One thing I’m very proud of with the triage design: total images for the entire site (not counting any images I add for specific posts, like this one) are about 3.7kb. You read that right. 3.7 kilobytes. Not 370 kilobytes. Not 37 kilobytes. 3.7.

The new design will be a bit heavier than that, but I’m going to try to stay true to the principles of lean and mean. I’ve spent months trying to come up with a design that reflects me. Months before the redesign I was trying to create a new design. One road I went down was a three dimensional wall look. Another had me trying to creative an illustrated look. That second one definitely isn’t me but I wanted to grow who I was as a designer.

I’ll keep working on the growth thing but, in the meantime, the new site I’m designing represents who I am right now. And that’s a minimalist designer with a love of iconography and type. I’m including a mockup of the new homepage here.

Mockup of new homepage

After trying to come up with something for six months, when I finally let go I designed the new homepage in two hours.

Twitter is starting to swell towards critical SXSW mass. I’m clearly not the only geek who is having a hard time focusing on anything else. I’m also not the only geek who misses ye olden days of “south-by” when it was just us geeks. I work in a marketing department. I’ve worked in an ad agency. But I wish the marketers would have stayed away.

The hype, the spiels, the venture capitalists, the wannabe venture capitalists, the wannabe entrepreneurs (real ones are okay), the new celebrity culture… You’ll here a lot of this from folks like me over the next few weeks but the festival just isn’t what it used to be. Everybody has something to hawk now. Everyone has something to sell.

The geeks will still be there—I’ll be there—but it’ll be a little bit harder to find them in the crowds this time. Just like it was a little bit harder last time. There are a lot of great apps to help people organize though and the panels you pick offer their own kind of organization. There probably aren’t that many marketing types sitting in on JavaScript sessions. So there’s hope!

Browsing through Twitter this morning, here are few SXSWi quick hits to help with your organization:

• The SXSW Interactive Mobile Thriving Guide (iPhone)
  Want to ditch the laptop this year? The IMTG offers advice and a collection of iPhone apps to help you.

• South By Texas State
  The tagline for the site is “New Media Students Chronicle SXSWi 2010″, which looks to be a fairly accurate description of what they’re doing. So far they’ve written up various top five lists and several individual panel previews.

• SXSW 2010 Guide: Balancing Film and Interactive
  If you only have a Film badge or an Interactive badge but want to be more involved in the other part of the festival, these guys did the legwork for you and found out which events of the other track you can cross over to participate in.

As it turns out, when I actually looked at the film panels, I found a lot of stuff I’d like to see. My company pays for my interactive badge but I’m considering paying to upgrade to a gold badge. And not just so I can go to the premiere of Kick Ass. Not just for that reason. There’s also the panels.

My wife and I are both fascinated by title sequences. They can be amazing works of art in their own right. This year there are least two film panels entirely devoted to them.

I most likely won’t pony up the $200 though. We’re trying to be good and save, to the point where I’m even considering putting off purchasing an iPad for a few months. (My wife was duly shocked by this pronouncement.) Then again, it’s only $200…

I surprisingly found myself bookmarking lifehacking sessions. Things like improving my memory, using social media to live cheaply, and building your dream life.

I’m also apparently still very interested in improving my design process and how I manage and work with project owners. And I apparently I want to become a professional blogger, except that I don’t, so those panels might get the axe. In theory I really like publishing content. In reality it’s damn hard work.

As usual some timeslots have half-a-dozen panels I’m interested in while others have none or maybe one.

Are you going to SXSWi? What panels are you going to?

Friday, March 12th

TBA

• How We Built the SXSW Mobile App
• iPad: New Opportunities for Content Creators

2:00 PM

• Beauty in Web Design
• Social Media Marketing for Your Business
• The Broke Diaries: Using Blogs And Twitter To Live Cheaply

3:30 PM

• Battledecks 2010
• Jacks of All Trades or Masters of One?
• Making Genuine Connections: Putting Passion Over Process
• Memory Matters! How Do Elephants Do It?

