Hi and thanks for visiting my blog. All of the text is online, but I’m in the midst of doing a cpanel switch between hosts. Images are not transfered yet. Everything should hopefully be back online soon.
May 29th, 2010
Paula Scher looks back at a life in design (she’s done album covers, books, the Citibank logo …) and pinpoints the moment when she started really having fun. Look for gorgeous designs and images from her legendary career.
May 4th, 2010
At the 2009 Front-End Design Conference, Chris Coyier of CSS-Tricks fame entertains the audience and discusses the many benefits of using jQuery with CSS development, demonstrating how jQuery resolves many typical CSS issues, and even helps extend CSS in ways that CSS alone probably never will.
Using jQuery to Pick Up Where CSS Leaves Off – Chris Coyer – Front End Conference 2009 from Nate Croft on Vimeo.
“[Choosing jQuery] is like choosing the guitar. If you’re going to pick an instrument to play, the guitar’s a cool one to choose, because there’s so much information about it out there. There’s a lot more [Google] results for ‘guitar tabs’ and ‘jQuery tutorials’ than there are for ‘banjo tabs’ and ‘MooTools tutorials’.”
May 3rd, 2010
Jeff Veen designs and makes beautiful things. When he has a project in mind he doesn’t just copy someone else’s idea, instead he looks for elegant solutions and intentionally takes what he needs.
“The key here is to be intentional with what we steal, to look at what the principles are behind the things that are successful, and steal those, rather than just a superficial copy.”
April 29th, 2010
Part of the MFA in Interaction Design program, this is a candid and personal discussion of how print design and the technique of “storytelling” have affected the designs of Jason Santa Maria in his professional career as a web designer.
SVA Dot Dot Dot Lectures: Jason Santa Maria from MFA Interaction Design on Vimeo.“Over time I started looking at the way that publications look, and the way that web designs look, and I didn’t see that same connection, and I wondered why. So I want to go over some of the stuff I’ve discovered, and why web design looks the way that it does.”
Jason has been recognized for designing stylistic and imaginative web interfaces that maintain a balance of usability and readability. Jason is a celebrated speaker worldwide at such conferences as South By Southwest, An Event Apart, @media, and Webstock. He also maintains a popular website where he frequently holds discussions on design for the web.
April 28th, 2010
Check out this very interest talk about design where New York Times columnist David Pogue breaks into song. He takes aim at technology’s worst interface-design offenders, and provides encouraging examples of products that get it right.
“I know one guy who spent $4,000 just on Photoshop over the years. Software companies make 35% of their revenue from just these software upgrades. I call it the software upgrade paradox, which is, if you improve a piece of software enough times, you eventually ruin it.”
April 26th, 2010
This is a video from the “From Business to Buttons” Conference where Scott Berkun talks about design failure and its causes. Sometimes it’s problems in our design process or how we carry it out that cause failure. But in many cases, it’s the other stuff, the non-design stuff, the business stuff that causes failure. Scott argues the need to consider these other aspects — pitching ideas, learning to talk the language of business, and so on — as design problems too.
“Studying the perfect cases doesn’t inform as much as the fail cases do.” -Scott Berkun
April 25th, 2010
Every week I take some of the most popular and interesting tweets that I come across and share them with my community. Enjoy! Follow me on Twitter if you aren’t already
1. How to successfully educate your clients on web development
“If you are running a design agency, your job is very likely to combine business development, graphic design, technology and user experience design: a basketful of very different fields. When dealing with clients, one faces the challenge of clearly and effectively communicating the goals and results of the work done in these areas.”
2. Dribble.com – What are you working on?
Show and tell for designers in 120,000 pixels or less
3. Top 7 Most Cliché Stock Images Used in Web Design
“Sometimes clients ask us to implement ‘not-so-unique’ elements into our designs and sometimes it seems almost impossible to convince them otherwise, however, hopefully this post can suggest some reasons why not to use the old web design stock imagery clichés.”
4. 50 Fantastic Favicons: Episode 9
“Every now and again we showcase fantastic favicons, those tiny pieces of art that you’ll find in your browser’s address bar or when rifling through your bookmarks. These little gems are important because they serve as visual indicators to help visitors easily identify content in their browser. That aside, favicons …”
5. Tips for using icons in interface design
Icons and pictograms as a form of communication are effective to communicate meaning quickly and where space is limited. Not only that, they also reduce language barriers because symbols are not tied to a language like written text.
April 25th, 2010
Andy Budd, at Build Conference 2009, thinks looks and first impressions do matter, especially in design, and he shows how such principles can be applied to “seducing” users through design.
“Often [seduction] is seen as a negative thing, it’s seen as bad. People think of it as leading people astray. However, I actually think that seduction can be a good thing, it can be a fun thing.”
Andy Budd – Seductive Design from Build on Vimeo.
April 17th, 2010
On my quest to create a blog series showcasing a diverse collection of documented design processes, I started to browse the search engines for existing posts from known designers.
You may have read my request for designers to share on the post, “Want to Contribute? I’m Looking for Designers to Share Their Design Process?“
Every designer takes a different approach. Not all designers get the chance to work in a team atmosphere, which is a great way to gain experience and grow. If you are like me, then you may have jumped straight into a freelance career, but I really enjoy seeing other designers work. This often takes me to the internet when I’m trying to break “out of the box.”
Check out the links below, and if you have any other sources please share them. Enjoy! (more…)