06.06.12 |
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Kotaku’s Luke Plunkett recapped the winners and losers from day two of E3. Nintendo’s Wii U hardware came out as a clear loser:
It’s got some promise, but we’ve also got some concerns. The battery on the controllers only lasts for 3-5 hours. At most. Use two pads at once and the framerate for games drops by half. Throw in the fact that nothing shown this week looks anything remotely like a “next gen” game and the Wii U as a piece of hardware isn’t off to the brightest start. At least some of the games are coming along.
Graphics that barely match the current gen XBox 360 and PS3. 3-5 hours on a charge. Not good.
06.05.12 |
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Designer/writer Stephanie Rieger, talking about her frustrations while browsing the Camper web site:
All this wouldn’t be so bad if each shoe collection didn’t spawn yet another “Please wait” message, and yet another 20 second wait before i’ve even seen the shoes (…but that’s what the awesome copywriting is for…a collection called Flexibility, Together or Cushioning must surely be worth the wait!)
Eventually it becomes unbearable. Where is a good mobile site when you need one?
Like Jeffrey Zeldman noted in his oft quoted article several weeks ago, if we don’t design our content to be easily consumed, we’re toast – users will search for alternative consumption methods (e.g. Instapaper, PDFs, competitor’s web sites) almost immediately.
06.05.12 |
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Oliver Reichenstein:
The size of your body text doesn’t depend on your personal preference. It depends on reading distance. Since in general computers are further away than books, the metric size of a desktop typeface needs to be bigger than the sizes used for printed matter…
Graphic designers without Web design experience are surprised how huge good body text on the web is in comparison to printed matter. Mind you, it’s only big if you compare it side to side, not if you compare it in perspective.
I’m far from being a typographic genius but I’ve argued for years that most websites have their body text far too small. Mr. Reichenstein just provided the ammo I needed, along with a great article on web font styling.
06.04.12 |
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Designer Dan Cederholm interviewed by The Great Discontent:
Maybe it goes back to not being formally trained, but I always had this inferiority complex. I thought I was going to be outed as a non-designer and that someone would say, “Wait, he’s not really a designer. He’s not part of this club.” That isn’t true. The difference between someone who is a designer and someone who isn’t is simply that a person who is a designer has done it. My advice is don’t get hung up on labels or position or titles. It doesn’t just happen; it’s a gradual process. You can’t be afraid to jump in there and start doing it.
Dan’s a cool designer, one who’s been a huge source of CSS inspiration for me with his Bulletproof Web Design and CSS3 for Web Designers books. Naturally it’s a great interview, but it was this paragraph that really struck a chord with me. I’ve always pushed my career forward by looking for the next big thing and not being so hung up on my specific role. I’m not alone either; designers and developers are moving to smaller, multidisciplinary teams where being game for wearing multiple hats becomes critical.
06.03.12 |
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Because the Lost craze kind of passed me by with little effect, TV and film writer Damon Lindelof didn’t ring a bell with me at first. But now he’s attached as the main writer for Prometheus, so I checked out his interview on the latest On the Verge podcast. Really good discussion here about screenplay, TV endings, living up to prequel expectations, working with Ridley Scott and much more.
06.02.12 |
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Unique little design stories like these totally make my day.
06.02.12 |
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Today’s console games push computing to the limit. But as fidelity and realism improve, the gaming industry demands higher quality voice acting. Troy Baker is one such voice actor heavily in demand and Joystiq looks into how he got his start. It’s an interesting read:
Around 2004, Baker “stumbled” into doing car commercials, which led to a chance encounter that would shift his entire career focus. “Since we were doing album work at the same studio, it was just right place right time. So I started doing commercial work, and met Christopher Sabat who plays Vegeta in Dragonball Z.” Soon he was cast in a slew of minor roles throughout the anime and video game world: various iterations of Dragonball Z, bit parts in Lupin III, roles in One Piece, Bloodrayne 2 and Mega Man X: Command Mission. Things started to explode, and did so with a sonic boom when he was cast as the memorable Frank Archer in Fullmetal Alchemist.
06.01.12 |
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Matt Zoller Seitz, wrapping up his recap of Mad Men’s “The Other Woman”:
I want to go on record saying how flat-out amazing this season has been…Something Sgt. Peppers-level major is happening on Mad Men this year, a seismic creative flowering comparable to season one of The Sopranos and season three of Breaking Bad. Every season five episode is a creative experiment that draws on the cumulative power of every episode that preceded it. We’re nearing the point where everything on Mad Men seems to connect to everything else — not just from episode to episode within season five, but backwards, as if the new episodes are somehow unfurling tendrils into the past, fusing the whole run of Mad Men into a fiendishly intricate mega-story. It’s just extraordinary.
Damn right. I rarely get those “on the edge of my seat” moments when watching TV. Yet it happened with the The Wire, season four. Breaking Bad, season three onward. And now I can clearly add season five of Mad Men. We’ve had a few so-so episodes (e.g. “Hare Krishna” from last week), but many extraordinary ones: Signal 30, Far Away Places, and now The Other Woman.
06.01.12 |
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There’s been a lot of critical breakdown of The Avengers success, but The House Next Door’s Ted Pigeon really nails it:
As you might guess, just about every plot turn is recycled from other fantasy or superhero stories…But it’s worth noting that Whedon, to his credit, never pretends that the story arc is particularly significant. He instead supports it from the bottom up, with solid structuring and careful characterization. For example, despite a weak plot, Whedon gets all the mileage he needs out of Hiddleston’s exceptional performance. He bellows phrases like “Kneel before me!” about as convincingly as an actor can, and his demonic smile works to great effect when beaming through that metal-horned helmet of his.
How often do we see such a strong directorial hand or style in a $300 million plus summer blockbuster? Exactly. Without Whedon, The Avengers would have been merely average.
06.01.12 |
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I’ve already plugged the excellent film podcast Battleship Pretension enough here, but this week’s episode was awesome. It’s all about film scores with deep analysis and extended audio clips.