewing area on a device that’s still as small as a mobile phone.
Two weeks after announcing “Designing Elegant CSS Interfaces” the seats are half gone. Would love to see you there — now’s the time to register!
Veer Summermixes. I can’t imagine their taste for music being any less astute than their taste for creative elements.
April Zero has all the stylistic flavors of Web 2.0… but I still like.
A rarity: Freebie fonts from FontShop, a few of which are actually quite nice.
New Treo 750 photos. Nothing terribly exciting to see, continue on folks.
Portland Studios T-shirt store (mentioned here a few days ago) is now open for business.
Free Mobilists’ mobile RSS reader. Stay abreast of mobile technology with 15 sites. Good little app, actually, just gave it a run. Supported on most phones, or so it says.
Pattern utopia at Print & Pattern. Sensory overload! Via Hicks.
Video showing a Lexus self-parking car.
Cross-reference Pantone, CMYK, and RGB Hex values with LogoOrange’s color codes matching chart. (Keep in mind these are approximations.)
Flow, a money manager for freelancers and small businesses. Wow, that was fast, Mark.
I’ve seen at least a couple sources citing Chumby, a low cost, wifi-enabled delivery device, as the most interesting news to come out of Foo Camp ‘06. More from Christine.net: “Once you’ve plugged in your chumby, it connects to your home network via wifi. Select ‘Trust the chumby’ and it will autodiscover. Once you’ve registered online and picked from a selection of free widgets, the chumby displays a Flash stream of whatever you’ve configured - weather, news feeds, alarm clock, movies, pictures, stock tickers, etc.”
“Try looking through heathersloane.com without grinning,” writes Pete K., reader. I tried. I failed. Beautiful, light-hearted illustration work.
Adobe’s del.icio.us bookmarks.
Phoenix-based Obadiah Parker’s acoustic cover of Outkast’s “Hey Ya”.
SlideShowPro v1.3.5 now includes optional thumbnail nav.
NTT DoCoMo’s liquid-inspired charge indicator. “[The phone] has a motion sensor that detects tilt, affecting the ‘liquid’ inside the display appropriately. As battery level drops, so does the level of the liquid.”
More Utah vintage signage stuff: Urban Typography Project. Letterpress prints based on imagery found in and around Salt Lake City. (thanks, Sam)
Sign a petition to get Google to create a doodle for Prematurity Awareness Day (March of Dimes).
Mighty Mouse reviewed rebuked.
Two from Khoi today: Shorty, TinyURL-like link shortening, but on your server.
Khoi’s feed icon will likely soon show up all over the place; the first instance I’ve seen being NorthTemple. Nicely done.
20% off Chato Band, a grungy script font.
Yay! New dictionary.com design. There were a few cogs involved in this, one might say.
Jeff Croft: Has accessibility been taken too far? A delicate sorta delicate but appropriate treatment of the issue. “I believe too many people are trying to make accessibility a binary (yes or no) matter. It can’t be. It has to be a continuum. Every additional thing I’m expected to do for the sake of accessibility has a trade off of some kind. At the very least, there’s a time and effort trade off.” (Side note: I wasn’t aware of the Apple screen inversion Jeff mentions. Give it a whirl: ctrl-cmd-option-8)
.Mac’s slow death. “Then Google introduced (free) Gmail with oodles more storage than .Mac offers, calendars and so on. To make a long story short, I’m about to give .Mac the boot for good. After the jump, a breakdown of why.” I honestly thought we would have seen the impending death already by now. I toyed with it briefly several years ago and haven’t seen any value in it since.
FontShop with another excellent newsletter listing typefaces used on popular consumer packaging. Loving this series — I hope to see more.
Jquery tool tip. Simple but useful UI enhancement for those ever-present question marks next to form fields. Will find use for this soon… (thanks, Jesse)
A couple of readers’ sites worth noting: Auchtertool Parish Kirk and Die Kleidermacher (loosely based on some of the techniques in CSS Mastery).
On a roll with photography today… Scads of inspiring print work at Sesame Letterpress’ Flickr photostream.
Jan Von Holleben “Dreams of Flying” series photography with objects and children lying on their sides as if floating in the air/water/land. Exquisitely unique and beautiful. Love kids throwing giant rock.
Flickr: Early Morning, April 4. From a recent trip to the National Civil Rights Museum. See also Lorraine Motel.
Digg Labs. Hadn’t even seen this until today. Digg Swarm is really interesting to watch, to say the least.
Videos of Web Design World presentations by Jeff Veen, Molly Holzschlag, Cal Henderson and others. Via Stylegala.
Vintage Utah signage. Up until recently, I used to pass the Rexall signs every time I visited my parents.
Speaking of tees, A Yearbook of History at Apple Computer “told through the shirts that have been a significant part of the Apple story” (hardcover).
Upcoming tees from the talented illustrator chaps at Portland Studios.
Tetris magnet set. Geek out your fridge.
American Express card holder and business owner? Submit your product for space on the 2006 Holiday WishList.
Today’s Inspiration, an ongoing collection of illustration from the 40’s and 50’s.
Mike Ibach and Stuart Sandler unleash Font Bros to the world, with faces from Astigmatic One Eye, Mark Simonson Studio, Alphabet Soup, Fonthead Design, and others.
On hiring your first employee. “Percentage-wise, that first employee is doubling the size of your company. It’s the most important hire you’ll ever make. And you need to nail it. […] Don’t make this jump unless you’re willing to put your butt on the line for the person you’re hiring.”
Aaron Foster’s incredible collection of artwork created with vintage license plates. Pottery Barn offers a canvas print of his USA map. (thanks, Amanda)
Dave Shea on using Parallels Desktop for Mac to switch instantaneously between Mac OS and Windows on Intel-based Macs.
