Crap brief Jan 31, 12, 6:36 a.m.

My mum just emailed me this:

"We are getting annoyed here because people are letting their dogs crap outside the house and along the pavement. More today and yesterday apart from Saturday night's decoration of the pavement. Revolting for walkers, not to mention the road sweeper who I chatted to this morning. It occurs to me that a poster which is amusing and attracts attention might be more effective to stop it than horrible notices and might shame dog owners into being more thoughtful.
Any ideas from you would be very useful."

such is the life of a graphic designer, always a useful person to know.

Anyone got any fun ideas to shame people?
cheers.

The Bark Side – VW ad Jan 19, 12, 10:19 a.m.

http://youtu.be/6ntDYjS0Y3w

can't help but like this

No TIFFs please Jan 5, 12, 3:07 a.m.

Just a note to say that TIFFs are outmoded these days, they slow everything down, especially layered TIFFs. PSDs and JPGs from here on in please!

Thank you, that is all.

New Youtube layout Nov 17, 11, 7:27 a.m.

Anyone seen this, I got a shock when I went to youtube just now, sneaky how they've got google+ and facebook into there now:

Tumblr source attribution icon Nov 15, 11, 9:20 a.m.

I wonder if anyone here knows anything about customising tumblr.

When an image is given a source attribution (where it came from) this is normally shown as a text link. But some (larger companies) have theirs as an icon. Like GQ, see below:

This:

not this:

The GQ icon is hosted here, which leads me to believe that they have some kind of deal with Tumblr.

the part of the code that deals with source attribution is this:

<tr>
<td class="date"><a href="{Permalink}">{TimeAgo}</a></td>
{block:IndexPage}{block:NoteCount}<td class="notes"><a href="{Permalink}">{NoteCountWithLabel}</a></td>{/block:NoteCount}{/block:IndexPage}
{block:PermalinkPage}{block:ContentSource}<td class="notes"><a href="{SourceURL}">{block:SourceLogo}<img src="{BlackLogoURL}" width="{LogoWidth}" height="{LogoHeight}" alt="{SourceTitle}" />{/block:SourceLogo}{block:NoSourceLogo}Via {SourceLink}{/block:NoSourceLogo}</a></td>{/block:ContentSource}{/block:PermalinkPage}
</tr>
and is listed under Content Sources here:
http://www.tumblr.com/docs/en/cu…

I've tried swapping out {BlackLogoURL} with the URL of my icon but it's not working.

Any help would be appreciated

Advice on wordpress magazine theme Nov 1, 11, 6:06 a.m.

So, I'm narrowing in on a good wordpress theme, for a magazine style blog that I'm writing.
The best I've found so far is this:

http://organicthemes.com/demo/ma…

which I'll be able to tweak, design wise, swapping out the google fonts for a serifed version etc.

Can anyone recommend anything nicer or more feature rich than this one?

I was also looking at Sight by wpshower, but it doesn't have social media buttons for each post, which I think will prove useful:
http://wpshower.com/themes/sight…

any tips or things to watch out for would be appreciated, thanks

Show me nice serif blogs/sites Oct 26, 11, 5:32 a.m.

I'm in the process of designing a blog which I want to have serif typography, pretty classical in style, ie NOT the usual swiss helvitca/grid mix.
Can anyone recommend some nice examples. If they're wordpress then all the better.

Both of these tumblr themes are pretty nice in terms of basic typography:
http://www.tumblr.com/theme/2158…

The Monocle site is a great example, more like this please:
http://www.monocle.com/

calling wordpress gurus Oct 13, 11, 2:35 a.m.

I've got a blog that I write on tumblr, I've modified the css of the theme a bit, so it looks ok but still, it's a tumblr. Why tumblr? well it's just so quick and easy to add stuff and everything looks good instantly, plus there was a community ready and waiting.
However, I'd like the blog to be a proper, professional site now, I own my .com url etc, and I'm ready to do this properly now. This means building a beautiful looking site, probably using wordpress that allows for commenting, sharing etc, as well as possible space for ads, as I have a couple of advertisers interested.

Who here has experience of building custom wordpress sites? I'd love to see any examples, preferably someone in London, obviously this is a proper paid job, the site is a hobby so I'm happy to fund it to make it that much better. thanks.

images from rss feed distorted Oct 7, 11, 3:39 a.m.

I'm working on a blog part of which pulls in rss feeds from other site. In these articles the main image is distorted, I assume because the original image doesn't have dimensions associated with it, so the template I'm using just squashes it in a fixed area.
Any tips on how to reformat the images when they're being pulled from an rss feed?
looks like this:

Labor day Aug 31, 11, 6:45 a.m.

