Last week, with the snow storm in Seattle I was able to slip out to the art supply store down the street and picked up some stuff to fix my polaroid wall I put up back in May. It was quick and easy, just some plastic flashing and some spray adhesive, but after the warm summer and the weight from the Polaroids the flashing started to peel away from the wall. I’d been wanting to replace it with something else but just didn’t have the time, or any ideas on what to put up there in its place ...
Continue readingWhen I’m reading through business requirement documents, creative briefs, or high level explanations about what a site should do there’s one line this is almost always there:
“We want the design to be flexible for the future.”
It’s by far my least favorite thing to see. My beef is not that I think sites shouldn’t be flexible for the future (they should!), it’s just that the expectations surrounding this one single line vary so greatly.
Continue readingIn the second installment of my Information Architecture Deliverables series, I’m going to talk about one of my favorite (and one of the most tricky) deliverables: the page description diagram. In case you’re not familiar, a page description diagram is a text-based list that explains the importance of content that appears on various pages of a website. Here’s a sample of what one looks like.
One of the main reasons why I love pdd’s is that they effectively remove visual design and layout-based discussions (which should be reserved for the visual design phase of the work ...
Continue readingWhen I talk about Information Architecture, I don’t want to talk about deliverables. I want to talk about getting people on the same page about what is going to be built or designed. The gist of my job is getting “consensus” (and I don’t mean designing functionality by committee; I mean ensuring that that everyone understands what is going to be built before the development and design happens). Yes, there will always be changes, and yes, agile development can be a great thing. But without some sort of initial blueprint to guide you, the project will flounder around ...
Continue readingIt might as well be paper or plastic. You step up to the cash register and the checker looks up and asks, “Paper or Plastic?”. If you’re like me, you start over-thinking the question. I’d like to avoid using petroleum products so I should go with paper, but those actually take more energy to produce, but I can use them for my recycling later… Meh, I should just buy some reusable bags and get it over with.
The same types of questions pop into my head when people ask if they should use tags or categories. Tags are ...
Continue readingIn an attempt to keep the good weather here in Seattle to stay I’m releasing the grey mix. Inspired by Sarah’s anti-rain boots this mix is meant to be played whenever you need to bend the weather to your will and get some sunshine. We’ll see if I’m as successful as the anti-rain boots have been.
The mix is starts out with a great Radiohead cover from Damien Rice and then moves into a few older songs I’ve listened to through the years that fit perfectly with the some thick clouds and warm tea. The ...
Continue readingAfter a few comments and now more than a few emails asking me for my Wordpress theme for this site I figured it was high time to explain a bit about how my site works and the concepts behind it.
The idea is a simple one, but with a bit of an over-the-top solution: I just want a personal site that incorporates (go figure) everything I do online (the vast majority of it, anyway). Since new toys pop-up all the time, I want the site to be flexible enough to deal with any new service that I might fancy down ...
Continue readingSince the iPod’s release people having been bitching about the headphones that have shipped with them. At first, people were stoked for the white and wore them because it was a status thing. I even remember hearing about people getting mugged because people saw the white and knew they had an iPod. Shortly after though people realized they didn’t sound that great, or they simply fell out of their ears because of their “superior” ergonomic qualities.
I understand people’s issues with them, but they’ve always worked great for me. They fit perfectly in my ears, sound ...
Continue readingApparently it’s spring. You wouldn’t know it from looking out the window here in Seattle, but that’s not going to stop me from posting the Green mix. I’ll bend the weather to my will I tell you! A bit of green, a bit of spring was the theme. I can’t help but think of budding plants, green grass and if you’re here in the northwest a bit of moss still clinging to the trees.
It starts off with a little song from Simon & Garfunkel during their concert in central park and ends with a ...
Continue readingA few days ago when the the Blue Flavor crew was out having lunch, we started discussing Expression Web and why there’s practically no interest in it at all. None of us have spent much time with EW’s suite of products, but there are good reasons why. The lack of interest can be boiled down to three main obstacles that anyone trying to carve out some space on Adobe Mountain will have to overcome.
Learning new tools as complicated as Photoshop or Illustrator takes a whole lot of time that, technically speaking, we should not bill ...
Continue readingI’ve gone ahead and cleaned up and added a few new feeds to T Incorporated. There are now feeds for just about everything, and well, everything that happens on T Incorporated. You can subscribe just to the main blog posts as before, but I’ve also added a links and blog posts combined feed. I’ve also gone through and updated the older feeds for blog posts, links, photos, favorite photos as well as the stream, or everything, feed. I know it can be a bit of a wait between postings but I usually post 3-5 links each day ...
