December 28, 2006
Coolest Flash sites of 2006
I’ve been a little lax in putting up URLs to Flash sites during 2006, but there’s two sites that have really turned my head...
Motorola: Moto colors
Every time a new version of Flash comes out, it takes the design community a while to really get to grips with all the new features. Video alpha was the first new feature to become mainstream, but that only appeared in high end sites (as the costs of professional video production are an order of magnitude higher than most other motion graphics).
The other, potentially cooler features are hidden within ActionScript, and its taken until the end of 2006 for a site that uses most of them to appear; moto colors (www.motocolors.net or direct.motorola.com/hellomoto/colors).
This site allows you to create cool vector based patterns, the type of thing that used to take ages in Illustrator and was all the rage a few years back (appearing in all sorts of places, including the Flash 5 box artwork). Not only does moto colors allow you to create the vector artwork, the site also allows you to save the work as a screensaver and desktop theme installer for your Windows/Mac computer or Motorola cell phone.
This site uses many of the features of Flash 8 that are hidden under the bonnet (bitmap caching, better support for server side communications, etc) and is a perfect example of the creative use of web applications.
Susanne Paschke: portfolio site
Flash-only sites are cool, but the really good use of Flash only shows through in sites that integrate Flash with other technologies (or Flash Used Carefully Keeps Users; I’d turn it into an acronym - more memorable than AJAX, but…).
The Susanne Paschke site (www.susannepaschke.de) is a perfect mix of cool Flash motion graphics and good HTML layout; the Flash and HTML simply meld together to produce something that is better than either.
Posted by motiongraphics at 01:27 PM | Comments (8)
December 27, 2006
Useful free applications and tools
A couple of weeks ago I was asked by a fellow designer about finding changes between two versions of the same fla (i.e. because the later fla had a hard-to-find error in it). This is something I've come across before, and my solution involved using freely available applications. That set me thinking; I use many free applications in my day to day work. Here’s a list of my most often-used ones. (NB - I use a Windows machine)
Differencing Flash files with oyFlashDoc
Here’s a story we’ve all been through…
You’ve been working on a Flash site for *ages* but somewhere along the line you’ve introduced an error and can’t figure it out. Your site looks ok, but one button just refuses to work anymore. It worked in the fla you saved three hours ago. Damn.
To fix this sorta problem quickly, you would need to be able to see only the differences between two flas… and here’s how. The oyFlashDoc.jsfl Flash extension file converts your Flash file into an XML text file. By comparing the XML files generated from two .fla files using a differencing tool (such as the free application WinMerge), you can do just that
To get oyFlashDoc, go to the Software Secret Weapons site (www.softwaresecretweapons.com) and look for the oyFlashDoc.jsfl file in the Projects section (as of this writing, direct link is here).
Flash version checker and launcher
When you double click on an FLA file it opens the last version of Flash that you used instead of the version of Flash that was used to create the FLA. If you have multiple versions of Flash installed, you risk getting the dreaded ‘Unexpected file format’ error every time you double-click a fla file.This isn’t really an error of course; it really just means "open me in the right version of Flash please".
If you just hate that as much as I do, install FLAver.
All your flas will now magically open in the version of Flash you created them with. Not the most timesaving application, but boy does it calm the nerves!
Pixel level tools in Flash
Pixel tools gives you a new set of drawing tools that draws lines and shapes as if they were made of pixels. Cool for retro video games or the oh-so-cool isometric pixel style. Although Pixel tools actually approximates pixels using vector squares, you can force Flash to treat the graphics as true bitmaps at runtime using caches (Flash 8). The other advantage of graphics created via pixelTools is that they look the same when you set the quality to low (no anti-aliasing), making for faster playback.
Bandwidth profiling and traffic analysis
The Flash bandwidth profiler is cool for testing swfs across a low bandwidth connection, but not so good when you are testing a complete site. A complete site includes lots of other files, such as html, css and xml. Sloppy (www.dallaway.com/sloppy) is a Java application that simulates low bandwidth connections at the browser, thus slowing down everything.
