Webdesigninformer.com

Hicksdesign Go to the source

As I’ve said before, the quality of the acting in new Doctor Who has often gone some way to disguise the lack of a decent story. In particular, David Tennant’s swansong “The End of Time” was a big confused mess of abandoned plots and ‘reset buttons’, but it shone whenever there was one to one dialogue. It wasn’t a satisfactory end to his reign by any means. It’s not as if Russell T Davies can’t write good Who stories – ‘Gridlock’ and ‘Midnight’ show us he jolly well can – he justs gets a bit overexcited when it’s finale time. It’s like a Royal Variety Performance, Who style… Read the rest here

Cameron Moll Go to the source

We’ve added a third job type to Authentic Jobs , specifically for contract positions. You can read more about the hows and whys over at the Authentic Jobs blog . I’m repeating the screencast video here merely to give me a chance to talk about the making of it. Surprisingly, this is only the second screencast I’ve done throughout 11 years of doing web stuff. I’ve still got plenty to learn… Read the rest here

SimpleBits Go to the source

I’m pleased to announce Ethan and I are bringing the Handcrafted CSS workshop to Nashville ! We’ll reprise of the one-day course we organized last September here in Salem, Massachusetts and again last November in London with Carsonified . As always, each attendee will get a copy of the book ( Handcrafted CSS: Video Edition including the DVD ) and we’ll spend the day walking through much of its content and more. This event was a great success in New England and Old England, and we’re thrilled to bring it south, to Tennessee. So join us on June 21st at the historic Hermitage Hotel right smack in downtown Nashville (steps away from the famed Ryman Auditorium and other sights). For more info on the event and to book a place (there’s a max of 100 spots), visit the Handcrafted CSS Workshop site . … Read the rest here

Snook Go to the source

Leave it to PPK to come out with a bold statement like, " CSS vendor prefixes considered harmful ". Moreso, It’s time to abolish all vendor prefixes. They’ve become solutions for which there is no problem, and they are actively harming web standards. The problem is that they are necessary. Look at Safari’s implementation of border-radius compared to the rest. I still can’t remember if it’s border-radius-topleft or border-top-left-radius . … Read the rest here

Cameron Moll Go to the source

I’ll confess: Every year, I’m one of those guys that gripes about SXSWi being too big, about the content being poor, and about the assumption that this year is finally the peak year and things will die off next year. Well, this year, I was pleasantly mistaken. I’ve attended and spoken at a number of web conferences here in the U.S. and abroad. Not quite enough to conclusively state the following with 100% certainty, but pretty close: There’s simply no other web conference like SXSW on the planet. Undeniably, there’s an atmosphere of excitement that surrounds SXSW that’s hard to find anywhere else. … Read the rest here

Cameron Moll Go to the source

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

Cameron Moll Go to the source

QR Codes on Badges at SXSW : Although QR codes (also called matrix or 2D codes) have never really taken off here in the U.S., this will be fun to try out at SXSW: Along with your badge photo, you will have a square bar code to scan. When you meet someone at an event, let them scan your badge with their smart phone, and they will automatically be following you on my.SXSW, where they can message you or access your contact information. … Read the rest here

Andy Budd Go to the source

5 Years ago somebody wrote something stupid on the Internet that annoyed a bunch of bloggers enough to write about it, including myself. Yesterday I received a contrite email from this person saying that the incident had ruined their life and asking if I’d remove the post. It turns out that my blog post ranked in the top 20 results for this guys name and he was wondering if I’d remove the article. I considered it, as to be honest I’d completely forgotten about the event (as had most people 2 weeks after it happen) and I didn’t really care that much anyway. However it got me thinking about two different things. On the one hand, the Internet can freeze youthful folly and a small transgressions can stick with you for life. … Read the rest here

Eric Meyer Go to the source

I’m a bad conference organizer. Why? Because we opened the An Event Apart 2010 schedule for sales back in, um, flippin’ November , and I never mentioned it here. Cripes, I never even posted when we announced the lineup of cities. I could go through the great big long sob-story list of reasons why 2009 was really tough and blah blah blah, but when you get right down to it, I fell down on my job. Okay… Read the rest here

