CROWDCTRL

Interesting that usps.com/smallbusiness doesn’t work, but usps.com/smallbiz does.. I remembered seeing the URL on a commercial in passing, and went with the correct spelling first.. #

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New favorite feed: Tiny Gigantic, the blog of creative studio Language in Common. Via JSM. #

I’ve been following the work of KNI for some time, and their work has inspired many a late night around these parts. Tonight I’ve rediscovered Yewknee, found d_box is back online, and found this cool little nugget in his flickr stream: a cool KNI book prototype. Rad idea and smooth design there. #

Andy Rutledge takes a shot at the new AIGA website, designed by HappyCog, and backs his arg with a few #s: Fonts/Faces: 6, Link Colors: 6, Link Styles: 2. The site certainly goes in a new direction, but the jury’s still out for me on this one. The logo is freaking me out. I do know HappyCog’s own site is the best work I’ve seen that super crew (all of whom are out of this world) do collectively in the last few months. Methinks this redesign has a lot more to do with strategy and information design than blue plaid and typography. #

Mike Rundle: The Web’s Best Interface Design. From Wayfaring to Akamai. #

Ruby on Rails Caching Tutorial #

Heading down to Austin for SXSW this year? Join me and the crew from Northtemple for our Northtemple Designer Meetup. Think about this: talk with some of the world’s best designers while you’re sober. Manage to give out business cards without getting beer spilled on you. Head over to nt for the details, and RSVP at Upcoming. See you there. #

This is a really cool way to promote yourself and your book at a major conference. SXSW really offers a unique self-promotion opportunity, and Colly and crew get it right. #

Geoff over at Nuby on Rails posts a nice review of all the major Ruby on Rails hosting options. All my Rails sites are currently on Dreamhost, but the errors and spottiness have made me consider others. Nice writeup. #

Procrastinators: Leaders of Tomorrow. #

Little problem with the comments. Seems to be fixed for the time being. Sorry for the trouble, if you’ve tried to comment, please return and let me know what you think.. #

Jesse of Soylent Foo fame posts a nice how-to on making screencasts with Mac OS X. He fails, however, to post a screencast of how to make a screencast. Disappointing lack of irony. #

That new Hivelogic logo is pretty sweet but I find myself really missing those little illustrations that used to occupy his masthead. Now the site seems a bit too canned and lifeless. And Mormon. #

For those in Salt Lake City, come over to the LDS Tech Talks downtown on Thursday, January 18th at 6:30p. A few of us from Northtemple will be there to meet and greet and answer questions about working at the Church. #

George Fulton is a photographer in Columbia, SC, who creates really snazzy pieces of work – each recalling some strong emotion in some way or form – using great situations with a smear of digital illustration. Look for him to steal the show at this year’s Addy’s in the photo category. #

Mr. Dilworth, good friend, fellow Railshead and esteemed coworker (I dined with him today at Caputo’s in fact), relaunches his homepage and companion site, the Cosmic Knot. Touche, old chap. To say I love it would be an understatement. Delightfully dirty, with plenty of old world, almost Victorian flavor. Do go enjoy them. #

I just got a 500 Internal Server Error on a Dreamhost discussion board addressing 500 Internal Server Errors. Dreamhost has some major problems, and sites hosted in PHP, Rails, and Django are all experiencing this. Lame! Jesse, when’s our Amazon server ready? #

Ted Boren over at Northtemple summarizes the great lesson every interaction designer should learn: “Customers do not always know what they need, or even what they mean by what they say. It’s our job to take requirements, clarify them, push back to the simplest design that meets those requirements—not to play the Yes-Man to our client.” #

50 front pages of today’s paper announcing Saddam’s death, from Newsdesigner. #

Nice breakdown of the Carmax website by Andy Rutledge: “CarMax would do well to remember the shopper’s mantra: get outta my way and let me shop.” #

Are you reading Bearskinrug yet? The site of alistapart’s resident sketch Kevin Cornell. His recent sketches on Peoplemals is awesome. I love his stuff over in Coudal’s sidebar as well. What’s great is those cool watercolors he has are done digitally. Love it. #

Is it just me or does the new Mezzoblue fail to excite or inspire? Words that come to mind are homely, drab, and boring. Check out those comments for some typical comment worthlessness. Depressing. #

John Dilworth, in Make Your Small Type a Little Bit Bigger over at Northtemple: “10px type has potentially 38% less resolution than 12px type. Sure you can still make out the words, but you’ve eliminated all the subtleties of hundreds of years of typographic design elements that were put there to make things easier to read.” #

Photoshop CS3 public beta later this month? #

Jesse spreads his foo with a screencast on Firebug. Thinking of using both the extension and screencasts at work.. This ‘cast of his is getting great response.. #

Five Simple Steps: Designing for the Web, a PDF book by Mark Boulton. Christmas 2006. #

Ben Bleikamp’s 4 idiot-proof ways to make your blog look cool are also four good things to do to improve the design of anything you do. #

Rad portfolio design for Airside, an ad / design agency. Good work too. #

From I believe in adv, one of my daily inspiration points: Coca Cola Love (bold usage of color and typography), Messer Roedter Knives (medium as part of the message), and a great set of wordless ads for Milenio Diario, a Mexican newspaper. #

If I’m getting rich off anything, it’ll be with Jesse Newland. J launches his hot new design today over at SOYLENTFOO, and adds a freebie (foobie?) with a tumblefeed of all his internet feeders, combining last, twitter, delicious and his own blog in one opml-supported morsel. Grab it and consume. #