For the web application developer who also needs to view (and/or fiddle with) the underlying web service data, try Fiddler. You can also find more information about fiddler here and here.
Replace Windows Notepad with something that’s actually useful: Notepad++
Notepad++ (notepad-plus.sourceforge.net) has support for code coloring, and folding and it recognizes all the common web design languages/mark-ups (CSS, HTML, JavaScript, Perl, PHP, Ruby, XML). The fact that it also supports ActionScript makes it a must have for Flash coders.
Also useful for those looking for an ActionScript only editor; Se|py
Test with different versions of the Flash Player
Most clients specify a minimum version of the Flash player that the site has to work with, but that might not be the version you have installed. There are a couple of easy ways around this;
- Kewbee plugin switcher.
- Sepiroth's Flash switcher (firefox only)
To use the switchers, you will also need old versions of the Flash player. To get these, go to www.adobe.com and enter ‘14266’ in the search field (top right), or use the direct link to tech note 14266 here.
Quick and easy sound editing
Every web designer has bitmap editing software, but motion graphics designers need to make use of sound almost as often as they need bitmaps, so a sound editor would be cool. Adobe has a sound application for the multimedia designer; Adobe Audition. Rather than use Audition, try Audacity (audacity.sourceforge.net). It can do all the things Audition can do, its easier to use, and its free!.
Backup your application customisations and add-ons: MM-Exporter
MM-Exporter (mm-exporter.joexx.de)is backup utility that allows back-up of all your Flash/Dreamweaver/Fireworks settings. This allows you to quickly recover your application configuration (and therefore your preferred workflows) if you ever have to reinstall your operating system, or if you need to move between computers.
Better searching; Agent Ransack
Tired of that crappy Windows XP search window with the risible dog animation? You need Agent Ransack. Especially cool for the web designer, because it also shows previews of all common text files it finds (.as, .html, .xml, .css etc).
Temporary emails
Guerrilla mail; A randomly generated anonymous email address that lasts 15 minutes, and then expires, forever.
Genius.
Now you can try out that 30 day trial without having to set up a hot mail or (horror of horrors) disclosing your permanent email address…
Posted by motiongraphics at 08:54 PM | Comments (2)
December 11, 2006
Rosy and the lost magic of Web 1.0
Whilst archiving an old hard drive over the weekend, I came across the Word file for my introduction to the book New Masters of Flash Volume 3. It kinda answers many of the questions I get asked a lot; 'How did you get into writing those 20 (at the last count) books you did between 2000 and 2004?' and 'Who exactly is Ed from Friends of Ed?'. It also gives some insight into the heady days of 'Flash as a creative web canvas', a.k.a the big dot.com boom that Web 1.0 was all about.
Its called 'Rosy'.
Rosy
Let me start at the beginning. I first met the folks at Friends Of Ed after applying for a web design position.
Birmingham based Initiative urgently needs Master/Mistress of Flash
If youre currently moonlighting with Flash 4 but would love doing it full time... if your head is constantly bursting with ideas for headstopping Flash applications.... if you've got a Fine Arts degree... if you can write in a structured and persuasive style... if taking it all further with dynamic scripting in ActionScript and Perl, PHP, ASP, etc is a thrill and not a cause for panic....
If it's yes to some or all of the above, we could offer you a really rosy future. Get in touch today.
I fancied that rosy future. I sent them a short email that read
‘Hi, I don’t have a Fine Arts Degree, but I am a graduate, and I do have my own teeth and hair. I also have some URLs you might want to look at. Give me a bell and we can have a chat.’
… and ended the email with a short list of Flash 4 URLs. Don’t ask me where the teeth and hair bit came from, but it got me the interview.
As part of that interview, they let slip that it wasn’t actually a web design position at all. They were not really sure what the job was when questioned, but anyway, they asked me to think about it.
