Dressed In Value is a design workshop in Louisville, Kentucky. Learn more.

Friday, February 27, 2009

Wednesday afternoon I got an email about a rush job. Thursday morning I had the design in hand, and today (Friday) it’s finished. A new portfolio site for Louisville artists Amanda Bishop and Ty Kreft.

Ty supplied the artwork and I was responsible for making the magic happen with the HTML, CSS, and CMS (built on Textpattern). It was really fun to work on, despite the time crunch. Check it!

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

I like to look at and read about architecture, and in so doing I wandered into this text from a little old book called Architecture, written by Forrest Wilson:

There are aesthetic rules for building just as there are principles of structure. The difference is that if we do not follow structural principles the building will fall down, but if we violate the rules of design the building may continue to stand but will be very ugly. Anyone can tell when a building falls down but not everyone agrees on what makes a building beautiful.

Very straightforward and very true in my experience. I’ve watched a building fall down, and I’ve had disagreements on what might be beautiful.

The quote is from the book’s Part 3, in which Wilson talks about ‘the language of architecture’ — things like shape, depth, illusion, texture, space, and scale. I really enjoyed these illustrations showing how we can perceive what kind of materials have been used simply by recognizing their shape and scale in proportion to average human height:

Wilson describes these images:

If you were asked to

…

Monday, February 23, 2009

The New Book Banning by Walter Olson for City Journal:

It’s hard to believe, but true: under a law Congress passed last year aimed at regulating hazards in children’s products, the federal government has now advised that children’s books published before 1985 should not be considered safe and may in many cases be unlawful to sell or distribute.

It has to do with lead in printing-inks prior 1985. According to Olson, however, “no one seems to have been able to produce a single instance in which an American child has been made ill by the lead in old book illustrations.”

The law seems incredibly shortsighted and inconsiderate. A “feel-good law,” as Olson writes. What kind of dummies do we have passing such legislation? The article in whole is highly recommended.

(Via Design Observer.)

Monday, February 23, 2009

For all the fuss I wrote recently about blogs and bloggers, I could have just as easily linked you to a future twitter that Jeffrey Zeldman would write:

Attention editors, your writer did not “publish a blog.” She published a blog *entry*. You could also just say she published an “article.”

You could also say that a blogger is a writer. Maybe.

Thursday, February 19, 2009

Jason Fried on multitasking:

Things suck when you don’t give them your full attention.

I’m not thrilled with the work I’ve been doing lately.

This isn’t a breakthrough, it’s just a reminder. If you want to do great work, focus on one thing at a time. Finish it and move on to the next thing.

Quickly reminds me of my own realization that multitasking is often really just managing distractions.

Thursday, February 19, 2009

Having talked about linking to books at IndieBound, I should mention today’s news that they now have permanent links to books with descriptions. The prior lack of this was a big reason I backed out of linking to them. I don’t consider their work finished just yet, though (is it ever?). Affiliate links still go to the rather boring Enter Your Zip Code screen to find your nearest local bookstore. That function really ought to built into new book screens. If and when.

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

For a while now I’ve been thinking about the general usability of the Dressed In Value website, and for the last several months I’ve been making minor tweaks here and there, all toward making it better as a whole. It’s not perfect by any means, not even close, but I wanted to point out a few things that I have done.

Get rid of stuff

These changes coincide pretty well with a recent article from A List Apart, In Defense of Readers by Mandy Brown. This part from the article rings most true to what I’ve been working on here:

If you want your users to skim the page, then by all means, fill the sidebar with content all the way down. But if you want them to read—if the page was written and not merely filled up, if the text consists of carefully crafted prose rather than bullet points—then respect the reading process and move that content elsewhere.

A while back, I started clearing out unnecessary visual stuff from the article screens. I can’t remember what prompted this exactly, but I’ve been thinking about the reading experience here, that there should be …

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

There’s a small article over at Business First of Louisville about a “New section of city Web site [that] helps people volunteer.” That’s what the whole article is about. Three paragraphs. There are two links. One link goes to other related articles about Louisville Metro government and the other link goes to related articles about the Louisville Zoo.

The only text that should be a link (above, highlighted in yellow) — the address of the website the article is about — is not a link. I am imagining a few decision-makers worried about people leaving their website. (!)

The truth of the matter is this. By not making that address a link, they have created an unnecessary and possibly frustrating step in the path they are directing their readers.

If the whole point of an article is to direct people elsewhere, by all means let them go, and make it easy. If you’re …

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

A few months ago I wrote about the Courier-Journal’s attempt to recreate the physical newspaper experience online, and how I thought it failed miserably. This past weekend NYTimes launched an article skimmer that aims at much the same, except they actually succeed. I think it has a lot everything to do with truly understanding the differences between the mediums:

Think of it as an attempt to provide the Sunday Times experience anytime. Of course, there are parts we can’t replicate: the satisfying crinkle of the paper; the circular stain of your coffee; the smell of newsprint.

Here’s what it looks like:

Plenty of keyboard shortcuts and everything. This is awesome. I wish Courier-Journal had a development team with enough resources and authority to make something like this.

(Via John Gruber.)

Friday, February 13, 2009

Here are a couple of things from today about our beloved web browser.

First, Dan Cederholm shows us how to employ conditional comments to hide all CSS from IE6.

[…] there are plenty of sites I’ve designed and maintain where the IE6 stats are low enough to drop the axe and move on. Now is the time!

Think about this. In just 6 years from now we’re going to have hoverboards and flying cars — and people are still using IE6.

Second, Microsoft has decided to play favorites with irresponsible web developers in IE8 by shipping it with a default setting to load a list of special websites in IE7-mode, and Andy Clarke has a few things to say about it.

Responding to a satirical remark that Andy had twittered, Chris Wilson, head of the IE development team, asked him what else he thought they could do. Andy’s correct response:

Chris, I feel for you. I really do. But what I really think is that

…