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Today, we are going to design the logo for the WordPress blog we are creating. As you might know, Project WordPress evolves around an actual blog we were asked to design. What we are also revealing today is where you can find the blog and see it in live action.
So far, we’ve covered the following [...]...
Okaaaay, we’re still here! We’ve had some busy times which wasn’t the best for this blog, BUT - we’re back (actually never gone)! And before we post the next part of Project WP (we’re gonna get dirty there with Photoshop, by the way), we thought we’d make it up to you with a free vector [...]...
In this part of Project WordPress, we are creating a layout for our customized WordPress blog. The blog layout strongly depends on the niche you’re in and how you want to appear to your readers. Every niche has its own preferred blog style that you have to consider before you start blogging.
Until now, we’ve already [...]...
…but this free eBook will get you a lot closer to that goal. In order to shorten the time until the next part of Project WordPress (which is coming up in the next few days), we want to point this excellent resource out to you:
Free Type Classification eBook by Jacob Cass
This 27-page eBook covers the [...]...
This is the third part of Project WP, and the last one where we play pretty. After this, we’ll get into customizing a basic theme with PHP, HTML and CSS, and creating a blog identity with logo, icons & header. Expect Part 4 here next week, but for now:
Give us the Pretty one more time! [...]...
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There are three general types or client/designer relationships: boss/worker, friends and partners. All three types have their place, but only one of them offers the potential for truly great design to emerge.
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Executive Director Ric Grefé outlines AIGA’s position on SOPA and PIPA, recent bills introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate intended to protect creative property.
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Combining the lovely photos of Julie Pierce with my design talents, we created a calendar to raise money for an animal charity.
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Web lessons from 2011, the Protester, buzzwords to avoid, HP’s new logo, pop stars’ personalities in percentages, Design Envy picks from Diana Hong, interviews galore, censoring the internet and extreme long-term planning—these are our stories of the week.
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Beautiful book covers, the #NewNewTwitter, Design Envy picks from Juliette Cezzar, inspiration vs. imitation, Ice Cube on Charles and Ray Eames and the 2012 color of the year—these are our stories of the week.
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In-house designers are at risk of being just different enough to be misunderstood, undervalued and marginalized by both the business and design communities. Shame on us, though, if we let that happen, says veteran in-house design manager Andy Epstein, who outlines how to use outsider status as an advantage.
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No business thought leader has advocated more for the
design profession than Dan Pink. His books have consistently encouraged those in the
business world to not only value and nurture their own innovative and
creative sides but to seek out and empower the right-brain individuals in their
companies. In this interview, Dan provides insights on issues unique to the in-house design community.
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Developing a contract between yourself and your in-house clients may seem overly formal, but defining your business relationship with your company is absolutely essential for in-house success. Learn what questions you should ask and what information you need to have.
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In part one of a three-part conversation, Bob Calvano, creative director of Merck’s full service in-house agency, describes how he’s carving out spots for his team to play a bigger role in the company.
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Top stories this week: A new partner at Pentagram, Bloomberg Businessweek’s newfound edge, learning responsive design as you go, Design Envy picks from Joan Raspo and more.
Top stories this week: redesigns, Facebook’s IPO, IxDA People’s Choice Award, a dearth of critical discourse on design, Design Envy picks from Jonnie Hallman and more.
Through member surveys, conversations with stakeholders and conference sessions, AIGA has been examining the role of annual design competitions. AIGA Executive Director Ric Grefé explains the thinking behind new programs and competition structures.
Top stories this week: The new face of American activism, design’s role in the evolution of the web, creative gatherings in Utah, Design Envy picks from Jessica Walsh and more.
Protesting, making posters, writing, performing, using social media—through methods both new and old, design activists speak out against extreme immigration policies and economic inequality.
New this week: Paul Sahre’s 18-foot paper hearse for They Might Be Giants, Smashing Magazine’s responsive website redesign, an artful spoof, Chuck Anderson’s Design Envy picks and more.
Top stories this week: DONDA, learning to code in a year, design challenges for 2012, push-button social media, the best U.S. map, Design Envy picks from Elle Kim and more.
Every year all across the country, AIGA chapters work hard to present invaluable, thought-provoking, one-of-a-kind events where connections are formed, knowledge is learned and inspiration is gained. Here are 21 (plus 4!) that made 2011 eventful.
Top stories this week: the year in design that works, who will be hiring in 2012, how designers and engineers can play nice, the Kickstarter phenomenon, Eike Koenig’s Design Envy picks, and more.
Web typography, simplified, decoded, deconstructed. That was the focus of our sixth “Breakthroughs” webinar, featuring Tim Brown, type manager at Typekit and author of the blog Nice Web Type .
At Pentagram Julia Hoffmann designed for renowned clients including The Metropolitan Opera in New York. Then as art director for Crispin Porter + Bogusky, she worked for powerhouses like Burger King. Still, since joining MoMA in 2008, she believes that “in-house design studios are the future of successful branding.” In this interview, learn why.
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I recently ran into a problem that was really hard to figure out. I was working on a responsive design where I used img {max-width:100%;} to make sure that images would be downsized rather than overflow in narrower viewports.