Richard Collins, the strategy manager at the time, had a well worn old bikers jacket on when he appeared at my interview. and he went on to become really animated when he talked about the web and the creative possibilities (rather than the just the technical or commercial or technical potential that was the more obvious angle back then). I thought about both these facts. The laid-back appearance and the genuine enthusiasm were just right for the manager of a new start-up. So that was enough thinking for me. I took the job.
That’s not so much an introduction of how I got to meet the Friends, more of a summary of the way they worked. The whole company had attitude, but they were also committed professionals with real aptitude. That same mix of attitude and aptitude went into New Masters of Flash. Informed chaos, blended with professionalism.
Anyway, I started by doing some consulting and Flash web design for the Friends, but ended up writing on a Flash book to help out in other areas. It did rather well, so I did more.
At the time (mid 2000) computer books were pretty much a known quantity. They were either written by programmers, or they were based on lecture notes. Design oriented Photoshop books were all over the place of course, but the computer book world didn’t want to have anything to do with it. That is probably an oversimplification that will get me into trouble, but I don’t think it was that far off. Of course, right now computer books that address design are the big growth area. But back then, there were no glossy computer books that were based on fashion magazine layouts, and certainly none that would look good resting on expensive furniture.
Nobody had really done this mixing code and design gig, so there were all sorts of problems....
We wanted to fill the book with innovators from the Flash underground rather than the first dozen or so cool sites we saw, and we didn’t want to use corporate sites. Thus, choosing the contributors took a serious amount of time.
Some of the contributors had not written before.
The book was expensive to make so costing was problematic.
The printing press didn’t understand the fact that this computer book would use heavy paper, so they used a cheaper binding appropriate for a normal computer book, and less than the one the Friends specified. The pages very occasionally fell out. We pulped the entire first print run. It didn't meet our expectations of quality. The book stores were not sure what we were trying to do and just looked at us and said "?".
The book got published.
The Flash conventions were using the New Masters of Flash author list as their most wanted speaker list. Other publishers were using the same list of authors as a poaching checklist. New Masters of Flash peaked well within the top 10 on the Amazon USA all-book chart. We kept running out of stock. We had used mad layouts that totally covered the pages in color. A reviewer complained about the smell of all that ink. We laughed.
New Masters of Flash took the Computer Book of the Year Award. A competitor was worried enough to have an intern writing bad reviews about us first thing every Monday morning.
Things were looking rosy.
Fast forward.
A few months ago, Gary Cornell gave me a call. He owns Apress, and now also Friends OF Ed (you will notice that both names are on the cover of this book). He wanted to know what my suggestions would be for future Friends books. I said Friends Of Ed is a design imprint. Even when he’s writing about programming, Ed should be design oriented. I said we need to do a third New Masters of Flash book as a priority.
Gary told me it was a difficult book, and people might not know the why of it in the new post dotboom publishing industry. He said it was risky. I said publish it anyway. The ‘Ed’ in Friends Of Ed is supposed to mean whatever you want it to mean, but it mostly means ‘Every designer’. Ed needs to know the basics and standard advanced stuff, sure, but he also needs to know what other designers are doing out on the edge, away from the normal path.
You know the rest. Gary published the book. You’re holding it.
I know what will happen. We’ll see some people just not getting the why of it. They’ll bang on about this not being a proper computer book, or not a design book, or how <insert name> is missing from it, especially because they work for so and so studio, and they´ve got a great big blog.
Here´s my why. Design and programming go hand in hand. A book on Flash that doesn’t include both is a book that is stuck in the days of publications created from lecture notes. This book isn´t coming from there.
The contributors in this book are just like the book itself. They have the attitude and aptitude. They make their own rules and set their own agendas. Nobody showed them the right way. They just did it, and wondered why later.
They´re already famous, or about to get famous because of their attitude to their art. They’re worth reading about because of their aptitude for their art.
They´re the future of Flash. Rosy.
Sham B
April 2004
England.
...end quote.