5:00 PM

• Networking at a Multi-Day Conference
• ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income
• Simple Steps to Great Web Design

Saturday, March 13th

9:30 AM

• Add Some XBOX to Your UX
• Pain Free Design Signoff
• Web Fonts: The Time Has Come

11:00 AM

• Building A Bulletproof Personal-Finance System
• CMS Admin. UX Gateway to Heaven or Hell
• Online Advertising: Losing the Race to the Bottom

11:40 AM

• Web Evolution: The Rise of Mobile, APIs and Runtimes

12:30 PM

• Design Fiction: Props, Prototypes, Predicaments Communicating New Ideas
• Designing the First Fifteen Minutes
• Shameless Self Promotion Without Looking Like an @#$%^&!
• The Right Way to Wireframe, Part 2

12:50 PM

• iPhone Application Development: Myths and Facts

02:00 PM

• CSS Framework Shootout

3:30 PM

• BBC Digital Planet Live at SXSW
• CSS3 Design with HTML5
• From Blogger to Social Media Guru to Professional Speaker
• Is WordPress Killing Web Design
• That Game Feels Nice: Tomorrow’s Touch Interfaces
• Ze Frank Conversation: The Creative Lifestyle

5:00 PM

• CSS and Fonts: Fluid Web Typography
• Keeping Sane While Working From Home
• The Ten Commandments of User Experience

Sunday, March 14th

11:00 AM

• Accessible JavaScript Techniques
• Extending Your Brand? There’s an App for That
• Gaming the Crowd: Turning Work Into Play
• Why You Aren’t Done Yet

12:30 PM

• Anything But Typical: Learning to Love JavaScript Prototypes
• Coding for Pleasure: Developing Killer Spare-Time Apps
• Cross Device Accessibility: Is This For Real?
• Ditch the Old to Build Your Dream Life

2:00 PM

• HTML5 Accessibility
• Your Design Process is Killing You

3:30 PM

• HTML5: Tales from the Development Trenches
• Turn Your Idea Into a Business Leveraging Interactive

5:00 PM

• Wow, That’s Cool… Fun With HTML5 Video

Monday, March 15th

9:30 AM

• ANYONE Can Create a Video Game!
• The Art & Science of Seductive Interactions

11:00 AM

• R.I.P. Content Management System
• Scoring a Tech Book Deal
• What Coworking Tells Us About the Future of Work

12:30 PM

• ExpressionEngine 2.0: Total Domination!
• Make Me A Damn Good Manager!
• Slow Twitter: Users Who Take Their Time Tweeting

2:00 PM

• Evan Williams Keynote Interview
• Tapworthy: Designing iPhone Interfaces for Delight and Usability

3:30 PM

• Beyond the Desktop
• Choosing Offline Activities in a Time-Deprived Lifestyle
• Forging Your Ideal Career
• Mobile Development with the Flash Platform: iPhone and More
• Visual Note-Taking 101

5:00 PM

• Hold the Cocoa: Building iPhone Apps with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript
• Visual Problem Solving: 5 Diagrams in 15 Minutes

Tuesday, March 16th

9:30 AM

• Design for the Dark Side
• Prototyping Web Apps – Nobody Loves a Wireframe

11:00 AM

• Effective Dashboard Design: Why Your Baby Is Ugly

12:30 PM

• Balance is Bullshit
• Getting Better: The Designer’s Path From Good To Great
• Love AND Money: Can Fansites Pay the Bills?

3:30 PM

• Can Web 2.0 Kill the Real Estate Industry?
• Interactive Infographics
• Maps, Books, Spimes, Paper: Post-Digital Media Design

5:00 PM

• Brilliant Second Acts You Must Steal Tricks From
• Bruce Sterling Presentation

If you’re going to SXSW Interactive and you have an iPhone, you should grab download this years apps. There are two of them: my.SXSW for browsing the conference schedule and building a schedule and SXSW Play for discovering music and film media.

