Webdesigninformer.com

Jason Santa Maria Go to the source

One of the best annual wrap-ups returns after a hiatus in 2009-10, Our Favorite Typefaces , from Typographica. Welcome back! The idea is simple: I invite a group of writers, educators, type makers and type users to look back at 2011 and pick the release that excited them most. … This is not a juried contest. The result isn’t necessarily the “best fonts of the year”, or even those most used or ballyhooed. But these 50 selections do capture a pretty accurate snapshot of where type design is now, and where it’s headed. And the results are spot on… Read the rest here

Eric Meyer Go to the source

After the blackout on Wednesday, it seems that the political tides are shifting against SOPA and the PROTECT IP Act—as of this writing, there are now more members of Congress in opposition to the bills than in favor. That’s good news. I wil reiterate something I said on Twitter, though: the members of tech community, particularly those who are intimately familiar with the basic protocols of the Internet, need to keep working on ways to counteract SOPA/PIPA. What form that would take, I’m not sure. Maybe a truly distributed DNS system, one that can’t be selectively filtered by any one government or other entity. I’m not an expert in the area, so I don’t actually know if that’s feasible… Read the rest here

Jason Santa Maria Go to the source

I generally avoid lists and New Year’s resolutions, but Mike Monteiro issues a rallying cry so poignant we all need to listen: I spent the first 10 years of my career saying things like, “If I could just do this work the way I know it should be done…” and convincing myself that someone else was keeping me from making better choices. I’ll often be reviewing work with another designer and they’ll say, “Well, if I were doing this…” I stare back at them in astonishment until they realise what they’ve said. What is this strange gene that makes designers handicap themselves? Mike sums things up as only he can and it’s a damn fine way to start off a fresh new year. Do yourself a favor and read this one. It’s a wake up call we could all use… Read the rest here

Snook Go to the source

It is once again that time of year where I reflect on the year that has passed and contemplate the year the come. Professionally On a professional level, this has been a fantastic year but still not without its ups and downs. This year capped my second and final year with Yahoo!. Yahoo! has been a great experience for me and exposed me to an environment that I hadn’t worked in before. I was able to work with large teams on a large scale across multiple products. To know that I had a big part to play in the success of those projects is very rewarding. … Read the rest here

Andy Budd Go to the source

I first came across the term Minimum Viable Product when I dropped into a talk by Eric Reis at the Web 2.0 Expo in New Year a few year’s back. As a company that has always worked on variable scope projects, defining a MVP seemed like a great way of managing client expectations. Rather than clients worrying whether your team would deliver something useful, you’d work together to define the smallest thing you could release and it still be a success. You would then guarantee that the client would meet their core business needs, and everything else you manage to deliver in that time was a bonus. … Read the rest here

Hicksdesign Go to the source

There is nothing worse than pulling up to an unknown cafe while out on a ride to find they offer poor coffee and stale cake Patisserie Cyclisme , is THE source of cycling café reviews and they have a rather spiffingly hypnotic new logo! Comment on this … Read the rest here

SimpleBits Go to the source

A month ago I made one of the best purchases I’ve made in a long time. I bought a kick scooter . Not one of those aluminum things with rollerblade wheels where the handle is so short you have to hunch over—but a scooter built for adults. Check out this video that shows how the KickPed operates—particularly how it folds up. … Read the rest here

Jason Santa Maria Go to the source

We’re very excited to release not one, but two, new A Book Apart titles today. We’re finishing up our publishing year with a big splash; first with Designing for Emotion by Aarron Walter , and next with Mobile First by Luke Wroblewski . These guys are both personal UX/design heroes of mine and their books really hit home. Here’s an appetizer from the back cover of Aarron’s book: Make your users fall in love with your site via the precepts packed into this brief, charming book by MailChimp user experience design lead Aarron Walter. From classic psychology to case studies, highbrow concepts to common sense, Designing for Emotion demonstrates accessible strategies and memorable methods to help you make a human connection through design… Read the rest here

Snook Go to the source

With all my work at Yahoo!, I’d been thinking more and more about CSS architecture. I really sat down and took the time to analyze my process. What’s the most flexible but straightforward way to do it? How does this fit in with the team process and how does this work in comparison to how other people are doing it? I started making notes and eventually started writing up my thoughts… Read the rest here

Hicksdesign Go to the source

Here’s an interesting idea for improving bike lights and night time visibility. Revolights is a Kickstarter Project that places LED s in a ring around the wheel, timed so that it provides a constant beam lower down, lighting up the road around you: From the video, I’m not 100% convinced that they’re quite bright enough yet, but to be honest, I adore the effect. Tron light cycle comparisons aside, I’m just a fan of how they look when moving. I really hope this project gets some attention, funding and development – in a few years this might be the kind of thing that gets built into the wheel itself. Tagged: cycling , inventions … Read the rest here

