I just uploaded some Wiimote inspired desktops I created to my flickr account. They’re all designed for 1600×1024 … but should scale pretty nicely for most resolutions. I used to make a lot of desktop pictures in my free time – many of which can still be found on MacDesktops.com. If you like these, let me know. It might inspire me to continue this little hobby…
Category: Design
Posts on graphic and web design.
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Design Quote
Fantastic quote by famed Apple product designer, Jonathan Ive:
“I don’t want to see a designer wagging his tail in my face. I want to see a problem solved, and in a way that acknowledges its context.” – Jonathan Ive
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Sneak Peek
Here’s a little preview of the upcoming design for cdharrison.com:
I’ve been putting a lot of thought into the UI design, trying to make the site easier to use. I don’t have a timeframe for roll-out, but you’ll start to see bits and pieces of the new design starting to appear soon. My site has long been about stuff, and that’s why I’m calling this release “Effercio” (Latin for, you guessed it, “stuff”). This will be the 14th major iteration of the site, and the third since migrating over to WordPress. (In case you’re wondering, I called v13 “Nanideska”. “Nani deska” is a little Japanese phrase I picked up from watching too much anime in my younger years… it literally means “what” or “what is it?” That’s what I kept asking myself about the direction I was heading with the site and the design…)
Redesigning, or realigning, a site is one of the more rewarding aspects of what I do. You take what works and you make it better. You take what doesn’t work and you throw it out the window.
“The desire to redesign is aesthetic-driven, while the desire to realign is purpose-driven.” – Cameron Moll
With every iteration of this site, and pretty much every site I work on, there is a strong desire for me to push my skills a little bit further. Design, in general, should be fun. It isn’t when you’re doing the same thing over and over again.
So… here’s what you’ll be able to expect with v14:
- Full Sandbox integration. Sandbox supports microformats like hAtom and hCard right out of the box. It’s a great theme upon which to build a site.
- Better navigation. Browsing through the ‘stuff’ on my site will be a bit easier than before. Navigation will be more apparent throughout the site.
- Better organization of content. Categories should be easier to use. Older content should be easier to browse through.
- Better accessibility. An alternate stylesheet will be available for High Contrast. (I’m hoping to accomodate text-resizing a bit better as well.)
- Better design. v13 evolved from a theme called Qwilm! … but it’s never been exactly what I wanted. v14 changes all of that.
I’ll post something in the next few days detailing more of my process of taking an idea, mocking it up in Photoshop, and then turning it into a design…
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Housecleaning
I’ve been messing with the site a bit, so if things look screwed up, forgive me.
Seeing as this isn’t that far of a departure from what I already had on this site, I’m considering this Version 13.1.0. I’m trying to clean up my templates, add some additional functionality that I’ve been missing, and add little enhancements here and there.
Right now, I’m adding a number of customizations that would be considered transcendent css… It’ll make the browsing experience in modern browsers a lot better than if you’re still using Internet Explorer 6, Netscape 6 or lower, etc. The decision to go this route was dictated by browsing statistics on the site. Most people that come here use Firefox and/or Safari. Yes, IE accounts for a significant part of the traffic, but honestly… if you’re still using an older version of IE it’s time to upgrade. You’ll still be able to access the content here even if you’re using an older browser, but things might look a bit messed up. Take the good with the bad, I suppose…
This is Phase 1… Phase 2 will include the switch over to the Sandbox theme framework. Sandbox supports rich semantic markup, microformats, etc. and I can’t think of a reason not to use it… I’ve already started the process of converting the site over to Sandbox, so you can expect that switch to be made soon. The decision behind this switch is based on making the site more forward compatible. Mozilla has already announced that Firefox 3 will have built-in support for microformats. I hope the Internet Explorer team will follow suit with IE8. We’ll see.
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I Wish I Had Written This
Fabulous post over at NO!SPEC:
To those who are looking for someone to do work for free… please wake up and join the real world
Every day, there are more and more CL posts seeking “artists” for everything from auto graphics to comic books to corporate logo designs. More people are finding themselves in need of some form of illustrative service.
But what they’re NOT doing, unfortunately, is realizing how rare someone with these particular talents can be.
To those who are “seeking artists”, let me ask you; How many people do you know, personally, with the talent and skill to perform the services you need? A dozen? Five? One? …none?
More than likely, you don’t know any. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be posting on craigslist to find them.
And this is not really a surprise.
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The Truth Behind the Outlook 2007 Change and What You Can do to Change it.
