For countries that aren’t lucky enough to have the CBBC children’s channel, and in particular, the Horrible Histories series, I offer the Viking Song to you. You won’t be able to get it out of your head… LITERALLY !! Tagged: comedy , history , metal … Read the rest here
Building a Custom HTML5 Audio Player with jQuery : Ben Bodien, who also masterminds a lot of the jQuery, HTML5, and CSS3 material for Authentic Jobs , explains what it took to make Tim Van Damme’s audio player design for The Box a reality. … Read the rest here
Quipsologies Redesign : This is gorgeous and original. Fonts are rendered with Typekit, featuring Coquette, Skolar, and P22 Underground. (Armin, a Twitter account would let me credit you guys for all the linkage I lift from your site.) /via @jasonsantamaria … Read the rest here
Less Framework : A CSS framework for cross-device layouts, built on the principles in Ethan Marcotte’s “ Responsive Web Design ”. I’m not a huge fan of frameworks, but they can come in handy at times. (See, however, my remarks regarding using media queries for mobile experiences .) … Read the rest here
How to Design a Perfect Bathroom : This post comes from Mike Davidson, who built a stunning custom home in Seattle. He documented nearly every step (including expenses tallied in the sidebar) and shares what he learned along the way, such as this advice: The most important thing about shower controls is that they should not be placed underneath the showerhead. At least 90% of showers get this wrong, probably just out of builder convenience or laziness. You should be able to step into your shower, fiddle with your knobs, wait until the temperature is right, and then hop into the spray. Consider putting your controls as far away from the showerhead as possible… Read the rest here
‘Designing Obama’ Digital Edition : Flip through the 388 pages of this digital edition and you’ll find plenty of design inspiration. Update: Not sure how I missed it (the link is right there in the header), but there’s an iPad app for the book , as well. $5 gets you 388 pages of inspiration at your fingertips. /via Kottke … Read the rest here
$0.99 Today Only: Mobile Web Design (2007) : Grab a PDF copy of my book, Mobile Web Design , for just $0.99. Offer expires at the end of today (Aug 30). View a preview on Lulu or on your iPad in the iBookstore (iBooks app), and read the reviews on Amazon . … Read the rest here
I’m about to head out on a little vacation, but I realized this Wednesday marks ten years of archives here at SimpleBits. Actually, there were a few other domains that came before simplebits.com (robotcom.com and cederholm.org). I’d actually been publishing short, frequent updates for a few years prior to 2000, either by updating a .html file by hand or using a hobbled together home-grown CMS built with PHP and Perl. Those old posts are long gone, but there’s about to be 10 years of archives still preserved here and that’s rather dumbfounding when I stop and think about it. It’s likely dumbfounding because the last 10 years also happen to have been the most eventful I’ve ever had. They’ve been both terrifying and wonderful; educational and exciting; important and enlightening. … Read the rest here
“In the same way that a movie isn’t good because it’s in color, a movie isn’t good because it’s in 3-D.” - James Cameron … Read the rest here
Design for Mobile: Chicago, September 2010 : A talented lineup of speakers assemble in Chi-Town for four full days of mobile instruction. Topics include the mobile web, iPad development, gesture design, mobiles in museums, several case studies, and more. I get no kickback from it, but please use code cameronmoll when checking out for 15% off your registration. (Excludes academic rate.) … Read the rest here
iPhone 4 GUI PSD (Retina Display) : Not sure how I missed this news (dated August 12). This is the Retina Display-ready update to the original iPhone GUI PSD by Teehan+Lax. The task was no small effort: It wasn’t a simple scale-up from the last file. It was clear as we created it that Apple has spent a lot of time considering how each element should be translated to such a dense resolution. What were single pixel elements are now two or three pixels thick and effects are exaggerated to become visible. For anyone designing for the retina display (640×960) it really is quite a different experience. … Read the rest here
Is the New Virb for Me? : An excellent write-up by Virb design extraordinaire Ryan Sims. The new Virb , which launched Monday, focuses on building an elegantly simple website for $10/month. I actually appreciate that they’ve launched with no theme previews or sites featured . … Read the rest here
Subtlety, Deconstructed : The ever-sagacious Seth Godin: Subtle design and messaging challenge the user to make her own connections instead of spelling out every detail. Connections we make are more powerful than connections made for us. If Amazon and Zappos had been called ‘reallybigbookstore.com’ and ‘tonsofshoes.com’ it might have made some early investors happy, but they would have built little of value…. It’s tempting to turn the dial all the way to 11, the make everything just a bit louder. The opposite is precisely what you might need. … Read the rest here
iPad Gripe Session : Khoi Vinh: As a gesture to invoke the Undo command, shaking a handheld device the size of an iPhone is clever and workable. Shaking a much larger device like the iPad is awkward at best and violates one infrequently violated but nevertheless important law of good user interface design: don’t force the user to look like a fool [original euphemism deleted in deference to British sensitivities] in order to use any given feature. … Read the rest here
The new Virb : Congratulations to the Virb team for relaunching as a way of building and hosting simple websites. The design and copy is beautifully executed as always. … Read the rest here
jQuery Mobile Framework : Scheduled to be released “late 2010”, this cross-platform, cross-device UI system looks really promising. The design mockups are looking fantastic, too. … Read the rest here
Tempus Fugit : Former office mate Rob Foster, describing a task management system he’s been proving for several years: Here’s where this system really diverges with the others. Those systems rely on review. You have to refer to them throughout the day as you do things. Some of them are time-based and have date-related features but still require you to go back to them to adjust the system, close things, etc. They require MANAGEMENT. … Read the rest here
Eight Principles of Information Architecture (PDF) : Not that Dan Brown , but this Dan Brown : Information architecture, a field in relative infancy and constantly rediscovering itself, does not yet have a well-established theory that drives the design of structures for websites. You can pick up two books on graphic design and see the same topics covered in each. Why is there no such agreement for books on information architecture? Indeed, information architecture has yet to normalize, and the constant new demands on our work make progress toward that goal challenging. While the industry has yet to settle on a standard theory, there are a handful of principles I keep coming back to – principles that guide my design decisions but don’t dictate a particular approach. … Read the rest here
Good vs. Great Design (Video) : Video from my presentation, “Good vs. Great Design”, at LessConf 3010. This is the first time in the four years I’ve given this presentation that video from the session has been made available. It’s lengthy. … Read the rest here
Just purchased these city set prints by Ryan Brinkerhoff after seeing their progress dribbbled . … Read the rest here