All Discussions - Drawar Community

What is the last thing you worked on?

Scrivs — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 19:11:09 -0500

I would love to see the last thing that you worked on (that can be shown publicly). As for me, I was part of the design behind SiteMover. Have more cool stuff coming out, but that might not occur till 2012.

Show me what you got.

Why start in Photoshop?

bryanbergman — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 19:58:19 -0500

It seems like most web designers first create a full design in Photoshop, and then proceed to code it. This feels like a waste of time to me. What are your thoughts? Should web designers start by coding?

Design Resources

Scrivs — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 18:16:14 -0400

I'm putting together a design resources section for the site and was hoping you would share your favorite resources with me. They can be sites, articles, tools, anything you find useful. Doesn't have to be in one of the categories up there, can be a brand new category. However, this is about design and not necessarily web development so please keep that in mind. If you aren't sure, post the resource anyways.

How do you do wireframes?

Scrivs — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 09:39:40 -0400

After you sketch something out do you create a wireframe? If you do, do you create them in html/css or a graphics program? At my work I'm starting to do some wireframes, but I like to do them in html because it helps me see the user flow better and I can make quick changes. I'm thinking about creating a toolkit so other people on my team can create them as well.

The New fonts.com

Scrivs — Tue, 01 May 2012 11:47:33 -0400

HappyCog seems to have done a decent job on the new fonts.com site. My only issue, and this has nothing to do with HappyCog, is that the logo is so damn ugly I can't even focus on the rest of the design. You have a nice grid layout, very clean and then there is this garish 1990s, clipart logo punching you in the face.

I hope they are considering a redesign of the logo to do the rest of the design justice.

Best pens and pencils for sketching

Scrivs — Sun, 22 Apr 2012 23:49:29 -0400

I need to start doing my research online, but I thought maybe some of you had some great suggestions. For as long as I could remember I have just been using whatever pen or pencil was available to do my sketching of interfaces, but I realize I need to stop being cheap and start getting the right tools. Not saying you shouldn't use whatever tools are available to you, but I would love to step up my sketch game some and see if there is something better out there.

So if you stick to a specific pen or pencil to do your sketching, I would love for you to share it. Thanks.

Edit: If you have some sketchpads you love, might as well throw them into the ring as well.

Are breadcrumbs just a case of bad IA?

Scrivs — Wed, 09 May 2012 17:23:00 -0400

I'm working with a designer and he mentioned that "we could just rely on the breadcrumbs" for navigation. I know breadcrumbs have been around for a while, but to me the idea of having to navigate using them seems like the IA is broken.

How often do you use breadcrumbs or do you still see a need for them?

Pixel Trading Company

tadfry — Wed, 02 May 2012 12:12:36 -0400

Per @scrivs recommendation, I'm posting my latest project to discuss.

It is Pixel Trading Company (yes, it actually is a company and I'm insane):
http://pixeltradingcompany.com

You log in each day and you get pixels and can trade them with others. I think it's a game, but I mostly created this project so I have an avenue to exercise my new knowledge of typography (just finished Thinking with Type). Furthermore, I want to build this out as a brand and have the pixel trading aspect support the brand. My server also generates random tweets to http://twitter.com/pixeltrading to get more pixels and also ties in with http://rolladay.com; a digital game based on a real-life physical roll of the dice. If Roll A Day rolls a 7, my server also generates another tweet to get more pixels.

Pressure and pressure

lutjiano — Fri, 04 May 2012 07:28:34 -0400

Hi guys,
It has been a long time since I've been here and first thing; I like the new look of the website! But why am I posting?

I'am currently studying at the Royal Academy of Art, doing the study Interactive Media / Design. The study is great! (We find the problem and then a solution and at last we find the right medium for it)
I've seen a lot of inspiring Interactive installations and so on, let's just say i've seen a lot of advanced and deep work from many artist and designers in this first year. The academy teaches us to be innovative and so on.

I'am at a point where every idea I get for an assignment is not good enough in my head and then I breed on it too long to try and make it better but eventually it gets me nowhere at all. That's where I'am right now.