Yes, Microsoft Outlook 2007 is going to use Word as it’s rendering engine… but hope is not completely lost. Microsoft is prepared to listen. This article is a follow-up to a post last week on this very topic…
In response to the post on the CampaignMonitor Blog, I had this to say:
I think this irritates me more, to be honest with you. The fact that Microsoft conciously made this decision to improve messages sent from one Outlook user to another Outlook user is a cop-out.
Yes, I realize that a lot of businesses use Exchange Server, so this change will apply to them… but what about those of us that don’t use Exchange Server? What about those of us that email users on other platforms? What about those of us that don’t use POP accounts, and only strictly use webmail accounts?
To me, this just escalated beyond just being a major concern for legitimate email marketers to a full-scale war on interoperability with other email clients/systems. By making this choice, Microsoft is making it very clear: use our product, or your email will be screwed up.
It’s good they are willing to listen, but it’s like they completely ignored any of the feedback they received on Internet Explorer… My only hope at this point, is that 1) Microsoft adopts a “quirky” mode to allow for standards-based email; or 2) let users decide which rendering engine to use…
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Fireworks CS3 to replace ImageReady!
If AppleInsider.com’s report is correct, the forthcoming version of Fireworks will replace ImageReady in the upcoming Creative Suite 3 from Adobe.
As part of its testing for Fireworks CS3, internally dubbed “Agni” after the Vedic god of fire, Adobe is putting to work some of the first fruits of its buyout of Macromedia in 2005. The visual editing firm has thoroughly revamped Fireworks to join its features closely with those of Photoshop CS3, people familiar with the project say, beginning with the addition of a simple tool for creating photo slideshows.
Key to many of the other expected changes is the addition of hierarchical layer support, those same people say. Where the previous version of Fireworks assumed only basic layering and would destroy any hierarchy created in a Photoshop image, the new edition will add sub-layers for filters and other special effects that will follow their parent layer around as it moves.
I can’t say I’ve messed with Fireworks much, but I’m glad to see ImageReady on its way out.
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Font Management for Windows Made Easier
A new version of Extensis Suitcase for Windows was just announced. It’ll work with Illustrator CS2, InDesign CS2, Quark 7, etc. This release of Suitcase for Windows adds a number of new font auto-activation plug-ins, a font vault, as well as compatibility with the next operating system, Microsoft Vista.It’s been quite some time since the software’s been updated… This news couldn’t have come at a better time for me. I was just complaining about the lack of updates this morning…read more | digg story -
Font Management
Usually you hear people complaining that certain applications are available only on the PC side, and Mac users get screwed. In this case, the opposite is true. I’ve been a long-time user of products from Extensis, and I’ve used them on both Windows and OS X.I’ve been using Extensis Suitcase 9.2.2 for Windows for well over a year now. Prior to that I used Adobe Type Manager (ATM) Deluxe. I opted to go with Extensis’ offering because ATM Deluxe was no longer being supported by Adobe.Here’s the problem, though… Extensis Suitcase for Windows has been stuck at version 9.2.2 for at least a year, if not longer. In that time, Extensis has released the new Suitcase Fusion for OS X, which is lightyears ahead of the PC version. Where’s the love, Extensis? Maybe font management isn’t high up there for a lot of designers on the PC side, but your solution could be a lot better!A follow-up to this post can be found here: Font Management for Windows Made Easier
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Pandora’s Box
In the beginning there was Text, and it was good.
I’m still in awe about how much residual traffic I’ve gotten as a result of the conversation going on about how Microsoft Breaks HTML Email Rendering in Outlook 2007. The story, in various forms, has appeared on a number of sites. If you were to trust the comments on Digg, most people (it seems) would prefer that we revert back to a time where email is text-only. I don’t disagree that HTML emails can be evil, but there’s an inherent problem in wishing us back to the Stone Ages of Email: People like HTML email.
Yes, HTML email is abused by spammers. Yes, Incredimail sucks and so does “email stationary” in Outlook and the like… but if HTML email didn’t work (for spam or even legitimate correspondence), and if people didn’t want their messages to look *gag* “pretty”, there wouldn’t be a market for it.
HTML Email is here to stay, and that is why I am so irritated over the fact that Microsoft has taken to course action they have with Outlook 2007. Why break something that worked fine in older versions? Why take away something clients have come to expect?
Software should be improved from version to version. The choice to use the Word rendering engine in Outlook 2007 was probably predicated by a desire to avoid further anti-trust lawsuits… but that’s unexectable.