January 2012
2 posts
Gridiron League →
Wes Kull:
This is not an exercise in nostalgia but an interpretation of the league’s founding principles through the symbols that we, as football fans, identify with most.
Many NFL franchises — Patriots, Broncos, Rams, Lions — have updated their uniforms and logos to a swooshed-out, dropped-shadowed, and more commercial-ready image, ignoring a good deal of their team’s...
Of Mice and Markets →
Zeldman:
In the short run it’s going to be hell, just as the browser wars and their lack of support for common standards were hell. But it is the short run….
When I see fragmentation, I remind myself that it is unsustainable by its very nature, and that standards always emerge, whether through community action, market struggle, or some combination of the two. This is a frustrating...
December 2011
2 posts
3 tags
Lighting Techniques for Video Interviews →
This is an excellent tutorial that answered a lot of questions for me regarding how to light an interview properly, as that’s something I’m still experimenting with.
Hero →
This is a really fantastic, well-shot piece. And the resulting portrait definitely wasn’t what I was anticipating.
Update: The process of creating art with small dots is called stippling. Had no idea. (Thanks @signalnoise.)
/via @jontangerine
November 2011
1 post
2 tags
Letterpress Tuesday →
A brief hiatus from hiatus-ing to announce Letterpress Tuesday, a one-day holiday sale exclusively for letterpress goods made by yours truly and a few other vendors.
As for my stuff, this is final promotional sale of 2011, so if you’d hoping to receive or gift one of my posters at a discount this Christmas, today is the day to pick one up.
Happy holidays, all.
October 2011
1 post
Hiatus
It’s clear by now dust is gathering at this domain. I’ve been okay with that, and will continue to be okay with it, but only a little longer. I’ve been swamped with obligations on my current projects and have traveled much more than usual. I’ll visit NYC for the third time in a month starting next week, for example.
More importantly, I’ve realized I need to realign...
September 2011
18 posts
Build Icon Set, vol. I →
This is just neat. Adrian Pelletier, recently married and not in a position to donate as much as he’d like to our charity: water campaign, contacted me to offer his Build icon set as a free download for those who donate. It’s what we call an in-kind donation, and it’s very kind of him.
So, first donate to charity: water if you haven’t already, and then download the...
2 tags
Twelve Days
I’m blessed to have remarkable parents who created opportunities for unforgettable experiences during my childhood. This is one of those experiences.
Leading up to Christmas one year, my parents gathered the family together and announced that we would be helping another family in need. This wasn’t foreign to us, as we had not only done the same before, but we had also been the...
6 tags
HTML5 Whiteboard Magnets
Last Friday I posted a photo of these magnetic HTML5 elements from part of our homeschool curriculum, and several of you expressed interest in knowing how I made them.
It’s pretty simple: magnetic sheets that are compatible with any inkjet printer. I’ve used Avery magnet sheets satisfactorily for similar projects. For this project, however, I used Office Depot magnet sheets. They...
Food Allergy Walk for Jonas Gruber →
John Gruber and I have known each other for years, first teaming up on a project for Joyent way back when, and communicating regularly since then.
We share something in common: a son who has a serious medical condition. Jonas has a life-threatening dairy allergy, as described by his mother:
Jonas had a food challenge, where an allergic child is given measured doses of his allergen in a...
You’ve Already Seen This →
Unless your entire social circle was under a rock yesterday, you’ve already seen Facebook Timeline. But what’s most interesting to me is seeing the influence of two notable designers, Tom Watson and Nicholas Felton, craft and shape this refined concept.
Many designers likely had a hand in this, I recognize that. But consider Tom Watson’s Level & Tap, a site with a focus on...
Hiring: Head of Web Development at CIMMYT →
I find this position intriguing for two reasons: 1) it’s the first position in Mexico ever posted to Authentic Jobs if I’m not mistaken, and 2) it’s for a non-profit group that helps improve the varieties of wheat and maize, thereby improving the livelihood of farmers (more about that on Wikipedia). It’s sort of like charity: water, but for crops.
