February 2012
5 posts
Distance →
Speaking of magazines I’ve (pre-)ordered, you could do worse than supporting Distance on Kickstarter. Distance is a new quarterly publication featuring long-form essays about design and technology, published by Nick Disabato of Cadence & Slang’s fame.
There’s a lot of writing about the hows and whats of design, but we wonder where the whys are. So much of the writing...
Offscreen Magazine →
New good looking 112-page print magazine about people who make digital products:
Welcome to Offscreen, a new, collectible print magazine with an in-depth look at the life and work of people that create websites and apps. We want to tell the less obvious human stories of creativity, passion and hard work that hide behind every interface.
Besides six interviews with creative minds of...
Kickstarter's $2M →
Today, in five hours, two different Kickstarter projects — Elevation Dock and Tim Schafer’s1 designed Double Fine Adventure — reached $1M in funding. I backed Tim’s game, hoping for an iOS or Mac version.
It’s a major highlight for Kickstarter, which has been breaking the publisher barrier between creators and consumers for some time now. I believe the world will now start...
Musings on Preprocessing →
A few years after trying CSS Preprocessors for the first time (back then, the only one was SASS), I recently began using them again1. It took me just a few hours to reach the same conclusions that Chris Coyer reached.
For a long time I thought: I write CSS everyday. I know CSS pretty well. My workflow is fine. I’m productive. Why does anything need to change?
The real answer is that...
Interview on showcasePT podcast →
(This interview is in portuguese)
A few months ago, Pedro Telles, the host of showcasePT, a podcast about portuguese people doing techie things, invited us for an interview about Listary, which is now posted.
I had the pleasure of spending 30 minutes talking about my background, the goals behind Listary, how people may use it, the crowded productivity market, the reliance on Simplenote, why we...
December 2011
1 post
Faith
While exchanging emails with a friend about doing our own thing, I asked myself:
Why the hell do I make Listary? Why am I putting so much time and effort into something that, in the end, doesn’t make enough money?”
This is what I concluded:
I know we’re doing something good and learning a lot.
Lots of people way smarter than us, whose work I admire, keep telling us they like...
November 2011
4 posts
Share the Fun →
There’s a new iPod touch TV ad from Apple. It’s interesting. Here’s what it shows:
iMessage
Playing a game
Game Center
Playing a game
Recording a video
Sharing a photo on Twitter
FaceTime
Multitasking (with iMessage)
Music
iMessage (yes, again)
It’s a great ad, but what’s most interesting about it is that the Music app shows up for just one second...
Back To Work #41, “Carpal Tunnel Diem” →
Merlin Mann:
There’s a very unkind phrase that I’ve actually applied to myself. The phrase “poser” or “poseur”.
This is where you take on all the trappings and all of the affectations of something, and where you end up doing some pantomime version of something that’s theoretically interesting to you.
That could be an artist, it could be an activist, it could be a...
I'm going to be a teacher
Starting next January, I’m joining the teaching staff of a postgraduate course on Web Design, here in Portugal, at ESAD1.
It’s a year-long course that will teach the web to a small group of students, three days a week, with evening classes. We will teach the web of 2011, with an up-to-date curriculum comprised of topics such as digital culture, the history of the medium, designing...
In real life →
Short but fine piece by Mandy Brown:
We have this phrase—“in real life”—to distinguish between the life that goes on in our pockets and the one that happens on the street. […] But the obvious corollary to a “faux” life grates more and more each day. Is life online necessarily less real?
October 2011
2 posts
On Leaving
In times of trouble, I always come back to this quote:
No matter where you were born, where you have lived, how long you have been away, this is the only country that is yours. It’s a God-awful mess right now, has been for awhile, and probably will be for awhile longer, but that doesn’t make it yours to desert. It makes it yours to fix.
From the always lovely Pictory.
Jobs' Theory
After reading many pieces about Steve Jobs’ passing, I couldn’t stop thinking this: what I’m thankful for isn’t any product that he helped to create, it’s that he proved that shipping products with great care and attention to detail is not just a theory. It’s possible.
June 2011
1 post
I had a conversation with a lovable bastard →
A week ago, a friend of mine, Ricardo Melo, told me he wanted to interview me regarding a tweet I posted. What? An interview? I said. But I put the weird feeling aside and agreed to do it. It was more like a good conversation you’d have at a bar. But online. With no drinks. Well, I know I wasn’t drinking, can’t be sure about him. No strangers nearby either. That changes things,...
May 2011
1 post
Running Towards →
I used to draw pictures and there are many that wish I would still draw pictures. Maybe I will. Probably. But, I have a new job. It is to make these words. There are those that say that by not making these pictures, I am devaluing myself, that I am some how running away from the thing that made them like my work in the first place. They’re right in saying that I’ve abandoned making images for a...
