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

Snook Go to the source

My mind is on CSS quite a bit these days. At Shopify , I’m jumping into projects that already well under way. As a result, it’s been a great way to look at what I wrote in SMACSS and see how applicable it is to yet another project. (As if Yahoo! wasn’t already enough of a testing ground.) With Yahoo!, I (and a team of people) were writing the CSS from scratch and creating our mental map of the project as we went along. Jumping into the middle of a project as I am at Shopify, I have to try and figure out why things are done the way they are. Here’s an example of something that I ran into in the CSS: #loading-header .loading { background: url(spinner.gif) no-repeat 0 0; } [...separated by a few pages of code...] #content { [...separated by more code...] #loading-header { display:none; } .row { display:block; } &.loading { #loading-header { display:block; } .row { display:none; } } } The loading class has a spinner… Read the rest here

Jason Santa Maria Go to the source

The latest issue of A List Apart is one of my favorites in recent memory, and has three articles you can’t miss. In “ An Important Time for Design ”, Cameron Koczon challenges designers to be all that they can be: The web is going to increasingly shape our world and consequently our daily lives. We can either sit on the sidelines and submissively assist those who are doing the shaping or we can take a more active role in creating the future we want. This year, thanks to a spike in demand, designers have a chance to actively nudge the world in any direction they like. It’s a huge opportunity with a tiny window. Let’s not let it pass by. … Read the rest here

Hicksdesign Go to the source

2011 was the year that cycling replaced the “search for the right media centre” as the main blog topic at The Hickensian. I’ve been pretty much starting from scratch in terms of knowledge, and gleaning information from all sorts of sources. Here are just some of things I’ve learnt this year: There are Rules . 87 of them in fact. … Read the rest here

Jason Santa Maria Go to the source

These upcoming Kafka covers by Peter Mendelsund are really lovely. These beautiful stark shapes and colors make them unexpected, but also totally on the mark. Also, they make use of FF Mister K , a typeface based on Kafka’s handwriting. That’s one of the few appropriate uses for a handwriting font, and it really works here. via Jacket Mechanical … Read the rest here

Snook Go to the source

From my presentation at StarTech , here are my slides. Fake it ’til you make it shows some code and examples on how to make a web app look more like a native mobile application. This can provide a way to build quick prototypes or to build using familiar technologies. … Read the rest here

Jason Santa Maria Go to the source

Another great gallery from Christian Annyas: Speedometers are those kind of items you look at thousands of times during your live, without ever really noticing. You notice the speed, not the meter. And if you do notice the meter chances are you don’t realize someone actually designed it. The company probably even did some research beforehand. Research regarding the readability of typefaces, the right size of the numbers and the space between them. … Read the rest here

Jason Santa Maria Go to the source

Just in case you were under the impression that type design or typography are easy, I suggest you try out Kern Type and Shape Type , two fun game from Mark MacKay for Method of Action . Each game tasks you with correcting default and malformed spacing, and then ranks you against the correct solution. It’s instructive and humbling! Hug your designer today. … Read the rest here

Jason Santa Maria Go to the source

We just launched something over at Typekit that we’ve been working on for some time: a brand new interface for browsing our type library . This release had lots of moving parts, including devising a new classification system that worked with our offerings, and retagging every last one of our fonts. We had built up some crufty tags in the last couple of years, so I’m happy to say that things are nice and tidy now (and vastly simplified). But my favorite part of all is the new visual interface for browsing fonts. Type can be difficult for newcomers to understand, there are lots of strange terms that don’t always sound like what they mean… 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

Jason Santa Maria Go to the source

The previous Instapaper icon on the left, and the updated icon on the right. Instapaper 4.0 is out! Instapaper is one of the best iOS app around. It lets you save articles from the web for offline reading, and strips out everything but the article text and images. It’s especially great for a subway commute. … Read the rest here

Jason Santa Maria Go to the source

Stephen Doyle, that super smart guy that everyone loves, created some lovely tape illustration/lettering/installations for a New York Times Magazine story this weekend. Lots of people do these type illusions, but few do it this well. Check out the tape on the skeleton’s ribs! I want to be Stephen Doyle when I grow up. Also, don’t miss the behind the scenes video. … Read the rest here

Andy Budd Go to the source

There’s a lot of nonsense being written about conferences at the moment; so as a regular speaker, organiser and attendee of both free and paid for events, I thought I’d redress the balance. First off there is a big difference between community driven events and professional conferences. I started a free monthly event called SkillSwap way back in the early naughties and know a stack of people who run similar events now. These FREE events tend to rely on local speakers (who typically don’t charge), community organisers (who work for free), venue donations (usually from companies or community groups) and the occasional spot of sponsorship to pay for beer and pizza. These FREE events have grown from small local happenings into large community events like HackDay , BarCamp and Design Jam … 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

In episode 2 of Off Book , typeface designers Jonathan Hoefler and Tobias Frere-Jones outline the importance of selecting the right font to convey a particular feeling. Graphic designer Paula Scher talks about building identity in messaging, while Eddie Opara uses texture to create reaction. Infographic designers Julia Vakser and Deroy Peraza map complicated data sets into digestible imagery, mixing color, graphics and type. There is a moment towards the end where Jonathan Hoefler and Tobias Frere-Jones have a John and John from They Might Be Giants thing going. … Read the rest here

Cameron Moll Go to the source

Square, the iPhone Credit Card Machine, Goes Mainstream : Alexis Madrigal: I asked Square to make me a map of their transactions to see where they had users. The map you see shows one hour of transaction volume on a Friday afternoon. The size of the bubble represents the volume of the transactions while the different colors indicate the types of users that Square has…. Just about every major city and plenty of smaller places have someone using the device. I was particularly to see that the whole southeast is blanketed with Square users. … Read the rest here

Jason Santa Maria Go to the source

There’s strong evidence that Times New Roman wasn’t designed by Stanley Morison, but by William Starling Burgess, a wooden boat designer from Boston: Burgess — in 1904, when he was only 26 — had a brief and brilliant flirtation with typography. He wrote to the U.S. branch of the Lanston Monotype Corp. requesting that a font be made to his specifications. … Read the rest here

Cameron Moll Go to the source

Film Sessions vol. II is now available for listening. I’m really pleased with how it came together, much the same as vol. I . Here’s the description I provided with the mix: This mix paints a narrative as if it were the score to a single movie. Dreams yield to mystery and suspense and then evolve into hope. … Read the rest here

Jason Santa Maria Go to the source

About Face , a new article series I’m writing over at the Typekit Blog where we’ll look at the details behind a typeface and try to crack what makes it special. First up, some of my favorites, Joshua Darden’s rounded wonder Omnes , and Carol Twombly’s gorgeous slab hybrid Chaparral (the same serif in use here on my site). I have a serious crush on Chaparral. … Read the rest here

Andy Budd Go to the source

As I explained in my previous post, user experience design is a multidisciplinary activity which includes psychology, user research, information architecture, interaction design, graphic design and a host of other disciplines. Due to the complexity of the field a user experience team will typically be made up of individuals with a range of different specialisms. On larger teams you’ll find people who focus on one specific area, such as user research or information architecture. You may even find people who specialise in specific activities such as usability testing or wireframing. This level of specialism isn’t possible in smaller teams, so practitioners tend to group related activities together. Conceptually I believe you can break design into tangible and abstract activities. … Read the rest here