Web Design Best Practices Rap
May 22, 2008
I found this via The Rissington Podcast.
Licensing music for podcast intros
May 19, 2008
Brian Christiansen wrote about the music he uses for the UIE podcasts. Brian mentioned that he has licensed the music through ASCAP. I checked their Web site and there is information about getting a license to use music for podcast intros, etc. The minimum license fee is $288 annually and then the balance is determined by revenue generated by the site and other factors.
Important Skills for a Designer
May 2, 2008
Yesterday I read an article by John Dilsworth on NorthTemple. The article came about as John considered the question, “what is the one skill that can make the most positive impact in your profession?” John breaks down the work that designers are called to do into 3 categories
- understanding
- identifying
- crafting
He goes on to talk about the work that must be done under those categories and then lists some skills a designer must have and sharpen to be successful in that work. He also lists some specific skills that a Web site designer or interaction designer must have. It is a good list to check and determine where growth needs to occur.
Thanks to Cameron Moll’s Premium linkage for bringing this article to my attention.
Design is in the Details
May 2, 2008
Here are some memorable points from Dan Rubin and Bryan Veloso’s talk, Design is in the Details from Webmaster Jam 2007, get MP3 of talk from RSS feed. I listened to this talk over my Christmas vacation. I listened to it again this morning. I had immediately applied several of the things they talked about to my personal site and have integrated into my design process.
- Let your layout breathe – CNN.com is a great example
- Consistency of spacing or use multiple scale
- Use range kerning in headlines (with larger font size)
- No hanging widows – Shaun Inman’s Widot plugin (no longer available)
- Alignment – aligning elements can make a huge difference
- Black is not black and white is not white – consider using #333 or #CCC instead of default black and white
- Flat is boring – create some depth
- Adding a pixel to add interest – as one border (they used example of Mint’s dashboard)
- Know when to quit