Webdesigninformer.com

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

Adactio Go to the source

A little while back, Andy wrote : Even if you happen to be a genius in the waiting, there are no svengalis to pluck you from obscurity and put you on the pedestal you know you deserve. … So if you want to contribute to articles, write books and speak at conferences, you’re the only person in the way. You can contribute to A List Apart . You can write for Smashing Magazine . You can also put a resource written in HTML at your own URL that is retrievable via HTTP …write a blog post, in other words. If you prefer dead trees, you no longer need a publishing house. … 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

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

Cameron Moll Go to the source

It’s clear by now dust is gathering at this domain. I’ve been okay with that, and will continue to be okay with it, but only a little longer. I’ve been swamped with obligations on my current projects and have traveled much more than usual. I’ll visit NYC for the third time in a month starting next week, for example. More importantly, I’ve realized I need to realign the focus of this site. The tumblog, light-narrative format is definitely enjoyable, and it’s helped me blog more frequently, as well. … Read the rest here

Adactio Go to the source

Every year in the run up to Halloween Jason asks some people to write short stories about candy. He then takes those words and turns them into beautifully-designed web pages: candygrams . I encourage you to revisit the wonderful tales from Jeffrey , Frank , Jim , Rob , Mandy , Erin and others . This year I was very honoured to be asked by Jason to contribute some words of my own. … Read the rest here

Eric Meyer Go to the source

For very little reason other than I was curious to see what resulted, I’ve compiled a list of various CSS modules’ version histories, and then used CSS to turn it into a set of timelines . It’s kind of a low-cost way to visualize the life cycle of and energy going into various CSS modules. I’ll warn you up front that as of this writing the user interaction is not ideal, and in some places the presentation suffers from too much content overlap. This happens in timelines where lots of drafts were released in a short period of time. … 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

Cameron Moll Go to the source

Jason Santa Maria: Five & Ten : Jason Santa Maria, describing his site’s redesign (which launched on Friday): I decided to not let the design of my site become a barrier to writing here. The most important thing this site does for me is give me a creative outlet to play and write. Anything that gets in the way of that needs to get the boot. The result is a responsive, Tumblr-esque digest of things interesting to and written by Jason, with much more design sense than most Tumblr sites — including mine. … 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

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

Adactio Go to the source

The word “awesome” is over-used. I’m about to over-use it some more. The internet is mostly awesome. Some human beings are also awesome. When you combine the two, you get awesome things… Read the rest here

Cameron Moll Go to the source

Cosmonaut, a Wide-Grip Stylus for Touch Screens : Glif makers Dan Provost and Tom Gerhardt are at it again with another Kickstarter project, this time for a wide-grip stylus that feels more like a dry erase marker rather than a pen: Writing or drawing on the iPad feels nothing like using a pen or pencil. For one, tablets are ideal for low fidelity sketching. Also, it is pretty awkward to rest your palm on the screen of the device because it throws off the capacitive detection. Writing on a tablet feels like writing on a dry erase board: fast, simple, low fidelity. … Read the rest here

Hicksdesign Go to the source

A superb student project, creating a series of possible posters for The Smithsonian Museum. The copy-writing is spot on with these! Comment on this … Read the rest here

Cameron Moll Go to the source

Unit Interactive’s 4½-Day Workweek : Andy Rutledge, writing about his firm’s four-and-a-half day workweek: We have rules for Fridays. No project launches, no discovery meetings, in fact no meetings of any kind. Friday is when the pressure valve is opened, not tightened. Working smartly, most of our project work is accomplished in just four days. There are exceptions, but Friday half-days here are often when folks use the structure of office time to work on personal projects, to write articles or blog posts, or to catch up on things left behind by the sometimes overly-structured activities of the work week. … Read the rest here

Eric Meyer Go to the source

I recently became re-acquainted with a ghost, and it looked very, very familiar. In the spring of 1995, just over a year into my first Web gig and still just over a year away from first encountering CSS, I wrote the following: Writing to the Norm No, not the fat guy on “Cheers.” Actually, it’s a fundamental issue every Web author needs to know about and appreciate. Web browsers are written by different people. Each person has their own idea about how Web documents should look. … Read the rest here

Snook Go to the source

The third book from A Book Apart, The Elements of Content Strategy , is a “brief guide [that] explores content strategy’s roots, and quickly and expertly demonstrates not only how it’s done, but how you can do it well.” That’s an accurate description, although this book, unlike the previous two, does not feel brief. This book focuses on content and is all content. There are few diagrams and no code samples filling up the pages; this books feels lengthier than it is, and I mean that in a good way. The writing within this book is also eloquent and well-written, as I suppose might be expected for a book on content strategy. While much of the content seemed targetted at larger organizations that could afford the cost of a dedicated content strategist, I felt the material would be good to know for freelancers and agencies, alike. When I worked in an agency, I worked with project managers who had many of the skills described within… Read the rest here

Hicksdesign Go to the source

Let’s get straight to it! I’m busy writing a book called “The Icon Handbook” to be published by Five Simple Steps , hopefully at the latter end of this year. It will be ‘application-agnostic’, looking at the process of creating icons for web as well as software. It will be a manual, reference guide and coffee table book in one. For the last 5 years I’ve been wanting to write this book – I keep looking around for other books of its type on the market, but never find any. … Read the rest here

Cameron Moll Go to the source

Mastering Photoshop: Noise, Textures, Gradients and Rounded Rectangles : Some really good tips in this article by Marc Edwards, writing for Smashing Magazine. Several of these I was not aware of. … Read the rest here

Cameron Moll Go to the source

An MBA? “Don’t Bother.” : Philip Delves Broughton, Harvard MBA, writing for The Economist: The return on investment on an MBA has gone the way of Greek public debt. If you have a decent job in your mid- to late- 20s, unless you have the backing of a corporate sponsor, leaving it to get an MBA is a higher risk than ever. If you are getting good business experience already, the best strategy is to keep on getting it, thereby making yourself ever more useful rather than groping for the evanescent brass rings of business school. That last line cannot be overstated. I know personally a few individuals with MBAs from prestigious schools who are either seeking work or are underemployed. … Read the rest here