THE SEVENTH and final An Event Apart show of the year 2012—three days of forward thinking and inspiring insights on multi-device design, content strategy for mobile, the next CSS, and more—is now winding down at San Francisco’s Palace Hotel. The show may end, but the memories will linger … enhanced by digital artifacts like these:

• An Event Apart San Francisco 2012 – speakers and schedule
• A Feed Apart – official Tweetage from An Event Apart
• An Event Apart San Francisco – photos on Instagram
• An Event Apart San Francisco – photo set on Flickr
• Storify: Tweets from An Event Apart San Francisco 2012
• An Event Apart: What Clients Don’t Know – Luke Wroblewski’s notes on a presentation by Mike Monteiro. November 13, 2012
• An Event Apart: Buttons are a Hack – Luke Wroblewski’s notes on a presentation by Josh Clark. November 13, 2012
• An Event Apart: The (CSS) Future is Now – Luke Wroblewski’s notes on a presentation by Eric Meyer. November 13, 2012
• An Event Apart: Designing for Content Management Systems – Luke Wroblewski’s notes on a presentation by Jared Ponchot. November 13, 2012
• An Event Apart: Adaptive Web Content – Luke Wroblewski’s notes on a presentation by Karen McGrane. November 13, 2012
• An Event Apart: HTML5 APIs – Luke Wroblewski’s notes on a presentation by Jen Simmons. November 12, 2012
• An Event Apart: Style Tiles — Luke Wroblewski’s notes on a presentation by Samanatha Warren. November 12, 2012

Filed under: A Book Apart, An Event Apart

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IT’S A Karen McGrane world! Today, as A Book Apart unveils Karen McGrane’s amazing new Content Strategy for Mobile, the entirety of A List Apart Issue No. 364 is dedicated to Karen and her vision for future-friendly web content:

Uncle Sam Wants You (to Optimize Your Content for Mobile)

Thirty-one percent of Americans who access the internet from a mobile device say that’s the way they always or mostly go online. For this group, if your content doesn’t exist on mobile, it doesn’t exist at all. The U.S. government has responded with a broad initiative to make federal website content mobile-friendly. Karen McGrane explains why this matters—and what you can learn from it.

Your Content, Now Mobile

Making your content mobile-ready isn’t easy, but if you take the time now to examine your content and structure it for maximum flexibility and reuse, you’ll have stripped away all the bad, irrelevant bits, and be better prepared the next time a new gadget rolls around. This excerpt from Karen McGrane’s new book, Content Strategy for Mobile, will help you get started.

Help Hurricane Sandy relief efforts

Fifteen percent of sales of Karen McGrane’s Content Strategy for Mobile and other A Book Apart books sold today will go to the Red Cross in its effort to aid victims of Hurricane Sandy.

Filed under: A Book Apart, A List Apart, content, Content First, content strategy

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CO-FOUNDER of Mule Design and raconteur Mike Monteiro wants to help you do your job better. From contracts to selling design, from working with clients to working with each other, his brief book Design Is A Job is packed with knowledge you need to know. This is one of the most in-demand titles we at A Book Apart have yet published, and the long, long wait for its release (and yours) is finally over!

— Enjoy an exclusive Preview of Design Is A Job in Issue No. 348 of A List Apart, for people who make websites.

— Buy Design Is A Job directly from the makers at A Book Apart.

Also of interest:

• Watch F*ck you. Pay Me, a presentation by Mike Monteiro to San Francisco Creative Mornings, 25 March 2011. (Video, 38:40.)
• Listen to Big Web Show No. 59: Jeffrey Zeldman talks with Mike Monteiro of Mule Design. (Audio, 54 minutes.)
• Follow @mike_ftw on Twitter.
• Pay attention to Mule Design Studio.

Filed under: A Book Apart, Acclaim, Best practices, business, Career, client services, clients, Designers, E-Books, Publications, Publishing

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HERE I AM at the Palace on Market Street for another thrilling installment of An Event Apart.

An Event Apart San Francisco features twelve great speakers and sessions. Following the two-day conference comes an intense learning session on Mobile Web Design led by Luke Wroblewski (author, Web Form Design).

Starting Monday, December 12, 2011, follow the live Twitter stream on A FEED APART, the official feed aggregator for An Event Apart.

Hum along to the interstitial AEA Playlist on Last.fm or Rdio.

Stay in the loop! Follow An Event Apart on Twitter or Facebook, or subscribe to our mailing list.

Filed under: A Book Apart, A Feed Apart, An Event Apart, cities, Design, Responsive Web Design, San Francisco

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THE FIRST SIX essential new classics from A Book Apart — brilliant, brief books by Jeremy Keith, Dan Cederholm, Erin Kissane, Ethan Marcotte, Aarron Walter, and Luke Wroblewski — make the perfect gift for the web geek in your life. During our holiday sale, buy all six books and save 30%!

