November 2011
2 posts
“Adobe’s management is also being pragmatic about its priorities. Rather than...”
– Adobe ends mobile Flash development – Marco.org
Not for profits need to be more aggressive in...
Over the years, you start to notice patterns when working with different types of organisations. You notice the similarities and differences between organisations in different markets, in varying sectors, and with different personalities.
The Australian not-for-profit sector (and in this I include charities, foundations, as well as public-sector hospitals) is a very strange beast indeed. A large...
October 2011
2 posts
essdogg replied to your post: Stop designing for engineers.
I’ll add that they shouldn’t be designing for designers, either. Whether words, images, design or engineering, the key is, as you say, creating a spark. They’re all tools — it’s how they’re used to convey meaning.
Agreed. At the core of all communications disciplines, there’s a rather simple and fundamental question that that...
Stop designing for engineers.
I’ve been around web design since the start of the web. I became despondent with the state of web design in the late 90s and gave up on it almost entirely around 2002.
I was sick of the fact that the tools, technologies and standards continued to provide a less-nuanced toolkit for designers to work with. I was sick of the state of flux around workflow. And I was tired of the relative...
July 2011
1 post
Mike Monteiro On The Stream Design Of Google+ Vs.... →
parislemon:
I know it’s completely subjective, but I really prefer uniformity of Twitter’s design over what Google+ is doing. To me, Google+ is interesting, but at first glance it looks like chaos.
When you give people the ability to have different sized areas for things, I find that they tend to go bigger because YELLING gets you noticed more than whispering. What’s great about Twitter is...
May 2011
3 posts
essdogg replied to your post: Budgets, briefs, and trust.
Couldn’t a counterargument be made that more transparency of component part costs up front should be made so the client can also express its scope accordingly? Aren’t you asking for transparency without first providing it?
I hope we’re not doing that. To employ the overused car analogy, the client is telling us that they want...
Budgets, briefs, and trust.
Recently we had a meeting with one of our favourite clients about a large and exciting new project that they’d like us to work on together. It has dozens of constituent components to be delivered over three months, and we’re very excited to work on it. The client is excited about having us work on it. We’re all giddy. And then I ask the fateful question. “So, what’s the planned budget for this...
April 2011
1 post
March 2011
2 posts
3 tags
February 2011
7 posts
Mobile UI Patterns - Check-in Screens
jmdickinson:
The new Mobile UI Patterns site is fantastic but it reveals a disturbing “me-too” trend in the mobile space: ubiquitous check-ins. The fact that this page can be a category with as many examples as “splash screen” and “activity feed” is a little saddening to me.
You never forget your first and Foursquare will always be my go-to check-in app. It satisfies a past and future need...
“The boomers have overstayed their welcome,” declares the man credited by...”
– Conan 2.0 - Fortune Tech
Fascinating story about how the previously-luddite Conan O’Brien ended up being the king of the digital kids.
January 2011
0 posts
Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mentor, Or, Why Modernist... →
whileyouweresleeping:
“Here are some things I was not allowed to do as I began my first job:
- Use any typeface other than Helvetica, Century, Times, Futura, Garamond No. 3, or Bodoni. - Use more than two typefaces on any project. - Use more than three sizes of typefaces on any project. - Begin any layout without a modular grid in place, including a letterhead or a business card. - Make visual...
November 2010
1 post
Steampunk Blogging: an interview with Ross Floate →
Matt Levinson recently interviewed me about And Now It’s In Print, and the interview has ended up on his blog This Is Possible.
As per normal, I ramble a bit too much, but I think this remains my most stridently held view about the value of newspapers.
There’s something we get from newspapers that people don’t realise. What people think they’re buying when they buy a newspaper is the news...
October 2010
3 posts
Think.: Web Design Apprenticeships and the Scam of... →
gbb:
Andy Rutledge has a powerful new post about web design education:
If you emerge from university today with a web design degree, chances are rather slim that you’re employable as a user experience (UX) or web designer. Maybe you learned a lot of stuff; it’s just probably the wrong stuff….
I try not to reblog too much on this site, but if you’re a working designer you could...
July 2010
12 posts
Thoughts on Flipboard.
This could get long.
I’m going to come out and say up front that as a user, I’m a slavish lovesick fool for Flipboard. It’s become my most-used iPad application, and my go-to interface for social media. As a user, it’s completely hooked me. If you could read the Tumblr dashboard on it, it’d be the only way I read the social web.
Information hierarchy and editorial...
Hello there, Magic Trackpad. Will I love or hate...
I’ve started to become used to (and excited by) the use of gestures in multi-touch interfaces. The beautiful and unexpected ways that multi-touch has been implemented on the iPad are a constant delight. Simple gestures on my MacBook Pro trackpad have become part of my everyday casual use (read non-work use) of a computer.
But in a work environment so far gestures have been an annoyance more...
'So, how do you like the iPad?'
That’s a question people have been asking me since I had one sent out to me from the US just after launch. The truth was that I liked it, but I didn’t love it.
And now I’ve totally changed my mind. I love it. Love love it.
Of course this week’s launch of Flipboard* has shown that there’s still plenty of room for innovation in app creation, but what has changed my...
“Men are no longer heroes but consumers. Worse, they’re idiots. They might...”
– Charles Purcell in The Age. Portrayal Of Men In Advertising
As much as I’d like to get upset over this (and in the past I have been noisy about this subject) nowadays I think it’s simply a combination of the entirely comprehensible blowback against white male privilege, and the fact...
4 tags
June 2010
9 posts
2 tags
Here's the list of what went into 'And Now It's In... →
2 tags
2 tags
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On Print
(This article originally appeared in The Big Issue Australia #366)
As long as I can remember, I’ve worked in a world where the conventional wisdom has been that print is dying. If you listen to a lot of pundits (mostly online pundits, naturally) you’ll hear that print is already dead; it just doesn’t know it yet. The big stories in media for the past decade have been the collapse and decay of...
Words from experience.
A client who uses the word ‘just’ when asking you to complete some work for them (“can you just do this round of changes for us”) does not value your time, expertise, or craft.
If you can, cut them loose. You will be better off when they are your competitor’s client.
The person behind @BPGlobalPR speaks →
This is going to be in textbooks soon. Get your head around it now.
2 tags
And Now We're on radio.
Ned Dwyer and I are going to be on RRR FM’s Byte Into It program tonight between 7 and 8 talking about And Now It’s In Print. Hope you can listen in.
May 2010
9 posts
HTML5 Watch →
In which the talented Neven Mrgan keeps up with interesting things being done with HTML5, so you don’t have to.
1 tag
There are no backwaters.
When I was a young designer working in niche magazine production, sometimes I would get discouraged. Australia is a long way from the rest of the world, and designing industry publications (I cut my teeth on some pretty obscure things) seems a long way from the mainstream.
I was wrong to feel it then, and there are no excuses for feeling it now. If you do great work anywhere it will get noticed....
2 tags
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“You’re not readers to them. You’re “eyeballs”. You’re not customers. You’re the...”
– I have a lot of time for the writing of Marco Arment, (Marco.org) who seems to be a thoughtful guy who cares a great deal about ideas, information, and the right way to convey them. He even gave me a t-shirt at sxsw, listened to my odd comments about why I hate RSS, and didn’t make fun of my...
