A handy tool to help you generate a layout based on the 960 grid system. Good as a starting point for most layout projects.
Archive for the 'Design' Category
What’s fascinating about this project is less of the technology than the new form of user interaction that takes advantage of the unique capabilities of this wearable device. The later half of the talk gives a preview of some of these gestures Pranav have designed.
TED Talk
Website: http://www.pranavmistry.com/projects/sixthsense/
Interesting site presenting social media news in the form of interactive lego blocks.
Online 3d has always been mired by long loading times or unresponsive interface. The thing that caught me was how the author of this site, Masayuki Kido, has taken that apparent limitation and used it to his advantage by combining low poly models with a beautiful cut out style. The illustrations, character designs and witty dialog are are wonderful too, leaving me wanting for more after exploring all the sections. Of course, expect nothing less from the winner of the FWA Site of the year 2008.
Check it out at http://ecodazoo.com/
The site is in japanese but that shouldn’t harm your experience a bit. Click through the 10 questions and have your robot generated, then watch it move around and fight with other robots. The algorithm that moves them and animate the legs is intriguing, and the interface looks clean and polished, typical japanese design.
http://www.verbatim.jp/senshuken/
Created by IMG SRC/Non-Grid, Kaibutsu, and Masayuki Kido
Reading the iPhone Human Interface guidelines for inspiration on interface architecture design.
Chanced upon this indie game which had a game visual similar to that of microsoft’s photosynth demo.
Of course it only looks similar on the surface, the underlying technology seems much different in the sense that its unlikely the engine will arrange and stitch your photos in 3d. Having said that, the game play looks interesting enough.
Source: http://www.indiegames.com/blog/2009/11/trailer_trauma_krystian_majews.html
I was recently tasked to improve the look and functionality of a site that lets users upload images. One of the area I looked into was how it handled automatic thumbnail generation, because I found the thumbnails that were being generated to be, well, plain ugly.
The method they used was a standard resize to max width and height. The uploaded photo is scaled down proportionately to fit into a box of specified width and height. This resulted in irregularly sized thumbnails and even more so when users upload photos with strange dimensions. Not only does it make the page look messy and disorganized, Continue reading ‘Making Smarter Thumbnails’
Came across this little tool that generates custom loading icons. You basically select the background and foreground colors and choose a template for the shape, and it generates an animated .gif.
Useful when you just need one quick. http://www.ajaxload.info/
Quoting Sanid who gathered this collection of typographic portraits at abduzeedo:
Typography is not just about choosing a nice typeface, actually it’s much more than that, it’s how we arrange the types in the layout choosing the right size, weight and type of font to transmit the message in the easiest and more understandable way. Now, imagine some designers take that to a next step, mixing typography with portraits.
Thanks to Kian An for the link.