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Veer: Visual Elements for Creatives.Stock photography, type, and killer tees. Genuinely recommended by Authentic Boredom.
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 Williamson, who has been “developing and deploying content and applications almost exclusively for use on mobile devices” over the last 10 months.
Google Maps for mobile (version 2.0) now provides location approximation for many of the smartphones without GPS using cell tower triangulation. Here in the U.S., the same technology has been in use for a few years now to locate 911 calls from mobile phones, part of the Wireless E911 mandate. (As an aside, both location awareness and Wireless E911 are covered in the book.)
“Choose a typeface or group of typefaces that will honor and elucidate the character of the text. This is the beginning, middle, and end of the practice of typography…. Letterforms have tone, timbre, character, just as words and sentences do. The moment a text and a typeface are chosen, two streams of thought, two rhythmical systems, two sets of habits, or if you like, two personalities, intersect. They need not live together contentedly forever, but they must not as a rule collide.” –Robert Bringhurst, The Elements of Typographic Style, what many (myself included) regard as the typographic Bible.
As described by Type for you, “From France, Thomas Huot-Marchand gives us Minuscule, a typeface for extremely small sizes, which could be used under the commonly acknoweledged threshold of legibility (around 7 points).”
One incredibly replete (and inspiring) business card collection. Via Airbag.
Email Standards Project. A noble effort to create some consistency among mail clients for standards and accessibility (HTML emails).
60 Unite for Children: “60 artists and designers from the whole wide world are gathered together through a book dedicated to UNICEF’s actions. Featuring the work of Joshua Davis, Renascent, The Ronin, Jason Siu, Niko Stumpo…” Site | Shop
Guitar Hero? Accordion Hero!
2008 is just around the corner, thus a couple calendar links: Pentagram 2008 Typography Calendar designed with 12 typefaces by Matthew Carter, and an infodesign challenge whose entries attempt to use “better design to fit a year calendar comfortably within a business card.”
ALA Issue 249. Proper CSS text sizing and a lucid definition of “web design.” Both articles worth your time.
Color Decoder, a color picker that speaks English.
“Advanced Search”: Is The Name A Problem? This line of thinking is about 7 years overdue. “I want visitors to understand that Advanced Search actually is Easy Search or Better Search. I reckon the best way to do this is to encourage larger companies, like Google to change their approach and actually change the name on ‘Advanced Search’ to something more welcoming, and try to make it some kind of standard.”
Two fab portfolios to kick off a new week: Alberto Cerriteño and Drew Wilson.
RFP, R.I.P. “The worst kind of business, in my humble opinion, is that which beckons in the form of an RFP…. Talk to most experienced design managers and they’ll feel similarly: RFPs simply don’t work when it comes to purchasing design services.”
Keep browser lock-out a thing of the past. Amen. “Locking out users, be it because they do not use a particular device or application to browse the Web or because they happen to have a disability, completely misses the point of the Web. The Web is meant to be universal, device-independent, inclusive, and accessible. What, exactly, is the point of deliberately preventing people from accessing your site with the user agent of their choice?”
The Book Design Review’s Favorite Book Covers of 2007.
Crayon Physics Deluxe. This looks like a blast that not only the kids would enjoy but me too. When’s the “Coming to Mac” version available?
“Croatian creative agency Bruketa & Zinić have designed an annual report for food company Podravka that has to be baked in an oven before it can be read.”
You growl, it blends. Gives new meaning to the term “interactive.”
Mike Davidson on the new msnbc.com.
Wii finder widget. Yeah, so I’m in the market for a Wii this Christmas. Apparently so is the rest of the world. (If you know where I can get one without paying double the retail price, I’d love to hear from you.)
A brief interview with Olivo Barbieri, whose unique photographs appear to be miniature sets rather than actual locations.
iPhone debuts in Germany and the UK today, while the XO Laptop (formerly the “$100 laptop”) debuts on Monday (Nov 12).
Plenty of inspiring work to thumb through at Studio K and Faust.
The Great Firewall of China. An understanding of how it works, its flaws, and ways to get around it.
CSS diagnostics with XRAY and MRI bookmarklets.
John Gruber, in his article Shipping Means Prioritizing, regarding why Mac OS X Leopard did (or didn’t) include certain features — and a good reminder for software dev in general: “Shipping is hard. The only way to ship software is to prioritize, and prioritizing means dropping things that are less essential in exchange for things that are more essential.”
Flickr: speed racer.
Sweet YouTube Halloween costume.
“Make My Logo Bigger” creme. Really works.
Wired: Tweak Mac OS X Leopard’s User Interface. Rid the 3D reflective dock, replace glowing dots on dock with triangles, rounded screen corners, and change the startup bg image.
