Category Archives: Web Design

Veer Have All the Good Stock Photos Gone?

VeerOver the past few years, I’ve seen lots of stock agencies try to take a decidedly editorial approach to the creative strategy of their catalogs, mostly in an attempt to ingratiate their beautifully produced compendiums of pictures-looking-for-a-purpose into designers’s hearts. Nonstock and Photonica, notably, have produced some lavishly and slavishly designed tomes, but beyond the novelty of their approach, I always found them somewhat hollow; the design trickery that laid out their pages never seemed to be able to mask the emptiness of most of the photography they showcased, or if it did, any true creativity was spread too thin over too many pages. These books were generally as thick and heavy as a textbook, and the guilt of tree-killing, more than the books’ inherent usefulness, was probably what kept so many of them from getting pitched the minute they arrived.

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Tickets to Nowhere

Here’s a quick complaint about online ticket purchasing for highly popular events: it has a long way to go. Unable (and, by principle, unwilling) to camp out all night for post-season Yankees tickets, I decided to try and make an online purchase yesterday when tickets to the division and league championship series went on sale right at 12:30p sharp. I set an alarm on my computer to remind me to log in at the appointed time, and I was pleased to be able to secure a spot in the virtual queue right away — especially knowing that probably tens of thousands of other fans were trying to do the same thing either online, at Ticketmaster outlets, or at the stadium.

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The Paperless Home Office

PDF IconThere’s a case to be made for the inherent clumsiness of the the Portable Document Format — better known as PDF, and most often associated with Adobe’s Acrobat software — but I really like it. At least in the interim, while the principal delivery medium for most documents is still paper, PDFs make a great replacement for stacks of letter-sized, stapled or paper-clipped documentation. Last night, while trying to figure out how to get my VCR to tape a show saved on my DVR, I suddenly realized that I could replace most all of the paper user manuals that ship with the consumer electronics devices I own with simple PDFs.

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That Lovin’ Feelin’

In spite of the beautiful weather, I spent a lot of this weekend indoors, seated in front of my computer. Since we moved into this new apartment, it was the first full weekend that I’ve had complete use of my workspace, thanks to the wireless networking that I did a week ago. I’ve been working on a new project, a Web site for a new client, that’s driven entirely by a series of Movable Type weblogs.

A good chunk of my Saturday was spent sketching out the site with a paper and pen, trying to get my head around a clear method for interweaving at least three and possibly as many as six separate weblogs into a single, seamless site. The hardest part was figuring out a clear, concise method of visually representing the relationships between each; it was a fun challenge, and I think I was able to bite off a good chunk of it pretty successfully by the time I called it quits earlier today. Inside of thirty-six hours, I had a reasonably robust prototype up and running, and many of the major conceptual and technical challenges had been sorted out.

It made me think that I miss this part of Web design, the part that’s intensely personal, where a single person can take an idea from paper to Web in just a matter of days. This immediacy was the quality that originally drew me away from print design and to the Web, when I found that my ideas could be rendered online without interference or obstacles. It’s nice to be intermittently reminded of this original seduction; each time it happens, I rediscover at least a little, well-preserved part of my tarnished passion for this business.

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Labor Day Weekend, Citysearch-Style

New York empties out for Labor Day weekend, when everybody who’s anybody heads out of town in order to avoid the ridicule of New York Magazine. Over the five years I’ve been here, I’ve actually learned that these are some of the nicest times to be here in the city (this partly explains why my girlfriend and I went away last weekend). Every year at this time, a general calm falls over Manhattan as there are fewer pushy assholes roaming the streets, less competition for the nine o’clock show at the movie theater, and thinner shopping crowds to take advantage of the temporary amnesty from taxes on clothing sales.

It’s also easier to reserve tables at the restaurants that stay open through the holiday, though finding a good restaurant through Citysearch remains as frustrating as ever.

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The Page I Made… Except for the Tabs

Amazon.com It’s almost a sure thing that I will never buy anything from Amazon.com’s ‘Apparel & Accessories,’ ‘Magazine Subscriptions,’ ‘Home & Garden,’ or even ‘Camera & Photo’ stores, and yet, in random order, they show up repeatedly in the navigation each time I return to the site. It’s a wonder to me that Amazon, perhaps the most highly personalized experience on the Web (as in architecturally responsive to user profiles), doesn’t allow me to configure the tabs that appear at the top of my screen.

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We Did Can Do

Can Do FitnessAnother casualty of my time away last week was the timely announcement of the latest site launch from Behavior: the official Web site for Can Do Fitness, a chain of high-end health clubs in New Jersey. We built the site entirely in Flash, and it’s driven by a custom content publishing tool on the back-end to make class schedules available online. You can also explore interactive floorplans, newsletters, trainer biographies, ‘smart’ directions and more… it kinda makes me wanna get up from in front of my computer.

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Blogger’s Toolbox

Six.5.05For the sake of posterity, a few technical notes on how I built Six.5. First and most predictably of all, I’m proud to say that this whole endeavor has been a Mac OS X production (aside from browser compatibility testing on Windows of course). If you’ve read any number of posts here, you already know a few things that I’m head over heels about, and Mac OS X is one of them. This operating system has been a total pleasure to use, and completing a sizable personal project like this entirely with native X applications has me more excited than ever about the platform.

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A Hundred Words or Less, or More

Six.5.04When I was posting to this site with Blogger, and when the blog portion of the site was about 250 pixels wide, my posts were much shorter. Now they’re longer, sometimes much longer — this isn’t necessarily a good thing, but it illustrates the by-now-old saw that the medium is the message. In contrast to Blogger, Movable Type practically begs for more words for each post.

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Immovable Parts of Movable Type

Six.5.03Movable Type is probably among the top five best pieces of software I’ve ever used, whether online or on my desktop, but it has its shortcomings. But before I get into them, let me reiterate my continuing awe at its flexible, ingenious feature set, all of which is available for the princely sum of free. Ben and Mena Trott’s generosity is truly a marvel, and they’ve engendered a wonderful, vibrant community of users.

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