So I'am not satisfied with my own ideas because I feel its not "innovative" enough or it just does not feel right all tho the idea might pass by my teachers. My problem is I'am feeling a lot of pressure to preform and come up with some thing new and innovative. And I think its the pressure of me trying to do this and the pressure of me seeing what can be done by other designers and artist; I'am trying to make a big thing every time at every assignment. Do you recognize this problem, have you been here, and what are you're thoughts on this?

Chill.com Interface

Scrivs — Sun, 22 Apr 2012 13:24:13 -0400

Go take a look at Chill.com. I really enjoy the aesthetics of this site, however I don't agree with going the Pinterest route of laying the content out. With images and maybe large headlines this type of layout works for quick browsing, but with video, the default image doesn't really tell me anything so I have to scan the headline. That is very difficult when they all aren't at the same level.

I fear that many clients will look at Pinterest and see the cool masonry layout it has going on and want to provide that on their site as well. I hope that isn't the case and designers can talk them out of it.

I use Masonry on the Resources page and I think it is easy to scan due to the spacing and boldness of the headlines. On Collections I just good ol' CSS columns for right now, but again the layout works because you are just scanning images.

When it gets time to really sit down and have to read though, making the eyes jump up and down all over the place isn't chill (am I witty or what).

Redesigning online discussions

Scrivs — Sun, 22 Apr 2012 23:29:16 -0400

Forums have been on the web forever. Listserves even longer. The problem with forums in general is that once you hit a certain number of replies or people involved in the conversation, it can be hard to keep track. Drawar works just fine right now because the discussions are small, but could you imagine just 20 people participating in a topic and replying to specific people?

Rarely are conversations linear and yet discussions online are designed to make it seem as so.

Allowing threaded discussions doesn't really solve the problem either because the deeper the thread goes the more you start to run out of room till the design eventually has to stop the threading. The concept behind threading is ideal though, which is that separate discussions should be allowed to break off on their own.

Seeing as there a ton of brilliant people around here I would love to start brainstorming how online conversations can evolve to another level. It would be great to hear the problems you have with online discussions whether they are in emails, forums, Twitter or anywhere else.

It's hard to tackle a redesign of such an old concept if we first don't understand all of the frustrations.

As I mentioned I don't like the fact that some discussions can't naturally evolve into other topics unless someone specifically starts a brand new discussion and even then the context is often lost. I like to read a topic and all the different discussions under it, doesn't matter how long it takes. Having to jump back to the main forum page isn't ideal because the conversations start to get completely separated.

Is speeding things up moving us backwards?

Scrivs — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 12:16:44 -0400

Nobody likes a slow website. However, we are slowly being given more and more technology with audio, video, HTML5, JS and CSS, and yet the more we add the slower a site can become. With the rise of mobile everyone is claiming that you need to make your site as small as possible and I'm not in disagreement, but when does the focus on the fast user experience get negated by the fact you want to create a more immersive experience?

No matter what you should be trying to make your site as fast as possible, but does this kind of thinking hold us back? Maybe if there was a general threshold for the size of a site it would be easier to set what can be done under that limit. For example, if I'm being told that all the code on the Drawar homepage, including images, has to be under 200k then I could focus on how can I get the experience I want to fit within that limit.

So I guess what I'm asking here is a two part question: 1) Is the quest for faster sites preventing us from creating the experiences that will really propel us into the future 2) what it the size limit of a site before a user really starts to notice its taking too long too load?

Value of Design

joshuamilford — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 07:39:26 -0400

In We Do Not Need You To Design Anymore, Scrivs brings up the question of the value of design.

There are always going to be people on both ends of the spectrum just as there are some who eat McDonalds and others who eat at 5-star steakhouses (or drive a Kia versus a Mercedes).

Do you think there's value in good design, even if an ugly website performs well? Should we try to convince people who don't "get it"?

Are wireframes dead?

Scrivs — Sun, 25 Mar 2012 22:12:34 -0400

Last week there were two posts about wireframes (here and here), which talk about how wireframes shouldn't be used to show clients the potential of a design. When it comes to basic websites I believe this to be true, but I don't think that is the case when it comes to designs that involve a lot of human interaction like web apps. Prototyping can definitely be done on paper, but sometimes a wireframe is quicker across a number of screens. It makes sense for longevity.

