August 2009 Archives

A wonderful visual narrative from Maira Kalman

By Patrick J. Lynch on August 29, 2009 8:43 AM | 1 Comment

A nice reminder from Maira Kalman that the scrolling nature of web pages isn't just a necessary evil, it can be a vehicle for unfolding a visual or text narrative. The cartoonist Scott McCloud has often used scrolling in a similar way, with equally impressive results.

Multitasking and media poisoning

By Patrick J. Lynch on August 27, 2009 3:32 PM | No Comments

Lot of great lessons here for those of us who contribute to the overwhelming volume of media noise people now live with in their professional and personal lives. "Study Find People Who Multitask Often Bad At It."

Redesigning Craigslist

By Patrick J. Lynch on August 25, 2009 11:02 AM | No Comments

Craigslist seems to be everyone's favorite example of a highly functional site that succeeds in spite of a hideous visual design. Wired magazine asked several prominent web design teams to re-imagine Craigslist. In the redesigns note the reliance on visual hierarchy and contrast, essential visual tools for organizing complex displays.

Plug for Laura Carlson's Web Design Update

By Sarah Horton on August 21, 2009 1:26 PM | No Comments

Some time back I subscribed to Laura Carlson's Web Design Update, which is a nice, clean, plain-text email newsletter segmented into categories that mesh nicely with my thinking about web design:

• Accessibility
• Cascading Style Sheets
• Color
• Evaluation and Testing
• Events
• Javascript
• Miscellaneous
• PHP
• Standards, Guidelines & Patterns
• Tools
• Usability
• Typography

Continue reading Plug for Laura Carlson's Web Design Update.

An excellent multimedia article on the "Kind of Blue" album

By Patrick J. Lynch on August 17, 2009 12:12 PM | No Comments

Slate has an excellent article by Fred Kaplan looking at the unique musical structure and creative circumstances around the creation of the best-selling jazz album of all time, Miles Davis' "Kind of Blue." This fluid and thorough integration of great writing and very specific musical quotations is exactly what people hoped for in a true "multi-media" experience, but it is still all-too-rare to see it so well executed.

Interactive map of high water in Venice

By Patrick J. Lynch on August 17, 2009 12:07 PM | No Comments

Another very nice interactive visual display, this one mapping Venice's "acqua alta," or periodic flooding over the year, from this month's National Geographic article on "Vanishing Venice."

Extremely cool interactive data graphic

By Patrick J. Lynch on August 12, 2009 3:25 PM | No Comments

A very complex set of data on how various types of people spend their time during the day, reduced to a very elegant, easy-to-use data graphic. From the New York Times, July 31, 2009.

OXO tools and universal design principles

By Patrick J. Lynch on August 5, 2009 10:42 PM | No Comments

I'm a fan of great design wherever I find it, and OXO kitchen tools have always impressed me with their thoughtful innovation - I've got a kitchen full of OXO tools. This short article from Daily Beast looks at the universal design principles behind the development of the OXO tools. You'll see that the article is "supported content" within the Daily Beast (e.g, an advertisement), but I have no hesitancy in recommending both the article and the tools.