Despite the fact I’m a little late discovering this, here’s a wise use for mobile content: Calfire.mobi, mobile-friendly links, news, and numbers for the recent California fires.
AppleSac, a MacBook/Pro sleeve made of burlap and 100% polyester sherpa fleece.
If you’re into using OmniGraffle for wireframing, consider Michael Angeles’ OG Wireframe Palette.
Web Directions North returns in January 2008 for “enlightenment, inspiration, networking, and of course snowboarding.”
Tonight (Oct. 25) I’ll be speaking at Southern Utah University in Cedar City, UT. If you’re in the Bay Area, tonight is also Typophile Film Fest 4 in San Francisco.
cause/affect, a design competition for do-gooders, is a biennial event which celebrates the work of designers and organizations who set out to positively impact our society. The deadline for entries is coming up soon (Nov 9th).
CIA “Terrorist Buster” logo. You’ve got to be kidding.
Looking for a position in Hawaii? eHana is seeking a Web Application Engineer.
Stunning design with textures by Maciej Hajnrich.
Greg Storey: “Each month I receive questions relating to the field of website makery and/vs. post-secondary education. Instead of replying privately, as I have for years, these inquiries will be posted publicly. Here is the first: What happens when you feel like you’re stuck at a place who refuses to go beyond what was done five years ago. However, you’re still in college, about to graduate, trying to find some experience, but worry that you won’t get work that will get you out of this place.”
Thumb drives and external hard drives? Bah. Just dock the hard drive.
If the hands are all you need, why show the entire clock?
Veer’s Type City Prints are gorgeous. A collection of 10 prints with letterpressed illustrations designed entirely with type.
Stunning color paper sculptures by Jen Stark. (thanks Kaleb)
Gmail Mobile updated. 30% faster, contacts viewer, and a few other upgrades.
Socialight, described by CoolHunting as “a combination of Dodgeball and Google 411.” A bit like Citysearch I suppose, but on your mobile and a lot more social. Video showing how it works. (Utilizes location awareness, which is covered in the book.)
AdMob Mobile Metrics. “This initial report covers the month of September and includes manufacturer, device and country-specific data on AdMob’s top four markets by impressions served: US, UK, India and South Africa.”
Way behind on linkage, catching up. ALA Web Design Survey 2007. Nearly 30,000 responses and no shortage of analytical breakdowns in the compilation process.
Khoi Vinh: “Apple’s designers have borrowed the boldly elegant ‘X’ from the packaging of its predecessor, Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, and placed it against the goofy, sci-fi-fueled, airbrushed nebula of stars from Leopard’s Time Machine feature. Why they did this, it’s not clear, because it looks horrific. Apparently, Leopard’s most lucrative potential customer base may all be devotees of the plasticky, bombastic and yet still naIve era of science fiction we call the Nineteen Eighties.”
Podcast: An interview with Jared Spool and Cameron Moll. Recorded in Brighton (England) following d.Construct, in preparation for my upcoming UI12 workshop.
Herencia, an elegant handwriting typeface by Diego Giaccone.
Speaking of email, Premailer is a preflight tool for analyzing HTML/CSS emails, converting CSS to inline styles, and more. Via Dan Cederholm.
Flickr: Snail display team!
100 resources to attract, retain and utilize rock star programmers.
Seems all the major U.S. news periodicals and media are overhauling themselves online these days, and Newsweek is no exception. Via Coudal.
Lighten up your Monday a little: Creep pendant light shade and Memento by Hiroshi Yoneya and Yumi Masuko.
Quiksilver “Ignighted” Fedora. A beaut indeed.
A brief history of G.I. JOE, including an accounting of the sad shift from Real American Hero to Global Integrated Joint Operating Entity.
“For some problems, the distance to a solution must be measured in days, not hours. It might take only a few hours of work, but if you try to work those hours all in a row, you won’t solve the problem.” –Jesse James Garrett (thanks Ted)
Sundance Film Festival. Fantastic site design, standards-based to boot. (This takes place just 30 mins from home!)
VanityRing. “It shows the number of Google hits you get, when you search for the name of the person who wears it.”
Fight For Kisses! Nice.
jQuery crash course. (thanks John)
MSNBC.com acquires Newsvine. Holy Hanna. Congrats, Mike!
New Backpack feature: Add Anywhere. Awesome. I’ve been really pleased with the revised Backpack, except for three fairly major UI flaws. This fixes one of those three. Great work, guys.
I’m suddenly inclined to become an owner of Mondaine wristwatches: “Don’t Rush” (hourhand only) and “Homage to Johannes Itten” (color wheel extraordinaire).
Just ordered Humble Masterpieces by Paola Antonelli and Made to Stick by Chip Heath and Dan Heath — two finds from the aforementioned Fast Company issue.