Maybe I'm too attached to the idea of wireframes when it comes to certain projects. I've worked in places where I had to hand off a design concept or userflow to a designer that wasn't in the same building as me. Should I have sketched these out on paper and taken pictures of them to send over?

Let's talk 16px fonts...

Scrivs — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 12:39:09 -0400

Smashing Magazine has a nice a little write up on why you should use 16px fonts. I know a lot of designers despise small type and we had a talk on that before. Fact of the matter is 16px is a nice default size because it doesn't make most people even hesitate to start reading.

Body copy shouldn't make a person pause to adjust before they start reading. If the focus is to get them to read your content make it a size where they can. If it is smaller blocks of text then you can get away with smaller font, but why should body copy be small?

Smaller is definitely cooler and can look funkier, but normal will keep the people coming back.

Using JS to render a complete HTML layout

Scrivs — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 12:17:15 -0400

Recently I have been working on a new forum platform. It's still in the early stages where I'm just designing some protoypes, but the idea I have for it require a layout that I'm not sure is possible with simple CSS. Looking at the layouts of the rdio app on the web or Tinkerbin and studying the source code I see that they pass it through some JS and was curious as to why. Is it because they can get the height and width of the browser window and set the variables accordingly?

Design Observation: Foodstuffs Facelifts

tadfry — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 11:36:22 -0400

What are your thoughts on these recent remodels?

I see a lot of solid planes, rock texture, solid lines with metal. Many awnings are one plane.

I really don't know where I'm going with this post, just curious on your thoughts and wanted to caputre these changes.

A lot of the restaurants in my area are making this change within the same year. The restaurants who aren't making this change are quickly looking like the oddball.

Source: http://community.cbs47.tv/blogs/kenmalloy/archive/2011/05/09/4460016.aspx

Source: http://www.davidsonae.com/project-detail.php?project=126

Source: http://doherty.standoutjobs.com/jobs/2943-now-hiring-applebees-in-garfield-nj

Wired Launches Wired Design

Scrivs — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 01:18:14 -0400

I'm not sure, but maybe they should unlaunch it. I don't even know where to begin, but how a major magazine that does a pretty good job of design in its print magazine can fail so bad online is beyond me. It is almost like they are forcing you to go out and buy the print edition.

Surprisingly, Fast Company does a much better job with their design site.

The 2012 BuildConf Site

Scrivs — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 13:54:38 -0400

2012 Build Conference. Kyle Meyer has always been one of my favorite designers on the web. His "style" of design always solves the problem and gets the message across, but gets in the way. In a world where we are surrounded by bevels, gloss, and dropshadows, his designs always offer a nice relief to the 2d form.

Hope other designers look at stuff like this and realize you don't have to follow trends to create designs that the world will love. Understand why certain aesthetic choices are made and apply them appropriately.

Startups that care about design

mbavio — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 08:52:18 -0400

Following the topic created yesterday, I would like to look at some startups that actually care about the design part of the process. I'm not talking about the ones that has a slick website, that can be done by any good web designer, I'm talking about those who focus and really take care of every design step details.

We all know that Apple created an example on this matter, and of course we have Dribbble which is actually guided by Dan Cederholm, who is a really a smart and good designer. I can also mention GitHub, a startup for programmers mainly, but who is focusing more and more on design each day.

Any good example that any of you can mention?

Startups, This is Design

Scrivs — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 13:16:12 -0400

So this site made the rounds last week and I love the sentiment behind it. Stuff like this should always be done if you have the inclination to do so, but there are some things that bother me about it and I'm not sure are part of the "this is how design works" manifesto.

1) The abuse of the left-margin just breaks the flow for me. I'm scrolling down a nicely spaced page and then for some reason the content just juts into the center and right of the page as if it is running away from the left. The left-margin is always your friend, so please don't abuse it.

2) The small heading with the red arrows make me think they are links. When design work it doesn't confuse.