Maybe I'm stating the obvious here... y'know what I think?
Web 2.0, Standards, webservices and Flash as an application platform, Windows presentation layer. It's all well and good. Um. But....
For us designers, the old stuff was so much more fun.
Posted by motiongraphics at 11:43 PM | Comments (2)
August 08, 2006
Why I have not posted for a while
Yeah, I know, my rate of posting stuff isn't that high at the best of times, but...
Around the end of June, I collapsed at work. I had no radial pulse (no pulse in the arms or legs) and less than a 5th of the normal blood pressure.
I had been feeling weak for a couple of days, and had totally lost my appetite. When the folks at casualty looked at me, it turned out that I'd lost 5 pints of blood, and it was still dropping. For comparison, there's about 10 pints in the average human body.
I was bleeding internally, bigtime. It was caused by a cut or ulcer in my guts somewhere that had hit a vein, and I was effectively eating myself... hence the lack of need to consume anything else. Nice. I kept this up for a while, and spent a week in observation stuck to a drip.
A week later I was out, and had to curb my enthusiasm for weekend alchohol, as well as spending a lot less time sat in front of this computer (I was told that the 'sitting in front of computer' position is not so good for the healing process).
Almost exactly a month later to the day (end of July), I split up with my partner. If we had have stayed together for two weeks longer, we would have made tenth anniversary (that's years).
I'm over the worst of all this, so don't worry. Normal service will be resumed in a week or so when things settle down.... or rather, when I've convinced myself there's nothing else due to hit me at the end of August...
On the plus side, my weekend getting pissed and dancing like a mad fool antics are back to normal. So that's at least one good thing already :)
Posted by motiongraphics at 09:10 PM | Comments (7)
December 18, 2005
New Resolutions for 2006
Okay, I know... I've been really slow with new stuff of late, but...
... I haven't been able to do any personal work for about three months. I currently have 4 big projects nearing completion at the same time, and all of them are urgent.
Hopefully, the new year should be a lot quieter. I am owed a lot of time off, so hopefully I can catch up then... that and the constant 15 hour days are getting a bit old without any time off.
Yup, I know... all the other web designers out there will be thinking 'Yeah, you think you've got it bad / You should see my hours...'.
Anyway, big new years resolutions for next year
Get up to speed with Longhorn so that I am cool with the new UI design features when they come out. Something that all ActionScript people should be taking a healthy interest in!
Get into webservices a lot more. I know how to do the Flash end of a web application, but I've only played with it from the server side. Its high time I started being able to do the whole loop myself quickly.
On the graphical side, I have a lot of half finished personal Flash projects that really need completing. Ive got a version of 'Passages' working using the page flip technique as the UI (see a few of the static pages below for a flavor of the actual content, although the final version will contain motion graphics rather than bitmaps). I've also gotta get some episodes of Draconis Coy finished... the link shows +10 year old work (most of it was actually done on a Commodore Amiga!) I've had this on semi-retirement for a while, but last year I converted some of the stuff (its all 3D rendering) to Softimage XSI using a current PC, and some of the stuff the new technology allows me to do really blew me away. I can't wait!
Do all the other stuff I've been promising - vCam and all the other goodies.
Start that online ActionScript reference I've been promising for a while. The templates and back end have been done, its just now a case of getting all the ActionScript 1.0/2.0/3.0 entries done (and getting release on some previous work I can use here). Yeah, its a mammoth task, but I actually did half the entries of the (print based) MX ActionScript reference in about 4 months, so I believe its a doable task (more fool me). Watch this space.
Posted by motiongraphics at 12:13 PM | Comments (1)
November 28, 2005
Flash and Web 2.0
There’s been a lot of material put out on the web design blogs about the new buzz word on the block - ‘Web 2.0’, but there is no mention of Flash. What exactly is the relationship between Flash and Web 2.0?
The term 'Web 2.0' was originally coined as a buzzword to mean ‘the new web’, but it already has a (rather long) technical entry on Wikipedia.