So, I'm off to NYC on saturday, hopefully now the hurricane has passed, things will be a little more normal there. But I just realised that next monday is Labor Day. What does this mean for me, the casual visitor? Will things be shut etc? Naturally I will not be wearing white past this point...

fullscreen video with divs on top Aug 3, 11, 7:21 a.m.

I'm not a webdesigner but I sometimes build simple sites. This is one such occasion.
I need to build a site with a video, fullscreen in the background, with some very simple text/links over the top.

Does anyone have any good references for this? preferably not in flash. Basically something I can use to understand the code.

Thanks

That girl in pink Jul 15, 11, 7:57 a.m.

You’re 13 years old, and one morning you wake up (gotta have my bowl, gotta have cere-yowl) to discover that thousands and thousands of people are making fun of the way you dance. And they’re making animated GIFs of you dancing

You set up a non-profit. You do this:
http://thatgirlinpink.org/

this made my friday, what a great idea.

examples of nice invites Jul 12, 11, 4:55 a.m.

I'm looking for examples of high-end invitations, not weddings, more corporate events, exhibition private views etc. More interested in interesting formats and print processes than content per se.

thanks

Wedding photography Jun 9, 11, 8:36 a.m.

The wedding invites thread reminded me...

I'm going to a pretty informal wedding this weekend and I've said I'll take some photos. They don't want super posed style photos, just a nicely shot record of the day.

I'm taking my dslr but I've not shot 'events' type stuff before. I'm not a professional photographer but experienced as most designers are.

Any tips from those that have done weddings before? Also any tips for getting good results on a dull/rainy day since that's what the forecast is predicting

thanks

keep the change you filthy animal May 6, 11, 3:53 a.m.

http://newsfeed.time.com/2011/05…

The Home Alone house is for sale.
Who wants to club together the $2.4million to buy it?

Windows ad - photographer Apr 28, 11, 4:30 a.m.

I saw this ad this morning and just had to laugh, there is so much wrong with it.
Windows trying to appeal to photographers, whether amateur of professional. just look at the image, the old film cameras in the foreground, the plate of biscuits, the flight cases.
Who is this Harry fellow? they couldn't even get a real photographer to endorse it? How many people do you know that use Windows Live gallery to view and edit photos?

chrome fullscreen on multiple monitors Apr 14, 11, 3:05 a.m.

I have a set up with 3 monitors (for a disaplay) and I want to display a site (which was custom built and is very wide) across all 3 monitors.
I want to do this in fullscreen mode to hide the browser page furniture.
When I click fullscreen mode in chrome it only displays fullscreen on one monitor.
does anyone have any experience of fullscreen mode across multiple monitors? or any hacks to get this to work (on a pc)
thanks

all smartphones look the same Apr 13, 11, 2:12 a.m.

Prove my point.

I'm doing research, and I'm realising that as smartphones converge on being the thinnest piece of glass (ie a touchscreen) they all start to look the same. there's no where near as much variety as there used to be with the design handsets.

Also, as more and more phone companies take up Android, will that mean the UI looks similar too. in which case what will be left to make each company stand out from eachother?
will we be left with a case like what happened with Windows and PCs where the only thing people bought was the windows OS and the box it came in was generic: compaq, gateway, dell etc.

Even the iphone design is becoming more generic looking, from a distance it looks like any other, especially one people put their rubber cover over it.

i'd appreciate any photos or images of UIs etc that kind of prove this point. or just your point of view of where this stuff is headed

thanks!

Source Code movie Apr 4, 11, 2:25 a.m.

I liked Moon by Duncan Jones, and despite a crappy looking trailer for Source Code, it had a couple of decent reviews so I gave it a chance.

Turns out it was terrible. The fact they kept referring to this secret government project as 'source code' just made me cringe every time.
As if some hollywood screenwriter had just heard of coding for the first time.

but the biggest clanger for me was when jake gyllenhaal was on the train going through someone's mobile phone and at the top of the screen it said "history.swf" as if it was just playing back a flash file, surely it couldn't be that badly planned?
anyone else seen this movie yet?

what the logo Mar 8, 11, 3:57 a.m.

I'm thinking of a logo (possibly religious organisation) whose logo is an open book with light emanating from it.
Any ideas?

a bit like this but more graphic and bold. I think the sun makes up the fanned page edges:

I assume it's pretty common christian symbology