C H A D H A U S

One thing i have an appreciation for is wood, its worm, renewable, long lasting and is relatively easy to work with. The main thing that grabs my attention is the grain of the wood, how each line never intersects and each knot is different than that last.

I came across this company C H A D H A U S and saw a number of there pieces of furniture and realized how good it looks and how simple it is.

Farmhouse Modern is a collection of freestanding cabinets, furniture pieces, and accessories suited for any home. Each piece is crafted from painted steel and a variety of domestic hardwoods.

http://www.chadhaus.com/farmhouse-modern/

The Helvetica project

Every ones favorite note book, the Moleskine has come out with a Limited Edition Helvetica Notebook. I would love to have one. but i have two “old” ones as it is.

The typeface known as Helvetica is one of the most widespread and recognizable typefaces in the world. In order to celebrate its fiftieth anniversary, Gary Hustwit produced and directed a film called “Helvetica” about the birth of this well-known typeface. It is a documentary that explores how typography and graphic design have influenced our lives.

Also See:

moleskine.com
Helvetica the film

The Sound Advice Project

Perfect example of how something so simple can be so cool, and meaningful. The Sound Advice Project creates a bracelet designed by the waveform of your message. These seam to resemble the WWJD bracelets.

The site is seams aimed at Anti Drug messaged but i was not able to find anything saying your messages had to be along those lines.

For $18 the seam like a great deal!

The Sound Advice Project
Designed By David Bizer

Framework Plugins for Browsers

I’m just expressing an idea i had a few weeks ago involving widely adopted frameworks. More specifically Java Script Frameworks. Browsers should have support for the most recent Java Script Frameworks such as Jquery, Dojo, script.aculo.us, Prototype, Moo Tools, and many others. Changes should never be made to the frameworks them selves so it doesn’t make sense to have each site hosting them on there own, it also doesn’t make sense to make the user download it every time they access a site.

Google Code has AJAX Libraries API, Even if browsers don’t offer the frameworks as plugin’s people using the Google Code version will be caching from Google and there for not download from every unique site containing the framework.

You will have access to the latest stable versions as they are released, save on bandwidth and also be able to mashup different Frameworks much easier.

How to use it:

<script src="http://www.google.com/jsapi"></script>
<script>
  // Load jQuery
  google.load("jquery", "1.2.3");
</script>

Supported Library’s:
jQuery
jQuery UI
Prototype
script.aculo.us
MooTools
Dojo
SWFObject
Yahoo! User Interface Library (YUI)

AJAX Libraries API

Starting from scratch with Reset CSS

Reset Css seams to be on the controversial side, at least to developers and designers. What is it? well its a way to make sure every element has a consistent baseline across many browsers.

With BluePrint, 960 and other CSS frame works becoming so popular many of them are including a reset feature. My current site design makes use of one. And i admit it took some work to get it set up so things were just how i wanted them.

Every thing has a set margin of 0 for example so all browsers will display your Unordered List the same across the browsers, but now you need to add your margins back to give some white space.

But in some cases your content text can be a pixel larger here or smaller there. The user isnt goingto be any wiser unless they are looking specifically for changes.

Jonathan Snook makes the point that you have to include more code to reset the reset elements so they appear how you would like them to be. I agree but still use one. I think it keeps people from neglecting elements that are not styled and may be over looked in the design that would cause blatant style differences.

Jonathan Snook
Eric Meyer

Helvetica Film

While searching for ideas and inspiration on Grid Design during my process i came across this interesting Typography video called Helvetica, almost a humbling experience watching it. How Helvetica was developed in 1957 by Max Miedinger with Eduard Hoffmann at the Haas’sche Schriftgiesserei Foundry.

Believe it or not each letter used to be cast in steel. some times even hand made or manipulated.

Here is a little Wikipedia Blurb:

Haas set out to design a new sans-serif typeface that could compete with Akzidenz-Grotesk in the Swiss market. Originally called Neue Haas Grotesk, it was created based on Schelter-Grotesk. The aim of the new design was to create a neutral typeface that had great clarity, had no intrinsic meaning in its form, and could be used on a wide variety of signage.

In 1960, the typeface’s name was changed by Haas’ German parent company Stempel to Helvetica — derived from Confoederatio Helvetica, the Latin name for Switzerland — in order to make it more marketable internationally.