Fast Company’s October 2007 issue, “Masters of Design,” is definitely worth securing a print copy. Yves Behar ($100 laptop, Jawbone headset), Philippe Starck, Paola Antonelli (MoMA), and more. You can read most of the articles online, though the online version doesn’t do the visuals justice.
Visualizing Fitts’ Law. Great in-depth article by Kevin Hale.
iPod Zeppelin speakers by Bowers & Wilkins.
Scrap text resize widgets and teach people how to resize text. “Instead of cluttering client sites with this kind of widget I’ve started adding a set of pages with information that helps the user resize text in their browser…. The reason I’m providing this info instead of text resizing widgets is that I hope it will teach people how to use their browser, thus enabling them to resize text on every site they come across while using the Web.”
Michael Bierut: “… I carried my work in a black portfolio, 34 by 42 inches, acetate sleeves, pockets in the front and back. That portfolio sat in a box, largely untouched, with some other junk in the closets and basements of the three places I’ve lived in the last 27 years, sort of like a slowly decaying design time capsule. A few weeks ago, I opened it up for the first time in a long time.”
Chalkwork iPhone replacement icon set. Rock. On.
Air. Taken by a colleague just outside our offices (@ Dew Tour in Salt Lake City).
creativepro.com: Mobile Web Design excerpt, “Four Paths to Mobile Web Design and Deployment.” Download a PDF segment from the book not available elsewhere.
Incredible. These ornately decorated cupcakes are absolutely stunning.
“A group of kids from one of our local elementary schools has formed a ‘mini-laptop club.’ They don’t use electronic machines. Instead, these first-, second- and third-graders draw their own laptops on construction paper and pretend to e-mail each other. They dedicate a surprising amount of time to this activity. I once had a chance to examine one of their ‘keyboards.’”
Webstock. Back for ‘08, and a wicked new design to boot.
Mobile phone operators O2 and T-Mobile chosen for iPhone debut in UK and Germany, respectively. Both will offer iPhones starting November 9. Discussion on the intertubes thus far indicates Apple may not receive as warm a welcome overseas.
Ahoy ye lubbers!
New jQuery UI. More details in this blog post.
“The Tree of Meaning is a collection of thirteen lectures given by internationally-renowned poet, linguist and typographer Robert Bringhurst [author of The Elements of Typographic Style].”
Urban Dirty, free texture stock photography for your artwork, designs and desktops.
Cabedge. I’d seen this firm on several galleries lately but didn’t take time to explore. I’m glad I now did — lots of clean, solid portfolio work.
Icon Magazine: 50 Manifestos. “For our special 50th issue we asked 50 of the most influential architects, designers and thinkers to tell us what they believe in.” (thanks Ted)
“Photos of a book i designed, titled ‘the loser’* by Thomas Bernhard, as a part of the ‘book design & typography’ class in my college (taught by Ankati). *the book’s title in hebrew is ‘Hatovea’ - ‘the drowner’.”
Jesse BC offers a behind-the-scenes peek at the design iterations for mobilewebbook.com.
Threadless Chicago store now open.
Cursor Kite. Via swissmiss.
“Velvet is a spiral shaped sofa upholstered in a sensual and luxurious smooth velvet. Its wooden frame is covered with a thin layer of polyurethane.”
Flickr: Tribute In Light.
Flickr: another season 2.
Pics of an original 1984 Macintosh User Manual.
Why we need standards support in HTML email. “This much is clear - arguing about HTML vs plain text or complaining about standards support in email isn’t going to get us anywhere. It’s time to get off our butts and actually help email client manufacturers to introduce better standards support.”
Tomorrow’s the last day to enter Smashing Magazine’s 1st Anniversary Giveaway. 5 copies of Mobile Web Design included in the prizes.
Huzzah! iUnlock, the first free, open source iPhone SIM unlock software. More from Dave Shea.
The Fallen Will Forever Stand. A moment of remembrance.
“On Saturday, September 29 at 11:00, Tobias [Frere-Jones] will be leading a typographic walking tour for AIGA/NY, which promises two and a half hours of the city’s most unexamined — and imperiled — typographic treasures.” Wow. How I’d die to be in NYC that day. (As an aside, Tobias designed the Gotham typeface used in Mobile Web Design and the accompanying site.)
Still can’t choke down even $399 for an iPhone? Try a refurbished one at $349. Update: 4GB refurb model for $299 (thanks Ryan).
Khoi Vinh: “…there is an inherent learning plateau in Apple’s [iPhone] software keyboard, and that plateau falls short of full accuracy. That is, the vast majority of people will never be able to type comfortably on the keyboard with anything close to one hundred percent fidelity. You can get good enough to type what you need, but no better. Am I completely wrong?” Nope.
