I updated the OmniGraffle Web Design Template.
This web design template for OmniGraffle Professional provides the basic layout for a design deliverable including the following master canvases: document title, section title, wireframe (portrait and landscape), storyboard, and blank. The wireframes were created at 950px wide with guides following the Blueprint CSS Grid system. Wireframes also have 2 small hairline marks around the 600px point to mark the approximate fold. Go grab it here.
As you may know, several months ago, I created an Adobe Photoshop template for creating comps that work with Olav Bjorkoy's Blueprint CSS Framework. Today I'm also adding an Illustrator template to my Resources section and I have updated the Photoshop template to include horizontal guides.
Both templates are simply documents with guides based on the 24 units provided by Blueprint. The background image of the grid is also provided with a layer to show unit numbers if you like, and the Illustrator document shows a fake comp to demonstrate positioning on the grid.
You may download the templates here:
I welcome your feedback.
After about a 4 year break from blogging about information architecture on iaslash (my last post there was 11/2003) I've decided to return to blogging on a wider range of user experience topics. The new blog is called Konigi. Here's a snapshot of how it looks today:
The word Konigi means "to make known." Before I started on this project I wanted to find a way to focus on doing some sort of personal knowledge management related to web design, and somehow I ended up doing this site. I can't tell you how happy I am to have finally found a way to combine my interest in KM, Design and UX, and Blogging into one project.
Herw's what you find on the site for now:
- Interface: A gallery of user interface and interaction examples that are both conventional and accepted solution as well as innovative examples that push the use of medium.
- Design: A gallery of sites that can be described as influential, innovative, and effective at representing their brand and purpose. Visitors may submit designs for inclusion. The submissions that get the most votes will be included among the featured sites.
- Notebook: This is the more traditional blog, pointing to UX resources. For now I'm going to keep the writing lean and succinct. This is also the place where I'll be posting the Collages (Command-Shift-5) I play with occassionally and post to Flickr.
- Function: This is a competitive analysis section that I'm working on and hope to release very soon. Hopefully these pages will start appearing in the Spring.
When I started this project a few months ago, I thought I'd simply be starting a blog or wiki, but somehow it evolved into a more focussed portal of sorts with lots of screenshots. I got my hands on Skitch and started posting screenshots to Flickr. I started a new job last year and found myself taking screenshots a lot more and write a lot less on urlgreyhot. All the little experiments using Skitch on Flickr forced me to organize things and separate these screens from those Ipost to urlgreyhot. This is where Konigi comes in. Hopefully it will keep this stream of screenshots in order so they're findable and reusable by others in the UX community who may be interested in them.
I'd love to hear your feedback.
I made some minor modifications to the wireframe stencil/palette adding some new label markers, cursors including a hand pointer with tool tip, an AJAX spinner, a drop-down/selection menu with options showing, and a sizable window element.
Download the new version from the Wireframe page.
I'm ready to take a break for a few weeks. I've finally updated my portfolio, adding some Lucent work from the past 4 years, and removing some old work. You can see the new stuff by going to the services section and using the Featured Work links in the right sidebar. Was anxious to get that out of the way. I've also gotten some responses out for new project work and can now focus on actual work for a friend and a few personal projects.
The year has had good and tough times. Some things I can do without like constantly getting colds by taking my son out play with his friends every week. I discovered Airborne, but that damned sinusitis keeps finding me. Such is the life of a parent. The stupid car I use only once a week gave me all kinds of headaches. But otherwise, it's been cool. Time really flew by this year.
Some of the things I've been thankful for: finally feeling like I'm learning to paint, rediscovering cycling, rediscovering that I love to make stuff with my hands, getting better at doing site development, accepting that I can do a little freelance and enjoy it, being lucky enough to do work that I enjoy, finally starting to take my finances seriously, being lucky enough to see my friends occassionally, telecommuting, spending every day with my wife and son and living in a city full of wonders.
Upcoming for me hopefully (sort of a to do list for January on):
- hopefully a blog entry about cutting up comps and creating CSS for grids
- more skinning of this site and experimenting with making Drupal skins (some for you to use for free, some possibly for sale)
- getting physically ready for the spring bike season (seriously)
- selling my car so I can bike commute to NJ (who needs the MTA?)
- back to mixing with Traktor DJ Studio
- sewing classes at Make Workshop
- watching more movies
learning to trackstand- getting brown in Jamaica!!!
I need more hours in the day.
