Why Creatives Are Always Confused : Bob Hoffman, CEO of Hoffman/Lewis Advertising: When their friends like it, their clients hate it. When their clients like it, their friends hate it. They are encouraged to be collaborative. But the more people touch their work, the worse it gets. They are counseled against becoming prima donnas… Read the rest here
I’ve never over-run on a talk. Ever. Usually I embarrasingly finish around 10 mins early, leaving plenty of time for questions. Until last week at Future of Web Design that is. When it came down to the last 5 minutes, I realised I had a lot more to go, and had to really hurry the last couple of sections. Thankfully the feedback so far has been positive, but I promise this will be (probably) be the last time I talk on this subject. … Read the rest here
You thought our long nightmare of PNG alpha transparency support was finally over as of IE7, didn’t you? Yeah, me too. Over the past few months I’ve been collaborating with Chris Glass on the newly-launched Joyent site. (When someone comes to you and says, hey, we have Chris Glass helping us out with this project and we’d like the two of you to work together, you jump at that chance.) I was tossing around ideas for building an interactive infographic Chris had designed, and thought of at least four different ways of pulling it off. We’re reaching this interesting point with front end web technology where we now have actual choices besides Flash for jobs like this… Read the rest here
Adobe Launches “We Love Apple” Ad Campaign : Erictric: Upon clicking the ad, the user is presented with the following open letter from Adobe’s founders: ‘At Adobe, we believe that the open flow of creativity, ideas, and information should be limited only by the imagination. Innovation thrives when people are free to choose the technologies that enable them to openly express themselves and access information where and when they want. Everyone loses when technological barriers impede the exchange of ideas….’ … Read the rest here
Photo: ©Tony Park When I last saw The National play the (now extinct) London Astoria on the Boxer tour in 2007, one person in the crowd asked for “Mr November… AGAIN !”. Such is the energy of this song live, and the presence of Matt Berninger when he belts out that he is Mr November, that you want it again and again. Last week, I saw them again at the Royal Albert Hall, and the photo above by Tony Park is from that evening’s performance of that song. In short, the sound, atmosphere, band and venue all added up to be one of the best gigs I’ve ever been to . I was utterly carried along, particularly during the chorus of new songs like Bloodbuzz Ohio… Read the rest here
I remember when I first went freelance, paying for my first software bundle. I had the choice of buying Quark Xpress 5 for a few pounds shy of a thousand (that’s a complacent monopoly for you), or I could get Acrobat, Photoshop, InDesign and Illustrator for just £600. It was a no brainer to leave what was the leading print design app of the day, that I’d used for all my career so far, and go for the plucky youngster that was InDesign. Back then, Adobe felt like the good guys. Nowadays they feel more like the Quark Xpress. Another weighty CS upgrade is upon us, and I was keen to see if there were improvements. … Read the rest here
Jason Santa Maria Go to the source
I’m very pleased to present A Book Apart , a new publisher of brief books for people who make websites, founded by Jeffrey Zeldman , Mandy Brown , and myself. Our first book is HTML5 For Web Designers , by the indomitable Jeremy Keith . If you’re already getting your feet wet with HTML5, or just trying to figure out what the hell it’s all about, you’ll want this one. I’ve read it three times and love how approachable it is. You can read more from Jeffrey about how we chose our first title , or from Mandy on how A Book Apart works as a publisher . … Read the rest here
A few months ago 37signals redesigned Basecamp ’s notification emails, and the result was a move from plain-text emails to HTML emails. For reference, these emails are sent when someone posts or replies to any of the content types in the system (messages, to-dos, etc). I’m generally opposed to receiving HTML emails if a plain-text alternate is available. I use email as a tool to send and receive communication, and too often some creators of HTML email offer visual noise more than anything else. Ironically, they fail to leverage one advantage HTML email has over plain-text email: visual hierarchy, or the ability to help the reader get the right message using color, proportion, and so forth. Visual hierarchy, the classification of elements according to importance and relationship to other elements, tends to be one of the most ignored and underutilized principles of design. … Read the rest here
We Have Met the Enemy and He Is PowerPoint : There are so many quotable lines in this New York Times story I could very well copy and paste the entire thing here. Instead, a few gems, beginning with this one: ‘PowerPoint makes us stupid,’ Gen. James N. Mattis of the Marine Corps, the Joint Forces commander, said this month at a military conference in North Carolina. … Read the rest here