Andy Budd Go to the source

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

Andy Budd Go to the source

The concept of ‘Pull Marketing’ is all the rage at the moment. In the age of the Mad Men, selling a new product was easy. You’d be handed a commodity product like toothpaste or washing powder and set about building a brand to set it apart from the competition. You would then buy advertising space on a small number of influential marketing channels and wait for the sales to roll in. … Read the rest here

Andy Budd Go to the source

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

Andy Budd Go to the source

As a self confirmed conference junkie I speak at a dozen events each year, and attend many more. As such I’ve probably seen close to a thousand talks over the last five years. Because of this I’ve got a pretty good idea what makes for an exciting talk and how you can guarantee your session will suck. As somebody who also organises two conferences, UX London and dConstruct I’m really keen on getting new talent into the speaking circuit while still maintaining quality. As such I’ve put together a quick guide to help both new and experienced speakers kick arse/ass. … Read the rest here

Andy Budd Go to the source

A couple of weeks ago Wired Sussex invited me to a debate on the standard of design education in the UK. Being a topic incredibly close to my heart I literally jumped at the chance to participate. In order to create a sense of drama, the event pitted three designers against three educators in a heated and passionate discussion on the quality of design education in our industry. I started by citing the recent ALA survey which showed that only half of the people polled felt that education was relevant to their work. For such a highly skilled profession, this is pretty shocking. However it’s understandable when you consider that most mid-to-senior level practitioners don’t hold a relevant degree as such things didn’t exist when they entered the profession. … Read the rest here

Snook Go to the source

While at the Fronteers conference watching Thomas Fuchs go through his slides, a keen member of the audience noticed his use of bitwise negation and asked what it was for. Understandable, as there is so rarely a time where bitwise operators seem necessary. It did, however, remind me of a project that I worked on where I ended up using bitwise operators quite heavily in one particular chunk of code. It’s a solution that I’m quite particular fond of. … Read the rest here

SimpleBits Go to the source

Ten years ago, two of my biggest fears were: flying and public speaking. I’ve done enough of both (usually combined) over the last several years to where I’m now OK with either. At times even comfortable with it. I’ll probably always get nervous right before a talk — but the anxiety has shifted from, “crap, how am I going to get through this” to, “I want this to be good . I don’t want to let anyone down”. With that confession out of the way, the next year is filling up with some great events, and I thought I’d list them here: Future of Web Design NYC — November 17th, 2009. … Read the rest here

SimpleBits Go to the source

Well, after 6+ years on an ancient and highly customized install of Movable Type 3.15, and 4+ years on various homegrown CMS solutions, I’ve finally upgraded the guts of this site. I chose WordPress. Sure, there are several other excellent options out there to power the blogs of 2010 and beyond, but the familarity of WP, its plugins, pricetag and other factors all fed into the decision. Plus, I told Matt in the halls of SWSW in 2003 that I’d try his little weblog project. … Read the rest here

Hicksdesign Go to the source

Marshall Alexander creates wonderful one-piece paper toys, available as free PDF downloads for you to make, including the Max figure (right) having a wild rumpus! Growing up in the seventies and eighties, my personal work is heavily inspired by retro design, videogames, movies, bright plastic toys and TV cartoons. Most of this work can be downloaded for free from my site. So get your knives and glue out, download some of the models and start building. Enjoy! Comment on this … Read the rest here

Jason Santa Maria Go to the source

by Mandy Brown I remember the candy cigarettes most fondly, not because they tasted better, but because they were grown-up. Sticks of white sugar rested neatly in packaging that could have passed for the real thing. I could hold a candy cigarette between my fingers and perch on the curb—my too-long legs in front of me—and the driver in the passing car would open his eyes wide; I was seven going on seventeen. It wasn’t long before candy cigarettes vanished from the aisles, sent off to the same warehouse where the toy-guns-that-looked-too-real went. They were too obvious a sign of our parents’ addictions, too easy a target for their guilt. And yet I’ve barely smoked a day in my life… Read the rest here

Snook Go to the source

In case you hadn’t noticed the lovely titles on this page, they’re League Gothic . Well, they should be if you happen to be using the latest version of Firefox, Safari, or Internet Explorer. However, it took much trial and error to figure out exactly how to get there. There are a number of pieces to the puzzle but in the end, I got something to work. The assumption here is that you are on a Mac (as I am) but I believe these tools work the same on PC… Read the rest here