A fascinating post detailing the creation of a consistent visual identity of the BBC ’s online presence. Also, worth reading is the response from Paul Robert Lloyd . The use of big clunky Verdana for headings seems to have been phased out – hurrah! Comment on this … Read the rest here
A fascinating post detailing the creation of a consistent visual identity of the BBC ’s online presence. Also, worth reading is the response from Paul Robert Lloyd . The use of big clunky Verdana for headings seems to have been phased out – hurrah! Comment on this … Read the rest here
Logo Design Love is a book written by David Airey that covers the whys and hows of brand identity development. The book is broken down into three parts: The importance of brand identity, the process of design and keep the fires burning which looks at how to find motivation and inspiration. It’s a light 200 pages with readable type and plenty of examples. David Airey aims this book at the aspiring designer by not only covering the design process but also covering the process of project scope and client management in the context of logo design. Logo Design Love hits the mark when it speaks from experience, which it does for most of the book. There’s plenty of real world examples with plenty of input from designers other than just Airey himself… Read the rest here
Logo Design Love is a book written by David Airey that covers the whys and hows of brand identity development. The book is broken down into three parts: The importance of brand identity, the process of design and keep the fires burning which looks at how to find motivation and inspiration. It’s a light 200 pages with readable type and plenty of examples. David Airey aims this book at the aspiring designer by not only covering the design process but also covering the process of project scope and client management in the context of logo design. Logo Design Love hits the mark when it speaks from experience, which it does for most of the book… Read the rest here
The last thing I needed was more choice in apps for keeping a ‘Design Scrapbook’, but that’s what’s happened with Zootool . At first glance, it looked like just another FFFF ound , Ember or Img Spark , but it turns out it’s much more than that. The developer, Bastian, told me to think of it as more of a visual Delicious. Once I got into that mindset it made more sense. Zootool ‘lassos’ not only images, but documents (like PDF s), videos, and pages (not complete pages yet) and stores them in your ‘zoo’… Read the rest here
The last thing I needed was more choice in apps for keeping a ‘Design Scrapbook’, but that’s what’s happened with Zootool . At first glance, it looked like just another FFFF ound , Ember or Img Spark , but it turns out it’s much more than that. The developer, Bastian, told me to think of it as more of a visual Delicious. Once I got into that mindset it made more sense. Zootool ‘lassos’ not only images, but documents (like PDF s), videos, and pages (not complete pages yet) and stores them in your ‘zoo’. … Read the rest here
Jason Santa Maria Go to the source
O nce again I’m adding to my list of recommended books with some good reads I’ve come across in the past few years. I’m always up for finding new books to help me better understand design or improve my practices, but it can be very difficult to find the meat from so many fatty offerings. That’s why I try to keep this list focused on design, type, and theory. There are many lists for good web design books around, but few of just straight up good design books, and many of these topics are applicable anywhere. Like last time , this doesn’t aim to be comprehensive, but I personally vouch for the usefulness all of these books offer… Read the rest here
Jason Santa Maria Go to the source
O nce again I’m adding to my list of recommended books with some good reads I’ve come across in the past few years. I’m always up for finding new books to help me better understand design or improve my practices, but it can be very difficult to find the meat from so many fatty offerings. That’s why I try to keep this list focused on design, type, and theory. There are many lists for good web design books around, but few of just straight up good design books, and many of these topics are applicable anywhere. Like last time , this doesn’t aim to be comprehensive, but I personally vouch for the usefulness all of these books offer. … Read the rest here
This year will be a busy one in terms of speaking events. I’m currently crafting a brand new talk titled, “The CSS3 Experience”. It’ll focus on enriching the experience layer with advanced CSS and CSS3. Everyone can easily add enhancements to to their designs when focusing on the interactions and events that happen on the page. And by targeting the user experience with these new and evolving standards, you can start using these flexible techniques now, on any site, with less worry. Well damn, that sounded rather pitchy, didn’t it… Read the rest here
One of the problems of working in the knowledge economy is the constant need to keep abreast of current trends and thinking. This would be fine if you worked in a mature industry or one with a limited number of books, papers and conferences appearing each year. However in the knowledge economy of the web, more information is being published every day than could be consumed in a year. What’s more, that pace is increasing. The problem is exacerbated by a number of things. … Read the rest here
“I want my sites to look Safari in Safari, and IE6 in IE6. I most definitely do not want my sites to look like IE6 in Safari” Sam Brown Comment on this … Read the rest here