Creating a website can be a daunting task, especially if you’ve never done it before. More and more people are turning to blog software like WordPress to get a site up and running with very little effort and even less know-how. Free themes let them quickly choose a theme that works for their needs, whether those needs are running a business or talking about their cat (I’m obligated to mention talking about cats whenever talking about blogging in a broad sense. Thank you for that media.)

The problem with free themes is that they usually don’t meet your exact needs or do exactly what you want them to. Then there is the problem that it’s hard to stand out and be unique when you have a website that looks identical to dozens, or even thousands, of other websites. If you use WordPress long enough, you’ll eventually want something unique.

This post isn’t going to cover how to build your own theme, that’s covered in other places. What I want to do here is simply provide some sources for inspiration. And, if you are just starting out, these sources also include lots of free templates that you can start with.

WordPress Themes

1. ThemeForest

   ThemeForest, part of the Envato network, at the time off this post offers 538 WordPress themes that range in price from $10 to $35. Each theme includes multiple screenshots you can look at as well a live preview. You can sort by rating, sales volume, price, and more. The sidebar breaks themes down by category including magazine, corporate, non-profit, and entertainment.

2. WooThemes

   WooThemes is kind of cool because they actually seek out leading web designers to create custom themes for them, which leads to them having some of the best themes available. At least from a visual perspective.

3. WordPress Themes with Unusual Uses

   Personally, I think the real power of WordPress theming is in the niche/custom themes. WordPress can be made to do a hell of a lot more than just blogging. Custom themes with custom plugins can create a turnkey wiki, or store, or real estate website.

4. A Comparison of 6 Popular WordPress Frameworks

   Frameworks are somewhat of a new concept, although in web years, I suppose they’re more like teenagers. Frameworks handle most of the heavy lifting, the repetitive stuff that needs to be done for each theme. You can build as many themes as you want that all use the same base framework, which itself is a theme. It’s a brilliant idea and, if you’re designing a theme and you’re not planning to roll your own framework, you should consider starting with an existing one.

5. WordPress Gallery from We Love WP

   Pure inspiration. We Love WP gives you a good idea of just how flexible your designs can be. The sky is the limit. If it can be a website, it can be WordPress theme.

6. WordPress.org Free Themes Directory

   The definitive source. WordPress has been aggregating themes since long before people starting building a cottage industry around selling “premium” themes. Since it’s open to anyone they’re not all gems, but you can do keyword searches or sort by popularity to help narrow things down.

7. Theme Release from Premium Mod

   These guys take existing GPL themes, modify and improve on them, and then re-release them. For free. They’re fairly new and “they” might be one person. I’m honestly not sure. I like the concept behind the site though and I hope the idea takes off.

8. RocketTheme

   RocketTheme releases one or two new themes a month. In November they did a big refresh on their existing themes, updating them all with new features.

9. 14 Fantastic Free WordPress Themes

   Mashable bills itself as the “Social Media Guide” and that apparently includes guiding people to free themes for social media software like WordPress. I wish they would drop the hyperbolic adjectives but, hey, they have advertisers to please and bills to pay. And their content is free.

10. 20 of the best Free Premium-like wordpress themes

    One more collection of free themes. These are definitely not all gems but there are a few good ones in the mix. Enough to warrant taking a quick look.

AIGA Austin Job Board

Be sure to read the AIGA Standards of Professional Practice. To post a job, go here.

Refresh Austin job board

Before posting a job, be sure to read their job posting guidelines. The Refresh Austin guys also run the Austin Web Design & Develop Meetup, which is a great place to meet designers and developers in the area.

Door 64

This one is geared primarily towards developers. Anybody can view jobs but you have to become a member to post jobs. Membership is free.