“Planned in under two weeks and completed in under 24 hours, the [Firefox] crop circle had a final diameter of 220 feet. We constructed the circle in an oat field near Amity, Oregon, where it was completely invisible from the road but unmistakable from the sky.” If I ever see any of my work as a gigantic crop circle, I just might fall over dead with amazement. Via Airbag.
Creating flexible buttons using Photoshop shapes and styles.
“8020 Publishing is out to create the ultimate web/print hybrid magazines. We’re just getting started now and our first magazine is coming in November. Wanna come along?”
Mondays are typically full of meetings. Just in case you need to get out of one.
This is wacky… but perhaps one of the best targeted emails I’ve seen recently. Send a “Snakes On A Plane” email to a friend with Samuel L. Jackson making jests about him/her based on the character traits you choose. (Thanks, Jesse)
“Just for fun, I’ve decided to share my first published writing on the subject of typography. It appeared in the April 19, 1977, issue of Metropolis, the Weekly Newspaper of Minneapolis.”
FontShop takes a trip to the supermarket and identifies typefaces used in the packaging for Izze Juice, Tazo Tea, and others.
Basecamp Dashboard widget. Be sure to enable the Basecamp API (Account tab).
Help SXSW Interactive decide panel programming for the 2007 event. Tons of great topic suggestions, and this could kick things up a notch next year. You might vote for “After the Brief: A Field Guide to Design Inspiration” and, um, I just might be a part of the panel. Speaking of inspiration…
“These pieces are done on 8”X8” plywood, sealed with several coats of varathane. They have the feel of ‘tiles’.”
Belkin wi-fi Skype phone. “The phone connects to any free Wi-Fi hotspot, allowing you to access your Skype account and place free, unlimited domestic and international calls over the Internet to other Skype users.”
Todd Dominey is looking for another crew member (web designer). Brief details here (scroll down about halfway).
Flagr. Flag/tag locations with comments, photos, and more using your mobile phone or PC. Like in case you need to find public toilets (which, in the US isn’t a big deal, but to find them elsewhere can be).
Speaking of logos, behold LogoPond (logo gallery).
Raja Sandhu, one of the most talented logo designers I know, boasts a jocular but very appropriate, spot-on contract design FAQ. “‘This doesn’t look like something from your portfolio?’ I always love this one. […] Your company is called Bob’s Dart World and you told me I have to use red green and black in the logo, you said it also must contain a dartboard and a flying dart. Those aren’t exactly the elements I work best with. The results will indicate that.”
CNN profiles Dennis Hwang, the artist behind Google’s logo interpretations.
I draw pictures all day (Veer shirt).
Jon Hicks: “Time Machine - Great idea, but my goodness, Apple’s designers must’ve been overdoing the weed. That is the cheesiest interface I’ve seen in a long time.” No kidding. I honestly thought it was merely a metaphor, not the actual interface, when I first saw it.
Otterball. Plenty to be inspired by here.
Coudal’s latest endeavor, In Real Tight photo contest. “Take an extreme close-up of some everyday object that makes for an interesting composition, but also makes it difficult to identify the object. Send a link to the photo to us.” Selected winners receive some cool CP stuff.
Kottke: How I Blog. Great advice for anyone posting links on a regular basis.
33% of all blog posts are in Japanese (only 1% less than posts in English) and other blogosphere stats from David Sifry.
Mobile WordPress.com. Type m.wordpress.com into your mobile device and blog, link, and get stats.
“At this year’s DEFCON Jesse D’Aguanno of Praetorian Global demonstrated a program called BBProxy that can cause your RIM [Blackberry] handheld to give malicious intruders access to your remote network by tunneling through your device’s link to the mail server mothership.” More from Engadget.
FYI, a few URIs to get live WWDC 2006 coverage: MacRumors, AppleInsider, and MacNN to name a few. (Another with photos.)
The release of iTunes movie rentals is one of several unveilings anticipated in today’s keynote. Give me tabs in Leopard’s Finder and I’ll be giddy.
If you’ve been dying to code on the go, DragonEdit is a text/HTML editor for Palm Treo. Crazy.
Eons is apparently a new social networking site for the 50+ crowd. If they were really cool they would have called it Boomr.
Missed my W3C mobile web virtual seminar? Grab the audio and PDF slide deck and you’re golden.
store.purevolume. Hot. Simplicity and audacity rolled up in one. Love Kreuger Bars.
Mark Boulton, grid and typography extraordinaire, is leaving the BBC to go freelance. “Yes, I’m scared to death. I think it’s natural, but also a good thing. I’m sure it will make me work hard to make this a success.” Success? Bah, it’s in the bag, Mark. Congrats on making the leap.
Enter the 15th Annual HOW International Design Awards. Winning entries to appear in the April 2007 issue of HOW. Last year’s winnners shown here.
Tick - time tracking app, but with time budgeting (progress bars and other indicators) for each project/task. Looks like a pretty good app after a few mins playing with it.
One of the best “how to get here” pages I’ve seen in a while: 4-step macro-to-micro instructions for getting to the Wickaninnish Inn.
7 stock icon sets for $5/each at IconBuffet.
Dave Shea: “According to CNET, Internet Explorer 7 is going to be sent out automatically to XP users as a priority Windows Update upon its launch. We’ll see a massive migration, and IE6 numbers will take a sharp dive in the very near future. This is a good thing. However, a sharp surge of immediate adoption could be a little painful for those not currently testing in IE7; now is most definitely the time to start, if that’s you.”
“You’ll shoot your eye out, kiddo. 144 times.”
NY Times: The Brand Underground. “Branding […] is really a process of attaching an idea to a product. Decades ago that idea might have been strictly utilitarian: trustworthy, effective, a bargain. Over time, the ideas attached to products have become more elaborate, ambitious and even emotional.”
