Peek behind the curtain at newspaper site design
July 3, 2008
From an information architecture perspective, most of the best designed sites on the Web today are newspaper sites. To succeed, news sites must put a structure to a huge amount of traditional content - stories, features, blogs - and online-specific media such as slideshows, audio and video.
How these sites are designed and developed is often a closely-guarded secret, only known to newspaper management, in-house online departments, and the creative agencies who draft and build them. So it's refreshing to get a behind-the-curtain peek at how Swiss-via-Japan agency Information Architects (iA) created sites for local newspapers Tagesanzeiger, Basler Anzeiger, and the Berner Zeitung.
Design Language | Neil Bennett | Read more...
Donnie's back and you still suck at Photoshop
July 2, 2008
"Uh, this is Donnie and you suck at Photoshop. You do. You're awful. And that's why your here."
From the first line, spoken in a stoner drawl, you knew that You Suck at Photoshop was going to be different from most online video tutorials about Adobe's tool. At first it seemed to be a pure lampoon of the shoddier type of Photoshop videos created by buffoons whose lack of artistic talent is matched only by their monosyllabic voiceover skills.
Design Language | Neil Bennett | Read more...
Burma book brings together top designers
June 30, 2008
The devastation left by Cyclone Nargis across Burma has galvanized many members of the creative community into action. Last month we covered Shilo's video for MTV, and last week saw the launch of book bringing together the talents of fifty top designers and studios -- including Stefan Sagmeister, Wim Crouwel, Eboy, The Designers Republic and Pentagram -- from which all the proceeds go to UNICEF.
Fifty Designers' Current Favourite Typefaces was created by James West. In the blurb on the inside cover he says: "I first thought about putting this book together when I was trying to get to sleep one night. It seemed such a good way to easily raise some money for UNICEF that I felt I would be letting everyone down if I didn't actually see it through. It was one of those ideas that takes a second to conceive, and then weeks of emails and phone calls to actually produce – but everyone was eager to contribute and help out, and for that I am grateful.
Design Language | Neil Bennett | Read more...
Friday kickback
June 27, 2008
It's almost the weekend and the weather's not as bad as you'd expect considering it's the first day of Glastonbury, so allow yourself a break from your current project and find some extra creative inspiration to help yourself through the day.
First off, start downloading Shilo's latest mixtape, We Make It Good volume 3, which has been put together by the UK's own Graeme Sinden. Mixed by a former Fabric resident and Kiss FM DJ, it's more mainstream than the first two -- so there's no Bollywood soundtrack music mixed in as in previous tapes from the animation studio -- but it's full of tracks you'll be hearing all summer. Download it now, ready for when you return to your work and it'll keep your creative juices flowing throughout the afternoon.
Design Language | Neil Bennett | Read more...
The digital video distribution dance
June 27, 2008
There's an interesting gavotte taking place in the world of digital video. On one side, Apple and the iTunes Store. On another, the studios. On yet another, those invested in physical video media - DVD and HD and the hardware used to play this media. What makes it interesting is the thin line each treads - staying in sync just enough to keep the various bodies moving across the dance floor but with each trying to lead the others.
As you may recall, during last January's Macworld Expo, Steve Jobs announced the introduction of movie rentals at the iTunes Store. During that portion of his keynote, Jobs introduced Jim Gianopulos, co-chairman and CEO of Fox Filmed Entertainment, who, after waxing rhapsodic about iTunes movie rentals, went on to announce that Fox would begin including iPod-compatible digital copies of movies on some of its DVDs and HD discs.
Digital Arts | Christopher Breen | Read more...
Graphic design is back
June 24, 2008
Looking around this year's New Blood exhibition last night, it's gratifying to see that the best work is largely good ol' ink on paper. While there were some outstanding individual pieces of motion and interactive work, the overall standard wasn't as good as previous years -- but this was more than made up for by a wide variety of cracking old-school designs.
It's been a difficult time for graphic design over the last year. It began with tabloid outrage over the badly-conceived Olympics 2012 logo - which is already dated now, though to everyone's surprise it will be trendily retro come the time of the Games. In the past month, we've seen no Black or Yellow Pencils given in the graphic design categories at this year's D&AD Awards.
Design Language | Neil Bennett | Read more...
Five Firefox add-ons you must own
June 23, 2008
Mozilla has touted Firefox 3 as faster and more secure than earlier versions of the open-source Web browser. But there's another reason to look at the browser upgrade: it is highly customizable for individual users by utilizing the massive library of Add-ons - additional features that users can choose to install on top of the browser.
