BUSINESS: Noelle writes about dealing with consumers who question everything.
DESIGN: Mark continues his series with Five Simple Steps to designing with colour, part 2: A few basics.
BROWSERS: On having layout - IE/Win rendering inconsistencies and the various characteristics of and solutions to the idiocy that is Internet Explorer bugginess. (via)
DESIGN: Web design is 95% typography. (via)
DESIGN: Mark Boulton is soon to publish a PDF Book, Five Simple Steps: Designing for the Web.
STANDARDS: Reinventing HTML. "…This is going to be a very major collaboration on a very important spec, one of the crown jewels of web technology. Even though hundreds of people will be involved, we are evolving the technology which millions going on billions will use in the future." (via)
PROFESSIONALISM: Eric works more than you do and wonders how anyone who claims to have passion can work just 9 to 5.
MOBILE: Roger shares some best practices for the mobile web.
BROWSWERS: Gina shares a few Firefox 2 tweaks to get the browser working just right.
AGENCY: What have you done for your agency's success lately?
MARKETING: The two things that kill marketing creativity. Don't settle.
INTERVIEW: Shirley Kaiser is interviewed by Meryl Evans for Digital-Web magazine.
DESIGN: Jorge Frascara about designing effective communications & communication design. Somebody's got it right.
RSS: I've always hated RSS - the whole idea of it circumvents contextual design. But Idio is going to put a more appropriate spin on this technology. Idio is basically a flash magazine that works like an RSS feed, but is design-inclusive. Read what TechCrunch has to say about it.
BROWSERS: Firefox 2.0 is released for Windows.
ACCESSIBILITY: Roger writes about accessibility 2.0. Meh, not sure what the "2.0" is about. Also not sure why we should be concerned with "selling accessibility," as he writes. We should just be building accessible websites as a matter of course, not as a matter of what we can convince clients of. They don't even need to know.
BROWSERS: CSS bug fixes and issues associated with IE7. (via)
ACCESSIBILITY: Using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. Login forms gone wild.
PLUGINS: TechCruch's list of Firefox Add-ons that you must have (or not, your choice).
INTERVIEW: Peter Merholz of Adaptive Path talks with Michael Bierut - Part 1.
MAG: A List Apart #226 is published. Read and enjoy.
BLOGGING: David describes 6 degrees of perspective on why blogging matters. I love his simple test for whether or not a company should start an external blog - call your 800 number - and look in the mirror.
SADNESS: I can't help but think of desperation and experience a profound sadness when I see this video. Youtubers. (video)
DESIGN: Everything is an interface.
FREELANCE: Andy Budd's 7 habits of a hightly successful freelance web designer. (via)
BROWSERS: IE7 quirks, round 1. There's probably going to be many rounds. (via)
MARKETING: Seth's top 10 secrets of the marketing process.
DESIGN: Mark Boulton starts another design series. This one: Five Simple Steps to designing with colour.
TECH: Technorati announces support for Open ID. This is sort of cool, as it means the implementation of the VeriSign PIP project that I was lucky enough to design a while back. Create your identity account today!
AGENCY: R/GA opens an emerging media lab to explore mobile and social media. Forward thinking.
TALK: Part 3 of the Dan Cederhom, Jason Sanata Maria, Ryan Sims, and Greg Storey Fireside Chat.
TOOLS: Here are some cool creatures/people fonts for download. (via)
MOBILE: dotmobi has made some starter templates for mobile pages available for download. Generic, but perhaps a good place to start. (via)
BROWSER: Microsoft releases IE7. Caveat emptor. (via)
OPINION: John Oxton with a thing or two to say about IE7 in the empire strikes back.
MOBILE: Keith mulls over a few mobile observations.
IDIOCY: Dealing with "Women" Part 1: The Rant. Like it or not, Armin's right. Gender's got nothing to do with nothing in design. Deal with it.
CRAFT: The making of 300. Can't wait! (via) (video)
ILLUSION: Dove Evolution. Taking a woman from photo shoot to billboard in 60 seconds - via Photoshop for "correction." Ahem. (via)
MAG: UX Mag has been updated and relaunched. No more beta. (via)
DESIGN: Things you think will be fun / good / glamorous to design, but actually aren't. At all. (via)
COVERAGE: HOW Magazine did quite a nice piece on 37signals in their most recent issue. Of course, this is noted in the Signal vs. Noise blog.
CULTURE: Jeffrey on differentiating Web 1.0 from Web 2.0.
REDESIGN: Shaun Inman redesigns. (via)
CONVERSATION: Part 2 of the Fireside Chat with Dan Cederhom, Jason Santa Maria, Ryan Sims, and Greg Storey.