New this season from the Coudal superheros: Holidiscs, a nice little Jewelboxing kit for sending out dvds of your kids to the grandparents. Jewelboxes, dvd-r’s, liners, booklets, labels, shipping materials, photoshop templates, even tic-tacs. “A limited-time offer for Moms and Dads with design skills and cute kids.” Rad. #

Cameron announces his move back to Utah and to the NorthTemple.com team at the LDS Church. Word! #

far from fearless is an elegantly worn – and GREEN – site from Chris Murphy. Love the color palette. #

I am really enjoying Andy Rutledge’s new design. Huge type, an inspiring contrast with the black and bright yellow, and as always excellent content. I can’t stop looking at it. #

The best international logos of 2006. Favorites: the Elenov winery of Macedonia, where the typography resembles a bunch of grapes, the colors of the Romanian Radiocom, and the old-worldish and simple design of the Guild teashop chain of Russia. Good stuff. #

Microsoft has thousands of developers checking code into the Longhorn repository. Ouch. #

Add this to the list of best designers in Utah: Mafe Maria – a creative playground of Maria Stultz. #

50 essential design bookmarks, from Commuication Arts (via Design Observer). #

This environmental ad campaign from MADD makes me cringe a bit. Obviously the names are fake, but the installations are purposefully insensitive and graphic (in a not-so-graphic sort of way). #

Vi8.cn has a really cool design showcase of awesome sites—the kind you don’t see on the other galleries. Only thing is I have no idea what it says. Good linkage tho. #

Resistance is Futile: how to run IE6 and 7 simultaneously, via CodeDump. Randy, i’m still looking for your css-less site layout. Do it dude! #

Design by Fire: The unfortunate death of Helvetica #

css bloooooom. i’m noticing people love to vote low on these sites. do the same people who visit digg frequent these css galleries? #

how to create brushes in photoshop, over at blacksuits creative, the company of jason gaylor. #

featured on Best Web Gallery, CSS Quest, Most Inspired, and Cameron Moll... thank you to everyone who’s supported the redesign! #

The incredible and unique work of Miguel Ripoll. #

I’ve got to say this is the coolest site for a university department I’ve ever seen. Department of Spanish and Portuguese, UC Berkeley. via Moll #

i’m loving the little details on Supercharged, the personal site of Darren Ansley. kindof slightly elegant, slightly worn. minimally. nice work. #

featured in w3c sites, css galleries, css import, and daringfireball ... #

Caryn’s enjoying this new Maya’s Mom site. “Where parents share.” We’ve been looking for a well-designed site for parents, and this one fills that need. RSS even.. #

Know how to use the interrobang? The snark? John Dilworth over at northtemple.com explains in his 9th installment of excellent typography tips. #

Hometown Typography from Bountiful, Utah, courtesy of PlainSimple. Great post. #

A non-comprehensive list of quality Utah blogs. Brian’s on there, northtemple too. World famous PlainSimple? CodeDump? CROWDCTRL? Come on! #

Sweet site built on a love of branding: BRAND NEW, from the folks who brought us Speak Up (via jsm) #

btw, if you’re planning on attending SXSW, a lot of the hotels are already selling out. act fast. #

Featured on the Daily Slurp, One Pixel Army, and the CSS Collection (which in itself is no css wonder).. #

Found the CROWD on CSS Hazard today. Looks like a rad little collection of css-driven sites, most of which are wicked and/or worn. Good stuff. Gil- what’s that japanese say? #

Olof Lonnroth is a music producer and web designer from Gothenburg, Sweden. Sweet site design, with beige/brown and plenty of worn. #

13 strides is a niche site/app design firm focusing on athletics. Love the slight worn element. #

Featured on CSS Thesis #

Gil’s PlainSimple featured by Khoi as “a fantastic piece of work that I’ve spent a lot of time poring over.” But dudes, plain != simple. I keep telling you that! #

In which Jeff Croft visits CROWD and finds truth and hotness herein. #

Mentioned on Screenalicio.us #

CSS Mania, baby! #

Matt Owens has some of the most original work for major clients i’ve seen. Bringing the funk to MTV, Puma, American Eagle. Why haven’t I heard of this dude? #

Porterhouse Vegan and other fine clothing from the supa baaaad three-headed dragons at Good night, TV! #

Here’s more from Jason Dilworth. Tons of great work in there. #

The Designers Handbook: not yet printed, but i’d totally buy a copy. “What to do if you.. need to signal another designer … break your ipod … stretch your type…” Art project, via john #

I’m liking this Carnegie Mellon redesign. Some interesting flash integration, with great usage of color to draw your eye over the page. Via Croftie. #

The Rails Way, from Koz and Buck: “This blog is our attempt to back up Rails’ opinions on what things should be done, with our own opinions on how things should be done.” #

Snookie Cookies #

you throw a flash site with auto-playing music at me and i’ll likely chuck it right back at you. but Red Jacket Clothing shirt designs are just the right combo of worn and wicked, so i’ve gotta point you over there. check out those sweet baseball t’s. b-b-but there’s no online store. shame. #

Lazily sweeping the whole Rails page cache—almost a year old but saved my butt early this morning. #

Speaking of Inman, he’s splashed a few lines of paint on his site. I think I would have responded more positively had he started with this.. but due to personal integrity I WILL NOT ENJOY IT. #