A hard copy of Jeremy Keith ’s HTML5 For Web Designers arrived in the mail today. It’s wonderful to finally see how well-designed it is as a physical object. Most importantly, it’s the clear explanation of a confusing subject that’s made this little book a must-read. … Read the rest here
Is CSS the New Photoshop? : John Nack, Photoshop’s principal product manager: As people can do more and more in code, it makes sense to ask whether even to use Photoshop in designing Web content. I think Adobe should be freaking out a bit, but in a constructive way…. As for Photoshop, we could either teach the app to speak HTML natively (via live HTML layers ), or we could translate Photoshop-native artwork into HTML (e.g. ‘copy this button/text as HTML/CSS’). It’s not yet clear to me, however, how such code would smoothly integrate into one’s projects… Read the rest here
Inc. Magazine: How to Design and Build a Mobile Website : In which myself and several others offer advice to those diving into mobile. … Read the rest here
Fracture Custom Glass Printing : This is a unique idea: Print your photos on a sheet of glass, ready for mounting. I found out about Fracture’s service through their listing on Authentic Jobs for Web Developer / Visionary / User Interface Guru / Design Master . Pricing is affordable, from $8 for a 5”x7” print up to $25 for 11”x14”. And they’re located just a few hours away in Gainesville, Florida to boot. … Read the rest here
The Scent of Search : Essentially a list of recommendations for searchbox, search results, and query refinement design and layout, this should be unsurprising reading for anyone experienced in designing for search. Nonetheless, it’s a good overview blended with links to related resources. … Read the rest here
I’ve finally been through the entire site, and kicked out any legacy stuff (some of which went back to 2003!) and implemented the new responsive design. Originally, I’d intended to change the layout in the various sections, but in the end I’ve used the same one. After trying the other options, it just felt right. Wallpapers One of things I’ve changed is a new Goodies section. With the exception of the Hill House font (download link now works!), everything is new, including brand new desktop and iphone(4)/mobile wallpapers. Icon Reference Chart Another new goodie is a little labour of love: The Icon Reference Chart . … Read the rest here
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Firefox Home for iPhone : Mozilla has submitted its first app to the App Store, and it’s a “lite” version of their Firefox browser. The entire premise seems to be built on picking up where you left off on your desktop PC. While a nice idea (and one possibly forced by Apple policy), it ignores the context of mobility — something I repeatedly hammered on in Mobile Web Design and something that still holds true today. Frankly, I don’t see my phone’s browser as an extension of my desktop browser. I wouldn’t place any bets on this app doing remarkably well. … Read the rest here
FontShop Educational PDFs : Each of these PDFs are brief but packed with plenty of examples. And they’re free. (Skip to the “ Download all Educational materials ” link at bottom.) /via Brian Hoff … Read the rest here
Tapworthy Book: Designing Great iPhone Apps : Josh Clark’s Tapworthy is now available from O’Reilly Books: Tapworthy takes you from concept to polished interface design with plain-spoken principles and a rich collection of visual examples for designing exceptional interfaces for the iPhone and iPod Touch. The ebook version, which is available in the ePub, mobi (Kindle), Android, and PDF formats, is on sale for $9.99 today only (normally $31.99). Use code DDTAP. The print version is also available on Amazon . … Read the rest here
One of Textpattern’s drawbacks has always been that page templates are saved in the database. Editing them means using the textarea in the TXP admin interface, but I’m sure most people would prefer to use their favourite text editor. Here’s a workaround that works in TXP 4.2.0 (I haven’t tried other versions). Once you’ve enabled ‘Allow PHP in pages?’ in Advanced Preferences and set up your sections and page templates, put everything in your page template into a file (such as ‘pagetemplate.php’), and replace it with a PHP include: <txp:php>$docRoot = getenv("DOCUMENT_ROOT");include($docRoot.'/pagetemplate.php');</txp:php> You still need to setup your templates in TXP admin, but from there on in, you can edit the templates in a text editor and upload them. There may be a performance hit doing this, but all TXP tags work. Much easier! Update : Thanks to Sam Brown for this much neater version: <txp:php>include(txpath.'/pages/default.php');</txp:php> This is much shorter, but be aware that the ‘txpath’ value takes you to the textpattern folder rather than the site root… Read the rest here
With the iPad and iPhone 4, there are as many, if not more, different size icons to create for iOS than there are for desktop apps. While there are plenty of templates and reference sheets for Photoshop users (see Cocoia ) I prefer to use Illustrator CS5 to create mine. So I’ve made my own template, and it’s available here if you find it useful too! Download the iOS icon template for Illustrator CS5 The top layer of the file contains labels and a mask to add the rounded corners of the icon. Don’t forget to hide these before you export. Corner Radius Something that Apple doesn’t include in it’s documentation are the various corner radius dimensions for all the icon sizes… Read the rest here
Fruit Memory for iPad : A fun and well-designed memory game for kids by good friend Paul Mayne. … Read the rest here
Locate a Web Design Conference : Not complete, but a pretty long list. … Read the rest here
Microsoft Calling. Anyone There? : Ashlee Vance, reporting for The New York Times: Stylish designs, an emphasis on flashy social-networking features and an all-out marketing blitz were meant to prove that Microsoft could build the right product at the right time for the finickiest customers — gossiping youngsters with gadget skills. But last week, less than two months after the Kins arrived in stores, Microsoft said it would kill the products. Explicitly marketing something as “hip” to the hipster crowd rarely works, even less so coming from a company with a string of failures in that area (Xbox being the one exception). But it’s more than just marketing. … Read the rest here
Springfield Punx have been doing a series of Simpsons-ised characters from Season 5! I’ve also got a soft spot for his Steve Zissou … Comment on this … Read the rest here
Booth is a beautiful annual poetry magazine (and weekly blog) published by Butler University in Indianapolis. To my surprise and delight, this years edition, which came out in May, featured Daniels Daily Monsters ! First, check out the gorgeous cover, which was part-inspiration for the little illustrations I’m doing on the site: The first page of the article featured the Monster that Leigh drew: And the accompanying spread shows not only my monsters, but also 2 that Samantha drew as well. The whole family got published! Tagged: danielsmonsters , press , published … Read the rest here
Like many others before me, I’ve moved the weblog portion of SimpleBits over here to Tumblr . I did this for many reasons. I like that there’s one f!@#$ing template. That’s it. I don’t miss comments… Read the rest here
I recently undertook a refresh of the Shopify shopping bag logo. An interesting one for me, as the concept was already in place, it just needed a rendering clean up, sort out the perspective and make it more dynamic. Here’s a side by side, old and new: Sketches of initial ideas, looking for the right perspective: Followed by early ‘vector roughs’, getting the shape and colours mocked up (the idea of making the bag handles form a cutesy smile was shelved early on!): Final Artwork with green and black/white variations: Tagged: logos , work … Read the rest here
Brooklyn Beta : Coming to Brooklyn in October, this is a new conference brought to you by Analog & Fictive Kin . I’m thrilled to be a part of it because a) I’ve never visited New York (I know!) and b) I’ll be sharing some stuff I’ve not shared before. No Good vs. Great Design this time around. … Read the rest here