It worked great everywhere… until I went to check in IE8. The site’s logo was gone! None of the usual IE bug fixes cured the problem, and it took me quite a while to realise that max-width was part of the problem.
Copyright © Roger Johansson
In an ideal world there would always be a clean way of displaying data supplied by a third party on your site. Two examples would be getting the data in JSON or XML format from a Web Service and having an API to code against. But you don’t always have any of those options.
Sometimes the only way of incorporating data from a third party is by loading it in an iframe element. A few examples are financial reports, e-commerce applications, and ticket booking applications. Using an iframe is not ideal for many reasons, one of which is that it can make multiple sets of scrollbars appear on the page. Not only does it look ugly, it also makes the site less user-friendly. But there is a workaround.
Posted in JavaScript, Usability.
Copyright © Roger Johansson
Showing whether a link on a web page has been visited or not can be very useful. One example that many will be familiar with is how it helps you know which links you have already followed from a Google search results page – links to pages you have already visited are a different colour than the other links.
Changing only the colour can be a bit subtle though, especially for people with colour vision deficiency. Depending on which colours are used to differentiate between visited and unvisited links it can be hard to tell them apart. To make the difference more obvious, there are a number of techniques involving background images, generated content (like the one I describe in Check marking visited links), and other CSS properties. However, if you’ve been using any similar tricks to style visited links, it’s time to forget about those and start relying on colour alone.
Copyright © Roger Johansson
When adapting a layout for different viewport widths (a.k.a. responsive design) or media (like print), it’s common to reset any float and width values on major layout blocks to linearise their display.
Unfloating a floated element is as simple as specifying float:none. Width doesn’t seem to be quite as straightforward – lately I’ve come across several cases where people use width:100% to undo explicitly specified widths when they should be using width:auto instead. So here’s a brief explanation of the difference.
Posted in CSS, Quick Tips.
Copyright © Roger Johansson
I just recently ran into an issue when styling buttons that had me pulling my hair for a while. I had my buttons looking the way they were supposed to look in desktop browsers, but when I went to have a look in Safari for iOS, much of my CSS wasn’t applied.
This was pretty puzzling as I couldn’t remember having any problems with buttons in Safari for iOS before. After taking a closer look at the CSS I was using for these particular buttons and the CSS I had used previously, I managed to find out what made the difference.
Posted in CSS.
Copyright © Roger Johansson
As I have noted in a couple of blog posts recently, there are some cases when CSS has quite unexpected results in screen readers (or the way web browsers create the accessibility information they hand over to screen readers). If you haven’t read them, the posts are Screen readers, list items and list-style:none and Using display:table has semantic effects in some screen readers.
Here are a few examples:
- Using
display:tableon non-table elements to get the visual layout characteristics of an HTML table without actually using one may cause screen readers to act as if there was a real table - Using
display:blockor float on table-related elements may cause screen readers to treat the table as a layout table and ignore its semantics or report an incorrect data structure - Using
list-style:noneto visually remove bullets or numbers from list items may cause screen readers to ignore them too, basically treating list items as paragraphs of text
Posted in Accessibility, CSS.
Copyright © Roger Johansson
Back in the day you used to be able to view source on a web page to see the markup used to create it. These days, on many sites, a large portion of the markup is not visible when you view source because it is inserted by JavaScript functions.
That isn't necessarily a problem provided that you use progressive enhancement and unobtrusive JavaScript. If you follow those principles, content and basic functionality will still be there when scripting is unavailable. Many of us understand that. But one thing I’ve noticed is that some developers forget to consider semantics or accessibility in the markup they use JavaScript to insert.
Posted in (X)HTML, Accessibility, JavaScript.
Copyright © Roger Johansson
I’ve always been wary of styling form elements too much. Possible usability and accessibility issues, browser quirks, and the fact that the CSS specification does not define form control styling are the main reasons.
With that said, sometimes you have to do things you don’t really want to. Like styling select elements, which I’ve recently had to find a way to do. There are quite a few workarounds for doing this out there. However, most of the ones I looked at replace the select element with a bunch of links which changes semantics and behaviour a bit too much for my tastes. I couldn’t find any implementation that I was completely happy with, so I took the best one I could find and tweaked it.
Posted in Accessibility, CSS, JavaScript.
Copyright © Roger Johansson
It’s not exactly news – it was announced in July in HTML5 Parsing in IE10 – but in case you missed it, Microsoft are removing support for conditional comments from IE10.
I don't expect this to be a big deal. Actually I’m not sure it will have any impact at all, at least not for me. It’s already a rare thing to need to do something special for IE9.
Posted in Browsers.
Copyright © Roger Johansson
Since uninstalling Flash I’ve noticed how common it is for sites that still use Flash to pay little or no attention to visitors that do not have Flash Player installed. Showing a “Missing plugin” message instead of navigation links or even worse, the entire site, is an efficient way of turning people away.
There used to be a time when “everybody” had Flash player installed. These days there are many millions of iOS users that don’t. Apple does not include Flash Player with new Macs anymore (neither is it included with OS X 10.7 Lion). And then there are people who block Flash with browser extensions or uninstall it completely.
Posted in Accessibility, Usability.
Copyright © Roger Johansson