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Lately I ‘ve been working on a project which was designed by someone else. The particular person is actually a graphic designer. He mainly works with Illustrator or Photoshop. His most important characteristic is that he grew up and started designing in the USA.
Working with him is a tremendous influence which cannot be compared with the experience I get during a usual surfing. The way he approaches design is something completely new to me. He follows an almost anarchic style regarding information design, images and colors.
However his designs embrace a well defined scheme and most of all they pass the message he wants. Which is logical if we consider that Illustrator is a tool which provides freedom. Someone who designs well can produce exceptional work by it.
During our professional life it is rarely to find a way to draw inspiration from someone so different. I don’t know if I am going to start my next project from Illustrator, but I do know that I will put a decent effort to get away from the usual forms I got used to follow.
From the very beginning of someone’s e-life there comes an issue about his identity. His ID might include an avatar, a nickname, a signature etc. At that point everyone selects how to represent his virtual ego. Most people remain anonymous because they feel free to become whatever they would want to be. However, the deeper they go into their microcosms the more difficult is to remain hidden. Unless they follow a strategically organized method of representing themselves. Or whatever…
In the end it is obvious that being an avatar isn’t wise. At least it isn’t wise for me. I reckon that integrity is your real name too. That’s why I selected not to hide myself.
All this long prologue points to a fact. Kathy Sierra lives under terror and humiliation because someone obviously sick threatens her life.
It could have happened to anyone. Let us question ourselves who selects to remain anonymous and why. And let us act the proper way.
PS. I do know that many people remain anonymous because they can’t do otherwise. They are not the case.
Today I got a list of specs about a web portal. The portal concerns a huge state commission. I am not going to go into the details. Instead I will list some of the specifications of the project:
We should build htm, not html, pages and JavaScript pages
Each of the web pages should have a Strict and Transitional DOCTYPE
The project includes a database which has been already built. We are to use this database but it will not be given to us.
The person who formed the list of specifications obviously wanted to show off a little so he also asked for:
An accessible portal by all people with physical disadvantages
Use of CSS
Wildcard search (nevertheless he wanted an embedded Google search)
Obviously the customer wanted to put some tall orders. And he did it.
I made a swift trip. 1000+ kilometers in two days. I came back with a new car. My old Toyota Starlet doesn’t live here anymore. I used to be tied with this car. I don’t anymore. But leaving 17 years behind you is not so simple.
In this car I saw all of my beloved people sitting next to me. Some of them don’t live anymore and some other wouldn’t get in again anyway. I learned how to drive in this car. I went everywhere with this car. I would go anywhere. During these 17 years I had to change its battery three times and that’s all. No more damages.
I crashed three times, one of my fault. It carried on.
I knew this car. I listened to it. Above all this car used to be a good and reliable mean of transport. There was nothing fancy with it. People were never attracted by it. My last trip with it was more or less the same with the first one. No moans, no creaks, no extra fuel consumption. A loyal dog. 193.000 kilometers is a fair number, don’t you agree?
I don’t know who is going to buy it. Well, actually I know, but I don’t want to learn anything else. I don’t like symbolisms but this car used to be a part of my life, an everyday thing. Today, as I was leaving I didn’t take a look at it. A new shiny car was ready to start off. All that I cared was my old car was standing brave and still outside our yard.
One of the hardest constraints of Web design is the (non) availability of fonts. As I have written before there are 6-8 available font types which can be viewed by any computer. Combining different fonts in one page is not wrong but not easy too.
Most of the times designers combine one serif with one sans-serif font. For example they can use Georgia for their titles and Verdana for the main text. Of course to achieve a good result a series of typography rules should be followed. Dan Cederholm’s website is an example of excellent typography. Let us see why:
Point 1
The title is as simple as it implies. Cederholm uses sans-serif for it. The size is large enough to create a focal point along with the graphic.
Point 2
The navigation menu is written with capital fonts. Usually, capitals are not a wise choice but not here. Serifs and curly brackets produce an interesting result which transmits the information required.
Point 3
The introduction text is an astonishing example of good typography. The text passes a meaningful message. Since the title talks about handcrafted icons ant text, it is written a way it seems really handcrafted. Look at the “&”! The cubes graphic completes the scene.
Point 4
The homepage acts as a synopsis of contents of different sections. Each section is clearly outlined by green serif fonts.
Point 5
Links are obvious since they are blue and underlined.
Point 6
Paragraphs include an ideal number of words in each line. The leading (line-height) is also excellent. All this results to readable text. Nothing more is required.
Spending some time at the website of Dan Cederholm you ‘ll certainly discover more examples of good typography. And not only. The whole site is one of the best designed for the modern Web era.