Also intriguing: full...
My Late Grandfather Was a Pinch-Hitter, Too
Recently I pulled this form letter out of storage. It’s one of my favorite mementos of Grandpa Moll. An independent contractor later in life, he probably sent this to companies in the surrounding area, most likely larger cities such as Reno, Nevada, as his quaint home town of Markleeville, California had only about 150 residents at the time.
Back when I did client work as a freelancer,...
Music From a Dry Cleaner →
Diego Stocco:
Almost everyday, on my way to a local bakery, I walk in front of a dry cleaners. When they have the front door open, I hear a lot of interesting sounds coming from their work equipment. Eventually, the different mechanical and steam sounds sparked something in my mind, so one day I asked the owners if I could record a piece of music by using their machines as musical...
Letterpress Poster Sale Later This Week →
Keep an eye on the aforetolinked page or @cameronmoll for discounted pricing to be announced later this week. And for an extra 5% off on top of that, sign up to be notified:
I promise to sell your email address only to the finest of spammers.
Totally kidding.
Target.com Redesign →
Wow, how’d I miss this news about this? I’m pretty sure someone made an argument like this at some point in the design process — and won:
Look, everybody uses the search bar or those big fat categories strung across the top anyway. So, why not have a little fun with the rest of the page?
Update: For those asking, since it may not have been clear in the sarcasm: I’m...
How To Back Up Your Life Automatically with ifttt →
Nice overview of ifttt, including some useful “recipes”.
A Farewell to CSS3 Gradients →
Alex Walker:
While the idea of programmable gradients is great, using them is seriously messy. Even in perfect-browser-utopia, gradients are consciously limited to rudimentary linear or radial application. You certainly can’t combine them, or make them contour a shape or anything useful like that….
In short, [CSS gradients are] a blunt instrument with cranky syntax and patchy...
6 tags
600,000 for charity: water
We’ve just unveiled this parallaxified mini-site as part of Authentic Jobs’ 6th birthday celebration.
I had the pleasure of collaborating with Michael Botsko on the site. I had my hands on the design, while he wrangled the markup. There are a few imperfect details remaining to be polished, but overall I’m really pleased with the end result.
Lest I focus unduly on the...
Ethan Marcotte: The Boston Globe →
Ethan Marcotte, who was an important member of a team full of important members, describing the anticipation leading up to the responsive overhauling of BostonGlobe.com:
It’s been kind of a weird experience, talking publicly for the better part of this year about a site that hadn’t yet launched. I mean, I was—and still am—incredibly proud of the small contributions I made, of the talented...
9/11 in Review
I’ll keep this brief. I didn’t have a chance to see any of the tributes yesterday (or the news reports for that matter), as I had prior commitments. So, I spent this morning reviewing the day’s events and related material.
Following are some of the highlights from my review.
The Story of Michael Ragusa’s Burial
You’ll have Command+F or Ctrl+F and search...
9/11 Memorial: Name Placement Based on Clever... →
Linda Tischler, Co. Design:
When the National September 11 Memorial opens this fall … friends’ names will be inscribed next to each other on the granite wall surrounding the Memorial Garden’s fountains.
Their adjacency is product of a masterful bit of programming undertaken by the New York media design firm Local Projects, which took 1,800 requests from families of the...
charity: water Birthday Event →
Though I wasn’t able to live blog/tweet as much as I hoped, yesterday’s visit to charity: water’s offices for their birthday celebration was memorable nonetheless. Here’s a recap of the day in moving pictures shot by charity: water.
The New Design →
Naz Hamid:
Let’s say for a moment print design is on its way out — traditional mass magazines and publishing houses will shutter and move toward a screen-based medium. The current crop of designers coming out of school are ill-equipped to design for screens — especially screens that change as fast as they’re released.
