Author Archive

A couple of weeks ago I asked if there was a better way to style paragraphs and mostly considered whether or not paragraphs should be indicated with an extra line space or an indent. This post is a follow up to some of the comments on that one.
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A couple of recent guest posts have discussed the value of 4 year and online degrees as compared to learning on your own. While I’ve added some thoughts to the previous 2 posts, I wanted to clarify some thing in a post of my own.
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About a week and a half ago, Matt Cutt’s posted to the Google Webmaster Central blog, about an algorithmic change that considers the layout of a webpage, particularly what appears “above the fold” as a signal in where the page should rank.
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For years designers have been following the canon of page construction put forth by Jan Tschichold. The construction works well in print where the canvas is fixed and known. The situation on the web is very different and something new is required.
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Can design be reduced to formulaic solutions to a common set of problems? Can creativity be stripped from the process? Once you’ve chosen a design concept is the resulting finished design inevitable?
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Today, January 18th, 2012 sites all over the internet are blacking out to protest SOPA and PIPA, two US bills in Congress aimed at fighting piracy and copyright infringement. Neither bill is written in a way to successfully achieve their goals. Instead the bills will threaten economic prosperity, online security, and freedom of expression.

I had thought of blacking out this site, but as it’s unlikely a site the internet would miss for the day, I thought I could do more by keeping the site up and pointing you to the video and accompanying description below.

You’ve may have seen it already, though please watch it you haven’t. It’s only a few minutes long it will explain better than I can the dangers in the proposed bills.

To learn more and take action please visit Stop American Censorship at americancensorship.org/.

Thanks.

Tell Congress not to censor the internet NOW! – www.fightforthefuture.org/pipa

PROTECT-IP is a bill that has been introduced in the Senate and the House and is moving quickly through Congress. It gives the government and corporations the ability to censor the net, in the name of protecting “creativity”. The law would let the government or corporations censor entire sites– they just have to convince a judge that the site is “dedicated to copyright infringement.”

The government has already wrongly shut down sites without any recourse to the site owner. Under this bill, sharing a video with anything copyrighted in it, or what sites like Youtube and Twitter do, would be considered illegal behavior according to this bill.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, this bill would cost us $47 million tax dollars a year — that’s for a fix that won’t work, disrupts the internet, stifles innovation, shuts out diverse voices, and censors the internet. This bill is bad for creativity and does not protect your rights.

What’s the best way to indicate a new paragraph has started? Should you add an extra line space as is most common on the web or is it better to indent the first line as is common in print? Are these our only options?
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A few weeks ago Designmodo contacted me for an interview they were doing with a number of web designers. They asked a few questions along the lines of what were the big changes that happened in 2011 and where did I think things were heading in 2012.
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The pattern of building tension and then releasing that tension is one of the most ingrained patterns on all human beings. Tension and release is at the heart of music, story, art, and pretty much all creative endeavors.
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Adding a sense of depth to a design can make that design seem more realistic and increase visual interest. Building out the 3rd dimension pulls the viewer into the design and can help you set up entry points and control flow throughout your design.
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Recent Posts

• The Novice Web Designer: How Do You Achieve Perfection?
• More Thoughts About Paragraph Styling
• The Value of Theoretical And Practical Knowledge