There’s nothing special about today. It’s just another Monday. I did just pay the hosting last week so the site is renewed for another year. But I’ve done that every year for the last four years without posting. I don’t even really feel like I have an aim for this post.

I guess sometimes you just have to scream into the void as an act of existence. Drag your feet to make a line in the sand and watch the waves erase it. Make some little marks to remind myself, “I was here.” Does everything — every little blog post — have to have meaning? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe just breaking the streak and resetting the counter is enough.

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Then, inertia takes over. The first takes become the standard. The imperfect model morphs into guidelines and “the way it’s always been done.” Systems are built around the original findings. When the rest of the data comes in, when base assumptions are proven as flaws, when extra external factors are included — it’s no longer seen as a progress of knowledge, but as a challenge to convention.

Here are two such challenges I found this weekend. Carbon offset credits for preserving forest land are coming up short on the amount of carbon dioxide they actually sequester. The real estate market in the United States is not properly accounting for flood zones.

That’s because the state was using averages to estimate how much CO2 each parcel of forest could hold. In reality, some pieces of forest can store more than others based on what kinds of trees are there and how dense the forest is. Forest managers also “gamed the system” by selling credits from parcels that inflated how much carbon they stored, ProPublica and MIT Technology Review reported.

By Justine Calma at The Verge

Our findings indicate that houses in flood zones in the United States are currently overvalued by a total of $43.8 billion (95% confidence interval: $32.6 to $55.6 billion) based on the information in publicly available flood hazard maps alone, raising concerns about the stability of real estate markets as climate risks become more salient and severe.

The effect of information about climate risk on property values

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Today Epicurious announces that we’ve done just that: We’ve cut out beef. Beef won’t appear in new Epicurious recipes, articles, or newsletters. It will not show up on our homepage. It will be absent from our Instagram feed.

We know that some people might assume that this decision signals some sort of vendetta against cows—or the people who eat them. But this decision was not made because we hate hamburgers (we don’t!). Instead, our shift is solely about sustainability, about not giving airtime to one of the world’s worst climate offenders. We think of this decision as not anti-beef but rather pro-planet.

The Planet on the Plate: Why Epicurious Left Beef Behind

If you haven’t taken inventory of your food decisions, please read this piece about their decision making and the questions they had to confront. If you have already made changes to your diet, use these links to help spread information to those around you. The writing and facts are straightforward. It’s also self-aware enough to admit that this is just one little act that needs bigger and bigger support.

Meat — be it beef, chicken, or seafood — makes up about 5% of my family’s yearly diet. We started cutting it out over two years ago when it had been an every day feature. On about fifteen special days a year, we indulge and have a meat meal. Even then, we still choose more sustainable options. Most often that’s local seafood since we’re on the Gulf Coast. We’re also not completely vegan; we eat dairy and eggs and cheese. A sustainable diet is a spectrum and there are some easy wins to help the planet by cutting out the worst polluters.

Sure, there’s lots of bean and rice meals. But that’s okay. That’s what we should be eating. That’s what a lot of people all over the world eat. Pitch in, do your part, and join the side of humanity that wants Earth to stay functional.

(Photo Credit: Lou Liebau)

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(Side shout out to Mario Ipsum for fun test wording!)

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Wirecutter has a list of their favorite — and easy to take care of — choices. There’s lots of mentions of low maintenance options. What’s really got me excited about the idea though is the new resource site How Many Plants? Amazing illustrations. Amazing design. Amazing info. Yes, I want my rooms to look like this.

(via swissmiss)

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Alongside the questions about when the new Normals will be released (first week of May), we’ve gotten a lot of questions about the Normals and global warming. Is global warming affecting the Normals? (Yes). Are the Normals adjusted to “subtract out” global warming? (No.) So the new normal reflects our changing climate? (Yes). Then how do we keep track of what used to be normal? (Different analyses.)

So what happens when you step back from the short sighted Normals and start doing that “different analyses?” (I know, I know — thirty years is short sighted? Yes. In the grand scheme of planetary science and millions of years, it’s a blip. We must think bigger.) You don’t have to look far because you can compare each update of the Normals starting from the first period of 1901–1930. Now with a century in the books, things look pretty bad.

Annual average temperatures have risen 2°F in much of the U.S.

Everywhere in the U.S. is warmer now than during the 20th century.

Precipitation is getting pushed to the extremes. Areas are 12.5% wetter or drier.

Planting zones are shifting northward and up elevations.

The planting zone maps emphasized a key point about the Normals and climate change: the once-per-decade update means these products gradually come to reflect the “new normal” of climate change caused by global warming. What’s normal today is often very different than what was normal 50 or 100 years ago.

Happy Earth Day!

(via kottke)

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Aggressive plowing and monoculture planting led to unprecedented topsoil loss during the Dust Bowl. In 1935, in the wake of staggering soil and economic loss, Congress created the Soil Conservation Service (now known as the National Resource Conservation Service) to encourage more sustainable farming. The organization encouraged no-till planting, which conserves topsoil by not churning it up as intensely as conventional tilling, and cover crops, which help hold soil in place and replenish its nutrients, in the mid- to late-1900s. Today, such sustainable practices are beginning to spread as awareness of soil spreads too, but fewer than a quarter of fields nationally are farmed with no-till practices.

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Additionally, the oats from which our products are sourced are vulnerable to adverse weather conditions and natural disasters, such as floods, droughts, frosts, earthquakes, hurricanes, pestilence and other shortages and disease, which can adversely impact quantity and quality, leading to reduced oat yields and quality, which in turn could reduce the available supply of, or increase the price of, our raw materials. The monocultures that we use are also sensitive to diseases, pests, insects and other external forces, which could pose either short term effects, such as result in a bad harvest one year, or long term effects, which could require new oat varieties to be grown. […]

There is also the concern that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere may have an adverse impact on global temperatures, weather patterns and the frequency and severity of extreme weather and natural disasters. If such climate change has a negative effect on agricultural productivity, we may be subject to decreased availability or less favorable pricing for oats and other raw materials that are necessary for our products. Due to climate change, we may also be subjected to decreased availability of water, deteriorated quality of water or less favorable pricing for water, which could adversely impact our manufacturing and distribution operations.

Oatly F‑1 Statement

In fact, the Securities and Exchange Commission is welcoming public input on whether climate change disclosures are informative enough and how regulations might force companies to address environmental impacts in their official communications. Apparently, investor demand about climate change has “grown dramatically” since the SEC last looked at in 2010. Gee, I wonder why?

Also, shout-out for the F‑1 name dropping industrial agriculture’s reliance on monocultures as posing both short and long term risks to food production.

(via the verge)

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The balance between the permanence and ephemeral nature of content on the internet is part of what makes it beautiful. I don’t think everything should be preserved in an automated fashion–making all content permanent and never removable, but I do think people should be able to decide for themselves and effectively archive specific content that they care about.

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My first post — in all its infantile ick — is still here. The feed has continued to work for ten years even through hiatus. Those are some minor accomplishments that I’m going to be proud of today. It’s not much and it doesn’t have to be. We should be celebrating the zero victories when all we do is stave off the heat death of decay. That’s more sustainable than overproducing for the simple sake of consumption. Now, time to tend some weeds both in my digital and physical garden.

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[…] pay people enough to take the issue of money off the table. Pay people enough, so that they are not thinking about money and they are thinking about the work. Once you do that it turns to 3 factors that the science shows leads to better performance, not to mention personal satisfaction: Autonomy, Mastery, and  Purpose.

(via swissmiss)

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[…] the plague was interesting to him only in how it reflected upon and threatened him. There are, it turns out, tens of millions of people who are not just also like that, but whose single most deeply held value is that they must be permitted to continue being like that forever. For these people, having to do something other than whatever they want to do, at any moment and for any reason, really is a much more urgent threat than sickness or death; to be without the agency to make the same stupid non-choices, every day, is not fundamentally different than being killed, because making those facile choices is for them what it means to be alive.

