Now maybe no one would notice, but all those small details mean the difference between a “B grade” website and an “A grade website”. The thing I am finding tho is the closer you get to being  100% done with a website the long and hard things seem to be. I would go so far as to say that the first 89% of a project is about equal to the last 11% of project in terms of effort or time.

This kind of art takes time, organization and dedication.

Kevin Cornell one of my new favorite illustrators has a website that is great example of what that extra 11% looks like. THE WEBSITE (you will also find Kevin’s work all over AlistApart.com)

This is the screen I landed on after making a PayPal purchase from Kevin’s store.

This type of customer care and detail in web design is inspiring to me. The thank you screen has a custom illustration and humor, even tho I have already bought a product. This kind of foresight and effort is noticed.

What makes Kevin’s  site is it’s attention to detail, which is something that take a lot of time, and to me means that someone cared a lot about there work, and about there customers. So kudos to that extra 11%.

**Look for Kevin’s art on the walls of the MAC soon.

Sites Sighted :
Kevin Cornells the Illustrator »
A list Apart.com »

Prompted by an outcry over the use of Papyrus for the subtitles in the movie AVATAR, this article from last week’s BBC News Magazine online relates the passions—pro and con—that were provoked. Various other heinous examples of crimes against typography are included.

In 2009, the Swedish retail giant IKEA changed its signature typeface from Futura to Verdana—a font that had been created by Microsoft specifically for screen display.

As in other cases, widespread outrage ensued, with bloggers and tweeters madly weighing in:

“On Aug. 26, Romanian design consultant Marius Ursache started an online petition to get Ikea to change its mind. That night, Verdana was already a trending topic on Twitter, drawing more tweets than even Ted Kennedy.”

It must be noted that some opinionators were more sympathetic.

While typography has a rich history that goes back to the earliest written forms, new typefaces are always arriving on the market, making it tempting for designers to stray from the classic choices. And, sometimes, with good reason. Depending on the target audience and the branding message, it may be perfectly reasonable to select one of the very latest typefaces, especially if it can be effective across a wide variety of corporate needs—website, business cards, magazine and billboard advertising, price tags, serial number labels, Hi My Name Is badges, exterior and interior signage … the list goes on.

I found some great Best and Worst lists. Here’s one that I particularly like because it includes my favorite two Worst examples—#2 and #3, where companies invested in a logo redesign when what they really needed was an overhaul in corporate practices.

If your scroll wheel (or your two-finger touchpad action) is in good shape and you have an extra half hour, check out these collections from Smashing Magazine, an online resource for web design.

• 80 gorgeous typefaces for professional design, in no particular order, based upon suggestions from designers and web developers all over the world (scroll past the well known fonts at the top of the list to see more unusual examples later in the list)
• 60 effective typefaces for corporate design, offering a much quirkier selection than the first list
• 30 new typefaces for corporate design—just what it says: new typefaces

I saved the best for last, but this one isn’t strictly typography. If you have read this far, you may be interested in two visually engaging articles on Writing Systems And Calligraphy Of The World. Part 1 is here, and part 2 is here. My bet is, you’ve never seen such an array of writing samples from so many historical language roots and from virtually every corner of the world.

Calligraphy from illuminated Armenian Gospel manuscript

(Bonus points if you noticed which typeface I used in the numbers in my thumbnail illustration at the top.)

He used 300 million tweets in real time to map mood in a kind of heat map fashion.
Well I am not sure what this means its interesting to look at.

There does seem to be more and more of these large data aggregation and I am skeptic of how much I should read into it. Check out the video and a few other posts below.

» Article on New Scientist

» Article on Fast Company Blog

» Alan Mislove

Ok so Nike+ is an amazing little bit of technology that I have been using. No, it’s not that new, but there website is! Basically it’s a tool to track your runs, one part in or on your shoes and the other a watch you strap on a add on for your iPod/iPhone. I use the watch which has a removable USB port.