Forcing HTML5 ‘details’ Support Using jQuery : The details element, as explained by the W3C , is designed to be a “disclosure widget from which the user can obtain additional information or controls.” Think of the +/- control in Windows or the right/down arrows in Mac OS. (Check the demo page and you’ll see what I mean.) This script by Mathias Bynens allows you to use the element with jQuery forcing support for those browsers that don’t yet natively support details . According to Mathias, currently no browsers natively support the element. … Read the rest here
New HTML5 Form Field Type: range : Amidst all the HTML5 buzz over the past year, somehow I missed this: HTML5 offers a new input field type, type=”range” , which renders a UI slider for entering data anywhere between the min and max values you specify. This feature could become as useful as CSS multiple backgrounds, in that a) it’s long overdue and b) we’re already faking it all over the web. The HTML5 presentation from which this slide was taken, by the way, is wonderful. It’s an interactive teaching tool on the subject of HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript APIs. Slide 41 is really wild—press 3, then arrow left or right. Update: I failed to mention these slides are best viewed with a browser that already supports these features, i.e… Read the rest here
The New CS5 Branding : Veerle Pieters, with input and samples from Shawn Cheris, lead designer for Adobe’s Desktop Brand team. /via Paul Mayne … Read the rest here
Last week I put together an animated infographic that required some flexibility. Alpha transparency was essential, but the number of images I needed to pull it off meant that my typical way of creating PNGs wasn’t going to work. Let’s be honest; Photoshop is absolutely terrible at saving transparent PNGs for web use. Your choices are between an 8-bit with 1-bit transparency (better than a GIF in terms of file size, but no better in terms of transparency options) or a huge 32-bit PNG with alpha transparency. There’s no middle ground. … Read the rest here
Library of Congress to House Your Tweets : Kent German, writing for CNET’s Crave Gadget Blog: The Library of Congress announced today —via Twitter, no less—that is acquiring the Twitter’s entire archive through donation…. Though the whole idea may sound bizarre, the Library already holds more than 167 terabytes of Web-based information, including legal blogs and Web sites for political candidates and current lawmakers. We all best write a little more carefully, I suppose. … Read the rest here
iPad for Filmmaking, Specifically Screenplays : Stu Maschwitz, filmmaker and “accidental technologist”: First and foremost, I hoped that I would enjoy reading screenplays on my iPad, and I am happy to report that I do, very much. I read a ton of screenplays, many in PDF format. I hate reading them on my computer screen, especially my laptop. Not because of the backlit screen, but because of the psychological association I have with my computers. They are devices for doing work. They are a constant and cacophonous source of distraction… Read the rest here
What the iPad is Missing: Good Typography : Stephen Coles, FontShop’s self-described “Glyph Pusher” (and boy does he know glyphs): Apple has made some puzzling decisions over the last few years that leave one wondering if they really care about typography as much as they did in the 1980s when the Mac launched the desktop publishing revolution. As recently as 2005, Steve Jobs made typography a central theme of his commencement address to Stanford grads, but his actions as the almighty head of Apple haven’t followed suit. Sadly, I have to agree with Stephen’s thoughts. The Winnie the Pooh book that comes with iBooks is a shining (i.e. dull) example of illegible type. … Read the rest here
Here’s some fun. (For a sufficiently nerdy definition of “fun”.) Launch Safari 4 or Chrome 4. Drag Videotate to the bookmarks bar. Go opt into the YouTube HTML5 beta . Find your favorite YouTube video. … Read the rest here
Screw the Web : Faruk Ateş, adding fuel to the web vs. app debate: So screw the Web, for it is too limiting for us creators—be we designer or developer or content writer or otherwise—to build things that inspire and instill a sense of wonder in its audience. We should be thrilled by the iPad (and the new breed of similar devices soon to follow), because it offers us a chance to break free from our DOM-driven chains and CSS hackery and actually use a platform that’s designed from the ground up to deliver amazing user experiences. … Read the rest here
Today kicks off a series of contests that will be announced here throughout this week. Each day you’ll see a new contest, aimed at helping promote the Colosseo letterpress poster and, in return, providing you a chance to win one of a few prizes. Contest #1: Win an iPad 16GB Wi-Fi + 3G This first contest is pretty simple. To have a shot at winning an iPad 16GB with Wi-Fi + 3G (valued at $629 USD), do either of the following: If you’ve already purchased one of my Colosseo posters, you’re already entered to win. … Read the rest here
Mobile Roadie Seeks Objective-C Enginner : Since we’re on the topic of Objective-C, you might be interested in this full-time position in Beverly Hills, California. Mobile Roadie , “an award winning platform that lets anyone create an iPhone or Android App in minutes and manage it via a CMS,” needs an Objective-C Engineer to help craft its iPhone and iPad apps. … Read the rest here
