David Emery OnlineSwan Song
A couple of weeks back – it’s been a little too busy recently to keep up with blogging, as you may have noticed – at work we launched a new site for Vampire Weekend:
I’m happy with the way it’s turned out, which is fortunate as it’s liable to be the last artist site I do for a good while. Such is the way these things go I’m now no longer in the position where I do any actual design or development anymore. Not to say I’m not involved with all that – I certainly am – but the pixels are no longer pushed by my own hand. I’m sure I’ll keep on doing the odd job on the side (I’m not just going to stop designing, perish the thought) but certainly I’ll be doing it a lot less. Hopefully that doesn’t mean I’ll start redesigning this place even more though…
With vampireweekend.com being my swan song then, I thought I should try and make it a good one.
My favourite element is the homepage with it’s fullscreen scroll-y carousel, and particularly the ‘Contra’ page within it, which you can drag around like a google map to reveal the lyrics to all...
Read more ➔I hope ebooks usher in a world of ideal book lengths
I hope ebooks usher in a world of ideal book lengths. I.e., detached from the burden of having to be "book-sized"; less filler, more focus.
A great idea – after having now spent a bit of time reading on the iPad (2 books so far) I firmly believe this is the future of the medium, and it’s a lot more adaptable then paper ever was.
Of course, whether the publishers will get their heads around this sort of thing is a whole different question…
Visit ➔Redesigning stories
Over at msnbc.com, where I spend most of my waking hours, we just launched a massive redesign of our story pages. For a news site, the story page is the most atomic and probably most important page of the site. The homepage (“cover” in our vernacular) and section fronts get a lot of attention and push our readers but the story page is where they’re trying to go and it’s where they spend the most time when they get there. This was a massive undertaking, the seeds of which were planted almost two years ago, and spanned the entire company, it’s amazing to finally see it live.
Amazing work – the layout is great, and I particularly like the ‘Upscroll’ navigation which you get to by scrolling up after the page has loaded.
Visit ➔Robyn launches 3D, interactive video
Swedish pop star Robyn has launched a 3D video, complete with Twitter integration, for her delightfully titled new track, Don't Fucking Tell Me What To Do...
Pretty nifty, although it’s not the most amazing bit of computer animation I’ve ever seen.
It is though a good signifier of how the music video really has transitioned to being based primarily on the internet, and how it’s changing because of it.
Visit ➔Cross-browser kerning-pairs & ligatures
Improved handling of kerning pairs and ligatures in modern browsers using the text-rendering: optimizeLegibility; declaration.
Nice and simple, although presumably their must be a performance hit of some kind otherwise it would be on by default.
Visit ➔Levi’s Sales Page has individual like buttons
Levi’s Sales Page has individual like buttons for EVERY pair of jeans. I can instantly see what everyone else thinks is cool (sea foam skinny jeans) and what sucks (jorts).
Veeeeery interesting – great user experience.
Visit ➔Firefox 4: CSS3 calc()
Firefox will support the CSS calc() value, which lets you compute a length value using an arithmetic expression. This means you can use it to define the sizes of divs, the values of margins, the widths of borders, and so forth.
Oh god, it would be so awesome if all browsers would adopt this – most importantly WebKit, which on the sites I look after has a majority share (!).
Visit ➔Finally, a fluid Hicksdesign
I’ve been wanting a fluid layout on this site for about 5 years. I had a brief redesign back in 2005 where I flirted with it for a few months, but it was soon switched back to fixed as I couldn’t get it right.
Lovely stuff – I’ve been a long proponent of fluid width designs, and now with the rise in smaller-screen browsing and media queries now seems the time to really start getting stuck in.
A List Apart – as ever – is leading the charge, this is all you need to know on the subject.
Visit ➔W+K: Honda commercial
Great new ad for Honda from W+K, love the photography style
Well isn’t this beautiful:
While we’re on the subject of adverts, I really like the new Cadbury’s Flake ad as well:
Visit ➔Say Hello to My Little Friend
The other day, after spending my usual ten to twelve hours in front of this laptop I decided to restart my machine. I checked my email. I refreshed my Tweetie. I double-checked Facebook. I loaded Google Reader to make sure I was entirely up to date on all the news from Helen Thomas’ Middle East snafu to the number of gallons of crude still bubbling into the Gulf to the latest legal wrangling over Gary Coleman’s will to Sandra Bullock’s backstage reception at the MTV Movie Awards. Finally, after a quick check of my realtime blog stats, I took a deep breath and pressed the restart button.
Within five seconds, I picked up my iPhone and checked my email.
Suddenly self-aware, I paused. I looked at my sweat-beaded reflection in the still darkened laptop screen and I realized that yes, I am high on my own supply.
Well, this certainly rings a little too true.
I’m not sure it’s a problem, though, just a product of modern culture.
Visit ➔