The most enthusiastic, positive, funny web-guy I know was interviewed at RailsConf about the being a designer who can write code, and “touching the magic wand”, which isn’t nearly as pornographic as it sounds. Have a listen.
And this is me showing off my new Flip camcorder to Ryan, and his silly little dance, complete with my belly chuckle wobbles.
Discouraging Design Decay
If you’ve ever designed a site which someone else will be maintaining, you know design decay: the little tasteless changes that slowly but surely turn your masterpiece into a piece of trash. Jina Bolton’s written a good guide to laying down the law with a style guide, and pushing back the forces of entropy as long as possible.
My two cents: Jina’s right in everything, except the choice she offers at the end: print or HTML. Don’t make the mistake of creating a printed or PDF styleguide. If you’re working on a project that’s really big enough to need a detailed styleguide, then the odds are that your guide will land in 20 different pairs of hands—various client departments, various content providers, and different agencies working for your client. I’ve seen this happen more than once. By the time they all have a copy, you’ll have changed it, and the annoying distribution cycle begins again. Make your styleguide in HTML, so there’s only one copy, and changes are instantly visible to all. If someone insists on hanging it on their wall, they can print it themselves. For extra credit: make your styleguide a living example of the rules it explains.
Skip the Shop
This just popped up in my reader: “Why We Skip Photoshop” from the 37signals blog, where Jason lays out 7 good reasons to skip Photoshop and jump right into HTML & CSS. I’ve been having quite a few talks with people in my company about this lately, so it’s pretty timely for me.
There’s already a pretty lively conversation going on over there, and I ‘m hoping someone from 37 answers Jeff Croft’s questions, especially:
Is it possible that your no-Photoshop workflow has actually influenced your design style?
I think that’s a big “yes”, but either way, even though I’m a glorified Photoshop-jockey, I’m eager to try skip the Photoshop phase in a project and see what happens. Update: Jeff’s written his own response over at the Blue Flavour blog.
A discussion (in German) the other day in the foyer of Sinnerschrader (translated into English for my readers).
Blogger 1: You wouldn’t believe what just happened! I’ve got to blog it right now!
Blogger 2: Nice thought, but I was there too, thank you very much. Do you know how hard it is to find subjects to write about? This definitely belongs in my blog!
Blogger 3:(in passing) normally I’d never blog about work, but you’re talking about some thing very general…
Blogger 4: And anyway, you guys have always got stuff to write about. My blog hasn’t had anything new in it for ages, so I deserve to write about this!
Blogger 5:(me) I don’t care about any of it. I blog in English, so no one in Germany reads me anyway.
In general I tend to have about three standard tools open all day, and don’t often fool around with the millions of ultra-focussed apps out there which only do one specific thing. But in the last week or two, a few of them have managed to catch my attention enough that I have to share.
Things
I’ve heard over and over about Getting Things Done, but it always seemed to me like a complicated brainwash system (somewhat reenforced by Wired’s article) I’d never stick to, even if I read the book. But lately I’ve had the feeling I’ve got about 200 todos a day, and quite a few have been falling under the table. That’s where Things comes in. It’s based on the GTD system, but you don’t need to know it to use this handy little tool. And that true hallmark of good software shines in Things—it’s easy enough to start using in 5 minutes (especially if you watch the well-done screencast), but open enough to use in a number of sophisticated ways, if you want to. In the end it’s just a place to save todos, but that’s not doing it justice. If you find yourself with too many things to remember to do, you should definitely check Things out. Sorry Bill, Mac only.
Isolator
And once you know what you have to do, how about getting focussed on doing it? Isolator does one simple thing: it blacks out all programs other than the one you’re currently using. No flashing chat crap in the background, no clutter of overlapping windows, nothing but what you’re working on and you. It’s worth a look.
Instapaper
I love the idea, but can’t quite decide if I’ll actually be using Instapaper.
We discover web content throughout the day, and sometimes, we don’t have time to read long articles right when we find them.
Instapaper allows you to easily save them for later, when you do have time, so you don’t just forget about them or skim through them.
No more explanation necessary, and the site itself is minimal enough you’ll be up and running in 20 seconds. I’ll probably wait to fall in love until I have an iPhone.
Business Cards
Certainly not software, and not exactly a tool, but I found some nice stuff to share. Not so relevant for me—my cards are designed and printed by others, but as a designer I can’t help but get a little warm & fuzzy about good cards. An article at Freelance Switch has some great examples, which led me to similar articles with more examples at FaveUp and Creative Bits. Inspired? Go make your own cards online in a nifty format with your own photos at Moo.
I’ve read Andy Rutledge’s blog as long as it’s been around, and his articles have never failed to be opinionated, structured, intelligent and useful. Now he’s got a podcast called The Design View Show and I can wholeheartedly recommend it for designers, but also clients, project managers, and anyone else who needs to understand, communicate, sell and judge design. He started with a bang in his first show by making it clear that the design profession has been stolen from designers, and we let it happen. Get it in your ears and learn something. And if you’re into the show, you’ll love his blog too.
Although Noam Cohen doesn’t seem to understand how Tumblr and Twitter differ, he’s written an interesting article for the New York Times about the social effects of being constantly, but lightly, in touch with hundreds. And he quotes all—round smart Aussie lady and Twitter friend Leisa Reichelt.
For those of you who’ve learned to love Quicksilver (and if you haven’t you should. It’s worth it.), and are driven to tell everyone what you’re doing as you’re doing it, check out Tweet, a twitter plugin for Quicksilver. Installation’s a little more complicated than for most Quicksilver plugins, but it works great. Vomiting out unconsidered and uninteresting news about yourself has never been faster.
Brad Sucks — a somewhat Beck-like musician we used to play on our now defunct podcast and who does in fact not suck at all — is going full Web 2.0 with his new album. You (yes you!) can send him a track of yourself singing as best you can, and he may use it as backup vocals. You get your name in his liner notes and a free cd. [via Joho the Blog]
A Brief Message is something like a blog, featuring design opinions is 200 words or less. Fitting a site with such a mission, it’s design is beautifully clear and minimal and it simply reeks of simple. By Khoi Vinh and Liz Danzico.
