January 2011
4 posts
1 tag
Spacing really bothering me
Now I have a variety of *kinds* of posts over at Nice Web Type’s tumblr, and I’ve been actually writing so they’re showing up in various combinations. Although so far, for image, quote, and link posts, I have only tossed numbers up without paying much attention, I am not at all pleased with the vertical spacing.
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Image treatments
Tried three, in this order. Settled on the third. After making the first one, I remembered the Kiss of Death and Jason’s thoughts on the Polaroid metaphor’s lifespan. (Hey look, the iTunes icon has no CD.)
2 tags
Quote styles, early responsive design, and plans...
Over the holidays, I made several tweaks and did some thinking about Nice Web Type’s homepage. First, regarding the homepage, I’m going to have it be a different thing than a stream of notes and bookmarks. I think the Nice Web Type tumblr will live at something like notes.nicewebtype.com. The homepage will do a better job of pointing to lots of different things — my projects, resources...
December 2010
9 posts
1 tag
More subtle design shifts
Went back to dark gray text, rather than black. Made post titles black, rather than green. Also, normal weight (not bold). Before:
After:
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Hurry up!
Just received Dan Cederholm’s new book. Now hurrying to get this redesign to minimum viable launch, so I can comb through all the markup and HTML5ify it, then read Dan’s book and apply some finishing touches.
Renamed sidebar stuff from “Projects and other work” to “See also,” and added Twitter/Dribbble callouts. Done! Got rid of lame stickynote-style boxes just...
Working toward navigation
Spent some time thinking about the nav area. One example of art direction over time. I’m making decisions about this thing now because I need to now. Later I may iterate some more and change things, but I need something to start with.
Iteration 1:
I started by thinking the nav could be a spot for some kind of chunky visual. So I made a button bar. No good. It was distracting in the same...
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Rough adjustments to projects/features
The sidebar I had going on was a bit overwhelming. It drew too much attention away from the main column. I speculated about somehow having it recede, and then tried a few different things. Darkening the area was problematic because it created new visual boundaries in the composition that made everything feel too complicated. But hiding the images helped (quite a bit!) and lightening the text in...
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Pilcrow permalink
Added a permalink to bookmark entries. I like how Daring Fireball does permalinks and timestamps. With John’s linked entries (which function like my bookmarks), in stream view, there’s only the linked character, but on permalinked pages there’s a timestamp.
Used Cronos Pro’s pilcrow character for my permalinks. What a great pilcrow. Wish I could link to Cronos’ glyph...
Notes & bookmarks header
Added one more thing: a “notes & bookmarks” heading above the stream of posts (notes) and Pinboard bookmarks. Added a link to the RSS feed here because now subscribers get both (NWT subscribers used to only receive notes).
Still not sure about the text style and spacing, nor am I totally happy about the very light gray rule below this heading. But it felt like it needed to be...
Starting to feel right
Sat down tonight for an hour, by the glow of my freshly cut Christmas tree, and made a handful of extremely subtle adjustments to the Nice Web Type redesign that feel to me like they’ve made a big difference. Here’s what I did. You can toggle between these before and after screenshots if you like.
Black text, rather than gray
For as long as I can remember, I’ve used an...
Quick rant about bookmark handling while looking...
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Column swap
I swapped the columns and shortened the measure. Looks better now, I think. Here’s how the composition looked before I swapped the columns:
November 2010
4 posts
1 tag
Two column
Started to act on my sketch, with new ideas on organizing content. We now have a two-column layout. As I said, favorites weren’t working out in the main stream. So the main column is now just posts and bookmarks. Adding the second column was easy — I chose a number from my scale and kept the overall width below 960px wide. However, I haven’t yet put a margin between the columns, and...
Several adjustments
Favorites are out. There were too many. And I didn’t want them in the main RSS feed. I’ll work them in later somehow, because I really like showcasing them. Bookmarks are Masonry’d. I like how it’s going so far, but the measurement and details still need a lot of attention. Nice Web Type’s tumblelog now powers the live RSS feed to which hundreds of folks subscribe....
October 2010
1 post
1 tag
September 2010
5 posts
2 tags
Applied Masonry, updated Tumblr
Quick post tonight, because I’m really tired. One of those nights when you work because you can’t sleep. (Or can’t sleep because your brain wants to work.) These kinds of nights are great. The tomorrow mornings are less great. Anyway, good stuff going on here.
