Posts tagged design

If You Love to Create, You Should Create

I’ve recently become obsessed with a food+writing blog called Pupcaked, created with a lot of love and patience by my good friend Zoe. She’s a fantastic cook, journalist, photographer and writer. In her own beautiful words about the project:

Currently, I am taking residence in my hometown, New York, and baking from a small kitchen with a city window… As both a writer and maker of food, I am led to understand that eating is made from both loud and quiet, in an utterance of everywhere and anywhere that life can be savoured — the “journalist” in me will do all that she can to avoid interrupting its serene gaze that’s greased gently with a kind of grace known only to those patient enough to taste it.

In short, “Pupcaked” is an experiment in food-making, food-loving and food culture. I hope that you will join me.

I share it here because I think it represents something worth thinking about: if you love creating, you should create. You should work hard at it, block off a little bit of time each day to dive deeply into it, and you should love it. Zoe cooks, photographs and writes. 

We get a lot of questions from our readers about how to break into journalism, about the correct steps to take to secure a great internship, about how to become a writer or blogger. Our answer is always the same: do it. To quote Michael in his response to one such question: 

So, you say you want to be a writer but there’s nothing available in your area. In that case, make something available to yourself.

There are stories everywhere. There are stories where there are lots of people. There are stories where they are no people. There are great stories about topics other than people.

So start writing them. Choose something that you’re passionate about. If it’s a character who lives down the street, approach him and ask if you can interview and write about him. If he asks why, and what for, say simply, “I like to write.”

Some people will say no but you’ll be surprised by how many people say yes. People are wonderful that way.

And if your passion is for a subject or topic that requires more discrete expertise, say science or medicine or art or local politics, start reading up and then start calling people up (eg, at local colleges, businesses, governmental agencies and what not) and ask questions.

Again, many will ask why and where will this appear and you simply say, “I like to write and its for a personal site I’m creating.”

And then some will say no but others will say yes but give it a couple months and you have yourself body of work. You’ve gotten started.

Summer has just begun and we suspect some free time comes with it. So, we encourage you to take a break from the internship hunt and get cracking on producing and documenting the little hobby you’ve been thinking about. —Jihii

Image: Coffeecake muffins with cinnamon-walnut streusel (via pupcaked)

Snow Fall, Meet Firestorm If you haven’t checked it out yet—and I hope you have—The Guardian’s Firestorm, a Snow Fall-esque interactive long-form multimedia piece came out last month and it’s completely stunning. From Poynter’s story on the teamwork required to put it together: “I think you have to capture people’s hearts,” Francesca Panetta, special projects editor of interactive storytelling projects, said in a phone interview. “As with all kinds of storytelling, you can’t lose sight of that need to connect and touch people, whether it’s writing or radio or a complicated interactive.” Firestorm is remarkable for a number of reasons, including the stellar video images and the subtle way that looping video is used behind the written story. The integration between words and video is handled with such finesse that the one doesn’t distract from the other. “We’re very happy with the subtlety,” Panetta said. The chapter navigation uses clear images and concise icons and labels, ensuring it’s always clear where you are in the story. A project like Firestorm or The New York Times’ Pulitzer-winning interactive,Snow Fall, demands considerable resources. Twenty-three people are credited for Firestorm, which was three months in the making — actually a speedy turnaround for a project of this scale. Many newsrooms don’t have that level of resources, of course. But they can still learn from The Guardian’s process and the project’s experiments with layered storytelling — and figure out ways to do something similar on a smaller scale. Keep reading for key takeaways from the project. FJP: I’ve been hearing people favor this one to Snow Fall but perhaps that’s because the story itself (which is incredibly moving) lends itself to a slightly more poignant interactive than Snow Fall…but both are fantastic. —Jihii Bonus: E-book version of the story, which you can buy here, along with other Guardian shorts.

Snow Fall, Meet Firestorm

If you haven’t checked it out yet—and I hope you have—The Guardian’s Firestorm, a Snow Fall-esque interactive long-form multimedia piece came out last month and it’s completely stunning.

From Poynter’s story on the teamwork required to put it together:

“I think you have to capture people’s hearts,” Francesca Panetta, special projects editor of interactive storytelling projects, said in a phone interview. “As with all kinds of storytelling, you can’t lose sight of that need to connect and touch people, whether it’s writing or radio or a complicated interactive.”

