Influence vs Inspiration by Cameron Moll Link
13th August 2010 Be the first to comment... http://sam.brown.tc/436
Cameron Moll recently spoke at LessConference on the subject of Good Design vs. Great Design, I would highly recommend setting a couple of hours aside to watch this video. Cameron’s distinctions between Influence and Inspiration I found particularly interesting, where one finds inspiration is probably the question I get asked most, Cameron’s thoughts on this subject (about 30 mins in) are very much worth listening too.
Cameron Moll at LessConference talking about Good Design vs. Great Design →
Improve handling of kerning pairs & ligatures in latest browsers Link
29th June 2010 5 Comments http://sam.brown.tc/434
This one simple line of CSS can dramatically improve the handling of kerning pairs and ligatures in modern browsers.
text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;
Currently supported in Safari, Webkit & Firefox. Subtle but massively benefical, something I’ve been wanting for a long long time.
More info & examples of Cross-browser kerning-pairs & ligatures →
Helping people connect through friendly recommendations. Link
16th June 2010 3 Comments http://sam.brown.tc/433
Today we have officially launched and opened Endorse to everyone. As previously stated we were still beta testing, fixing bugs and scaling the site but now anybody and everybody can join in and start recommending people today. Thanks to the beta testers for their valuable feedback and thanks to those patient folks waiting to get access.
Have an overflow of job requests and looking to pass on the work to your network? Or are you looking to find a reputable contact who is an expert at a specific skill? Connecting with Endorse allows you to do all that and more…
Thanks to the wonderful folks at Fusion Ads we are now able to sustain the growth and continue to build the site and develop the concept. Definitely look out for a lot of improvements and new features in the near future.
I have forwarded almost a dozen clients looking for people available for work to my Endorse profile this past week and it has been very well received by them:
“Thanks for the links of other good people on endor.se (endor.se is a neat idea).”
“Not a problem, we can appreciate how busy you must get! Thanks a
lot for the list, which is highly appreciated.”
“Thanks for the pointer to endor.se. It looks great and I’ll definitely check out the designers that you recommend.”
Lastly, I have created a couple of simple 16px and 32px icons in the same style as Rogie King’s Social Network Icon Pack should you wish to download and use them to link to your Endorse profile, see my sidebar links as an example. Mike and I hope you continue to find Endorse useful. Thanks.
Billings Case Study Link
16th May 2010 3 Comments http://sam.brown.tc/429
It was a year ago this month that I decided to ditch my current time tracking, quoting and invoicing methods for an all-in-one solution. I asked for recommendations on Twitter and did a bit of research myself, Billings from Marketcircle was most recommended and the one I ended up going with.
I’ve been thoroughly satisfied with the product and would definitely recommend it. Marketcircle had a few questions for me that I answered in their most recent Billings Case Study:
Design Feedback is Good Link
21st April 2010 1 Comment http://sam.brown.tc/424
Occasionally when I am unsure about a concept I am working on I will fire it around a few of my close contacts who are also designers. This kind of feedback is usually of the Yay or Nay variety as we are all very busy and I don’t look for specific or detailed feedback just their general impression. The majority of the feedback I get is from my clients directly.
I have found Dribbble to be a fantastic source of good feedback on design work while it is still a work in progress, hopefully they implement some Privacy Settings soon so I can continue to use the limited and high caliber community as a design soundboard.
Unrequested feedback can be both a positive and negative thing, you have to take it with a pinch of salt – design is subjective and what one person likes might not suit someone else. What I will say though is that if you are giving feedback, make it constructive – “this sucks” or “don’t like it” are useless unless you explain why and how you think it could be improved.
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My opinions on Design Feedback. Read the full article: Design Feedback is Good →
Your Guide to the City at WooThemes Link
18th March 2010 8 Comments http://sam.brown.tc/421
City Guide is a WordPress theme I designed for the fantastic people at WooThemes.
We’ve developed this theme to cater for directory-based wordpress sites. For example, a guide to a city with shops, restaurants and other places of interest all archived in posts with geo-tags and custom content about the locations.
I was approached by the WooThemes Team late last year to design a new theme for them that was a going to be aimed at a niche market instead of the typical blog and magazine themes. The brief was to design a theme that allows one to best publish listings/ratings of attractions in a city and plot them on a map via the Google Maps API. A location-based directory that anyone can morph into something of their own for their local area, town or city.
It was a fun process working together, there was a lot of freedom and some fantastic concise feedback from the team. While I only provided flat PSD mockups the folks at Woo have done a good job bringing it to life and integrating it into their system for you.
If you fancy getting your hands on a copy of this theme you can get a rather generous 20% discount with the coupon code SAMBROWN for the next 2 weeks. Thanks to Woo.
How-to register an International Domain Name Link
24th January 2010 6 Comments http://sam.brown.tc/417
John Sutherland a fellow Edinburgh Refresher has written a fantastic little guide on:
How-to register an International Domain Name →
I had been meaning to look into this after seeing Gruber's fantastic http://✪df.ws short URL. Thanks to John's how-to guide I picked up http://ɯɐs.com/. Let me know what you nab.
Project52 - A personal challenge Link
3rd January 2010 9 Comments http://sam.brown.tc/413
Project52 is a personal challenge geared toward getting fresh content on your website. The goal is to write at least 1 new article per week for 1 year. Because we all know what it‘s like to procrastinate on our content. A website is not just a fresh design that can be uploaded to the web and forgotten about!
Find out more about Project52 →
I have decided, along with some 500 other people, to take part in Project52, writing an article a week on my site for 2010. There are a whole host of other great people taking part in this and I can’t wait to read what they have to say on a regular basis. Be sure to sign up and take part.
Getting rid of the dotted border around links the right way Link
9th December 2009 Be the first to comment... http://sam.brown.tc/409
I heard Patrick H. Lauke from Opera speak at the FOWD Tour Glasgow on Keyboard Access Essentials and today’s 24 Ways article (which I hope everyone is reading) by Patrick does a great job of summarising one of the key points that he spoke about.
Removing the dotted line that occurs around clicked links in Firefox and Internet Explorer can be achieved with one super simple CSS rule :focus {outline: none;}. The big problem is accessibility, people using anything other than a mouse need :focus to see where they are within the page. Patrick’s solution to this problem is simple, and what I really took away from his article is that I should be applying :hover styles to :focus as well, something I have been neglecting to do.
URL ABC Link
27th November 2009 5 Comments http://sam.brown.tc/408
A simple game: Go to the address bar in your favorite browser, and type one letter. Start with "a", end with "z".A simple game brought to you by Tim Van Damme. What you got?