Jason Santa Maria Go to the source

Wood Type Revival is the brainchild, and subsequently successful Kickstarter project , of Matt Griffin and Matt Braun from Bearded . Their aim is: …to acquire ten fonts of rare historic wood type representing faces that are not available in the world of digital typography. The faces will be printed on an old Vandercook proof press, scanned, and digitized as opentype fonts. Those fonts will then be for sale as digital downloads on this site. … Read the rest here

Jason Santa Maria Go to the source

Golden Grid System , a folding grid for responsive design. I’m not big on frameworks, especially when we’re talking about baseline grids, but this one is really well done. And I can get behind this sentiment from its creator: “Take it apart, steal the parts that you like, and adapt them to your own way of working.” Plus it’s a beautiful design to boot. Be sure to resize your browser a lot and play with the little grid reveal button on the top right of the page. … Read the rest here

Snook Go to the source

Just a quick documentation of this interesting bug. This only happens in Internet Explorer 8 (but not 7 or 9), which was interesting. If you have an element with long text but it has white-space:nowrap to prevent text wrapping with a max-width and overflow:hidden to clip the overflowed text, then a floated container (which should collapse to the width of the content) will collapse to the width of the text as if it was not set to be clipped. The use of text-overflow:ellipsis has no effect on this. … Read the rest here

Snook Go to the source

I’ve been thinking quite a bit about CSS architecture these days. One thing in particular that has crossed my mind is how to handle certain situations. For example, we want to hide content on the page and then reveal it (or vice versa). In JavaScript, this is relatively straightforward: get an element, and apply a class or remove a class to change the state of the element. … Read the rest here

Cameron Moll Go to the source

“You Interact with the Content, Not the OS” : Joseph Cohen: They reversed the direction of mouse scrolling! Crazy! But really, they needed to. With Lion, Apple is trying to change the user experience metaphor that has governed OS design since the 80s. It was a symbolic move, but one, to me, that ties together the new interaction paradigm — you interact with the content, not the OS. Lion — at $29 — seems like an incremental upgrade. But I guarantee that it will prove to be one of Apple’s boldest moves in defining how we interact with computers of the future. … Read the rest here

Cameron Moll Go to the source

iPad Outsells Mac : Dan Frommer: During the June quarter, Apple sold 9.2 million iPads for $6 billion in revenue. It also sold 3.9 million Macs for $5.1 billion in revenue. Apple even admitted that some of the iPad’s success was at the Mac’s expense: ‘We do believe that some customers chose to purchase an iPad instead of a new Mac during the quarter,’ Apple COO Tim Cook said on the company’s earnings call, ‘but we also believe that even more customers chose to purchase an iPad over a Windows PC.’ This is astounding. … Read the rest here

Hicksdesign Go to the source

I’d reached that point in my rides, where I wanted some sort of cycling computer to track my progress and show my route, so I recently picked up a Biologic BikeMount to allow me to use my iPhone. Rather than buy a dedicated unit (such as a Garmin, which isn’t really an option financially at this point) this lets me reuse a device that’s already replaced lots of other separate devices like Camera and iPod. Here are my thoughts after 2 months of use. The phone gets clipped into a sturdy protective hardcase, which is then mounted to your handlebars via a supplied bracket. … Read the rest here

Cameron Moll Go to the source

YouTube Redesign Preview, Dubbed ‘Cosmic Panda’ : Another preview of a redesign by Google Inc., this one for YouTube, and it’s difficult to not like the UI improvements. … Read the rest here

Cameron Moll Go to the source

How to Get the New Gmail ‘Preview’ Theme : I’ve been using this new theme for about a week, and it’s utterly fantastic. (I prefer the Dense version.) For the record, I’ve been using the gmail.com interface — not through an email client, but the in-browser version — since 2006. I’ve yet to find a more efficient interface for email, including Sparrow . I do, however, use Mailplane , which I’ve stuck with for about a year now. It helps with switching between accounts (easier than the Gmail option in the upper right), gives my mail a place in the dock, and retains the in-browser experience… Read the rest here

Hicksdesign Go to the source

It’s all too often the case that as soon as a project is finished, I’m on to the next one in the queue, without any time to stop. I’m sure others know this feeling – there’s no time to reflect and blog about the work you’re doing. So here starts the catch up… Back in April, a project I was involved in was finally launched, the new Identity and website for Five Details , previously known as ExtendMac, whose “Flow”: FTP client won a Runner up prize in the prestigous Apple Design Awards in 2008. Brian Amerige, who created Flow was getting ready to release a new iOS app called Seamless to coincide with the relaunch, and Hicksdesign were bought on board to create a new identity and website. After a few different explorations, we settled on the simple logo of the 2 ‘D’ shapes that together form a ‘5’ in the negative space: The logo has white and orange variants, working on either a white or dark background, as well as ‘layered’ version, for use in backgrounds: Brian and I discussed suitable type treatments, and I felt that LFT Etica was the right fit for this project… Read the rest here