As Mark Boulton drowns in a “thickening quagmire of paperwork”, he finds release by developing his own custom invoice/estimate app, EE powered. Looks promising, and a good app for creating estimates is long overdue.
How to save for the future if you don’t have a nine-to-five. Kill credit debt, start with short-term saving, put 10% of each check towards savings, open a Roth IRA, buy a CD, and other good tips.
Brian Fling’s slides from what appears to have been a brilliant “Designing for Mobile” workshop at Webvisions 2006. The diagram on slide 38 is phenomenal. Love the “Jargon Alert” idea, too.
“For one of the projects they create a typography poster for a typeface they are assigned. Students are to research and write a paper about the typeface and then design a poster based on their research of the typeface and time period. We’ve started posting samples of some of the best posters in our Flickr typography set.”
Behind the scenes: Yahoo! FIFA mobile site. “To make sense of the chaos, Yahoo!’s team first selected a target group of ten phones. They were all widely distributed, and their browsers ran the gamut from high-end to barely functional. As the thinking went, if the site worked perfectly on all of them, it would perform reasonably well on the rest of the world’s phones.”
Merill Lynch: Time to pull the plug on ESPN Mobile. Amen.
Web 2.0 Show episode 24, with yours truly. Chris, Josh, and I chat about design, mobile gadgets, .mobi, and tons of other great stuff.
So I’m bummed big time today. 30 glorious years with 20/20 vision have finally come to an end. I’ve never worn a pair of glasses. Ever. I’m off to shop for some tomorrow. Any tips on what to look for? (comments on) (26)
How to fix an iPod with the sad iPod icon. “I held it and slammed it onto a pad of paper on my desk (providing some cushion so I didn’t crack the case), charging port down. And like mana falling from heaven, the tunes started playing.”
Gorgeous icon work from Stefan Dziallas.
Nintendo DS + Opera screen grabs. Update: YouTube video showing DS Browser. Forget mobile phones — maybe this is the future of browsing on the go… (Thanks, Shaun)
One more Atari link while we’re at it: “You’re a starship captain in an asteroid field!”
Jeff Bezos invests in 37signals. Wow. Rock on.
Learning from Atari: “Thinking back on my childhood, I remember Atari always being great marketers because of one gigantic realization: suspension of disbelief. […] When you played something like Yar’s Revenge, you didn’t see a bunch of inflated pixels, you saw giant mutant house flies. Atari set up the pieces, and let your imagination fill in the blanks.” Bonus reading (viewing): 1981 Atari Game Catalog.
W3C Mobile Web Best Practices “checker” is essentially a validator for checking how well your mobilized site adheres to the BP guidelines.
ebon. I can’t understand a word, but the perceived simplicity of this site is excellent.
Weightshift is back… in pink! a magenta alternate of some sort. (Thanks, Ryan)
Stunning aged and worn display faces from Device.
On becoming a Geographic Arbitrageur (living where cost of living is low while charging big-city prices): “In this century of high metro real estate prices and flattening paychecks, GeoArb could become a way of life for millions of knowledge workers. Suppose you lost your high-paying white-collar job in a big city. What would you do? […] In all likelihood you’d set up a home office and try your hand as a consultant. That’s what some 300,000 Americans have done since 2000.”
“One thing that students might overlook when using InDesign for the first time is the document size that by default it displays in pica increments. This is one thing Roberto missed when setting up his brochure project for the shoe company Kangaroo. Roberto’s 9” x 12” tri-fold brochure was unknowingly sized at 9 picas by 12 picas - which lead to a final brochure which was just 1 1/2” by 2” in size.” Full story by Amanda Kern. (How’s that for a graphic designer’s surname.)
Indiana-based Gautam Rao paints with oil on masonite, and a share of his work is “web-based”, notably CAPTCHA series and New Folder. Several items are available for purchase.
More Jason Gaylor brushes: Fresh Foliage 2.
Big Cartel. DIY store/cart builder that seems to have some potential. Nice site, too.
Seth Godin: How to live happily with a great designer. “#10 - This one may surprise you: don’t change your existing design so often. Not when your kids or your colleagues tell you it’s time. Do it when your accountant says so.” Precisely. (Though I’d probably change that last sentence to “…when your market research says so.” By the time it affects bottom line and shows up on the accountant’s desk, it’s way too late to start planning a redesign.)
“The Hope Garden is live and growing. […] a virtual community garden that allows you to plant a custom made flower and attach a message for a loved one, then pass an e-card message on that links back directly to your flower. Users can navigate the 3D garden and browse other inspirational messages with the option to ‘water’ flowers that touched them.” Beautiful work, Paul.
“IUseThis looks as if it will become the cork�d for OS X apps.” –Jon Hicks
Wow, this Nokia spot by Helios is 30 well-spent seconds of creative euphoria. Every element executed beautifully. Via Coudal.
Christopher Fahey refutes the usefulness of eyetracking studies in User Research Smoke & Mirrors, Part 2: Research as a Design Tool: “Again, it is possible that, like chicken soup, eyetracking can’t hurt a redesign process […]. But unless you are working with graphic designers with no talent whatsoever […] it’s hard to believe that the recommendations of an eyetracking study would be a meaningful influence on a design process, much less form the very basis for the redesign.” Via Stan.
I missed the news, but apparently Opera plans to release browsers for both the Nintendo DS and Nintendo Wii. With the success of alternate user agents such as Opera Mini, I suspect Opera will continue to penetrate the non-desktop browser space and decrease development for the desktop over the long term.
Daring Fireball: The Mac OS X Tipping Point. “The difference between the old Mac OS and Mac OS X isn’t that it used to suck but now it’s great. The difference is that Mac OS X’s appeal is broader; it is good in more ways than the old Mac OS was. It’s this increased breadth of appeal that has grown Mac OS X’s share of the nerd market. What makes nerds ‘nerds’ is that they care to an irrational depth about certain specific things; Mac OS X covers more of those things than did Mac OS 9, and so it appeals to many more nerds.”
