Long Live the Redesign : Francisco Inchauste: Designers have become enablers to the redesign. We helped to create this monster…. It’s time to stop this madness. Realign it, or refine it. Focus and attack the high priority issues that will cause little disruption and improve on the experience. Set up ways to measure and diagnose specific problems. … Read the rest here
Puzzld! : Jacob Souva, who did the illustration for Funny Bugs , did the illustrations for this beautiful app for kids ages (I would guess) 2 to 5. Via Veerle Pieters, who just published an interview with Jacob . … Read the rest here
The HTML5 Switch : Summary: There’s really no reason to postpone switching all your sites — big or small, existing or new — to the HTML5 doctype at a minimum . I support this argument and began doing this months ago. Read the full article for reasoning. … Read the rest here
Determining a unit of measurement to size our text can be a topic of heated debate, even in this day and age. Unfortunately, there are still various pros and cons that make the various techniques less desirable. It’s just a matter of which less-desirable is most desirable. There are two main techniques that are extolled: Size with px Size with em Let’s review these two approaches before I reveal the magical third. Sizing with px In the early days of the web, we used pixels to size our text. … Read the rest here
The rise of smart devices like the iPhone and iPad has led to an application goldrush, with companies racing to stake their claims. In the early days we saw a few lucky pioneers strike gold with novelty apps. There were also a handful of independent developers and well-known brands that invested in user experience and captured the high end of the market. However, as with most goldrushes, the obvious targets were depleted very quickly. Digital prospectors are arriving to find a very different market, one rife with competition and few obvious deposits to mine. Furthermore, our appetite for apps seems to be dwindling as we fall back on a few must-have staples. … Read the rest here
Funny Bugs is a non-profit endeavor our family has been working on over the past several months. We think kids with Type 1 diabetes deserve a fun, educational, and social experience for managing their diabetes and helping others do the same. We’re making plans to build that experience in our (very) limited spare time. Our 7-year-old son, a Type 1 diabetic, has been the chieftain of the project. Funny Bugs is literally a product of his imagination. … Read the rest here
Final Cut Pro X: $299 : Due out in June, Final Cut Pro X is a 64-bit upgrade with a much-needed overhaul to the 90s-esque UI. And the price? That’s a substantial cut, especially given the current Studio package runs $1,000. It will probably sell as a standalone product rather than bundled with Motion, Soundtrack, etc. Even then, my $200 Final Cut Express software just became obsolete. … Read the rest here
The Big Picture: Japan’s Vast Devastation : Heartbreaking. Please consider ways to donate , even by purchasing a poster by James White or a Salvation Army t-shirt by Joshua Smith . … Read the rest here
Yesterday, Web Standards Sherpa launched. A WaSP outreach project initiated by Aaron Gustafson and Easy! Designs and sponsored by Microsoft, Mozilla, Opera, W3C and several other companies. I had the pleasure of handling the initial design and art direction for the site and working with the fantastic team that put this project together. It’s exciting to see it alive and kicking. Web Standards Sherpa will… “…provide web professionals the opportunity to receive feedback, glean advice and learn best practices from experts in the field to help them improve the quality of their own work.” Check out the first pool of articles from sherpas Jared Spool, Aaron Gustafson and Erin Kissane or read more from the Web Standards Project… Read the rest here
Unit Interactive’s 4½-Day Workweek : Andy Rutledge, writing about his firm’s four-and-a-half day workweek: We have rules for Fridays. No project launches, no discovery meetings, in fact no meetings of any kind. Friday is when the pressure valve is opened, not tightened. Working smartly, most of our project work is accomplished in just four days. There are exceptions, but Friday half-days here are often when folks use the structure of office time to work on personal projects, to write articles or blog posts, or to catch up on things left behind by the sometimes overly-structured activities of the work week. … Read the rest here
When I saw Ian Lloyd tweet the words “Cunning. Like a fox. Neat little trick!” I knew I had to check it out, because Ian’s a sharp one. So I popped over to the linked CSS-Tricks article, Show and Edit Style Element , and checked it out. Cunning indeed! And yet, it immediately bothered me. … Read the rest here
Shawn Blanc Membership Drive and Giveaway : Shawn Blanc is making the leap into full-time blogging. I steal links from his link blog regularly, but Shawn does the long-read, entertaining article stuff too (see his software/hardware reviews ). Support Shawn by signing up for just $3/month and you’ll be entered to a number of nice prizes: Fusion Ads Burst , prints by Jorge Quinteros , signed copies of books, a copy of my Colosseo poster, and more. … Read the rest here
Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom: 30-Second Rule for App Success : Speaking of Instagram, this is some sharp thinking by Kevin Systrom on pairing down features for the initial stages of an app: [Instagram] has come a long way since its first iteration, a feature-laden app called Burbn that lacked a simple value proposition. To founder and CEO Kevin Systrom, simplifying the product — paring it down into an app that enables users to share beautiful photographs quickly — was the smartest business decision his team made - and a strategy other developers should take to heart. ‘Products can introduce more complexity over time, but as far as launching and introducing a new product in to the market, it’s a marketing problem,’ Systrom tells Fast Company. ‘You have to explain everything you do, and people have to understand it, within seconds.’ … Still, there were benefits to its see-what-sticks approach: The team realized its users were gung-ho about Burbn’s photo-sharing capabilities and filters. … Read the rest here
NYT: No Plans for Smaller iPhone : Miguel Helft and Nick Bilton: [C]ontrary to published reports, Apple is not currently developing a smaller iPhone, according to people briefed on Apple’s plans who requested anonymity because the plans are confidential. Apple’s engineers are currently focused on finishing the next version of the iPhone, which is likely to be similar in size to the current iPhone 4, said one of the people. Among all the press I’ve read the last few days regarding a smaller iPhone, there’s been too little mention of the following, also stated in the article: More important, a phone with a smaller screen would force many developers to rewrite their apps, which Apple wants to avoid, the person said. That seems reason enough to leave the screen alone for now. … Read the rest here
The King of Apple Talk Radio : Fortune writer Philip Elmer-DeWitt, interviewing the article’s subject, Dan Benjamin: In stark contrast to the rapid-fire, deadline-driven pace of most cable news and drive-time radio, Benjamin gives the impression that his guests have all the time in the world — which in a sense they do. Any subject that he and his co-hosts can’t dispose of in 60 to 90 minutes is simply pushed forward to next week’s show. And what co-hosts they are! ‘I’m fascinated by these guys — the pundits, the experts — who think about the stuff I care about every day. And I’m lucky enough to talk to each of them for an hour every week,’ says Benjamin. … Read the rest here
I’ve met quite a few designers who are colourblind, but personally it affects my ability to distinguish between green and brown, or blue and purple. Tones and colour strength I can see, but certain colours are hard to tell apart. You might already know I originally trained as a wildlife illustrator. I knew which colours to use by the helpful names on the paint tubes, and even the more obscure names like Oxide of Chromium were memorable (it’s the best base for natural greens by the way). Then when I transitioned to print design, I used the CMYK system. Even if I couldn’t differentiate colours, I knew how to create, for example, a bright red numerically… Read the rest here
Mastering Photoshop: Noise, Textures, Gradients and Rounded Rectangles : Some really good tips in this article by Marc Edwards, writing for Smashing Magazine. Several of these I was not aware of. … Read the rest here
How Influencers Manage Their Email : Responses from Caterina Fake, Ben Blumenfeld, Andrew Warner, Julie Zhuo, and myself. Here’s mine: I loathe email. Unfortunately it’s still the primary means of most business communication over 140 characters. I used to try and keep my inbox below 50 items as regularly as possible. Now I get to email when I can, even if that means a swelling inbox. … Read the rest here
On Wearing the iPod Nano as a Watch : John Gruber, referring to an article by Nilay Patel : Relevant today because I just got my TikTok band for the Nano , as my reward for backing the wildly-successful Kickstarter project . The TikTok is everything I could have hoped for: the Nano fits perfectly and the wristband is supple and comfortable. But for the reasons outlined by Patel above, the current Nano just isn’t ideal for use as a full-time wristwatch. Not promising for me, as I believe my TikTok is sitting in my business UPS mailbox as I write this. The good news? … Read the rest here
On Wearing the iPod Nano as a Watch : John Gruber, referring to an article by Nilay Patel : Relevant today because I just got my TikTok band for the Nano , as my reward for backing the wildly-successful Kickstarter project . The TikTok is everything I could have hoped for: the Nano fits perfectly and the wristband is supple and comfortable. But for the reasons outlined by Patel above, the current Nano just isn’t ideal for use as a full-time wristwatch. Not promising for me, as I believe my TikTok is sitting in my business UPS mailbox as I write this. The good news? I ordered the TikTok before shelling out cash for a Nano, which I still haven’t done… Read the rest here