I'm not going to dive into the actual content, but those two things kept bothering me everytime I visited the page from another link. I think the student did a great job overall, but you have to be careful when you are doing design manifestos because lots of people will start to think that all of the things applied to this design constitute great design.

Stand out from the Crowd...

aaronkwhite — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 11:06:21 -0400

So I was looking over some job posting (there are a ton out there FYI) and a couple of them included the following statement: "Send a cover letter, relevant work samples, and whatever else will make you stand out from the crowd..."

I've seen a few people go above & beyond to try and land a job, most seem successful (the The Google Please Hire Me Guy & the Community Mgr at JoyRide for example). So I thought I would see what I could come up with:

http://www.coverlettr.com

Name and Identities have been removed to protect the innocent. I'd love feedback on

1) This specific page (works/looks best in Chrome)

2) General thoughts on this type of tactic, have you ever done this, good or bad? etc...

Skeuomorphism

RoyAhuis — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 12:54:41 -0500

I don't really like it. Most of the time when designers (us?) try to make some on-screen interface resemble the 'real thing', I feel like there are two possible outcomes: at best, the design stays somewhat usable, and some visual delight is added. At worst, it looks like a 2002 Winamp skin.

Some not-totally-random of bad examples.

Lately, the discussion about this has been reawoken by, amongst others, the design of the iOS find my friends app and iCal on OSX. Find my Friends because of the horrible faux-leather look - something I don't really care about personally because I don't use it - but iCal used to look like a computer program, and now it looks like a bastard lovechild of a leather-ish calendar and said computer program. There is absolutely nothing the program does better now the design is different, but there is extra visual noise, the design looks incoherent compared to the OS, and in general, I feel like the change in design is purely visual and serves no apparent purpose.

I like design that serves a purpose. For example, this website (considering it hasn't changed again by the time you read it ;)). Every element of the design serves a purpose.

In the mobile world this type of purposeful design can be seen too. Looking at the videos, Clear is one of those apps that looks nice, but even the background-colors serve a purpose - higher priority tasks should be placed at the top and get a red background-color. An extreme (albeit in my opinion lovely) example is Windows Phone, where there is almost no unnessecary visual noise, and everything seems to serve a purpose.

No fake textures or shadows, but still an interesting design

However, my opinion is just what it says: an opinion. I understand that some, possibly a lot, have differing opinions. So I went looking for 'good examples of skeu…thing'. There are some I agree with, for example this iBooks versus Calibre comparison, where the iBooks screenshot definitely looks more interesting.

Just to make it clear: left side is Calibre ; )

More useful, I don't know, but in the light of reading being an experience I feel the whole faux-wood thing is appropriate and somewhat serves the user.

While the web has, in my mind, seen a transition from these fake textures and drop-shadows to a more simple state, OS and applications are lagging behind and even getting worse.

However, I might also be missing a larger point here, and it's entirely possible there are many good examples of skeuomorphism out there I forget or do not know about. So, fire away: good examples, bad examples, reasons!

Is spec work ever okay?

Scrivs — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 00:20:52 -0500

Is it okay when you are just starting out? Is it okay if you really want to do the project? Is it okay just to participate for fun?

Redesigning an iPhone App

aaronkwhite — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 13:37:20 -0400

Hey folks... I spent a couple hours this weekend re-designing the iPhone App for my local Sports Radio station. After listening to a post from Boagworld, where they are re-designing the Buffer app, I got to thinking, which App do I use that fits this criteria and more importantly how would I fix it. Here is the Boagworld post about the Buffer App: http://boagworld.com/usability/help-your-users-be-focused/

You can read my post here: http://www.aaronkwhite.com/2012/web-development/delivering_a_bunch_of_mediocre_features/

So, what App would you choose? How would you fix it?

Recommended designers to follow

mkjones — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 11:21:02 -0500

My twitter feed has recently been overrun with PHP, Ruby, Git, Java, and Version Control :(

Please recommend your fave 'design types' to follow. No matter how unknown they are :)

The Little Printer

Scrivs — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 12:19:09 -0500

I'm sure we've all seen the Little Printer by now. It's cute and an interesting concept, but I'm not sure that it is a great design. It is a beautiful product and the 'receipts' that it prints out are exceptional so to many that would make it an exceptional design.

