I love Fireworks. It’s been my tool of choice for a rather long time. In the previous year of working for Opera, I’ve used it more than any other app. Whether I’ve been working on interactive wireframes, UI mockups, icons or final production artwork, Fireworks is the one that I go to. When people ask why I don’t use Illustrator or Photoshop I sometimes find it hard to articulate precisely why. … Read the rest here
The League of Moveable Type release the gorgeous open source font League Gothic, reminiscent of designers standard Trade Gothic. One for Jason in particular? Comment on this … Read the rest here
The League of Moveable Type release the gorgeous open source font League Gothic, reminiscent of designers standard Trade Gothic. One for Jason in particular? Comment on this … Read the rest here
Thanks to this tip on editing compiled .nib files , I’ve finally been able to re-instate the widescreen hack for Yojimbo 2. With the new Tag Explorer, this makes a total of 4 possible vertical panes, so it may not suit you as well as it did for version 1, but I still prefer it. Download Yojimbo-Wide-2.zip Installation This hack is for Yojimbo v2 only. Please make sure you update before installing this hack. Backup Yojimbo first. … Read the rest here
I didn’t start work on the Opera 10 redesign until April this year, so what was doing between November (when I started) and then? Opera Mini 5! My first day at Opera, was visiting the team out in Link
If you’ve ever used SimpleNote as a Fluid app to create a ‘desktop client’, you’ll have discovered that the webapp is a fixed size. I wanted a SimpleNote app that could be resized small, and still be able to see all the fields. This userstyle does just that – everything is aligned to the viewport. To install in a fluid app instance, go to Preferences > Userstyles. Add the following ‘ URL Pattern’: https://simple-note.appspot.com/* Paste the contents of the SimpleNote Fluid CSS file into the field below… Read the rest here
Jason Santa Maria Go to the source
My first time speaking professionally in public was back in 2005 at the first An Event Apart in Philadelphia. While not my first time speaking in front of a big audience, it was the first time I had to prepare a slide deck and use Keynote. Before and after view of a slide deck. On the left, you can see the bright red used to slides that need work, as well as black and grey for title slides, and blue for quotations. Two basic rules: simple and big When I use images, I almost always use them full screen and free of distraction. Keep your title slides to a few words, then speak through the rest of the story… Read the rest here
After trying to convince us that we’re funding terrorism , equating us to petty thieves and calling us cheapskates , the UK film and TV industry have decided to take a more positive response . I’m surprised it’s taken them so long to realise people see the weakness in their arguments and that their actions may actually be having the reverse affect . While the UK film and TV industry tries to convince us that every download equates to a lost sale, simple logic shows this not to be the case. People who download music and movies still buy CDs, they still rent DVD s and they still go to the cinema. Sometimes even more so. Downloading is just another content channel and one that is used for sampling new artists or consuming media that we probably wouldn’t have paid for anyway… Read the rest here
On the same day that the latest font catalogue from Netherlands foundry Typotheque arrives in the post, I discover the exciting news that they’re about to launch their own Web Font service . As far as I’m aware, this is the first foundry to setup their own web distribution – rather than using a 3rd party such as Typekit. It feels like the flood gates of web fonts are suddenly about to open! What also peaked my interest, was the incredible piece of work that is Typotheque
On the same day that the latest font catalogue from Netherlands foundry Typotheque arrives in the post, I discover the exciting news that they’re about to launch their own Web Font service . As far as I’m aware, this is the first foundry to setup their own web distribution – rather than using a 3rd party such as Typekit. It feels like the flood gates of web fonts are suddenly about to open! What also peaked my interest, was the incredible piece of work that is Typotheque
Alex Cornell and Scott Hansen of ISO50 have thrown together an impressive and definitive Field Guide to Color Management . Though there are literally thousands of guides on the web like this, ISO50’s is not only replete covering everything from lighting to print settings but also comes from a trusted resource plenty experienced with color management and printing . Consider this advice for workspace color management: An additional step you can take to ensure ideal lighting conditions in your workspace is to paint the walls with Munsell 8 Gray. This paint is specially formulated to have a flat spectral response with no color bias. … Read the rest here
