Webdesigninformer.com

SimpleBits Go to the source

A few weeks ago, we moved the studio (affectionately dubbed the BitCave) across the street to newer, slightly larger digs. It’s more comfortable, the windows open, we have our own temperature controls–you know, real lavish stuff. Yesterday, we relaunched the SimpleBits Shop , bringing the fulfillment back in house. Our slightly larger space is able to accomodate the stock, and now each order will be lovingly hand-packed by resident Commerce Director, Meagan Fisher . … Read the rest here

Snook Go to the source

Logo Design Love is a book written by David Airey that covers the whys and hows of brand identity development. The book is broken down into three parts: The importance of brand identity, the process of design and keep the fires burning which looks at how to find motivation and inspiration. It’s a light 200 pages with readable type and plenty of examples. David Airey aims this book at the aspiring designer by not only covering the design process but also covering the process of project scope and client management in the context of logo design. Logo Design Love hits the mark when it speaks from experience, which it does for most of the book… Read the rest here

Snook Go to the source

Logo Design Love is a book written by David Airey that covers the whys and hows of brand identity development. The book is broken down into three parts: The importance of brand identity, the process of design and keep the fires burning which looks at how to find motivation and inspiration. It’s a light 200 pages with readable type and plenty of examples. David Airey aims this book at the aspiring designer by not only covering the design process but also covering the process of project scope and client management in the context of logo design. Logo Design Love hits the mark when it speaks from experience, which it does for most of the book. There’s plenty of real world examples with plenty of input from designers other than just Airey himself… Read the rest here

Andy Budd Go to the source

A few nights ago I attended a UX-Bri session where one of the speakers floated the idea of doing free usability testing in order to win projects. I asked about the moral implications of this and was surprised by the response. While the audience largely disagreed with the idea of speculative design work, it seemed that speculative UX work was somehow more acceptable. The speaker later cc’d me into an email question from one of the audience members querying my negative reaction to speculative pitching so here was my response… “Dear XXXX, There has been a debate over the subject of speculative work running within the design community for some time now, so I thought it was worth raising the issue. One side of the argument states that helping a client solve their problems for free, before being awarded a contact is bad practice… 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

Cameron Moll Go to the source

Of the many things we do well as creative professionals, we often forget to think for ourselves, relying on thought leaders to determine what works for us and what doesn’t. Paramount in this failure to think for one’s self is the fact that these thought leaders often struggle to encourage others to explore new thinking without belittling their methods–or worse, ostracizing them–in the process. Whether or not the title of thought leader can be applied to myself, I’m just as guilty as anyone else. In ” 20 tips for better conference speaking “, I offer this short-sighted observation: There is absolutely no reason in the world you should use anything other than Keynote. … Read the rest here

Clagnut Go to the source

Earlier this month, Clearleft went on a company outing to the Design Museum in London. There we spent some quality time perusing the work of the influential former Braun industrial designer, Dieter Rams . Accompanying the exhibition were these design tenets penned by the man himself. Good design… Is innovative The possibilities for innovation are not, by any means, exhausted. … Read the rest here

Cameron Moll Go to the source

Last Thursday night we stopped in Albuquerque, New Mexico on our cross-country move to Florida . What was supposed to be an overnight stop has turned into a lengthy stay and a permanent change in our family’s lifestyle. One of our sons fell ill with the flu* soon after leaving Utah on Wednesday. By Thursday the flu had escalated and we found ourselves in the hospital by nightfall. On Friday the diagnosis was clear: Type 1 diabetes . … Read the rest here

Jason Santa Maria Go to the source

Well, it only took nearly a hundred issues since working on the A List Apart redesign for me to get around to writing an article. I’ve had a blast working behind the scenes working with authors on fleshing out the visuals for their articles, but after repeated kindly nudges from the rest of the ALA staffers, I wrote one of my own: On Web Typography . This has been a year packed with talk of type on the web. We’ve been making great strides in bringing real fonts to the web, a good progression that will help us rely less on replacement techniques. There are many great articles that boil down the technical hurdles involved in doing so, but I wanted to tackle what happens to our designs once we have lots of typefaces to choose from… Read the rest here

Snook Go to the source

A few months ago, the folks at Mobify were kind enough to create a mobile version of my site using their service. Mobify is a web-based service that allows you to create a custom mobile version of your site. Since my redesign, I got an opportunity to play with the service first-hand and felt that it might be good to share my experience. What does Mobify offer? Why would anybody use a service like Mobify? … Read the rest here