Speaking of not sleeping, I’m headed to Brighton (England) today to speak at d.Construct. Come say hi if you’re in attendance!
Smartphone & Pocket PC Magazine reviews Mobile Web Design. The opening line couldn’t be more true at the moment: “Cameron Moll, who never sleeps it seems (writes books, gives lectures, runs several websites including a very popular one for web jobs while holding down an awesome day job…”
jQuery plugin: Accessible news slider. Reminiscent of the iTunes store home page.
Netvibes, my saving grace for keeping life organized, has gone mobile.
Fun with the iPhone accelerometer, including source code.
Checkout, point of sale app for Mac.
Luke Wroblewski: Primary & Secondary Actions in Web Forms. Inevitably part of Luke’s upcoming book, Web Form Design Best Practices.
Multi-Safari. Stumbled on this earlier this week needing to test for previous versions of Safari.
This Way to the Web, Print Designers! (Don’t skip the comments.)
“That’s not a bug, that’s a feature.”
Future of Web Apps: Road Trip. Great idea, great site design. Nice job, guys.
Carhartt Streetwear. Lots of things to like here — grid usage, photography, typography.
If it’s as good as LEGO Star Wars, we’ll be pre-ordering this one for the boys: LEGO Indiana Jones. Available Summer 2008.
Tutorial Blog: Cool Workspaces.
iPhone copy and paste proof of concept.
I’m honored to fill in as August’s Guest Editor at one of my all-time fave sites, Coudal.com. Thanks, chaps, for bringing me aboard.
Bulletproof Web Design, Second Edition!
AdMob now serving 1 billion ads per month. Who says there’s no money in mobile website advertising?
More iPhone wallpapers, this round via Garrett Murray.
Khoi Vinh discusses Blueprint, a foundation for developing typographic grids using CSS, with its creator, Norwegian tech student Olav Frihagen Bjørkøy.
Incase’s 15” Canvas Sleeve.
In Do Transcoders and the iPhone Make the Mobile Web Obsolete?, Dennis Bourique makes a rationale case for mobile-optimized content, despite the presence of “full-web” browsers such as MobileSafari and Opera Mini 4.x — a view I obviously agree with. “It’s true that full-web browsers are changing the mobile web landscape but that doesn’t mean web designers don’t need to adapt content for them…. [G]etting to the information on a full-web site, even using a great browser like Opera Mini is often a tortured and painful process.”
Currently enjoying A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson (abridged, iTunes required). This is a fascinating book to say the least, and the author narrates it extremely well to boot.
Sparky, a Sparkline-like Firefox extension for Alexa stats.
“On this mini-site are examples of great 1960s design I found when helping my mother-in-law move a few years ago. The spreads and detail shots are from ‘The Improvement Era’, the precursor to ‘The Ensign’, a publication of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.”
Thinking and Leaping, the story I often recount in conference presentations of Abraham Wald’s ingenuity in data analysis during WWII (fix vs. prevent).
The new Apple Keyboard. Mr. Ives continues to exhibit unsurpassed industrial design excellence.
BusinessWeek: Jeffrey Zeldman: King of Web Standards. It’s about time mainstream media profiles the impact he’s had.
“The Font Clock is a 21st century take on the British 24 hour clock design icon. Twelve different fonts are printed within the mechanism of the clock providing a random, mixed display of graphic language within a single time piece.” Via Uncrate.
“A project about faking weightlessness.”
A few useful web dev bookmarklets/extensions: XRAY (analyze any element), Syncotype (overlay a baseline grid on any page), and Dust-Me Selectors (finds unused selectors).
Future of Mobile 07, London, November 14.
Better Writing Through Design by Bronwyn Jones, who just might know a thing or two about writing.
Web Designer Wall. No holding back on the ornateness here, no sir.
The 5, 10, 20 year plan. “At the end of every interview someone inevitably asks ‘Where do you see 37signals in five years? Ten years? 20 years?’ My answer remains the same: ‘Still in business. Beyond that I have no idea.’”
Remember that job opening in Iraq? Turns out it pays well over $200K per year. Not surprising, I suppose, given the perilous work environment.
“We are a group of designers who felt a need to give back to our community…. So we started OrangeTreeProject, a line of original products that have both contemporary appeal and an inspiring message. These unique products are for sale on this site, as well as in select retail stores.”
“The White Room is a constantly changing meeting place providing a wide spectrum of possibilities…. The room and its interior design have an all-white theme and the four Bang&Olufsen 42” flat screens mounted on the walls can be used for all kinds of visual shows such as video art and presentations.”
