02/2009 Article Archive

  • February 27, 2009 in Friday Blog Clips

    5 for Friday | The Week's Best Blogs (2/27/09 Edition)

    Logic+Emotion probed an interesting corporate trend this week: Businesses (large and small) seem to be warming up to the idea that sometimes they're wrong. Logic+Emotion's article relates the story of Tropicana's recent back-peddling from their new juice carton design after customers complained. We saw a similar situation with the Facebook user agreement. And, hey, my local Albertson's grocery store removed its self-checkout system after receiving complaints from its patrons. Is this genuine humility? With an increasingly marketing savvy population the old modernist techniques of treating the consumer like an evolutionary byproduct may be going by the wayside. Let's just hope this new humility is sincere and not an indication of the dawning of the age of postmodern power plays. Enough of that, here's this week's 5 for Friday:

    • 3 Comments
    • 1603 Views
  • February 25, 2009 in Web Design Worldview

    Design with Humility / Design with Conviction

    The Christian life is one of great paradox. We glory in the image of God stamped on our souls and yet weep at the thought of our sinful brokenness. We cling to life as God's most precious gift but are prepared to cast it away without hesitation. At once we laugh at the utter subjectiveness of the relativist and yet count our personal relationship with Christ our most prized possession. This is a unique characteristic of Christianity and, if we are honest, it is the very essence of existence. There is one such paradox that is key to the design vocation: the paradox of humility and conviction.

  • February 20, 2009 in Friday Blog Clips

    5 for Friday | The Week's Best Blogs (2/20/09 Edition)

    This week I posted the longest of four articles in my intro to web design series. I have to admit this endeavor has proven to be much more involved than it seemed in theory. Sometimes the skills we develop slowly over the years seem so simple at a glance. It's not until you attempt to explain them in detail that you realize how far you've come. I hope the series has been helpful to everyone. I plan on posting the final article the week after next. Now, here's this week's 5 for Friday:

    • 1 Comments
    • 1540 Views
  • February 18, 2009 in Design Tips & Tutorials

    Intro to Web Design (Part 3): Styling the Web with CSS

    We talked about the content layer in the last article of this series. If don't know anything about HTML, and especially if you already know HTML, I recommend going back and reading it. This article is about style. The style layer of a web page is what makes it enjoyable for humans. Search engines and other robots are perfectly happy with just the content layer, but for the web to be human it has to have style.

    • 12 Comments
    • 6363 Views
  • February 13, 2009 in Friday Blog Clips

    5 for Friday | The Week's Best Blogs (2/13/09 Edition)

    It's been another great week in the world of web design. The article I posted this week, Modern Trends: The Truth is in the Comments, was a little more sobering than my usual content but I think it was appropriate. If you haven't had a chance, at least skim through some of the comment quotes in the article. Hopefully you will be incensed. On a lighter note, I really enjoyed the jCrop screencast on NetTuts this week. You should definitely check it out. Here are this week's 5 for Friday:

    • 3 Comments
    • 1553 Views
  • February 11, 2009 in Web Design Worldview

    Modern Trends: The Truth is in the Comments

    The recent explosion of social features on the internet has given us access to a representative slice of culture we've never been able to see before. I've seen this most intimately in the form of blog comments on Mirificam Press, and I think I've come to understand the state of Christian designers better through these interactions. Recently, I stumbled upon a Solon blog called World O' Crap that reminded me of all the comment adventures I've had in the past year or so. The blog post was about an organization called the Nehemiah Institute. And, being a solon blog, World O' Crap was ruthlessly critical of the organization and its Christian worldview test. The article was poorly written and littered with typos but it at least stopped short of calling for the systematic extermination of all Christians (how tolerant). The commenters were not so tolerant. Here's what one of the authors of Blondsense had to say in the comment section:

  • February 6, 2009 in Friday Blog Clips

    5 for Friday | The Week's Best Blogs (2/6/09 Edition)

    Well, this is more like 5 for Saturday but... There were so many lists in the blogosphere this week I decided to make it a theme. This week's 5 for Friday is entirely dedicated to the ubiquitous list post. I think you'll especially enjoy the web typography tools list from Smashing Magazine. The shear number of tools and tutorials is a little overwhelming but the information is really good. I find more and more that typography is the aspect of web design I struggle with. Here are this weeks 5 for Friday:

    • 3 Comments
    • 1258 Views
  • February 4, 2009 in Design Tips & Tutorials

    Intro to Web Design (Part 2): Building a Content Layer with HTML

    In the first part of this series I gave an overview of the foundational concepts of web design. Most of the article was spent explaining the separation of content from style that is so unique to the web. In this second article I'll be giving a brief tour of the content layer: what it is, how it's created, how it should be structured, etc. This is not a detailed HTML reference guide but I would highly recommend reading it before you go off reading a tedious reference manual.

    • 16 Comments
    • 13399 Views