Category: Design

Everyware

Post author By L. Jeffrey Zeldman
Post date 31 March 2006

Adam Greenfield has written one of the most provocative books in years. If the right people read it, Everyware: The Dawning Age of Ubiquitous Computing may do for the coming, computerless computing interface what Don Norman’s The Design of Everyday Things did for design generally. Like Norman, Greenfield argues for good design not as an aesthetic issue but as an ethical and business imperative. There is an urgency and clarity to every word.

Everyware is both a prescription and a warning. Although films like Minority Report have made such ubicomp staples as the gestural interface look a bit silly, these kinds of interactivity are coming soon to a wall or object near you. Depending on who designs them and by what principles, they will work beautifully or badly. Everyware will enhance our lives by anticipating our needs or it will destroy our privacy — or both.

Besides Don Norman’s book, the other piece of writing I sometimes thought of as I read Everyware was Walter Benjamin’s “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” Writing in 1937, Benjamin pondered what the existence of photographic reproduction did to the status of the unique work of art. If the Mona Lisa can be reproduced by lithography, what is the value of the Mona Lisa?

It’s not that Greenfield writes like Benjamin (he doesn’t). It’s that both writers see and can describe changes in the world to which their contemporaries are oblivious. Greenfield is a friend and former member of Happy Cog so I have an interest in seeing his book do well. But if I didn’t know him or couldn’t stand him I would still highly recommend this book to anyone who cares about how design and technology are shaping our time.

An Event Apart Design film links music Standards Tools

Heartwarming

Post author By L. Jeffrey Zeldman
Post date 30 March 2006

Baseball weather has come to NYC. And a baseball stadium is where we’ll hold An Event Apart Atlanta in just a few days’ time. If global warming worked the other way — if the winters were getting colder each year — the world’s governments would have already worked together to reverse global warming. But when winter grows milder and spring arrives sooner, it feels so good it’s hard to realize how bad it is. But I digress.

We’re busy prepping for Atlanta, so here are some links:

Minolta quits camera biz: A former ad client, at one time the 3rd largest camera maker in the world, can’t compete against digital.; “Would you write your life story in pencil?” was an ad I tried to sell them for their Maxxum line of high quality, 35mm point-and-shoot SLRs. (Instead they bought “More Maxxum Magic!”, a line I did not write for them.) Even so, it’s sad to see them go.
Monochrom Brandmarker: An attempt to evaluate the power of brands by making Austrian people draw twelve logos from memory, 25 people per brand. Via Coudal.com.
Magnolia Blossom: Mac OS X dashboard widget embeds social networking in your desktop: “Watch websites scroll across as they are bookmarked by ma.gnolia.com members. Spend less time scrolling through pages of text and find those eye-catching sites now!”
Gapers Block: Clean, good-looking, well written Chicago blog.
In Progress: Logo Design (A): Cameron Moll on the National Gazette identity he and Jason Santa Maria are designing.
In Progress: Logo Design (B): Jason Santa Maria on the National Gazette identity he and Cameron Moll are designing.
Top 15 Skylines in the World v. 3.0: An urban planner picks his Top 15 skylines. Via Gapers Block.
Dieter Steffmann typefaces: Immense archive of Dieter Steffmann fonts. “Acorn Initials” is typical Steffmann work. Re-blogged from March 2004.
CNN.com redesigns: 1024 wide. Looks great. Pity about non-validating table layout. Via Hivelogic.com.
coComment: In one central place, track comments you’ve left on blogs all over the place.
My Life in the Bush of Ghosts: “…total access to original tracks with remix and sampling… Download all the multitracks on two of the songs. Through … Creative Commons licenses, you are free to edit, remix, sample and mutilate these tracks however you like. Add them to your own song or create a new one. Visitors are welcome to post their mixes or songs that incorporate these audio files on the site for others to hear and rate.”
Drupal: Open source content management platform that cares about accessibility and standards.
Airbag – Styrofoam: Adventures in food management.
Designers must write: “As my ability to shape both written and oral communication improves, I am better equipped to direct the work of others.” (Via Cameron Moll.)
In Search of a Comprehensive Type Design Theory: “Type designers might be convinced that our profession is vital to society, but we wouldn’t risk going on strike.”
Ironic Sans – Pre-pixelated clothes: “Stop worrying about whether or not the producer of that Reality TV show you’re on will pixelate your carefully chosen t-shirt. Beat them to the punch with pre-pixelated products!” (Via K10k.net.)
Thank You for Smoking – main titles: Beautiful! via Stan.
America’s Technology Future at Risk: A new study released by the Economic Strategy Institute explains why U.S. companies can’t compete in key new business sectors, and offers a variety of regulatory and investment prescriptions (via Thomas L. Friedman).
Teaching at Risk: Progress and Potholes: The Final Report of the Teaching Commission (via Thomas L. Friedman).
It’s a great time to start a business: Six reasons to start a business today (by 37signals’s David Heinemeier Hansson).
IE7 Improvements and Bug Tracking: Eric Meyer weighs in.
W3C: Failed Commitments?: Much ado about nothing. Forest. Trees.
Happy Doomsday to You!: “Washington was about one horseman short of an apocalypse yesterday.”