Private Choices Have Public Consequences

I think widening our circle is the next evolutionary hurdle. Moving from self-interested individual units to a concerned collective might just be the Great Filter. You have to change the question “What benefits me?” into “What benefits us?” and then also expand who is included in that ‘us.’ Your answers to lots of questions will change if you can think of ‘us’ as including every human being and ecosystem on this planet.

It involves personal sacrifice which is the antithesis of self preservation. It requires restrictions to accept sustainable growth instead of unfettered expansion. It takes controlling the natural course of life and creating our own predatory pressures to shape survival — for everyone, not just the fittest.

Anyway, go get vaccinated as soon as you can. I’m getting my first dose tomorrow 2021-04-16.

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The pessimistic part of my brain, looking at reality, makes a sad face and pats the optimistic part of my brain on the head.

The optimistic part of my brain, remembering how bad humans are at intuitively understanding exponential growth, pats the pessimistic part of my brain on the head.

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The atmospheric burden of CO₂ is now comparable to where it was during the Mid-Pliocene Warm Period around 3.6 million years ago, when concentrations of carbon dioxide ranged from about 380 to 450 parts per million. During that time sea level was about 78 feet higher than today, the average temperature was 7 degrees Fahrenheit higher than in pre-industrial times, and studies indicate large forests occupied areas of the Arctic that are now tundra. 

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Research

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I sat down on Saturday to clean out a stack of Wired magazines I had been piling up in a when-I-have-time tower. Thanks to previous procrastination and pandemic time dilation, the issues stretched back to January of 2019. As always, the journalism was outstanding. Superb subjects, wonderful writing, delightful design. The article that snagged my attention and produced this morning’s paradox was The Race to Understand Antarctica’s Most Terrifying Glacier.

Of course it was climate change. Also of note, I had already stopped my print subscription several months ago since that’s just more consumption of paper and transportation costs and another tiny burden on resources I can eliminate from my daily life.

It struck me enough to search for Thwaites Glacier this morning and what should I find? A brand new article published three days ago. I jumped from we need more data to we have more data in one day. Boom, time travel! Unfortunately, it wasn’t good news.

For the first time, researchers have collected data from underneath the remote Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica using an underwater robot. Findings reveal that the supply of warm water to the glacier is larger than previously thought, triggering concerns of faster melting and accelerating ice flow.

It’s been a few years since I’ve watched Waterworld. Maybe it’s time for a refresher. Ooh, another idea. Disney needs to create a series of Primitive Technology videos with Moana characters teaching kids the skills they will need to survive in the environment they will inherit. I don’t think a magical water spirit is going to be there to save them.

(Vessel Photo by Aleksandra Mazur)

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The discovery helps confirm a new and troubling understanding that the Greenland ice has melted off entirely during recent warm periods in Earth’s history — periods like the one we are now creating with human-caused climate change.

Understanding the Greenland Ice Sheet in the past is critical for predicting how it will respond to climate warming in the future and how quickly it will melt. Since some twenty feet of sea-level rise is tied up in Greenland’s ice, every coastal city in the world is at risk.

Science Daily

You know what’s even sadder to think about it? If someone had been paying attention to those ice cores over 50 years ago, it still would not have mattered. They could have released a scientific study about these fossilized leaves at the first Earth Day in 1970 and we would still be in the same boiling pot we are now. People think in decades and lifetimes not millennia. The trend seems to be speeding up instead of slowing down. When we careen off the cliff, here’s to hoping for wide open water to splash down in.

Photo Credit: William Bossen

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Abstraction. Speculation. Competition. So much of our world in 2021 is geared towards individual profit over collective good. It’s been that way for a long time — really forever. The innate biological imperative of survival continues to hold grasp even after layers of conscience. Sure, some cultures that value the group have emerged, but we need some species level evolution. We need to find ways to make it easier for us to think about everyone instead of our self.

Screw NFTs. Screw infinite growth. Screw unpriced, negative external costs.

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The Great Green Wall is an African-led movement with an epic ambition to grow an 8,000km natural wonder of the world across the entire width of Africa.

Now this is the bold, humanity-as-a-collective action I needed to see this morning. The world needs more people spending time on projects like this and less on NFTs (or blogging for that matter). Unfortunately, given the scale and bureaucracy it’s impossible to directly donate to the United Nations convention campaigning the Great Green Wall initiative. If you want to show some monetary support, you’ll want to head over to a partner such as TreeAid to donate.

(via swiss-miss)

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Sometimes people use “respect” to mean “treating someone like a person” and sometimes they use “respect” to mean “treating someone like an authority”

and sometimes people who are used to being treated like an authority say “if you won’t respect me I won’t respect you” and they mean “if you won’t treat me like an authority I won’t treat you like a person”

and they think they’re being fair but they aren’t, and it’s not okay.

Autistic Abby on Tumblr

It’s an important reminder of the nuance of language. It’s also a wake-up call for treating people with decency regardless of any power dynamic. Hopefully, humanity will continue to evolve to be more collective than individualistic. Make a decision today that benefits every single human being on this planet. I know that’s hard to do, but it’s what we should be doing.

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Made by Chad Ashley via Present /&/ Correct

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living in a social system based on brutal competition that made all human relationships transactional and perverted the very idea of community

Something About The Way Society Was Exposed As Complete Illusion Over Past Year Really Getting Man Down Today

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Here’s an easier scenario. Which came first — the dollar or the income tax? The American dollar came into existence on April 2, 1792 with passage of the Coinage Act of 1792 by the 2nd United States Congress. A short lived income tax during the American Civil War lasted from 1861 to 1872. Our modern incarnation of income taxes began in 1913 with the ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment. Similar payroll taxes didn’t appear until 1934 with the creation of Social Security by Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Modern Monetary Theory appears to be new economic thoughts grappling with a different answer to the fundamental nature of what comes first when talking money. The following podcast from Slate Money is a good wake up call for dispelling some of the fact-myths that have formed in our current economic systems.

Professor Stephanie Kelton joins Slate Money to talk Modern Monetary Theory. June 20, 2020

Money has no value and whatever value we want all at the same time. We forget that because it has numbers printed on it. One dollar can get you a soda out of a vending machine or a tooth from under your kid’s pillow. No value and infinite value all at the same time. Money is just a medium of exchange and can be whatever we want it to be. If we can agree on some values.

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We made it further than most during this pandemic, but it’s still another name to add to the list. One more small business closed. Five families finding new paths. Thousands of customers picking a new brand to buy. That last line should be read with a hint of sarcasm and a dose of criticism with a capitalist C.

I’ve still got a few paychecks to collect before I join the other 20 million unemployed Americans or find some other way to make my livelihood. I certainly feel fortunate to have made it this far. I know others have been dealing with upheaval for most of 2020. The changes I’ve had to make in my life are hard to even classify as inconveniences. I’ve been lucky and privileged.

There’s still more stirring around, but I haven’t nailed down all the words. This might be all I have today. A simple marker for where the trail changes direction. A somber, grim, foreboding marker for the occasion — but hey, at least I created something today!

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I’m not the only one coming to grips with this realization. Mozilla recently released a greenhouse gas baseline. They estimate that people using their browser in 2019 amounts to 785,474 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (mtCO2e). That’s equal to the yearly energy use for 90,639 homes in the United States.

Apple has also made a bold promise to be totally carbon neutral by 2030. That includes “the energy used to power our customers’ devices.” They would not be counting the energy my iMac is using right now since it is nine years old. The fine print states, “Apple assumes a three- or four-year period for power use by first owners based on the product type. Product use scenarios are based on historical customer use data for similar products.”

Closer to my original thought, Eric Bailey came along and asked, “So you wanna create an eco-friendly website.” His take included some good performance improvements for minimizing impact but still came to the same conclusion I’m running into. Outside of deleting your website and not participating in energy use, you’re going to need carbon credits and offsets.