Zeldman: What Apple copied from Microsoft. I repeat my comment: Not only is this an insightful article, but it’s written so beautifully it’s blissfully painful. Thank you, Jeffrey, for reminding us how to write.
Google iPhone-optimized search. This is probably used in conjunction with device detection, but this seems totally unnecessary.
Web apps are feeling more OS-like at an increasing rate these days, if evidenced by at least these two simple examples: Moving items to different pages in Backpack and Drag ‘n drop route customization in Google Maps.
Remember that discussion about BumpTop? Richard Ziade tells us Doug McCune is building a working version in Flex.
Thoughts about what an iPhone Nano might be like.
YSlow for Firebug “analyzes web pages and tells you why they’re slow based on the rules for high performance web sites.”
AT&T: 146,000 iPhones activated on June 29 and 30, far less than what most were expecting. However, this number reflects units activated, not sold. I imagine the number of units sold by Apple was much higher, especially given the rampant activation problems with AT&T the first couple of days after launch.
Google Print Ads. Now available from within your AdWords account.
Carson Workshops: 2-day in-depth XHTML/CSS with Eric Meyer, London. You’ll walk away knowing all things cascading and extensible.
APIs and Mashups For The Rest Of Us. A good primer on APIs for those of us considered noobs on the subject.
Behind the scenes: Sprint’s TV ad, “Dream”. Done with entirely with a few flashlights and stop-motion photography.
The Open Source Web Design Toolbox. 100 tools, resources, and template sources.
iUI, a JavaScript and CSS bundle by Joe Hewitt aimed at making iPhone web app development easier. “As much as possible, iUI maps common HTML idioms to iPhone interface conventions. For example, the <ul> and <li> tags are used to create hierarchical side-scrolling navigation. Ordinary <a> links load with a sliding animation while keeping you on the original page instead of loading an entirely new one. A simple set of CSS classes can be used to designate things like modal dialogs, preference panels, and on/off switches.”
I wish I could say these’ll be the last for a while, but I doubt it — more iPhone linkage: Apple’s Optimizing Web Apps and Content for iPhone, David Pogue’s iPhone Period-Typing Shortcut, and Mike Davidson’s A Week With the iPhone.
Removing your iPhone SIM card. Let the unlocking begin!
Zeldman: “We are still crunching numbers on the Web Design Survey… [but] preliminary data supports what anecdotal experience led us to expect: almost no one who makes websites works in their company or organization’s web division. That’s because almost no company or organization has a web division.” I’m pleased to report our division is pretty webby, even despite being a large religious organization.
Hadn’t even noticed they bothered to indent the home button on the iPhone packaging. Nice touch.
Business card inspiration: one, two. (thanks Shane, Randy)
Burma Riders. Beautiful site, rich content (I think, as I can understand just a few words).
Roger Johansson: “Recently a movie clip that was published on the official London 2012 Olympic Games website (Warning! Contains colour combinations that are painful to look at. Yes, really.) contained an animation that caused seizures in at least thirty people. And those are just the people who contacted the charity Epilepsy Action about it.”
Kottke: Quick iPhone review.
Daring Fireball: iPhone First Impressions.
Hiring: Front End Web Developer @ New York Times.
“We chose just a handful of pieces of art from some of greatest masters of painting to show a little of how they were inspired by color… or perhaps, how they inspire us with color.”
MobHappy: Steve Jobs: Doesn’t Get Mobile, Completely Full Of It, Or Both?
Print ad: Raid, “The Flight of the Bumblebee”. Great concept, great execution.
As expected, plenty of people are already in line for an iPhone and numerous offers on Craigslist for line proxies.
iPhone reviews: The first batch. NY Times, Newsweek, WSJ, and USA Today.
iPhoneDevCamp, July 6-8, San Francisco. “By the completion of the weekend event, a number of iPhone-ready web applications and web sites will be launched to the public.” I still have plenty of reservations surrounding the idea that we all run off and create iPhone-optimized sites (remember the days of Treo-optimized sites?), but I’m pleased to see this is focused mostly on web apps.
An Event Apart iMix. Wax nostalgic with the music that played between sessions.
The design could use some fine tuning, but Cashboard looks like it could be a solid app for estimates, invoices, and time tracking. Detailed review here.
Twisted Trailers: MS Surface. “Instead of using one of today’s more popular compact devices to get directions to where you’re going, why not use a device the size of a small car?”
So I missed it the first time around, but “Web 2.0 Internet standards”? What’s that all about, Apple?
iPhoney, an iPhone web simulator. Via Airbag.
How to recruit a designer. Nice work, Washtenaw Community College. In today’s tech job market with record unemployment lows, this is how it needs to be done, folks.
Biola University Undergrad. Love this design, and I’d imagine this targets the target audience rather well.