However, because it uses paper that paper is a waste on the environment. Because you have to buy more paper when you run out, how likely are you to go and buy another roll? That also means more waste on the environment. It is great to get something physical in a world of digital goods, but I'm not sure if the Little Printer takes things far enough.

I'm glad it is around though because it opens up the imagination to new possibilities.

TV Remotes

malydok — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 11:06:25 -0500

Does anyone else get frustrated and overwhelmed by these evil little devices? You'd think they should have it figured out by now but no—these things are still barely useable.

Feel free to share your rants.

Do you show your pricing upfront?

Scrivs — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 14:19:30 -0400

I know everyone has their own ways of pricing projects, but do you let your potential clients know how much they could potentially pay for your services? I like what Vlad Georgescu has done here. Keeps the expectations normal and if people don't like paying by the hour maybe they can negotiate a per project fee. But at the very least they should understand that low-balling is not allowed.

I think what prevents many designers from doing this is fear. The fear of showing your price to everyone else because you aren't really sure what others are charging. The fear of chasing people away because they see your price, but what is the difference between chasing them away now vs. wasting your time and and quoting them only to have them complain and then leave?

What fate have you prepared for Xmas trees this year?

bickov — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 12:46:15 -0500

Recently I've designed a web project to save Xmas trees http://www.bickov.com/projects/greestmas-greeting from being cut down and then thrown away as a usual garbage.
That's not right. We use natural resources too much, so I've decided to make a small contribution - this year I won't cut any Xmas trees and I am calling for you too :)

Designing for mobile -> how will we do it a year from now

RoyAhuis — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 16:15:44 -0500

Recently I sort of redesigned a blog I maintain, and I decided to put some extra effort in removing the sidebars when the site is viewed from smaller screens. The sidebar isn't really important anyway and now it reads a whole lot better, especially because I also changed the zoom behaviour (always fully zoomed in using viewport) etcetera.

However, I used CSS media query wizardry to get the viewport width, and I use a treshold of 800px. Which works fine for me personally as my phone has a 800x480 resolution. However, it won't work so well on the iPhone in landscape, and I don't even want to begin thinking about phones like the Galaxy Note and the Galaxy Nexus, which both have super-high resolution screens.

Am I missing something or is the whole designing for mobile thing impossible a year from now, without relying on user agents etc (which is kinda sketchy)?

Simple-RESS

Scrivs — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 12:33:06 -0500

Has anyone tried Simple-RESS yet? It seems to be the solution that I have been waiting for. While CSS media queries are grand and there are definitely Javascript solutions that get me closer to where I want to go, I would rather have the server detect what the screen width is and serve specific files and code just for that.

Reactable: the synthesizer redesigned

notbanksy — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 10:23:13 -0500

The video says it all; I'm speechless.

New Site For Rap Duo

dbanksdesign — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 15:09:31 -0500

Just launched it at 3am last night, still lots of bugs, but good enough to launch and I'll fix the bugs live. Let me know what you guys think

http://themacknbiz.com

Note: view in webkit browser right now (music section doesnt work in FF yet and I'm still working on IE bugs)

If you got a tablet, see how it looks on it (still working on mobile though)

To Do:
- Get html5 audio to work in all capable browsers and have a fallback
- Make IE look better and fix IE bugs
- Test / optimize for mobile
- Maybe a photo viewer for the photos section instead of linking to flickr

Thanks!

Design Challenge #2: Thanksgiving Logo

Scrivs — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 11:31:28 -0500

You have been tasked with creating the official logo for Thanksgiving. However, Thanksgiving is now a global holiday and doesn't have the same backstory as it does in the United States. Instead of Pilgrims and Indians, the new holiday celebrates the day the Aliens landed and made peace with us (before taking all of our land in 2030).

Create a logo in any style you want that represents this new global holiday.

What's the difference between inspiration and stealing?

tadfry — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 08:05:40 -0400

What's the difference between inspiration and stealing?