Luckily, there are some resources to help with this process.

• The Website Carbon Calculator can show you a sobering estimate of your impact.
• The Green Web Foundation can help find eco-friendly hosting.
• There are tons of carbon offset companies popping up now. I haven’t done enough research to link any. That seems like the next step I need to take to justify this site staying online.

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Livelihood: a means of securing the necessities of life

“Memaw” Ivey, as she has been affectionately — or derisively? — referred to, tweeted the other day. Maybe it’s the emphasis of this being a reiteration. Maybe it’s the conciseness. Something about it sounds more like an ultimatum than a life lesson, prescriptive rather than descriptive. Something about ‘cannot’ is so definitive in the statement.

“You cannot have a life without a livelihood.”

Why do I get the feeling that’s the polite Southern way of saying, “If you don’t have a job, you don’t deserve to live.”

It’s true that if you don’t get water, food, and shelter — at the bare minimum — then your life will end. There is a fundamental aspect to the statement that is understandable. It’s also false.

There are plenty of people rightfully exempt from such an expectation. Different levels of physical and mental ability might prevent someone from being able to take care of them self. We certainly don’t expect children to go it alone and secure their own necessities. On the other end of the age bracket, we believe the elderly have a right to life without continuing to work. So it is possible to have a life without a livelihood.

Of course, Twitter’s character limitations prevent nuance. Governor Ivey would never say people who can’t provide for themselves forfeit their life. That doesn’t sound as nice as, “You cannot have a life without a livelihood.”

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• “Don’t like to write, but like having written. Hate the effort of driving pen from line to line” Frank Norris via kottke.org
• “Purpose is an essential element of you.“
  Chadwick Boseman via brenebrown.com
• “One little blog post is nothing on its own, but publish a thousand blog posts over a decade, and it turns into your life’s work.” Austin Kleon
• “There will always be too much to do – and this realisation is liberating.” Oliver Burkeman
• “I decided I needed to start writing things down.” kottke.org first post

Going further, the words that keep ringing in my ear — and I hope to exorcise through this little diatribe come from the following quote published fifty years ago.

“We must do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian-Darwinian theory, he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living.”

Richard Buckminster Fuller
“The New York Magazine Environmental Teach-In” by Elizabeth Barlow in New York Magazine (30 March 1970), p. 30

A human being had that thought in 1970. Here it is the year 2020 and so many still think a person is only worth their productivity. That value is only measured in what you can create or do for others. That your efforts must be quantified through currency or comfort or convenience. That life is a zero-sum game. That progress requires growth and positive year-over-year balance sheets.

Why can’t progress simply be zero? You replace all the things you extract in order to live. You erase your impacts so they don’t continually build up as debt to future generations. Hell, you quit externalizing costs and transferring them to living, breathing people currently on the other side of the planet or even right down the road. Accept that more isn’t always the answer because sometimes it’s the problem.

Consider this a warning that more word vomit similar to the above might come spewing out. Or it might not. I’m still swirling in the do less/do more conundrum of justifying my existence by doing things vs. simply being.

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1. Flat Beach Ball of Death
   The flattening of design continues and not even the rainbow pinwheel is immune from the trend. Not that crazy, maybe mildly interesting.
   
2. Retractable Menu Bar
   How long has the menu bar been a sacred cow of the Mac interface? And now this little check box. Now that’s crazy.
   
3. Secure Empty Trash
   Apparently this wasn’t working right so the solution, remove the feature. Say what?!?

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Chris Allen has an awesomely simple portfolio site full of nice work.

I loved landing on Benjy Stanton’s site because you get a bit of his personality right off the bat.

Ivo Mynttinen has a gorgeous hero image and well-designed site overall. I also love the transparency he took with his business.

Build your own overhead desk image with this freebie of Designer Desk Essentials from Graphic Burger.

I love the details in this freebie of food themed icons.

And speaking of food, “C” is for cookie. “L” is for letter-pressed.

Speaking of freebies, Freebbble lets you search Dribbble resources by license so you can find free for commercial use design items.

These off-canvas menu effects would add a nice touch to your user experience.

Do you wonder how somebody else solved that tricky design problem you’ve been having with a dialog box, login form, or other element. Well, Codepen put together a library of design patterns for you to draw inspiration.

There’s also this list of user interface ideas to check out.

Kenneth Cachia put together this SVG-based seamless pattern maker in your browser.

Quickly and easily build an animated CSS gradient with this tool by Ian Forrest.

The Lost Type crew share a few of their favorite drawing tools.

New tech meets old tech in Richard Ardagh’s idea of a 3D-printed letterpress font.

Speaking of new tech, Gyroscope harnesses your social media activity and health data to build a website about your life.

Motive — Digging the design of this WordPress theme by ThemeZilla

I also like this free theme from Automattic — Goran

More WordPress — easily add employee/team profiles with this Staffer plugin.

I’m always checking out the CMS, website-building landscape so this list was super helpful in finding new contenders.

I’m getting one of these t‑shirts for my birthday because my wife loves me.

Mmmm… Typography poster… So nice…

Aerial Wallpapers — interesting satellite imagery optimized for use as iPhone 6 Plus wallpapers

I’ve always wanted to get into using Gantt charts to get organized. Maybe I’ll give this free tool from Twproject a shot.

Great suggestions about what could be slowing down your team and how to fix them. Don’t Blame the Designer.

Need some suggestions for how to structure and write your code? Check out Mark Otto’s Code Guide for HTML and CSS.

Is that new client or job worth taking? Here are three questions to help you consider the true value of every design job.

And here’s another six questions to ask during interviews to find out about a company’s culture and environment.

Another post from the business side — Pay People for Commitment. He definitely has a point about the changing dynamics of work/life balance.

An extremely long read, but definitely worth it if you are thinking of striking out on your own. How I Wrote and Sold My First Ebook

And we’ll end this monstrosity of a list with a video — Guardians of the Galaxy: 8 Bit Cinema

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1. Somebody, somewhere had to design these manuals. They made little dishwasher illustrations or took pictures of a “properly” loaded dishwasher. That’s funny to me.
2. I have personally been scolded many a time for my inefficient, unorthodox, and just plain wrong loading of a dishwasher.

(via Kottke)

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The State of Web Type — Do you need to know which OpenType features are supported in which browsers? Then here is the Can I Use for typographic features.

Do you know how many rules, selectors, and declarations are in your CSS? Maybe you’re curious how many colors or font families are hidden in your style sheets? Plug in your URL or raw code to CSSStats and get the breakdown.

The folks at Tower are celebrating OS X Yosemite with An Illustrated History of Mac OS X. The illustrations are marvelous. I think the Lion in the spaceship is my favorite, though Snow Leopard is close too.

Turn static mockups into transparent, floating guides with GluePrint.

Just want to code and not worry about web servers, databases, engines, or deployment? Cactus is a free, static site generator that compiles Markdown, SASS, and Coffeescript out of the box. It also automatically refreshes your browser when you save changes and can deploy to Amazon S3 to make your website public.

Flakes is a clean, open source design framework for building internal business applications — think sales lead management and inventory tracking screens. Just look at this form for entering info.

How to Make a Performance Budget? What should you be measuring, how should you measure it, and what should your goal be in delivering the best website performance.

DeviantArt has a new brand. I love the writeup about the process, but I’m not entirely sold on the logo yet.

Awesome homepage and all-around awesome website by the folks at Underbelly. Really nice touches with the URL names.

‘Tis the season for cute, wintery-themed holiday icons. Here’s an awesome free set on Dribbble.

Speaking of the holidays, here’s a Christmas present I would have liked as a child. Typeblocks — maple wood alphabet blocks.

Finally, let’s wrap the post up with a little self-promotion. Society6 — which I have some artwork available on — has some great holiday discounts going on this week. Be sure to check out my store and pick out any last minute gifts you still need to get.