Need to open Publisher or Excel docs (and other formats) but don’t have MS Office installed? PDF Online works quite nicely, if only for viewing purposes.
New TED talk videos are now available. Notable: Blaise Aguera y Arcas’ Photosynth demo.
“Yeah, but you still bought it. And so do I. Cottonelle is good stuff, man. Even if they do have stupid infographics.” -Jeff Croft’s reply to Mike Davidson’s post on the subject of useless bathroom infographics.
A few Monday mobile links (not that Mobile Monday): Ask.com Mobile, Bank of America Mobile, Creating Mobile Sites in Drupal, and Monetizing Your Mobile Site With Ads.
John Gruber: “Telling developers that web apps are iPhone apps just doesn’t fly. Think about it this way: If web apps — which are only accessible over a network; which don’t get app icons in the iPhone home screen; which don’t have any local data storage — are such a great way to write software for iPhone, then why isn’t Apple using this technique for any of their own iPhone apps? … If web apps running in Safari are a great way to write iPhone apps, why aren’t web apps running in Safari a great way to write Mac apps?”
“The printed and scored leather ‘jewels’ tell an interesting story, they’re based on actual stolen jewels, in fact pixilated images of the stolen gems from the web, and printed on scored leather so that each facet/pixel can be bent out.”
The Mobile Codeatron. Generate your own AU, Docomo and Vodafone compatible QR codes for use with mobile devices.
“Poppies” is currently Cyberoptix’s best-selling tie, and it’s no surprise why. Lovely.
Safari on Windows? Meh. But how about the new apple.com, laying to rest a design that held true for +6(?) years?
Khoi Vinh’s thoughts in response to the Ideasonideas’ interview with Erik Spiekermann. “Over the past few decades, it seems as if design has become increasingly more labor intensive — or time intensive, anyway. Young designers are typically working fifty hours a week or more in all corners of the globe. Is that what it takes to achieve success in this field?”
Puma Urban Mobility Bag. One for the wife, please. Via Notcot.
Zeldman: E-mail is not a platform for design. I have to admit I side with Zeldman on this one. I’ve been a plain-text email sender for as long as I can remember, and I choose plain-text for receiving emails whenever given the chance.
Amigo Mark Wyner is seeking a standards-focused web designer in the Portland, OR area. Great guy to work for, tons of great work on the table, as well. While we’re at it, if you’ve got PHP chops, I’d like to hear from you.
Zeldman: Daily Reports from 1997 on. “You don’t need the WayBack machine to go way back in zeldman.com history.” I revel in, and envy, Jeffrey’s collection of archived writings. In their original visual format, no less.
HTML entity Dashboard widget. (thanks, Sam)
Ideasonideas interviews design virtuoso Erik Spiekermann. “I have a bad history of neglecting my private life…. Today I actually cancelled a trip to Korea to see the complete senior management of a big client there because my son and my grandson will be visiting me during that week. This is the first time I’ve ever done that, and we may lose the contract.”
Viget Labs. Fun site, lots of moving parts.
List of logo typefaces from leading companies around the world. (thanks, Spencer)
Speaking of pillows, how about a bedtime story blanket?
“This little note is to thank you for your outstanding help through your Authentic Jobs venture. Thanks to your site, we were able to not only hire one freelancer but two and mark four down for potential work down the line, all in a single week.” -FJ de Kermadec, Founder, Webstellung.
This may have been announced elsewhere, but it’s news to me: iPhone available June 29, as seen in these ads.
Apple refurbished items are now under the umbrella of the Apple Outlet Special Deals. Faruk, Jina, I presume you had a hand in this redesign? (And I can finally link to outlet products without the session expiring?!)
Lightweight mobile device detection using PHP. Another complement to the recent Newsvine/WURFL discussion.
beta.cnn.com. They’ve really cleaned things up with this version. (thanks, Spencer)
National Geographic is seeking a Web Designer, Flash Designer/Developer, and XHTML/CSS Designer. Go forth and apply.
A couple of clever metaphorical products: Quote/Unquote Bookends, Talk Bubble Clips.
Google Street View. Map a location, view panorama photos from that location. (thanks, Rob)
Jeff Croft’s chapter from Web Standards Creativity, Creative Use of PNG Transparency in Web Design (republished at Digital Web Magazine), looks like a great primer on PNG usage.
Sony’s flexible, incredibly thin, full-color OLED screen.
Thanks to Laura Zucchetti following my presentation at @media 2007, I’ve been turned on to “semiotics”, the study of signs and symbols.
Seventy-nine Short Essays on Design by Michael Bierut, who writes, “I discovered that putting the words on paper changes the claim those words make on your attention. Is it better? Is it worse? The answer may be different for every reader. As a designer, I am very grateful I’ve been given the opportunity to let you see for yourself.”