CraigsList

I’ve listed this one last for reason. As a job seeker you can expect to find a lot of crap job offers that pay either a fast food wage or a stake in the company (read: work for free). If you’re looking to hire someone, either know what you’re doing or avoid this option. Roughly 80% of your applicants will not be qualified. You can find good people and good jobs there though so I wouldn’t totally dismiss the site.

Of course there are non-local boards you can check out too:

• Authentic Jobs
• AIGA National Design Jobs
• 37signals Job Board

And there are a few staffing agencies worth talking to:

• Aquent
• Liaison Resources
• Art Squad

I’ve had the best luck, again on both sides of the fence, with Aquent. If you’re going to a talent agency, I’d start with them.

In order to continue to improve our products and deliver more
sophisticated features and performance, we are harnessing some of the
latest improvements in web browser technology. This includes faster
JavaScript processing and new standards like HTML5. As a result, over
the course of 2010, we will be phasing out support for Microsoft
Internet Explorer 6.0 as well as other older browsers that are not
supported by their own manufacturers.

We plan to begin phasing out support of these older browsers on the
Google Docs suite and the Google Sites editor on March 1, 2010. After
that point, certain functionality within these applications may have
higher latency and may not work correctly in these older browsers.
Later in 2010, we will start to phase out support for these browsers
for Google Mail and Google Calendar.

Google Apps will continue to support Internet Explorer 7.0 and above,
Firefox 3.0 and above, Google Chrome 4.0 and above, and Safari 3.0 and
above.

I think you can expect to see more of this as the big boys go after one another. Apple’s supporting HTML5 for video over Flash players. Google has a browser-based OS coming out and leveraging HTML5 makes a lot of sense there as well. That’s a shot directly at Microsoft. Frankly, if the club being used is an open standard, I’m okay with that.

Aside from those guys fighting wars on a battlefield the rest of us are sitting on, it also raises an interesting discussion about website development versus web application development. While I fully support progressive enhancement for website development, it’s harder to achieve for web apps. From a practical standpoint there is the simple issue of cost. For instance, how much manpower should Google throw into alternative content for the Flash charts in Google Analytics? That’s just one item in one app across their entire suite.

Neutra Face : An Ode On A Typeface (A Bearded Poker Face Parody)

I thought I’d lead off with one of the funnier typography related videos that I’ve seen in a while.

Trajan is the Movie Font

This video actually turned me on to Goodie Bag. I know follow Kirby on Twitter and routinely check his website for updates. He seems to be relatively unknown, which I find amazing—in a bad way.

A few from CollegeHumor

• Font Conference
• Font Fight
• Big Red Text

Helvetica Film Official Trailer

Kinetic Typography

Definition of kinetic typography from Wikipedia:

the technical name for “moving text”—is an animation technique mixing motion and text. This text is presented over time in a manner intended to convey or evoke a particular idea or emotion. It is often studied in Communication Design and Interaction Design courses. Some commonly seen examples of this technique include movie title sequences and credits, web page animation and other entertainment media.

Here are a few samples. My favorite, “Google Wave Pulp Fiction” is near the end. It’s NSFW. It’s also awesome.

Blink 182 – Online Songs Kinetic Typography

Fair Trade Coffee

This one is really more of a data visualization but I like the use of typography in it.

Fair Trade Coffee Infographic from Simon Vieira on Vimeo.

Typography by Paweł

Typography from Paweł on Vimeo.

Typography from Paweł on Vimeo.

Google Wave Cinema: Pulp Fiction (NSFW)

Kinetic Typography Tutorial by Elrond Hubbard

Kinetic Typography Tutorial from Elrond Hubbard on Vimeo.

More Kinetic Typography Videos

• ILT Typography Channel
• tYPE iN mOtiON
• “Animation & Motion Graphics / Typography” on Vimeo
• 18 Creative Examples of Typography in Motion
• Kinetic Typography Channel on Vimeo

Have any favorite typography related videos? Share them in the comments. I’d love to see them.

