08/14/2014 - No Comments!

This is Material Design

Google is not traditionally known for their design prowess. When discussing tech companies and their design aesthetics, many would shift their conversations towards Apple. Google has always prided itself on simplicity, clarity and accuracy. As our industry is shifting towards a higher understanding of the importance of these principles, Google has a head-start of leaps and bounds. Their design departments have recently published their principles on interface and product design, aptly named "Material Design".

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07/12/2014 - No Comments!

Lean UX by Jeff Gothelf

For our monthly "designer forum" meeting this month, the team decided to get together and watch Jeff Gothelf's introductory presentation of Lean UX. While we've all read the book at some point in time and practice these methods daily in the office, it's always great to get a refresher from the man himself. The presentation was given at the UX Immersion conference in 2012 and is now available to watch on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOJWss8_BVA. After the video, we all discussed together what we are currently doing and how we could improve our workflows and introduce new practices. Overall, this was a great team building activity and everyone left with a few new strategies to better integrate our UX design with the agile software development teams we support. My notes from the video and our discussion follow.

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03/20/2014 - No Comments!

SXSW 2014 – Highlights & Trends

SXSW is a lot to take in over a few short days. Attendees find themselves up at the crack of dawn and operating at 100% until deep into the night. After some public transportation and a few short hours of sleep, the cycle begins again. This was my first year at the conference and I wasn't exactly sure what to expect beyond the crowds and tasty Austin food. By the end of the conference, I realized that I had underestimated both. The crowds of geeks and designers were teeming, while the food was simply incredible.

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02/21/2014 - No Comments!

Iconic logos recreated with Squarespace

As the graphic design community is painfully aware, Squarespace recently released their web-based logo creation tool. The tool enables users to create minimal logo designs for small business using a combination of free fonts and icons from The Noun Project. This enraged many in the design community and sparked lots of interesting conversations. I've attempted to recreate a few of the great, iconic logo designs of our culture using the tool.

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11/22/2013 - No Comments!

What Bitcoin Is Not

The adoption and acceptance of Bitcoin (BTC)  has been building for many years, since it's anonymous introduction to the world in 2009 by Satoshi Nakamoto. However, in these last few weeks the digital crypto-currency has escalated to new heights, both publicly and monetarily. In the last few days, the term Bitcoin has been a top-runner amongst Google's hot searches and trends, leading to thousands of articles, discussions and tweets around the world. Sadly, the fact remains that the majority of people still don't understand a few core concepts behind the digital currency.

 People fear most what they don't understand.

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08/16/2013 - No Comments!

Strengthen Your CSS Layout Skills

All skills will be forgotten without regular practice. When I think of all the facts and skills I've memorized at some point in my life for a test or one-time exercise, it's truly baffling. While I'm sure this knowledge is rolling around in my gray matter somewhere, my knowledge of the path leading to it has been lost for years.

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