With that in mind, we examined three Add-Ons for Firefox 3 that can help you interact with colleagues and browse the web more efficiently to find the relevant content you need for your job. In some ways, the overall usefulness of an add-on can be measured by its ability to help the user without opening more tabs, and these add-ons seem to do that well.
Digital Arts | C G Lynch | Read more...
Firefox 3: will Mac users switch from Safari?
June 19, 2008
When I switched from a Windows PC to a Mac in the autumn of 2006, I was very disappointed in my choice of Web browsers. As a confirmed Firefox user, I expected Mozilla's Mac browser to be a no-brainer. But after trying Firefox 1.5 and 2.0 for the Mac, I adopted Apple's Safari -- and haven't looked back. Now that Firefox 3.0 is out, though, is it finally the better choice for Mac OS X?
Safari has been the better browser on the Macintosh for a number of reasons. Among the annoyances is Firefox's more Windows-centric way of doing things -- it doesn't closely adhere to Apple's user-interface principles (which admittedly aren't all that well understood or followed by many native Mac applications).
Digital Arts | Scot Finnie | Read more...
What I hate about Leopard
June 16, 2008
When Apple released Mac OS X 10.1 in 2001, I ditched OS 9 and never looked back. With rare exceptions, if a program didn't run on OS X, I didn't use it. When Apple released 10.2 (Jaguar), 10.3 (Panther), and then 10.4 (Tiger), the first versions went on my Mac immediately. And I was in line right away when Leopard first went on sale last fall.
I know there will always be issues with the first version of a major OS upgrade, but I also know those issues will be resolved in time. The initial versions of Jaguar and Panther, for example, drove me crazy. But by the time Tiger rolled around, Apple seemed to have its quality-control act together. Sure, Tiger ultimately went to 10.4.11, but it rarely caused me headaches.
Digital Arts | Rick LePage | Read more...
Five reasons to buy the Apple iPhone 3G
June 11, 2008
When the iPhone was introduced, I found it tempting ... very, very tempting. But just enough features and capabilities were missing from Apple's initial cell phone offering that I held off on buying one.
I wasn't alone in waiting, but that doesn't mean the first-generation iPhone didn't sell well. In fact, the iPhone moved 6 million units worldwide, well enough to make Apple extremely competitive in the smart-phone market.
Digital Arts | Melissa J. Perenson | Read more...
Top five myths about Steve Jobs
June 9, 2008
In case you've been living in a cave, today marks the first day of the Apple Worldwide Developer's Conference and Steve Jobs' keynote, which Apple watchers have declared will be the venue where Jobs unveils iPhone 2.0 -- a 3G broadband, GPS-enabled model of the Jesus Phone -- along with some groovy third-party iPhone apps. And if he doesn't, well, we'll hear the caterwauling of Apple fanboys from Cupertino to Khartoum. I don't think I could take it. So let's hope that happens.
Rather than speculate what the announcement will or won't contain, however, I'd like to explode some common myths about Steve Jobs.
Digital Arts | Robert X. Cringely | Read more...
A sneak peek at Photoshop CS4's interface changes
June 6, 2008
Adobe's senior product manager for Photoshop -- and semi-official office gossip -- John Nack has talked about the thinking behind some interface changes that will be added to the next version of Photoshop. He's also posted a video showing how it will work.
As usual, Nack makes a point of not referring to the software as Photoshop CS4, merely as the "next version". Last week Nack's comments about naming terminology caused a minor blog-froth as he tried to avoid saying "I don't want to call it Photoshop CS4 as then we're tied to calling it that". However, with public betas of Dreamweaver CS4, Fireworks CS4 and Soundbooth CS4 available from the Adobe Labs site, I think we can take the CS4 name as a given -- at least as a codename for the beta. Though that's not to say that the company's marketing department won't have a communal brain tumour for breakfast, and decide to rename the line of applications as 'Creative Suite Extreme', 'Creative Suite On Fire', or 'Creative Suite 2009' before its probable launch later in the year.
Design Language | Neil Bennett | Read more...
Converging continuums
June 6, 2008
I was asked recently about how I thought technological convergence was affecting marketing. I'm really quite astounded that people still use the 'C' word really... anyway I thought I'd share...
