There has been a gap in how I manage my work for a long time. It's a little thing and is no bother most of the time. But when things get crazy, or if I'm not careful, some important task falls through the cracks of my system. I'm referring to the follow up email. This is a straight forward concept. I have a task or project that is my responsibility, but depends on others to do some work. I email them, asking for information or for work to be done. Down the road, I…
It would seem that life consistently affords one opportunities to look back at the path you've walked. I do my best to embrace these opportunities, but I've often found my self slightly discouraged in the past when doing so. I would tend to review the goals I had at a period in time, then measure the progress or lack thereof and feel as if I did not make the most of the time I had. And yet in the big picture, things have gone very well. My family has had its needs met, I've…
All the changes that have been introduced over the past decade via the Internet have been focused on one thing. Sharing. Sharing thoughts, sharing photos, sharing work. Sharing experiences … well, just the attractive parts, but hey, that's still sharing. Above all else, I appreciate the ability for anyone, almost anywhere, to share their thinking or experience or knowledge by writing and publishing on the Internet. Being unshackled from some of the barriers of times past is perhaps the greatest…
When designing a document, whether it be a web page, email, invoice, or book, I have an order of events I like to follow. I start with content, sketch out a layout, then move on to typography. In my mind, this process ensures that priority is given where it should be. The content is king, the architecture (or layout) of that content is second, and the typography provides the foundation that the design sits upon. I'm no expert in this stuff; I'm learning with every project I work on. But over t…
In every field, workers will have their preference for what is the best tool to do any job. Often times the tool is actually the same, but the preference comes down to brand. Designers are no different. When it comes to working on a site design, newsletter template, or a book cover, the tools can all be different for me. Text editors, graphics tools (Sketch [http://bohemiancoding.com/sketch/] is great), or iBooks Author are all used for varying projects. But I do have one tool that seems to be…
When I first became interested in web design, Firefox was the browser pushing web standards forward. And as a Windows user, I was very happy to take advantage of something new and fresh. And one of the best parts of using Firefox was Firebug [https://getfirebug.com/]. This article covers basic functionality and is targeted to the novice designer/developer. This was an add-on that enhanced the browser, allowing the user to monitor and tweak the HTML, CSS, and JavaScript that was used for a giv…
Typekit has been around for just under 4 years now and is a staple in my web design toolkit. Veen and the team there led the way in improving the delivery of web fonts, providing good or better features and results than all the other options available. Add to that a great selection of fonts and it's a pretty easy decision to make use of the service. Only now there's a new option [http://www.typography.com/cloud/welcome/]. Cloud.typography from H&FJ Hoefler and Frere-Jones [http://www.typograp…
If a lovely photograph is taken in the forest, but no one is there to appreciate it, is it still lovely? I would argue yes. Good work, work that is the result of careful, painstaking time and attention, is good whether or not it's enjoyed by others. But it seems that the activity we partake of online has trained us to seek after the Fave/Star/Like more than is necessary. Shawn Blanc wrote about his photography workflows [http://shawnblanc.net/2013/07/flickr-and-instagram/] and how the different…