Nathan Smith gets input from several buddies of mine, including Anton Peck, Jared Christensen, Patrick Haney, and Jenna Marino, on their preference for either Fireworks or Photoshop. The comments are definitely an interesting read, so I encourage you to check it out. I think it’s important to keep some perspective, though: the only people who really care whether you use Fireworks or Photoshop are other designers. Clients couldn’t care less. Debating the pros and cons can be fun for us design nerds, but ultimately it doesn’t really matter what you use — keep that in mind. Visit site »
Suddenly it seems like respected web designers everywhere are starting to catch on to what I’ve been saying for a couple years now: established standards and best practices are great, but they are simply a means to an end, and we should always challenge them in cases where it seems like a different means to the same end might be more effective. “Perfect” can be, at times, the enemy of “good”.
I don’t necessarily agree with everything in Martin’s article, but I’m glad to see other big names beginning to jump on the pragmatic, but still standards-oriented, approach. Visit site »
Kevin from howiworkdaily.com had my good friend and design hero Nathan Borror on the line for a 30 minute podcast. They two discuss Django, Basic Apps, playgroundblues.com, the iPhone, and more. It’s a really good listen.
I’ve said it before, but I’ll take the opportunity to say it again: Nathan Borror is absolutely the most underrated web professional on the Internet. He’s quite possibly the most talented person I’ve ever worked with. His attention to detail and breadth of knowledge across all aspects of web work is surpassed only by his sympathy for the user. I know just about every amazing designer in this industry, and Nathan would still be the first person I’d call if I were hiring.
And, he’s a great fucking guy, too.
(Nathan, you owe me dinner, or something.) Visit site »
August 18th, 2008–August 19th, 2008 in San Francisco, CA
Carsonified’s four-day Django gem has launched. It’s a little tool that lets you easily post a single tweet to multiple Twitter accounts. Although it’s not something I particularly need (I only use one Twitter account), it’s a nice example of how quickly a team can make something cool with Django, and it’s got a freaking wonderful illustrated design, to boot. Congrats, Carsonified! Visit site »
October 8th, 2008–October 10th, 2008 in London, England
Really, really great piece by Andy on what sort of skills one needs to be a good and employable web designer in the industry today. You’ll note that Andy’s list of skills focuses on understanding the foundations of design as a craft (as well as basic communication, interaction, and business skills needed by a professional in nearly any industry), and not on individual design packages such as Photoshop or Dreamweaver. To that point, this quote at the end is particularly interesting:
…you may find that there are plenty of job listings where the job requirements are described as, “must be expert with Photoshop and Illustrator…” or something long those lines. Ignore those job listings; they’re placed by inept and sick companies looking for decorators, not designers. Take a job with a company asking for a Photoshop expert and I promise you’ll never be allowed to engage in design.
Andy might be over-exaggerating a little bit, here — I wouldn’t say every listing that mentions Photoshop and Illustrator is absolutely a bad gig — but his point is very sound. Such a mention is definitely a red flag. If you’re being hired as a designer, your employer ought to be much more interested in your ability to design than your expertise with a particular software package. And if they are more interested in your expertise with a particular software package, it’s probably because they really want you to be a Photoshop jockey, not a designer. Visit site »
Firefox 3 gets big kudos for its incorporation of kerning and basic ligatures in the new version of the browser. However, these improvements are negated by the fact that it also enables discretionary ligatures by default, which is likely to destroy the look of pages rendered in certain typefaces. Visit site »
Matt, a great web designer and friend in Seattle, has finally launched his blog. After I met this guy at a Refresh Seattle shortly after he moved to town, we exchanged several e-mails that got into some rants and saves about the industry. I told him, “dude, you’ve gotta get a blog.” And he finally has. Trust me, you want to subscribe to this one. Plus, it’s got a nice design. Visit site »
Chad’s got a nice post showcasing several great examples of web typography. His selections are definitely good, but it’s worth pointing out that they’re almost exclusively examples of great display type on the web. Very little body type is showcased here. Visit site »
Adam has redesigned his personal site, and it’s gorgeous. Well done! Visit site »
James makes the case for choosing HTML over XHTML. He makes several good points, but overlooks what is, to me, the single biggest reason to use HTML: because HTML is clearly the future, not XHTML. Today, the choice is mostly arbitrary. In my opinion, neither markup language offers significant advantages or disadvantages compared to the other. But, it’s clear (at least to me) that HTML5 is where things are going, so stepping away from XHTML now may better prepare you for the future.