So my cousin tells me he surfs on Lake Austin (inland, about 200 miles from the shore). Didn’t believe it until I saw the video. Turns out with enough weight in the boat and at the right speed, it’s do-able. Crazy.
More Photoshop brushes from the infamous Jason Gaylor: Graffiti brushes.
Bak Dergisi. Gorgeousness!
“Anuncios publicados en la revista ‘Cl�nica Rural’. A�os 60-70.” Simply magn�fico.
ideasonideas: Creativity is a discipline of learning. “About a year ago, I acknowledged that much of my design work simply wasn�t good enough. As much as I wanted to believe that I was on par with some of the people I admired, it simply wasn�t the case. This was a liberating sensation. By acknowledging my weaknesses I was free to learn more, push harder, and seek growth more honestly.”
CSS World Awards winners recognized by CSS Mania. I had the opportunity to stand in as one of the judges. Congrats to the nominees and winners.
Speaking of Webvisions, there’s a ton of great sessions and workshops this year. An entire track on mobile, no less, more than half of which cover the mobile web, including Brian Fling’s workshop.
In preparation for his session at Webvisions 2006, Bill DeRouchey has started blogging about the history of the button. “The Button is nearly a character on the show [Lost]. It’s an entity. It’s a thing that holds sway on our heroes and divides them. The button has believers and detractors, a Man of Faith and a Man of Science. The Man of Faith believes it his destiny to be the caretaker of The Button. The Man of Science sees no reason to believe, but logic tells him it’s better to wait, learn and see.”
Reasons Dan C. enjoys flying. Pre-completed Sudoku puzzles rock.
Tutorial for pixel perfect (background) patterns in Photoshop.
Hockneyizer. Create a simulated collage from a single photograph. Hand-off to Flickr is pretty easy (sample). Tool inspired by English artist David Hockney.
Love the tabs on SaraJoy Pond.
Distressed design, sample sites. Cool visited technique on the thumbs, too.
Nope, my boys didn’t do it, but I bet they could have. (Thanks, Michael.)
Beginning CSS Web Development. Another forthcoming book, this one by fellow author Simon Collison. I enjoyed his lighthearted yet technically sound style of writing in CSS Mastery. An entire book done up in that style should be well worth the money.
JavaScript tabifier. Sweet. Cut-and-paste for dynamic tabbery. (Thanks, Jesse.)
Snipplr. “Share your code snippets with other coders and designers.”
Several time tracking and invoicing apps reviewed. I’d likely go for a Blinksale/Harvest mashup, too.
A couple of JavaScript debuggers: FireBug for Firefox and Drosera, which “lets you attach and debug JavaScript for any WebKit application—not just Safari.”
Bookshelves inspired by Tetris. Via Netdiver.
Veerle’s interesting links. Mostly CSS. Veritably resourceful.
Transcending CSS. Andy Clarke’s forthcoming book, unveiled at @media. If it’s anything like his presentation, it’ll include plenty of fresh thinking about how we use CSS moving forward. Molly’s comment at dinner, “How would you mark that [plate of food] up?” is only one of many ways you’ll begin to think differently about markup.
UC Berkeley on iTunes. Sweet. I’m now an unofficial continuing ed student at Cal.
“Maxdox� Mobile Publisher software provides the tools to rapidly create content rich mobile publications.” I believe it’s (very) loosely something akin to Dreamweaver for mobile content, though I haven’t had time to play with the software yet. Had a good chat with Maxdox execs at @media.
Ornate fleuron characters available in Fleurons Two.
Speaking of US v. European TV: NY Times blog, “The Sins of American Sportscasting”. “It’s easy to see why O’Brien and Balboa announce this way. They are simply calling soccer games the same way all American sports are called. And yet the fact that there is such dissatisfaction with a very traditional, mainstream announcing team speaks volumes not just about the way soccer is presented on American TV, but about the state of American television sportscasting in general.” Via Kottke.
Flickr: Standing in the shadows at the end of my bed.
Mobile Web Best Practices 1.0 status is now Candidate Recommendation. Sample guidelines include short entry-point URIs, access keys on nav items, text equivalents for non-text elements, and 120px minimum screen width.
Scott Shaffer asks, What really is mobile search? “There will come a point when there is more internet traffic from mobile devices than PCs. What happens to search engines then? What happens to the Golden Goose of advertising when people won’t be using a search engine to do their surfing? […] Advertisers are still trying to catch up with the eyeballs that left TV to the stationary Net. What happens when the net shift goes from the PC to the cell phone?” An excellent read. Not a lot of answers, but the questions certainly merit pondering.
Flick’d away. Zeldman’s Pro account expires without notice, and 200+ photos immediately disappear. Good to know — mine expires next week. I’m off to renew immediately…
Mosso, “the world’s first hosting system for people who build websites.” Via Jesse.
Justin K. is looking to trade a new Veer 15” laptop bag for the 17” one. Excellent condition. Email kaitel {at} gmail dot com.
Peel-and-stick embossed wallpaper-like patterns by Inhabit. Hot. Via WDIK.
Firewheel adds Scott Raymond and Keegan Jones to the payroll. Congrats, guys.
Amigo unveiled. “An application that helps site owners find advertisers for their e-mail newsletters […] and that helps advertisers find new, unexploited advertising opportunities in e-mail newsletters.”
Kevin Mears’ illustrative interpretations of @media 2006.
The small team at Oddica could very well be poised to give Threadless a run for its money. Fantastic designs, affordable pricing, and American Apparel threads. I’m particularly fond of the Tape Bird and Exploded Boombox tees.
