For the third year in a row, good citizens of the web, we ask that you take a few minutes to tell us about your professional skills, educational background, career prospects, job benefits, and more.
This month, I presented "Typography for the Web" at the NY Web Standards Meetup. Right now, typography on the web has been receiving lots of attention from both designers and developers alike—designers wanting to know what their constraints are and developers wanting to know the best practices for implementing advanced typography. I covered a wide range of topics so that people can continue to research and learn about this rapidly-changing field.
Slides, photos, video and audio from "Typography for the Web"
What are some of your favorite typography resources? How do you feel about one type of replacement technique over another? Please continue the conversation in the comments below
Whew! It’s been quite a time at South By Southwest Interactive–lots of panels, parties, and good eating! Since there are a multitude of people who have taken amazing notes during the panels and core conversations, I’ll spare you those details, but just as important as what’s said during the panels is what you can take away from it! Here is a list of the “take-aways:” the twitter usernames, the Web sites and the books. Here are some ideas and resources you can use right away!
Overarching Themes:
Collaboration within companies, collaboration between client & web team, collaboration between web teams
Openness with coworkers and with clients
Don’t do work for the sake of doing work; create deliverables that have applicable value
Some clients (and even workers) respond better to many lo-fidelity steps (sketching, collage, mood boards) to buy into the design process before seeing a polished design
Agile development! Working in quick phases to roll out a product. Everyone’s talking about it, but it may not be good for every team or every client
Web Typography: Quit Bitchin’ and Get Your Glyph On
Ditch the concept of the “singular genius designer.” The designer is the person who takes everyone’s ideas and creates a cohesive solution to the problem
Always sketch out at least six layout ideas!
Get as many people (developers, clients, shareholders) involved as early as possible
A good fit is achieved by every team member having the same core values
Always remain passionate about what you’re doing. Even if you find yourself in a situation you don’t like, find a small thing to focus on and remain passionate
Show your clients a variety of mood board concepts; This is the stage for back-and-forth conversations and for feedback. Take this knowledge and deliver one cohesive design mock-up. Delivering several designs diminishes your expertise in finding the right solution.
Educate your clients on the value of your product; don’t work to meet unreasonable deadlines
Don’t let a single designer get too involved in the “ownership” of his/her design. Take it away and let someone else work on it.
Don’t design behind closed doors, open up the conversation!
Calling all designers, developers, information architects, project managers, writers, editors, marketers, and everyone else who makes websites. It is time once again to pool our information so as to begin sketching a true picture of the way our profession is practiced worldwide.
For we non-designers out there, ajaxload.info offers a very cool service: automated creation of animated loading .gifs in three easy steps. Simply choose your indicator type (35 options!), set the background and foreground color, and generate it. View the preview and then download your .gif, ready to use.
Very simple and useful. Thanks for designing this, Kath
Jeffrey Barke is senior developer and information architect at theMechanism, a maxi-media firm in New York City and London.