JAVASCRIPT: Really nice slideshow widget using mootools (and moo.fx if you like). Simple, lightweight, and nice function.
ILLUSTRATION: The rise and fall of illustration as an industry craft.
AGENCY: Bart Cleveland in defense of pro-bono work.
CRAFT: Veerle shows us how to make a ribbon in Illustrator.
INTERVIEW: 37signals' Fireside Chat with Dan Cederholm, Jason Santa Maria, Ryan Sims, and Greg Storey (part 1 of 3).
DESIGN: Fixed-Width Designs and Usability.
INTERVIEW: Khoi Vinh interviews Jeffrey Zeldman. 'Nuff said.
PLAY: Sometimes you just need a break from work. Play Pacman. Seriously.
MOVIE: Wow, this is one hell of a movie trailer for the movie, 300. Excellent art direction in this one, kids. My favorite part, "...Then we will fight in the shade." Nice. (video) (via)
CRITIQUE: Jason's site has been the subject of an interactive media class critique assignment. Interesting reading.
BUSINESS: Cheaper. Just say no.
MAG: A List Apart #225 has been published. Read and enjoy.
UX: Andy Budd on user experience and interaction design.
PARTICIPATION: Jakob Nielsen takes a look at participation inequality: encouraging more users to contribute to community sites. Did it ever occur to him (or you) that community sites are not communities at all? "Community site" is just the name someone gave these sorts of sites, insulting our intelligence and soiling the good name of community. I suggest you foster real community by face-to-face interaction (not digital interaction) and person-to-person discourse (not blog post commentary). Words mean things. Maybe it's time to get real or live in a virtual delusional world.
SIMPLICITY: Here's a short, interesting infomercial from Phillips, highlighting some of their recent innovations and product prototypes. Some are quite nice. (video)
UX: Dirk presents his ideas for applied empathy: a design framework for meeting human needs and desires (you know, ...design). Do you agree with his assessments? (via)
DESIGN: Christopher concludes his series on class and Web design with Part 6: Breaking the Class Barrier.
APPS: Back to School with the Class of Web 2.0: Part 2.
BUSINESS: Noelle suggests some questions to ask before chasing new business. Take heed.
TYPE: The Elements of Typographic Style Applied to the Web. (via)
DESIGN: Christopher's series on class and Web design continues with Part 5: The Politics of Class.
DESIGN: The casino experience. It's a powerful experience and is deadly effective and inescapably immersive. Contextual design at its best?
DESIGN: Your visual thinking assignment. (via)
FUN: Rocketfuel Malt Liquor. Damn! Vintage goodness from Phil Hartman found on AdFreak. (video)
FUN: Well, sort of. It's the Executive Coloring Book, circa 1961. (via)
DESIGN: Christopher continues his series on class and web design with Part 4: The Vicious Circle of Desire.
BUSINESS: "Business wants to love design, but it's often an awkward romance." From Tough Love in the current issue of Fast Company magazine.
DESIGN: "A competitive survey, no matter how rich the information gleaned from it, will always play second fiddle in the design process. After all, just because your competition does something doesn’t mean you should." Wise words from Dan Brown's Competitive Analysis, Part 2 in Digital Web magazine.
REDESIGN: The Morning News reveals a new design. It's better than before (though two designs ago it was really nice). (via)
SHAME: Beautiful People Network thinks it's 1995 again. Lending further credence to the idea that beautiful people are as dumb as a bag of hammers, this message from their site to Firefox users says, "BeautifulPeople.net is only supported by Internet Explorer." Ha! (via)
DIVERSITY: Bart says, "Agencies who only welcome those of like kind are doomed to mediocrity." This and further wisdom in Why Starbucks is a Model for Small Ad Agencies.
INTERVIEW: Scrivs interviews Mike Davidson, CEO of Newsvine.
CLASS: Chris continues his series on class and Web design with Part 3a: Tabloid vs. Broadsheet.
TOOLS: Solution Watch survey of school / education / teaching tools online in Back To School with the Class of Web 2.0: Part 1.
PRO: Jeff wonders, what does it mean to be a "profesional" web designer?
REDESIGN: "Back when we decided B&A needed an overhaul, we held a contest for a new design of Boxes and Arrows. Boy, was that a mistake. Quality wasn’t the problem. Although the designs were terrific—beautiful, clear, and innovative—not one was what we needed. A successful design is more than beautiful; it is appropriate." Yeah, get a friggin' clue: spec design contests are useless. Are We There Yet?
REDESIGN: Jason Santa Maria implements a subtle redux.
