Campsite is a New York based design blog and studio run by visual designer Max Ritt.
Even today there are rather few blogs and web based editorials that truly craft unique quality content. The Brander as far as I know is the first to do such a thing for brands, their development, and the people behind them. Pairing amazing photographs with comprehensive writing they truly rise to the occasion of covering people and brands that have risen to top of their field, or in some cases created a field.
(via Quipsologies »)
I posted about the The Official Manufacturing Company previously here. Their work is always impressively bold and holds very specific characteristics based on each client and their brand. They also maintain a client list equally as impressive as their work, including Ace Hotel, Rudy’s Barbershop, and Stumptown Coffee Roasters. Last time I posted about them I had just encountered the new packaging Stumptown had released, which they designed. Since that post they have done more great work for Stumptown along with a slew of other great stuff.
Michael Surtees of the blog Design Notes and the new web shop Gesture Theory has recently launched a Google Chrome extension called Silence of the Celebs. The extension gives you the ability to remove headlines of celebs from CNN, Huffington Post, and TMZ. You can choose from their default list or add your own. Additional features are said to be coming soon, including the ability of the extension to function on any site.
The Noun Project is an awesome new project with the mission of “Sharing, celebrating and enhancing the world’s visual language”. By creating a library of symbols and icons they have created a universally accessible visual language that anyone can use at anytime free of charge. Whether you are a designer or otherwise you can download and use the images. Beyond having created a visionary idea, the UX and site design are very fun to use despite their simplicity.
My friend Skylar Challand of oak is the genius behind this revolutionary new bookmarking and sharing tool dropmark. Dropmark combines a lot of the features I love in Gimme Bar with a little be more focus on data ownership, which I really appreciate. They also have a handy little API so you can use your data and dropmarks in anyway you would like.
(via swissmiss »)
Photo: Jason Santa Maria
A Book Apart will release the third title in their collection on March 8th. The book is titled The Elements of Content Strategy and was written by Erin Kissane who works as a project lead at Brain Traffic.
CONTENTS:
º Basic Principles
º The Craft of Content Strategy
º Tools and Techniques
º Bonus Track: How Do I Get In?
Typography Deconstructed fills such a necessary void in design education and equips us with general knowledge of something we designers use everyday and on average know very little about. Today there are very few well designed sources of good factual reference when you are truly in need of it. This site and accompanying poster provide the design community with a wealth of knowledge on the subject of typography. So on behalf of myself and designers every where I say thank you TypeDecon!
(via Beast Pieces »)
Underheard in New York is the perfect example of a simple idea that may not change the world, but can at the least change what we know and the way we think about homelessness. Pairing the social media capabilities of twitter and four prepaid cellphones Underheard has empowered homeless New Yorkers to participate in the global dialog on homelessness. They truly deserve a seat at the table in this discussion and most certainly deserve to be called New Yorkers.
“Underheard in New York is an initiative to help homeless residents in New York City speak for themselves. We’ve provided Danny, Derrick, Albert and Carlos each with their own mobile phone, a month of unlimited text messaging and a Twitter account. They’ve found their voices by texting their thoughts, feelings and actions to Twitter. Our mission is to use their social media presence to create real interaction and make them a part of our global community.”
(via swissmiss »)
Disclaimer: This post makes some broad strokes about a few different things, but it’s main intention was to recount a recent data snafu and to send some appreciation to a couple of fellow bloggers for being awesome.
As you read this I am recovering from what initially looked like catastrophic data-loss. My Lacie d2 Quadra 500GB hard-drive(sole file storage for most if not all of my work past and present. Yes I am a lazy dinosaur) refused to mount and was making that brushy clicking sound; said to be characteristic of collapsed brushes. It turned out to be the other common and infinitely more palatable scenario. A corrupted power source. Painless $30 fix from the nice helpful people over at Tekserve.
The comedy in all of this lies in the fact that earlier that day I had signed up for Backblaze and made the mental note to start putting together A Backup System. This initiative had stemmed from reading two insightful posts from some fellow design, web creatives Frank Chimero and Antonio Carusone of Aisleone. I really respect these two guys for their work and for the education and inspiration I get from their blogs on a regular basis. These posts about something that could be written off as trivial or something any body should be able to figure out on their own is a great resource. Inevitably we all need good information on a particular subject at some point. So why not get that info. from someone you have learned to trust?