August 2011
24 posts
My Neighbor, Steve Jobs →
Lisen Stromberg:
While Newsweek and the Wall Street Journal and CNET continue to drone on about the impact of the Steve Jobs era, I won’t be pondering the MacBook Air I write on or the iPhone I talk on. I will think of the day I saw him at his son’s high school graduation. There Steve stood, tears streaming down his cheeks, his smile wide and proud, as his son received his diploma and walked...
Designers vs Coding →
Frank Chimero, a relatively recent convert to HTML/CSS:
Good design and good markup provide structure to content. Good markup is a fundamental part of good design: beautiful on the inside, beautiful on the outside.
Retiring Jobs’ Number →
Rob Cottingham:
The debate will rage for a long time over what piece of technology best encapsulates Steve Jobs’ influence on our world: The iPhone? iPod? iMac? iPad? OS X and Aqua? But I’m going to argue for something a lot more low-tech: the turtleneck.
That, to me, captures the excitement Jobs both conveyed and sparked in others over his vision. It wasn’t just...
HOW Interview with Yours Truly →
Bryn Mooth interviews me leading up to this November’s HOW Interactive Design Conference in San Francisco.
Speaking of, the early bird registration ends this Thursday, September 1. Save an additional $50 on top of that with discount code CAMERON.
Hope to see you in San Fran.
2 tags
Jason Santa Maria: Five & Ten →
Jason Santa Maria, describing his site’s redesign (which launched on Friday):
I decided to not let the design of my site become a barrier to writing here. The most important thing this site does for me is give me a creative outlet to play and write. Anything that gets in the way of that needs to get the boot.
The result is a responsive, Tumblr-esque digest of things interesting to...
3 tags
Square, the iPhone Credit Card Machine, Goes... →
Alexis Madrigal:
I asked Square to make me a map of their transactions to see where they had users. The map you see shows one hour of transaction volume on a Friday afternoon. The size of the bubble represents the volume of the transactions while the different colors indicate the types of users that Square has….
Just about every major city and plenty of smaller places have...
charity: water September 2011 Campaign →
Today marked the first day of charity: water’s annual September Campaign. They’ve had no problem raising money in the five years since Scott Harrison founded it, but they’re not building wells as quickly as they have the potential to. This year’s focus is to raise enough funds for a rig + materials to increase their drilling capacity. $17,000 on day one and rising.
...
UX Job Title Generator →
Struggling to title your UX job opening? Done. (Noticeably absent from the role orientation list: rockstar.)
“Only Geeks Understand Link Icons” →
Peter Steen Høgenhaug, suggesting we consider using something other than the ubiquitous link icon for inserting hypertext links in an application:
All in all, only 35.29% of the test participants understood the chain icon, and only 25% understood the globe icon. While we didn’t set a minimum for success, clearly, 25% is not good when it comes to usability. When being interviewed one of our...
Spin.js, a Loading Spinner Sans Images →
Uses CSS3 to render the animation, falling back to VML for Internet Explorer (all the way back to IE6). 2.8K of total code and supported by newer versions of most browsers.
/via @jc
Visual Design is Not a Thing →
Mark Boulton:
Talking to and observing your audience is a fundamental part of graphic design research. In fact, it’s the first thing they teach you about communication theory: what are you trying to say, and who are you trying to say it to.
So, you see, graphic design is not Visual Design. And given that the look of something — in my mind at least — can’t be considered holistically...
Drummers are Natural Intellectuals →
Of course they are, silly.
/via @scottboms
Hiring: UI Designer at Big Cartel →
I’ve used Big Cartel’s hosted shopping cart software to sell my letterpress posters going on four years now and, in a word, it’s superb. Made for designers, by designers.
They’re looking for the right kind of person who wants to help artists make a living doing what they love. Work from anywhere in the U.S. (extra credit for being in the Salt Lake City area). You’ll...