Behind the Veer booth at HOW Design Conference in Vegas.
d.Construct 2006 announced. Hot conference put on by the good folks at Clearleft.
I’ve been so wanting to take continuing ed courses for some time now. Jason’s account of his letterpress course only makes me long to do so even more.
“iDrops restore the health of your iPod (all models), iBook, eMac, and iMac G5 by bringing back the plastic, polycarbonate, or acrylic’s original factory finish and shine.” I’ve got a bottle on order. Excited to see how well it works.
18-year-old Tau Siroko’s portfolio, Rayform. Lovely.
Kirk writes: “While perhaps not important I thought I might point out that [the Rolleiflex MiniDigi you linked to] is really more of a novelty than a serious digital version of the classic. I’ve heard from other photographers who ached to try this that the results [sample pics here] are not nearly as good as a camera phone.” Listen up, Kirk knows a thing or two about photography.
Design by Fire re-emerges, new design and all. “There will be no comments to articles from now on. […] In short, I’d rather not look at you and say, ‘You’re an idiot and I have no idea why you’d think I’d even want to discuss such an irrelevant point on my site.’ So in order to escape that predicament, I’m practicing avoidance behavior.”
Design Observer redesigns and a raft of design discussion ensues. Tan of Speak Up: “The new DO is like that bottle of wine we just finished —expensive but pedestrian, insipid but functional.” Khoi of Subtraction: “It’s not a revolutionary design, but it’s exactly what it needs to be. The new look is austere, tasteful and orderly, and I like it quite a bit even if I do wish the text was larger still.” Me? I’m still digesting it, but I’m probably somewhere in the middle: Solid work, but it leaves one expecting just a bit more. Though I’ll certainly continue to enjoy the superb content regardless. (A bit of old news, but I’ve been out of the country the past 2 weeks!)
Airbag pixel ruler. “So here it is, here you have it, a simple image that can be applied as the background to most block level elements that will help you get an idea what’s going on between browsers and platforms without the need for another application.”
A digital version of the Rolleiflex 2.8F camera immensely popular in the 50s and 60s. Same square frame, same ability to shoot from the hip, only now in digital format.
Flickr: Tilting World. I don’t know how Molly does it. My in-flight photography always turns out like Boeing 777 aircraft windowage. Hers turn out like sub-orbital masterpieces. Impressive.
iCal: FIFA World Cup timetable. (English ver)
World Cup begins today (woohoo!). Wise up and get to know your national team nicknames.
Coudal Partners’ Field-Tested Books 2006. Limited-edition poster and reviews PDF now available. Just ordered both.
Opera Mini 2.0 released. Yes, I realize this is duplicated linkage, but Opera Mini is that good. If you don’t have it on your phone yet, you’re missing out big time. I have it installed on 4 different phones (Treo 650, RAZR, Nokia 6680, Nokia 6800). Chances are it works on your phone, too. Just point your phone’s default web browser to mini.opera.com, click the download link, and the rest is taken care of.
Pixelgraphix. Nice makeover.
The Alien Duck X-ray. And (Veer) Contest.
Remember the discussion about what designers read to their children? Turns out Lane Smith has a blog. And not surprisingly, it’s replete with illustrations, sketches, and more. (Thanks Kirk.)
Buy A Baldy. Great cause to help pay for chemo medication for a close friend’s sister. Raise enough money and 8+ people shave their heads. Donate via PayPal, CafePress, or Firefox downloads.
Follow-up to HTML markup graphs: An applet to create one using your site URL (or any other site for that matter). You’ll get a kick out of watching it build on the fly.
On using HTML markup to generate graphs: “HTML consists of so-called tags, like the A tag for links, IMG tag for images and so on. Since tags are nested in other tags, they are arranged in a hierarchical manner, and that hierarchy can be represented as a graph. I’ve written a little app that visualizes such a graph, and here are some screenshots of websites that I often look at.” Beautiful.
Carlo Longino: Is .mobi kickstarting the mobile web, or holding it back? Includes a response in the comments from Neil Edwards, CEO of dotMobi. In related news, mobile companies can now register their trademarks as .mobi domains. Registration open to the general public August 28.
YouTube now supporting mobile uploads. More fodder for the masses, this time with mobile flavor.
Opera Mini 2.0 released. New features include image/mp3 downloads, skins, multi-engine searching, and more.
MadeinMtl. Plenty of visual enjoyment found within. And the “I want to…” search results (select menus at top) are pretty slick.
“Refresh those stylesheets, folks. ‘Operation: My Last Design Was Okay But Ultimately Unsatisfying So Now I�m Starting Over’ has wrapped.”
Several new job listings added. A fair number of readers have found jobs through these listings. You might be next. Grab the RSS feed if you’re looking or think you might be in the next few months.
3rd Edge. Texture, wornness, and portfolio goodness. Yum. Via Netdiver.
Mojizu, a contemporary character design community. Via Powazek.
Elitist Snob. Simple layout, good color, fun type.
Part I of Design Patterns: What do we mean by design patterns? A logical start, indeed.
“When Titanic went on to make James Cameron the king of the world, George Lucas sent this card to him, which I happened upon and will now share with you.”
Big UI changes over at Flickr. Includes smaller changes such as shifting the photo sets from left to right sidebar on the Photos page, to much bigger changes like pop-up menus for the main nav and iPhoto-like improvements to Organizr. I thought the previous nav worked just fine, but that’s just me apparently. (5)
Seth Godin on different kinds of traffic: “Should Jeff Bezos be in mourning? After all, MySpace is killing Amazon in traffic. […] The problem here is that Amazon users visit to buy stuff, and MySpace users visit to flirt. Last time I checked, flirting was a fairly unprofitable activity.”
Big congrats to Ian Lloyd and his successful publishing of Build Your Own Website The Right Way Using HTML & CSS, which “teaches web development from scratch, without assuming any previous knowledge of HTML, CSS or web development techniques.”
