It was a hot Summer Sunday afternoon. I’d just stepped off the Acela Express from Boston to New York City, and I was confused as ever about HTML5 . I thought I was alone. Impossible in mid-town Manhatt— no, alone in being confused about the next chapter of markup specifications. … Read the rest here
A compilation of resources, products, and inspiration spotted before, after, but not during knee surgery. Los Angeles Times gets a makeover A rather nice overhaul of the latimes.com site. (Here’s what it looked like in February 2008 .) Oliver Kavanagh A rather audacious, springboard-style home page that leaves me wanting to try something similar. DIY ring light with LEDs …and other DIY camera mods using LEDs. The 6 brand naming styles Josh Levine: The 6 naming styles add context so you can see the full landscape of choices… Read the rest here
Jason Santa Maria Go to the source
As you’ve probably noticed, I’ve been taking a bit of a break lately. But there’s some exciting stuff coming up in the not too distant future. Excuses, Excuses Despite the temptations of ever-warming weather, I had to throw most of my free time towards a new presentation for An Event Apart and @media last week, and on a gameplan for teaching in the fall. Well, that and sometimes I just don’t have much of anything to say. Rather than drop posts on here that I don’t care about, I decided to take a few weeks away from this site to recharge. … Read the rest here
Last week I had the pleasure of attending @media 2009 in London, where it has to be said, I had the best conference experience I’ve had for a long time. I prefer the more cosy nature of the event – a single track, not too large and overwhelming quantity of people, and simply great talks. I can’t pick one favourite presentation, as I came away feeling really inspired and energised by everything. It was also the last @media curated by Patrick Griffiths, who is moving on to follow other passions (from next year the conference will be in the able hands of the Web Directions Team ). I want to take this opportunity to thank Patrick for encouraging me to talk, and giving the best possible environment to do it in. … Read the rest here
The first day of An Event Apart is wrapping up here in Boston. Dan is delivering his talk Implementing Design: Bulletproof A-Z which I’ve already liveblogged from a previous event so I can give my fingers a bit of rest now. The liveblogging was kind of fun. By keeping myself busy, I was able to stop myself from getting too nervous about my own talk. I’m so glad it’s over and done with now. … Read the rest here
If you’ve not yet signed up for next month’s HOW Design Conference in Austin, Texas, now is the time to do so. The conference organizers have been gracious enough to allow me to publicly post the handout that will be provided in my session, “Good vs. Great Design”. This 10-page summary of my presentation is something I’ve been hoping to compile for quite some time now, and HOW has finally provided the impetus for making it happen. Download good-vs-great.pdf (PDF, 588 KB) Highlights from other sessions and speakers include: Print to Web Breakthrough The Secret of Project Management for In-House Designers Keeping Creative Control with Difficult Clients Communicating Up, Down and All Around the Organization 10 Things You Didn’t Know Fonts Could Do Craft + Activism = Craftivism Studio tours (frog design, Olive Interactive Design & Marketing, others) for pre-conference attendees DJ Stout (Pentagram), Thomas Phinney (Adobe), Cynthia Rapp (Cartoon Network), Lia Braaten Hager (Proctor & Gamble), and nearly 50 other speakers Hope to see you there. … Read the rest here
When CSS animations were first introduced in Webkit back in 2007, I expressed my concerns that CSS may not be the best place for it . Sound cool? I don’t think so. Not only does it make CSS more complicated, it makes JavaScript more complicated, too. Having actually taken some time to implement CSS animations in an example , a light bulb clicked. The way I looked at how animations were declared and in what situations you would declare them suddenly changed. … 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
I’m back from spending a weekend in Cornwall at the inaugural Bamboo Juice conference , held in the inspiring surroundings of the Eden Project . I opened up proceedings with a talk entitled All Our Yesterdays . I know it’s the title of a Star Trek episode, but I actually had Shakespeare in mind: To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Usually my presentations follow a linear narrative but this was a rambling, self-indulgent affair. So I used a non-linear presentation tool this time; the Flash-based Prezi . You can view the presentation at prezi.com/35967 . … Read the rest here
I recently received a wireframe from a potential client outlining their plans for a new homepage, which in itself was pretty impressive. It showed that the client had knowledge of the industry as well as a good understanding about the importance of planning. To produce this wireframe our prospective client had used a relatively new tool called Balsamiq, which aims to capture the sketchy nature of hand drawn wireframes with the utility of a GUI application. On the surface this seems like a really good idea and it obviously allowed the client to produce something relatively quickly with little or no prior experience. As such, I think a tool like Balsamiq does have a place in the non-professional market… Read the rest here
