As the weekend approaches, I leave you with two good links and one interesting stinker:
Years ago, I toiled at an ad agency that employed clever, dedicated art directors, writers, and account executives. Sadly, the agency’s potential to do good work was blunted by the creative director who ran the company. This fellow suffered from two afflictions:
Time and again, the art directors, writers, and account executives tried to do the right thing. Time and again, the talentless, arrogant creative director led them in the wrong direction.
I’m not sure what made me think of those sad, misguided days, but here are some U.S. presidential inauguration day links:
In issue 192 of A List Apart, for people who make websites, managing editor Erin Kissane introduces a new feature to the magazine:
Groundbreaking accessibility information. Project management and information architecture theory from old-school experts. Plug-and-play solutions to universal design and development problems. Experimental CSS/DOM hacks that use non-semantic elements to do funky design tricks. One of these things is not like the others...which is why we’re introducing a tiny new feature to the magazine.
MLK Day links, published ex post facto as we took the day off:
Thanks to all who sent birthday greetings on 12 January.
In the 11 January double issue of A List Apart, for people who make websites:
by Joe Clark
You’ve designed for the screen and made provision for blind, handheld, and PDA browser users. But what about low-vision people? Powered by CSS, “zoom” layouts convert wide, multicolumn web pages into low-vision-friendly, single column designs. Accessibility maven Joe Clark explores the rationale and methods behind zoom layouts. Board the zoom train now!
The cross-column pull-out gave us a new technique for marking up a layout with a pull-out positioned between columns. Now we examine a variation of the technique for wrapping around the edges of a non-rectangular image positioned between columns.
Happy Cog Studios welcomes Editorial Director Erin Kissane and Interactive Graphic Designer Jason Santa Maria to the crew.
Erin is a writer and editorial strategist and the managing editor of A List Apart, where she helps sift through the web development community’s new ideas to identify and promote better ways to publish content and build websites. At Happy Cog, she’ll help clients hone a “brand voice” and develop copy strategies that meet user needs and business goals. When not focused on client communications, Erin writes about writing at Incisive.nu.
Jason Santa Maria has been recognized for designing web interfaces that are fresh and imaginative, yet always usable and content-focused. His graphic design skills have been put to use on two Happy Cog projects that are now nearing completion; we liked him so much, we asked him to stick around. Jason is a well-known blogger; he also wrote the cover story for the January 2005 issue of Design In-Flight Magazine, a PDF-formatted design zine available by paid subscription.
Last month I was honored to kick off Web Design World Boston with a keynote address sharing some of what I’ve learned during ten years of site design and independent content publishing.
Thanks to FTP Online, you can now watch the keynote in streaming video. (Requires Windows Media Player. The first minute is silent, and the audio kicks in while I’m delivering conference housekeeping announcements, but don’t let it throw you.)
At FTP's special issue site, you can also watch the other speakers’ presentations, and they are fantastic — which is no surprise when you have speakers like (in alphabetical order) Jason Fried, Kelly Goto, Tom Green, Molly Holzschlag, Andrew Kirkpatrick, Ethan Marcotte and Joe Marini.
The next Web Design World will be held in San Francisco; watch FTP’s Thunder Lizard page for announcements.
As will be obvious to most visitors, this site’s rotating photos have changed for the new year. We now feature images of New York City as it looked a hundred years ago. Enjoy.
Don’t you hate it when inconsiderate jerks shriek their personal business into their cell phones while you’re trapped in the same elevator car or other enclosed public space with them? The next time one of these ninnies mouths off in your airspace, wouldn’t you love to hand them their ass? Now you can.
Our good friends at Coudal, together with the excellent people of Draplindustries Design, have concocted a beauteous and witty way to make your feelings known. Download the PDF. Print, cut out, and hand out to the next person who lets everyone in the checkout line know how their love life is going.
Brian (Dr Frankensite) Alvey, creator of the standards-compliant A List Apart publishing system and CEO of Weblogs, Inc., seeks “front-end and back-end web geniuses — or anyone who fits both roles — for some freelance design and development projects starting yesterday.”
Front-end candidates should possess:
On the back-end:
For details and more information, see The Brian Alvey Weblog.
The New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC) seeks a consultant or team of same to redesign its site:
NYCEDC seeks to enhance our corporate image through a client-focused Internet presence in order to achieve our objectives of attracting and retaining businesses and jobs in the City.
Submission deadline is Monday, 24 January 2005. Additional Requests for Proposals are available. Go get ’em.
As the death toll climbs in Asia, where millions who survived the 26 December earthquake and tsunami face now disease and death, designer Andy Budd has come up with a simple (and easy) way to help. On his newly launched BlogAid, folks whose sites include advertising (such as Google AdWords) may pledge their sites’ ad revenues for the month of January to organizations engaged in the massive relief effort.
The honor-system pledge reads as follows:
I agree to pledge the earnings from advertising, affiliate programs or site sponsorship made from my site during January to my country’s local Earthquake and Tsunami appeal.
Think of it as an internet pyramid scheme, but a benevolent one: the more bloggers who link to BlogAid and pledge their support, the more of their fellow bloggers who will do likewise. In addition to money generated, the public pledge allows people to stand in solidarity with the tsunami victims and those engaged in saving their lives. We endorse BlogAid and encourage you to pledge your support.
If you would rather help without calling attention to yourself, Doctors Without Borders is back online after DNS problems caused it to disappear earlier in the week, and will gladly accept donations.
At the Blog Business Summit (“publish and prosper”), to be held 24–25 January in Seattle, an impressive group of speakers will show how to make blogs work for your business. As a reader of zeldman.com, you are eligible to attend the conference at the discounted price of $395 (while space lasts). Please see this special registration page before the last seats disappear.
Apache Lenya is an Open-Source Content Management System written in Java and based on open standards such as XML and XSLT. Lenya is built on top of Apache Cocoon and other components from the Apache Software Stack. Its XML-centric architecture allows for content delivery targeted to the capabilities of various devices, and avoids data lock-in. Apache Lenya is built around Off the Shelf components from the Apache Software Foundation.
Apache Lenya comes with the features you can expect of a modern Content Management System, such as Revision Control, Scheduling, a built-in Search Engine, separate Staging Areas, and Workflow.
2005 will mark our tenth year online. Happy New Year, and thanks for your support.