xBlog: The visual thinking weblog

Chris Ware animation for This American Life

Bill — Wed, 14 May 2008 19:26:34 +0000

“Chris Ware has returned with another animated opening for THIS AMERICAN LIFE.”

10 Tips for Managing a Creative Environment

Bill — Wed, 14 May 2008 14:17:26 +0000

“I pulled together a slidecast, with audio, of ‘10 Tips for Managing a Creative Environment.’ Bryan Mason and I gave this talk at SXSW 2008 Interactive. I’ve already described the talk here (we gave a version of it at Web 2.0 Expo SF in April) but the SXSW folks recently made the audio available.”

Follow the Rainbow: 101 Color Resources for Web Designers

Bill — Wed, 14 May 2008 14:15:49 +0000

“Do you freak out if someone asks you to match print colors to Web colors? Or, maybe you just can’t decide whether the orange would work better with the blue or the green. Either way, many designers may not realize how easy it is to choose a palette for that new Web design. Additionally, many designers might be surprised to learn that they can stay on top of color trends with a few visits to fashion design Web sites. All those tips and more are listed below in this list of 101 color resources for Web designers.”

Footers Design Showcase

Bill — Tue, 13 May 2008 20:18:15 +0000

“Footers can be much more than an afterthought containing the fine print of a web site. With the right design they can reinforce brand awareness and drive internal traffic. Footers can also be a place where a designer can let his creative juices flow a little more freely.”

“No Dashes Or Spaces” Hall of Shame

Bill — Tue, 13 May 2008 20:17:31 +0000

“Though I have a tolerably good handle on e-commerce software, I’ve not written much of it myself. In this respect, I’m not one to know what’s going on under the hood at any given site: maybe there is a reason why something works the odd way it does. But I’ve observed one technique that has been nearly universal: the practice of refusing to allow spaces or dashes in credit card number entry fields…

Credit card numbers are always printed and read aloud in groups of (usually) four digits, and when verifying a number after entry (which involves looking back and forth between the card and the web form) one uses the spacing to resynchronize. If there were some security or integrity reason for disallowing these characters, I guess I’d buy it, but I’ve not found a single good reason for it. The consensus among those that I’ve spoken to is that it’s nothing but lazy, sloppy programming. I completely agree.”

brand tags

Bill — Mon, 12 May 2008 17:02:44 +0000

“The basic idea of this site is that a brand exists entirely in people’s heads. Therefore, whatever it is they say a brand is, is what it is… A collective experiment in brand perception. All tags are generated by people like you and do not reflect the opinions of the site owner or anyone else he knows. Have fun.”

99 Flickr Groups for Design Inspiration

Bill — Thu, 08 May 2008 16:42:56 +0000

“Web designers and graphic designers are always looking for new sources of design inspiration. Of course, many of us turn to CSS galleries, and there are even more sources of offline inspiration. Personally, I find the work in many Flickr groups to be another excellent source of inspiration. Aside from the billions of photos on Flickr, there are also some groups that have been established to showcase the work of designers. Here is a look at 99 of them according to category (about half of them are general graphic design groups). Below the link to each group you’ll see the number of members and the number of items (pictures, graphics, screenshots, etc.) that have been submitted to the group, plus I have included part of the group description as listed by the moderator.”

Top 10 Tools to Get Blogging Done

Bill — Thu, 08 May 2008 16:42:03 +0000

“Writing your blog should be a fun way to stretch your mind and stay connected to trends, friends, and the greater world, not another computer task that takes far too long to get done. But that’s exactly what it can feel like if it takes you more time to find your post ideas, tweak your markup, and make everything look right than to actually get your thoughts down. Being somewhat experienced at this blogging thing, your Lifehacker editors have pinpointed a few tools and tricks that make our posts go faster and smoother. After the jump, we round up 10 of them.”

The Journal of Cartoon Over-analyzations

Bill — Thu, 08 May 2008 16:30:00 +0000

“Are there existential dilemmas in Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends? Does Brad Bird’s oeuvre contain creepy Objectivist subtext? Is there a Lorenzo Music/Bill Murray Ghostbusters-Garfield conspiracy? Were Paw Paw Bears simply evolved Snorks with a totemic religion? Or maybe Scooby and Shaggy, like, totally smoked weed, man. These and other questions require more than careful analysis. They demand over-analyzation.”

Information Design Patterns

Bill — Mon, 05 May 2008 17:27:19 +0000

“This application prototype is part of the Master thesis ‘The Form of Facts and Figures,’ developed by Christian Behrens in the Interface Design program at Potsdam University of Applied Sciences. Its goal is the development of of a design pattern taxonomy for the field of data visualization and information design.”