“So, once again, I’m going to offer up The Commencement Address Nobody Will Ever Ask Me to Give, and hope you’ll send it to a graduate: […] You probably will want to go out into the world and ‘make a difference.’ Odds are, you will end up making a sameness. College is a big bureaucracy that trains you to be a successful bureaucrat.”
Autograph Sketch Pro by Eisner+Flake could potentially make for some interesting app icons, among other things.
Bottle cap tripod. Precisely as it says.
If a couch rests in the forest, would anyone sit on it? This stunning photo seems to answer the question.
Viquae - A portfolio of Kevin Davis.
Five days, five heatmaps. “Over the next five days, starting Monday, 8th May, we’ll publish heatmaps from five of the sites we’ve tested.” Today: Amazon.co.uk.
Linotype: Fonts on football (soccer) jerseys. Yes! I love lists like this. But then you already knew I’ve got a little experience with soccer jerseys…
Best Flickr screen name I’ve seen in a while. Great pics to boot.
“200% more beta” must certainly mean hot chocolate, pink, and Jared Christensen. Nice work, Jared.
Light on Dark. “A showcase of well-designed and coded websites with light text on a dark background.”
Gorgeous aerial photography by Jason Hawkes.
Gapers Block: 05012006.jpg by Ken Ilio.
“Perspective shots of [Safeway] store aisles are distorted back out of perspective so that the shelf forms a rectangle in the picture plane instead of trapezoid. Then four passes of motion blur @ 999 to arrive at a kind of loose average or wash of the shelf’s chromatic contents.”
Exclusively for the scientist who always dreamt of blasting a porta potty into space.
Daring Fireball: Good Journalism. “Oh, zing! Not just an opening vignette, but the opening vignette with the ironic twist! See, I thought he was going to say Daines was using a Windows PC, because, you know, that sort of scene plays out millions of times a year to Windows PC users. You’d think I would have seen the ‘but he was using a Mac’ twist coming, given the various ‘Macs are not immune to viruses’ headlines that the piece ran under. But Goodin’s masterful storytelling bamboozled me.”
MomAdvice. Hard not to like the visuals on this one. I’m enchanted by the tab mouseovers.
Kelly Goto: Say Hello to Helio. “With MySpace in their back pocket, the promise for converting an initial percentage of the MySpace crowd is high. […] The trick is to convert an audience who is comfortable with the desktop model of MySpace into an integrated mobile space. […] MySpace On Helio may prove to be the next ‘killer app’ the industry has been searching for.”
AEA NYC. If you make it to only one An Event Apart, this might be the one. Stellar line-up of speakers.
The Art of No. Or perhaps, the art of asking why instead of saying no. “When you say ‘why’ instead of ‘no’, you open a design conversation that can help inform both sides.” (Love the blockquote styling btw, Derek.)
New focus indicator proposed for Firefox. Somewhat Safari-like. Love it? Hate it? Better chime in.
Comment design showcase. Only until recently while working on a forum app redesign did I understand just how much time one can spend on comment design.
Huge collection of Google Calendar tips.
BYU’s undergrad biz program ranks in top 10, not far behind Wharton, MIT, and Notre Dame. Right on. The diploma on my wall shines a bit brighter today.
Kyle rebooted. Soak in all that color, baby. Tastefully executed.
Jeff rebooted. Love the separation between article data (content, sidebar) at top and comment/recent entries at bottom. Seems to really open things up. Very uxmag inspired overall. Beauty, Jeff.
Blinksale Reloaded. Woohoo! I’ve been using this fantastic app for every one of my invoices since July 2005. I couldn’t ask for a better app, and this week it got even better. Invoice filtering / tracking / printing, tags, API, and much more. You’re missing out if you haven’t signed up already.
Drew McClellan and his 5 most important considerations when planning a site. Who is it for, what will visitors do, what do YOU want them to do, how frequently will they visit, and how will success be measured. Yup, that about sums things up. I’m off to alter my project questionnaire…
Jon Hicks: I heart people who send me art. Wow, so do I suddently. Beautiful.
An Easter rocket. One mother’s quest to satiate a child’s need for bedtime stories.
Close Enough. “An experiment about working together.”
John Gruber dives into Daring Fireball full-time. As my father would say back when he was a tail gunner in a B-52 in Vietnam, “I’ve got your six.” And so do thousands of other readers.
PureVolume widget goes live and straight to my Dashboard. Sweet one, guys.
CSS Mastery reviewed by Roger Berea, Ian Lloyd, and Alex Giron.
Yahoo’s FareChase puts all those mundane “we’re now searching for flights” splash screens to shame. Give it a whirl and you’ll see what I mean.
Photoshop brushes: Botched Ornaments 01. “….made up of a handful of decorative elements each distressed to varying degrees.”
Veerle: A brief typographic history of Chalet.
A recent eyetracking study conducted by Jakob Nielsen reveals a recurring F-shaped pattern for reading web content. I’ve seen similar results before, but this might be the most practical data Jakob’s put out there in some time.
Hiring the right design manager. Khoi Vinh offers up four solid tips for securing the right candidate.
Turns out Doug Bowman worked on Google Calendar. Now fill in the blank: “Ah ha, no wonder it ____ (looks sharp, is intuitive, etc)”.
Under the Loupe: #5 Visual Thinking.
Angela Moll’s quilted journals. No relation, but this is quite interesting. “The pages of my Secret Diaries are actual journal entries screen printed on fabric… Each fabric page is a layering of different entries, the superimposition of a day onto the next one.” (Thanks, Edith.)
Apple how-to: Developing Dashboard Widgets. Archived for that elusive 25th hour of the day, when I finally find time to knock out one of these.
Greg Storey on turning 35. “There is no secret sauce to what I have done with one exception, I never stop working on my confidence.”