I love user experience

I went for a run a few days ago and I ran the fastest mile I have yet to run using nike+. I plugged in my usb watch, it loaded the workout, pulled up the website but before showing me my run data a video pops up, a famous run tells me “I know fast when I see it, congratulation on your fastest mile yet” the screen closes, and well its kind of cheese its kind of awesome to. The site is easy to use and it feels… fun and fast.

A Little History

Last year I ran a marathon (hardest thing I’ve ever done) and a half marathon, much nicer : ). During this time I was running with my iPhone and tracking with GPS, running 16 miles well holding and iPhone is not so great. Nike+ is small and well it’s not GPS the benefit is when its cloudy nike+ still works, and its very light.

Design is what makes the product

I’ll just say that the nike+ site has “top shelf” design and interface, take a look.

Anyways I am not a fast running, but I love it so if any one wants to go on a jog let me know. Currently using this new website to train for a 10K!

Here’s a preview of what’s in store. We took our website and gave it some vintage sauce.

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JJ:  What inspired you and Julia to start Craft Svcs?

TP: Part of what got us thinking about starting our own business was being inspired by a couple of retail stores we visited years ago. One was called AKAR in Iowa City, the other was SMASH, based in Des Moines. We loved how AKAR married design and architecture. SMASH was a unique T-shirt shop that did custom design work, too.

Then there was the Renegade Craft Fair in Chicago that we attended five or six years ago. Think of young people making awesome screen-printed and hand-sewn crafts. Designed goods. Not your typical craft fair. Lots of tattoos… definitely not your grandma’s type of thing.

Also, there was a tad bit of frustration in submitting our T-shirt designs to Threadless that never got printed. We wanted to see them printed, so we decided to buy a screen printer and do it ourselves.

Beyond that, it really all started with the two of us just enjoying the process of drawing and working together.

How does collaboration between you and Julia work?

We’ve found that it works well for us to collaborate on our designs and patterns. For example, I will draw an axe and Julia will draw the pattern on it. We never work over each other’s shoulder. Instead we hand our work back and forth in order to take the designs in different directions.

When printing, I do most of the dirty work like pulling ink on the screens. Julia will align the paper or shirt. All of our two-color designs are hand-registered.

Speaking of designs, have you always had an interest in tree rings and antlers?

Those designs came out of a fascination with the new natural elements that we’ve been surrounded by since moving to Oregon. It’s a celebration of the Pacific Northwest, but it’s all a little ironic.

We probably have 20 new designs ready for printing, coming soon. Every single one of them seems to have a Pacific Northwest emphasis.

And you do this all from home? Tell me about your studio.

The entire house is pretty much our studio. Our laundry room serves as the print studio, where we’ve got a single-bed screen printer. Then we have a darkroom for exposing screens. Emulsion and stuff like that. We also have a separate drawing studio.

What sort of music inspires you while working?

Mostly roots-folk-rock type stuff. The Seedy Seeds, which is a Midwest indie folk rock band, Devandra Bernhart, Monsters of Folk, Matt the Electrician, who’s from Austin. All pretty relaxed, no Metallica.

Tell me about your online store. I see you’re using Big Cartel. Why did you choose them, and what other shopping cart tools did you consider using?

We considered Etsy, but it’s really too confined for what we wanted to do—not all that much design input is available for the store interface. I wanted a solution that I could shape how I needed it, and with Big Cartel I have full control over the HTML/CSS. Plus, there are fees for everything you sell with Etsy. The better you do, the more you pay.

We also looked at doing a home-grown merchant service, built from scratch, but Big Cartel was so much easier. It’s made for artists, and it ties into Paypal nicely.

Is Craft Svcs doing business apart from the online storefront?

Yes, last month we had a booth at Crafty Wonderland in Portland. Sold out of quite a few of the T-shirts. We also sold prints and some hand-stitched flags. That was sort of a personal thing of mine. You’ve gotta come see us at a show to get those kinds of goods!

