jcksn

Amazing video and song sampled entirely from Disney sounds.

[via Luke]

We’re a little late to the party, but we were nominated for some logos we designed for Ecoscraps and Planetsave (with the help of Alisa Schadt).

How do you get those fancy hearts, or other unicode characters, without going to the character palette?

Add the Unicode Hex Input via the International System Preference pane and then hold down shift-alt and type in your unicode character code. shift-alt-2665 is the solid black heart.

• I met Jacob at a bar with my friend Ryan.
• I went to Kiki De Montparnasse while in NYC this past month, with my friend Leigh. (perhaps both links) NSFW (depending on where you work)
• Joseph Querio has some amazing artwork, that I picked up at my local comic shop Detroit Comics
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• Randomly found: MIND CONTROL TECHNIQUES AND TACTICS OF THE New World Order
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• Web 2.0 fails to produce cash. Can I say “I told you so?” [via Hugh]
• Wordpress is 5. I can’t believe it. I recall having a conversation with Matt when he was working on extending b2 to Wordpress… I so wish I saved that chat transcript. What young geeks we were.

Seriously, awesome.

Originally uploaded by ext212

NASA has some nifty navigation taking place on their homepage. Something similar to what my friend Basil crow coded for Brown University

Buy less, do more. That is the mantra for the rest of my days.

Somewhere in between NYC and Detroit I lost my sanity. Scratch that, somewhere between 23rd between 3rd and 2nd. It was a great thing to loose. It gave me the chance to rebuild.

Less isn’t just more in what we create, less is more in the life we live.

I get to marry her, in 44 days approximately. :)

This has been what my entire year was like:

Being a designer today means you probably work with the Web in some way. I’ve always used the Web as my design medium (usually), but many designers don’t (some, not at all).

Many people have a great affinity towards their profession and even more towards their particular area of expertise within. I’m an “interaction designer,” you’ll hear, or “I’m a graphic designer.” It’s good to define yourself, but bad to box yourself in. The hard part, is doing the former without the latter.

Is it bad to be a “print designer” and not know HTML? Yes. My Mom even knows HTML. No really, she does! Being a “designer” means you are a creator. You know how to use a paintbrush, right? Then figure out what HTML is. Fightin’ words? Perhaps. But, shoot, HTML has been around since ‘89!

On the other hand, is it bad to be a “Web designer” and not know about CMYK? Yes. Web designers should know more about color spaces than any print designer, yet most are baffled at the thought.

But, what about development? Should Web designers know about code (PHP, Python, Ruby, Perl, etc.)? Yes! (You knew that was the answer.) Some may remark, “that’s what developers do.” Well, developers do know how to code, but they are also master designers. The MVC “design” is just one example of elegant design. “Code is poetry,” as Matt puts it.

Is it bad to be a “Web designer” and not know how to code? Yes. This is your world, you aren’t just producing HTML and CSS, it all eventually touches some procedural language.

Learn about everything that goes on with what you create. You should know what developers are doing, and they should know what you are doing – even just a little.

Learning about programming can open a whole new world of ideas and opportunities, especially for designers. Joshua Davis is just one of the coolest and most integrated designer/developer/artists out there. And, he does it all without a single thought to “what” he is. He makes things, period. He learns about whatever he needs to, to create integrity in his work.

We’ve gotten so much press about it, so I hate to point to it as an example. But, without programming, we wouldn’t have created Monotone. As a Web designer today, it’s not just a choice to learn to code, it’s a responsibility.

Your integrity reflects in everything you do. Without accountability, your integrity is null. Some people aren’t programmers, but if you can write HTML, I’m sure you can write a little old program.

Overlap your expertise. Code, write, draw, create.

Richard Buckminster “Bucky” Fuller (July 12, 1895 – July 1, 1983) was an American architect, author, designer, futurist, inventor, and visionary. He was the second president of Mensa. He lends his name to a family of complex Carbon structures called Buckminsterfullerene also known as Bucky Balls.

[via Wikipedia]

The wikipedia article goes on to explain Bucky in great detail.

One of my favorite tidbits, is this: Ephemeralization is a term coined by R. Buckminster Fuller. It refers to the ability of people to use technological advances to continuously do more with less.

It sums up the ultimate goal: do more, with less. (Design, Money, Words, etc.)