Design Observer: The Propensity for Density. “Today’s decorative leanings, however, appear to lean less to the geometrical than the overtly botanical. I’ve participated in judging several juried exhibitions this year in which I’ve seen a preponderance of twisted and winding viney things, which I’ve taken to referring to as ‘thornament.’” Thornament. Love it. Though Jessica Helfand seems to be arguing that excessive thornamental design may inevitably lead to “barfing on the page”. Yikes.
The visual work of Scott Hansen. Sweet mother of texture! Some unbelievable work here. And don’t skip the tees. (Thanks, Timothy.)
Following an exhausting weekend of painting, here’s a fun little interactive app by Sherwin-Williams for comparing colors in actual room settings.
Brian Fling: Mobile device UI design. Scads of great info here. “Many point to Apple to solve the Input/Output problems of the mobile phone. Maybe they will someday, but why wait for Apple to invent new hardware when designers can begin to solve the problem on screen?”
Contextual relevance in action: Jeff Croft on the thinking behind the mobile version of lawrence.com. “Still up at 4:30am and need to know where you can get some french toast? Just hit a few buttons on your phone. mobile.lawrence.com tells you what’s open, and when it closes. Perfect.”
Famous rapper or dead author? I didn’t fare too well with this little quiz…
For anyone who’s ever asked, How much do I charge? - Raise your rates. “This leaves you with 24 ‘billable’ hours in a week, or just over 1150 billable hours in a year. So what do you need to bill per hour to pull your $XXX? Well, dividing your $XXX by 1150 tells you $XXX an hour is your billable rate. It’s that simple.”
Eddidit. The portfolio of Edmund Hall. Love the textures. (Though those big fat images on the home page need to be clickable.)
Flickr: The pattern of the individual.
Why .mobi is a good thing. Or at least Russell’s opinion of it. “.mobi is a great way to restart the mobile web by giving it a standard naming and navigation scheme for that first step.” I still haven’t settled on a final opinion myself.
Gotomobile: Handheld style sheets and getting to Zen. “Russell Beattie wants a mobile CSS Zen Garden. Dave Shea has a lot on his plate, but I think we should support the effort and help to make it happen!” This would make for a rather interesting experiment, indeed.
A small collection of newspaper mastheads. I find the detailing of this one to be quite exquisite.
You certainly have missed out big time if you have yet to see the opening titles for “Thank You For Smoking”. Perhaps just as stunning is Stephen Coles naming 23 of the 28 typefaces used in the titles.
Campaign Monitor’s “A Guide to CSS Support in Email”. Wow, this is incredibly comprehensive. Covers popular PC, Mac, web-based email clients.
“Go into Microsoft Frontpage and select Build > Community > Non-Designed > Ugly > Cash Cow and just wait for someone to offer hundreds-of-millions to buy you out.” Greg Storey on the “non-design” discussion raging of late. (I’m still laughing as I post this in MT.)
Armin on why designers must write: “Work those e-mails as if they were the last e-mail you would send for any given project. Work on your exclamation points, avoid ‘I’ and say ‘we’, use emoticons just in desperate cases and finish with a nice closing, whether it’s ‘cheers’, ‘later’, ‘tata’ or ‘best’. There is nothing worse than an e-mail without cordial closure.”
ideasonideas on why designers must write. “I find that as my ability to shape both written and oral communication improves, I am better equipped to direct the work of others. I can uncover a verbal method of responding to what I feel emotionally when I view a project.”
PayPal goes mobile (login required). Send money by phone, or even better, buy stuff with your phone using Text to Buy.
Chicago is up next in the An Event Apart tour.
Got an insatiable desire to round off just about any corner in sight? Now you can with Nifty Corners Cube.
Is ugly design getting too much credit?
Basecamp API announced. Even for free accounts, no less.
Chax adds a variety of improvements to iChat, but the tabbed chats feature seems most promising.
Zeldman: Unmixed. What he learned at Mix 06 by not being there. Not just because all the cool kids are linking to it, but because it’s really worth a read.
Shaun Inman’s wildly in-depth account of SXSW. Biz cards, mini Wiki, and more.
The surprising truth about ugly websites.
Red bearded madness. Rob Weychert’s SXSW photoset.
Design Observer: “Warning: May Contain Non-Design Content”. “Over the years, I came to realize that my best work has always involved subjects that interested me, or — even better — subjects about which I’ve become interested, and even passionate about, through the very process of doing design work. I believe I’m still passionate about graphic design. But the great thing about graphic design is that it is almost always about something else.” Coudal, Gruber and I had a brief chat in the hall at SXSW on this very topic. Something along the lines of it being healthy for creatives to spend just as much time as they do in design in things other than design. Part of the reason I’ve started drumming again.
Slide deck and comps from the Plazes redesign at SXSW (“Holistic Web Design” panel).
“How an A List Apart Illustration Comes Together” written by none other than Kevin Cornell.
Someone handed me some Sweetriot Cacao Peaces while in the green room at SXSW, and they’re suprisingly tasty. Cacao bean pieces covered in chocolate. I just might order a case or two…
Academics of Worn. Greg Storey’s original article, republished for UX Magazine. If you missed it back in 2004, now’s your chance to read up.
Big.com. Yup, it’s big alright. Bold Predictions 2006 Edition - 0. That Fisher Price Look - 1.
Only one day left to bid for your chance to Skype-a-Celeb.
Seen the latest Veer catalog? Sure you have. But did you catch the associated mini-site and contest? (As a side note, Jon Parker tells me their team spent two weeks on just the first 9 print pages — amazing.)
From online game start-up to Yahoo buyout: A brief history of Flickr. In contrast to my “first to profitability” rant, here’s a story of two people doing something they love and eventually turning it into an incredibly successful business. However, this is by far the exception to the rule.
