05.30.12 |
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There’s a lot of wireframing tips floating around online but they rarely focus on just web applications. It’s cool to see that kind of web focus over on Intercom’s design blog. Pay special attention to point three which focuses on speed and exploration:
If you can’t produce concepts quickly, then you’re working at the wrong fidelity. If your wire-framing serves only to deliver a grayscale version of what you’ve already decided you’re building then you’re wasting everyones time.
05.30.12 |
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Having shot hundreds of shots via Instagram, I’ve gotten burned out on their strong 60s and 70s esque filters. Results are fast but crude – it often feels like applying a sledgehammer to a job that requires a scalpel. In response I tried a lot of alternatives but settled on VSCO Cam has been my new “go to” choice for post processing my iPhone shots. It’s not as fast as other processing alternatives, but I love the app’s much subtler filter effects, especially the three options in black and white.
For many VSCO Cam can be an all in one photo solution – it loads to take a shot in less than half the time of Camera+ or Camera Awesome. I still found the actual shooting options pretty bare bones, so I tend to shoot in Camera Awesome, and when I have the time later import shots directly into VSCO. Recommended for 99 cents in the App Store.
05.29.12 |
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Marcelo Somers:
Facebook advertising doesn’t work because they focus on showing you ads based on who you are, not what problem you are trying to solve.
Ironically enough, Google is running around afraid of Facebook, but their ads have been better targeted all along because they are shown at a moment where one has a job that needs to be done.
Great point. I’ve always felt Facebook’s advertising wasn’t fully effective, but couldn’t articulate why succinctly. No more.
05.29.12 |
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Thorough and excellent analysis of this week’s Mad Men by Salon writer Nelle Engoron (spoilers ahead):
But it’s Joan’s story that sadly underlines the circumscribed state of women, circa 1966. Having kept the firm running smoothly for 13 years, she deserves to be made a junior partner on those merits. But instead she must sleep her way into the position, and not even with a powerful man she desires like Roger (who seems never to have considered rewarding her in that fashion) but with a repulsive man who sees her as a pair of breasts between which he symbolically hangs a tiny jeweled chain.
It was an extremely sad, almost tragic episode that, as Engoron focuses on throughout her piece, centered almost entirely on feminism and women in the 1960s. Christina Hendricks deserves major praise for her acting this week; I suspect when we look back at Mad Men series highlights her work in “The Other Woman” will stand out.
05.29.12 |
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I can’t put my finger on why, but lately I’ve been skipping a lot of Smashing Magazine articles. That changed with Dan Reynold’s breakdown of body fonts. Very true to Smashing form, Reynolds’ coverage is exhaustive. A few times it becomes too exhaustive (I have doubts on the effectiveness of font ‘apertures’), but this is awesome stuff. I knew a lot of the basics (e.g. go for moderate stroke contrast, higher x-heights), but there’s a lot of info here I haven’t seen anywhere else.
05.29.12 |
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Designer Pat Dryburgh’s much passed around account of Photoshop upgrade woes is totally worth the attention it’s getting. His praise of small shops like Panic is what really sells his opinion:
How is it that a small, independent Mac development shop can make this experience so incredibly pleasing, while Adobe—a company with over 9,000 employees and 30 years of experience—can’t process an order quicker than 24 hours?
Wait… Photoshop CS4 just crashed. I think I’ve got my answer.
I find myself increasingly in the situation Pat did. The Adobe Creative Suite is awesome yet bloated, crash-prone, and overkill for at least half of what I throw at it. Pixelmator and [Sketch] have been logical next steps.
05.25.12 |
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I started listening to the excellent Battleship Pretension film podcast a few months ago. Hosts Tyler Smith and David Bax are really solid and go deep on movies in a way I rarely see elsewhere. They’ve now expanded their reach to videos as well over at Youtube. Nice discussion topics here averaging no more than ten minutes along with good production values.
05.25.12 |
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I dig really small, specialized web tools that do one job well. Degreees, a new temperature app, nails that pretty much perfectly. Nice job by the Finely production team here. Just head over and allow the site to scan your location. You’ll get the forecast for your area rendered with lovely CSS3.
05.24.12 |
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Keith Stuart at The Guardian writes on plot problems in Max Payne 3:
But here’s a problem. Throughout the game’s beautifully constructed narrative sequences, we see Payne going through agonies of recrimination and remorse…When the game begins he’s effectively drinking himself to death in his filthy New Jersey apartment. He desperately seeks some form of salvation.
…Yet he is also an accomplished killer, capable of gunning down a room full of “enemies” in a matter of seconds.
Much like an article I linked to several weeks ago, Stuart identifies an issue running through many modern games: You craft a complex, conflicted or “good” character in the main storyline cutscenes, but have no trouble murdering thousands of bad guys during the action. How do we reconcile these issues?
05.24.12 |
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The Gameological Society, a new gaming spinoff of The A.V. Club, interviews game designers on the challenges of establishing setting. There’s analysis here of three different games, each with widely different aesthetic and mood: Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Yakuza and Final Fantasy XII.
I especially liked the breakdown of Deux Ex’s futuristic Detroit setting, on setting the right balance of freedom for the player character:
The goal, then, isn’t to make the city big, but to make it seem big. It’s all about how you wrestle out that illusion of urbanity. “The player must feel like he has freedom of exploration, that he can be creative with the environment,” Jacques-Belletête said. “At the same time, we need to set limits and boundaries in the world and these boundaries must feel ‘natural.’ We think a lot about what these boundaries will be.”
The boundaries can be superficial. A police barricade, a boarded up door, a chain link fence that’s just too high to jump. Those boundaries can be masked, though, by any number of perceptual means. “A great trick to make the city feel bigger and livelier than it actually is with the sound. Having dogs bark in the distance, the echoes of police sirens, and people talking and babies crying when you get near windows of apartment buildings. The streets of our game don’t have cars moving in them. But with each opportunity we had, you can see moving cars in the distance—on overpasses, on the other side of fences, and other such places.”