Continue readingThe general consensus in the design community is that new U.S. five is ugly. The 2,500 at the United States Bureau of Engraving and Printing got together and decided to grace our good bill with a giant purple Helvetica in the corner. And then around the same time the Royal Mint shows off their sexy new coins designed by a first time, 26-year old graphic designer named Matthew Dent. For people uninitiated into the design processes this doesn’t make any sense, but for most of us in the thick of it, it’s pretty clear. Designing by ...
Continue readingYou’re out with a group of geeks. Maybe it’s SXSW, maybe it’s at a bar after Refresh, maybe it’s a few people out enjoying a baseball game on a beautiful spring day. Okay, that’s going a bit too far, I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen geeks out enjoying a sporting event that isn’t bowling. But you’re out, and you’re talking about something blasé like domestic politics or the Israeli and Palestinian conflict, but inevitably the subject turns to Apple. You start discussing MacBook Pro specs, the new MacBook ...
Continue readingClients have proposals. They come in all sizes and shapes, from formal RFPs to an idea hastily sketched on a back of a napkin. But there is one thing they all have in common: Requirements. And each of those requirements almost always calls for a feature. Like a blog. Tagging. sIFR. Some AJAX. These days, even a site that sells toothpicks seems to need a rotating AJAX-powered image gallery.
Often times, we web pros spring into action when confronted with this dilemma. We draft estimates, outline how all these “necessary” features might fit within a client’s budget, and ...
Continue readingFor all you polaroid geeks out there attending SXSW a few of us are going to be having a breakfast at Katzs Deli at 9:00 a.m. Saturday March 8th. It’s right on 6th street and has received 5 out of 5 golden eggs while been nominated for the best bargin breakfast in Austin by Mr. Breakfast. I’ve recently enacted a strict policy where I won’t eat anywhere that doesn’t receive 4+ golden eggs, so this place made the cut.
At this point it’s just a couple of us so we haven’t made ...
Continue readingBefore everyone makes the pilgrimage down to Austin I thought I’d throw up another mix so those iPods and iPhones might have a little something new for the trek. Yellow was the next list in iTunes that ended up with enough songs to warrant a posting and it seems just about right with all of us heading down for some sun and fun. After listening to this mix I get images of bright summer days, dry grass and yellow track jackets. I’m not sure what that means, but any mix that somehow pulls off Nickel Creek, The Coup ...
Continue readingAntitrust laws exist mainly to “prohibit agreements or practices that restrict free trade and competition between business entities.”
So, among other things, they protect you from Company X trying to force you to buy a second product after you’ve already bought a first one. This is the main crux of what got Microsoft in trouble with Internet Explorer.
These laws, specifically the Sherman Act, are likely what’s keeping you and me from having to buy our milk from Standard Oil, which is great, but with software it can be tricky. Microsoft stepped over the line a bit for ...
Continue reading3 or 4 years ago I made a bunch of compilation cds for a girl. Sure, it was the modern “mixed tape” but I went all out. I made a complete set, based on color, red, orange, yellow, blue, green, grey and black. I even made covers and cases for them all. Enough, I was smitten. It’s been a while and I’ve managed to lose the lists through my various computer upgrades, but I’ve always wanted to make some new ones.
There’s something that appeals to me about grouping songs by color. Colors, like music are ...
Continue readingOver the past few weeks I’ve been adding features, shifting servers and generally just getting T Incorporated into top shape. I’m glad I went ahead and launched but I found it a bit frustrating that I’ve been spending my time working on T Incorporated and not writing. So, now that things have finally settled down a bit (I’m not rebooting my server every 10 minutes anymore) I’d like to talk a bit about some of the design decisions that went into T Incorporated.
First, the goals:
I wanted to incorporate all of the stuff I ...
I truly believe my vote matters. My neighbor, a political science professor at the University of Washington, keeps explaining to me that statistically it has little to no impact. I keep hearing about these “super delegates” which, unless a clear front runner emerges, will likely get together in some smoke filled room in Colorado and decide who the nominee for the democratic party will be. Despite all this, I still feel my vote matters, and I believe strongly in making my voice heard.
The town I grew up in, Durham, a tiny suburb of Portland, Oregon, consisted of roughly 800 ...