Accessibility An Event Apart cities Design events Standards

An Event Apart Chicago

Post author By L. Jeffrey Zeldman
Post date 27 March 2006

Announcing An Event Apart Chicago. Join Eric Meyer, Jason Santa Maria, Jim Coudal and Zeldman in the windy city for a mind-blowing day of insights into design, development, and how to stay happy running a creative business. Register now to reserve your seat and save $50 off the admission price.

Friday, June 2nd, 2006
9:00 – 5:00
The Gleacher Center
450 North Cityfront Plaza Drive
Chicago, IL 60611-4316
(Map)

The Speakers

An Event Apart offers the opportunity to meet and learn from creative and technical stars who influence the direction of our industry:

Jim Coudal runs Coudal Partners, a design firm in Chicago. They work for companies and they build companies, like Jewelboxing, The Show, and The Deck. Before making websites, films, and real-world products, Jim Coudal was an ad creative director. His insights into conceiving and selling great ideas are not to be missed.
Jason Santa Maria has been recognized for designing stylistic and imaginative (yet also usable and effective) web interfaces. He recently won acclaim for the A List Apart redesign, whose secrets he’ll share with attendees.
Eric Meyer has conducted complex standards-based makeovers and led intensive multi-day training sessions for such clients as Apple Computer, America On-Line, Yahoo!, Macromedia, Wells Fargo Bank, Cornell University, and others. No one has a deeper or more practical grasp of CSS; no one can teach it like Eric.
Founder of A List Apart and Happy Cog, former leader of The Web Standards Project, and author of Designing With Web Standards, Jeffrey Zeldman helped bring standards to browsers and the design community. He serves clients from Ad Age and Amnesty International USA to Lexico (Dictionary.com) and the United Nations Womens Development Fund.

The Space

The Gleacher Center is 50,000 square feet of high-tech conference space, smack in the heart of Chicago’s business district, blocks from the Loop and steps from Magnificent Mile shopping, restaurants, and hotels. An Event Apart will unfold in one of its spacious, uncrowded lecture halls, where every seat has plenty of room and every view is a good one.

Gourmet lunch and other catering throughout the day will include vegetarian options. Spectacular river and lake views in the separate dining lounge will make you forget how good the food is.

The Sponsors

Lunch is courtesy of Media Temple (“set your sites on us”), web host to the stars. We thank them for their continued support. AIGA Press and New Riders (“Voices That Matter”) will also be on hand to make sure attendees have reading materials to stay mentally stimulated after the event.

And speaking of mental stimulation, new sponsor Jewelboxing will throw a post-event Happy Hour And A Half at a Chicago pub. Schmooze, hobnob, network, or beg for a job while enjoying free cocktails. Further details will come soon.

A good time will be had!

The Deal

Our Philadelphia and Atlanta events sold out fast and we were unable to accommodate many who wished to attend. Chicago, given its size and the depth of its design and user experience communities, will sell out even faster. Seating is limited and availability is on a first-come, first-served basis.