A Book Apart Holiday Bundle

Filed under: A Book Apart

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CONGRATULATIONS TO A List Apart technical editors Aaron Gustafson and Ethan Marcotte, whose Adaptive Web Design and Responsive Web Design were ranked #1 and #2 in .net Magazine’s “Top 25 Books for Web Designers and Developers” of 2011.

Other top-ranked web design books include CSS3 for Web Designers by Dan Cederholm, Designing for the Digital Age by Kim Goodwin, and Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug.

Four of the top 25 were A Book Apart books: namely, Responsive Web Design, CSS3 for Web Designers, Mobile First by Luke Wroblewski, and The Elements of Content Strategy by Erin Kissane.

I contributed to the article but did not nominate any A Book Apart books.

Congratulations to these authors!

The top 25 books for web designers and developers | Feature | .net magazine.

Filed under: A Book Apart, Design, Responsive Web Design, Web Design, Web Design History, Web Standards

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WE ARE THRILLED to present the two newest volumes from A Book Apart (“brief books for people who make websites”):

• Make your users fall in love with your site or application via the precepts packed into Aarron Walter’s new Designing for Emotion. From classic psychology to case studies, highbrow concepts to common sense, DfE demonstrates accessible strategies and memorable methods to help you make a human connection through design.
• Learn data-driven techniques that will make you a master of mobile with Mobile First. Former Yahoo! design architect and co-creator of Bagcheck, Luke Wroblewski knows more about mobile experience than the rest of us, and packs all he knows into this entertaining, to-the-point guidebook.

For a limited time, save 15% when you buy both together!

A Book Apart, Designing for Emotion & Mobile First Bundle.

Filed under: A Book Apart, Best practices, Brands, Design, mobile

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IN AN EXCLUSIVE EXCERPT from his new book, Designing For Emotion, Aarron Walter shows how to turn design interactions into conversations, imbue mechanical “interactions” with human elements, and use design and language techniques to craft a living personality for your website or application.

A List Apart: Articles: Personality in Design.

Filed under: A Book Apart, Brands, Design

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THE ORGANIZATION OF MOBILE web experiences must align with how people use their mobile devices and why; emphasize content over navigation; provide relevant options for exploration and pivoting; maintain clarity and focus; and align with mobile behaviors. In this excerpt from his brand new A Book Apart book, Luke Wroblewski explains how.

A List Apart: Articles: Organizing Mobile.

Filed under: A Book Apart, Design, mobile

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AS EVERY WEB DESIGNER not living under a rock hopefully already knows, The Boston Globe has had a responsive redesign at the hands of some of today’s best designers and developers:

The spare Globe website has a responsive design that adapts to different window sizes, browsers and devices, and it has a built-in Instapaper-type feature that saves articles for reading off various devices on the subway. The overhaul has incorporated the talents of Boston design firms Filament Group, and Upstatement, as well as a large internal team, and pre-empts the need to build separate apps for each device.—New York Observer

As the first responsive redesign of a “real” website (i.e. a large, corporately financed, widely read newspaper site rather than some designer’s blog), the site has the potential to raise public awareness of this flexible, standards-based, multi-platform and user-focused web design approach, and deepen perceptions of its legitimacy, much as Mike Davidson’s standards-based redesign of ESPN.com in 2003 helped convince nonbelievers to take a second look at designing with web standards:

In a major step in the evolution of website design, the Boston Globe relaunched their site today using a Responsive Design approach. For a consistent experience across mobile and desktop browsers, they redesigned the site to add and remove columns to the layout based on the width of your browser window.

This marks the first major, high-traffic, content-heavy website to adopt a responsive design. The lead consultant behind the project is none other than Ethan Marcotte, the designer who wrote the book on responsive design. Much as ESPN changed the way we worked by being one of the first to launch a fully CSS driven site a decade ago, the Boston Globe’s redesign has the potential to completely alter the way we approach web design.—Beaconfire Wire

More work remains to be done. Some sections of the paper have not yet converted, and some site architecture has yet to be refreshed, so it is too early to call the overhaul a complete success. But it is clear that Ethan Marcotte, author of Responsive Web Design and creator of responsive design, together with the geniuses at Filament Group, Upstatement, and the Globe’s internal design/development team have managed to work beautifully together and to solve design problems some of us don’t even know exist.

Congratulations to the Globe for its vision and these designers and developers for their brilliant work.

Filed under: A Book Apart, A List Apart, Design, Ethan Marcotte, Layout, Responsive Web Design, Web Design, Web Design History, Web Standards

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