Web 2.0’s building blocks include Ajax, Ruby, and a whole slew of social buzzwords.
There’s a lot of definitions of Web 2.0, but here’s two that I prefer:
Version A: ‘Hey, the web works now!
At worst, a self fulfilling prophecy: anything that is new and seems to work is ‘Web 2.0’, even if its been around for the last 10 years, has finally matured, everyone knows it by its original name... and is using it already. At best, Web 2.0 is simply a means of telling the general public that web content is now meeting many of expectations heaped upon it during the dot com boom.
Version B: Using the web ‘as an application platform and social network'
Web 1.0 was the ‘Information superhighway', but web 2.0 builds on this basic infrastructure, and it includes applications where
- Shared rather private data is used (e.g. syndication, WSDL)
- Site content is more important than appearance (data driven rather than UI heavy designs, e.g. blogs)
- Where development of the application itself is usually a public affair (open beta, open source languages and applications).
Like most people I’m a little confused as to what this actually means in practice. Ajax seems to mean ‘hey, browsers now support JavaScript and CSS!', and most of the Web 2.0 buzzwords are simply a way to get interest back to the web (and of course, to separate venture capitalists from their money as easily as we used to) rather than a meaningful description.
There’s one thing that Web 2.0 seems to include that is missed by a lot of people: Web 2.0 sites are properly tested against users, and that’s why they seem to work well and become popular. These sites are not 'Web 2.0', but they are something much more important - 'successful through actually fulfilling a need, good design, and appropriate choice of technologies'. Wow. There's a shock.
Web 2.0 includes certain types of sites (Google maps, Flikr, blogs etc) not because they use Ruby or whatever, but because users like these sites, and the sites therefore get lots of hits.
There are of course drawbacks to this strategy. For one thing, Web 2.0 sites are less accessible than Web 1.0 sites (because Ajax is not usually accessible), but this would not show up in testing (the vast majority of users don’t mind, so the low number of access impaired users would get drowned out in the hits graph). For another thing, Web 2.0 is aimed at traditional desktop machines, and doesn’t do well on mobile devices. Nontheless, it appears that the fundamental factor behind Web 2.0 is that users like the end result.
What does this mean for Flash?
Flash is not cited as a Web 2.0 technology, mainly because users see it most in intrusive advertising, plus the - often unmentioned - tendancy for Flash designers to design for other Flash designers rather than the end user (and of course, let us not forget clients who specify sites where 'they want a site that is as bandwidth heavy, as web-arty as our competitor's site, but even more so).
Users don’t like Flash as much as they used to. That’s not a problem with Flash. It is because most Flash site designs are not tested against their target audience, and flashy graphics are not as new and different as they were back in 2000. We can no longer get away with it because users now realize that 'Designer web art' means 'fundamentally unusable but looks nice for 30 seconds'.
That is a shame because Flash has all the capabilities that Web 2.0 has, plus Flash can include accessibility (oh yes it can!), and it runs on mobile devices.
I currently work in the education field, and all our (Flash based) applications are tested against a target audience. The funny thing is, the end results look a lot like Web 2.0 applications -
- They use websevices and other data centric technologies
- They separate data from the user interface (we design 'engines' that handle the exam data).
- Their design incorporates in-house unit testing (via people who are not the content creators)
- Their design includes the user in the production process through field testing
Thus, based on this experience, I have a third definition for Web 2.0, and this one actually includes Flash designers:
Version C: Putting the user first
Not the designer. Not the browser. Not the venture capitalist, but the user. In achieving this, use whatever technology fits, and make damn sure that you are fulfilling a need, and that the end user can actually use your designs.
Um. Or maybe I'm just describing Web 3.0.
Added 28 Nov 2005
Interestingly, it appears that Web 2.0 technologies are already making the same mistakes that Flash folks already know and love. Maybe that bit at the end about Web 3.0 wasnt the throw-away joke I assumed when I wrote it!