Alex Cornell and Scott Hansen of ISO50 have thrown together an impressive and definitive Field Guide to Color Management . Though there are literally thousands of guides on the web like this, ISO50’s is not only replete covering everything from lighting to print settings but also comes from a trusted resource plenty experienced with color management and printing . Consider this advice for workspace color management: An additional step you can take to ensure ideal lighting conditions in your workspace is to paint the walls with Munsell 8 Gray. This paint is specially formulated to have a flat spectral response with no color bias. Unlike other hues, this type of gray will not affect your perception of other colors in the spectrum. It creates a
I have a confession to make: I don’t like paying full price for Apple hardware. So I buy it refurbished . Almost all of it. In fact, in the past few years I’ve purchased a 20″ iMac, 13″ black MacBook, Mac Mini, Airport, and now a 13″ MacBook Pro 2.26GHz Intel Core 2 Duo (aluminum unibody) — all refurbished. The obvious advantage to buying refurbished over paying full retail is exactly that — you typically save anywhere from 10% to 30%, and all products are covered by a one-year warranty. I’ve hardly needed the warranty… Read the rest here
I really had my hopes up when it was announced that the Playstation 3 firmware v3.0 would include ‘iPlayer support’. The iPlayer site already worked rather well in the PS3 browser, so this sounded like a proper ‘iPlayer app’, allowing shows to be downloaded rather than streamed. I guess I read too much into that announcement. Once the 3.0 firmware is installed, it places an iPlayer icon in the TV menu which then just launches the browser – business as usual. It does solve a problem with using the Blu-Ray remote though. It used to leave the cursor in the middle of the screen, which could only be removed if you used the standard controller to move it off screen (an art in itself)… Read the rest here
Yojimbo 2 has suddenly arrived! , but I’ve immediately hit a snag. When you first open it, Yojimbo 1 users are met with this message: So if you try out version 2, you screw up your installation of 1. It’s good manners that it warns you, but a better solution would be to offer a backup and restore facility. The message put me off upgrading, but I found the database (home>Library>Application Support>Yojimbo) and have backed it up. Hopefully, if I decide not to upgrade, I can just restore this folder to revert to version 1. Great to see a new improved icon though! Update : Making a backup of the database works, although I found that wasn’t enough… Read the rest here
With just 2 months shy of completing my first year with Opera, I’m really chuffed to see a final release of Opera 10 desktop, with some of the fruits of those labours. Amongst the new features of Opera 10 are: Turbo – compresses pages to speed up slow connections: Thumbnail tabs – put them at the bottom, the sides, or just leave them at the top. Completely revised ‘skin’, with every icon replaced. Originally, these were updates that I was planning for v11, but I was itching to update the skin. This was quite an undertaking (and something I decided rather late on) but worth it. … Read the rest here
You have just two more days to enter the dConstruct Time Capsule competition which could win you a VIP ticket to the conference, including dinner with the speakers at a swish restaurant and two nights at a fancy-pants hotel in Brighton. Tickets to the conference are very, very near to selling out so winning might be your only chance to get to dConstruct this year. How do you enter? Well, the theme of this year’s dConstruct is Designing for Tomorrow so that got us thinking about what we would preserve for the future in a time capsule. So take a look around you. … Read the rest here
A compilation of resources, products, and inspiration spotted before, after, but not during knee surgery. Los Angeles Times gets a makeover A rather nice overhaul of the latimes.com site. (Here’s what it looked like in February 2008 .) Oliver Kavanagh A rather audacious, springboard-style home page that leaves me wanting to try something similar. DIY ring light with LEDs …and other DIY camera mods using LEDs. The 6 brand naming styles Josh Levine: The 6 naming styles add context so you can see the full landscape of choices… Read the rest here
The theme for dConstruct this year is “designing for tomorrow”. This got us thinking about what cultural objects or experiences may not be around in the future. The kind of things that future digital archeologists may uncover and showcase in museums or write hypothesis about their place in naughties culture. We had our own ideas, ranging from obvious things like Twitter, Facebook and the iPhone, to slightly more obscure things like the mass of wires and adapters than plague our digital lives, or the fact that you have to carry a piece of card on a train to prove your right to travel. However we wanted to hear from you, so we started the dConstruct Time Capsule Project … Read the rest here
I was recently asked to participate in the Travelling Moleskines project, and jumped at the chance! The summary is that you fill either 1 or 2 pages of Moleskine in any way you see fit, based on a theme, and then pass it on. The theme was ‘My World’ which immediately made me think of cheese, but if a blank page is daunting a blank moleskine is more so. I’ve chosen the next recipient to be Veerle . … Read the rest here