I haven’t been this excited about a Kickstarter project in months. As we spend more and more time on touch interfaces, it’s refreshing to see something that turns just about any physical object into a button. MaKey MaKey is an invention kit for the 21st century. Turn everyday objects into touchpads and combine them with the internet. It’s a simple Invention Kit for Beginners and Experts doing art, engineering,... Read more
I had my brand new retina display iPad (all 3.1 million pixels) in one hand and the panic button in the other. I was sure the pixel-dense screen would take the websites we’ve built and peel back their layer of pretty, revealing something less than perfect (like HD cameras did to sitcom actors). Was this layer we’ve so painstakingly designed, sliced, exported, and built stylesheets around really so thin?... Read more
I came across The World’s Longest Invoice website today from the Freelancers Union. It’s tallying up the dollar amount that is being “held hostage by deadbeat clients.” While I think the Freelancers Union site has some great resources & goals, I can’t get on board with the attitude of the longest invoice page. Since being in business, I’ve had 2 unpaid invoices. Sure, I’m disappointed in the clients, but... Read more
Paravel got really busy from November thru January. I spent the majority of my time with my head down, focused on client work, deadlines, basecamp, and email. We were a part of some fun projects, but when it came time for me to speak at New Adventures this year I realized I was a little used-up. I felt disconnected from my identity as a web designer because I... Read more
To design responsive websites effectively and responsibly, I had to completely redefine the way I view the web. It pains me to admit it, but I wasn’t too keen on responsive web design right out of the box. Weeks after Ethan’s ALA article, I even briefly entertained the idea of writing a post haranguing the practice, nit-picking concerns on how using media queries to relocate elements on a page... Read more
I’ve been tinkering with the font-size and the media queries that trigger width-based changes for this site regularly over the past month. I thought that maxing out at 20px for body copy at widths above 900px would be my final answer, but I decided to drop in one more increase last week: media screen and (min-width: 1234px) and (min-height:700px) { body {font-size: 137.5%;} } This bumps body copy up... Read more
