responsive jQuery video plugin

It’s been all about jQuery plugins for responsive web design these past few weeks … and here’s another good one: FitVids: A lightweight, easy-to-use jQuery plugin for fluid width video embeds. And, nicely done this, they’re using another responsive jQuery plugin – FitText for the heading text. Nice work all round.  Hurrah!

The Semantic Grid System

Really, this should be filed under ‘probably too good to be true’ … but let’s hear it out. So, here’s the problem: there are a ton of great grid based CSS frameworks for designers to work with – frameworks which provide a baseline for dividing up the page into a usable grid via a series...

Beautiful design systems

So, I was reading this article from Happy Cog and it struck a chord with me as regards systems for design. Whenever I start a web design project, I’m looking for elements from previous projects that can be re-used in planning the new project.  I might lift an HTML code base from one, a set...

Mona Lisa Remix

Love this print of the Mona Lisa … pointillism of fine art!  I feel a purchase for my new office coming on … Mona Lisa Remix

Responsive Web Design – new from A Book Apart

I like to think that I buy books from A Book Apart because they’ll further my expertise and knowledge as a web designer.  But you and I both know that it’s because they look gorgeous – and I want the whole set on my shelf.  The latest is no exception … and it’s coming.

Pitching to clients … a broken process

I’m quite lucky. I don’t do an awful lot of pitching to clients. Lucky because it’s not something I enjoy very much, and lucky because I find the whole process to be flawed and not necessarily conducive to finding the best match between a client and myself. The pitch immediately creates a ‘them and us’...

Re-framing the debate, iPhone vs. Android

This is a nice article about how Apple is changing the Android/iPhone debate away from an ‘open vs. closed’ framing, towards a ‘fragmented vs. integrated’ argument. It’s nicely illustrated in this quote from Jobs: We think the open versus closed argument is just a smokescreen to try and hide the real issue, which is, “What’s...

Logo design considerations

A nice article on how clients should prepare for having their logo redesigned … the example used in this article – for ‘Northland OB-GYN’ is a site I’m working on with Sally who wrote this piece. Can’t wait for the Northland site to go live … it looks great, and the logo is a wonderfully...

Web Designers who can’t code

This great post from Elliot Jay Stocks covers a number of points that I deal with on a few levels each week. To start off: I am a web designer who codes. I’m someone who enjoys the process of writing good, semantic code – loves the cleanliness of it, loves the craft, the constant learning, the...