Added 2 Dec 2005
I've had a few emails of the 'put up or shut up kind' over this post, centered around the question 'Well, show me an application that is better than Google maps and that uses Flash as its front end'.
Easy.
How often would you use Google maps seriously? Five times a year? Yeah. me too.
I use this every day, and it gets better the more I use it. My own radio station. I get to filter the play list, and I can let others listen ot it too.
Best of all, it also describes my musical taste: I like music that features a subtle use of harmony, mild rhythmic syncopation, repetitive melodic phrasing, extensive vamping and mixed major key tonality. I don't really know about that, but what I do know is that after a few days, it started playing music that I had never heard of, but that felt like it was part of my record collection!
NB - You have to be in America to listen to it (i.e. you have to know a US zip code... but all I did was think back to a certain TV show).
Added 2 Dec 2005
Last.fm is cool to.
Posted by motiongraphics at 01:53 PM | Comments (5)
October 23, 2005
Flash games
For many, Flash's graphic capabilities and cool programming environment make it the perfect choice for creatng simple interactive games... except that some of the more recent examples I have seen are far from simple...
No doubt many of you will have seen the Flash 8 WolfenFlash game, written by previous co-collaborator Glen Rhodes.
That is an amazing use of Flash, but something equally impressive that I found a while ago is a two level Sonic the Hedgehog game (complete with pixel perfect levels, and many of the cheats!) done in Flash.
Unfortunately, this game is not available on the web, and the email and URL seen on the exe go nowhere, so I've made it available here (2.3Mb Windows exe file) if like me, you love retro games.
Be warned though, I have lost literally hours of my time playing this gem (as well as wondering how Glen's engine works)!
Another favorite waste of time (especially during dinner breaks at work is teagames.com. My current addiction is Top Dog II.
Posted by motiongraphics at 04:10 PM | Comments (6)
October 11, 2005
Stuff in progress
Here's a list of stuff I currently have in progress as of this month. (I'll do one of these entries every month)
Author work:
Co-authoring a book with Adam Phillips for O'Reilly.
Freelance:
Doing some design work for Creative Commons, plus some hush-hush web application work that I can't talk about because of non-disclosure.
Work in the shop:
Web application for Harcourt Education, Flash front end for a reporting system, to be used by all teachers in the UK. Also helped out on some design work for submissions for Flash front ends for the BBC.
Personal
Finishing up the vCam and trying to finish BIA2. Trying to find time to update the design of the blog you are currently reading so that it stops looking like a vanilla Movable Type weblog. Getting a 6 ft high wall put up around the back of our garden so whoever keeps stealing Karen's lingerie quits doing it.
Oh, and finding time to sleep every other day ;)
Posted by motiongraphics at 11:16 PM | Comments (2)
September 26, 2005
Handbook for Bloggers and cyber-dissidents
Its cool to be able to spend your time bloging about Flash, iPod, CSS trivia and other non-issues-for-anyone-except-a-geek, but sometimes you see something important from the tech world that really needs to be publicised…
Not only is the Handbook for Bloggers and cyber-dissidents a good read for experienced bloggers (it lists personal accounts of blogging from places such as Bahrain, Iran and Nepal), but it also contains good 'how to set up a blog' guidelines for everyone else.
Oh, and as well as being better than most beginner blogging books, and containing more insight about the true political role of blogging than 100% of the tech/design blogs out there (including of course this blog), it is also free.
Get it, read it, tell people.
Posted by motiongraphics at 12:38 PM | Comments (1)
September 14, 2005
How we learned to live with the (dot com) bomb
Whilst looking through some archived files today, I came across some old correspondence that spanned the dot-com boom and bust years. It is interesting to look back and see how big an effect the dot com boom-bust had on sales of books, particularly books on Motion Graphics…
The graph below is taken from Nielson Bookscan data, which is considered by the industry to be the most accurate third party book sales data for the US market (the US market being the most important market for web design books).