Register during our Early Bird special to save your seat and shave $50 off the price of admission. The full day, including tasty catered lunch and goodies, costs $549. But if you register by May 1st, you can attend for $499. See you in Chicago!

Accessibility Design development events industry Standards writing

Fine Corinthian Leather

Post author By L. Jeffrey Zeldman
Post date 20 March 2006

Sophia Marie Dominey: A very healthy eight pounds, eleven ounces.
Dissecting The Process: or: How an A List Apart Illustration Comes Together, by the illustrator himself, Kevin Cornell.
simplifier lab: Phoebe Espiritu’s fine blog on the quest for simplicity and minimalism in design.
Rogue Librarian: SXSWi Takeaways: Carrie Bickner Zeldman’s writeup of her SXSW Interactive panel on Digital Preservation and Blogs. See also:
Digital Preservation Panel at SXSWi: Librarian Avengers’s notes on the same panel. See also:
Digital Preservation: What and Whom Are We Saving?: Bill Anderson’s notes on the same panel.
Vantan.org: Personal site of Vanessa Tan, devoted Netizen and musician, blogging from Singapore.
Aspen Design Summit: AIGA-sponsored retreat.
This is Powazek: Beauteous and well-written site of cofounder of JPG Magazine (and creator of bunches of other fab web content, none of which I need to tell you, ’cause you know)
Behind the WaSP Redesign: Designer Clarke discusses creative process. See also:
WaSP Annual General Meeting: Transcribed by Muffin Research Labs.
Does Your Blog Have a Business?: SXSW Interactive panel transcribed by Auscillate.com.
CSS Floatutorial: In CSS layout, float is all. Maxdesign’s step-by-step guide shows how to float elements such as images, drop caps, and next and back buttons to create image galleries, inline lists and multi-column layouts.
CSS Tweak: Now with in-page Help! Andy Peatling’s free web-based tool optimizes your CSS files. “It will take any CSS file and optimize the syntax, grouping your style declarations into shorthand where possible. It can also remove comments, and strip whitespace for maximum compression.”
A brief history of the “clenched fist” image: Like it says.
GrayBit v0.5 Beta: “GrayBit is an online accessibility testing tool designed to visually convert a full-color web page into a grayscale rendition for the purpose of visually testing the page’s perceived contrast.”
Interior Desecrations: Horrible home design from the classic halls of Lileks.
George Bush: I Don’t Know Much About Designing Rugs: In Design Observer.
Accessible Web Developers: A public group at ma.gnolia. Creating accessible (and mobile-friendly) sites.
Brit Pack: Proud members.
More Ma.gnolia Marks: See all 345 (and counting) of Apartness’s bookmarks.

A List Apart Design development

ALA 213

Post author By L. Jeffrey Zeldman
Post date 7 March 2006

In Issue 213 of A List Apart, for people who make websites:

Flywheels, Kinetic Energy, and Friction: by Nick Usborne; You want your users to do something—buy things, beg you to work for them, learn how they too can achieve inner peace. So how do you get them to do what you want? Try getting out of the way.
Getting Started with Ajax: by Aaron Gustafson; In this excerpt from O’Reilly’s Web Design in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition, ALA production editor Gustafson takes you aside for a little chat about the birds and the bees. Or maybe about Ajax.

Tags Usability

Design links

Fr.oz.en en.tre.es

Post author By L. Jeffrey Zeldman
Post date 2 March 2006

Ma.gnolia’s linkroll feature rules, but, like a list of “last 10 blog posts,” it is forever sending interesting content into the offscreen past. So here, frozen in time, and in some cases with expanded blurbage, are some of the latest bookmarks to appear in—and soon disappear from—the zeldman.com sidebar:

Microsoft iPod: A parody that says a lot about how design processes go wrong.
Google Code: Web Authoring Statistics: Which HTML ids and classes are most common? How many sites validate?
Eyebrow Antics: Illustrator Brian Tapley uses Flickr as a portfolio delivery system.
Publish and Prosper: Blogging for Your Business: What do Boeing, General Motors, and a small bag-clip company have in common? They are all blogging about their business. It’s time for a practical book about business blogging: a book that offers concrete advice, no-nonsense research, warnings about common pitfalls, and real-world examples of business-blog successes and failures. A conversation with your market is stronger and more meaningful with a blog. When you’re ready to bridge the gap between blogging theory and business reality, this book will get you talking, easily and professionally.; So runs the pitch for Peachpit’s upcoming Publish and Prosper: Blogging for Your Business, by DL Byron and Steve Broback (ISBN: 0321395387), now in presale mode. To save 35% and get free shipping, enter this code when you checkout: PP-234P-LKMS. (Journalists and teachers may request free evaluation copies.)
Netdiver’s Best: Long-running, always great design ’zine Netdiver.net publishes its Best Site Designs of 2005.
S5 1.2a2: Eric Meyer’s CSS-based slideshow hits 1.2 alpha 2 version.
Open Letter to AOL: The Open Letter to America Online is a vehicle for the entire internet community to express its “serious concern [about] AOL’s adoption of Goodmail’s CertifiedEmail, which is a threat to the free and open Internet.” The group explains:; In February 2006, AOL announced that it would accept payment for incoming emails. For these certified emails, it would skip its usual anti-spam filters and guarantee delivery for cash. Our coalition believes that the free passage of email between Internet users is a vital part of what makes the Internet work. When ISPs demand a cut of “pay-to-send” email, they’re raising tollbooths on the open Net, interfering with the passage of data by demanding protection money at the gates of their customers’ computers.
ourcommon.com: The design portfolio of Peter Reid.
Fl.ower: Greg Storey blogs the creative process behind Ma.gnolia’s user interface design.
Beggr 2.0 beta: A one-way ticket to easy street.
Images, Tables, & Mysterious Gaps: It lives! Eric Meyer’s classic on CSS layout as intepreted by Gecko—core of Firefox, Mozilla, Camino, and Netscape—finds a new (and hopefully permanent) home at developer.mozilla.org. Rumor has it all the old Meyer writings are or will be available here.
Linkology: How the Most-Linked Blogs Relate: New York Magazine discovers blogs. I usually ignore this kind of coverage by this kind of source, but I’m linking because this is actually a good article of its kind—and of course because it includes A List Apart in its coverage (albeit with blurbage that suggests that the author doesn’t really know what he thinks he knows).

P.S. Mark in Ma.gnolia or del.icio.us or digg this page.

Design development Happy Cog™ industry Tools

Fresh outta beta

Post author By L. Jeffrey Zeldman
Post date 17 February 2006

When I was younger, I considered myself too “creative” to work on anything that wasn’t cool or exciting. Eventually I buckled down and became a genuine client services professional. For over two decades, I brought my best to every job, no matter how dull.

So much for that. Today I can choose what I want to work on. And I choose projects that are cool, fun, and personally meaningful. In that context, I link to Ma.gnolia.

Designed by Happy Cog and taken out of private beta 15 February, Ma.gnolia is a new social bookmarking tool with well-thought-out features like Saved Copies (so you never lose a web page, even if it moves or goes offline), Bookmark Ratings, Bookmark Privacy, and Groups. Not to mention a Linkroll I like so much I use it here at zeldman.com.

Gnolia Systems envisioned the product and made it run. (The heavy programming? That’s all them.) Happy Cog developed the user pathways, brand identity, and creamy site design. The best part? Leading a dream team of Tanya Rabourn (information architect), Greg Storey (user interface design), Jason Santa Maria (brand identity design), Erin Kissane (brand director), and Mr Eric Meyer (semantician and technologist).

Accessibility Design industry Standards

Beneath the law, beyond the validator

Post author By L. Jeffrey Zeldman
Post date 13 February 2006

O say, can you see? If not, can you sue?