Golden Grid System: A ‘Folding’ Grid for... →
Joni Korpi, who developed the system:
16 columns sounds a bit much for anything other than huge widescreen monitors. This is where the folding, inspired by the DIN paper system and Unigrid, comes in. The 16 columns can be combined, or folded, into 8 columns for tablet-sized screens, and into 4 columns for mobile-sized ones. This way Golden Grid System can easily cover any screen sizes from 240...
Nosh 404: Behind the Scenes →
The deftly talented Alex Cornell (director, cameraman, editor, voice talent, designer, musician) describing the production process for the Nosh 404 page:
The script was basically this: cool place, action and stuff, guns, cool sounds. Generally that’s about all I have to go off anyway for my videos, so I figured we were ready to rock and roll.
It’s pretty impressive to read just how...
2 tags
Apple to Reduce Fifth Avenue Cube to 15 Glass... →
Currently there are 90 panes in Apple’s iconic Fifth Avenue store. Core77’s take on the consolidation of the panes is fitting for Apple and its admirers alike:
There’s no hard business reason to replace the Cube. It wasn’t falling down, tourists weren’t looking at it dismissively, and it won’t lead to an immediate increase in profits. Apple is replacing it...
Elliot Jay Stocks’ Mac Setup →
His setup is almost identical to mine, as are his sentiments regarding the Air:
As I said when I originally blogged about my plans for a cloud-centric Mac set-up, it’s all about the extremes: the biggest possible iMac and the smallest possible Air. Many people can’t understand why I went with an 11” Air, but in my opinion, a 13” defies the point of getting an Air in the first...
Amazon’s Kindle Cloud Reader →
Neato. An in-browser reader. Now I can read my Kindle books on every piece of Apple hardware I own.
Update: @nicjohnson informs me they’ve already got Kindle for Mac in the App Store, while John Gruber explains why a non-native web app is probably a response to Apple’s new rules.
Redesigning the Browser Window →
Henrik Eneroth:
Most screens today are widescreens, so why are we not putting the left and right hand sides of the screen to better use, instead of forcing everything into a bar on the top of the window?
/via Hacker News
MOVE →
Footage from 11 countries combined as if filmed in a single location. Imagine the coordination it took to pull this off. See also LEARN and EAT.
/via @scottharrison
10K Apart, Responsive Edition →
Same as last year’s contest (10k of data total per app submitted), but with an additional rule this year: must be responsive. Site design by the responsive savants at Paravel.
3 tags
Film Sessions II
Film Sessions vol. II is now available for listening. I’m really pleased with how it came together, much the same as vol. I.
Here’s the description I provided with the mix:
This mix paints a narrative as if it were the score to a single movie. Dreams yield to mystery and suspense and then evolve into hope.
That really was the intent with this second volume. Not only have I...
Nosh 404 →
I <3 a good 404 page. Nosh went all out on this one.
/via Daring Fireball
2 tags
Vimeo PRO →
Yesterday Vimeo unveiled its PRO account for businesses. They’ve had a long-standing policy against commercial videos on the site, though many have slipped past the radar if they were creative or artistic enough. Now they welcome business accounts, but with a catch:
Vimeo PRO lives as a separate service — invisible to the Vimeo.com world…. Vimeo PRO accounts do not have...
July 2011
26 posts
A Word About Unsolicited Redesigns →
Khoi Vinh, former design director for NYTimes.com:
Unsolicited redesigns are terrific and fun and useful, and I hope designers never stop doing them. But as they do so, I also hope they remember it helps no one — least of all the author of the redesign — to assume the worst about the original source and the people who work hard to maintain and improve it, even though those efforts may seem...
Daniel Loves Sharon →
Now that’s how you do an engagement site. Designed by none other than Daniel Burka, the brilliance behind Glitch (and groom to be). What the home page lacks in accessibility, the secondary pages delightfully make up for. Nicely done.