For instance, I took this picture of a rad (yes, rad is in again, I promise) sign yesterday:

As an exercise, I tried to make something "new" with my own text/colors/texture:

Then, you look at them side-by-side, and it looks like I flat out ganked the design, even though my goal was to take a modern something (pixels) and apply it to a 30-year-old style sign.

Again, I beg the question, what's the difference between inspiration and stealing? Do you just keep cramming your personal style, add more design elements, until it looks far enough from the original that it becomes your own? But that seems like it could come at the cost of making the new design look stupid or not at all what we were trying to achieve.

All people that reply are ridiculously awesome by the way; just sayin'.

Design Challenge Websites

thewzn — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 09:23:31 -0500

Hello,

Because I want to move my skills on a higher level I'm looking for a some place in the Internet with design challenges. I saw here one challenge with some apple party but it's only one. I want some more ;)

Do you know any websites or sth like this, where I can play with other designers? Maybe here are some guys who want to play?

Tom

Sites with great help sections

Scrivs — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 16:05:30 -0500

I'm working on a project that involves creating a new help section for all of our products. I was wondering if anyone had a site where they found the help experience to be beyond wonderful.

I like what Apple has with their help section. MailChimp isn't that bad. I feel as though help sections are still a couple years behind the innovation loop than other aspects of websites. Maybe we can start to push things forward.

A Handle to Pull on a Door That You Push?

tadfry — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 11:19:36 -0400

As I'm leaving a restaurant, there's a handle to pull on the door that needs pushed.

Is there a reason for having such a handle? Incoming tornado... door swings open, so the handle is needed to bring the door back? Or is the sole purpose of said handle to make people feel like idiots as they try to pull the handle to leave?

When is it okay to use an overlay?

Scrivs — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 12:57:48 -0400

I've done my research and can't seem to find best practices on when one should use an overlay. Should they ever be used or do they really help out in certain situations? I hate the idea that an overlay can break the flow of a page, but if it has nothing to do with a specific page, like a login/signup box, then maybe it fits right in.

Would love to know how you use them.

Best Design Portfolio Framework?

jerome — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 10:10:53 -0400

I`ve been looking for a service, which`ll help me to create my own portfolio really fast, clean and cool, under my own domain.

I`ve tried CargoCollective and Behance, well, cant say Im happy with them, dont reall like a layout for portfolios there.

Maybe you can give me some other services? I dont mind if they`ll be paid.

Thanks in advance.

p.s. cant load my profile pic to Drawar, smth wrong with script?

Is Photoshop Deblur the Frontpage for Photographers?

Scrivs — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 00:08:21 -0400

Here is a video and some background for the new Photoshop Blur. It's almost cheating for photographers that don't know how to hold a camera steady. Is technology taking away too much control from the creative or are tools like this empowering?

How do you perform user testing?

Scrivs — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 23:08:02 -0400

Do you use a special service or do you just sit people down and watch them yourselves? We used Usertesting.com and the results were pretty good.

My biggest gripe with login forms...

Scrivs — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 16:09:03 -0400

(Besides them not remembering my login info) is that when I input the wrong information, be it username/email/password, it rarely tells me which one is wrong. I might not visit a service for a while so I'm not sure what I made my username or what my password is, but I have a better idea if you could tell me exactly which one was wrong. Why do I have to keep on guessing which one is the correct item and which one is wrong?

Yes, I'm aware that there are utilities like 1password to help this out, but why have we go so long by saying that "your username/password is incorrect" without providing a bit more information?

Sites I want to redesign...

Scrivs — Mon, 09 May 2011 22:51:27 -0400

The problem with knowing a thing or two (but nothing more) about design is that I come across a site that has great content, but a crappy design and I think to myself "hell, I would redesign that site for free." Okay, maybe not for free, but there are some sites that I would definitely enjoy redesigning over others.

Asymco
I like reading tech news and especially Apple news and there is none better than Asymco. Problem is the site runs on a modified version of Khoi Vinh's Basic Maths theme and it seems to be stretching it to its limits.