April 2011
2 posts
Ten things Austin Kleon wishes he was told when he... →
It’s one of my theories that when people give you advice, they’re really just talking to themselves in the past. This list is me talking to a previous version of myself.
I like these kind of things. Some slap you in the face, some make you nod in oh-yes-I-have-been-there-too agreement. Most of all, they make you think (if you’re willing to). Like Austin says, your mileage may vary.
...
Tweeting and Writing and Deflating Like a Balloon →
One can’t go too deep in a stunted format. But still, it kind of feels like writing because my fingers are flying, there is that sound of the keyboard, that row of letters getting longer, that momentum of the cursor pushing right. But, it’s not the same as lengthier writing, because it doesn’t necessarily take us anywhere.
Frank is trying to tell me something.
February 2011
2 posts
The Manual →
The Manual is a new limited-run print magazine published three times a year. Each issue will have six substantial, beautifully illustrated feature articles, along with additional rich and unexpected bonuses. Challenging, contemplative, playful, and visionary, the articles focus on bringing a greater depth and maturity to our craft and profession: design on the web.
However, you won’t find...
Jef and Aza →
Aza Raskin posted a sad but beautiful heart touching story about the last gift his father gave him:
Three days before he passed, Jef had an accident. He needed to use the restroom, so—stooped under his arm—I supported his weight as he hobble to his business. There was something quietly unsettling about escorting my father to a toilet that had been taller than me when we first moved into the...
January 2011
1 post
Little Big Details →
A collection of wonderful little details in UI design that you may never even noticed, but when you do, you start appreciating the designer’s work a lot more. Plus, they often link to a blog post with more rationale behind the design decisions. Now I know how wonderful Google Chrome’s tab-closing behavior really is.
November 2010
6 posts
Jeffrey Zeldman on awards →
The day after winning three awards at the .net Awards 2010, Zeldman writes:
Our industry needs real design discussion, peer review, and recognition. I believe in the .net Awards, as their partnership with A List Apart attests. They are the best our industry has.
They are. I just think they’re not good enough. Then Zeldman continues talking to his friend who thinks he should not accept...
Smashing Magazine, Blog of the Year 2010 →
The .net Magazine Awards 2010 ceremony was held this evening in London, and Smashing Magazine took the prize for Blog of the Year. There’s no better way to say it: What a joke.
Let me recall what I wrote before about the .net Awards:
The .net Awards aren’t paying enough respect to the amazing work of web professionals. What’s interesting is that they could really be celebrating the...
“The” Project →
An interesting niche blog:
Wordmarks from a private stock of predigital lettering scoured from low resolution archives, personally converted to bezier outlines by Robb for use by today’s graphic designers who appreciate the wonky shapes of yesteryear.
Some of the wordmarks are particularly lovely, like the one used in the ad for 1935’s “The Bride of Frankenstein”. The lettering for...
Fifty and Fifty →
Fifty and Fifty is a collective, curated project where fifty individual designers are invited to represent their home state by illustrating it’s state motto.
Contributors include Aaron Draplin, Bobby McKenna and Jessica Hische. Looks promising.
Wings →
Coudal Partners made a video of the process behind Raven’s Wing, the latest release of their COLORS series of Field Notes. On the outside it’s a just a beautiful black memo book. But I highly suggest you watch the video and notice the great care that everyone puts into this process, the old machinery that embosses the covers or the workers that manually wrap the 3-Packs with a...
On the taste of our community and the .net Awards
A List Apart, Abduzeedo, Blog.SpoonGraphics, Boagworld, CSS-Tricks, HTML5 Doctor, Smashing Magazine, Soh Tanaka’s Blog, ThinkVitamin, Tuts+ Network. If you’re part of the Web Design and Development communities, these may sound familiar — they were the nominees in the “Blog of the Year” category of the 2010 edition of the .net Awards.
After seeing this list I immediately thought “Seriously?...
October 2010
1 post
Publishing vs. Making Money →
I’ve been a long time user of services such as Instapaper and Readability, and that’s because it’s so hard to read on the web. Small and bad typography. Loads of ugly and irrelevant advertising. Rows of “Share this” buttons in every post. Overally, really bad design.
It seems to me that if people wasted their time on creating better content and less on making their...
September 2010
1 post
Seriously, go to Build. It rocks. →
It was November 2009 when I arrived in Belfast for my first conference, Build. I wasn’t sure what to expect. And well, it completely blew my mind. It was amazing. I clearly remember Tim telling me:
After your first conference, you get hooked and can’t stop going to conferences.
He was so right. Conferences rock. It’s worth the money and time you spend. Well, you should go...
August 2010
6 posts
Frank's advice →
Frank Chimero sums everything he knows as advice to graphic design students. This one was particularly interesting to me:
If you can’t draw as well as someone, or use the software as well, or if you do not have as much money to buy supplies, or if you do not have access to the tools they have, beat them by being more thoughtful. Thoughtfulness is free and burns on time and empathy.