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Second is The Dead Pixel Society. A group of 1990s-era icon designers have reunited to triumph the 32x32 pixel canvas of their youth. Each icon is handcrafted pixel by pixel with the same limited, 256-color palette of yesteryear. It really takes a video to stress the attention to detail and insane amount of reworking it takes to get to a finished product.

As far as my favorite, Benny from The Lego Movie is pretty hilarious. But that might be influenced by the fact that I finally watched the movie yesterday.

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Here are a few of the best I got back this morning.

19 Things About Typefaces Your Kids Don’t Want You to Know

Darth Vader’s Guide to Typefaces

How to Be Unpopular in the Typography World

5 Ways Comic Sans Could Help the Cubs Win the World Series

Why Comic Sans is Hotter than Jennifer Lawrence

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Oh, and it’s responsive too. Definitely give it a try on your mobile device.

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For those of you who have already taken the plunge, you might notice some apps still waiting for an update to freshen up their design or introduce a cleaner icon to fit the new Yosemite style. Luckily you can cleanup your dock yourself with custom icons for OSX applications. Here’s a rundown of the best so far.

Yosemite Dock Icons By Jeremy Goldberg

Muir: Yosemite Icons Volume 1 & Volume 2

Adobe CC Icon Set by Benjamin Schmitt

Dots by dradis75

Microsoft Office Icons for Yosemite by Jason Zigrino

Evernote Field Book by Jason Zigrino

What do you think? Are you digging the new OS or have you started a list of things Apple needs to fix? Should I make the leap to Yosemite — or a better idea, just get a new Mac. Maybe one of those shiny 5K iMacs? Yummm… *drool* *slobber*

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But while it’s possible to build walls only using bricks, they’re not going to be as stable as they should be.

A corollary to Brad’s idea is that you can’t have all mortar. Everybody in the company can’t be super flexible and fit in wherever. The mortar has to have some bricks to work with. Otherwise you just have a big, wet pile of dirt for a business.

I am definitely a mortar person. I fill in the gaps and coordinate among all the bricks. The tricky part is balancing the amount of coordination with getting actual work done. You can’t be just an intermediary; you still have to produce something at the end of the day.

The post Job Title: Brick or Mortar appeared first on SpareType.

Based on this first project, I can’t wait to see more from Joseph Alessio’s Type Limited series. Yes please, to more lettering on objects.

(via Beautiful Type)

The post Type Limited by Joseph Alessio appeared first on SpareType.

When a colleague runs into your office and says, “The designer is changing things!” a well-placed “That’s exactly what I’m paying the designer to do” sets the perfect tone.

Amen! Halleluiah! Can I get a what-what? Change is hard for a lot of people, but often necessary to keep making progress. Shoot, just staying current and on par these days requires a healthy amount of change and flexibility. Designers are adept at making changes because of our problem solving skills. Given the right authority and support, we can make groundbreaking contributions to a business.

A designer with backbone and experience won’t have any problem carving out the room they need to work, but they can’t do so if you don’t grant them the authority. Otherwise, you run the risk of bringing someone in to follow the whims of those around them. That’s not a full member of the team. That’s a glorified Xerox machine, an asset used by the rest of the company whenever they need some pixels pushed around.

That’s how someone who’s supposed to work on your website’s UI ends up making Lost Cat flyers for Betty in HR.

And the second reason I love Mike Monteiro is because of this 2011 Creative Mornings talk titled F*ck You. Pay Me. Again, required watching for anybody in the freelance business. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve watched it just as a little pick me up, morale boost.

And if a third is required, the guy has a pretty sweet beard.

The post I Love Mike Monteiro and You Should Too appeared first on SpareType.

https://twitter.com/pixelsorter/status/518404668989648896

The real fun started when Way Spurr-Chen sent @pixelsorter and another Twitter bot @badpng the same image.

https://twitter.com/wayspurrchen/status/514246071464521728

The two bots started tweeting back and forth, continually processing the results from the each other. After forty-two hand offs, the loop was broken so the two wouldn’t go on to infinity. Here’s what the two bots made together.

@pixelsorter pic.twitter.com/x4Ueb6ZJkP

— badpng bot (@badpng) September 23, 2014

I love the idea of robot art. And glitch art can be very cool. It’s very abstract and postmodern. Done right it’s all about appreciating color, technique, and process. People make the coolest stuff on the Internet.

(via The Verge)

The post Twitter Bots @badpng and @pixelsorter appeared first on SpareType.

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It’s definitely better than those good luck emails you’re grandmother sends from her AOL email address with 100 recipients all pasted in the To: field.

This is a chain letter. Use shape or color from the last + pass it on. @AdamRGarcia is up. Follow along #chainletter1 pic.twitter.com/yUKGwJF8Tv

— Jeshurun Webb (@JeshurunDesigns) September 2, 2014

The post Chainletter — The Typography Telephone Game appeared first on SpareType.

When moving points and control handles around in Illustrator I’m not thinking about the math and numbers the computer is crunching to create the curve I want. I’m just thinking about what kind of curve I want. But this video is a great breakdown of how things happen. It’s not really going to help you have better curves — there’s plenty of other places for that — but knowing how your tools work is a sign of a good craftsmen.

The post The Math Behind Bezier Curves appeared first on SpareType.

(via Reddit)

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(via WDL)

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(via @tomstandage)

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There’s way more that could be done, but I wanted to give myself a hard deadline. By putting myself on the clock, I didn’t futz around. Nor am I holding on to it because it’s not perfect. It’s just an unsolicited redesign of a landing page — nothing more, nothing less.

The current site lives at warioworld.com while you can see my redesign live on my new playground space.

Warioworld.com Current Screenshot

Warioworld.com Landing Page Redesign

The post Warioworld.com appeared first on SpareType.

My favorite article so far is Practicing Passion by Tiffani Jones Brown. It’s a powerful, personal look at overcoming the fear of mediocrity and finding the love for something. *Hint: it’s practice.* It was definitely the perfect read to keep me motivated this week and to keep powering through projects. Especially this gem of a paragraph.

If you want to have passion for your work then do what your coaches told you: set challenging goals for yourself every day, work hard to achieve them, and evaluate how you did at the end. Structure it in a way that makes absorption possible. Do it, in other words. Then do it some more.
— Tiffani Jones Brown

The post The Manual appeared first on SpareType.

Stringfellows

Foundry : Nicky Laatz

Designer(s) : Nicky Laatz

Cost: $20

First up this month is a pen and ink script with plenty of hand-lettered quirkiness. Rough edges and an uneven baseline reinforce the lettering aspect of the font. The unevenness also gives it a good bounce so it flows nicely. It could use some more alternate glyphs to help the hand-lettered idea, but Stringfellows does come with an ornament companion font that has a few catchwords to use. Its look makes it prefect for wedding invitations, thank-you cards, and other personal correspondence needing a lettering-esque touch.

Voltage

Foundry : Laura Worthington

Designer(s) : Laura Worthington

Cost: $19 per style

Now for a slightly different script. Voltage by Laura Worthington is a structured, utilitarian, and angular entry in the script genre. Given its solid construction and rhythm, the type has great balance and good readability for display uses. It does have a slight industrial feel but with some of its more fun alternates and swashes can break free of feeling machined. Voltage then becomes even more energetic and sign-painterly.

Ridewell

Foundry : Intelligent Design

Designer(s) : Kostas Bartsokas

Cost: $25 per style

In the middle of the pack this month is a vintage, wood type inspired typeface by Kostas Bartsokas called Ridewell. Besides the clean version shown above, there is also a distressed printed version. In the spirit of old block posters, the fonts come packed with ligatures and alternates to create stacked letter effects. It’s compressed size gives it character and will help fitting it in small headline spaces. You don’t need much. Ridewell is definitely a display face where a little goes a long way.

