Some good rules for publishing a reader-friendly blog

"From Schwarzkopf’s boots to traffic cones, the federal government’s official color palette—yes, it has one—controls much of what we see. An investigation into how America elects to paint itself."

What makes a typeface good for screens and UI design in particular?

The typography of numbers

A web app (frame 1) running within a browser app (frame 2) on a smartphone device (frame 3) has three frames of interaction. You’re reaching through a window, then putting your hands into a box, to perform your task.

Chrome has a cost (“chrome” in the generic sense; no disparagement of Google’s excellent browser is intended). The more interface you have visible, the higher the cognitive load on the user. When parts of that interface belong to entirely different, unrelated frames (or levels) of interaction, the load is high.

SlickMap CSS is a simple stylesheet for displaying finished site maps directly from HTML unordered list navigation. It’s suitable for most web sites – accommodating up to three levels of page navigation and additional utility links – and can easily be customized to meet your own individual needs, branding, or style preferences.

simple webapp for designing pixel patterns - exactly the tool I envisioned for constructing hash patterns for map design

By "chrome" I don't mean Google's browser of that name, but all the pseudo-solid, pseudo-3D visual cruft that infests user interfaces in modern computing.

screenshots of iOS applications categorized by purpose, Signup/Comment/List screens, etc... showing the general structure and design of mobile apps

well-made, free & open-source, @font-face ready fonts.

Corridors make science-fiction believable, because they're so utilitarian by nature - really they're just a conduit to get from one (often overblown) set to another. So if any thought or love is put into one, if the production designer is smart enough to realise that corridors are the foundation on which larger sets are 'sold' to viewers, movie magic is close at hand.

PDF of presentation from google fellow Jeff Dean on web app performance

HTML5 Boilerplate is the professional badass's base HTML/CSS/JS template for a fast, robust and future-proof site.
After more than two years in iterative development, you get the best of the best practices baked in: cross-browser normalization, performance optimizations, even optional features like cross-domain Ajax and Flash. A starter apache .htaccess config file hooks you the eff up with caching rules and preps your site to serve HTML5 video, use @font-face, and get your gzip zipple on.
Boilerplate is not a framework, nor does it prescribe any philosophy of development, it's just got some tricks to get your project off the ground quickly and right-footed.

print mailing envelopes lined with your google maps location

Official user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) guidelines from the manufacturers, links to which you can find below, are a source of inspiration for mobile web and app design. Here, you will find guidelines, samples, tips, and descriptions of common mistakes. Many of the guidelines focus on native application development, but we can apply most parts of them to mobile web design too.

Saving a document for the first time is a minor chore, but it’s a chore nonetheless. The avoidance of such a minor chore is not rational; it is neither particularly complicated nor time consuming to hit Command-S and deal with the Save dialog. But we humans are not perfectly rational. We don’t always floss our teeth. We’ll pick the burger and fries instead of the salad. We’ll have one more beer. And sometimes we just don’t feel like dealing with the Save dialog box yet so we’ll put it off.

"Ratios are at the core of any well designed grid system. Sometimes those ratios are rational, such as 1:2 or 2:3, others are irrational such as the 1:1.414 (the proportion of A4). "

uses formal exercises of the Bauhaus to teach the Adobe Creative Suite. All students of digital design and production—whether learning in a classroom or on their own—need to understand the basic principles of design in order to implement them using current software. Far too often design is left out of books that teach software for the trade and academic markets. Consequently, the design software training exercise is often a lost opportunity for visual learning.

Digital Foundations is creative commons licensed (CC+BY-NC-SA). Read the whole book on our wiki, and read more about the writing process on our Blog.

CSS framework - "The 960 Grid System is an effort to streamline web development workflow by providing commonly used dimensions, based on a width of 960 pixels. There are two variants: 12 and 16 columns, which can be used separately or in tandem. Read more."

Metalist of information on typography

random blog of interest

Structured along Robert Bringhurst’s book The Elements of Typographic Style, explaining how to accomplish each using techniques available in HTML and CSS

DesignGridLayout is a LayoutManager inspired by the use of canonical grids for user interface design. DesignGridLayout works with JDK 1.5 and later.

Basic but detailed introduction to layout using CSS, include the box model and different kinds of positioning

“Layout” is an IE/Win proprietary concept that determines how elements draw and bound their content, interact with and relate to other elements, and react on and transmit application/user events.

Links to articles detailing the basic of a CSS-based design: Box Model, Floated Columns, Sizing Using Ems, Image Replacement, Floated Navigation, Sprites

"Knowing your em-dashes, serifs and line heights is important, but the key is developing typographic control. Here are some points to consider"

Current trends and ideas in personal home pages

chronotext is a growing collection of software experiments exploring the relation between text, space and time

journal of nomadic and popular culture

Explore, create, and share color themes. Requires flash

Office Collars designed by Simone Brewster: "Having observed that people working in open office space are constantly distracted by visual stimuli, she suggested they wear one of her collars" Distraction-prevention tool

Brainstorming with the power of paper

Web based application (Flash) which allows you to create and share your own comic strips. Uses clip art from different comic artists.

fantastic drawings

HTML DOM Visualizer Applet using processing

Netbeans property sheet design docs

Worldmapper is a collection of world maps, where territories are re-sized on each map according to the subject of interest.

Gilles Trehin is an autistic 28-year-old. Since the age of 12, he has been designing an imaginary city called Urville, named after the “Dumont d’Urville,” a French scientific base in Antarctica.

Stephen Wiltshire has been called the “Human Camera.” In this short excerpt from the film Beautiful Minds: A Voyage into the Brain, Wiltshire takes a helicopter journey over Rome and then draws a panoramic view of what he saw, entirely from memory.

The Rasterbator is a web service which creates huge, rasterized images from any picture. The rasterized images can be printed and assembled into extremely cool looking posters up to 20 meters in size.

This site contains PDF documents that can be printed and cut out to make lens hoods for a variety of 35mm and digital SLR camera lenses. Lens hoods give better quality photographs by reducing flare caused by nonimageforming light.

I write computer programs to create graphic images. With an algorithmic goal in mind, I manipulate the work by finely crafting the semantics of each program. Specific results are pursued, although occasionally surprising discoveries are made.

pinhole photography of cities using an entire room

Open source language for prototyping java graphics programs. Ought to be fun to try out

Potential for some unique christmas gifts

future-forward design for the world you inhabit

motion graphics, design, bombastic rambling

Home of budget DIY photography projects

Kidrobot is planet Earth’s premier creator and retailer of limited-edition art toys, mini-figures, posters, clothing, action figures and more! In Santa Monica

Photography of Jello replicas of San Fransisco

Church of the flying spaghettis monster

Almost every application with GUI needs icons. And they better be sexy. And stylish. And consistent. And small. Here are few tips for programatically creating icons using Java 2D features