Textura Design Blog

Crows in V Formation

2010-08-30T23:49:57Z

Each morning, the commuter crows arrive and assemble in this V formation. After a while, one of them will move towards the other one, sit for a while and they fly off. Later at dusk, they’ll fly back to the suburbs. I’ve been keeping an eye on the crows, ever since a crow died in in a fantastic, electrical blast in 2003. Other Seattleites watch them too and they watch us.

Uploaded by Hugger Industries | more from the dreeping set on Flickr.

Mike D's Housewarming Party

2010-08-22T18:39:31Z

iPhone photo from the front of Mike Davidson’s house last night. Mike’s house was just being framed when we moved into the Skybox. Mike and I are long-time colleagues and talked at length about both houses.

He’s posted all the details, including the budget, on A House By the Park blog.

Uploaded by Hugger Industries | more from the dreeping set on Flickr.

SXSW 2011 Panel: What Exactly Are We Doing on the Web

2010-08-13T19:58:40Z

A social network problem is having a really great panel, but not wanting to annoy everyone by pitching it cause you find yourself annoyed by all the panel pitching. My approach this year is to assemble a great panel, write a description, submit it to the Panel Picker and hope it gets picked up on merit vs. a personal publicity campaign.

What Exactly Are We Doing on the Web

Nearly 20 years into this industry, one that we mostly just made up as we went along, it’s time to ask what exactly is our craft. What do we do and how well do we do it? We’ll ask questions about a professional ethos, our values, and ongoing growth from the early days to now and the future. We’d also like to point out a few things along the way, like how maybe it’s time for us to have a little red sports car.

There’s a lot going on with that panel. Yes it’s the “what do we do now with this web thing we made,” but much of it has to do with a lament and general feeling I found my peers having this year. A webhead, mid-life crisis and much of the discussions that led to this panel came from the Design the Ordinary talks I did this year, including the ones with with Kevin Tamura. In that talk, we questioned the state of web design and asked if it had become to decorative, ornanmental and driven by, well, the wrong drivers.

Much to discuss in What Exactly Are We Doing on the Web. Probably too much for one panel, but just as we did with the Try Making Yourself More Interesting panel from 2 years ago, maybe we’ll fill the big hall with our peers discussing relevant, contextual topics. I know it’s on my mind and the minds of the people I chat with daily.

Flipboard with Zeldman

2010-07-21T23:02:49Z

First shared article seen on Flipboard is from @zeldman. How far can the "flip" sections go?

flipboad, flipboard, bo-blipboard
Banana-fana fo-flipboard
Fee-fi-mo-mipboard
FLIPBOARD!

The article in the screenshot was grabbed from our Twitter feed and while intially confused by what’s going on, understand now that, "flipboard is parsing links that get tweeted into their app and from there a user can comment and then the comment is tweeted."

Why is this a magazine?

The app is visually appealing yes and addresses the lament that many iPad apps weren’t that great, but it’s really just a social bookmarking mashup. Due props for not releasing a revolutionary new PDF reader like Road Magazine did or Magcloud.

The magazine label comes from the logic that lays out articles and images into a magazine-like format. The magic is the parser. It’s social cause it’s displaying content from your social networks plus websites and blogs.

Copyright

Our perspective is from a small business with content that is a revenue stream — that’s a big reason why you don’t see us writing free stuff for other sites — we write for ourselves and monetize it. Questions include: is this all creative comments? Fair use? They’re excerpting and linking with proper citation, but what about ads?

So if they run ads that means they’re just like any other aggregator site, just wrapped up in a UI and Apple device and not paying us.

Everything is a revolution

There’s isn’t anything particularity revolutionary about it besides the iPad interface, it’s an aggregator just like Daylife, but it does work.

Not sure exactly how yet, but it does.

Rewarding Crashing

Sidenote about their launch — you quickly saw it get anointed as a killer app on Twitter in an orchestrated series of tweets and then get pummeled by traffic. That seemed to please them. Back in the day, a down website or service was shameful. You were embarrassed and on the phone calling your host. Today it’s like a beta label. We’re so awesome we crash all the time.

No more fail whales please.

More on Flipboard here and later we saw articles from ourselves and Cyclelicious.

Props to @ktamura for the discussion that lead to this post.

Swipe to Reveal Magic

2010-06-22T21:46:09Z

Organized an iPhone desktop to reveal a magic poster with each successive swipe.

1

2

3

Uploaded by Hugger Industries | more from the dreeping set on Flickr.

The Girl with a Pearl Earring Pie Chart

2010-06-16T14:37:09Z

Pie chart art.

Uploaded by Quasimondo | more from the dreeping set on Flickr.

Hello Toronto

2010-06-14T14:10:26Z

We’re en route to Toronto today and talking about design at NXNEi on Tuesday. Then the Mobile Social Tuesday night.

Uploaded by Martinho | more from the Bike Hugger Photostream.

Despair Font

2010-05-11T20:04:36Z

There’s an emphasis on the two Ls in the word all. The owner of this sign also lost it. I saw it on a bike ride in a gutter. The rain hadn’t washed the ink of yet and the edges were tattered from two hands holding it.

Uploaded by Hugger Industries | more from the dreeping set on Flickr.

Zeldman's Dirty Big Balls

2010-05-04T13:38:04Z

A colleague said to me once at SXSW, “you’ve got balls to come here and do a bike party.” Hadn’t though of it that way before and was later very flattered. Today, I tell you who’s got even bigger balls, dirty big balls, is Jeffrey Zeldman for making a book.

He talked about it for a couple years and today it’s out. While many of us are looking at the iPad/iPhone as the future of publishing, he went micro with Mandy Brown, Jason Santa Maria, and Jeremy Keith.

Will it make money? Don’t know, but let the “social pages say he’s got the biggest balls of all. With a hat tip to AC/DC.

You Are Number 6

2010-04-23T16:00:12Z

In a monetizing Junta, Facebook just took over the web. While some of us got really scared, it’s likely most didn’t notice or will care.

Realistically, the proportion of people who, like me, find Facebook’s plans profoundly creepy, is probably pretty small.
@timbray

And I thought

“I am not a number, I am a free man.”

Uploaded by Hugger Industries | more from the dreeping set on Flickr.