That having been said, I still keep using XHTML out of habit, even if I think HTML is the better choice. :) Visit site »
Jon has a nice piece on the paragraph and how to appropriately use it on the web. It’s an important topic and one I spend a decent amount of time on in my usual typography talk when I speak at events. Far too often, people think typography is all about picking typefaces; Jon effectively explains some of the more nuanced details in this article. Visit site »
Wow. This is awesome. Liz Danzico and Steven Heller have put together a MFA program with a faculty that includes the likes of Christopher Fahey, David Womack, Jason Santa Maria, Karen McGrane, Khoi Vinh, Paul Ford, Matt Owens, Rachel Abrams, Jeffrey Zeldman, and more. The program will launch in the Fall of 2009. Only one question: where were you guys in 1994?! Visit site »
In part three of Keith’s ongoing series of post about working with Blue Flavor, he talks in detail about how best to empower our designers and get their best work out of them. I think many potential clients do have a misguided perception of how the relationship between client and designer should work, and Keith aims to quell some of those misunderstandings. Really good stuff. Visit site »
Jeff Palmer’s attractive and inventive tumblelog design. I love it. Via Wilson. Visit site »
Yesterday, our friends at 37signals started an interesting discussion on their blog with a post entitled Why we skip Photoshop. But the post actually has very little to do with ...
My good buddy Boltron has a great little piece in the latest ALA about writing a style guide for interface design. Style guides are commonly used for more overarching brand guidelines, but much less commonly address interface design for digital products — which is a shame, because they’re really very appropriate for many organizations, especially larger ones who have several different teams doing this kind of work (like, oh, I dunno…the company Jina works for). Visit site »
Nice-looking Markdown editor for use in browser from (like, on this site’s comment, for example). Includes toolbar for easy Markdown entry, and live preview of the rendered Markdown output. Visit site »
Leah Culver announces a new open standard for getting the URL to embedded content via an API endpoint. Smart. Currently supported by Flickr, Viddler, Qik, Pownce, Revision3 and Hulu. Vimeo and Blip.tv are working on implementations, as well. Visit site »
Several months ago, I spoke at Refresh Seattle. Kenny Meyers came. We met and became friends. For months, he has bothered me to write a blog post on the topic I spoke about, rehashing my slides and presentation. For months, I ignored him. So, the bastard wrote the blog post himself.
And it’s good. Check it out. Visit site »
If you use Django and Omnigraffle and find yourself mocking up Django admin screens, this could be useful. Visit site »
Safari is probably the most reliable browser out there when it comes to rendering things as a standards-aware developer would expect, but there are those rare times when you need to target it specifically with some unique rules. For those cases, this article will point you in the right direction. Visit site »
Friend of Blue Flavor, Kenny Meyers, has a blog. Its first post is titled, “Peaxal.com is up. Fuck you.” It’s funny. Kenny’s a smart and witty young dude who’s also a talented writer — this is a blog to watch. Visit site »
The wonderful Paul Boag from Headscape interviewed me for the latest episode of Boagworld, almost certainly the best web design podcast on the planet. We talk about my “controversial” views ...
Sara’s got a short little how-to on using clipping and transparency in web design to create some screens over photos and other similar layout options. Good stuff! Visit site »
So it appears that, short of a set of stone tablets carried down from the hills of Mountain View, we do have a fairly clear answer. Using CSS image replacement in a responsible way, where the image truthfully represents the content it’s replacing, is safe to use. The simple act of hiding text from users is not enough to get your site banned from Google’s index.
I think most of us have always suspected non-shady use of image replacement would be fine by Google, but now we (mostly) know for sure. Thanks, Dave! Visit site »
Talk about scratching your own itch… Visit site »
In my experience, most in-house web teams basically employ two types of people: designers and developers. Sure, some people call them different things, and there are definitely exceptions, but generally ...
Maura is the latest Django geek to go all tumblelog-style with her latest blog design. It looks great! Check it out. Visit site »