Marker Aid

Foundry : Pintassilgo Prints

Designer(s) : Ricardo Marcin and Erica Jung

Cost: $24 per style

There’s plenty of sketchy, marker fonts floating around the Internet so why pick this one? Because it’s like four fonts in one. There are four variations for each letter and two variations for each number built in through OpenType alternates. Marker Aid is bold and expressive. That makes it perfect for music posters, organic packaging, and anything needing a lively atmosphere.

Elise

Foundry : Context

Designer(s) : Alex Liebold

Cost: $42 for all six styles

Oh, I’m a sucker for layered type. I only did a handful of letters above because you need to see Elise in action to really understand how awesome it can be. In the image below you can see the letter ‘A’ being built several different ways given the four parts Elise has — 3D, fill, ribbed, and flourish. All put together it is cute and charming typography perfect for invitations and announcements. Dialed back a bit with only the 3D or ribbed styles, you have a great retro poster face. That versatility makes Elise an excellent tool to have. (Also, if you just want the ornaments, they’re available for free.)

The post Headline Heads Up — No. 23 appeared first on SpareType.

Makes me warm and fuzzy to see my hosting company @bluehost supporting #NetNeutrality #TitleII https://t.co/5hEtcYHr5T

— SpareType (@sparetype) September 10, 2014

The funniest thing to come out of this public outcry so far is Comcastify.js by The Onion. This script covers up your images and slowly reveals them like an old dial-up connection. It’s witty, snarky, and spot on. It could be used for good since you can control the speed and amount of reveal for each step.

The post Let’s Internet Like 1998 appeared first on SpareType.

Dan Rhatigan on type…Type on Dan Rhatigan from Grey London.

Interesting user interface idea — Monocle (via Smashing Newsletter)

Glitch effect — Chris Coyier breaks down Lucas Bebber’s neat CSS only technique

This is a shirt. Funny, very meta idea.

Why Starbucks Spells Your Name Wrong (via swissmiss)

Tools Outline Icon Set by Oxygenna

Beautiful inspiration for color gradients — uigradients.com

iPhone 6 Screen Sizes Infographic — This is the best breakdown in terms of resolution for Apple’s new toys released this week.

The post This Week’s Tabs appeared first on SpareType.

And yes, I know I’m showing off some of my geekness with this post. What would be even more geeky is if I were to disclose that I have a collection of Pokémon trading cards that I gathered in my teenage years safely tucked away. IF I were to disclose that. AND IF that were true…

*rummage* *rummage* “If I were a Pokémon were would I hide in this attic…” *rummage* *rummage*

(via Polygon)

The post Pokémon Color Palettes appeared first on SpareType.

(via Kottke)

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Jeffrey Zeldman: 20 years of Web Design and Community from lynda.com on Vimeo.

Map Glyphs — hundreds of scalable vector map icons

Build a quick flexbox layout just by dividing a box.

I wouldn’t mind having one of these tables when I get a new house.

Or maybe I’ll just string up a treehouse.

Codio — my IDE of choice — just launched education features for teachers to run coding classes.

And speaking of teaching, Tal Leming teaches you how to cook OpenType fonts.

The post This Week’s Tabs appeared first on SpareType.

The Last Month Year over Year

My first snapshot was a quick look at August 1st — 31st of 2014 and compare that to 2013. Over the last month, I’ve launched a redesign and been giving my site more attention as part of my move to freelancing and being my own boss. With 79% more people coming to my site, I feel great about the growth.

But What Content Are They Reading?

Well, their not reading the new stuff. Darn. My most popular content for the month of August 2014 is older list-style posts that showcase typefaces. These image heavy posts rank well in Google Image search for a wide range of typographical search terms. The homepage does make a strong showing at number two; a freebie rounds out the top ten. Next question, does August fit in with what people have been looking at on SpareType this year? The next table is top pages from January 1st, 2014 — August 31st, 2014.

Yep, the trend continues. The images are driving a bulk of search traffic for single page views. Readers then bounce on outbound links to where they can buy the fonts. It’s also good to see my freebie resources in the top ten views for the year. Combined they’ve been downloaded 491 times.

Year to Date

To finish up this little peek at the numbers, I decided to look at January 1st, 2014 — August 31st, 2014 and compare it to that same time period last year.

Again, improvement with more new users visiting the site. Pages per session and session duration aren’t great though. It would be nice if people stuck around and checked the site out a bit. I guess that’s what every website owner would like though.

My takeaway from glancing at the numbers is to keep making content. I need to release more design resources. I need to keep publishing posts and building value. People are reading — or at least looking — at my website. I’m not shouting into empty space. That’s a good feeling.

What do you think?

Are these numbers bad / good / meh? Am I reading them upside down or interpreting them wrong? Is there a metric you’re curious about that I didn’t cover? I’d love to hear from all 1479 users who stopped by SpareType last month.

The post Analytics, or Is Anybody Reading This? appeared first on SpareType.

The post Nihon Typeface by Malwin Béla Hürkey appeared first on SpareType.

And it’s GIF as in gift. If it was the other way it would be spelled JIF.
I don’t care what the inventor says.

(via DesignerNews)

The post Screen Capture GIFs Made Easy appeared first on SpareType.

Drew Wilson has an awesome homepage and tons of awesome projects to check out.

Totally digging Dustin Hysinger’s logo.

Oh, and his zombie thumb stickers are freaking cool.

A quick look at changes happening in WordPress 4.0 (via Smashing Magazine) Super excited about the changes to the post editor and how it scrolls.

Speaking WordPress, there’s this clean, media focused portfolio theme over at Themezilla that looks really good.

Jake Giltsoff points out twelve italics over on Typecast. Some have emphasis, while others have EMPHASIS.

A What If? book comes out next week.

Jamila Hodges has a diverse set of pictogram icons for free over on Behance.

The post This Week’s Tabs appeared first on SpareType.

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So much type. So many great layouts and examples of type in use. So many ornaments. So many great quotes. So hard to pick pieces to highlight. Just check out the whole thing.

After all is said and done, the printer’s work is judged chiefly by the type faces used in it. A good type face may make poor paper and cheap inks passable, but the best qualities of papers and of inks are incapable of giving even a semblance of quality to printing executed with type faces of inferior designs.

- American Type Founders Specimen Book (1923)

The post 1923 American Type Founders Specimen Book appeared first on SpareType.

Adjust the values for your base font size and line-height then pick a scale — like the golden ratio. Gridlover then spits out the CSS, SCSS, LESS, or Stylus for font sizes, line heights and margins to keep your paragraphs and headings on a pixel perfect baseline grid.

Ah, two of my favorite things together — the golden ratio in typography and computers doing math for me.

The post Gridlover: Vertical Rhythm Typography appeared first on SpareType.

Typography

Font sizes and line-height are the perfect candidates for variables in a CSS preprocessor. I’m running Sass because that’s the one I heard of first and it was easy enough to pick up the basics of imports and variables.

// =Variables for typography expressed in pixels
$title-text: 58;
$headline-text: 36;
$subhead-text: 28;
$primary-text: 22;
$secondary-text: 17;
$title-leading: 60;
$headline-leading: 44;
$primary-leading: 36;
$secondary-leading: 27;

So where did these numbers come from? The Golden Ratio Typography Calculator, of course. This provides a reliable scale and hierarchy while also addressing readability with an appropriate character per line count (CPL). While being responsive will cause that number to fluctuate, I’ve designed for 65 CPL on desktop sized screens which make up the bulk of my traffic. So what do we do with these numbers? Say hello to the only mixin in my Sass so far.

