04/2009 Article Archive

  • April 29, 2009 in Mirificam Press News

    Introducing the First Mirificam Press Interview Series

    As most of my long time readers know, I talk a lot about how worldview affects design philosophy. I've enjoyed the privilege of writing and discussing design in a deep vein, deeper than most designers ever stop to consider. I owe a great deal to the designers—both Christian and non-Christian—who have commented, emailed, friended, and followed me over the last year and a half. So I thought it would be appropriate to run a new series on Mirificam Press featuring designers and their philosophies—philosophies of life and philosophies of design.

  • April 24, 2009 in Friday Blog Clips

    5 for Friday | The Week's Best Blogs (4/24/09 Edition)

    I posted an article this week about what I believe and why. And even though it's one of the shortest articles I've written in awhile, it took quite a bit of searching and thinking. I'm glad that I'm constantly being challenged by readers and friends to examine my thoughts and motivations. So I'd like to preface this week's 5 for Friday by thanking all of you who have read and participated here on Mirificam Press during its first year of existence. Now, here's the links.

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    • 1348 Views
  • April 22, 2009 in Web Design Worldview

    Getting to the Particulars: What This Christian Designer Believes and Why

    "Tell me in detail what you believe and why." This is the request I received from an old high school friend a few weeks ago on Facebook and I have to admit it locked me up. After looking over my profile, this friend expressed surprise that I was attending a liturgical church. We went back and forth a little and finally she asked me if I would please explain in detail what I believe and why. "Oh, that's easy." I thought, and I started typing out my response. After all, I write a blog about worldview. Every week I go to great lengths researching topics, searching for truth, examining historical Christian positions on a myriad of topics. This will be a breeze. But instead of the free-flowing response I expected, I found myself in an intellectual stutter. I typed and retyped the first sentence several times and eventually found myself at a total standstill. Finally I responded, "Let me think about it and I'll get back with you."

  • April 17, 2009 in Friday Blog Clips

    5 for Friday | The Week's Best Blogs (4/17/09 Edition)

    In case you haven't been to the Mirificam Press home page in awhile, I'd like to announce that I have finally given in to the Twitter mania and set up a Mirificam Press account. If you'd like to follow, my name is @mirificam. You'll get some personal stuff but I try to keep it updated with links and other design related tweets as well. Now turning to the task at hand, I found Aisle One's "8 Simples Ways to Improve Typography" to be one of the best overviews of the basic typographic rules, I've ever seen. Here's this week's 5 for Friday.

    • 5 Comments
    • 1279 Views
  • April 15, 2009 in Web Design Worldview

    Grunge Design: Why It's Cool to be Broken and Disheveled

    In a recent 5 for Friday post I received a question from Hungarian designer Steve Herrmann: "Why is the visual appearance of NetGen broken and disheveled? Look at their page layout, their typography, images, clothing, mismatched styles, hairstyles,...Why?" In the past I've analyzed the worldview behind various design movements, but I've tried to stick to the ones that were very apparently berthed from a particular philosophy. It is easy, for example, to look at the fathers of the De Sijl movement and quickly deduce the connection between their philosophy and its practical outworking. But dissecting modern design trends is much more complicated. An oil-and-water-like mixture of postmodernism and pragmatism has made a tangled mess of the philosophical waters. In order to accomplish the task, we'll have to take look back at one of the cognates of postmodernism, twentieth century existentialism. But first I'm going to clear up some common oversimplifications Christians are often guilty of concerning grunge styles.

  • April 10, 2009 in Friday Blog Clips

    5 for Friday | The Week's Best Blogs (4/10/09 Edition)

    The big news this week is that the W3C has released a beta version of a much needed and long anticipated website redesign. I've included a link to the new design as one of my 5 for Friday links. Also, I'm working on a series of articles featuring interviews with influential web designers concerning design philosophy and worldview. I'm excited about getting the interviews up on the site but, in reality, it will be at least a few more weeks before they are ready. Here's this week's 5 for Friday.

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    • 1496 Views
  • April 8, 2009 in Design Tips & Tutorials

    Creating CSS Flair Elements for Clarity and Style

    We spend a good chunk of time in each new project developing layout mockups and converting them to solid web templates (or at least I do), and rightly so. We want our templates to look sharp and function well. But there's a temptation, once the sharp-looking template is set up, to get sloppy and bland with the content. It's easy to fall into this trap because the template can usually provide enough flare to get us by. That won't cut it on sites that are content intensive or require high design. But by making a habit of "pre-styling" a short list of HTML elements, you can make sure that the content on all your sites is easy to read and looks professional. In this article we'll take a look at these elements along with some effective styles that will add flare and clarity to your content.

  • April 3, 2009 in Friday Blog Clips

    5 for Friday | The Week's Best Blogs (4/3/09 Edition)

    SXSWi 2009 is now fading into history as I posted my last panel review this week. I'm excited about the things going on in the web design industry and I'm optimistic about our future (all economic downturns aside). It looks like the demand for good design will weather the storm and come out stronger on the other side. Now, I'll leave you with this week's 5 for Friday.

    • 6 Comments
    • 1282 Views
  • April 1, 2009 in Web Design Culture

    SXSWi 2009: Virtual Goods - Making it Work for Your Community

    The recent explosion of the virtual goods market has changed the way the world thinks about economic value and has pushed our culture one step closer to a sci-fi existence unimaginable to previous generations. At first, virtual goods seemed like a mere sub-feature in a social internet sphere that has existed in some form since the computer network was first conceived. But as virtual goods grew into a multi-billion dollar industry in just a few years, it was clear that their real significance had been underestimated. This SXSWi panel featuring Susan Wu (pictured right) as moderator took a look at the current state of the virtual goods market and discussed strategies for implementing virtual goods in various types of social networks. I'm going to give a brief overview of the three social networks represented on the panel and then take a few paragraphs to analyze the virtual gifts phenomenon from a Christian worldview.