Webdesigninformer.com

Cameron Moll Go to the source

ColosseoType.com, An All-HTML5 Endeavor : The site for the Colosseo poster is my first production-ready website with HTML5 under the hood. I’ve coded sites semantically with HTML5 class names before (see Jon Tan’s article ), but this is the first with legitimate HTML5 elements such as and in the markup. IE doesn’t yet recognize HTML5, so I’ve added Remy Sharp’s HTML5 shiv script , which forces IE to acknowledge the new elements. Granted, the Colosseo site is a one-pager, but hey, it’s a start. Update: It looks like Firefox 2.x doesn’t play well with HTML5, either. Here’s another article from Remy Sharp on getting Firefox 2 to recognize HTML5… Read the rest here

Cameron Moll Go to the source

This is a behind-the-scenes look at the printing (and making) of the Colosseo. Purchase a copy here . Also, read a little more about the successes and failures of creating the video in the description on Vimeo . … Read the rest here

Cameron Moll Go to the source

The malware attack(s) that my site suffered in recent weeks put into motion a series of changes which have been planned for some time now—some for a few months, some for a couple years. What follows is a detailed explanation of the changes. New Design Over Christmas Break in 2007, I started two redesigns: One for Authentic Jobs and another for this site. The premise for this realign encompassed a concept that wasn’t original, but one that I felt better suited my style of blogging. You see, I’ve always enjoyed posting links as much as I’ve enjoyed posting articles. … Read the rest here

SimpleBits Go to the source

FontFont is selling web licenses for their fonts in WOFF and EOT formats. Buy them and use in your Typekit account for free…. Read the rest here

Eric Meyer Go to the source

One of the things you discover as a speaker and, especially, a conference organizer is this: Keynote generates really frickin’ enormous PDFs. Seriously. Much like Miles O’Keefe, they’re huge . We had one speaker last year whose lovingly crafted and beautifully designed 151-slide deck resulted in a 175MB PDF. Now, hard drives and bandwidth may be cheap, but when you have four hundred plus attendees all trying to download the same 175MB PDF at the same time, the venue’s conference manager will drop by to find out what the bleeding eyestalks your attendees are doing and why it’s taking down the entire outbound pipe. Not to mention the network will grind to a nearly complete halt… Read the rest here

Cameron Moll Go to the source

Font Aid IV for Haiti: “Coming Together” Font : Veer: In response to the devastating 2010 earthquake in Haiti, the Society of Typographic Aficionados issued a call to action to the typographic and design communities to participate in Font Aid IV. The result was Coming Together, an OpenType font that contains over 400 ampersand glyphs designed by participants from around the world. The “ampercross” Veer designed to promote the font is fabulous. … 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

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

CSS3 features are making their way into the various browsers and while many are holding off on implementing them, there are those who are venturing ahead and likely running into a world of interesting quirks across the various platforms. Two such features that I have been having the pleasure of enjoying are the use of multiple backgrounds and CSS gradients. I’m covering both features because multiple backgrounds by itself is simple enough, as are CSS gradients, but combining the two is where things get interesting. Multiple Backgrounds What are multiple backgrounds when it comes to CSS? I mean the ability to define more than one background image for a single element. … Read the rest here

Jason Santa Maria Go to the source

O nce again I’m adding to my list of recommended books with some good reads I’ve come across in the past few years. I’m always up for finding new books to help me better understand design or improve my practices, but it can be very difficult to find the meat from so many fatty offerings. That’s why I try to keep this list focused on design, type, and theory. There are many lists for good web design books around, but few of just straight up good design books, and many of these topics are applicable anywhere. Like last time , this doesn’t aim to be comprehensive, but I personally vouch for the usefulness all of these books offer. … Read the rest here

Jason Santa Maria Go to the source

O nce again I’m adding to my list of recommended books with some good reads I’ve come across in the past few years. I’m always up for finding new books to help me better understand design or improve my practices, but it can be very difficult to find the meat from so many fatty offerings. That’s why I try to keep this list focused on design, type, and theory. There are many lists for good web design books around, but few of just straight up good design books, and many of these topics are applicable anywhere. Like last time , this doesn’t aim to be comprehensive, but I personally vouch for the usefulness all of these books offer… Read the rest here