Technological Convergence was heralded as the holy grail in the late nineties giving rise to multipurpose devices which purported to be the solution to that problem you didn't know you had, the only thing you need to carry - the sonic screwdriver if you will. Much time and money was spent and is still being spent trying to convince us that 1 + 1 = 3. Remember when they started making 'Media Centers' which were telly's with a VHS recorder bolted on?
Lateral thinking | Jon Bains | Read more...
Five effective ways to burglar-proof your laptop
June 5, 2008
Theft of laptops and other mobile devices is spiraling, and the consequences -- financial and other -- are getting increasingly dire.
These two disconcerting realities are attested to by survey findings from a range of different organizations:
Digital Arts | Nestor E. Arellano | Read more...
Has Adobe Taken a Wrong Turn with Acrobat 9?
June 5, 2008
This week, Adobe announced details of the next iteration of its Acrobat line of products, due in late June or early July. Perhaps the most prominent new feature of Acrobat 9 will be the ability to embed live Flash animation and video directly into PDF documents.
But while this capability sounds appealing, I can't help but be skeptical. PDF stands for Portable Document Format. It seems to me that this new direction that Adobe is taking in some ways flies against the original idea of what PDF is all about.
Digital Arts | Neil McAllister | Read more...
Managing to make it
June 3, 2008
Ask any creative why they got into their trade, and you’re unlikely to hear “to manage others”. After all, they’re craftspeople, artists, who are motivated by their desire to make stuff themselves. They want to learn all there is about their craft and produce the best work they can. Later down the line, they might even pass on what they know to others.
But line managing comes with appraisals, development plans, even disciplining when necessary – simply hard graft to many creative types. It’s right up there with timesheets and other admin, just more involved and time-consuming.
The Engine Room | Huey Nhan | Read more...
Apple is music industry's Public Enemy No. 1
June 2, 2008
Honestly, given the amount I write about Digital Rights Management, you'd think that I'd rather the industry kept using it, just so I'd continue to have fodder for writing and writing - and occasionally talking - about it.
As I was looking into the trajectory of DRM in this past year for my latest look at DRM, a pattern began to emerge. We've seen the prevalence of DRM-free music skyrocket over the last twelve months, with vendors like iTunes, Amazon, and Napster all joining the legions of the undamned. In fact, it's practically gotten to the point where it's news when a company launches a store that does have a DRM scheme.
Digital Arts | Dan Moren | Read more...
Photos, networking and tweets
May 29, 2008
First an update on the Eye-Fi SD memory card with built in Wi-Fi support for your camera that I discussed a few weeks ago: Eye-Fi has released a new product line that includes the US$79 (approx £40) Eye-Fi Home targeted at consumers, the $99 (£50) Eye-Fi Share (essentially the original product); and the $129 (£65) Eye-Fi Explore; all work predominantly in the US, with UK functionality yet to be announced.
The latter automatically locates nearby Wi-Fi networks and uses Skyhook Wireless (a positioning system for determining the card's location using Wi-Fi triangulation) to geo-tag pictures, and provide access to over 10,000 Wayport hot spots in the United States.
Digital Arts | Mark Gibbs | Read more...
So what do we know about Creative Suite 4 so far?
May 27, 2008
Adobe used to keep schtumm about new versions of its creative tools, not letting out a peep to the public until grandiose announcements shortly before boxed copies it shelves. Over the past year or two though, the company has opened up a little, offering sneak peaks and public betas -- discussing future features and offering public betas of software through its Adobe Labs site.
This is unusual as many companies have been more close-mouthed about future releases recently, often blaming American anti-fraud legislation. But since acquiring Macromedia, Adobe has become a linchpin of the Web design and development market, where continual and open(ish) product development are the norm - and has changed to fit this approach. The company is careful in its wording -- the real effect of Sarbenes-Oxley -- so instead of saying that new features will definitely appear in the next release of particular tools, the company gives "technology previews" and public betas. Semantics aside though, it's pre-announcing new features in way that would have been rather surprising a few years ago.
Design Language | Neil Bennett | Read more...
Cult of Ugly + b3ta = MGMT
May 23, 2008
By rights the new MGMT music video should be terrible.
Time to Pretend features the nauseatingly-clashing colour palettes of last year's reinvention of the Cult of Ugly -- epitomized by Wolff Olin's universally-despised London 2012 Olympics logo , the hipper-than-people-who-are- hipper-than-thou fashion magazine Super Super and anything to do with the Klaxons and the 'New Rave' music/fashion movement.
Design Language | Neil Bennett | Read more...