Even just a $1 is helpful. Donate through Amazon.com for the Myanamar tragedy.

Firefox 3 Release Candidate 1 was just released. I’m still hoping Firebug for Safari will someday be built (though I think that’s just a pipe-dream). The Web Inspector in Safari just isn’t cutting it these days.

Dean Allen, as he has always been, is my hero:

…and third, that by any means necessary, web-strategy, social-media, online-marketing webcocks – unaware as they are of how toxic their presence is in the arenas they cannot shut up about – must and shall be filtered out of view.

– Dean Allen

I almost fell off my chair, again, after reading that.

Do you really need a “social media strategy?” Think about its meaning. What does it mean? We hear it a lot, but I think the phrase has come diluted and is now sprinkled about without much real heart behind it.

Is “social media strategy,” just an analog phrase for, “setting up a facebook page and a myspace profile?” Because, in the end, that’s usually what ends up happening.

I think there is a great disconnect between what “social media” actually means and how people are using the term: as an umbrella word for “Web 2.0″ (another analog for “sites built before after 2005 that utilize javascript and other underutilized development techniques“) community products.

What media isn’t social? Print, even, is a social medium. You print to spread words and ideas in hopes of creating interaction. So, why all this hype about “social media.”

eight6 makes things. Most of the time, we make web things. And, when it’s smart, we use communities and other marketing methods to help customers get their message out.

Not ever do we tell our customers they need a “social media strategy.” Because, the entire point of the web, is to communicate. Being social is inherent with the medium. We want to instill smart communication, not mindless socializing. Don’t get me wrong, we like to have fun, but we think there might be a better use of time than “biting chimps” on Facebook. We’re guessing most of our clients’ customers feel the same way.

The web has always been social. Collectively people are finally starting to realize that. The ease of communicating with other people online has increased since the start of the web, absolutely… but underneath it all, the web hasn’t changed much.

Being social is inherent to being on the web. Do smart things that help you build your brand and focus on your business. Don’t let someone tell you that you need an x account or a y profile just to be viable on the web. In fact, your business might be better not jumping on the bandwagon. At the very least, tread (extremely)carefully into the realm of “Web 2.0.”

Bucminster fuller was a man of great integrity and ideas, most notably for creating the first geodesic home – he was a visionary, far far ahead of his time. Currently I’m reading a few of his books (all simultaneously). In searching, curiously for houses, I came upon this:

We created Monotone with Automattic, the company behind Wordpress.com. The challenge: create a theme that changed photo-blogging up a bit and brought back some of the nostalgia from the early photo-blogging days.

The end result is Monotone, a simple but dynamic theme for wordpress. It makes each photoblog, and furthermore, each entry, unique by taking the attached image and sampling colors from the layout to create a one of a kind color palette for the page.

We really loved being able to work with such a smart group of individuals and continue to work with Automattic on some other top-secret projects.

We’ve been just enamored by the response this theme has gotten with responses like the following:

I really am enjoying my photos all over again, and looking at the world with fresh bright eyes, thanks to you!

Much obliged,
Carrie Cahill Mulligan

Monotone is great. Thank you. My photos have finally found a theme that does them justice (in my opinion).

– Khürt

Beautiful photo and theme. Great work.

– juiced

Really nice! Makes me want to start a photo-blog. I was searching for new incentives to take my camera for walks, and here it is. World, watch out, the shutter bug is coming back, hehe…

– Simone

Sleevage is my favorite new (to me anyways) site – ridiculously detailed observation and slick choice of album art.

However, one of my favorite album covers is not featured there. M83 (long time fan here) released Saturdays = Youth, which is one of their more mainstream accessible albums, not too long ago. And despite being an amazing album, sonically, the album cover just screams 80’s love.

I’m going to try and post more album covers – the inspiration I get from music, and the art that accompanies it, is immense.

• Brian Cox: What really goes on at the Large Hadron Collider

• Bruce Schneier, a famous cryptologist — or at least as famous a cryptologist as cryptologists are likely to get in this century — once described attempts to make digital bits uncopyable as “trying to make water not wet.”

• dripbook is an interesting portfolio app/site.
• The biggest jerks, Wikipedia style.
• Khoi Vihn using keynote as a utility layout tool.

• 

  This is the first glimpse at my newest creation.

He who is tired of Weird Al is tired of life.

- Homer Simpson