The reason that what you’re reading right now makes sense to you, other than the fact that you are familiar with the written English language, is due largely to the fact that I’m employing—and you perceive—three important Gestalt Principles. The structure of this paragraph is dependent on its adherence to and consistency with the principles of proximity, uniform connectedness, and good continuation. Without these three factors I would be unable to clearly communicate my thoughts to you through this medium (written/typed words) and what you are seeing would bear little or no relationship to language.
~ Andy Rutledge, Gestalt Principles of Perception (Proximity, Uniform Connectedness,
and Good Continuation)
This entry was written by , posted on 03/31/2009 at 8:28 AM, filed under Design and tagged Design, Gestalt, Perception. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
Thank you, Mr. Cafferty, for saying what has been needed for decades…
This entry was written by , posted on at 6:54 AM, filed under Life and tagged Drugs, War on Drugs. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
I’ve been talking about this for months and months: that Apple’s prices are simply to high. I thought this way before the current economic fiasco started, and I think this way now.
My main beef, however, isn’t really the fact that Apple is expensive—because we’ve all known, that Apple prices are higher than those of it’s competitors. Apple makes better products—something we’ve all known forever as well. My issue is the continual price increases with each new product upgrade. The cost of a Macbook, Macbook Pro, iMac, and various iPod’s have done nothing but head north up here (Canada). Sure, these upgrades offer fantastic new features, faster clock speeds, and much better performance—but, the price continues to rise. All I ask is that pricing stay constant.
Let’s get 1 thing out-of-the-way: there is still no comparing Apple products to those of it’s competitors. I just want to see the price tag stop going up, nothing more (when the price tags of almost everything else stays the same, or drops).
It seems others are picking up on this as well: Fortune.
This entry was written by , posted on 03/30/2009 at 7:41 AM, filed under Business, Design, Future, Technology and tagged Apple, Economy, Prices. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
I’m always astounded by Big Spaceship. The work they deliver is some of the best agency work around—period. I don’t think I’ve seen better-designed websites for the film industry. They, like a lot of forward-thinking studios that are design-centric at their core, have also entered into the “branded applications” realm. The latest Big Spaceship creation is simply called: Qapture. I have yet to spend more than 5-10 minutes on it—but I love the concept. If you are a designer, and you use Twitter, then Qapture should turn-your-crank.
This entry was written by , posted on 03/20/2009 at 1:37 PM, filed under Business, Design, Future, Technology and tagged Application, Design, Twitter. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
I wanted to formally thank Jacob for the fantastic Wordpress sIFR plugin. For those of you who don’t know what “sIFR” is, well, first off, I highly-doubt you’ll find this post of any value, and you can stop reading now, and go back to whatever you were doing.
The plugin has had a few hiccups along the way, but, for the most part, it’s been an amazing tool. If you are a designer, that wants to tailor the visual of your blog, and do not want to rely on standard CSS text headings, then look no further—because this is your answer. If you are a designer that is now branching into customizing Wordpress blog themes for your clients (and if you are a designer, and you are not doing this, well, you really should), then look no further.
In fact, I love it so much, I’m using it on this little blog right here—yep, the one you are currently reading, and wondering why…
The plugin can be downloaded here.
This entry was written by , posted on 03/19/2009 at 1:23 PM, filed under Design, Flash and tagged Design, Flash, Wordpress. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
Mac (and iPod) sales down 16% in February 2009—you don’t say? This is generally the end-result of raising (yes, raising) prices in an economic tsunami. Full article can be read here, at Fortune Magazine.
This entry was written by , posted on 03/17/2009 at 7:26 AM, filed under Business, Future, Technology and tagged Apple, Recession. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
SiteInspire is a fantastic resource for the modern interaction designer—whether you are simply looking for a creative lift, or, like myself, spend at least 1 hour per day browsing the design showcase sites—and can never have to many.
