Archive for January, 2010

2010 Trend Prediction: Subtle Textured Backgrounds

Friday, January 29th, 2010

Subtle background textures will be popping up all over the web this year. This new trend doesn’t go overboard with textures (as seen in many grunge styles), but focuses on simplicity and a more precise use of texture. The goal of the trend is to give the site a surface and the illusion of actual texture, but to not distract from the other visual elements on the page. A subtle texture can add dimension and depth to a design, creating a sensory experience for the viewer. If the texture is used well it can become a significant and beautiful feature of the web design. Check out the examples below showcasing great uses of subtle textures.

One Twenty Seven

One Twenty Seven

Delibar

Delibar

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Perfectly imperfect

Wednesday, January 27th, 2010

The design team has often talked about the tendency for designers to be perfectionists. Sometimes, especially when creating something for myself, this can be paralyzing. It has to be absolutely perfect and I can’t start until I know exactly how that perfect thing will look. Let me tell you, this can result in some blank white walls in my apartment. I know I’ll have to stare at it, whatever it is, day in and day out and that if it isn’t perfect it will drive me crazy! But what if it isn’t permanent? What if I just do without analyzing the final product and every step it will take me to get there? And then if I hate it, or get sick of it, I can rip it down and start something new. It is this idea that got us Zoomers started on a new mission to create temporary pieces of installation art on the walls of our studio. We wanted to do something that all Zoomers could quickly contribute to while taking a moment to stand up and get away from their computers. We wanted something that could morph and change throughout the process of creating it. We wanted something that didn’t need a storyboard, a set of brand guidelines or a project manager. With this in mind, reacting to a printer that kept jamming we started crumpling up the mangled sheets of paper and stapling them to the wall. And so it begins, we have a beginning but no precise vision for the end, and in this case, that is the way we like it!

TheWall


Winning At Working: Workplace Heists

Tuesday, January 26th, 2010

robber_cartoon2It’s that time of the month again, when I receive my enewsletter from Nan Russell, author of Winning At Working. Her articles are typically well written, easy to read and communicate a specific concept related to success in the workplace. I find them to be good food for thought and I hope you do too.

Seated in the courtyard of a sports bar during a playoff game in the home city of one of the teams, it was an energetic crowd that Sunday. While we’d come for a quick bite to eat, we caught a glimpse of a play now and then as home-team enthusiasts roared their approval during the first half.

When a man sat down next to us with two friends, ordered a pitcher of beer and maneuvered around to glimpse the game, we barely noticed. But when he hassled the waitress every few minutes trying to intimidate her into getting him a table closer to the TV where none existed, his rudeness and her apparent discomfort, drew our attention.

What happened next surprised me. Growing increasingly agitated at not being able to watch the football game from inside the bar, the man stood up, ordered his colleagues up, and walked away without paying. I don’t get it. He came well after the game started. Why would he think he should be entitled to a great seat over others waiting in the wings? (more…)


The Perfect Omelet!

Monday, January 25th, 2010

3 Eggs
Salt & Pepper to taste
1t water
Wisk briskly until eggs are blended

Melt 1T butter in a hot skillet – Just before the butter browns, pour in egg mixture, let set a moment and begin shaking the pan vigorously until it rolls over on itself. Decant onto a warm plate, brush with more butter (!), top with fresh herbs and serve.

Julia Child nailed the perfect omelet with five basic ingredients and the right tools. No one really knows how many fails she had before perfecting her technique, and they don’t really matter because most likely, they were done in the privacy of her own kitchen. Once her show went live, any foibles she had were well planned and purposeful as shown here:

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The Problem with Probability

Friday, January 22nd, 2010

If you were to flip a coin 10 times, and it comes up heads each time, you might think, “On the next flip, it’s SURE to come up tails – it’s due.” If you flip the coin 10 more times and again it comes up heads each time, you might think, “The next flip will surely be HEADS. Just look at the statistics.” Of course, we know that any flip has just as much chance as being heads as it does tails (assuming the coin is evenly weighted and symmetrical). So how many flips does it take to change our feeling about the next flip? Somewhere between 10 and 20 flips? (more…)


2010 Trend Prediction: Oversized Logos & Headers

Thursday, January 21st, 2010

It looks like giant footers aren’t the only web trend that’s expanding in the upcoming year. New websites will begin to incorporate oversized logos and amplified headers. The goal of the larger scale is said to increase brand recognition and make an unforgettable impression on the viewer. These elements can get so large that they now take up the entire screen, acting as a substitute to a standard splash page, but allowing visitors to get more information by just scrolling down instead of figuring out where to click. Check out these examples of how this new trend is being used currently:

MailChimp

Mail Chimp

Blogger

Blogger

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Guess What? Size DOES matter.

Wednesday, January 20th, 2010

googlebrowsersizeThe Internet is full of variables.  As web developers and web designers, we constantly wrestle with web user variables.  Things like: browser types, browser versions, platforms, Flash, JavaScript, cookies, web-safe colors, connection speed, visual impairments, and fonts.

Our goal is to find the most common settings, and to deliver web sites which match settings with a majority of users viewing the sites.  Also, we need to mitigate any problems which might arise if the user doesn’t have their environment settings similar to the development team’s in-house settings.  Let’s face it, not everybody uses Firefox or Chrome.
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Priori Acute

Tuesday, January 19th, 2010

Priori_Acute_001-blogSince I was a kid, I have always been a fan of Dutch graphic artist M.C. Escher‘s visual paradoxes. I am still very intrigued by his altering the logic of space and dimension. Emigre has just released Priori Acute, a typeface that takes its cues from some of his work. These characters are impossible drawings that rely on the brain’s insistence upon using visual clues to construct a three-dimensional object from a two-dimensional representation. This is the idea behind Roger Penrose’s impossible triangle.

This is just a display typeface that would be great for headlines, initial-caps or possibly logo design. FUN!


Google Chrome is at it again

Monday, January 18th, 2010

IEChromeOver the weekend I was researching some new web technologies and stumbled across a new plug-in for Internet Explorer (IE). It’s called Google Chrome Frame, and it solves some big problems in the current development cycle for web apps.

Many people don’t know this, but a lot of time is devoted entirely to making IE (especially older versions) behave properly with W3C standard based browsers (Mozilla Firefox, Safari, Google Chrome, Opera, etc.). This makes developing for the web more complex than it needs to be because most browsers function as you would expect them to. Unfortunately, IE is used by most users across the planet, so the fact that it isn’t based on current standards and behaves oddly isn’t something that we developers can ignore. This is where Google-Chrome-Frame comes to the rescue.

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Design for the color blind

Friday, January 15th, 2010

ColorBlindTestAs a designer I tend to believe in the economy of form. Why make your web links a different color, bold and underlined when a simple color shift is enough to visually distinguish them? Isn’t it?

While I haven’t changed my “less is more motto”, I do think it is important to keep in mind that a color shift may not be noticeable to all viewers. About 8% of males have some form of color blindness.

When designing web sites, information graphics, maps or charts that use color to distinguish different pieces of information it may be helpful to test your design using a handy tool called the Color Oracle. The plug-in uses a menu that quickly converts your art (regardless of the program you are using) into a palette that simulates what colorblind people see. Very handy!