“Someone asked me the other day what percentage of my day was spent doing what. Yesterday it was approximately one third general admin type stuff, one third client liaison type stuff and one third designing type stuff. If we ignore the fact that there isn’t really such a thing as a typical day – that is a pretty much a typical day.” Ben Terrett ( Interesting Mini CEO Half Thoughts ) When I started working freelance, I worked out my rates and estimated earnings based on a ‘typical’ eight hour day. What I didn’t really comprehend at the time was the fallacy of an eight hour day of solid work. … Read the rest here
“Someone asked me the other day what percentage of my day was spent doing what. Yesterday it was approximately one third general admin type stuff, one third client liaison type stuff and one third designing type stuff. If we ignore the fact that there isn’t really such a thing as a typical day – that is a pretty much a typical day.” Ben Terrett ( Interesting Mini CEO Half Thoughts ) When I started working freelance, I worked out my rates and estimated earnings based on a ‘typical’ eight hour day. What I didn’t really comprehend at the time was the fallacy of an eight hour day of solid work. There are so many factors that eat into that supposed ‘billable time’. Admin … Read the rest here
Shared notebooks are one of the many selling points of Evernote. Being able to automatically share content easily (no manual upload), with additional benefit of an RSS feed is genius – it almost becomes a blogging platform. As well notebooks shared with individuals (such as moodboards for clients) I have two public notebooks: Design Scrapbook – where I keep any inspiration, be they images, PDF s or type samples. When clippings have come from webpages. the original URL is saved too. … Read the rest here
Shared notebooks are one of the many selling points of Evernote. Being able to automatically share content easily (no manual upload), with additional benefit of an RSS feed is genius – it almost becomes a blogging platform. As well notebooks shared with individuals (such as moodboards for clients) I have two public notebooks: Design Scrapbook – where I keep any inspiration, be they images, PDF s or type samples. When clippings have come from webpages. the original URL is saved too. Cheese Diaries ) – where I take snaps of cheese labels to remember what I ate… Read the rest here
One of my favourite features in the new Boxee Beta is a bookmarklet to add internet videos to a queue to watch in Boxee later. Once you’re logged into boxee.tv , the bookmarklet is found bottom right. Clicking it on a page with supported video type sends it to Boxee with a confirmation message: (The video in the screenshot was live visuals for Overture by Brian McBride, he of Stars of the Lid fame) This is even more useful to me than all the various video apps that come with Boxee, is an example of what sets Boxee apart from just using XBMC . However, if you’re using ClicktoFlash , with Youtube set to use H.264 video where possible, it will interfere with the magic, and Boxee can’t find the video. You just need to make sure it’s unchecked if you want to use the bookmarklet: … Read the rest here
One of my favourite features in the new Boxee Beta is a bookmarklet to add internet videos to a queue to watch in Boxee later. Once you’re logged into boxee.tv , the bookmarklet is found bottom right. Clicking it on a page with supported video type sends it to Boxee with a confirmation message: (The video in the screenshot was live visuals for Overture by Brian McBride, he of Stars of the Lid fame) This is even more useful to me than all the various video apps that come with Boxee, is an example of what sets Boxee apart from just using XBMC . However, if you’re using ClicktoFlash , with Youtube set to use H.264 video where possible, it will interfere with the magic, and Boxee can’t find the video. You just need to make sure it’s unchecked if you want to use the bookmarklet: … Read the rest here
For no particular reason, I present to you a list of things that were true on August 27, 2001 : The iPod, XBox, YouTube, Facebook, Flickr, Ubuntu, and Blu-Ray did not exist. IBM was still in the PC business, Handspring was still around, and Blackberries were data-only devices with no telephone capabilities. The Euro had not yet entered circulation, currencies like the Franc, Mark and Lira were still legal tender. George Harrison, The Queen Mother, Gregory Peck, Barry White, Johnny Cash, Ronald Reagan, Ray Charles, Julia Child, Pope John Paul II, Johnny Carson, Steve Irwin, Gerald Ford and Michael Jackson were still alive. SARS, Avian Flu, H1N1 were not in the common vernacular. Enron and WorldCom were still in business. … Read the rest here
For no particular reason, I present to you a list of things that were true on August 27, 2001 : The iPod, XBox, YouTube, Facebook, Flickr, Ubuntu, and Blu-Ray did not exist. IBM was still in the PC business, Handspring was still around, and Blackberries were data-only devices with no telephone capabilities. The Euro had not yet entered circulation, currencies like the Franc, Mark and Lira were still legal tender. George Harrison, The Queen Mother, Gregory Peck, Barry White, Johnny Cash, Ronald Reagan, Ray Charles, Julia Child, Pope John Paul II, Johnny Carson, Steve Irwin, Gerald Ford and Michael Jackson were still alive. SARS, Avian Flu, H1N1 were not in the common vernacular… Read the rest here
Dashnote is a well-thought-out dashboard widget interface for Simplenote , and my favourite of all desktop client/syncing solutions. Comment on this … Read the rest here