Continue readingA few months ago I was riding the subway out to Coney Island during a visit to New York and I had an idea. It wasn’t necessarily a new idea, but it stuck. I wanted to incorporate my life online. Sure, I’ve had ideas like this in the past. I’ve even tried using tools built on web development frameworks to make it happen, but this time I had some help. After a few conversations over ping pong with my good friend and co-worker Jeff Croft I realized how I could make it a reality. He was working ...
Continue readingYou can remove the “Property” now as yesterday afternoon I got this email from the Christopher Williams the Interim Superintendent of Seattle Parks and Recreation:
Continue readingThank you for taking the time to submit your naming suggestion for the recent Seattle Parks and Recreation park naming process.
After receiving overwhelming support from the community, I have decided to name the park site located at 48th Avenue SW and SW Alaska Street Ercolini Park. This name will recognize the longtime ownership of this site by the Ercolini family and their willingness to sell this property to the City for a public space ...
I got to spend some time last week in the, hell, I feel like whatever I write will sound like a cliche when talking about New York, I mean, what the “Big Apple”? I heart NY. Sigh. Regardless, it was a blast. I saw some great old friends from Japan, some who were in town for a web conference, met a few new ones, and others who seemed to have followed me. I went to a Knicks game, traversed to the top of the Empire State Building and took a few shots of an eerily abandoned amusement park. The subways ...
Continue readingAs I’ve written about before my family recently sold a piece of property to the City of Seattle with the intention of it becoming a city park. The property was sold at very generous rate to make sure it became a park instead of condos and it’s something I’m quite proud my family did. Unfortunately, with the sale of the property a name wasn’t designated for the park, so Seattle Parks and Recreation is soliciting names for the working name of “Ercolini Park”.
My family and I would love to see the parks working name become ...
Continue readingFirst off I just want to say thanks, thanks to my friends who decided to turn their sites pink for October. It’s great and it’s definitely made me think about doing the same. I’ve gone back and forth about the whole idea for a good week and I’ve finally decided not to. It’s not because I don’t think it’s a fantastic idea to spread awareness about this terrible disease, it is, it’s just not for me.
A few weeks ago I went down and participated in the Race for the Cure down ...
Continue readingI was just spending a bit of time tonight checking out A Brief Message which is a fantastic new site by Liz Danzico and Kohi Vihn. The initial article there was a brief bit discussing the possibility of print dying. There’s some good commentary that follows, people talking about Newspapers dying off or it happening really slowly, but it spurred a memory for me a while back about a spot I’d heard on NPR last year about something actually dying off—the telegram.
It’s a great example because it’s a form of communication that actually has ...
Continue readingSure, you have your Facebook page, your Virb profile and your MySpace “thing”. You’ve got your Flickr stream, your Upcoming events, and your Twitter status.
But I’m talking about having a website. Those services are great, don’t get me wrong, and maybe you want to use one of them to create your website and that’s fine. What I’m making a case for is a stake in the internet ground to call yours. A little online personal identity. It doesn’t have to be much. Some of my favorites are just splash pages or compilations of ...
Continue readingThe debate about whether or not you should be creating mobile specific content seems to be at an all time high right now. With the release of iPhone people are excited about the mobile web because the device makes it so compelling. At Blue Flavor, we got excited about it too and developed Leaflets, which is optimized for the mobile web and specifically the iPhone.
Sure, I’ve seen the commercial too, with Apple touting the “real” internet. And I see their reason for promoting it. Their logic being is that’s what consumers want, they want the desktop internet ...
Continue readingIt’s been a busy past few weeks but I’m excited to announce that Blue Flavor has launched Leaflets. To quote from our site:
“Leaflets are small, mobile web-based applications you access from Safari on your iPhone. And since Leaflets are designed to run fast over AT&T’s EDGE network, you can use them anywhere: no wi-fi required.”
It’s been a huge team effort, but I got to work specifically on the design for Flickr as well as helping out a lot with both the del.icio.us and Newsvine Leaflets. If you’ve got an iPhone ...
Continue readingIf it isn’t readily apparent from my blog title and about page I enjoy the simple number pattern. Not only when the digital clock reads 1:10 or 12:34 (one, two, three, four) but also with dates, and today is a great one, 07/07/07. It just screams head to Vegas and hit the slots to me, but I’m going to have to settle for a brief smile on my face and the thought that it won’t happen for another thousand years.
The last time I have a distinct memory of something like this was ...
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