Design

“Pixel perfect”

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Although the term is still whispered in cobweb-infested hallways to this day, it pretty much fell out of public favor once people realized you could affect “the fold” by simply turning your space phone sideways.

I chuckled when I read that, mostly because I spent years dealing with it. I’m glad that’s gone, but there are new ones to replace it.

Point device at food, it tells your phone food’s ingredients

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Spectrometers have been around a long time, but the TellSpec proposes to be a pretty fascinating implementation. Point it at your food and it runs a spectral analysis, sends details on its findings to an app on your phone. Pretty cool. If it really works.

LogoThief

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We are LogoThief. We exist to name and shame logo thieves and all others who plagiarise the work of logo designers.

Much respect.

iPhone compatible hearing aids

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I have a number of close friends and family members who use hearing aids. This is a huge step forward.

Responsive typography

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When it comes to responsive type on the web, there’s more to do than just resizing the text’s container and having the text reflow inside of it.

Readable font please.

Don’t be a design dickhead

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Dan Edwards is talking specifically about designers in his article, but his advice can be applied to all aspects of our lives.

Polygon’s review of Moga Ace iOS 7 game controller

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Fascinating review offers insight into the design tradeoffs involved in being first to market with a new technology.

Jason Biheller, the director of gaming innovations at PowerA, admitted that some of the issues with the controller’s feel may have been due to a number of restrictions. “It wasn’t an easy project,” he said in a phone interview. “I’m not blaming this on timing, but we did have a limited amount of time to get this done, and because the phone had to sit in the middle, it was very difficult. I guess you lose a little stability by having the phone in the center of the controller, because you’ve got moving parts and some mechanical designs moving back and forth. So you lose some of that solid feel you get with the Vita.”

I see three obvious alternatives to game controller design. First is the sandwich, the approach taken by Moga and Logitech (with their PowerShell controller), with the controller built to sandwich the iOS device between the two sides of the controller. This seems to be the most efficient approach if you want to take the controller with you, but has the mechanical disadvantage of having two points of wiggle weakness or flex, where the controller connects to the iOS device.

The second alternative is the top-heavy approach used for most Android controllers, where the device is held in place on top of the controller. This approach is unwieldy but necessary, due to the large number of Android form factors.

The third approach, is the satellite design used by consoles, where the controller is a single, solid, piece and plugs into the device via a cable. The upsides are solid controller feel and compatibility with multiple form factors (iPad and iPhone, for example), while the down side is the clumsiness of play while on the move.

It’s early days and I’m sure there’ll be lots of design innovation to come.

iPad stand you can fit in your pocket

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The TwoHands iPad stand from Felix is like a long, thin hair clip. Squeeze the short end and the legs grasp the sides of the iPad. Works on most tablets, in portrait and landscape. Love this design. Also love the domain name. Presumably felix.com was already taken. This is a good second choice.

Sass

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A List Apart has an excerpt from Dan Cederholm’s new book “Sass For Web Designers.”

Responsive images

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Bruce Lawson writes about where we are with responsive images and why we need to solve this problem.

Redesign of bulky UK USB charger

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This is one clever design. Take a bulky UK iPad charger and give it a twist so it folds flat. Perfect for travel. Terrific job.

Beautiful Kickstarter redesign of ice cream scoop

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Dr. Karl Ulrich, Vice Dean of Innovation at the Wharton School, is an ice cream scoop collector. He turned his attention to designing the perfect scoop, and I think he got it right.

The incredible memorial to flight UTA#772 in the middle of the Sahara

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First things first, open up a new Google Maps window and copy and paste these coordinates:

16°51′53″N 11°57′13″E

This should put you in the middle of Niger, Africa, smack-dab in the middle of the Sahara Desert. Start zooming in. Keep going. Eventually, the memorial to UTA Flight #772 will appear.

Flight #772 was taken down by a suitcase bomb back in September, 1989. Switch over to satellite view and you’ll get a sense of what the memorial looks like from the air. Then, follow the headline link to see pictures of the construction of the memorial, using pieces of the wreckage from the crashed jet.

Tragic and beautiful.

Chart.js

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This is very cool if you use charts.

Dig in to 3D modeling with this free Blender tutorial

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Blender is an open source 3D modeling program that runs on Mac OS X as well as on Linux and Windows. Blender is free to download. You can support the Blender project by making a donation on the Blender site, or by buying books and DVDs via the site.

The headline links to an excellent, free tutorial created by Vicki Wenderlich. If you’ve ever thought about designing in 3D, this is a terrific place to start.