That was the year, that was
Reading through the messages from my friends on Twitter, it sounds like a lot of people didn’t like 2009. At all. I’m feeling a lot of hate for Oh Nine. Personally, 2009 was perfectly fine for me. … Read the rest here
Posts Tagged 2009
Loo
While travelling this Christmas, I came upon some copywriting in a loo that I took umbridge with: 10-15 seconds and 80% less energy? Rather than 2 seconds and 0% energy? It’s really that last sarcastic last line that got to me though. It’s like the signs you get in hotels, claiming that they don’t want to wash your towels every day because they’re very concerned about the ‘environment’. ‘Well now’, I DID use my jeans, so that taught them! Fools! Since when did we become Americans and start calling the toilet a ‘bathroom’? And surely ‘as nature intended’ would be actually be a large bush… Read the rest here
Loo
While travelling this Christmas, I came upon some copywriting in a loo that I took umbridge with: 10-15 seconds and 80% less energy? Rather than 2 seconds and 0% energy? It’s really that last sarcastic last line that got to me though. It’s like the signs you get in hotels, claiming that they don’t want to wash your towels every day because they’re very concerned about the ‘environment’. ‘Well now’, I DID use my jeans, so that taught them! Fools! Since when did we become Americans and start calling the toilet a ‘bathroom’… Read the rest here
Ten design tenets of Dieter Rams
Earlier this month, Clearleft went on a company outing to the Design Museum in London. There we spent some quality time perusing the work of the influential former Braun industrial designer, Dieter Rams . Accompanying the exhibition were these design tenets penned by the man himself. Good design… Is innovative The possibilities for innovation are not, by any means, exhausted. … Read the rest here
Opera 10.5 pre-alpha next
Things have been a bit quieter around here lately, and here’s why. Everyone at Opera has been gearing up to release a sneaky peek of Opera 10.5 before Christmas comes! This isn’t even at an Alpha stage but it will show off, not necessarily new features (there are some though), but some rather big improvements in various areas. One of which has already been hinted at in the post on Choose Opera – speed . Can’t say anymore yet, but it will out on Tuesday 22nd December so you’ll soon be able to play with it, and find out. … Read the rest here
And Mary and Joseph had
Boxee
I’m more than just a few days late with this one, but I couldn’t let this pass without a mention! On Monday, Boxee unveiled their Boxee Box , a collaboration with D-Link to provide their own hardware solution. My initial reaction was that it looked like an award, and something that wouldn’t fit snugly into existing setups: However, once I saw just how small it is
Letterpress poster: Limited quantities for the holidays
If you’re considering ordering one of my letterpress posters as a holiday gift, I recommend doing so soon. I have only about 40 remaining on hand, and I’ve already shipped a half-dozen of them this week. I won’t be printing any more of this poster in 2009, as I’ll be keeping Bryce’s shop busy with another poster between now and the first of the year. Happy holidays, everyone. … Read the rest here
New Tee: Ampersandwich
Now available at the shop. Delicious typography. A super-soft, “Tri-Blend” t-shirt in espresso brown from American Apparel, printed with everyone’s favorite logogram (set in Knockout ’s Ultra Sumo weight). Peanut butter? Mustard? … Read the rest here
Top Fifty Albums of the Decade
Pitchfork pitched in with theirs back in October, the NME did it more recently, and this weekend the Observer/Guardian published theirs . Today it’s my turn. I know you’ve been waiting with baited breath for what is the ultimate list of the top fifty albums of the decade. And was it a good decade? There was no emerging or prevalent musical ‘movement’ that I’m aware of, unlike Britpop and the ecstasy-fuelled Dance of the Nineties. That decade will always be a defining era for me because it’s when my musical taste left the mainstream for a more independent view… Read the rest here
Netmag article on Icon
This month’s .net magazine (#196 December) features my article ‘Design the perfect icon’. focussing on icon design for websites, rather than for software. It expands on the talk I gave at @media earlier this year Icons for Interaction This is my first really big magazine article that I’ve written, and found 5500 words much harder than I thought, and probably won’t be writing another one in a hurry! However, I’m really pleased with result, and it’s given me an idea of how much harder it would be to write a book. … Read the rest here
Correcting Corrupted Characters
At some point, for some reason I cannot quite fathom, a WordPress or PHP or mySQL or some other upgrade took all of my WordPress database’s UTF-8 and translated it to (I believe) ISO-8859-1 and then dumped the result back right back into the database. So “Emil Bj
Adjusting to family life with diabetes
Last Thursday night we stopped in Albuquerque, New Mexico on our cross-country move to Florida . What was supposed to be an overnight stop has turned into a lengthy stay and a permanent change in our family’s lifestyle. One of our sons fell ill with the flu* soon after leaving Utah on Wednesday. By Thursday the flu had escalated and we found ourselves in the hospital by nightfall. On Friday the diagnosis was clear: Type 1 diabetes . … Read the rest here
‘Hooligan
I just signed and returned the paperwork. As of November 16, I’ll be an employee of Yahoo!. This might seem like a bit of a surprise for those aware that I started at Squarespace just seven months ago. Unfortunately, six months into it, the requirements of employment changed and I was no longer able to stay on. … Read the rest here
Icons of the screen icon - Wired
I got a wee mention in Decembers’ UK Edition of WIRED magazine, in a section called ‘Icons of the Screen Icon’. Nice! … Read the rest here
Isolation
You probably experience this on a regular basis: a client sends you an illustration or a logo they’d like to use in a project, but it’s a low-res bitmap or a flat image file with a background texture. Or both, if you’re really lucky. Sure, you can try and ask for a vector version, but more often than not what they originally sent was the best copy they had on hand. I seem to have made something of a hobby out of trying to coax useful results out of this type of file. Over the years I’ve stumbled across far better ways of doing it than manually clipping the background with the the magic wand or various selection tools. For the next time you’re handed a less-than-ideal source image, here are a few of my tricks for isolating the part of the file I want to work with in Photoshop. … Read the rest here
Loopland
The website of illustrator Allan Sanders. Fantastic aesthetic. ( via ) … Read the rest here
The new Authentic Jobs
This has been a long time coming. I won’t say more than that right now, but I’ll hopefully say lots more in the near future. For now, have a look at the site . More details available on the Authentic Jobs blog . Thanks especially to those of you who gave feedback on the proposed design way back when. … Read the rest here
The Kraken Media
TheDieline.com (a packaging blog you really should subscribe to) have lustworthy photos of the special media kit sent to promote Kraken black spiced rum. Comment on this … Read the rest here
Hey Jude, flowcharted
See also the inspiration . ( via ) … Read the rest here