About the movie:

Helvetica is a feature-length independent film about typography, graphic design and global visual culture. It looks at the proliferation of one typeface (which celebrated its 50th birthday in 2007) as part of a larger conversation about the way type affects our lives. The film is an exploration of urban spaces in major cities and the type that inhabits them, and a fluid discussion with renowned designers about their work, the creative process, and the choices and aesthetics behind their use of type.

I really recommend getting the movie, its inspirational as well as informative.

Get it here.

About the new Design

I recently updated my blog with a new theme, and had a number of issues with the server, MySQL and the Wordpress Media Gallery. All that aside everything is up and running, including the gallery.

I have tested the design in Firefox and Safari. I’m not going to fix anything in Internet Explorer because if there are any issued in IE then its not a problem with my CSS, its simply a problem with a browser that doesn’t want to follow the rules. But i really don’t think there will be any issues.

In the back end of Wordpress i removed a number of plugins and found a few better ones to use. I wanted to keep things lean and running as fast as possible. I updated my Zenphoto theme to reflect the new design. The front end is built using Blueprint CSS Framework to keep with the grid system.

I hope every body enjoys the new design, and i look forward to updating the gallery and finishing a number of draft posts that i have been working on.

Blueprint Css and Grids

Grids are nothing new, and by now nothing new to the medium of the internet. Nor are they new to me. I always tried for proportion and alignment. Framing content and making use of White Space. But i spent some time thinking of a new Blog theme and made 4 full designs and then decided i wanted to do a minimal approach. I thought it would be easier to build.

After scouring the internet and really finding nothing if Inspiration. I was on a side project and looking for fonts. That lead to typography, witch came to Page Layout and then back to Grid Design. So i had a look at a few CSS Frame works to handle grids, the two main ones are Blueprint CSS and 960gs. Heads or tales chose Blueprint CSS for me.

I had thought about building my own and then realized there really isn’t any point. Blueprint has it all covered. I read a few articles about the controversial reset.css files. Basically zeroing everything out to be unified in all browsers. Some views say this causes extra work in adjusting elements back to how you want them. I found my CSS to still be minimal.

Part of the beauty of a Grid system is its flexibility and its simplicity. Setting up the layout for the site was very simple and fast. I only had troubles with floated elements like the random photos block. Each grid is 60px wide and has a padding of 10px, there is a special class called last that removes that last padding making things line up perfectly with the right side of the divs. Content looped in a While statement doesn’t really work, so i had to settle for close enough.

In the future i will totally use Blueprint again, and think it should be a valuable tool to any designer. Some good further reading on Grid Systems is
Mark Boulton’s Article.

No 64bit CS4 for OS X

This was news to me, but might me old news to the rest of you. I Came across this article at John Nacks Blog. Apple runs Nativity on 64bit and all applications programed in CoCoa can take advantage of this.

What is 64bit? well it doesn’t mean that your 64bit computer will perform two times faster than a 32bit computer. it really means it has more access to ram. mainly over 4 gigs. so some one using a word predecessor wouldn’t really notice any advantages. But some one opening 200+ RAW photos at 15mb a pop would notice a significant improvement.

General performance gains are some place between 8-12 percent. When Apple announced in there WWDC last June that they would be dropping Carbon 64 a AIP that allowed C, Objective-C and C++ developers to take advantage of Mac OS X-specific features. Any future 64bit applications will have to be remade in CoCoa.

What does this mean for the Photoshop CS4? well it means that the application would have to be reprogrammed and that’s no small feat. John said it would potentially effect over 1 million lines of code. Adobe plans to have a 64bit version of Photoshop ready for CS5. I don’t know if this will mean that current mac users wont upgrade to CS4? or if addressing the over 4 gigs of ram is a big issue for most users and the power users will resist the upgrade?

I don’t see this as a bad thing really. I’m all for improvements and speed and if there are enough reasons to upgrade and suffer a bit of a performance hit then I’m fine with it. This would also give Adobe a chance to scrub out all the old code and create a fresh version of Photoshop. Al tho since there is a learning curve for there engineers this might also mean there will be a few unexpected results.

Its hard to say what will happen, i can only hope that Adobe and pull through and make a more natural product that runs solid on OS X.