Designing With Web Standards made the point that an inaccessible site could get its owner in trouble. Now a blind student is suing Target, claiming that its inaccessible site violates the Americans With Disabilities Act and various U.S. state laws:

The Web Standards Project 9 February
The Web Standards Project 10 February
Philly Standards Writeup
News.com
San Francisco Chronicle

Unitless and Somewhat Slightly Dazed

Although the W3C validator claims that A List Apart’s CSS is flawed, our CSS is actually fine; the validator has a known bug that causes it to incorrectly flag unitless line-heights as errors. So why write unitless line-heights? Eric Meyer, who created A List Apart’s CSS, explains. His post is not only the best primer I’ve ever seen on the subject, it is the only primer I’ve ever seen on the subject—and the only one you need.

Design industry Standards Tools

Don’t be a beta hater

Post author By L. Jeffrey Zeldman
Post date 10 February 2006

Yes, Happy Cog has a layout problem in Internet Explorer 7 beta. Not to worry: According to Molly Holzschlag of The Web Standards Project, Microsoft has fixed the problem, as we’ll see in a future IE7 release. The current beta chokes on this rule:

div#headwrap h1	{
	background: transparent url(/i/happycog.gif) 
		top left no-repeat;
	margin: 0;
	border: 0;
	padding: 0;
	padding-top: 100px;
	overflow: hidden;
	height: 0px !important; /* for most browsers */
	height /**/:100px; /* for pre 6.0 IE Win */
	}

It’s an image replacement technique that uses an alternate box model hack.

Designers use box model hacks to compensate for inaccuracies in the way some browsers (mostly Microsoft’s) calculate element widths with respect to padding and borders. I wrote this rule to insert my agency’s logo at the top of the page in visual browsers while presenting a text equivalent for screen readers and nongraphical browsers. The hacks force older Microsoft browsers to display these elements correctly.

When Microsoft released IE5, it was great for its day, but not always accurate. When they released IE6, it was better but not perfect. The company then declared victory and announced that the browser was dead and there would be no more IE browsers forever.

So designers got busy compensating for the standards deficiencies of IE5, IE5.5, and IE6 (and other companies’ browsers), using hacks like those seen here. The idea is to take the hackery out of markup, where it never belonged, and hide it in style sheets.

IE7 beta’s standards accuracy is already very good and getting better, and, despite what you might have heard to the contrary, Microsoft’s engineers are working with the community (and in particular with The Web Standards Project) to identify and fix CSS bugs and errors and to compensate for hacks like the one seen here. Using IE7? Finding bugs? Microsoft and The Web Standards Project want to hear from you.

Design industry links

Read these now

Post author By L. Jeffrey Zeldman
Post date 8 February 2006

Hungry? Want another bullshit sandwich?: Andy Rutledge in UX Magazine: “Bad design harms business, it does not help it. Websites like Boingboing, Google and eBay are successful in spite of their poorly designed sites, not because of them.”
Blogs versus the NY Times in Google: Jason Kottke at kottke.org: “In 2002, Dave Winer of Scripting News and Martin Nisenholtz of the New York Times made a Long Bet about the authority of weblogs versus that of [The] NY Times in Google…. I decided to see how well each side is doing by checking the results for the top news stories of 2005.”
Metamorphosis: Dan Benjamin in The Hivelogic Narrative: “[W]riting in second person had a negative impact on something critical to the ‘success’ of Hivelogic: it significantly diminished the frequency of posting.”
Airbag: Cheap: Greg Storey in Airbag: “I am loving Google’s new search service based in China. It’s faster and brings up only the most relevant results without having to be some kind of search engine algorithm enthusiast.”

An Event Apart Design development events people

Dominey, Santa Maria, join Event Apart roster

Post author By L. Jeffrey Zeldman
Post date 6 February 2006

It is pure pleasure to announce that famed web designer, developer, author, blogger, and entrepreneur Todd Dominey and fast-rising art director/designer/blogger Jason Santa Maria will join Eric Meyer and me on the speaker’s platform at An Event Apart Atlanta.

Todd Dominey is a living preview of tomorrow’s web designer: busy with client services, but also creating his own products; delivering powerful graphic design but always in the context of what the user needs to see; adept at web standards and Flash.

