The Internet Has Gone Mad

Is it just me, or has the Net recently lost its mind? I swear, half of the pages I try to visit give me errors. Even Google won’t come up every so often, even after numerous refreshes. For a second I thought that my internet connection was the one with problems, but many sites still work fine all the time, including AdamPolselli.com, so I am hereby diagnosing the internet as the one with issues. Maybe it needs a day off.

By the way, this is my excuse for the lack of updates.

A Beaming “Zunflower”

Now that Dave Shea has returned from his wedding and honeymoon, which included travels to Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, Vancouver, Seattle, Chicago, Providence, Boston, and New York City (phew!), I have been keeping a close eye on the Zen Garden, hoping that his return would mean a new design.

“The beautiful, yet simple, design portrays subtle innovation at its finest.”

Well, what do you know, it did! The newest edition to the ever-expanding Garden, entitled “Zunflower,” wowed me. Literally. The first thing I said when I saw it was, “wow!” The beautiful, yet simple, design portrays subtle innovation at its finest.

The three column layout is exaggerated and enhanced by soft drop shadows that make you feel as if you’re looking at a 3D presentation, and not just a 2D Web page. The edited sunflower image behind the logo is crisp and vibrant. It makes me wonder whether or not it began as a photograph of a real sunflower. In the end, Radu Darvas has provided the Garden with another astonishing design.

New ALA Redesign Clue

About a month ago, I reported that Jeffrey Zeldman had subtly revealed that A List Apart was getting a make over.

Now, exactly twenty-four days later, Zeldman has revealed another clue. This time it’s an image, accompanied by the dubious phrase, “Hey, you never know.” I tell you, that Jeffrey knows exactly how to keep people on their toes in anticipation!

About the graphic. I’m not sure I like it. It’s very similar to the third style of The Daily Report (original white), but maybe that’s what he was going for. Anyways, I guess I was just hoping for something drastically different, but I suppose it’s OK that he is staying true to his design style.

I’ll continue to watch for these dropped clues and hints about the ALA redesign, so stay tuned!

Some Changes

I have made a few changes to the layout of the site. Nothing too exciting, but the changes include:

• The width of the container box has been increased 50px, from 650 to 700.
• The increase in the width of the container box was made in order to be able increase the width of the sidebar. It was increased 40px, from 160 to 200. I have been wanting to do this so that the recent entry titles do not wrap, and to give the sidebar more flexibility; now it can hold paragraphs of text, without looking too cramped, if ever necessary.
• The border on the footer box was changed. The 1px, dashed, white border looked a little sketchy.
• In the “Personalize” section of the sidebar, I got rid of the wisp background. It was kind of ugly, and clashed with the design. I also put all of the background thumbnails on one line, because now there’s room to do so – yea!
• I added three more buttons to the “Buttons” section in the sidebar: an RDF feed, an RSS valid button that links to the validator, and a “CSS Tableless” button, just because. I also split the buttons into two columns because, you guessed it, now there’s room to do so – yea again!

Well, that’s about it. Here’s to hoping you enjoy the subtle, but worthy, changes.

Design Meme Redesign

DesignMeme.com has just had a face-lift. Actually, a face-lift would imply that the previous design was sagging, but it wasn’t, so let’s just call it … a chemical peel! The old design is gone, and in it’s place is a fresh new design, with a color scheme that resembles the look of charred, post-chemical peel skin (and that’s not a bad thing!)

The new design is drastically different from the former, in color, texture, and style. The header is a beautiful Photoshop piece, and has a sort of Leonardesque (as in Leonardo da Vinci) feel to it. I especially love the drawn underlines when hovering over a link; now that’s what I call innovation! The background-image on hover is something that I, and many people, never would have thought of.

Congratulations on a job well done, Stuart!

Stream of Consciousness

If the process that a designer follows to create a one-of-a-kind design is complex, which it is, then the process that goes on within a designer’s head while creating a one-of-a-kind design is inconceivably labyrinthine.

Likewise, if putting the indescribable workings of a designer’s mind into words would be a feat, which it would, then putting it into the form of a moving image would be a tour de force. Enter Armin Vit and his marvelous movie, “Stream of Consciousness: Listening to Your Inner Designer.”

“As all (or most) designers know, while designing we tend to have supra-hyper- streams of consciousness”

According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, a “stream of consciousness” is “the continuous unedited chronological flow of conscious experience through the mind.” As all (or most) designers know, while designing we tend to have supra-hyper-streams of consciousness and, as I mentioned above, to put this supra-hyper-stream of consciousness into the form of a moving picture would be quite the task. Well, Armin Vit has accomplished just that task.

Throughout his movie you’ll experience the thoughts, sounds, and visions that a designer encounters through the design process, including such tangents as “should I join green peace,” to “did I feed the cat,” to “I wonder what ever happened to my high school sweetheart?” At one point the designer even wonders what the tune is to “that Billy Joel song,” and then proceeds to hum “We Didn’t Start the Fire” as it comes to him. According to the narrator, these streams, or, perhaps, raging rivers, in a designer’s case, make up 80% of the things taking place within your head.

“Design is not about the end result. It’s about the process, the fun, and the possibilities.”

“Stream of Consciousness” concludes with this final message: design is not about the end result. It’s about the process, the fun, and the possibilities.

Better words have never been spoken. Armin’s movie reminds us to be open-minded and have fun with the design process. If your process simply includes step one, two, three, four, done, then you’re missing out on all of the amazing possibilities that lie between day one and day one hundred, when you finally finish your most worthy design and can say to yourself, “gee, that was really fun.”

Pull-a-Quote

Michael Pick’s recent entry on pull quotes, “small snippets of an article that have been ‘pulled out’ of the main body of text and set in a larger typeface and generally styled in an eye-catching manner,” has drawn much attention and inspired many bloggers and designers on the Net (including me) to include pull quotes in their content.

“People tend to skim content on the Web, and pull quotes help draw attention.”

Mike explains the benefits of pull quotes on the Web, the main one being the fact that people tend to skim content on the Web, and pull quotes help draw attention, and he provides some guidelines to good pull quotes and five nice examples, none of which display correctly in IE Win.

As I mentioned, I am one of the many people that have been inspired and that now have the urge to use pull quotes. In this entry you’ll see the first ever pull quote on AdamPolselli.com – yipee! It was done by simply inserting a blockquote with this class applied to it:

blockquote.pullquote {
color: #333;
float: right;
font: 20px/24px georgia, palatino, serif;
margin: 10px 0 10px 15px;
padding: 0;
text-align: center;
width: 150px; }

Simple enough. So, look forward to more pull quotes in the future!

More Get the Look News

As previously reported, the Get the Look design guides are under renovation. Actually, the guides themselves are complete. I’m in the final process of editing the articles that go along with the guides, and writing a new article to go with the new look, “Chic Simplicity.”

“Chic Simplicity” began as a remake of “Crisp & Clean,” but eventually turned into its own look. It still follows the concept behind the “Crisp & Clean” guide, but the colors, color schemes, and techniques have been completely recreated. Therefore, the “Crisp & Clean” design guide and article are being retired. Sad, I know, but it was the very first guide and article, and it was created when I was still a design novice. The colors needed improvement, and the techniques were far from great. That said, I am sure that you will enjoy and find useful the new look, “Chic Simplicity,” once it’s published.

Give me another few days to edit the articles and finish everything up, and then I’ll publish them to the site and make an announcement. Until then, you can enjoy a preview of the new guides, seen above.