Firestorm is remarkable for a number of reasons, including the stellar video images and the subtle way that looping video is used behind the written story. The integration between words and video is handled with such finesse that the one doesn’t distract from the other.

“We’re very happy with the subtlety,” Panetta said.

The chapter navigation uses clear images and concise icons and labels, ensuring it’s always clear where you are in the story.

A project like Firestorm or The New York Times’ Pulitzer-winning interactive,Snow Fall, demands considerable resources. Twenty-three people are credited for Firestorm, which was three months in the making — actually a speedy turnaround for a project of this scale.

Many newsrooms don’t have that level of resources, of course. But they can still learn from The Guardian’s process and the project’s experiments with layered storytelling — and figure out ways to do something similar on a smaller scale.

Keep reading for key takeaways from the project.

FJP: I’ve been hearing people favor this one to Snow Fall but perhaps that’s because the story itself (which is incredibly moving) lends itself to a slightly more poignant interactive than Snow Fall…but both are fantastic. —Jihii

Bonus: E-book version of the story, which you can buy here, along with other Guardian shorts.

Drawing New York City

Via Atlantic Cities:

James Gulliver Hancock wants you to know about a little personal project of his. It’s nothing big, really. Just something he does whenever he has the chance. The project is to draw all 900,000 buildings in New York City. Like we said, nothing major.

Hancock began his epic effort in April of 2010 along with a personal blog where he posted many of the finished works. More than 500 of the buildings in New York that he’s drawn so far were just published in the very appropriately titled book: All the Buildings in New York: That I’ve Drawn So Far (Universe).

Read through for an interview with Hancock. Prints of the drawings are available on Hancock’s web site.

Images: various New York City buildings, by James Gulliver Hancock. 

Pinterest Design Ethos Echoes With Publishers

joshsternberg:

The visual Web continues to push forward, one publisher site at a time.

Publishers across the digital media landscape are redesigning their sites to mimic the photo-friendly grid layout of social sites like Pinterest. Media companies from The New York Times to CNN to Mashable are falling in love with the less-is-more design approach, both as a way to create a better user experience and a route to integrate ads less awkwardly.

“The holy grail is how advertising feels more integrated to the pieces,” said Dan Gardner, co-founder of design shop Code and Theory. “As a page becomes more visual, it allows advertising to feel more integrated. It’s not to confuse what’s advertising and what’s editorial, but advertising can now be more part of the experience.”

That experience is transforming websites. Instead of putting up blocks of text, publishers are understanding that big, bold, beautiful images attract more attention from visitors. The old-fashioned way of presenting information was to offer an inherent hierarchy: news story headlines get bigger treatment, other articles get smaller text. Visual approaches change that.

Click through to read what designers have to say about the Pinterestification of publisher sites.

The Beauty of Letterpress

The Beauty of Letterpress is a new site showcasing the beauty and innovation of letterpress work today in an effort to assist the Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum in its move from its current Wisconsin location to a new one.

The site contains image galleries of letterpress examples and will have a monthly design issue curated by designers that highlight their favorite project. The premiere issue is called Form and Function and explores moveable type and the influence modern technology is having on it.

About the Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum:

With 1.5 million pieces of wood type and more than 1,000 styles and sizes of patterns, Hamilton’s collection is one of the premier wood type collections in the world. In addition to wood type, the Museum is home to an amazing array of advertising cuts from the 1930s through the 1970s, and all of the equipment necessary to make wood type and print with it, as well as equipment used in the production of hot metal type, tools of the craft and rare type specimen catalogs.

The Hamilton Museum is a non-profit and is looking to raise $250,000 to help move its 30,000 square feet of printing history.

The Panoramic Book

Or, The Horizontal Scroll, depending how you look at things.

Images via the Princeton University Library Blog: “The graphic arts collection holds a scrolling panorama made up of 12 unsigned, hand-colored etchings, with a narrative in verse, attributed to [Thomas] Rowlandson and titled Mister O’Squat.”

The New York Times is redesigning its Web site — starting with the article experience

Gray Lady’s getting a facelift.

Read through and you can see some of the front-end changes they’re making. The majority of it is cleaning up the clutter and bringing more contemporary UI and navigational schemes to the site.