We really enjoy the face-to-face conversations with customers, and we’d probably eliminate the online store if we could. At Crafty Wonderland we were able to meet up with lots of friends and others we don’t always get to see, and people we know through Twitter.

What’s next for Craft Svcs?

We’d like to move away from just doing T-shirt design and do more work with other local artists and friends. One idea we have is to collaborate with other husband/wife teams and couples like us, where we’d do a show together around a theme.

And, we’re booked for Crafty Wonderland’s holiday show in December at the Oregon Convention Center.

Taking us full circle, we’re also hoping to have our own booth at the Renegade Craft Show in Chicago this September. But we’re still waiting to hear if they’ll let us in.

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Find Truen and Craft Svcs on the World Wide Web:

» @designiscrafty

» Facebook

» www.truenpence.com

» www.craftsvcs.com

Truth is, Tara did most of the work (like, um, flying across the country to actually deliver the presentation for 600 attendees), and I chipped in with design, layout, and concept support. Together we created an 18-page booklet that her ever-more-productive pupils were able to use during the half-day session.

Tara’s client handled the printing, so we were limited on ink colors and binding. Nevertheless, I think the piece (below) turned out OK.

Thanks for the opportunity to lend a hand, Tara. Remember me when you get all famous and stuff.

Starting with forums over a decade ago, there emerged those darling little chiclets of identity called avatars. Stamp sized squares of fun (or annoying animated GIFs), they have become ubiquitous in Social Media use. With restrictive size and aspect ratio, individual and businesses can have difficulty picking the just the right crop or perspective to communicate to the world who they are.

You’ve probably given this some thought. I have too. It represents a significant shift in how you communicate your brand.  Chris Brogan’s recent post announcing his new logo tied together some of those thoughts for me. One of his objectives, according to the post, was a mark that could be used across a variety of channels. In his words, it should be “functionally-minded.” You see, there was social strategy behind it. Does that describe yours? Or does that even matter?

Absolutely.

Your logo should have the same effect in Social Media as anywhere else. At the very least, I should recognize it as it flashes by in my tweet stream. Better yet, like any good logo design, it should tell me something about you – confidently distinguished from every other identity out there. Oh, and while your at, have it evoke some really good feelings about your company. Just fit it in 100 x 100 pixels. Deal?

So am I saying you should just drop a grand or more on a new logo? Not at all. If it’s is already doing it’s job (see previous paragraph), sometimes just a well placed crop will do. But consider this: the form isn’t going away. Beyond the explosion of social media, took at the burgeoning app stores of iPhone, iPad, and Android. They are filled with icons proportionally the same to avatars. So whether or not an app is in the plans, some thought towards your brand’s digital future should be a part of any logo consideration.

Have more questions about logo design for social media? Leave a comment or contact one of the design folks found on Matchbook or Madison Ave. Collective. You can also find me on Twitter and Facebook.

Back in the late 1990s I attended a class with information designer Edward Tufte, who literally wrote the book on “The Visual Display of Quantitative Information.” Tufte is considered by many to be the leading authority on clearly and effectively depicting data in graphic form, and has for decades been helping designers avoid the pitfalls of depicting data sloppily in diagrams, charts, tables and reports. It was an eye-opener to spend 5 or 6 hours in Tufte’s company, examining in detail examples of graphic information that work beautifully and others that failed catastrophically. But I think I loved charts even before that class.

If you love charts, you should really know about the site “ChartPorn: data visualizations you just gotta love.” ChartPorn is basically a visual blog chock full of “charts, tables, maps, and interactive data toys, with a focus on economics and graphic design.” The images come from all across the web, and range from humorous to deadly serious. Here, you can learn through diagrams all about  the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill,  examine a flow chart that pokes fun at how designers select typefaces, learn how to cook, or play with a picture-based, interactive “History of the World Through Objects” from the BBC, featuring objects from The British Museum, complete with zoom and descriptions. Surf the ChartPorn site at your own risk: I’ve been known to lose entire afternoons over there. I’d say that makes me an official Chart Geek, but I’m not ready to join the union.