As for Jason Santa Maria, I hired him at Happy Cog and entrusted him with the redesign of A List Apart, so I think he’s pretty good.

Actually, I think Todd Dominey and Jason Santa Maria rock harder than Metallica and am thrilled that we will have them both on our stage. I hope some of you can join us at An Event Apart Atlanta.

A List Apart Design Standards

A List Apart 211

Post author By L. Jeffrey Zeldman
Post date 31 January 2006

In the 211th edition of A List Apart, for people who make webites:

In Search of the Holy Grail — Matthew Levine’s three-column CSS layout avoids the usual semantic sacrifices. Is it the ultimate of its kind?
Home Page Goals — Indie web powerhouse Derek Powazek articulates the unique set of design goals a home page requires to create a smart and welcoming impression.

Plus, listen up, ALA readers! A List Apart wants to know what you love—and hate—about the web right now…whatever makes you swoon or drives you nuts. We’ll feature a selection of responses in our next issue.

Accessibility An Event Apart Design development events Standards

An Event Apart Atlanta

Post author By L. Jeffrey Zeldman
Post date 26 January 2006

Messieurs Eric Meyer and Jeffrey Zeldman are pleased to announce An Event Apart Atlanta:

On 3 April 2006, America’s favorite pastime (designing with web standards) will come to the 755 Club at Turner Field, as the famed ballpark’s spectacularly furnished club hosts An Event Apart Atlanta.

An Event Apart is a concentrated, one-day learning session on modern web design. Check the Event Apart Philadelphia page to get a sense of how the first event, held in the Franklin Institute, went down. Transpose from Philly to Atlanta, think ballpark instead of museum, and you get an inkling of what to expect.

Online registration starts soon; seating will be limited. Subscribe to An Event Apart’s RSS feed to stay ahead of the curve. Can’t make Atlanta? Event Apart seminars in Seattle, Chicago, and Los Angeles are up next.

Tags Usability

Design film links Memes music people tv work

Four things

Post author By L. Jeffrey Zeldman
Post date 24 January 2006

I blame Mark Simonson.

Four jobs I’ve had

Writer for The Washington Post and City Paper
Laborer in a PVC coating factory
Art director
Keyboardist (Yatz, Spoons, Pop Maru, Insect Surfers)

Four movies I can watch over and over

Four places I’ve lived

New York City
Washington DC
Bloomington IN
Pittsburgh PA

Four TV shows I love

Four places I’ve vacationed

Istanbul
Rome
San Francisco
London

Four of my favorite dishes

Madras Rava Masala at Dosa Hut
White Omelette at Penelope
Sag Paneer
Tofu in Spicy Ramen

Four sites I visit daily

Four places I would rather be right now

Anywhere with Carrie, baby, and doggie.
Seriously.
That is my answer.
Home best.

Four bloggers I am tagging

Design industry Tools

Bookmarks for a rainy Monday

Post author By L. Jeffrey Zeldman
Post date 23 January 2006

Fresh and preserved petals from my Ma.gnolia bookmarks…

AJAX, Web 2.0 and the Threat to Digital Archives: The more layers of mediation there are between you and the information you’re trying to preserve, the more likely it is that you won’t be able to access that information in the future. For historians, this problem is particularly painful; as information gets wrapped in more and more layers of technology, the profession increasingly relies … on the work of preservationists who keep this “stuff of history” around for future generations.
Create photo galleries in XHTML and CSS: Jonathan Younger’s Photon plugin lets you create photo galleries (like this one, designed by the incomparable Douglas Bowman) by exporting albums from Apple iPhoto to leading blog software environments. Photon supports Movable Type, TypePad, Blojsom, and WordPress. And because it is open-sourced, developers can extend it to work with non-iPhoto gallery software and with additional blogging tools.
Create photo galleries in Flash: Atlanta-based web designer Todd Dominey is that rare artist who understands user experience and graphic design, web standards and Flash. In consequence, his SlideShowPro, a dynamic photo gallery/slide show component for Flash MX 2004, is as luminous as it is utilitarian.