Hicksdesign Go to the source

“Someone asked me the other day what percentage of my day was spent doing what. Yesterday it was approximately one third general admin type stuff, one third client liaison type stuff and one third designing type stuff. If we ignore the fact that there isn’t really such a thing as a typical day – that is a pretty much a typical day.” Ben Terrett ( Interesting Mini CEO Half Thoughts ) When I started working freelance, I worked out my rates and estimated earnings based on a ‘typical’ eight hour day. What I didn’t really comprehend at the time was the fallacy of an eight hour day of solid work. There are so many factors that eat into that supposed ‘billable time’. Admin … Read the rest here

Hicksdesign Go to the source

“Someone asked me the other day what percentage of my day was spent doing what. Yesterday it was approximately one third general admin type stuff, one third client liaison type stuff and one third designing type stuff. If we ignore the fact that there isn’t really such a thing as a typical day – that is a pretty much a typical day.” Ben Terrett ( Interesting Mini CEO Half Thoughts ) When I started working freelance, I worked out my rates and estimated earnings based on a ‘typical’ eight hour day. What I didn’t really comprehend at the time was the fallacy of an eight hour day of solid work. … Read the rest here

Hicksdesign Go to the source

Shared notebooks are one of the many selling points of Evernote. Being able to automatically share content easily (no manual upload), with additional benefit of an RSS feed is genius – it almost becomes a blogging platform. As well notebooks shared with individuals (such as moodboards for clients) I have two public notebooks: Design Scrapbook – where I keep any inspiration, be they images, PDF s or type samples. When clippings have come from webpages. the original URL is saved too. … Read the rest here

Hicksdesign Go to the source

Shared notebooks are one of the many selling points of Evernote. Being able to automatically share content easily (no manual upload), with additional benefit of an RSS feed is genius – it almost becomes a blogging platform. As well notebooks shared with individuals (such as moodboards for clients) I have two public notebooks: Design Scrapbook – where I keep any inspiration, be they images, PDF s or type samples. When clippings have come from webpages. the original URL is saved too. Cheese Diaries ) – where I take snaps of cheese labels to remember what I ate… Read the rest here

Hicksdesign Go to the source

One of my favourite features in the new Boxee Beta is a bookmarklet to add internet videos to a queue to watch in Boxee later. Once you’re logged into boxee.tv , the bookmarklet is found bottom right. Clicking it on a page with supported video type sends it to Boxee with a confirmation message: (The video in the screenshot was live visuals for Overture by Brian McBride, he of Stars of the Lid fame) This is even more useful to me than all the various video apps that come with Boxee, is an example of what sets Boxee apart from just using XBMC . However, if you’re using ClicktoFlash , with Youtube set to use H.264 video where possible, it will interfere with the magic, and Boxee can’t find the video. You just need to make sure it’s unchecked if you want to use the bookmarklet: … Read the rest here

Hicksdesign Go to the source

One of my favourite features in the new Boxee Beta is a bookmarklet to add internet videos to a queue to watch in Boxee later. Once you’re logged into boxee.tv , the bookmarklet is found bottom right. Clicking it on a page with supported video type sends it to Boxee with a confirmation message: (The video in the screenshot was live visuals for Overture by Brian McBride, he of Stars of the Lid fame) This is even more useful to me than all the various video apps that come with Boxee, is an example of what sets Boxee apart from just using XBMC . However, if you’re using ClicktoFlash , with Youtube set to use H.264 video where possible, it will interfere with the magic, and Boxee can’t find the video. You just need to make sure it’s unchecked if you want to use the bookmarklet: … Read the rest here

SimpleBits Go to the source

Artist Scott Teplin’s “… series of 26 dream-houses fashioned after our alphabet”. … Read the rest here

Jason Santa Maria Go to the source

It’s official: I’ve started a design studio called Mighty . I’ve been working under the name since earlier this year, and today I’m launching a small site for the endeavor. The prospect with Mighty is simple: I want to work on stuff that matters. I want the things I make to benefit people, and whenever possible, the design work I do to have a lasting impact. Here’s to new beginnings! Head over and say hello to Mighty … Read the rest here

Andy Budd Go to the source

A couple of weeks ago Wired Sussex invited me to a debate on the standard of design education in the UK. Being a topic incredibly close to my heart I literally jumped at the chance to participate. In order to create a sense of drama, the event pitted three designers against three educators in a heated and passionate discussion on the quality of design education in our industry. I started by citing the recent ALA survey which showed that only half of the people polled felt that education was relevant to their work. For such a highly skilled profession, this is pretty shocking. However it’s understandable when you consider that most mid-to-senior level practitioners don’t hold a relevant degree as such things didn’t exist when they entered the profession. … Read the rest here