Snook Go to the source

I just signed and returned the paperwork. As of November 16, I’ll be an employee of Yahoo!. This might seem like a bit of a surprise for those aware that I started at Squarespace just seven months ago. Unfortunately, six months into it, the requirements of employment changed and I was no longer able to stay on. … Read the rest here

Mezzoblue Go to the source

You probably experience this on a regular basis: a client sends you an illustration or a logo they’d like to use in a project, but it’s a low-res bitmap or a flat image file with a background texture. Or both, if you’re really lucky. Sure, you can try and ask for a vector version, but more often than not what they originally sent was the best copy they had on hand. I seem to have made something of a hobby out of trying to coax useful results out of this type of file. Over the years I’ve stumbled across far better ways of doing it than manually clipping the background with the the magic wand or various selection tools. For the next time you’re handed a less-than-ideal source image, here are a few of my tricks for isolating the part of the file I want to work with in Photoshop. … Read the rest here

Mezzoblue Go to the source

Last we left off , I’d just started going down the road of playing with @font-face , sans IE. This is the follow-up where we bring Internet Explorer back into the equation and look at the hoops we need to jump through to bring it in line. A quick refresher: following a different path than every other browser out there, IE requires a custom-created, rights-managed font file called EOT (Embedded OpenType). The syntax to safely serve up an EOT to IE was shown in that previously-mentioned post . What we’re covering here is, how in the world do you create an EOT file in the first place? Well, there’s WEFT, Microsoft’s one and only tool for creating EOT files… Read the rest here

Snook Go to the source

A really quick screencast today. I twittered about how frustrating it was to have to take 5 clicks to subscribe to a feed into Google Reader within Firefox. I finally decided to take a few moments to fix the issue and get it down to one click (well, technically two, but who’s counting). Of course, this is by no means the only way to do it. Plenty of people on Twitter recommended plugins and bookmarks that could simplify the process. If you got ‘em, link ‘em up in the comments. … Read the rest here

Cameron Moll Go to the source

I’m working on a covert project that may or may not be related to my next letterpress poster . This time-lapse video shows me attempting to recreate one of the glyphs featured in Libro di M. Giovambattista Palatino , which, again, may or may not be used in a poster involving letterpress. I captured the process using iShowU (Mac), sped it up 3000%, and edited it using Final Cut Express. … Read the rest here

Snook Go to the source

I’ve spent a couple days worth now trying to figure out the best and most complete approach to font embedding using @font-face . It really is a dark art that must be mastered. It is by no means a straightforward process. Font Formats Generally speaking, these days, a font on our system is going to be one of two formats: TrueType (with a .ttf file extension) or OpenType (with a .otf file extension). While it would be nice to be able to just throw a font like this on the web and link it up, we’re hit with two major limitations… Read the rest here

Cameron Moll Go to the source

I have a confession to make: I don’t like paying full price for Apple hardware. So I buy it refurbished . Almost all of it. In fact, in the past few years I’ve purchased a 20″ iMac, 13″ black MacBook, Mac Mini, Airport, and now a 13″ MacBook Pro 2.26GHz Intel Core 2 Duo (aluminum unibody) — all refurbished. The obvious advantage to buying refurbished over paying full retail is exactly that — you typically save anywhere from 10% to 30%, and all products are covered by a one-year warranty. I’ve hardly needed the warranty… Read the rest here

Adactio Go to the source

dConstruct week is in full swing. The conference itself is tomorrow. Remy and Brian are doing their workshops today. Myself, Rich and Nat did our HTML5 and CSS3 Wizardry workshop yesterday. I was handling the HTML5 side of things and had quite a bit of fun with it. … Read the rest here

Adactio Go to the source

I can never pinpoint the exact moment at which I “get into” a particular technology. CSS, DOM Scripting, microformats …there was never any Damascene conversion to any of them. Instead, I’d just notice one day, after gradually using the technology more and more, that I was immersed in it. That’s how I feel about HTML5 now. There’s another feeling that accompanies this realisation. I remember feeling it about CSS in the late 90s and about DOM Scripting half a decade ago. … Read the rest here

Cameron Moll Go to the source

I know, this feels like a Facebook meme or something like that. But in the absence of having time to post something more substantial, this will have to do. I go in for knee surgery tomorrow, hence a large part of the reason things have been relatively silent around here. This is due to a severe injury playing soccer (football) and several weeks of physical therapy since, consuming a lot of my spare time. This will be surgery #5 for me, the continuation of a history of knee problems since I was 16. The most ridiculous injury so far… Read the rest here