VIRTUAL: Leo Burnett buys space in Second Life. They claim to be the first agency in the 800,000-person Second Life virtual world. Leo Burnett bought 16 virtual acres in which to build their virtual agency. This is likely not as silly as it seems, as real commerce is going on in this virtual world.
DESIGN: Nine skills that separate good and great designers. I'll agree with these.
CLASS: Christopher continues his series with Class and Web Design, Part 3: As seen on TV!
NEWSPRINT: Yet another chime heralding the doom of newspapers. Michael Kinsey wonders, do newspapers have a future? (via)
DIGINEWS: New York Post redesigns its site. Still looks like a supermarket tabloid, but certainly better than before. (via)
INTERVIEW: Shooting oneself in the foot and other truths about designing on spec: An interview with Carmen von Richthofen and John Furneaux of the RGD. (via)
ORGANIZATION: Mark Boulton wonders, "…What do you think? Should there be a web design professional body? What should that body do? Is something like the iSTD model workable for web design?"
TYPE: Mark also takes a look at type and ponders the different messages created by different typefaces.
DOCTYPE: Jack say: it's time to kill off transitional doctypes. "They're called transitional for a reason." Here, here! (via)
PINK: Natalie has already gone pink for October. Go find out why.
FORMS: Buttons, plain or creative; you choose. Aaron examines things from a few angles.
MAG: A List Apart No. 224 is published. Read and enjoy.
DESIGN: Jakob suggests 6 ways to fix a confused information architecture.
BUSINESS: Marc suggests increasing revenue by declining new business.
MAG: Have a look at the latest issue of Profile magazine. (via)
MISLEADING: Strictly CSS suggests that these are the only CSS layouts you'll ever need. No, no, no. Please stop helping. (via)
STYLE: Geek 2.0
SXSW: The SXSW Interactive Panel Porposal Picker (Round Two) is out. Go and make your top 10 choice picks. See you in Austin next year.
UGLY: Yeah, okay, ugly on purpose is a viable design ingredient, as Matt shows us in these cool examples.
IA: Jeremy takes at look at the inconsistencies among ecommerce sites' buy button placements. Who moved my button?
STANDARDS: Roger says that standards still matter and Robert notes that the Web standards war is far from over. They're both right, of course. (via)
FUNNY: A classic Monty Python skit recreated with the video game Halo. Nice.
DESIGN: An article touting the benefits of wireframes - when they're done a certain special way. I'm still not convinced. Oh, and this just in: Boxesandarrows has updated their site.
FUN: "Would the fountain of your mind were clear again, that I might water an ass at it." and more fun insults from the Shakespearean Insulter. (thanks Michelle)
SPEC: "It's remarkable how client's can't believe it if you don't want to pitch --'What? You don't want to pitch; you don't want to spend three months of your life coming up with ideas for free?'" Ad agencies are finally getting it.
REDESIGN: Fox News takes (some) of my advice on information architecture in their newly redesigned site. In this case, a half-assed job is better than the previous version. Still looks half-designed, though. At least they now understand horizontal information bands.
DESIGN: A typical conversation a[n artist struggling to become a] designer has with himself. (via)
BLOGWATCH: Architectures of Control in Design. Looks interesting. (via)
AGENCY: "When sending out a cold call letter it is better to show your ankle and not the whole leg. Leave a little bit of mystery." Noelle on the small ad agency dating game.
CONFIDENCE: The one ingredient I've found most useful in work, life, love, and play. Matt agrees: Confidence in people, process, and purpose.
NEWS:"The first thing I ask is, where do they see their news product in ten years? Most of them bow their heads and say, 'Online.' This gets them thinking about long-term priorities." Theo examines the very necessary task of crafting online news.
BUSINESS: Seth has great advice for businesses. Just do it.
DESIGN: Should all sites be fluid? Cameron ponders. I say no!, but… (via)
DESIGN: Blogcast on Logic + Emotion: Anatomy of the new creative mind. (audio)
PEOPLE: Amanda Congdon goes from Rocketboom to landing on her feet to wallowing in a pool of self-promotion. Ugh.
NEWSPRINT: Roger examines print news' efforts to stay afloat in a shifting market. Looks like they're starting to use the furniture for firewood.
COMICS: Nathan announces the relaunch of PvPonline.com.
DESIGN: Cameron talks about optimal width for 1024px resolution. Nice insights. Who isn't yet delving into this resolution as a standard for page design?
BOOKS: Speak Up suggests a back to school reading list. Um, …the list is loooong.