// =Font size and line height mixin for pixels and rems
@mixin font-size($fontsize: $primary-text, $lineheight: $primary-leading) {
font-size: $fontsize + px;
font-size: ($fontsize / 16) + rem;
line-height: $lineheight + px ;
line-height: ($lineheight /16) + rem ;
}

This beauty allows you to pass it one of the variables above then spit it out in pixels for older browsers and rem units for newer browsers. The ‘16’ comes from the default type size in pixels. This piece is awesome because it does all the math in converting pixels to rem units. Hooray, for computers doing math. Now, the mixin in action.

body {
    @include font-size($primary-text,$primary-leading);
    color: $brand-color1;
    font-family: 'Source Sans Pro', sans-serif;
}
h1 {
    @include font-size($title-text,$title-leading);
}
h2 {
    @include font-size($headline-text,$headline-leading);
}

@include calls the mixin named font-size. The variables for text size and line-height are included for that particular element. Then we have some other CSS rules to start the overall styling of the text with color and font-family. The color property also shows off another perfect use of variables for defining color palettes to be reused throughout the code. Once compiled from Sass to normal CSS it looks like the following.

body {
font-size:22px;
font-size:1.375rem;
line-height:36px;
line-height:2.25rem;
color:#3c4d56;
font-family:'Source Sans Pro', sans-serif
}
h1 {
font-size:58px;
font-size:3.625rem;
line-height:60px;
line-height:3.75rem;
}
h2 {
font-size:36px;
font-size:2.25rem;
line-height:44px;
line-height:2.75rem;
}

Layout

My favorite piece of structure for the site is the blog page with its tiles for each blog post. Amazingly, it’s a CSS only solution. The secret is inline-block and column-count, which has plenty of browser support when prefixed. Set the column-count and column-gap on a div that wraps the articles. Then set the articles to inline-block and 100% width.

.loop-content {
    margin: 184px 72px 18px;
    -moz-column-count: 1;
    -moz-column-gap: 72px;
    -webkit-column-count: 1;
    -webkit-column-gap: 72px;
    column-count: 1;
    column-gap: 72px;
}

.loop-content article {
    display: inline-block;
    margin-bottom: 72px;
    width: 100%;
    background-color: $brand-color4;
    border: 2px solid $brand-color1;
}

@media screen and (min-width: 850px) {
    .loop-content {
        -moz-column-count: 2;
        -webkit-column-count: 2;
        column-count: 2;
        max-width:800px;
    }
}

This technique works great in a responsive design because you can update the column-count on wider displays to spread out information. You can adjust the width of the wrapping div and the column widths inside will adjust accordingly. Again, hooray for leaving the math to the computer and letting the browser calculate widths. I’ve also used this technique in the footer for laying out widgets there.

Multiple Thumbnails

The last piece of code I’d like to highlight is WordPress specific and actually involves installing a plugin. The Multiple Post Thumbnails plugin allows you to register extra featured images for your posts. It does take some coding to get working, but that flexibility allows for lots of tweaking to fit your design goals. All the code and instructions for implementing the plugin can be found on this Github page. It dovetails perfectly into WordPress’s built-in media manager and custom image sizes registered through functions.php. Plus, there is no limit to how many featured images you can add.

Those three pieces of code really do 80% of the work around the site. They are powerful, understandable, and adjustable which makes them amazing tools for working with the site’s design. As I makes tweaks and introduce new code, I’ll be highlighting the stand out pieces here on the blog so keep an eye out for those.

For now, that wraps up the redesign series about the site. If you really want to follow along, I am doing all of this out in the open on Github. Plus, there’s always the RSS feed so you can catch all of my blog posts. Now, go code something.

The post The Redesign: Part Three appeared first on SpareType.

(via Designer News)

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One of my favorites so far is this wavy wood type specimen sheet from the Morgan Press.

(via @okaytype)

The post Newberry Printing History appeared first on SpareType.

HWT Artz

Foundry : Hamilton Wood Type Foundry

Designer(s) : Erik Spiekermann

Cost: $24.95

Everything old is new again. HWT Artz is a digital version of wood type designed by Erik Spiekermann and cut by the Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum. It’s built for large, blocky headline work and would be perfect for posters and large display signage. Its rounded corners are a nod to the production process of wood type; sharp corners would require more hand-finished production time. You can also feel good about your purchase because proceeds of sales benefit the museum’s ongoing operations.

Peaches and Cream

Foundry : Fenotype

Designer(s) : Emil Karl Bertell

Cost: $35 per style

I’m always a sucker for a good brush script, especially one with plenty of OpenType alternates. Peaches and Cream has stylistic, swash, and titling alternates for every glyph. It also has quite of few unique ligatures. All that combines to make a dynamic typeface perfect for building headlines, logos, and other custom feeling pieces without pulling out the pen and ink.

Grandstander

Foundry : Tyler Finck

Designer(s) : Tyler Finck

Cost: $19

Last on the list this month is Grandstander by Tyler Finck. This handmade block type consists of four fonts. There is a clean version, a distressed print version, the individual shadow version, and finally the full version layered for your using pleasure. It’s fun, bouncy and playful which makes it perfect for laid back communications and children’s applications. Oh, and you can get the clean version for free which is awesome.

The post Headline Heads Up — No. 22 appeared first on SpareType.

Holy shit. I’ve been doing this all wrong.

Have you ever had that thought? It’s a tough real­iza­tion. I had that moment a few months ago. I was feel­ing like an old dog in my web design game. I knew of these things called Github, Grunt, and Sass but wasn’t tak­ing advan­tage of them. I hadn’t updated my skills or my process. My mindset also needed a reboot.

My first breakthrough moment was forgetting about a finished product. Coming from the print side of graphic design, I was still holding on to that idea of getting everything right before hitting the print button. I kept paralyzing myself with the list of things to do before I could release the redesign. But that’s not true for a website. If I don’t like the way comments show up today, I can update a file and they can look better tomorrow. A website can — and should be — in a constant state of improvement.

Make it more better.

The idea of constant improvement notched perfectly with the idea of version control. If I want to always be trying new things, I need a safety net to CMD‑Z the things that don’t work out. I threw all my coding pride out the window and started with the Git basics. “I’m smart enough to figure it out,” had to take a seat while I dusted off the instruction manual and read the baby steps. I’m still not completely using Git correctly for branching and merging, but I have the confidence to break things in my code and undo them.

At the same time I was starting to crawl with Git, I was lucky to stumble across Codio. Before, I bounced around edit­ing code in Dreamweaver or the built-in theme edi­tor in Word­Press. Some­times I just used the file browser pro­vided by what­ever host­ing com­pany the project was on. I didn’t have an integrated development environment (IDE) and settling on one place to code and work has been a huge organizing force in my process.

Codio is web based and fully integrated with Git and Github. It’s liberating to no longer be shack­led to a local pro­gram or files. I’m just moving stuff from one spot on the Internet to another. This also has the benefit of forcing me to learn the dark arts of com­mit, push, pull, and branch. Codio’s other integrations with the software I was interested in learning — Sass and Grunt — made it easier to start learning about them. Of course I screwed up at first — fourteen commits before Grunt was producing the right output. And it could still get better.

The Biggest Game Changer

As cliché as it sounds, if you feel like you need to do something, just do it. If you need to use [insert tool, programming language, new-fangled boondoggle here], start using it. Screw it up, read more documentation, copy some code, screw up again, get one tiny thing to work, screw up again, rinse, repeat. Along the way those tiny things that work start to stick and that’s called learning.

I’ve learned a lot the last few months both technically in my code and in my approach to thinking about what I do. It’s also made me appreciate others sharing their learning on the Internet. Hopefully, I can contribute a small piece and inspire others to make things more better. I leave you with a few of the key articles that helped teach me the last few months and bring about my process changes.

• Start Where You Are
• The Git Book
• Grunt for People Who Think Things Like Grunt are Weird and Hard
• Get Up And Running With Grunt
• Building with Grunt

The post The Redesign: Part Two appeared first on SpareType.

Methodology

All numbers come from Firebug 2.0.3 running on Firefox 31. Times above are the average of three tests for each scenario.

Takeaways

Already on the to-do list is to implement a build process with Grunt. That will take care of lowering the request numbers once the multiple JS and CSS files are combined. It should also trim a few kilobytes once it uglifies everything.