They’re also relocating comments to the side of article articles “so you can read them in context” and bringing the swipe to tablets as a way to go from article to article.

Blah Blah Blah shortformblog: Have to admit, this is a really fresh take on the op-ed headline. Really honest about the contents of the piece. (ht Charles Apple)

Blah Blah Blah

shortformblog:

Have to admit, this is a really fresh take on the op-ed headline. Really honest about the contents of the piece. (ht Charles Apple)

No Sleep ‘Til Fairbanks A few weeks ago EJ Fox wrote a piece for us exploring longform storytelling and adopting magazine experiences for the Web. In it, he discusses how JavaScript and CSS techniques can introduce full screen images and video, parallax effects and responsive design to amplify and support storytelling.  Importantly, he also writes about how producers of these longform pieces must break out from the templates and general style guides that control the rest of their sites. SBNation’s coverage of the Yukon Quest Race is a great, new example of harnessing these techniques. Created with Vox Media, it’s an elegant display of wrapping a 5,500-word longread in a delightful presentation package. Check it: SBNation, No Sleep ‘Til Fairbanks.

No Sleep ‘Til Fairbanks

A few weeks ago EJ Fox wrote a piece for us exploring longform storytelling and adopting magazine experiences for the Web.

In it, he discusses how JavaScript and CSS techniques can introduce full screen images and video, parallax effects and responsive design to amplify and support storytelling. 

Importantly, he also writes about how producers of these longform pieces must break out from the templates and general style guides that control the rest of their sites.

SBNation’s coverage of the Yukon Quest Race is a great, new example of harnessing these techniques. Created with Vox Media, it’s an elegant display of wrapping a 5,500-word longread in a delightful presentation package.

Check it: SBNation, No Sleep ‘Til Fairbanks.

The DRM Chair

Taking the lead from the Digital Rights Management embedded in our music, books and other things made from ones and zeros, Thibault Brevet and friends created the DRM Chair for the latest Deconstruction contest. 

Via Brevet:

The DRM Chair has only a limited number of use before it self-destructs. The number of use was set to 8, so everyone could sit down and enjoy a single time the chair.

A small sensor detects when someone sits and decrements a counter. Every time someone sits up, the chair knocks a number of time to signal how many uses are left. When reaching zero, the self-destruct system is turned on and the structural joints of the chair are melted.

Today’s Front Pages From the Americas

New York Post (bottom center) still keeping it classy.

Images: Via the Newseum. Select to embiggen.

Your Single Page CSS and JavaScript Scrolling Animation for a Cause Site of the Day Every Last Drop is a single page Web site by Waterwise, a UK NGO focused on water issues, to demonstrate how and where you can conserve water on a daily basis. Earlier today we posted on repetition in Web design so count this among the ways to do it better. Our sophisticated internal critique of the site ran something like this: Michael: You want to see something neat. [Sends URL] Jihii: Oh my God, I can’t even take this, it’s so cute. Michael: It’s… Jihii: Oh my God, I love this little man. Sophistication, FJP style. Image: Partial screenshot, Every Last Drop. Select to Embiggen.

Your Single Page CSS and JavaScript Scrolling Animation for a Cause Site of the Day

Every Last Drop is a single page Web site by Waterwise, a UK NGO focused on water issues, to demonstrate how and where you can conserve water on a daily basis.

Earlier today we posted on repetition in Web design so count this among the ways to do it better.

Our sophisticated internal critique of the site ran something like this:

Michael: You want to see something neat. [Sends URL]

Jihii: Oh my God, I can’t even take this, it’s so cute.

Michael: It’s…

Jihii: Oh my God, I love this little man.

Sophistication, FJP style.

Image: Partial screenshot, Every Last Drop. Select to Embiggen.

Every Fucking Web Site The morning PSA. Designers, communicators, marketers and brand strategists: take note. Personal favorite under header number three: “Because we saw three buckets of shit content on our competitor’s front page and we’re god damned if we’re only gonna have two.” — Michael H/T: @lorakolodny 

Every Fucking Web Site

The morning PSA.

Designers, communicators, marketers and brand strategists: take note.

Personal favorite under header number three: “Because we saw three buckets of shit content on our competitor’s front page and we’re god damned if we’re only gonna have two.” — Michael

H/T: @lorakolodny 

90 Years of TIME Magazine Covers in 120 Seconds

via.