Andy Rutledge: The Employable Web Designer. I’m still reading through this myself, but first glance tells me much of this aligns well with the idea of “generalist” designers.
“For the most part, the creation or effects of design, unlike science, are neither measurable nor predictable, nor are the results necessarily repeatable. If there is any assurance, besides faith, a businessman can have, it is in choosing talented, competent, and experienced designers.”
BusinessWeek: Moving to the Mobile Web. Jessie Scanlon’s article on the current state of the mobile web and iPhone’s influence on it. (Somehow my name slipped into this article a few times.)
My first Spore creature took about fifteen minutes of writer-not-designer fun to create, and Spore uploaded it to youtube as a personal favor. Go here to get your own free copy of the Spore Creature Creator (trial version). Warn your loved ones that you may be away for some time.
“In any project, the text itself will have its own tone, rhythm and meaning. It’s our job to provide it with a stage on which to sing. Typography serves the spirit of the text, bringing it before an audience, and then quietly fading into the background as the reader delves into the meaning.”
Rob Thomas (our design manager) and Pete Lasko are both competing today in the Ironman. The Ironman triathalon includes a 2.4 mile swim, a 112 mile bike ride, and then just for fun, they run a full 26.2 mile marathon after that. We wish them the best of luck.
What is going on here? The most commonly used button on a browsers toolbar was made a little easier to see and given a bigger hit area. Probably good for the general population who uses it often (alt/apple-left arrow people!). For those that don’t like it luckily you can easily make it the same size as the rest of the buttons. (/me waits for John to come throw something at him)
We have a lot of traffic coming to North Temple to read Aaron’s Accessibility Checklist (the one he vowed he’d never write). While you’re here you might check out some older accessibility posts (still working on that archive, right Jason?):
(By the way, and totally unrelated to accessibility, Microsoft’s Live search helped me find all this stuff with their site search where Google failed… What’s up with that?)
“In a small company [the attitude] is, “Hey, let’s launch it and let’s see if the users like it.” There was a time a few years ago where Yahoo had more of that mentality. But as companies get bigger and bigger, many of them reach a point where they can’t do that as quickly.”
Jeremy Zawodny of Yahoo in a Businessweek article on recent management departures
