March 2009
38 posts
Shift Happens, The Move From Words to Pictures
About: People are hardwired for visualization yet we rely significantly on text. Most games, graphic novels, magazines, interfaces, IKEA instructions, and many other forms of communication take advantage of people’s natural visual thinking ability. Panelists will discuss how to leverage visual techniques to improve your games, websites, movies, communications, or presentations.
Though...
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Excuse My Formatting
Tumblr doesn’t seem to like paragraph breaks :-(
Big Texas Sized Update
Whoa, I’m majorly behind on updates! I wanted to make sure I recapped Web Typography Quit Bitchin’ and get your Glif On panel discussion. This was easily my favorite panel of the conference thus far. It seems that I’m not the only designer that longs for more font options on the web.
A quick poll of the panelists revealed that the two biggest gripes among web typographers...
Sunday Keynote
Getting settled for Sundays keynote with Nate Silver of fivethirtyeight.com. Fivethirtyeight successfully predicted the Obama landslide in the 08 election behind Silver’s statistical analysis. He is being interviewed by BusinessWeeks Stephen Baker.
Next up, Design for the Wisdom of Crowds
With Derek Powazek
People are often dumb, so how can crowds be wise? James Surowiecki laid the groundwork in his book, “The Wisdom of Crowds.” In this solo presentation, Derek Powazek will apply those ideas to the web, concentrating on how to design websites that empower people to work together to create something truly awesome.
Web Typography: Quit Bitchin' and Get Your Glyph...
Last Panel of a very busy day.
Designers are still complaining about the limitations of Web typography. Is their case valid, and will it be in the future? What myths are there about web typography and how do we dispel them? This panel will discuss overcoming constraints on web to create elegant, legible, and expressive typography.
It’s true, I complain about web typography on a regular...
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WatchThe entire keynote speech will be illustrated as it happens.
Keynote
Just arrived super early so we could score good seats for the Tony Hsieh keynote speech. I bet this guy has more sneakers then @darrylohrt and I combined.
Thankful...
That a lot of the issues that are being raised in our conversation about talking to programmers have been resolved within our own organization.
Up next... How to Talk to Programmers
This should be interesting!
Can’t talk to your programmers? Can’t find a good one? Designers and project managers often complain that they can’t communicate with developers. Agencies often have trouble finding good freelancers. Learn how to make your interactions productive instead of painful and leverage programmers instead of living with them.
And the seven principles are...
Drum roll please.
1. Understand users and then ignore them. 2. Build only what’s absolutely necessary. 3, Support the users mental model. 4. Turn beginners into intermediates immediately 5. Prevent errors. (and handle the rest gracefully) 6. Design for uniformity, consistency, and meaning. 7. Reduce, reduce, reduce. (and refine)
Saturday Morning
After a fun night out with @darrylohrt, @ericfleming, and @stephfrancoeur its time to head back to the convention center. First up today is Seven Rules for Great Web Application Design In this lively and interactive session, Robert Hoekman, Jr., the author of ‘Designing the Obvious’ and ‘Designing the Moment’, uses the audience to reveal the 7 essential design principles...
Day one of panel discussions is in the bag
My first panel of the conference could arguably have been called Everything You Know About Web Content is Wrong. In it Dan Willis compared current websites to early film. Film began as nothing more then theatrical performance captured on film. It wasn’t until 1915’s Birth of a Nation that film progressed to the next level i.e. multiple camera angles editing etc. Likewise todays web...
Something to have fun with
http://tweet1.com
Oooh, That's Clever! (Unnatural Experiments in Web...
Off to my next panel discussion with Paul Annett of Clearleft Ltd.
Find inspiration in the ridiculous. See technological quirks as opportunities. Try something previously unheard of with your site design. Laugh in the face of convention. Use and abuse CSS in ways never before imagined. Get away with it. And if it doesn’t work, try something else instead.
Everything You Know About Web Design Is Wrong
I won’t be at all surprised if that statement is true. This will be my first panel at SXSW presented by Dan Willis of Sapient.
Just as early filmmakers struggled to break free from the conventions of live theater, after 10+ years Web designers are still trapped in the structures of the past. Forget pages, linear text and other archaic vestiges of design’s print ancestry; the...
WatchVery thankful that I was early to registration this morning. Now the line is about a mile long. And when I say a mile long it was probably 5280 feet long no exageration.
Hello Austin
Well, we made it to Austin. And unlike last year we weren’t greeted by Texas with a snowstorm. But it does seem we brought the gloomy cold damp Connecticut weather with us. Dear Austin, you can turn the sun on now! Not much else to report, just catching up on work emails and settling in.
That's all folks
With only about 40 minutes until we leave for the airport we’re wrapping things up here at SXSW. One can only hope that our return trip will be less eventful then our trip out here.
Last panel of SXSW
Going to check out Michael Eisner’s panel This is a joint panel session for both SXSW Film and SXSW Interactive registrants, and will be a one-on-one interview with the founder of The Tornante Company and new media studio Vuguru, will feature the former head of Disney turned media mogul discussing his past, present and future endeavors, as he builds new companies and models for...
Last day at SXSW
Looks like I’ll be focusing on client work this morning, gotta pack too.
Macbook Air
The guy 2 seats down from me has one and I’m jealous. In case you were wondering.