And this...
Frank Chimero's “The Back Side of Your Gullet” →
A series of posts by designer, illustrator and teacher Frank Chimero, about visual culture, consumption, and nourishment. It is wonderfully written, and it’s easily one of the best things I’ve read all year.
It’s about the unceasing and unstoppable quest for greatness, the never-ending and quasi-neurotic search for fun and delight in consumption and living, the disappointment...
Devour →
Devour is my new favorite website, featuring YouTube videos curated by the Uncrate folks. It’s all there: independent chocolate makers and denim companies, great songs with original videos, beautiful games, song mashups, two-handed sword commercials, lovely everyday images or just plain weird but awesome stuff.
I’m checking Devour everyday and not missing a bit. And so should you....
Layer Tennis, Season Three →
The new season of Layer Tennis is upon us:
Announcing two live matches (and two Baldwins) this Friday afternoon to start the season. LYT veteren Armin Vit takes on newcomer Matt Stevens with Matthew Baldwin providing the layer-by-layer analysis and motionographer/designer Nick Campbell plays illustrator/designer Aaron Scamihorn with Rosecrans Baldwin in the booth.
I’m already looking...
Virb.com, Pt. II →
Virb.com, once a social network competitor to MySpace, was recently relaunched as way to create and mantain simple websites. I used it for a bit. It’s very simple, the limited number of features works great, the copy is brilliant and design is, well, gorgeous to say the least. It’s such a pleasure to use that I wish I couldn’t make websites just to have an excuse to do it.
It...
Holiday →
What is all this stuff for any way? Is it even worth it? Maybe I should do something with my life and teach kids how to add and read or about evolutionary biology, and let someone else worry about how that button looks on that website.
Frank Chimero on his love-hate relationship with design. Worth your time.
July 2010
8 posts
A Real Web Design Application →
Jason Santa Maria posted an amazing piece where he talks about his design process, compares web design applications and makes a wishlist for a better one. Please read it before going on.
For me, the most interesting debate in his article is also an old one: designing in the browser vs. designing with a desktop application. But Jason has a very interesting proposal for an hybrid app that would...
Ten thousand bytes →
Today, An Event Apart and MIX Online announced 10K Apart. It’s a contest for web developers and designers, and the rules are simple:
Create a client-side web app, HTML5 and CSS3 are encouraged.
Make it work in IE9 Dev Preview, Firefox and Safari 5 or Chrome 5.
Make everything under 10KB.
jQuery, Prototype or Typekit don’t count against the 10K.
Entries can be submitted until...
Faruk Ateş reviews “Introducing HTML5” →
Faruk reviews another book on HTML5, Introducing HTML5, written by two of the HTML5 Doctors, Bruce Lawson and Remy Sharp. Faruk tells us:
The book continues with the new HTML5 Forms, serving as a nice segue into the more JavaScript-reliant HTML5 Audio and Video, before it hunkers down on the real new technologies in HTML5, starting with Canvas and going all the way to the Messages, Web Workers...
Raison d'être
Albeit this isn’t the inaugural post here at The Pilcrow, I want to tell you why it came to life.
Giving back
Since I started working on the web full-time, I’ve spent a considerable amount of time learning new stuff and became a more knowledgeable and opinionated individual in the process. The web is not only my workplace, it’s also my library.
I’ve learned a great...
New Adventures In Web Design →
Hosted by Simon Collison, New Adventures In Web Design is a new web design conference taking place next January in Nottingham.
At only £80 (Early Bird), and featuring an amazing line-up consisting of Andy Clarke, Brendan Dawes, Veerle Pieters, Mark Boulton, Dan Rubin, Elliot Jay Stocks, Jon Tan, Sarah Parmenter, Tim Van Damme and Greg Wood, this is one I won’t miss. And neither should...
Responsive Web Design →
This excellent article on A List Apart #306 by Ethan Marcotte has been linked everywhere, but there’s no such thing as link too much to this kind of thing.
It’s already one of the flagship articles on A List Apart, one of those that will pass the test of time, like Taming Lists and Faux Columns. In a few years, it’ll still be one of the most important and influential articles...
Good things come in small packages
Since the twitter account for A Book Apart was created, I was thrilled. A List Apart has done a lot for everyone working on the web, so its metamorphosis to book form should be awesome. A few months later, A Book Apart and Jeremy Keith announced HTML5 For Web Designers, the first book in the series, and I didn’t immediately pre-order it. To be honest, I wasn’t sure the book was worth...
The New Gentleman’s Journal →
Grain & Gram is a gorgeous journal featuring fine gentleman and their crafts. Worth a visit for the typography and photography alone.
Via Web Standardistas.