IMPORTANT: Griffin offers up 15 things he learned from The Big Moo. Learn it, know it, live it. (via)
DESKTOP: Design is just owning a clip art gallery ...and other fun desktop wallpapers from Veerle and her friends. Get 'em while they're hot.
FREE: Get your free icons, cartographic symbols and patterns from The National Park Service. (via)
DESIGN: John Maeda on simplicity (of course).
UX: David offers a model for conceptualizing user experience building blocks. Nice one.
INNOVATION: Luke makes a good point and references good articles about user research and not being too smart by half. Something to think about.
DESIGN: Bart talks about strangling great creative with bad research. Anybody notice a trend here?
DESIGN: Michael Bierut gives us a peek at his design process. Interesting that it's also my design process and that of many designers I know. Er, sometimes.
DESIGN: Cameron offers up a tidbit of wisdom or two in his beginner's guide from a seasoned CSS designer.
DEMOGRAPHIC: They didn't get the memo.
MAG: A List Apart No.223 is published. Read and enjoy.
JAVASCRIPT: Slideshow alternative for sequential images from Nathan.
CULTURE: Everything you wanted to know about designers, but were afraid to ask.
USABILITY: Jakob say user testing is not entertainment.
UX: A user experience hierarchy of needs.
MAGAZINE: Ready for a Good Magazine? (via)
DESIGN: Christopher offers up part 2 of his article series: Class and Web Design, Part 2: What Class are You?
DESIGN: Jared has some compelling thoughts on bringing to bear information architecture, usability and interaction design. Disciplines and Professionals.
BLOGWATCH: Meet Roger Black. He designs magazines and stuff. (via)
DESIGN: David offers his advice in four simple steps to becoming a compassionate designer.
FLOUNDERING: The new issue of Communication Arts Magazine arrived in in the mail yesterday. This issue is the Interactive Annual; full of flash websites and articles describing graphic artists' struggles to find relevancy in an increasingly Web-driven world. The reason they so often cannot find purchase is because they're not designers. Rather, they're artists misrepresenting themselves as designers. The Web is about design - problem solving. So it is entirely fitting that so many "graphic designers" fail to even understand the context of the web. More on this later.
CREATIVITY: T-Shaped Creativity. David's visual representation of and audio commentary on a sound creative approach.
JOY: Yes, I'm a full participant in the Steve Irwin lovefest and am happy to share this classic SportsCenter spot featuring steve. Steve was the human definition of enthusiasm. (video)
DESIGN: Class and Web Design, Part 1: The Class Struggle. Christopher re-examines the non-design/ugly-design debate from a different perspective.
BUSINESS: Building yoru own start-up technology company, Part 4.
TEACHING: Those who can, teach. 1000 words of advice for design teachers from Allan Chochinov. (via)
GOODBYE: I'm sad beyond words for the loss of Steve Irwin. Jason's post pretty much sums up my sentiments. So long, mate.
MARKETING: Johnnie Walker Billboard in Beirut, Lebanon. I love ballsy advertising.
IDIOCY: Michael Arrington and OpenBC hate designers. And Michael is an idiot. Please stop helping, Mike.
TOOLS: Veerle shows how to create grunge brushes for Photoshop.
GRIDS: Here's a series of screenshots of just the grids/wireframes from popular sites. Click through them and try to guess the site just by looking at the wireframe. The page address filename can offer a hint. (via)
DESIGN: Turning visitors into users. Vitamin takes a comparative analysis look at a few companies' main pages. Who persuades, and why?
MOVED: Keith Robinson has a new site. So long Asterisk?
SHUFFLE: Krista announces a few promotions and shares thanks for the folks at Digital Web magazine. Congrats to Carolyn and Mike and best of luck, Krista.
TEST: Click anywhere within the rectangles presented on a few screens and then see where everyone else clicked. Interesting study of human behavior. (via)
FEEDS: Designfeeds - may or may not be worth utilizing as a resource. (via)
TEST: How Web 2.0-aware Are You? (via)
BRANDING: Ze Frank on brand and customer experience. Karl Long led me to this episode from his own site's entry.
DESIGN: Luke Wroblewski examines the user's experience of sifting though tabular data arrays. (via)
CODE: How to crash Internet Explorer with one line of code - 61 bytes, to be precise.
DESIGN: What's new in Web UI?
UXD: Christopher cites a nice example of one important aspect of user experience design in Elegance through Nomentclature.
UXD: Jeremy Johnson explains user experience with a tidy graphic (and a few choice words). Nice work.
MARKETING: I know, I know, they're everywhere these days, but they are excellent efforts at marketing: the latest PC vs. Mac ads. (videos) (via)
CULTURE: Andrei posts an open letter to John Warnock (Adobe).
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