31 ways to validate, test, or optimize your website.
“I just wanted to write a short note thanking you for creating authenticjobs.com. Tomorrow I start a new position that I found on your site. It’s very nice to have a resource for jobs where standards fluent designers and developers know that employers are thinking ahead.” –Tim McElwee, who earlier this week went on the clock at Wunderman in NYC. Congrats, Tim (and Wunderman!).
Jesse Bennett-Chamberlain splashes 31Three with new paint, and it’s gorgeous. I have nothing else to say, Jesse. Speechless.
“Solace in Sore Hands” (iTunes) is the latest album from Swedish Amandine, and so far I’m really enjoying it. The wispy vocals, glockenspiel and banjo combination are reminiscent of Sufjan Stevens, and all told it makes for good listening.
Roger Berea: Creating bulletproof graphic link buttons with CSS. The code isn’t perfect, but until CSS3 arrives…
Fanimation Enigma ceiling fan. Unique single-blade design, single halogen light in the center. This is incredibly beautiful.
3Circle Studio. Catch me on the other end, I’ll be adoring Justin Carroll’s work for the next little while.
“A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.” –Douglas Adams
Tutorialblog: 30 pink websites. Because who doesn’t adore pink?
Miguel Ripoll informs me he’s just published a site for professor Jesús Rodríguez Velasco, UC Berkeley Department of Spanish & Portuguese. The somewhat unorthodox aesthetics fall within the same grid as the parent site, which was also designed by Miguel. Stunning work, to say the least.
The Secret of Apple Design. “‘The most fundamental thing about Apple that’s interesting to me,’ [Mark Rolston] says, ‘is that they’re just as smart about what they don’t do. Great products can be made more beautiful by omitting things.’”
Aside from the obvious apple.com rip, Color Oracle is pretty handy, allowing you to quickly filter your entire display and any open windows to test for color blindness issues. Update: Shane Guymon tells me the apple.com theme is apparently (and ridiculously, if so) a template within iWeb.
TeamSnap, an app for managing sports teams, looks like it has some potential. Love the straight-forward home page that communicates beautifully with photography, iconography, and concise copy. (Mike Davidson also offers his review of TeamSnap.)
d.Construct 2007. Fun site design (don’t miss the pink nav/switcher at top). But more importantly, will we see you there?
100 apps you may need as a freelancer. Though I certainly hope it won’t take 100 apps to get your work done.
Sign: “Fresh Tomatoes and Leg Waxing.” Because the two go hand in hand, do they not?
Tomorrow (May 15) is the last day for early registration, UI 12 Conference: Register for all 4 days and you’ll take home a video iPod.
Mobile web is now 19% of PC web (UK), 17% (US). Anyone out there still doubting the traction of mobile web content?
The Big Noob is back! Visiting the interweb is now worthwhile once again. (And now an Authentic Jobs partner to boot!)
Mozilla “looking at” mobile version of Firefox. “Most tech enthusiasts have wondered why web browsers on mobile phones suck so much. Mozilla Foundation CEO Mitchell Baker has been thinking about it too, and looking at how Firefox can be ported to mobile platforms.” The interview cites a concern about proceeding cautiously and avoiding the me-too game, and it makes sense given an earlier attempt, Minimo, never really took off.
Missed my workshop “Designing Elegant CSS Interfaces” last year in London? Well, set aside your angst and enjoy it stateside twice this year at Web Design World (Seattle) and User Interface 12 (Cambridge, MA).
Floats, by far, still confound me more than any other CSS property. Thank you, Smashing Magazine: CSS Float Theory: Things You Should Know.
A px-based grid calculator that relies on base font size, number of columns, and column/gutter width. (This would be a lot more useful if you could set the total width and then work from there, but linked to nonetheless.)
How-to: Make a ninja mask with any t-shirt.
“I recently landed a great full time position through your site — the kind of job I’ve been casually searching for for well over a year. When AJ launched, I had a feeling it would prove an invaluable resource, and in my case, it surely has. Quality over quantity indeed!” -Eric Eldredge, custodian of wanderaloud.net, replying to “On drinking one’s own Kool-Aid” (or more appropriately, “Eating one’s own dog food” as some have pointed out).
Veerle: The bathtub becomes furniture (includes some incredible pics).
How-to: Add and use bookmarklets in Opera Mini.
How to Check E-mail Twice a Day… or Once Every 10 Days. More from the same author in his article, “The 4-Hour Workweek” (great article btw, and yet ironically his first reply to the latter blog post is at 2:30 am — welcome to the not-so-4-hr-world of blogging, Tim).
