Refresh Columbia » Justin

Easy Whiteboard Prototyping with GUIMagnets

Justin — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 20:39:54 +0000

Ahh. The ubiquitous whiteboard. Nothing is quite as “wide open” as an empty whiteboard. When sketching out your next UI, why not reach for something to make your job a bit easier? These magnets represent various form elements without having to draw them. They would also be very helpful when dealing with clients who don’t know the difference between a combo box and an option button.

GUIMagnets: Prototyping made sticky

David Airey on The Contract

Justin — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 17:53:28 +0000

Contracts are one of the most important things in any designer or developer’s repitoire, yet it is one of the least talked about items. Thankfully, David Airey has taken some time and gathered a few resources about contracts that we can all delight in. You should also subscribe to his blog as he comes out with some amazing posts and will be expounding on contracts in an upcoming post.

David Airey: Using freelance graphic design contracts

Making time for talent

Justin — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 17:45:34 +0000

Much like we aren’t born with knowledge of programming and design, aptitude, or talent, isn’t born-in either. Until recently, I didn’t quite grok this. Thanks to a fantastic book (Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain) suggested to me by Bob Wertz, the realization that talent isn’t innate, but rather developed was a pretty fantastic and inspirational one. Always wanted to learn to draw or learn to program? Head over to d’bug for your daily dose of inspiration.

d’bug: You have the talent. You just don’t have the time.

Industry Survey

Justin — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 13:23:01 +0000

The annual A List Apart Survey is out again. They ask questions related to working conditions, compensation, benefits and competency in order to show trends in the web industry. The survey is slanted slightly towards designers but there is still a benefit for those of us in development. Head over to their website to help gather metrics on our work! There are 44 questions on the test which took me about 5 minutes to complete.

A List Apart: The Survey 2008

Web design, blogs and statistics

Justin — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 18:34:14 +0000

This is a great rundown of statistics on design decisions for the top 50 blogs. It takes into account typography & layout and provides statistics such as placement of the content rail, number of characters displayed per line, and lots of other fine-grained detail.

While the data involved may be a bit too fine-grained, it is quite interesting with regards to best practices. It basically boils down to a simple “Do what’s right for your content”.

Smashing Magazine: A Small Design Study of Big Blogs

Firebug for IE

Justin — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 15:34:13 +0000

Firebug Lite 1.2 was released today at OSCON. Those in the web design world no doubt are familiar with the Firefox extension that allows you to manipulate javascript, html, css, and the like from a debugging console. The newest version of Lite 1.2 offers enhanced functionality to non-Firefox browsers. For those suffering through debugging IE 6 and it’s ilk, chalk this up to one of those necessary tools.

Firebug: Web development evolved

Testing Paragraph Density

Justin — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 18:52:42 +0000

TypeTester is a very nifty website that allows you to test what different fonts look like in your browser. Beyond that, though, it allows you to compare the affect of different css effects on your paragraph density. Do I like impact 1.3em with 3px tracking? How does it look with 1px tracking, but .25em wordspacing? This site allows you to find out as quickly as you can manipulate some dropdowns.

TypeTester: Compare fonts for the screen [via Design Reviver]

Designers: The Client’s Guide

Justin — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 00:30:49 +0000

I came across this nifty article via Jeff Croft‘s link blog. It overviews some of the things a client can do to make being a designer an enjoyable experience. Most of it is common sense for the designer types.. Trust us, focus on the design from the customer’s perspective, etc. The best part of the article, however, is a nicely typeset PDF that can go in the project folder you give your clients.

Daniel Will-Harris: How to (and not to) work with a designer

The Employable Web Designer

Justin — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 13:27:18 +0000

This was an excellent article by Andy Rutledge about the skills necessary to be employable as a designer. I think the biggest thing in here is a focus on designing interaction between people and a product rather than focusing on a tool. Just because I can use a hammer doesn’t mean I can build a house, and I think this article illustrates that point well.

Andy Rutledge: The Employable Web Designer