For years Microsoft has made VPC images available that designers and developers could install using virtualization solutions like VirtualBox, VMWare or Parallels. Sometime around August 2009 they broke those images, requiring activation. This meant that, in order to test in various versions of Microsoft’s operating system and with various versions of Internet Explorer, you had to purchase an expensive license for each copy. This of course completely negated the purpose of having the images to begin with.

When Alan Burke ran into the activation problem he started a thread on the VirtualBox forums. Nobody knew what was going on. After a fair amount of back-and-forth, Pete LePage, an Internet Explorer Product Manager, popped in to say that Microsoft has never officially supported any virtual hosting application other than VPC:

Since we started shipping the VPC images in late 2006, we have never officially supported other VM hosting applications other than Microsoft VPC, and Microsoft Legal required us to add that part into the EULA.

That completely misses the point. The problem wasn’t with the EULA and I don’t need officially supported images. I just need images that I can install and test on without purchasing thousands of dollars worth of licenses.

Pete also said:

If there is enough demand, we may be able to get additional images built, I’d ask that you email me at plepage@microsoft.com along with the VPC software you’re running so we can have a better idea of the numbers and needs.

I emailed him and never heard back. A few days ago he responded to a more well-known designer, Veerle Pieters, in the comments section of a flickr photo she posted when she ran into the same activation issue:

Yep, we are aware of the issue, and we haven’t been able to find a good fix yet. We’ve figured out what the problem is at this point, why they used to work and why they now require activation. The question is how we fix that – it’s a combination of technology and policy.

For those who think it’s Microsoft trying to screw over non-Mac users, please believe me it isn’t. I have been gathering comments from folks to try to use to push the changes – so please keep them coming. Please shoot me an email and I can see what I can do to help!

It should be noted that this is almost six months after the problem first appeared. If Microsoft wanted to fix it, it would be fixed. I emailed Pete in August 2009 like he asked and I never heard back from him. I also have yet to get a reply in Veerle’s flickr thread either. Pete asking for people to email him has all the appearance of Microsoft’s standard M.O. as it removes the discussion from the public view. Not replying to those emails, not providing any sort of status updates and not doing anything for six months just reinforces that negative perception.

This is a real pain point for developers and it has real consequences for Microsoft. IE browsers are already on the bottom of my testing list and I’ve already decided IE users can have a less visually rich experience as long as they get the same content.

I don’t have infinite resources. The more difficult it is to test on their products, the less I’m able to do. It becomes a situation where, even if I want to provide a richer experience for IE users, I can’t.

If you have a website you should be keeping track of who’s visiting it and what they’re doing while they’re there. Google Analytics is a great tool for doing just that. If your site is built with WordPress, like mine is, you can also install a plugin like Site Stats, which will create a new page for your dashboard full of useful information like:

• Who is sending you traffic (referrers)
• Which posts and pages are the most popular
• What search engine terms are leading people to your site
• What sites are linking to you

If you want to grow your audience this is essential information to have.

Tips will feature short snippets on a wide variety of topics. By keeping them short, hopefully I’ll be able to update several times a week as things come up during my day-to-day work. I’m easily in front of a computer 12 hours a day and this is a way to integrate blogging into my day, provide useful content and meet one of my goals for this year. (This does not absolve me from writing longer posts.)

Quick Tip: Figure out what you want to say.

One of the biggest reasons why blogs fail is because the author doesn’t know what he wants to say. He’ll flounder about and write a variety of posts on a variety of topics. He has no goals for his blog and, consequently, finds it easy to post with random and ever decreasing frequency.

Before deciding to create a blog figure out what you want to write about and who you want to write it for. Be specific. Is there a topic where you have something meaningful to contribute? In my case, web design was too broad and other areas were already too well covered. I didn’t feel I could make enough of a contribution. In my case, it ended up being less about the topic and more about the audience.

Two great sites that helped me figure this out (and that I now follow) are ReadWriteWeb and Copyblogger.