Suzanne and I will both be present. Will you? @media America.
Mike Davidson: Building a Better Conference Badge. This might be construed as somewhat trivial, but Mike tackles a design issue that’s been ignored at nearly every conference I’ve ever attended (many of which cover primarily, you guessed it, design topics). “The typical conference badge loses its readability at about 10 feet but from my own crack-testing, the S.O.B. appears readable from up to 30 feet away.”
“Sure, there’s something to be said for sticking to your guns. But when every US department store website looks like it was designed by the same person on the same day, and left that way year after year, something is dreadfully wrong.” The opening lines from Andy Rutledge’s “The Stepford Wives”, a critical look at the online “epidemic clone aesthetic” among Dillard’s, JC Penney’s, etc. (Incidentally, a year ago I began the draft of a similar piece that would have extended the discussion to include office supply stores and university sites in addition to department store sites, had I published the article.)
Team members Paul Vaughn and Kaleb Tracy unveil beta.mormon.org, a resplendent update to one of our more prominent public-facing sites. Fantastic work, guys.
“Do they still sell computers? I know they used to but I haven’t seen one on anyone’s desk for a while.” A pointed comment from Airbag’s discussion of HP’s decision to acquire Logoworks.
I’m not a decals kind of guy, but these iPod decals by Lamb-Lamb are gorgeous.
Map of London created entirely in type. (detail)
4 Firefox plugins for mobile web developers. Add WML and XHTML-MP markup support, and spoof headers and user-agent strings.
WSJ: What Small-Biz Owners Can Learn From Blogs.
All our pixels are belong to Airbag: Ethan Marcotte becomes Airbag’s newest partner, and the resulting trio is a force to reckon with.
Coda, a new app by Panic exclusively for harmonizing web development apps. “Text editor + Transmit + CSS editor + Terminal…” Looks pretty promising. (thanks, Clifton)
“The People Formerly Known as the Audience.” Love this title and the session topic it described. I suspect Heather and Derek made it worthwhile for attendees.
YellowstonePark.com. Plenty to love about this site, both content and aesthetics.
35 designers x 5 questions. 175 suggestions, tips and ideas from designers and developers across the world.
Recall all that chat about surviving all-day interviews? Here’s one who recently did: Clifton Labrum will join our team April 30th. Welcome aboard, Clifton!
Edison, second oldest son (5), said to me the other day, “Sometimes I forget things because they get knocked out of my head.” I so know what you mean, Edison.
Kelly Goto’s DIY mobile testing device. “It’s home grown, affordable but most of all it works beautifully. It is portable, light and easy to utilize for mobile-specific testing of mobile interaction.” Kelly doubles as a mechanic on the weekends.
I confess. I’ve always wanted a bookcase door that leads to a secret room. Behold! So cool.
Adobe CS3 Video Workshop. Scores of video tutorials packaged in a handy interface.
Topo: Skia. Love the aesthetics of this piece, but also the way it’s presented in the portfolio.
How to Make Gmail/Gcal Rock Your Tasks.
Digital Web Magazine: Interview with Richard Ishida, internationalization expert. “Localization refers to the adaptation of a product, application, or document content to meet the language, cultural, and other requirements of a specific target market (a locale). This relates to more than just translation. Internationalization, on the other hand, is an approach to the design and development of a product, application, or document content that enables easy localization for target audiences that vary in culture, region, or language.” (Had no idea you could add dir="rtl" to the html tag for right-to-left text.)
Introducing Mowser, a portal for consuming and delivering mobile web content. It’s a transcoder (strips unncessary styling), mobile site directory, feed aggregator, and AOL-style keyword shortcut navigation. Cool thing is you can transcode any site on the fly merely by linking to http://mowser.com/web?url=[your_url], such as …web?url=mobhappy.com.
Your DNA as portraiture: DNA11. “Each piece is carefully processed to ensure the highest level of quality, and is then printed as a Giclee fine art piece.”
The Official Rock Paper Scissors Strategy Guide. Yes! Filed under Essential Reading.
From the makers of HOW Magazine: In-Howse Conference 2007 for us in-house design folk.
serestandar.es, a web standards conference in Spain, June 2007. ¡Me da lastima knowing that I was invited but can’t make it!
Fireside chat: Icon Designers. The likes of Icon Factory, Cuban Council, Firewheel Design, and The Hicks.
101 Essential Freelancing Resources.
“I had a meeting today with our creative services team and as a part of it they had a creativity exercise where we had to rip a magazine ad out and then try to come up with a better one…. I ended up with an ad for VESIcare, a drug that helps people with overactive bladders. It is hard to beat their advertising, what with their little people made out of pipes and their talk about problems with ‘internal plumbing’, but I took a shot at it.”