FF Chartwell ⚓
Web fonts are slowly taking over, despite the lack of pixel perfection on the web. Cameron Moll posted about the new FF Chartwell, which turns number values into beautiful information graphics. The appeal of using this only in Photoshop is huge, but add in the possibility of using it on the web and we just eliminated the need for another few javascript libraries in our apps. Designer, Yaron Schoen created a demo of a what the web version could be. Although it's not quite ready for production use, the author states that OT support in browsers is currently holding FF Chartwell back from a web version, I'm looking forward to having a charting tool I can use universally despite what device I'm designing for. You have to see FontFont's video to believe it.
RubyMotion brings MacRuby to life ⚓
RubyMotion is a revolutionary toolchain for iOS. It lets you quickly develop and test native iOS applications for iPhone or iPad, all using the awesome Ruby language you know and love.
Going to be great seeing the Ruby community come out with apps for iOS now. Check it out and make some Ruby iOS babies.
How typing on an iPad should be ⚓
It's always been slightly frustrating to type on an iPad. Writing notes and jotting in a bit of information isn't too bad, but you would never want to have it be your primary coding machine. The problem goes away when you have a physical keyboard for the most part, but selecting text was still awful. (Daniel Hooper)[http://twitter.com/danielchooper] has come up with a truly elegant solution worthy of Apple's attention. Please take a minute and help this come to your iPad.
- Go to bugreport.apple.com, sign in and click "New Problem"
- Set the Title to "Editing Text on iPad (duplicate of rdar://11365152)"
- Set the Product to "iPad", Version Number to "N/A", Classification to "Feature (New)" and Is It Reproducible to "Not Applicable"
- Copy the letter below and paste it in the Problem Details section then click submit
Idea Intertia
There's a funny thing about ideas no one talks about. An idea at rest, tends to stay at rest. The longer it stays sitting, the less likely it ever it to come to fruition.
As you stare at your queue, cherry-picking the lowest hanging fruit, consider an alternative strategy; ruthlessly push forward on ideas you have faith in. Even getting the smallest next action step done each day.
For example, last summer living with my cofounders, my role as designer / CEO had become that of a single mom. I worked two jobs and then came home to cook and clean for the team. It wasn't bad work by any means, but thinking of my hourly wage, it was for sure not as good of a use of my time as talking to customers. It would have taken maybe an hour and $500 to implement this idea and measure results for a week long experiment. Instead, I let the "startup babysitter" thought slip through to the ether. Now when I have the resolve to do it, I don't have the need anymore.
Learning from that small mistake, I keep a list of my ideas and every day choose which to work on not by which can be most easily accomplished, but rather what has the highest impact or running them through the regret minimization framework.
The time value of ideas is too precious to waste, don't squander them.
P.S. If anyone wants to run the "startup babysitter" experiment, I'd love to hear how it works out. Bonus points if you can find an Indian grandma to make you daily startup naan-ergy.
Day in the life of Google Glass ⚓
Sure beats the hell out of Google Goggles.
Export all your Photoshop layer groups as images, simply ⚓
To turn PSD elements into images for the Web and for Apps, simply name your layer groups once and let Layer Cake do its magic. Bye bye, “Save for Web/Devices”. Hello, boost in productivity and creativity!
Designers and Developers, rejoice — exporting is no longer a workflow killer. Name layer groups like the files you want to create, and Layer Cake will extract them individually. Enjoy complete freedom to move, obscure and even hide these named layer groups without affecting the extracted images.
This fixes one of the biggest problems with the Photoshop workflow, exporting all those images. Even with slicing, updating an iOS app design can take quite awhile to update and then export. For web design, this messy export is one of the reasons I prefer to work in pure CSS. Just do yourself a favor, save a ton of time, and download it right now.
Also it's from MacRabbit, the awesome team that makes Espresso. Download Layer Cake from the Mac App Store.
Field studies for product designers
Where do you go to learn product design? It's a constant juggling act between many subdiciplines of design and development that no one does quite the same as the next. Enter Three Point Line, where they are releasing field studies of other product designers and documenting their thought processes.
Their first field study with Skillshare is launching this spring. Be notified when they launch.
Paper makes me smile while I pay them
From FiftyThree, Paper is a drawing app for iPad. It's simple, useful, and their business model makes me happy.
As a designer you're always making concepts and interfaces more human. What doesn't get as much love is a business model that's user centered. This is what separates the team behind Paper. You download the app for free and start with a single tool, the pen. From there you can play with the watercolor brush, outline marker, and sketching pencil, but you can't use them in your drawings until you in-app purchase each individually or as a set. Personally I was sold on watercolor (my favorite art medium). Paid apps on the Apple store must be really compelling or highly recommended to purchase, but here I have all the benefits of the free trial period with an obvious upgrade path. It's the ultimate in show, don't tell.
Learning makes selling obsolete, but you probably already knew that.
Gaug.es embodies Edward Tufte's principles
Edward Tufte's six principles, from Double Think.
- The representation of numbers, as physically measured on the surface of the graph itself, should be directly proportional to the numerical quantities represented
- Clear, detailed and thorough labeling should be used to defeat graphical distortion and ambiguity. Write out explanations of the data on the graph itself. Label important events in the data.
- Show data variation, not design variation.
- In time-series displays of money, deflated and standardized units of monetary measurement are nearly always better than nominal units.
- The number of information carrying (variable) dimensions depicted should not exceed the number of dimensions in the data.
- Graphics must not quote data out of context.
Their data visuals hit the right chord of function and beauty. Gauges really lives up to their claim of, "the basics done right". If that isn't enough, they're owned by Github now. Sign up for an account and get chart inspired while you're at it.