Second, and more important, is upgrading hosting. The shared hosting on Bluehost is great. I’ve never had any problems, tons of features, and things work wonderful for the price. Now that I’m getting serious and looking at the numbers, performance is where you take the hit. Waiting for a response from the server varied wildly with the quickest response taking 837 milliseconds and averaging 2.69 seconds.

Not a bad starting point but it will definitely get better.

The post Site Performance Starting Point appeared first on SpareType.

Countable.js — a 1KB function to add live paragraph‑, word- and character-counting to an HTML element

Harry Roberts has put together excellent guidelines for writing CSS

I’m pretty big into WordPress but I might have to fire up an instance of this Pagekit CMS and give it a try. I certainly dig the design.

DesignCuts has a $29 font bundle for sale for the next few days. All twelve fonts are very handmade and roughed up.

Input — a flexible system of fonts for coding. 168 styles of width and thickness. Free of charge for private use.

Awesome portfolio of a fellow Auburn grad — Ryan Lundy

The post This Week’s Tabs appeared first on SpareType.

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New Identity and Logo

I designed the original SpareType logo in 2008 as part of my college senior project. Now that I am using the name and brand for my freelancing career, it was time for a redesign. I wanted something so clean, simple, and easy that there wasn’t even design there. There’s the one typographical nod with the ‘TY’ ligature. Everything else about the logo screams plain and uneventful.

The idea is that the content is the focus. The logo and identity are simply frames for showcasing content. Artwork, client projects, and type design all have enough personality. They don’t need a fancy identity branding them. They brand themselves. The work should also build the brand of SpareType more than the logo.

Color

Rethinking the color scheme was a big step that set a lot of progress in motion. Stepping back from the golden yellow [#FEC34D] and using it as an accent in a 60–30-10 palette helped a ton. There was lots of tweaking to settle on a 60% percent color. It needed to complement so that meant the blue family. It needed to be dark but not completely black. It should be duller so that accents popped. The winner ended up being #3C4D56. It’s a great base and doesn’t attract attention to itself. Rounding out the palette is a light grey #9CA5A9 that I haven’t used much because white has worked so well.

The Jumble

In putting together business supplies and profile headers, I did find the logo too simple and needed to add another element to the identity. I’ve always loved this typography jumble and it was the perfect element to round out the identity and provide some interest in situations that needed a little more. It’s complexity contrasts with the simplicity of the rest of the design and provides a balancing point. It isn’t on the website yet, but I’m thinking larger screen sizes might see a parallax version of the jumble on the right hand margin.

Website

The idea from the logo — a simple frame for content — guided the design of the website. All it needs to be is a simple structure for displaying work and thoughts. Focusing on the content meant perfect typography for reading and plenty of white space so images could stand out. Similar to the identity, a lot of progress happened quickly once the color palette took shape. I’ll have more on the website design in parts two and three where I’ll talk about some of the coding details and how I’m changing my process. Look for those posts later this week!

The post The Redesign: Part One appeared first on SpareType.

George Carlin (and Lenny Bruce) would be proud of us. In comments to the FCC, citizens used the combined list of suggestive, raunchy, rude, crude, lewd, and off-color terms a total of 8,289 times. Here’s a detailed breakdown, plus a couple of bonus words that are sure to offend the bureaucrats who have to slog through our anger.

My opinion on the matter is that all traffic should be treated equally. It’s all the same — ones and zeros, bytes and packets. Build and expand the infrastructure to keep pace with demand. Plan and factor those costs into doing business. Price services accordingly. It is amazing how simple that formula is, and yet how easily internet service providers screw it up.

The post Net Neutrality Comments appeared first on SpareType.

I’m still leaning towards wireframe.cc because of it’s minimalism. I like to have the bones and blocks, then move to coding a working prototype. I would get bogged down in Moqups trying to overwork things that I could do when coding.

But if you like to be further down the user interface waterfall — closer to a prototype than a wire frame — Moqups is a good solution. It’s quick to setup, quick to add elements in, and provides more options for customizing and tweaking elements. This gets you something more like the end product. There’s a lot of options that need at least a free account to work; that includes saving, sharing, and exporting your project. All in all a good option for mockups, just not my workflow.

The post Moqups — Another HTML5 App for Wireframing appeared first on SpareType.

Game About Squares — Simple, minimalist brain teaser of a game

Greater Than or Equal To — Wonderful concept for a writer’s website, executed perfectly

Some details on Github’s CSS by Mark Otto

Chris Coyier pulls back the curtain on Codepen’s CSS

Dave Rupert talks about responsive web design bloat, then increases his site’s performance.

Wordmark.it — Have a lot of fonts on your computer? Ever wonder what a word would like in every font loaded on your computer? Boom, problem solved.

VIDE — jQuery plugin for video backgrounds

A visualization of creatives’ salaries from a Designer News survey

Elliot Jay Stocks is consolidating his web typography knowledge

A dissenting opinion about Monotype buying FontShop

And we finish with this expletive laden video of every Samuel L. Jackson Mother######.

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I like that it adds just enough polish over my hand scribbled mockups but is still fast and easy to work with.

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A redesign of the site has been in the works. It’s been a slow process as I’ve also been retooling my workflow. I’m writing a post about that process and learning new things which will go up with the new design. I’ll also have a post breaking down the design as it includes a re-branding with new logo and focus. A few more final touches and it will be ready to go.

A redesigned SpareType

My attention was also diverted from the website as I focused on opening a Society6 shop for some artwork. It was a great outlet for making stuff and putting it out into the world, which seems to be a constant nagging feeling I have lately.

SpareType on Society6

And then there’s the firehouse of my RSS reader, that I still need to learn to control. The constant inflow of freebies, techniques, articles, showcases, and more is entertaining and informative. But it doesn’t get work done.

So I’m putting myself on notice. Get more work done. Now, back to work.

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A new user interface — codenamed Australis — is in the pipeline for Firefox. Looking good.

#WorkCanWait — find that work/life balance

An easy to follow introduction to CSS flexbox.

53 percent of the time Waldo is hiding within… (via Kottke)

ish. — a pretty sweet viewport resizer. Hay! mode for the win. (via Sidebar)

This is a motherfucking website. (again via Sidebar)

Need a little inspiration for a badge design? Abduzeedo has pulled a few great ones together.

Adam Mottau — nice, super clean portfolio site

Another simple portfolio site with awesome interaction and animation — Bradley Haynes

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BETTER EMAIL BRAULIO from Thundertiger on Vimeo.

Some fun posters, cards, and stickers with great type — Fifty Five Hi’s

Type Fight — Two letters enter, one letter leaves.

Colin Tierney — Awesome portfolio with some great lettering

84 high quality scans of wood type alphabets

How well do you know your brand blues? (And other hues)

Harpoon — Freelance financial planning and metrics looks promising, along with a good newsletter to other freelancing articles.

5 Signs It’s Time to Make the Switch From Employee to Freelancer (via Harpoon newsletter)

Good article, even better design. This is web journalism taking advantage of technology to tell a story.

I’m thinking about running my own Dropbox-style server with ownCloud. Another promising piece of software to check out.

Christmas is right around the corner, maybe you need some free festive icons.

Two javascript plugins for drawing charts — chart.js uses HTML5 canvas while Pizza takes an unordered list and produces an SVG

Typesense is a simple, responsive and content-centric WordPress theme from Mathieu Mayer-Mazzoli.

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Brand

Foundry : Lián Types

Designer(s) : Maximiliano Sproviero

Cost: $37

It’s no mistake the sample above is all about food; Brand is the perfect packaging script for tasty morsels. It has variety with OpenType ligatures and alternates to help it grab attention, but legibility and readability remain high when glancing on a store shelf or advertisement. There are also inline and shaded versions that would work great for warm, inviting invitations.

Braxton

Foundry : Fontfabric

Designer(s) : Evgeny Tkhorzhevsky

Cost: $95

On the other end of the script spectrum is the pointed, calligraphic Braxton by Evgeny Tkhorzhevsky. Available in five weights, the deliberate style of the strokes give the letters strength. However, the repetition of the angle and vertical stroke weight destroy readability in any kind of longer sentence setting. With a few extra ligatures and stylistic alternates, Braxton would work well in packaging or an identity system.