It is really great that people in our field have the compulsion and platforms available to them, like never before, to share their experiences, ideas and tools for doing what it is we do.
Muncie is a strong condensed, all-caps typeface offered for free from The Lost Type Co-op. Riley Cran and Tyler Galpin collaborated on this project, which was built and launched in an awe inspiring 24 hours. After a great first release TLTC is on track towards their goal of being a “pay what you want” type foundry.
(via Quipsologies »)
Little Big Details is a nice minimal tumblr blog, which allows you to view a great collection of UI details and explinations of the interactions in a easy scrollable format. This will definitely come in handy when I am having trouble deciding how something should function.
(via swissmiss »)
Collections of things are always insightful, and this collection of UI button types from all over the web is fantastic. Apptly named House of Buttons, this blog is edited by Jason Long a developer and UI designer from Columbus, Ohio.
(via swissmiss »)
Posting from the road for the second time. I am currently in Antigua, Guatemala on a trip around central America.
“Domestique is a historic cycling journal. You will find clippings, images, random filings and general romantic cycling non-sense filling these pages. Most likely you won’t find much about carbon, expensive modern components or the like, but once in a while we get a little self-indulgent. Think of it as a history book, but a hell of a lot less boring.”
I couldn’t really some it up better myself. This is a great blog with awesome historic cycling content and a nice minimalist design to boot.
My good friend Jessica Hische just launched a beautiful new site for her project Daily Drop Cap, which will function as a blog for the duration of the project and then as an archive and resource once the final alphabet is completed. For anyone who has followed the drop caps project at all, you know how beautiful and vast a body of work it has generated. So it stands to reason that it should be given a beautiful home. This very simple, yet refined WordPress site makes an awesome home for these alphabets.
The super talented design duo The Heads of State, comprised of Jason Kernevich and Dustin Summers have launched a new portfolio site and store. It showcases a much larger portion of their work including some rad new stuff I haven’t seen. Also their store has some great pickups. I had the good fortune to see these gents give a talk at MAD here in New York this past year and they some of the funniest most humble guys designing today.
After a few minutes of “reallys” and some keyboard slamming I have settled into the new redesign and renaming of one of my favorite blogs. As a blogger and reader who is against the concept of RSS feeds and reader apps in general the actual native design of a blog makes a huge difference on the experience and whether or not I will bookmark a blog or site for a return visit.
That being said. Once I read Bobby’s posts about this big change I became a little more comfortable with the new site. I definitely understand the need to spice things up and even completely renew something and Bobby Solomon has done a great job of this with The Fox is Black.
“Photoshop dexterity (PSD) is a skillset acquired by proficient users of Adobe Photoshop, the world’s most ubiquitous digital tool for creating visual ideas. Qualities of PSD include supernatural powers of imagination and an overwhelming desire to constantly make the world more beautiful. PSD affects people from different walks of life. In fact, there is a high probability that you have PSD.”
Hyperakt seems to make some of the most enticing and fun side projects around. Whether it is a 2010 World Cup bracket poster or this short film showing “PSD” (Photoshop Dexterity) in someone’s morning routine, the folks over at Hyperakt seem to be able to infuse some good old ingenuity into it.
(via swissmiss »)
Chris Messina has created a nice simplified system for streamlining our character usage and ways of crediting people on twitter. The extremely thorough post over at his blog is a must read for any twitter users and possibly for twitter haters as well.
(via swissmiss »)
The sea of photographers on that have a portfolio on the web today seems endless, but floating along on a magnificent ocean liner is Peter Baker. I follow his flickr stream like a cult member and I am rarely disappointed when he uploads something new. The flood gates opened last week when Peter launched a rad new portfolio site that highlights the square format that I have begun to know him for. Another detail that really struck me is that the redesign has been implemented seamlessly across his blog and the new portfolio site. Beauty in the small details!
A huge thank-you to Shane Latkovic the gentleman behind the beautiful blog of design blogs called Sample Gallery. If you haven’t checked SG out yet you need to pronto. The layout alone is amazing, and the ever growing collection of design and creative blogs that have been posted there makes it a serious resource. Thanks again Shane!