Buyer beware. I'm removing the link to the Zazzle shirts I created because I received my shirts and the quality is really sub-standard. You can get much better results from a real tshirt screen-printing service. No idea if Cafe Press will be any better.
Judging from this discussion of Zazzle on Dealtime, other people have had the same bad experiences. The biggest problem I have with these folks is that you cannot delete products from their site and they will continue to run your shirt perpetually. I didn't read the agreement, but according to others who have uploaded art work on Zazzle, there is no way to remove their art work, and Zazzle can continue to profit from your work even if you no longer want to sell through them. That may be good business for them, but it's really bad for the creators of the art work.
So my opinion is to stay away from Zazzle for dark t-shirts and wait to see how Cafe Press does with theirs. I'm having a really hard time imagining that the quality would be any good for any of these types of shirt printing services on black.
UPDATE: Black TShirts on Cafe Press are now up for sale!
Following my cycling accident last week, I thought it might be a good idea to carry the TransAlt checklist for cyclists who get doored in New York City. You always need to carry some form of ID with you just in case. This might be a suitable thing to carry for those who travel light and don't want to splurge on one of those Road ID bracelets.
I made a card that can be printed on 3x5 index cards, laminated, folded and slipped into your jersey pocket. The card contains a section at the top where you write in your emergency information and the checklist that reminds you of the steps you should take at the scene of an accident. Use the blank back to write down the driver's information at the accident scene. I suppose it would also be a good idea to have a blank form on that side so you can fill out the information you need. Someone on a club mailing list pointed out that 2 additional things are missing from TA's list that you might want to keep in mind:
* if you need to go to the hospital, the police MUST take your bike for safekeeping.
* If a hit-and-run, menacing, or assault occured, ask the police to file a criminal complaint against the motorist.
The NYPD will often not do either of the above unless you remind them that it is part of their job, so you'll have to remind them yourself.
Download the PDF file (163 K)Well I decided to can the last skin. The purpose of that skin was to try and create a more professional looking site. In the past year I combined studioid and urlgreyhot and was having difficulty figuring out how to organize the site. So in the last skin, I created main categories for professional and personal content. It worked I think at positioning my publications and portfolio better, though I haven't updated the portfolio in about 3 years.
The problem now is that I actually do not want to do freelance work. In the past 6 months I've been turning down about 3 freelance jobs a month. Most are small jobs, but some have been medium to large size projects. For various reasons, I just can't take on any extra work right now. So I've reverted this site to a minimal design that just puts everything out in front and doesn't try to make my professional work so prominent. The only different thing I've done with this skin is to use Dave Shea's CSS Sprites image replacement technique for the navigation bar. That has to be one of the coolest CSS ideas I've seen in a long time. I hope to get that brown palmtree skin working some time in the coming months as well if I have the time.
In any case, with the cancellation of the Miami conference and some depressing bouts with illness these past few months, I've been spending a lot of time researching a warm place for us to go real soon. We're also talking about researching warmer climates where we might be able to spend longer term stays during the winter. This is what a lot of NYC retirees do. They're called snowbirds, because they fly south, usually to Florida, for the winter. If we can afford to, I'd like to eventually find a place where we can rent initially for a month to start. Then it would be ideal to buy a small condo or something and rent it out. I'm seriously looking at San Diego. Looks like a wonderful place to be.
In any case, this site will be changing very slightly. I'm awaiting a Flickr API and hope to use the Flickr module for my photos section.
For some reason -- probably because people come to this site by way of presentations I give -- I decided to make this site neat and clean and therefore more professional looking. Thus the recent Tricorder and this 0403 theme are very white, spare and employ a lot of white space. I was attempting to make myself appear more professional, but, God, isn't it also more boring this way?
As you probably know, I tweak this site constantly and don't care about continuity from one version to the next. I'm just trying to learn new stuff. I also just get sick of looking at the same thing every day. So I redesign every few months. Is there a name for this disease? It's like consumerism. You get tired with what you have and crave after a new thing. In this case it's a new blog skin.
So here's the new skin that may replace what you see now. Kind of reminds me of this earlier version around 2001. Boxy and brown. That version actually won a netdiver award for some reason. Anyway, the earth tones suit me.
And now I can leave my lingering siteredesignitis for now to get back to regular work.
It's kind of harsh, but my office mate wanted a bumper sticker with the "59 million dumb" headline from the London Daily Mirror, so I created the 59M Dumb Cafe Press store.
I don't know. This is like a sign that reads "break my windows".