Blogging and all that malarkey

While the folks at New Riders work hard on editing the three DVDs that I recorded in February, and I make trouble by asking for tiny changes, I turned my attention to designing the cover artwork.

Could this be the day that I eat my words about CSS frameworks? I’ve been mean to them in the past, written harsh things. I once likened them to instant cake mixes in response to Jeff Croft’s What’s not to love about CSS frameworks?

Last Monday, I met up with the New Internationalist team to talk about what we had accomplished so far in the redesign and the remaining issues. As he was in the area, we were also joined by my friend and design meeting interloper Dan Rubin.

I wanted to learn more about CSS attribute selectors.—This article was originally published on And All That Malarkey on February 20th, 2005.

Clearleft has been working on a system very much like Typekit. Our technology sounds different, but the effect should the same: a font-face delivery system that will work keep both font designers and web designers happy. — You heard it hear first folks. I thank you. (cymbal crash)

A clear and quick reference to HTML symbol entities codes. (via)

Now is the time, particularly during this open design process, where I get nervous about presenting the design I hope to launch. While I know that there are still aspects left to resolve, I wanted to share my process and thinking behind what I’m showing today.

For the last few days I’ve been working on the branding aspects of my New Internationalist redesign and I have to admit that I’m struggling. There is a raging argument going on in my head. Please help me make it stop.

As I’m putting together Walls Come Tumbling Down, the talk that I am giving this year at @media 2009 London and An Event Apart, I wanted to share some of my notes on how the current recession will affect the way that web designers and developers work.

Well, perhaps not quite everything. Today Jeffrey Veen let the cat out of the proverbial. He announced Typekit.

It’s possible that this should be an elsewhere entry, but as so many people have emailed, tweeted and otherwise asked about the placeholder images that I’m using in my New Internationalist redesign process, I thought I’d share the source.

Thanks to all of the excellent and constructive feedback so far, I am today working towards the New Internationalist pages that I am designing being feature complete and ready for sign-off next week. With that in mind, I wanted to share with you a top-down view of all of the pages that I have been working on.

Today I want to share and invite your feedback on my work on the New Internationalist blog pages.

Today I want to share and invite your feedback on my work on the New Internationalist magazine pages.

I hope that New Internationalist readers will never see 404 Page Not Found.

Most often when I’m designing a new site, I focus first on its content pages. Then, working from the inside-out, I finally arrive at the home page. This is the approach that I’ve taken in my work for New Internationalist. That said, a site’s home page is often what people want to see first, so who am I to disagree? Today I want to share and invite your feedback on my work on the New Internationalist home page.

How do you answer the Internet Explorer 6 question?

When I was asked by New Internationalist to design for their online magazine, blogs and shops, the challenge seemed pretty daunting. The New Internationalist site has content that reaches back over thirty years, more page templates than you can shake a riot policeman’s truncheon at and a structure that involves some complex interaction design challenges. I also have limited time, budget and resources available.

As part of the New Internationalist redesign project, I’m focussing on how the organization presents itself online. To begin that process, I’ve been researching the printed magazine since it started in 1973. (I should stress that I’m not working on the organization’s overall branding, nor the design of the magazine.)

A few weeks ago I received an email from New Internationalist magazine asking me if I’d like to work on the redesign of their online magazine, blogs and shop. I was away from my studio when the email arrived so I pecked out a quick reply on my iPhone. I think it went something like New Internationalist? Oh fuck yes!

Yesterday I took a call (and received an email) from a long-standing client. I designed for them in 2001/2. Over the last year, the staff responsible for updating their site had changed, they had mislaid their passwords and they needed help. So help was what they got.

Earlier this week, I wrote about the limitations of current CSS to bind font styling to the availability of typefaces. I mused that a clever person might develop a solution using Javascript.

The baseline is an invisible line onto which all type characters sit, although of course some characters (including ‘j’, ‘p’, ‘g’ and ‘y’) have descenders that hang below the baseline. Baseline shift involves moving characters up or down in relation to the baseline and using it effectively can make a huge difference to the professional look of your type. Although baseline shift has traditionally been a part of using tools like InDesign or Quark, there are ways to accomplish the same results using today’s CSS.

As I wrote yesterday, CSS has unresolved problems concerning the lack of variable line-heights (leading) in relation to available installed typefaces. I don’t expect those to be resolved any time soon, unless by switching to @font-face for even commonly installed typefaces or some clever JavaScript font detection. During my teaching in Australia last week, another leading issue, in relation to CSS frameworks, came to mind. This one can be resolved by applying a little typography knowledge.