For a long time I had an ongoing problem optimizing PDFs in CS3 (I believe the problem occurs with CS2 and possibly other versions too). After a file had been optimized it wouldn’t display or print properly from Apple Preview. Elements of the PDF would either be missing or only partially displayed. I found documentation of the bug online but in each case the person said there was no known workaround.
Asking the Right Questions
A lot of people think designers just make things pretty. We don’t. First and foremost we solve problems. Problems that usually start with a question and, sometimes, we need to ask ourselves if we’re asking the right question.
Vendor Client Relationships
Found:
Designers: Design Your Resumes!
I’m reading through resumes and cover letters, looking for freelancers to add to our pool of talent at Spiceworks. And most of the resumes suck. They are horribly designed. (Two pages in all caps, seriously? And you call yourself a designer?) As a whole they have terrible leading, headers, use of white space, suffer from poor font choices, and are riddled with typos, misspellings, grammatical errors, missing punctuation, inconsistent punctuation on lists, and on and on.
UX Team of One Panel (Unedited Notes from Presentation)
These are the unedited notes I took during the SXSW panel. Sub-lists aren’t indented so I’ll need to come back and format later. No guarantee I’ll actually do that so hopefully she’ll publish her presentation.
Put away the computer
Start with a six-up template:
A piece of paper with six thumbnail boxes
[...]
Icons, Icons, Icons
I’ve recently come across a wealth of icons from various sources. At first I thought “I’ll keep all these to myself so I can impress my designer friends,” but then I thought “what else am I going to blog about?” So I decided to share them. Besides, sharing is cool too — just ask the creators of all these amazing icons…
Digging Digg
Lately I’ve been coming across a lot of really cool stuff on the web via a variety of sources. The most recent of which has been Digg. I had heard about Digg for years but a system to rank popular news stories just didn’t interest me that much. I finally took a look at the site and I was an immediate convert. The design category is fantastic.
Make the Logo Bigger
Are you a designer? Do you have clients? Are they in love with their logo to the detriment of anything you try to design for them? Then this song is for you: Make the Logo Bigger presumably by Burnback (song and links courtesy of today’s Compiler Blog).
The Blue Marble
A lot of people don’t know that NASA makes their satellite images available for free. They actually have a lot of cool websites these days (a lot better than what they had a few years ago), but the one I’m most interested in right now is the Visible Earth website. That’s where I found the most amazing picture of planet Earth.
You can’t see it but…
I just updated my WordPress admin interface to use the WP Tiger Administration plugin. Take that.