cameronmoll.com was hacked pretty severely sometime (or multiple times) in the last few weeks. Because of this, many of you have seen malware warnings when visiting this site recently. I apologize. All of this put into motion a series of events, many of which had already been planned for months—new design, switching hosts, and switching blog platforms. The malware issues were merely the catalyst for finally making changes. … Read the rest here
One of the things you discover as a speaker and, especially, a conference organizer is this: Keynote generates really frickin’ enormous PDFs. Seriously. Much like Miles O’Keefe, they’re huge . We had one speaker last year whose lovingly crafted and beautifully designed 151-slide deck resulted in a 175MB PDF. Now, hard drives and bandwidth may be cheap, but when you have four hundred plus attendees all trying to download the same 175MB PDF at the same time, the venue’s conference manager will drop by to find out what the bleeding eyestalks your attendees are doing and why it’s taking down the entire outbound pipe. Not to mention the network will grind to a nearly complete halt… Read the rest here
Font Aid IV for Haiti: “Coming Together” Font : Veer: In response to the devastating 2010 earthquake in Haiti, the Society of Typographic Aficionados issued a call to action to the typographic and design communities to participate in Font Aid IV. The result was Coming Together, an OpenType font that contains over 400 ampersand glyphs designed by participants from around the world. The “ampercross” Veer designed to promote the font is fabulous. … 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
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
This just in: I’m leaving Opera. Before I go any further, I need to make this very clear. I’m not leaving because I unhappy working for them, or any such rubbish. Neither did we come to blows over 42 different shades of red. … Read the rest here
This just in: I’m leaving Opera. Before I go any further, I need to make this very clear. I’m not leaving because I unhappy working for them, or any such rubbish. Neither did we come to blows over 42 different shades of red. Opera as company, and as individuals, have bent backwards to accommodate my remote working ways, and it’s been nothing but a fruitful and joyous time. … Read the rest here
Incase testing-friendly packaging : Incase: Our research showed that consumers were opening packages and test-fitting products before making purchases. In most cases, the packages were not correctly returned to the shelves or were somewhat damaged and unsightly, making it difficult to sell these products. The design solution was to create an outer wrap that was easy to slide on and off, offering full access to the product without damaging the package. The sliding action of the wrap was simple and intuitive and did not involve additional flaps or mechanisms that the previous packaging employed. This is brilliant and overdue thinking. … 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
Please, Google before you Tweet : Available for purchase as a limited edition letterpress print for just $15. … 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
A few nights ago I attended a UX-Bri session where one of the speakers floated the idea of doing free usability testing in order to win projects. I asked about the moral implications of this and was surprised by the response. While the audience largely disagreed with the idea of speculative design work, it seemed that speculative UX work was somehow more acceptable. The speaker later cc’d me into an email question from one of the audience members querying my negative reaction to speculative pitching so here was my response… “Dear XXXX, There has been a debate over the subject of speculative work running within the design community for some time now, so I thought it was worth raising the issue. One side of the argument states that helping a client solve their problems for free, before being awarded a contact is bad practice… Read the rest here
In order to get more people in the design scene speaking at events like SillSwap , BarCamp and even dConstruct or UX London , I’ve been toying with the idea of organising a free public speaking course. It would be held on a yet-to-be-determined Saturday at the Clearleft offices in Brighton and would focus on practical, hands-on tuition. We would start with how to plan, research and design a talk that delights your audience, paying special attention to story telling and narrative. We would then move onto the delivery and performance side of things; teaching people how to project their voice, vary their tone, use the stage and work the audience. It’s all basic stuff, but it’s these rookie errors that can damage an otherwise excellent presentation. To ensure everybody gets the individual attention they need, the even will be for a limited number of people… Read the rest here
Zeldman: Flash, iPad, Standards : Jeffrey Zeldman: Lack of Flash in the iPad (and before that, in the iPhone) is a win for accessible, standards-based design. Not because Flash is bad, but because the increasing popularity of devices that don’t support Flash is going to force recalcitrant web developers to build the semantic HTML layer first. … Read the rest here
The New AisleOne : It’s worth sitting down and studying the new design—1202px width, “infinite” scrolling, grid-based, toggles for Dashboard and Grid/List… Lots to appreciate. … Read the rest here
JiveWorld ‘10 Microsite : Nice microsite by Josh Pyles . … Read the rest here
Michael Bierut is such a down-to-earth, practical designer (and speaker) who works hard to do amazing work without the typical stigma associated with graphic designers. This practicality is clearly evident in the video above, a presentation given at CreativeMornings in New York City. And if you haven’t seen Helvetica , you need to see how his commentary really helps the movie shine. Michael’s presentation on clients is one of those “should be required viewing” kind of presentations. It’s fantastic… Read the rest here
CSS3 features are making their way into the various browsers and while many are holding off on implementing them, there are those who are venturing ahead and likely running into a world of interesting quirks across the various platforms. Two such features that I have been having the pleasure of enjoying are the use of multiple backgrounds and CSS gradients. I’m covering both features because multiple backgrounds by itself is simple enough, as are CSS gradients, but combining the two is where things get interesting. Multiple Backgrounds What are multiple backgrounds when it comes to CSS? I mean the ability to define more than one background image for a single element. … 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