Who Jobs? There is only one Steve Jobs. During my day-surfing I read some of his quotes, I took in interviews, I watched videos and I observed carefully some of his products. People like him are always a source of knowledge.
Stick to quality. Do not betray quality. Easy to say, but who really does it? Jobs does.
It doesn’t matter what you believe of your product. It doesn’t matter what others believe. This comes next. What does matter is what people believe for themselves after they have used your product. This is what we call user experience.
Don’t leave people talk about issues that concern you without responding. Don’t stay in silence. Show what you think.
Be aware. Be able to respond, analyze, explain, offer, suggest. Leave your mark.
Be brave. Not careless. Consider things and when the right moment comes don’t be afraid to raise your voice and change the world.
Reduce the time. Be decisive. Even if you have to make someone displeased.
Tell stories without missing the target. Without forgetting who ‘s in front of you. No presentation is as good as a juicy story.
Have a vision. Believe in this. Fight for this even if you have to stay awake for some days. It doesn’t matter.
I could keep on writing for hours. Still, I think that these list items are enough for a start.
They say that a group proves its glory on stage. I agree.
Blackfield, the collaboration between Steven Wilson the leader of Porcupine Tree from UK and Aviv Geffen from Israel gave a concert yesterday in Thessaloníki, Greece. They played tracks from both their albums, Blackfield and Blackfield II and the result was fabulοus.
Just before the concert one guy told me that Blackfield are well known among girls and that was true. The number of women was almost equal with the number of men while in concerts of Porcupine Tree men are many more. Anyway, we did go for the music and the music was great. It seems that Wilson makes live performances better than studio ones.
The members of the group obviously have played many hours together. They knew what to do at the right time. Geffen had real fun and he showed it. Wilson, barefoot as always, played his solos very intensively. I also liked the performance of the drummer who did more than keep the rhythm.
The concert opened with “Once”. It was played again by the end of the show even louder. This song, along with “Thank you”, a fantastic adaption from the original of Alanis Morissette, were the best moments of the show. Blackfield played almost all songs from their albums even though I expected “Summer” which was left out of the program.
I like Blackfield a lot. Yesterday were twice as good. This show was refreshing and extraordinary. However, all this was just warming up. I ‘m expecting Porcupine Tree to come again and overwhelm the whole thing.
I admit it. I am slow at certain things. For some time now I ‘ve been wondering about if I should use for this blog tags to label my posts or divide them into categories. “Pah, big deal”, you might say. However, the question is more important than it seems because the whole thing has to do with semantically organized content.
Differences
Using categories is a pretty clear way to guide your visitors within well defined areas. At the same time you control it better inside your head. For example, if you create a category named “Life” you are sure that a fictional post about summer vacations belongs there. Here it comes my difficulty. I want to keep things easily organized, so I turned to categories. Which is not enough. That ‘s why I am writing this post.
Categories are not very flexible. Surely, the post about summer vacations would belong to “Life” but at the same time posts such as what coffee I like, the post about my Sunday mornings and the one about new car would also belong there. Still, all the previous posts are totally irrelevant. In this case, using tags is wiser, because this will permit a user select a more relevant post according its tag. Notice that tags are more applicable when it comes to a detailed description.
What categories do and tags don’t is to create hierarchies. Hierarchies is another useful way to keep content under control. Talking about content it is good to say that a category can be described by several words e.g. “Accessibility, usability and validation”. If one wants to use tags instead he should try three different ones: “Accessibility”, “Usability”, “Validation” in this case.
Categories are not as hot as tags in terms of modern Web. I am not only talking about the trends but also about the ways of interacting different sites between them. Wordpress for example offers someplugins which enhance the performance of a blog by connecting it with tools such as Technorati or Flickr. This is because tags offer meta information. Categories don’t.
Combining categories and tags
Using tags as categories is possible, but this is not a real solution but a workaround. So, as long as it regards me, this approach is not valid. Another way to archive content is using both tags and categories. In this scenario categories divide content the traditional way and tags spice it a bit. Lorelle explains it an excellent way:
I think of categories as a table of contents and tags as the index page of a book. If I’m searching for a broad topic, unsure of exactly what I need to find or the keywords, then I will hit the table of contents (categories). If I know the exact word I need in order to find the information I want, then I will hit the index page (tags). As repositories of content and information, why should blogs be any different?
Conclusion
To sum it up: both ways of archiving content are good. Combining is an extra. In the end it comes to the author of a website. If someone writes about relevant things of a subject area or he needs to point out the details, he should use tags. If his topics cover a wide area, he should go for categories. Once more it is the content that actually imposes one way or another. And as we all know, the content is the king.
Anyway, we did go for the music and the music was great. It seems that Wilson makes live performances better than studio ones.