Author Archive

Google Presentations is Free PowerPoint?

Wednesday, August 25th, 2010
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We learn to treat the Google Docs software different than other software, when we don’t wait years for the next improvements to our applications. If you haven’t used a Google Docs application recently, you should find the interfaces much improved. I recently discovered how far the Google Docs presentations application has come — Ironically, Google Docs apps don’t seem to be named separately. Like the aspiration of other Google Docs applications, Google Presentations are Microsoft PowerPoint presentations on an attractive diet.

HST, Taxes in Canada, and e-Commerce

Tuesday, June 29th, 2010
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HST is coming to Ontario and British Columbia July 1, 2010. Are your e-commerce stores ready? There are implications for small business and online retailers. HST is not simply PST + GST. For the purpose of this article we’ll stick to what online retailers need to know for selling goods between provinces, i.e.  if/when/how the taxes are collected and remitted.

Google vs. Design

Friday, May 7th, 2010
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Your Business Needs Quality Design

Experienced web designers can tell amateur design by many marks. Observing heavy, thoughtless drop shadows and harsh inner bevels is perhaps the easiest. Google knowingly sported both for 12 years.

Google’s home page is legendary for its simplicity. The recent arrival of the new search results page, and other visual and functional enhancements, is accompanied by my favourite Google move yet. Google Docs is great. Google Earth? Super cool. But finally updating the worst logo to ever emblemize a company not headquartered in a car? Brilliant.

Vancouver 2010 Web Site is Excellent

Monday, March 1st, 2010
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VANOC commissioned an awesome website for this historic event. Everything from the art to the technology is extremely well done.  Here’s quick  roundup of the noteworthy stuff.

Great layout, great design: The content organization and navigation is intuitive: find the sport, scores, venue, read the news, etc. It appears cluttered, but it’s got a lot to do! But more fun is the design. Notice the modern lineart used in the large backgrounds (peaking out the right side of the content) and through the header. The sport featured is random on the home page, and sport-specific on the sport portals. This original art is seen all throughout graphics at the venues and in associated advertising. Watch for it on the boards in the hockey and curling highlights we’ll be seeing for some time.

Use Vector Smart Objects

Tuesday, January 12th, 2010
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Using Vector Smart Objects in Photoshop can save a great deal of time. When a designer spends less time operating his technology, he has more time for his creative. Vector Smart Objects are embedded objects in a PhotoShop file that are edited elsewhere; they are representations of outside elements, used on your Photoshop canvas. Creative Suite has at once eliminated the lack of vector opportunities in previous PhotoShop versions, and integrated their powerhouse art applications.

My Screen is Wider Than Your Website

Monday, November 16th, 2009
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The last three computer screens I’ve purchased are 1920 pixels across, the new 27” iMac is 2560 across. Designers often hear “make the design fit the screen”. This is not a reasonable request and it’s made without understanding the variability and indeed the nature of screen resolutions.

But what about making your design 100% of the browser width? This is no problem technically; just let the design expand horizontally as far as it will go and make sure the content still works at low resolutions. But we almost never see it in modern web design.

Augmented Reality

Thursday, October 8th, 2009
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ar-baseball

You’ve maybe not yet heard of Augmented Reality, AR, but a simple YouTube search indicates an amazing new frontier everyone can appreciate. AR is best described as the layering of digital elements on to views of the real world, in real time. Honestly, this is not just nerd stuff.

Imagine standing on a street corner, panning the neighbourhood in front of you with your cell phone camera. At once you see your surroundings on the phone screen as usual, and additional information layered on top the live scene showing you real estate opportunities of the very building(s) you are pointing at. How? The software application on the phone uses the physical characteristics of the buildings observed as keys to fetch respective data on the units inside.

Above What Fold?

Tuesday, August 25th, 2009
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above-the-fold“Please move that box up so the page does not scroll.” The web designer then reaches for his canned “everyone will see this differently…” response. The term above the fold comes from print, where desktop publishers and editors can reliably determine priority placement for best content. The notion holds on the web: the designer needs to make the right impression above the scroll line. The problem is determining that point. And when you play it safe, cater to where you imagine it to be and leave some margin for error, you handcuff your design, and you’ll probably still get it wrong.

News Sites Design Roundup

Monday, July 6th, 2009
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Online News Sites and First Impressions

As papers disappear, we’re going online for news. There was a first step though; cable news. Cable’s used to looking in the mirror and dressing up nice. And it seems the old outlets, print and otherwise, are taking themselves more seriously online. I’ve found the more established the outlet’s reputation for real news, the better they perform aesthetically on the web. Understanding how news sites are used, their huge repeat visitation, they stand to remain the most profitable sites on the web. We should expect the utmost in design.

Texture is the New Gloss

Monday, May 25th, 2009
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texture-n-designApparently Gloss is dead. Texture is here to rip up the corners, splash paint around, burn and char everything above the fold, and get iStocked up. Jacob Nielsen does not like these sites – but you might.

These designs are wide and very modern looking. They jump off the page and offer great colour and depth. Original art, often with vectored sketch, is a cornerstone of this class. Notice how masthead art is integrated with page backgrounds in these designs.