Although the data on this graph is now obsolete, the graph illustrates the fall in book sales per publisher for Flash books immediately after the dot com bust. As you can see, it doesn’t paint a pretty picture.
The following is my opinion on the data. Every publisher/writer will most likely have their own spin on this.
The biggest losers were those publishers who clung on to old style books - big bible style editions or reference books that were essentially print versions of the stuff anyone can already get from the web, or teaching books that were academic rather than practical. The sorts of book that held up during the downturn were those that contained information structured in a way that actually gave added value by being formatted as printed books - i.e. books that were meant to be read from cover to cover (taking in much more information than you ever could from a website or TV), or books that were seen as definitive and concise, practical, or just plain prettier in print.
There is also the issue that web design and I.T. in general has moved from a nascent and new frontier to an established industry during the dot com boom-bust period, so the need now is for replacement and maintenance rather than pioneering. This means there is less of a demand to learn new stuff, and the information is easy to come by from multiple sources. Finally, there is the effects on investment that the attack on the WTC caused, and the slowdown in I.T following it.
Although the market has recovered slightly since the timeframe of this graph, there is also the issue of extreme competition and many more titles being published, so the return per title has actually been very low during 2003-2004; 50 to 25% of what it used to be. there is some evidence that this is changing, however, with fewer books been published in 2005-2006.
So why do us authors still write? Well, I can only speak for myself. Rather than being a full time writer who did web design, I am now a full time web designer who writes books. Although I write fewer books, I have a much more immediate exposure to the coal face of practical web design, and I can see how this has made my recent output much more pertinent.
Also, I actually enjoy both writing and designing, because both avoid me having to engage in the thing that least interests me - anything that requires me to take part as the audience. This is not because I like to be in the limelight (far from it - I am not a 'scene' designer by any stretch!), but because I hate 'not doing' and - especially - 'not creating'.
To this end, there are all sorts of new ideas I’m looking at right now. The only trouble these days is finding the time to sleep after fitting it all in… but I count that as a good thing!
Posted by motiongraphics at 10:27 PM | Comments (0)
September 13, 2005
What co-authors discuss when writing...
I guess most readers expect book co-authors to be constantly in communication when writing books, discussing all the finer technical points of the subject in hand, constantly refining the content.
Well...
... we are for the most part, but there's always the chance that you end up working with a co-author who knows his/her stuff, but doesn't really connect and have fun at the same time.
I hate it when that happens (and it happens a lot), because the overall personality of the book suffers. Books that are easy and fun to get through for the reader were usually easy and fun to write.
Fortunately, my current co-author, Adam Phillips shares the same off beat and unusually stupid sense of humour as me. Every hour of technical discussion we engage in is surrounded by an hour of irrelevent chat on either side, as we bounce off-beat webdesign ideas off each other, talk about clients (nuff said), other designers, or just plain crap.
Here's an example of the latter - Adam had a contract to create a number of concept drawings of lesser known Marvel superheros (as in 'we need to create some mock-ups because we're going to do loads of cartoon features because Hollywood and everyone else is into superheroes right now').
Um. Except that he started a discussion about it with me in the middle of discussing the book, and that sense of stupidity got in the way, yet again... here's Adams revised concept post chat (scroll down).
Roll on Spiderman III...ahem.
Posted by motiongraphics at 07:17 PM | Comments (0)
September 08, 2005
Cool design always beats cool technology
I was doing my weekly 'Let's see what is cool on the web since last time I looked' gig, when I can across this site...
Nice motion graphics UI, sharp, clear design, and surprisingly, not a hint of Flash in sight: iancoyle.com. If he made it so that the site centers on the currently expanded image, this would be perfection (hint hint).
Other recent must see sites include:
Good design is something you notice. Flawless design is more subtle than that: particletree
Im not sure what a colourmod is, but after seeing the design on this site, I know I've gotta have one.
A layout that just exhudes quality: Stonewall
Posted by motiongraphics at 11:01 PM | Comments (2)