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
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
Jason Santa Maria Go to the source
My first time speaking professionally in public was back in 2005 at the first An Event Apart in Philadelphia. While not my first time speaking in front of a big audience, it was the first time I had to prepare a slide deck and use Keynote. Before and after view of a slide deck. On the left, you can see the bright red used to slides that need work, as well as black and grey for title slides, and blue for quotations. Two basic rules: simple and big When I use images, I almost always use them full screen and free of distraction. Keep your title slides to a few words, then speak through the rest of the story… Read the rest here
I mentioned in my previous post that I “had come away with my head reeling from the massive length and depth of the often-changing specification”, which is entirely true. Printouts of the current draft of the HTML5 spec can reach, depending on your operating system and installed fonts, somewhere north of 900 pages. Yes: nine hundred . There are unabridged Stephen King novels that run shorter. You might well say to yourself: “Self, is it just me, or are the people doing this completely off their everlovin’ rockers… Read the rest here
While it’s been a fairly quiet summer around these parts, that doesn’t necessarily mean I’ve been slacking off. Let’s run down the list. New Chalkwork Icons & Search Back in June while sitting around recovering from some minor surgery, I spent a weekend producing a new free icon set for payments and ecommerce called, naturally, Chalkwork Payments . It highlighted a fairly obvious deficiency in the collection, so immediately after I set to work on a much larger commerce set. Creatively named Chalkwork Commerce of course. Due to the growing size of the overall icon family (2500+ now), I decided a better way to find a specific icon was in order. … Read the rest here
After posting my reasons for switching back to px for font-size citing page zooming as the primary justification, it was apparent that enthusiasm for page zooming wasn’t as unanimous as I had thought. As a refresher from the article, low-vision users (or anyone) can alter their browser’s text size by changing the default text size permanently via the browser’s settings, or on-the-fly using the keyboard commands Ctrl+ / - (Windows) or Command+ / - (Mac). Until recently, these commands would cause all major browsers to scale up or down the size of the text while retaining the formatting and layout of the page, commonly called text scaling or text zooming . Now, however, recent versions of every major browser now default to page zooming instead of text scaling for Ctrl+ / - and Command+ / - commands AND for the “Zoom” option in the browser’s menu. … Read the rest here
Jason Santa Maria Go to the source
The rule of thirds and ratios such as the golden section are fantastic methods for achieving designs that feel cohesive. The problem is these principles don’t really apply to web design. Golden Ratio: When the ratio between two numbers is the same as the ratio of the sum of those numbers and the larger number. Basically, a+b is to a as a is to b . Also referred to as the “divine proportion” from its frequent occurrence in nature. … Read the rest here
When I was in Japan last year, I noticed that most advertisements don’t mention URLs . Instead, they simply show what to search for. The practice seems to be gaining ground over here too. Advertising for the government’s Act on CO 2 campaign didn’t include a URL—just an entreaty to search for the phrase. The current television advertising for the latest Dyson vacuum cleaner finishes with the message to search for “dyson ball.” Sure enough, the number one search result goes straight to the Dyson website …for now. That might change if Google were to implement any kind of smart synonym swapping. … Read the rest here
Ah, blogging: the new long-form Tweet. This morning I said : retraining myself not to /> close img, input, and meta tags. It’s an uphill battle. Which received an instant string of responses asking, in a nutshell, “why?” So I clarified : because I’m done with XHTML is why. … Read the rest here
There’s something about the Diggbroglio that has left me scratching my head: how is it that so many people are up in arms about the DiggBar when they’ve had nothing to say about the framing bars of StumbleUpon, FaceBook, etc. etc.? Now, please note that I’m not saying the DiggBar, or any other framing bar, is cool and we should all love it. I’m not. I absolutely, completely, totally get all the reasons why framing bars are bad for breaking bookmarking and navigating and search engines and copyright and hijacking content and so on. … Read the rest here
Thanks to a tweet from Jason Santa Maria a few weeks ago (and his help since), I was pointed to Cufón , which “aims to become a worthy alternative to sIFR, which despite its merits still remains painfully tricky to set up and use.” I’ll refer to these tests again in a minute, but feel free to jump ahead to these Cufón test pages that I’ve put together. sIFR , as many of you are aware, is a means of replacing “short passages of plain browser text with text rendered in your typeface of choice, regardless of whether or not your users have that font installed on their systems” using a combination of Flash and JavaScript. Shaun Inman , Mark Wubben , Mike Davidson , and several others put in many long hours developing and refining IFR and sIFR, and we all owe them our gratitude for moving forward in a big way the state of typography on the web. These efforts continue today, as evidenced by this Web Typography mini-site from a SXSW 2009 panel. For many of us, however, the Flash part of these technologies makes it difficult to set up and use… Read the rest here
