tipping my blue beanie

tipping my blue beanie
Originally uploaded by +kdis

BlueBeanieDay 2k9

{ I only had a black beanie, so I improvised. }

Monday, November 30th, 2009 marks the third annual International Blue Beanie Day in Support of Web Standards. Show your support to help make the internets a better place.

_ 30 Nov 2k9

Primal website is live!

I posted a new web design project on my portfolio site. We just launched the site this week. You can check it out here.

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National Community Church's lead pastor Mark Batterson recently published his third book Primal + asked Bittersweet Creative Group to design + develop a microsite to go with it. I designed a layout which, upon site reveal, would immediately evoke an earthy, dark + mysterious mood, but juxtaposed the luminous warm tones + textures from the cover design to help bring light to the composition.
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_ 17 Nov 2k9

THANK GOODNESS FOR HELVETIREADER !!

*yay*

Now my eyes don't hurt when I look at my Google Reader window.

No offense, Google, but somebody had to come up with a skin for your feed reader. Look at it this way: At least you won my heart with Gmail themes. :)





» Get your own Helvetireader. Now.

Why the big type, ol' chap?

It's not just for the focally-challenged anymore...

If you haven't yet noticed, trends regarding type size on the web have been reversing in the last few years. We used to think bigger type looks juvenile + that smaller displayed better—for example, setting body copy to Arial 11px, or even using tiny bitmap/pixel fonts in Flash-based sites—especially because our browsers didn't allow for much back in the day of tiny 640 x 480 screen resolutions. Not to mention, using smaller text to be able to establish hierarchy between headings, sub-headings, body copy, + disclaimer notes on top of keeping important content "above the fold". Project after project we've tried to push smaller, "cleaner", pleasing-to-the-grid type to our clients + yet have always been requested to go bigger for legibility's sake.

"Can we see it bigger than Verdana 11px?"

If designed properly, using 14-16px type for main content doesn't seem to look so "clown-sized" these days. The NYTimes.com has been using this on their articles for awhile now. It's a trend that seems to be more the norm to help improve online readability, to cause less strain to the eye, + to help some of us avoid from having to use the key command shortcut 'COMMAND/CTRL +' times three to zoom into our browser content. It helps that the commonly used screen resolution is leaning more towards at least 950px of usable width to accommodate a type size closer to our browser's default type size, which is set to 16px.

Check out the case study by Oliver Reichenstein mentioned within the blog article link below. The visual comparison really puts it into better perspective. Also, read the comments following the article for other points of view. Something worth thinking about when considering layout options for a new website project.

Really, the moral of the story is: Use big type for good, not evil.


Relative Readability
Why go so big on type? There's a short answer and a long answer...

Video now on Flickr mobile?

For all you iPhone [or Android, or iPod Touch] owners out there who haven't been able to view Flickr videos on their advanced mobile browsers, well, now you can.

Last week, Flickr released several upgrades to their mobile site m.flickr.com, + most notable of updates is being able to watch Flickr videos on your mobile phone.  There is a catch though... They stated on their December 4, 2008 blog that this feature would only apply to videos uploaded from that day forward.

One thing I'm confused about... Flickr videos are generated using Flash software, which feature is apparently not supported on the iPhone as far as I know. [Please, correct me if I am wrong]. According to this Wired article, Apple will not allow Adobe Flash software to run on the iPhone simply because Apple's Terms of Service agreement prohibits it. The clause that states it in the agreement is as such:

An Application may not itself install or launch other executable code by any means, including without limitation through the use of a plug-in architecture, calling other frameworks, other APIs or otherwise,

reads clause 3.3.2 of the iPhone SDK agreement, which was recently published on WikiLeaks.

No interpreted code may be downloaded and used in an Application except for code that is interpreted and run by Apple's Published APIs and built-in interpreter(s).

Now with that said, how is it that Flickr is able to have their users view their Flash-enabled videos on their iPhones?  If you are reading this + have an iPhone, please try to view this random guy's flickr video + see if it plays on your iPhone. Since he uploaded his video on December 7, 2008 the new mobile site upgrade should apply.