I love the feeling of paper in my hands. I always have and I always will. My wife has begged me to rid our bookshelves of my favorite paper swatch books that I’ve I acquired over the 10+ years I’ve been doing this…but I just can’t do it. Magazines will always have a special place in my heart… Read more…
Newest to Oldest forever and ever
The introduction of tablets and smartphones have created a need for web-based animation that goes way beyond the capabilities of the old stand-by that is Flash. Because of that, Flash has been experiencing a very long and somewhat painful death, leaving a hole in the web design / development community that’s in the shape of animated web elements. Adobe has responded to this need by creating Adobe Edge. This is how Adobe describes it:
“Adobe® Edge is a new web motion and interaction design tool that allows designers to bring animated content to websites, using web standards like HTML5, JavaScript, and CSS3.”
For the past few months, I’ve been playing around with Edge and so far, I really like it. It gives me the option of animating virtually anything I want within a web design while using mobile (and SEO) friendly HTML5. For now Edge is free because it’s still in beta, but it won’t be for long!
Here’s a link to download it. Adobe Edge
We seem to be getting this request a lot lately … “can you design our new site for a mobile phone?” or “will our new site look okay in an iPad?” or “should we re-design our website to be more mobile-friendly?”
It’s a valid line of thought — and these are exactly the kind of questions clients should be asking. Mobile web usage is at an all-time high (see insightful article and “infographic” from DigitalBuzz). Some estimate that mobile Internet usage will overtake desktop Internet usage by 2014. The way your site looks in an iPhone, on a Droid, or in a tablet matters now more than it ever has. The W3C even has a standards section devoted entirely to mobile. Read more…
As the lead, and oftentimes only designer working on a project at JLB, it can be hard to stay fresh and continuously come up with ideas–not to mention good ideas. Over the 5+ years of being the Creative Director here, I’ve learned how to get my mind focused on a project and how to jumpstart creativity in my brain. But there are the bad days when simple projects simply take time (way more time than I allotted for that specific project), and I can’t seem to design anything that’s any good. Read more…
Those of us who use Photoshop on a daily basis (literally) know how frustrating using the guide system can be. Guides are used to mark certain dimensions and points of alignment within a photoshop file. I use guides for web design to mark where a content area begins and ends and to align elements in a design. The issue with guides is that they don’t sit exactly where they should. If I place a guide at 250 pixels (using the ruler), it actually looks like I’ve placed it a pixel or two to the left of the 250 pixel mark. What’s the point of using guides if they can’t accurately depict where you’ve placed them! Read more…
Graphic designer, Julien Mercier, created a typeface that combines both serif and san serif font details to create a really interesting and elegant approach to typography. It’s called Otsuki-Sama and you can check it out here.
iPhone’s are extraordinary but they seem to be encroaching on my job. An iPhone owner has access to hundreds of really creative apps that are made for photography or basic graphic design needs. Hipstamatic and Instagram are two great examples of apps that have almost completely removed the need for post production photo editing.
Well, now you don’t need to worry about designing your next holiday card! Cartolina Post is an iPhone app that allows you to take a photo, insert it into one of several postcard templates and mail it out…all from your phone. See what I mean??
Smashing Magazine (one of the greatest web resources for designers and developers) is redesigning their site and Elliot Jay Stocks is doing it. He posted a great article about web font usage.
Check out his post here: Choose your web fonts wisely
…font family, that is! I know this is somewhat old news, but I just came across this entry at the Ascender Corporation’s blog.
Comic Sans Pro Typeface Family Makes its Debut
We all know that Comic Sans has gotten a lot of flack for being one of the worst, most overused typefaces in computer based graphic design history. I wonder why the blog post doesn’t touch on how bad of a name Comic Sans has gotten over the years?
This was my favorite part: “Hats off to Monotype Imaging for enlivening Comic Sans and getting it back to its roots as a comic book lettering face. Now everyone can write with more panache – and look even more like a pro using swashes, small caps and other typographic embellishments,” said Connare.
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