Thanks to a tweet from Jason Santa Maria a few weeks ago (and his help since), I was pointed to Cufón , which “aims to become a worthy alternative to sIFR, which despite its merits still remains painfully tricky to set up and use.” I’ll refer to these tests again in a minute, but feel free to jump ahead to these Cufón test pages that I’ve put together. sIFR , as many of you are aware, is a means of replacing “short passages of plain browser text with text rendered in your typeface of choice, regardless of whether or not your users have that font installed on their systems” using a combination of Flash and JavaScript. Shaun Inman , Mark Wubben , Mike Davidson , and several others put in many long hours developing and refining IFR and sIFR, and we all owe them our gratitude for moving forward in a big way the state of typography on the web. These efforts continue today, as evidenced by this Web Typography mini-site from a SXSW 2009 panel. For many of us, however, the Flash part of these technologies makes it difficult to set up and use. (I personally have not opened Flash on my computer in literally 4 years, and I hope to keep that run alive.) Cufón, on the other hand, can be set up and run on your site in about 5 minutes. … Read the rest here
The current issue of A List Apart is the proud bearer of a superb article by Ethan called Fluid Grids . If the title isn’t enough of a hint, it’s all about grids …wot are fluid. It’s an excellent tutorial. I’ve made no secret of my love for a good liquid layout and Ethan’s article is a great resource for anyone brave enough to take up the challenge. … Read the rest here
Design Melt Down Go to the source
Nostalgic designs can take on many forms. Sometimes through classic typography. Sometimes through the visual language of an era like retro pop 1950’s elements. In this case the color combo forces such an appeal onto the design. Combine this with other classic elements and you have a recipe for success…. Read the rest here
(This is part of the Feedback on ‘WaSP Community CSS3 Feedback 2008′ series.) Not surprisingly, there was a lot of community feedback asking for better layout mechanisms . Actually, people were asking for any decent layout mechanism at all, which CSS has historically lacked. Floats mostly work, but they’re a hack and can be annoyingly fragile even when you ignore old-browser bugs. Positioning works in limited cases, but does not handle web-oriented layout at all well. Why do we use floats for layout, anyway? clear . … Read the rest here
The traditional approach to product development involves coming up with new idea and then driving as many people towards that product as possible, in the hope that some of them will want it. As such we adopt the language of marketing, and talk about marketing funnels and conversion rates. If our marketing department has done a good job they will have created a campaign that not only generates traffic, but creates a previously unrecognised need. Tired? Need a break? Why not have a KitKat? … Read the rest here
As soon as I mentioned I’d ordered one of these, I’ve had a lot of interested people quiz me about it, so it seems a review is in order! Apologies for the use of press photos here, as the ones I’d taken (and the video) were rubbish – I’ll hopefully post decent ones in the next few days. Quick recap: The WD TV is a device for playing your non- DRM media (Movies, Music and Photos) through your TV (via HDMI or Composite) with audio out via toslink if you prefer. There is no internal HD, you simple plug in up to 2 USB drives, making it easily expandable. It intrigued me for 2 reasons: cost and size. … Read the rest here
The new Gregorian year has brought a striking new Big Z design to An Event Apart , along with the detailed schedule for our first show and the opening of registration for all four shows of the year. Jeffrey has written a bit about the thinking that went into the design already, and I expect more to come. If you want all the juicy details, he’ll be talking about it at AEA, as a glance at the top of the Seattle schedule will tell you. And right after that? An hour of me talking about coding the design he created… Read the rest here
As one who works at an organization with nearly 3 dozen designers and websites and apps that also number several dozen, I feel comfortable admitting that the goal of striving for and maintaining visual consistency is often an elusive one. Chris Pullman, Vice President for Design at the much respected TV station WGBH, has stepped down following 35 years of service. Upon leaving, he shared ten lessons he’s learned over the years and gave Design Observer the privilege of publishing his remarks in full . The entire article is worth a read, but #7, “Variety is the spice of life”, is of particular interest to someone such as myself seeking a somewhat elusive goal. It’s worth excerpting in full. … Read the rest here