Pure gorgeousness. Best words I can come up with to describe Veerle’s redesigned blog.
Speaking at SXSW? Dave Shea offers 11 tips for better speaking. And don’t forget “How to kick butt on a panel”.
Lifehacker: A guide to email triage. How timely, Keith. Been spending way too much time in a swamped inbox lately.
Apparently I’ve been WordPress themed. Just as heads up (since I’ve already received an email), I don’t offer support for this template as I didn’t design it.
Mark Bixby does Airbag: “After a few more rounds with ‘he who shall not be named’, we arrived at the following design.”
Get a picture taken of yourself and a copy of CSS Mastery. Win an iPod.
Shaun Inman: The making of Mint (workshop slides).
Greg Storey: The making of Ma.gnolia (design process).
Thong. “Thorry — I type with a lithp thometimeth.”
Maybe Wufoo can help me build a contact form once and for all.
Flickr: Early bird. Shots like this don’t come from a can.
What if Microsoft redesigned the iPod packaging? Marvel at the branding / packaging / identity / whatever lessons this parody conveys. Absolutely brilliant.
Unpacking the set. It’s been 7 years since I sold the last set just before getting married. Hopefully it won’t take another 7 to learn how to play again.
In addition to foliage, I’m certain my clients need Plainpicture pattern mixups right about now too.
More foliage, this time in font format: Blossomy by T.26. Via Hicks.
Jason Gaylor: Gorgeous hi-res foliage brushes for Photoshop. (Fingers crossed) my clients suddenly need foliage imagery for their projects.
VW: Un-pimp my ride. (Thanks, db.)
AOL and Yahoo to charge for email? Both are planning to give preferential treatment to companies who pay anywhere from $0.0025 to $0.01 per email for “guaranteed delivery”. I’m having a hard time seeing any positives to this approach. Via Mark Wyner.
Refreshing Cities is “a community of designers and developers working to refresh the creative, technical, and professional culture of New Media endeavors in their areas. Promoting design, technology, usability, and standards.” Good directory site for a movement that’s gained a lot of traction the past year or so. Who’s gonna start SLC?
Find your contacts on Flickr with Stalkr. Found via SGC v5.
MySpace goes mobile. Via Russ.
Flickr: Moon for the misbegotten.
Flickr: Say no to drugs, don’t eat farmed fish.
This morning’s Photoshop Tennis / Dodgeball session at Coudal’s Campfire.
Live by the mockup, die by the mockup. Some very valid points here. Via Keith.
Seth Godin: How can I get more traffic? “People never say, ‘how can I earn more traffic?’ or ‘How can I rethink the core of what I’m offering so that it organically attracts people who want to see it?’”
New York Guitar Festival. Love the logo. So simple. So spot-on.
Measure Map (and Jeff Veen) sold to Google. Shoot, I didn’t think this was even available to the public yet…
Joyeur.com. Joyent’s blog redesigned and realigned. Bryan Bell plays off of my earlier design and introduces a darker, richer theme. I presume the content will be less corporate this time around. (Nachos, anyone?)
In case you missed it, the newly unveiled Engadget Mobile is giving away cellphones daily for the next 30 days. This week? A Treo 650 or 700w.
Flickr: Brillant Crank. I mentioned Greg Storey’s foray into Flickrland earlier when I threw a bunch of links into my del.icio.us account, but it’s worth mentioning a second time here. Fantastic work, Greg.
Step into my office. Well, not my office, but wish it was. Though that’ll be changing soon. Stay tuned…
From the makers of Engadget: Engadget Mobile, “a new spin-off site with obsessive daily coverage of the world of cellphones and wireless.”
Getty Images acquires iStockphoto. Crikey!! $50 million? Way to go, Bruce.
Got spare time tomorrow (Friday, Feb 10)? Drop me a line if you’ve got CSS skills, decent design skills, time during the morning/day tomorrow, and a PayPal account. 2-4 hours of coding/design work. Found someone. Thanks.
The mobile designer. Yet another excellent write-up from Kelly, covering screen attributes, hard/soft keys, text entry, and testing.
More refurbished Apple gear posted today, much of which are iMac G5s ($849 and up). Visit the Apple Store and click the red “Save” tag in the lower right.
World’s smallest pong game. No really, it’s actually playable.
Clearbits. GIF icons with what I call “reverse transparency” to allow the color of the icon to be set by CSS. It’s an easy trick, perfect for apps that are customized by the user, e.g. forum software. Link pulled. Sorry, I agree with Ethan on this one.
The case of the plane and the conveyor belt. Kottke muses an answer from Cecil Adams while readers give their own 2c. Apparently this physics question has been around for some time but it’s the first I’ve heard of it.
Linotype A-Z typeface catalog. At $16, this is an absolute steal. (Though shipping to the U.S. will run you another $25). 584 pages laden with typeface samples.
Dude, this is so reminiscent of Bubble 1.0. Wasn’t there a thing that did the same 5 years or so ago? Speak up if you remember (comments on). (5)
Variable fixed width layout. Now isn’t that title ironic. Richard catalogs this recent trend as seen in the wild.
iTunes billion songs countdown. LOVE the scroller at right. Brilliant. Oh hey, I just saw Herbie Hancock scroll by. And there went Johnny Cash.
Navigation magnification using CSS. Kinda like the Mac OS X dock. Highly experimental. Highly questionable where it would be useful. But hey, that’s what makes sandbox stuff like this fun.
HyperStrike. Sharp little site with a minimal dose of Flash and unique column arrangement on the secondary pages. Via CSS Import.
Wired: Make your own ringtones. Just in case you’ve been dying to get those New Kids on the Block tracks on your mobile but couldn’t find them anywhere.
iStockphoto articles: “Know Your Type” by Red Labor. Great stack of tips here.