Gregory @ Tech

A Miniature City Built with Metal Typography | Colossal

Wed, 15 May 2013 22:51:59 -0400

A Miniature City Built with Metal Typography | Colossal:

This is so cool! It’s like a mix of two of my great loves, SimCity and typography!

typographie: (Gallery of Soviet posters courtesy of tumblr user...

Mon, 13 May 2013 21:56:38 -0400

typographie:

(Gallery of Soviet posters courtesy of tumblr user odificus.)

I’m a sucker for Soviet posters

40 Inspiring Workspaces Of The Famously Creative

Mon, 13 May 2013 21:53:22 -0400

40 Inspiring Workspaces Of The Famously Creative:

From tiny writing desks to giant painting studios, the only thing all of these creative studios have in common is that they inspired their successful inhabitants to create greatness.

For those of you with a creative space, some inspiration, perhaps. I obviously am a fan of open space, light, and a view of nature, because I really like Georgia O’Keefe’s and E.B. White’s spaces. I also like Joan Miró’s too, I could see building hardware in a space like that. Or doing woodblock prints… :)

cabinporn: Sod-roofed hut in Geiranger, Norway. Submitted...

Sun, 13 Jan 2013 12:42:22 -0500

cabinporn:

Sod-roofed hut in Geiranger, Norway.

Submitted by Laura Mattila.

Green mountains and a sod roof. *swoon*

Responsive Re-design

Fri, 28 Sep 2012 18:51:28 -0400

Recently I have been reading Ethan Marcotte’s “Responsive Web Design”, an excellent little book about not just the technical aspects of designing a responsive website, but the philosophy behind it as well. It has gotten me pretty energized about creating responsive web pages, something I strive for in my work. However, I realize that before reading the book I was very much stuck in a pixel mindset. This panel needs to be 256 pixels wide, that button needs to be 32 pixels tall, that kind of thing.

So now I want to create a truly responsive website, to but the theory into practice. To think of the design in terms of percentages, not pixels, and to think of how that site will be interacted with on multiple device types. I have also been inspired a lot by Luke Wroblewski’s ideas about designing for mobile first, so in creating my responsive website I want to put some of those concepts into practice as well. As luck would have it, a friend of mine recently linked a wonderful little tool for testing out webpages and multiple devices: http://www.responsinator.com/

So, what website will I be designing, you might ask? Why, my own, of course! Right now my personal website is not very aesthetically pleasing or responsive, as can be seen from responsinator:

I plan on documenting my responsive re-design here, so look for more related posts in the future!

So you hate the new Facebook design...

Wed, 09 May 2012 13:03:48 -0400

So you hate the new Facebook design...:

An interesting article that may help to explain why users complain so loudly about sudden site design updates. I’m a proponent of design evolution, rolling small changes out over time, to avoid imposing new learning curves. But I never considered that limiting changes to a subset of users might have the rest of the user base clamoring for them.

http://bradfrostweb.com/blog/web/responsive-nav-patterns/

Wed, 28 Mar 2012 11:57:07 -0400

http://bradfrostweb.com/blog/web/responsive-nav-patterns/:

Great article comparing the different ways websites can design in-site navigation to support both desktop & mobile browsing.

In my humble opinion, Segoe UI looks better with a bold weight than regular…

Mon, 26 Mar 2012 10:41:44 -0400

In my humble opinion, Segoe UI looks better with a bold weight than regular…

I have a phone that takes video now!

Mon, 26 Dec 2011 14:00:51 -0500

I have a phone that takes video now!

thingsorganizedneatly: SUBMISSION: precious design...

Wed, 19 Oct 2011 10:17:03 -0400

thingsorganizedneatly:

SUBMISSION: precious design process

Hehe, this is really cool. UX in a nutshell.

Rooftop garden! :-) humanscaled: Some serious insulating...

Thu, 29 Sep 2011 17:58:19 -0400

Rooftop garden! :-)

humanscaled:

Some serious insulating properties. Sweet home.

Quotes about innovation

Tue, 27 Sep 2011 18:32:30 -0400

Quotes about innovation

PARK(ing) Day

Fri, 16 Sep 2011 12:27:14 -0400

PARK(ing) Day:

I love projects like this! Unexpected, yet simple. Important, as the goal of PARK(ing) Day is to “inspire people to rethink how we should use public space”, yet playful. Not only does it demonstrate the importance of parks to improving city life, it also seems like it would be a neat design exercise, as the park must fit inside a parking space.

As designers, it’s important to keep in mind the impact...

Thu, 15 Sep 2011 16:46:05 -0400

As designers, it’s important to keep in mind the impact our choices have in influencing the end-users of our products. I continue to see studies indicating that most users go with the default values of a system, so those values should best reflect their needs. And just because we might read through all those opt-out options doesn’t mean our users will.

Oh, man, does this really exist? Because that would be a lot of...

Wed, 14 Sep 2011 23:42:13 -0400

Oh, man, does this really exist? Because that would be a lot of fun!

brianconnor:

Lego Crossword Puzzle

Interactive storytelling

Tue, 06 Sep 2011 17:15:27 -0400

Interactive storytelling:

This is really cool, and strange, and somewhat unnerving. With the simple instruction of “Click anywhere”, it encourages exploration on the part of the consumer. This makes me wonder, though, is it better to simplify interaction for this end? Are consumers of media more likely to explore the system space when the interaction is boiled down to a simple mouse click? Or can we encourage more interaction, creating a richer narrative, by allowing more complex interactions? For instance, in the ink bubble chapter, I tried to drag a point through space in order to get the bubbles to rotate in a particular way. I’m not arguing against the artists choices, but I would be curious to see a similar work that, for instance, had all of the interactions afforded by touchscreens available. It would be interesting to compare the degree of exploration.

This looks like a pretty cool device! I’ve always wanted...

Thu, 01 Sep 2011 17:33:09 -0400

This looks like a pretty cool device! I’ve always wanted to try out Wacom’s products to get more into digital drawing, and so when I first saw the Inkling I thought, “Why not just use a scanner?” since it seems like a move away from their product line. But it looks like it simplifies the process of extracting line data, enabling easier manipulation later on. Plus the ability to add layers is pretty cool.

It seems to me that the Inkling would be really useful for sketching wireframes and designs collaboratively. You could quickly sketch ideas on paper and then share them with colleagues. Tweaks could be made in Photoshop, etc, to create more professional looking mock-ups. I wonder if it will be adopted by UX shops, or if they’ll stick with traditional pen and paper?

Computing chip designed after the human brain

Fri, 19 Aug 2011 15:13:32 -0400

Computing chip designed after the human brain:

This is some very cool and inspiring work being done at IBM. I loved the cognitive psychology course I took in grad school, so I’m excited to see research on the human brain being applied to chip design. Of particular interest to me is seeing that research applied to computer vision. I think it’s fascinating that the visual system begins with such basic building blocks: is this ganglion sensing light or not? is this group of ganglions sensing a line of light or dark? and so on, building upon these low-level sensings to recognize complex shapes like trees, dogs, and human faces. All very cool stuff. And considering another article I read recently about a 13-year-old who improved solar cell placement efficiency by studying trees, maybe biomimicry is a good place to start.

I love this! A really cool and inventive use of the Arduino...

Wed, 17 Aug 2011 13:03:39 -0400

I love this! A really cool and inventive use of the Arduino platform. This has inspired me to think about what neat home projects I could do with an Arduino, put my experience with it in grad school to use!

The future of mobile experience?

Sun, 31 Jul 2011 23:37:21 -0400

The future of mobile experience?