Jason Santa Maria Go to the source
Last Friday I played in Coudal Partner’s Layer Tennis in a east coast vs west coast brawl with Derek Powazek , a friend and one of my favorite web designers. I thought it might be fun to give some background on the match. The view from my desk during the match. For those uninitiated with Layer Tennis, the premise is simple: two players trade a Photoshop document back and forth, each player has 15 minutes to iterate on the previous “volley” however they see fit. The matches are played live on Friday afternoons, and people follow along and comment via Twitter… Read the rest here
Jason Santa Maria Go to the source
Last Friday I played in Coudal Partner’s Layer Tennis in a east coast vs west coast brawl with Derek Powazek , a friend and one of my favorite web designers. I thought it might be fun to give some background on the match. The view from my desk during the match. For those uninitiated with Layer Tennis, the premise is simple: two players trade a Photoshop document back and forth, each player has 15 minutes to iterate on the previous “volley” however they see fit. … Read the rest here
As you’re no doubts aware I’m an unabashed conference junky, so it will come as no surprise to you that I’ve spent the last couple of weeks in the States attending three such events. First up was ETech, the emerging technology conference from O’R eily. Moved from it’s spiritual home in San Diego, this year it was help in the Chino wearing capitol of Silicon Valley, San Jose. The event was much smaller than last year and the tone was somewhat downbeat. However I don’t think this was necessarily down to the economy as a lot of people were speculating. … Read the rest here
Each year, hundreds of assorted geeks will get the chance to speak on a panel at SXSW, many for the first time. I’ve witnesses some truly inspiring and thought provoking sessions at SXSW. However I’ve also had to sit through my share of turkeys, from the mind numbingly boring to the painfully embarrassing. So here are my top 9 ways to stop your panel sucking. Keep your introductions short and sweet… Read the rest here
(This is part of the Feedback on ‘WaSP Community CSS3 Feedback 2008′ series.) The portion of the feedback devoted to shapes had two overarching themes, as I saw it. That makes this entry a bit short, but when I tried to combine it with my feedback on “ Graphical Effects “, it quickly got too long. So, a little amuse cerveau , as it were. Animations, transformations, and so on — the WebKit team have of course been having a field day in this area, and what they’ve done will likely make is way to other browsers. Or not. I don’t know. … Read the rest here
View from on stage as I’m preparing to speak at An Event Apart New Orleans 2008. I’ll be straight up with you: I don’t profess to be an expert speaker. I’ve had my share of presentations that have been total flops, along with some very successful ones. But if anything, I’ve done quite a bit of speaking over the past four years (see the summary on my LinkedIn public profile ), and therefore I’ve learned a few things about speaking along the way. Below are 20 things I’ve learned. Though this list is geared towards one-hour sessions rather than panels and workshops, some of the same principles apply… Read the rest here
Recently I’ve seen a considerable amount of press on blogs and such regarding HTML 5, “the 5th major revision of the core language of the World Wide Web” (W3C). I have virtually no experience (yet) with HTML 5, so as I jump on the bandwagon and begin familiarizing myself with it, I thought I’d share some of the resources I’m reading along the way. So far from what I’m learning, the consensus among several of these articles seems to be this: The world isn’t ready for HTML 5 at large just yet, but we can begin preparing for it by using common, semantic selector names ( header , nav , section , etc.) — or even new attribute names — derived from HTML 5 within our HTML 4.01 or XHTML 1.x documents. This is by no means an exhaustive list, just a start. In each of these you’ll find other resources to help you dig deeper. … Read the rest here
Four months after the curtain went down on dConstruct 2008 , the final episode of the podcast of the conference has just been published. It’s the audio recording of my talk The System Of The World . I’m very happy indeed with how the talk turned out: dense and pretentious …but in a good way, I hope. It’s certainly my favourite from the presentations I have hitherto delivered. Feel free to: listen to the recording of The System Of The World , read the hypertext document The System Of The World or look through the slides on Slideshare … Read the rest here
Four months after the curtain went down on dConstruct 2008 , the final episode of the podcast of the conference has just been published. It’s the audio recording of my talk The System Of The World . I’m very happy indeed with how the talk turned out: dense and pretentious …but in a good way, I hope. It’s certainly my favourite from the presentations I have hitherto delivered. … Read the rest here
It’s that time of year when people see the big number roll over and decide to reminisce over good times and bad, and talk of where they plan to go until the big number rolls again. This blog post will be no exception. On the Personal Front It’s interesting to look at last years pontificating . In some ways, things haven’t changed. … Read the rest here