Design

Digital Trends:

It’s no secret that branding is powerful: Fonts, shapes, colors are all part of what we associate with certain brands. Without the words, we can tell the swoosh is part of the Nike franchise, and a yellow M is a straight sign to your local McDonald’s. But can you recognize these brands and objects if you take the colors and logos away? That’s the idea behind the project Brand Spirit by Andrew Miller.Every day for 100 days, Miller has taken a random object and paint it completely white to strip it of the branding we’ve come to know like the back of our hands. By removing the visual branding, Miller says this ”reduc[es] the object to its purest form.”

Many of these are utterly generic but it’s interesting to see how many you can identify simply by their shape.

But if you don’t have a lot of experience with CSS, then you’re probably trying to figure out what is the best way to handle some of the challenges that arise from using multiple vendor prefixes, dealing with older versions of Internet Explorer, and other CSS3-specific dilemmas.

There have been many imitations – Fancybox and Thickbox to name just two – but Lightbox still remains as the favoured way to present images to a user. This, primarily, is due to its 3d animation and background dimming which allows the user to view the image without any distraction. It’s a useful, timeless technique.

Rian van der Merwe:

I’ve never fully bought into the “user experience cannot be designed” argument. You could say I’m biased because user experience design is how I choose to make my living, but I would (surprise!) disagree with that as well.

It seems to me it’s the clients that hinder most designs.

Ever met someone who uses UX and UI interchangeably? Ed Lea created this photographic infographic to visually define the differences between user experience and user interface design and how they relate to a product.

This will be a huge hit.

“Comic Sans was designed because when I was working at Microsoft, I received a beta version of Microsoft Bob. It was a comic software package that had a dog called Rover at the beginning and he had a balloon with messages using Times New Roman.”

The initial challenge was to create a classic semi-transparent 3D box with 6 sides. The final challenge was to create a complete 3D bar chart which we will create in this tutorial.

So much better than plain images or using JavaScript.

The 336 New Colors enrich the current PLUS SERIES palette, providing a more comprehensive selection. All color families are extended to include a wider variety of values, saturation and undertones – from subtle pastels and reliable mid-tones to the intensity of deep tones, vivid brights and vital, nuanced neutrals.

Matt Gemmell:

But knee-jerk design decisions are worryingly commonplace, and pose substantially more risk to software users. Familiarity is only one factor, and it’s often a deceptive one. Consider the entire scenario and context, and take the time to truly design your user’s experience.

Great stuff from Matt.

Cool Material:

The Pocket Artillery Mini Cannon looks like a harmless desktop accessory, it’s nicely polished, available in some eye-catching colors and it seems like an ideal way to show off your eye for design and love of little trinkets. Then you light the fuse. All of a sudden that fun office party turns into a hospital run cause Dottie took a BB in the hand.

Don’t lie – you know you want one.

Mental Floss:

Here are fifteen of the most beautiful libraries throughout Europe.

I’ve posted in the past about beautiful libraries in personal homes. These are ones the public has access to.

The Web font revolution that started around two years ago has brought up a topic that many of us had merrily ignored for many years: font rendering. The newfound freedom Web fonts are giving us brings along new challenges. Choosing and using a font is not merely a stylistic issue, and it’s worth having a look at how the technology comes into play.

I just love the Chateau de Noisy in Belgium.

More CSS3 goodness. Although I don’t agree with what they said about being careful of CSS3 because of the older browsers that don’t support it. It’s time to move forward.

Mental Floss:

Even though I’m fairly ancient, I’ve never seen a Model T outside of a classic auto show. So I realize that there are many things that have been obsolete since the elastic waistband was invented and would confound anyone under age 70. But what about some common items that have come and gone within the last 30 or so years? See how many of these you recognize, and how many of them would puzzle your kids or grandkids.

Interestingly, while I have heard about all of them, five of them I’ve never actually seen in real life (#2, 4, 6, 8, 10). How about you? And which ones would your kids not be able to recognize?

NY Daily News:

This vending machine cares more about love than money.A new Coca-Cola machine at the National University of Singapore dispenses free beverages in exchange for hugs. The red-and-white machine has the word “Hug Me” written across the front in Coke’s signature font.The machine is programmed to dispense a Coke when a person wraps their arm around it.

The video accompanying the story is very sweet but it’s hard not to be cynical and think there’s no way this campaign would work in the US.

[caption id="attachment_22903" align="alignnone" width="470" caption="This is what a $28,000 turntable looks like"][/caption] Cool Material:

Every year, unbeknownst to most of the public, the most outrageous and amazing pieces of audio equipment are tossed (see: very carefully placed) into one hotel for The New York Audio & AV Show.This is not the kinda stuff you get at Best Buy or hook up to the turntable you bought from Urban Outfitters. This is the stuff for the hardcore audio fan who happens to have deep pockets.

“Deep pockets” and maybe a pathological need to spend insane amounts of money on audio gear. Some of it is really cool looking though.

Erin Griffith for PandoDaily:

But, especially with Squarespace 6, Casalena said the platform is ready for adoption from publishers of any size. Version five, while excellent, “wasn’t a developer’s dream come true because they couldn’t get into all the code,” he said. The new version is more open for developers. The company is completely capable of hosting high volume sites and is building out programs comparable to WordPress’s support staff.

I’m beta testing Squarespace 6 and I really like what I see so far. There are some functionality things that I’m not too sure about yet, but I expect this to be a really big rollout.

Pebble E-Paper Watch:

The Pebble is an “electronic” watch with an e-paper display. It vibrates, has a three-axis accelerometer and contains Bluetooth 2.1+ EDR for connecting to your phone. Battery life is seven days and is charged via USB.The beauty of the Pebble Watch will be the apps and customization – everything from different styles of watch faces to all kinds of apps.

Amazingly, this Kickstarter project is fully funded already with over $2 million dollars pledged and still 35 days left to go.

The aim of this article is to find out why people still find it difficult to use CSS sprites. Also, we’ll come up with a couple of substantial improvements to current techniques.

I like, but don’t understand how to implement sprites. I’ll do it one day.

Carrie Cousins:

Pay attention to alignment, contrast, type effects and color because these items can make or break your website design.

Solid advice. It’s the small things that often kill us.