SiteInspire, however, is different. Sure, it is a web design showcase—but it’s what I’ll call “agenda-free”. If you’ve been browsing the design showcase sites and portals for as long as I have, you should be aware that many have an agenda behind them. This is most often seen on the CSS showcase sites—they are the biggest offenders, and in my opinion, it’s what keeps many of them down—a continuous cycle of mediocre CSS website postings, and nothing more. No real value.
This is where SiteInspire is different—it offers the viewer (most of which will be interaction designers) great value, and it does this by offering nothing more than “good design”. Flash, XHTML, AJAX-rich-applications… whatever. They all have a place on SiteInspire.
This entry was written by , posted on 03/16/2009 at 9:04 AM, filed under Design and tagged Design, Portal. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
A very informative article from Adobe on Flash, and how the Flash platform can (and does) work in harmony with the search engines…
Read it here.
This entry was written by , posted on 03/15/2009 at 9:46 AM, filed under Design, Flash, Technology and tagged Flash, SEO. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
Acid house is a sub-genre of house music that emphasizes a repetitive, hypnotic and trance-like style, often with samples or spoken lines rather than sung lyrics. Acid house’s core electronic squelch sounds were developed by mid-1980’s DJ’s from Chicago who experimented with the Roland TB-303 electronic synthesizer-sequencer. Acid house spread to the United Kingdom, Australia, and continental Europe, where it was played by DJ’s in the early rave scene. By the late 1980’s, copycat tracks and acid house remixes brought the style into the mainstream, where it had some influence on pop and dance styles.
Nicknamed “the sound of acid”, acid house was different than the emerging styles of deep house or vocal house in that it was starkly minimal, being very light or absent of instrumentation and generally harder or trancier sounding than these. This bifurcation marked an early separation in house music that directly correlated to the origin of hard dance and trance and which developed in conjunction with the more underground and specialized rave scene. The starkness of the style was a result of the discovery of the strange sounds that the Roland TB-303 bass line synthesizer produced when tweaked and the straight 4/4 rhythm which though shared by much of house and techno music was programmed into much harder and more pounding rhythms than pop or electro. Both of these elements are present in most of the tracks considered core to the sound of acid house. Roland’s other famous sound, the Roland TR-909 drum machine is nearly as common. Acid house’s influence on dance music is tangible considering the sheer number of electronic music tracks referencing acid house through the use of its sounds, including trance, goa trance, psytrance, breakbeat, big-beat, techno, trip-hop and house music.
This entry was written by , posted on 03/13/2009 at 5:20 PM, filed under Life, Music and tagged Analogue, Music. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
Something has been bothering me for some time. I’m a regular visitor to the many design portals and community sites. I’m that increasingly-rare type of designer that doesn’t discriminate when it comes to platform: design is design. If it accomplishes it’s intended goals, communicates it’s message, and does what it should—then I’m happy. CSS, Flash, XHTML, javascript—it does not matter to me.
I, however, am in the minority on this one (at least I think I am). Designers are a finicky lot. The CSS community seems to have a genuine mistrust of all-things-Flash (and often love to spread un-truths, and blatant lies about it), and many Flash designers are just that—Flash “specialists” that rarely venture outside their comfort zone.
One thing I have noticed recently—and it’s almost completely unique to the CSS portals—is that many of the featured designer websites are void of any office location, mailing address, and often even a phone number. I’m seeing this on a daily basis. It’s no secret that there is no shortage of freelancers that masquerade as companies, and there is certainly nothing wrong with this stance. But—when you have nothing more than a 3-field form on your contact page, then something is wrong. How can this reassure any potential client thinking of hiring said designer? As a potential client, I certainly would take issue with this. No office (or mailing) address is one thing—but no phone number, is another.
I’m not bashing the freelance web developer here, and I am certainly not singling-out those without an office, not at all—what I am saying, though, is that this gives the wrong impression—and a bad one at that.
This entry was written by , posted on 03/12/2009 at 8:46 AM, filed under Business, CSS and tagged Business, Clients, CSS, Design. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.