Levi Rebrushed

Foundry : Levi Szekeres

Designer(s) : Levi Szekeres

Cost: FREE for personal use

Similar to Braxton, Levi Rebrushed is built on very deliberate strokes. The rough, painter style isn’t for every project, but for the right grunge, punk, or edgy poster it is perfect. You will also need to check that you have all the glyphs you need as this is far from a professional font with full language support.

Brush Up

Foundry : Pintassilgo Prints

Designer(s) : Ricardo Marcin, Erica Jung

Cost: $24

Sticking with brush style typefaces, next is Brush Up by the duo at Pintassilgo Prints. This hand-painted type contains three variations of each letter, two variations of numerals, a couple of extra punctuation glyphs, and even a few squiggles. Its style floats between grunge, hipster, and playful depending on how it is paired with imagery and even its color. That makes it a very versatile tool when needing a hand made touch.

Sketchnote

Foundry : Delve Fonts

Designer(s) : Mike Rohde

Cost: $99

We’re sticking with hand made for the last three typefaces on this month’s round up. First up is Sketchnote from Mike Rohde. Mike is the guy behind the whole sketchnote idea and he even wrote a book about it. When he needed a hand-drawn typeface to set his book, he captured scans of his own handwriting and digitized them. The edges keep the slightly rough texture of ink on paper while the strokes show the slight variation of the human hand as it moves across a page. Great ideas and a great typeface.

Charmante

Foundry : Juraj Chrastina

Designer(s) : Juraj Chrastina

Cost: $59

The second hand-drawn typeface on this month’s list is Charmante. It’s elongated proportions give it a ton more character and quirk. Shown above for K‑S the bold style adds even more interesting features by unevenly increasing only certain stroke weights. All of it combines to make a charming, casual font for invitations, greetings, and coffee shop menus.

Lango Px

Foundry : Pixilate

Designer(s) : Kemie Guaida

Cost: $24

Last up this is month is Lango Px. This hand-drawn typeface is available in four weights; it has tons of bounce and playfulness in its tall, lean letters. Its casual and dare I say an excellent replacement for when a client demands Comic Sans on a project. Lango Px would also be perfect for baby announcements, children’s birthday cards, and other juvenile pieces. Pixilate also has several other handwriting style fonts worth checking out.

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A great behind the scenes by Elliot Jay Stocks on Digest’s typography & grid.

Two great typography Tumblrs — Type Novel and Type Hunting

What level web developer are you? Find out at Dungeons & Developers

How about circles in web design? First is circular navigation from CSS transforms.

Then, circular hover effects from CSS transitions. (via Veerle)

Glitched out jpegs are totally a thing right now. (via Sidebar)

How much money is your million dollar idea going to make you? Find out at What do you stand to make?

I was totally looking for something like this last year. I didn’t Google the right keywords. Network Link Conditioner

You can always have more icons. 50 Icon Sets with Stroked Icons via Iconfinder.

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Macaw Sneak Peek from Macaw on Vimeo.

Want a quick cheat sheet of CSS3 Animations? Here it is.

Speaking of animation, a nice example of a fixed header bar that scales on scrolling.

A genius UI concept, move loading indicators into the action that triggered it.

More code — Slide and push menus that appear from off page.

Even more code — Gridism by Coby Chapple. A simple, responsive CSS grid.

Matthew Butterick has published a web-based book — Butterick’s Practical Typography. Great tips (or reminders) of what good typography means. (via Sidebar)

Another Sidebar find — The Hipster Logo Design Guide. Six steps to the perfect logo.

Similar advice from Webdesigner Depot — 12 Signs You’re a Trendy Designer. Beware…

Are long shadows the next phase of flat design?

Heritage UI vectors by Ryan Putnam. Really, you should check out everything he does. Rype Arts, Vector Mill, Vectips. Prolific would be a good descriptive word.

The most minimalist WordPress theme I’ve ever seen — Clutterless by One Page Love

Let’s finish with another video, Underlight — Ale Paul meets Tomás García by Author’s Bay.

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But her love for Sully is, after all, the crux of the entire Pixar universe. The love of different people of different ages and even different species finding ways to live on Earth without destroying it because of a lust for energy. And that is the Pixar Theory.

And what would a unified theory of something be without time travel.

An issue some have found is that this doesn’t properly explain what happened to humans. I haven’t settled on a theory I really like yet, but I’m leaning towards the idea that monsters and machines eventually forgot that they need humans and got rid of them again, not realizing their mistake until all humans died out, leading to the necessity for time travel.

Or it’s all coincidence of reusing artwork and wire frames. I like the theory better.

(via The Verge)

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Adrift from Simon Christen on Vimeo.

A day in the life of a type designer — a little to the left, a little to the right

Ready to Inspire Conference — design, type, code (also check out last year’s videos)

Pen and ink lettering — quality, robust, serendipity, tactile

screensiz.es — great reference for width, height, density, and aspect ratio

430+ FREE storyboard illustrations — Not for commercial use, but still a great inspiration for sketching

Adam Whitcroft — check out the couple of projects he has released

colourco.de — an awesome way to build color palettes

Designers Like to Complain — love the tumblr theme

The Secret Handshake — helpful, inspirational tips for creative individuals

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2880 x 1800 (Retina dis­play Mac­book Pro)
2560 x 1440
1920 x 1200
1440 x 900
1280 x 1024
1024 x 768
640 x 1136 (iPhone 5)

2880 x 1800 (Retina dis­play Mac­book Pro)
2560 x 1440
1920 x 1200
1440 x 900
1280 x 1024
1024 x 768
640 x 1136 (iPhone 5)

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I started to write this post after seeing the announcement of a new MailChimp interface being unveiled for release in a few weeks. What caught my attention — besides the design — was that the word “flat” appears nowhere in the announcement. The rumor mill is whispering that Apple is going flat too. I’m going to place a bet that none of the presentations at Apple’s WWDC are going to describe iOS 7 as “flat” either. The bandwagon is taking on passengers and filling up fast.

Now, I know MailChimp and Apple are going to do it right. They’ve put in the research and user testing to refine their iterations and get to a happy place. The problem is all the other people who start hacking away at their website or application trying to chase the look but not completely understanding it. That’s a bold statement; I guess I need an example to back that up. Oh look, here’s one.

Windows 8 vs. Office 365

The instigator for all the flat design hullabaloo was the release of Windows 8 in late 2012. Gradients out, drop shadows out, intricate icons out, cluttered menus and settings out. Focus squarely on the content and drop everything else. Windows 8 got it right. Now other departments at Microsoft are realigning behind the flagship and some are not so successful. Look at Office 365 and its 2013 updates. Sure, it’s flatter, but is it better?

Here is the admin portal before and after. This is a complex screen with lots of options for managing a lot of functionality so it’s a tough starting point anyway. Before is nothing to praise as the pinnacle of web design, but it still had more definition and hierarchy than the new design. Getting rid of backgrounds and using two colors doesn’t do anything to help the structure; it actually hurts. The new design even took a step backwards in terms of responsiveness causing horizontal scrolling at 1280px wide.

Here’s another example, this time the settings screen for the calendar. There are a few checkboxes and dropdowns for customizing how your calendar looks, how reminders should work, and how to help automate some tasks. Spacing is haphazard. What’s this hierarchy you speak about? All of it blurs into a jumbled mess of lines as you try to find somewhere to look first. Is this flat enough yet?

They Call It Clutter

The idea of simplicity and deleting clutter is an admirable goal; just make sure you know what is clutter and what is necessary. That’s always been a design challenge no matter what trend is popular at the moment. Chasing after flat design can be a slippery slope to messy interfaces. Be careful what you cut and don’t become too flat.

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