Graphic Design: The Forgotten Web Standard
A great three minutes of behind the scenes design work of Mike Kus as he prepares his slides for a presentation he gave at FOWD London 2009.
Layer Tennis
This week’s Layer Tennis may be the best I have ever watched. Check out all 10 volley’s from Chris Glass & Aaron James Draplin: http://www.layertennis.com/090501/index.php
There’s lots to love about this match: Aaron’s misspelling of the logo, Chris’ videos and sneak peek behind his process, the first I’ve ever seen players come together for a final product, and Chris’ play on the aforementioned misspelling during Layer 9.
For those in the crowd that aren’t pixel-pushers, Layer Tennis is a Friday afternoon competition put on by Coudal Partners that faces off two different designers each week. Players take turns creating something and then volleying it over to the other to build upon. A third party is also used to narrate the match as it progresses. It’s pretty much nerd-ertainment for a profession that is known for their ability to stroke each others’ egos. Needless to say, I have season tickets.
Research proves attractive things work better.
According to a 2002 study, the “appeal of the overall visual design of a site, including layout, typography, font size, and color schemes,” is the number one factor we use to evaluate a website’s credibility.
– In Defense of Eye Candy by Stephen P. Anderson (A List Apart)
Most people I deal with fall into two categories when it comes to design. There’s the “I’m a designer” group and the “Design is the afterthought” group; neither of which I handle all that well. Form and function have to coexist.
If you sell widgets, you know your widgets. I don’t profess to know your widgets better than you. Likewise, I know what I’m doing. My goal is not to make your website be the best website you have ever seen on your computer. My goal is to use design, content and functionality to make it the best possible experience for your clients as a greater whole.
My pitch has never been “my job is to make you look prettier,” nor has it ever been “my job is to give you more functionality.” My job is to make you look better. Fortunately for me, articles like the above and the research it references are slowly making it easier to prove to clients the need for well thought out plan of attack and hopefully refute the responses of “my wife likes brown and purple.”
Gr?°fica Fidalga
I grew up in the printing industry. I saw that it could be done to make a living but it wasn’t putting anyone on the fast track to prosperity. I am sure I even mentioned a time or two that I had a plan of getting out of it sooner rather than later.
Hand-bindery work is where I spent most of my formative years but after a short hiatus in college from printing, I found myself back inside a shop the last couple of years at university. Though I moved up to the use of actual machines for most of my bindery work, it was still bindery work.
There isn’t much I miss about being in a print shop. My list would probably be on one hand if I narrowed it down but lately I have had an affinity towards – and a fond remembrance of – the letterpress.
My favorite machine (as I remember it now) to run was called the Heidelberg Windmill.
Welcome to your doom.
I’m pretty much the best at HTML but this page is still under construction.
Yep, that pretty much sums up his talent: http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbsite/
Related, but entirely in jest and beautifully crafted to swim upstream among all of the designer portfolios out there today: http://noahstokes.com/
If you really want to see what he can do scroll down to his links 3/4 of the way down, Noah’s legit. And it’s pretty likely that you’ll have to multiply that hourly rate 5-10 times just to get on his schedule.