Hacker News
One of the few sites that I visit religiously. I've already done a quick readable version before as a design exercise, but I would love to sit down and really push the design in a new direction. On the other hand messing with large community sites never turns out well initially and only after some time do people acknowledge that the transition was for the best.

Any airlines site
Self-explanatory.

---------

With the sites above the only stipulation would be that I could use all the HTML5/CSS3 I wanted without worrying about old browsers. A pipe dream, but the fun in designing is pushing new technology forward, not tweaking to make sure the past still works.

What sites do you want a crack at?

What is the best way to deal with...

aprilfool — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 14:12:27 -0400

What is the best way to deal with people who are a) designers who can't do web design and b) programmers who can't seem to grasp good user experience practices?

My luck seems to be stirring me in weird directions lately and I keep ending up working with people who are a little unqualified to take on a task but are too stubborn to listen to somebody else.

I worked with a programmer on a statistics project and I asked him to display a small set of data in descending order. He told me that he cannot do that because he didn't program the system that way. I'm a designer/developer hybrid and I'm pretty sure modern programming languages can order a small set of data. I worked with a front-end developer who decided to add a detailed color picker that features all colors with sliders etc. which is fine except he was convinced that it's a good idea that every time the admin user clicks on a color, it saves that preference right away. I asked him: "So if a front-end user is looking at this section and the admin user is picking colors, the front side would keep changing colors during the browsing experience?" He looked at me as if I just spoke in tongues.

Any suggestions?

I know it sounds like whining but sometimes I'm so paralyzed and I let the project through just to either have the higher ups say the same thing, or the actual client says the same thing bringing us back to the same situation all over again.

Updated Website Crit

sdasilva03 — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 12:48:26 -0400

Hello everyone! After a brief hiatus from the community for business and personal reasons, I'm hoping to become more active in the discussions again. To get myself active again, I was hoping you guys could give me a quick critique.

My client came to me with this old website: http://www.zehfussdogtraining.com and asked if I could update it for him so that he would be able to add things to it himself. He also wanted to be able to blog without having to use the separate GoDaddy blogging interface he had been using. He really liked the design of his old website and didn't want to deviate from it too much. I had to agree that the design itself was pretty sharp, it didn't need that much changing in itself, but the actual build and layout of the site was pretty outdated. So I went with a custom Wordpress theme as I usually do when clients express the need to update themselves (usually small business owners) and gave him this: http://zehfussdogtraining.com/happypuppies/ He is very pleased with it and with the new features I've added, such as the embedded Youtube videos and channel and the ease of navigation. I just wanted to make sure from my fellow designers that there are no glaring faults, problems, or things that are broken. Not really looking for a crit on the "look and feel," but more on layout and code issues. Thanks so much guys! Great to be back!

What role does copy play in your company or design flow?

Scrivs — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 13:33:13 -0400

I'm trying to get people on board at my company about getting content upfront before trying to nail down all of the workflows. To nobody's surprise it is a bit difficult when working with product development where the features aren't set in stone.

I was curious how big of a role copy plays in your company?

Rest in Peace Steve Jobs

Destiny — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 20:35:54 -0400

As many know, Steve Jobs passed away today after a long battle with Pancreatic Cancer at the age of 56.

I would like to discuss with you all how he affected you. Even if you're not an Apple fan, his innovations have affected many designers and developers. Personally, I am not an Apple fan, but I still respect him as a visionary. Learning how Jobs and Wozniak built Apple from only a dream was an inspiring story for me to achieve big things.

You can pay your respects to Steve at rememberingsteve@apple.com

Why are you a designer?

Destiny — Tue, 31 May 2011 11:12:55 -0400

People love stories and story time. So tell us all why you are a designer.

My story begins when I was 12.

I became a web designer when I saw the insides of an InvisionFree message board. It was basic HTML and CSS, but when I was younger, I had no clue what it was. I wanted to manipulate the code to produce a cool, functional message board with an amazing design. So I jumped into learning basic HTML and CSS just for that purpose. As time went on and I learned more, it eventually became too easy to design those boards, so I started using my knowledge to create websites because I found that to be more challenging. Now, the challenge never ends and I love that. That challenge fuels my passion everyday.