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Hicksdesign Go to the source

When I was writing The Icon Handbook, I had my list of first choices for people I wanted to work with. Chris Mills and Owen Gregory for Project Manager and Copy Editor, Gedeon Maheux from the Iconfactory for Technical Editor, and for the foreword… The Noun Project. All of which said yes! I absolutely love what The Noun Project are doing, there isn’t a comparable site for the quality of it’s curated collection of pictograms. So when I was asked to write a guest post for The Noun Project blog, I was chuffed to bits! The post I’ve written, ‘Insights on Symbol Design’ contains portions from The Icon Handbook (and as such It’s another taster for the book), but was still written more or less from scratch, looking at considerations of pictogram design in particular. Comment on this … Read the rest here

SimpleBits Go to the source

Yesterday, on stage at An Event Apart Atlanta , I announced Pears : an open source WordPress theme for creating your own markup & style pattern library. I wanted to create my own database repository of commonly used patterns and figured the tool might be useful for others as well. Breaking interfaces down into patterns has been immensely helpful in learning and re-evaluating the best possible code to implement them. I’ve just gotten started and will be adding more as I create them. But Pears isn’t about how I code these patterns—it’s a tool for creating your own . The theme is available on GitHub for those that want to chip in and make it even better. … Read the rest here

Hicksdesign Go to the source

I’m getting a lot of ‘Are you still using Fireworks?’ questions recently, and my answer is ‘Not for almost 2 years now…’. I’ve been using Illustrator CS5 solidly ever since, but part of the transition is going from Fireworks Pages/States to Illustrators multiple artboards. Artboards are more flexible, and allow you to have see everything at once, but the built-in options for exporting artboards are limited. I use this wonderful script, which provides all the settings I could desire, from format to filenaming. Top work! Comment on this … Read the rest here

Hicksdesign Go to the source

Since publishing a section from The Icon Handbook as part of 24 Ways last December ( Displaying Icons with Fonts and Data- Attributes ) I’ve been involved in a few discussions regarding its cons, some of which have since gained workarounds, and it felt a good time to do a follow up post. First of all, its worth mentioning the context of the article – it’s from Chapter 6, where all the various possible methods for deploying icons on the web are laid out. This includes creating icons with CSS , which isn’t something I’d recommend, but just may be a solution for someone out there and work well in a particular context. In the same vein, using fonts to display icons is just one of the options. Lets go over the 2 cons that keep coming up: Unicode Mapping Jon Tan states (rightly) that where matching unicode characters exist , the key should be mapped to that (such as the heart symbol for Favourites) and others that don’t to Private Use Areas where they have no associated meaning or content. This isn’t a problem with the technique as much as the current implementation of the fonts… Read the rest here

Andy Budd Go to the source

First off let me apologise for the laboured metaphor I’m about to inflict on you, but I thought it could be entertaining to try and describe the web design industry using a medium I’m sure you’re all familiar with—Dungeons & Dragons. However I should point out that I’m no D&D expert, having played it last when I was 13. So please don’t leave comments to the line of “you got that all wrong as those character classes were changed in AD&D 2nd Edition, Unearthed Arcana.” or I’ll pull out my +2 broadsword and go Berserker on your ass. In the world of Dungeons & Dragons, characters could have a variety of professions such as Fighter, Thief or Magic-User. These professions were loosely related to a characters natural abilities. So if you were intelligent you’d be well suited to becoming a magic-user, whereas if you were dexterous, becoming a thief was a good option. … Read the rest here

Andy Budd Go to the source

I was really disappointed to see a recent post from somebody I admire and respect defend the validity of the new UX Developer job title that has been cropping up of late. As well as being misleading, the title, UX Developer has implications that are damaging to the field of User Experience and will hasten the current devaluation of the term. Despite what many newcomers to the industry may think, User Experience Design is a well-defined specialism as distinct from visual or interface design. The practice of user experience design is a specific field of study with its own books, conferences, membership organisations and college courses. User experience designers therefore have a distinct set of skills and practices that form the core of their profession. That being said, user experience designers don’t own these practices any more than developers own the ability to code up wireframes. … Read the rest here

Jason Santa Maria Go to the source

One of the best annual wrap-ups returns after a hiatus in 2009-10, Our Favorite Typefaces , from Typographica. Welcome back! The idea is simple: I invite a group of writers, educators, type makers and type users to look back at 2011 and pick the release that excited them most. … This is not a juried contest. The result isn’t necessarily the “best fonts of the year”, or even those most used or ballyhooed. But these 50 selections do capture a pretty accurate snapshot of where type design is now, and where it’s headed. And the results are spot on… Read the rest here

Jason Santa Maria Go to the source

The latest issue of A List Apart is one of my favorites in recent memory, and has three articles you can’t miss. In “ An Important Time for Design ”, Cameron Koczon challenges designers to be all that they can be: The web is going to increasingly shape our world and consequently our daily lives. We can either sit on the sidelines and submissively assist those who are doing the shaping or we can take a more active role in creating the future we want. This year, thanks to a spike in demand, designers have a chance to actively nudge the world in any direction they like. It’s a huge opportunity with a tiny window. Let’s not let it pass by. … Read the rest here

Eric Meyer Go to the source

Though I certainly do not support SOPA or the PROTECT IP Act (the complete, rather contrived acronym of PIPA), I will not be blacking out meyerweb. This is largely because the vast majority of my readers already know about these bills, and very likely oppose them; as for anyone who visits but does not know about these bills, I feel I’ll do better to speak out than to black out. (Which is not a criticism of those who do black out. We all fight in our own ways.) Instead, I will reproduce here the letter I attempted to send via contact form to my state Senator this morning, and which I will print out and send by regular postal service later today. Senator Brown: I grew up in Lexington, Ohio. I moved to Cleveland in pursuit of a career, and found success. … Read the rest here

