design

/ Don

iPhone Blueprints: Fundamentals of User Interface Design

iPhone Blueprints is a new book by Scott Jensen that covers User Interface Design and its importance. In the book, Scott deals with everything needed to create an effective user interface. Most of the books that are available on the subject are typically full of design patterns with tons of theory and very little actual usable information. iPhone Blueprints [iBookstore link] is being featured here because it looks spectacular on the iPad and is one of the best guide books on UI design for the iPhone in existence today. The author currently works at Ender Labs that brought us the lovely music player app Track 8.

Everything from the book cover to the chapter mastheads in this book is drool-worthy. The book is split up into 9 main sections. The introduction deals with why UI is important and the author then goes on to discuss who makes a good designer by drawing some brilliant examples. I love the emphasis on why UI and UX go together.

“If you’re a UI designer, you should be making UX decisions. Otherwise, you’re a decorator, nothing more.”

Original article on BeautifulPixels.com

/ Don

You Work For Her

A dozen years ago, I was sitting in the senior design lab at Ferris State University with the soon-to-be graduating class. Looking around the room, it was hard not to notice that I was only one of three guys in the room. My freshman year, close to fifty students had gathered in the survey courses. Whittled down to a dozen through the pressures of the program and a rigorous portfolio review, I found myself within the gender minority. In fact, all the professors of my core classes were also women.

Last fall, partially due to an increasing percentage of my studio‘s clientele being female, we rebranded the company to better appeal to women. This Spring, looking up from a dozen concurrent projects, I realized that, other than a few long-term clients from the previous decade, 100% of the projects I was working on were for women. Even those accounts built on the life and work of men were being driven and managed by female liaisons. And the digital peripherals of the design world also have afforded me the privilege of working with a rising number of women stars—notably Krystyn Heide (@SquareGirl) of SquareSpace and Caroline Schnapp (@CarolineSchnapp) of Shopify.

It makes perfect sense, when you think about it. Read more

/ Don

Why Aren’t You Following Me on Pinterest?

Pin Me on Pinterest (You Have My Permission)
After noticing I only have a handful of followers on Pinterest, I recently updated my Facebook status with the question: why aren’t you following me on Pinterest? To which I received a rather snarky, but provocative reply from a friend: Because pinterest is for chicks dude.

And he’s 80% right, too. Pinterest’s user base is predominantly women. According to recent data from Google Ad Planner, as presented by Ignite Social Media, only 20% of their users are guys. Pinterest’s popularity among women in their late 20s and early 30s is illustrated (quite literally, ReadWriteWeb says) by the proliferation of images related to wedding planning and home decor.

But is Pinterest really for chicks, dude? Yes and no. Read more

/ Don

Target Benchmarks Central Park Illustrations

In archiving old era404 projects, I just came across these twenty illustrations I created in 2003 for the Target Benchmarks Central Park event at Christie’s Auction House in the Rockefeller Center. The event was an auction to raise money for the Central Park Conservancy and produced/designed by Rand Burrus of Phoenix Event Productions. Each illustration was enlarged and reproduced on colossal 8′ x 8′ canvases to provide the backdrop for each of the benches being auctioned. In fact, after the bench auction was over, they began to auction off the illustrations too!

My last forays into illustrating for clients were for the Global Investment Literacy project and the Brooklyn Wine Company Sparkling White Wine Label. Target Benchmarks Central Park was a fun project and a chance to contribute artistically to a good cause. More information about the event can be found on the era404 website, here.