Now using Masonry!
I used David DeSandro’s jQuery Masonry to get Twitter favorites (one third the column width)...
1 tag
Art direction in 4D
So I began taking my own advice, the steps I had laid out in my previous post. I looked at designed things I admire. I looked at nature. But the thing is, I do those things all the time. This design is taking shape intuitively, based on those things, without my needing to meddle. There will be plenty of opportunities for art direction. Over time.
When I begin to space things subtly, and introduce...
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Assessment and art direction
Last night I added a touch of color to the design in progress, to see how different it would feel, and then bolstered my sketchy markup and style with Paul Irish’s HTML5 Boilerplate. Getting my brain into the boilerplate made me want to hurry up and connect Tumblr and get this all actually flowing as a designed theme! But before I go any further, now is a good time to assess the design...
2 tags
Scala Sans and Cronos
After much deliberation, I have made a decision about the typefaces I’ll use at Nice Web Type. Scala Sans has been a favorite of mine since Typography 101 in college, when two of my books (Robert Bringhurst’s The Elements of Typographic Style and Ellen Lupton’s Design Writing Research) put it to beautiful use. It was the first font I ever licensed in print (for my résumé). I feel...
2 tags
Update
Felt really good to put some hours into this project tonight. Here’s what I’ve been thinking about. First of all, as I said in the final paragraph of my last substantial post, I began to bring data into my Tumblr stream. That means @nicewebtype’s favorites, and my Pinboard bookmarks tagged Type. (I much prefer Pinboard to Delicious, which I had used as a stopgap after Magnolia...
June 2010
5 posts
1 tag
Two quick changes
Just made two quick changes to this Tumblelog’s theme. First, I linked the post titles (that was annoying me). And second, I put a little padding above posts preceded by other posts. FYI.
1 tag
Sketching
Folks, I actually made some sketches! First I drew in my notebook and took a picture of that with my phone, but it was all blurry. So I redrew my sketch using the Adobe Ideas app on my wife’s iPad (really fun to use).
On the left here is what I imagine the desktop layout to be. This is what I had sketched in my notebook. Then as I was labeling the areas on the iPad, I figured I’d plan...
Emotions
The next step I try to take in planning web projects is to think about how I want folks to feel about the experience, and do my best to have those ideal feelings support my reasons for making the site. I call this step “emotions,” and it’s a written exercise that uses adjectives or descriptive phrases like concepts on a mood board. Sometimes I’ll list them, but here I think...
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Solutions
Solutions are the things I’ll actually do, in designing this site, to satisfy my reasons. In fact, I’ve already arrived at some solutions. Using Tumblr immediately prepares this effort for simplicity. So does beginning from scratch. And using Tumblr assures followability and subscribability via parts of the service that I don’t have to maintain.
Consolidating Nice Web Type’s notes blog,...
May 2010
5 posts
1 tag
1 tag
Reasons
I try to begin thinking about design by first asking myself, “What’s the reason for this thing I want to make?” I don’t always begin projects this way, mostly out of impatience, but I try. Having clear goals can help simplify tactical decisions later.
The main reason I’m designing Making Nice Web Type is to simplify Nice Web Type. Right now the site has a notes blog,...
2 tags
More cleanup
I haven’t begun my design process yet, but I did just update this site’s typeface, text size, and leading, and I’ve added a very brief description of the project up top. I added the description so new visitors know what’s up (and where to start). I changed the typeface and type spacing because I wanted to get Typekit set up — now I don’t have to think about the...
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First Steps
The first step on the road from thought to website is text. Text is the most fundamental kind of web content. When websites have images, audio, or video, responsible authors will make sure these things have textual equivalents. However pale such alternate text may be compared to the media it represents, it’s a baseline. Text is the common denominator of web communication.
Markup
The second...
1 tag
Hi there. This is a new project.
I’m going to design this tumblelog from scratch, and talk about the decisions I make a long the way. Web folks might find it interesting because I’ll talk about typography. Type folks might find it interesting because I’ll talk about web design. It’s going to be really fun. Come back every so often and see how it’s going!