Snook Go to the source

Using CSS transitions can be quite fun. But what’s not fun is when you want to transition something that needs to use display:none or visibility:hidden (or really, any non-transitionable property). For example, let’s say you have a dialog. When the user clicks on the close button, you want the dialog to fade out — a simple transition from opacity:1 to opacity:0 . The problem is that the element is still there, even though you can’t see it… Read the rest here

Hicksdesign Go to the source

‘The Bacon and Cheese Machine’ is a collaboration between Illustrative genius McBess and P-G Bikes for Dudes Factory I’m a sucker for art projects like this, and really fancy having a go myself! This video shows the intricate painting process unfold: … Read the rest here

Hicksdesign Go to the source

2011 was the year that cycling replaced the “search for the right media centre” as the main blog topic at The Hickensian. I’ve been pretty much starting from scratch in terms of knowledge, and gleaning information from all sorts of sources. Here are just some of things I’ve learnt this year: There are Rules . 87 of them in fact. … Read the rest here

Jason Santa Maria Go to the source

I generally avoid lists and New Year’s resolutions, but Mike Monteiro issues a rallying cry so poignant we all need to listen: I spent the first 10 years of my career saying things like, “If I could just do this work the way I know it should be done…” and convincing myself that someone else was keeping me from making better choices. I’ll often be reviewing work with another designer and they’ll say, “Well, if I were doing this…” I stare back at them in astonishment until they realise what they’ve said. What is this strange gene that makes designers handicap themselves? Mike sums things up as only he can and it’s a damn fine way to start off a fresh new year. Do yourself a favor and read this one. It’s a wake up call we could all use… Read the rest here

Hicksdesign Go to the source

Here’s a great find from the dusty depths of YouTube – a British Transport promotional film from 1955. Not only does this feature Tweed (plus fours much in attendance), cycling, a fantastic soundtrack, railways and country pubs, it’s also filmed around the area I grew up in Warwickshire. So if you need an antidote to haggard looking men or hipsters doing trackstands on their fixies*, this is it! Part One Part Two Via the Tweed Cycling Club *I do love Rapha and fixie videos too, its just that, well, this is the complete opposite . Tagged: britain , cycling , films , retro … Read the rest here

Snook Go to the source

I hesitate putting this information out there as I’m not sure what its relevance is. I merely note it as interesting, especially in light of gender inequality in our field. In number crunching the people who have purchased a SMACSS e-book or site membership, I’ve noticed that the numbers are heavily skewed in one direction: 94.5% of the purchases are by men. That means only 5.5% of purchases were by women. I wonder if there is anything in the way that I’ve presented the information that has turned women off from buying the book. Since I market the book under my personal ‘brand’, especially via Twitter, I wonder if my particular following is also heavily skewed towards men (I suspect it is). … Read the rest here

SimpleBits Go to the source

Yesterday, a copy of my latest book arrived in the mail, the Third Edition of Bulletproof Web Design . The first edition came out back in 2005, and I’ve been revising it every few years. This latest edit was a bit larger than the 2nd because so much has changed. HTML5, CSS3, Responsive Web Design—all of these things dovetail nicely into the core bulletproof concepts from the original book. If you have the 2nd edition, the new version is likely not a necessary upgrade (New Riders probably loves me for saying that). Meaning, the guidelines for building flexible websites are still there, but a lot of the code and some of the examples have been brought up to speed. … Read the rest here

Jason Santa Maria Go to the source

The fine folks at Made by Hand made a cheery promo video for those lovely designy temporary tattoo people at Tattly . I love it when smart people get together and make great things. And you can’t help but smile while watching this. I make a cameo appearance about seven seconds into the video. … Read the rest here

Hicksdesign Go to the source

Todays 24ways article is Displaying Icons with Fonts and Data- Attributes , taken partly from Chapter 6 of the upcoming Icon Handbook , but rewritten to fit to the 24ways format. Instead of using the traditional route of PNG s, web fonts offer a scalable and resolution independent solution. Combined with HTML5 data attributes, you can create one CSS rule to style them all in one go. This article covers both the advantages and disadvantages of the technique. Thanks must go to Drew Wilson who helped me understand how to use data attributes. He created Pictos the excellent icon font used in the article, and his experience in making Pictos was a valuable source of research… Read the rest here

Jason Santa Maria Go to the source

Does our definition of what a book is need to change? Barbara deWilde has been seeking to answer just that as part of her project “What the Book” in my SVA IxD class that also doubles as an installation at the AIGA 50 Books/50 Covers exhibition going up later this week at the AIGA headquarters in NYC. This on the heels of the near cancellation of the competition last year which drew the ire of many designers. Part of the project is a short survey online that asks you to agree or disagree with such statements as “I would never give an ebook as a gift” and “Decorating with books is perverse”. Those same questions are asked at the exhibit too as an installation that allows viewers to physically shelve books as votes (as seen in the photo above). … Read the rest here

Cameron Moll Go to the source

Hero : This is a really fantastic, well-shot piece. And the resulting portrait definitely wasn’t what I was anticipating. Update: The process of creating art with small dots is called stippling . Had no idea. (Thanks @signalnoise .) /via @jontangerine … Read the rest here