November 2008 Archives

AIGA article about the signage history of the NYC subway system:

"There is a commonly held belief that Helvetica is the signage typeface of the New York City subway system ... it is only somewhat true ... this essay explores several important histories: of the New York City subway system, transportation signage in the 1960s, Unimark International and, of course, Helvetica. These four strands are woven together, over nine pages, to tell a story that ultimately transcends the simple issue of Helvetica and the subway."

Read the Story of Helvetica and NYC Subway System »

Another article on SEO from Redswish.com:

"Search engines pay a lot of attention to links – both internal and external. As internal links are those that can be controlled by you, make sure your website internal linking is proper structured and filled with relevant descriptive keywords. A plain anchor text like ‘click here’ and ‘read more’ are not clever; ‘click here for more Jordan shoes’ and ‘read more about ballet shoes’ are."

http://www.redswish.co.uk/10-seo-elements-all-websites-should-have/

More thoughts from Jakob Nielsen:

"In linear media — such as print and TV — people expect you to construct their experience for them. Readers are willing to follow the author's lead ... In non-linear hypertext, the rules reverse. Users want to construct their own experience ... People arrive at a website with a goal in mind, and they are ruthless in pursuing their own interest and in rejecting whatever the site is trying to push."

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/print-vs-online-content.html

Article by Joe Clark at A List Apart about video captioning:

"I’ve been telling people for years that closed captioning, as a general approach, just is not going to work for online video ... What’s the alternative? Open captioning, i.e., captioning everyone sees."

http://www.alistapart.com/articles/thisishowthewebgetsregulated

From Smashing Magazine:

"In this article, we explore some of the most popular and useful in-browser Web development tools. You’ll find tools for popular Web browsers like Firefox and Internet Explorer. Whether you need to debug and inspect your HTML, inspect HTTP headers, access FTP source files, evaluate accessibility or just figure out what color a Web page element is, you may find a variety of tools discussed here useful."

View the list here »

From Smashing Magazine:

News websites can be intriguing to examine from a design perspective. Regardless of what type of news they cover, they all face the challenge of displaying a huge amount of content on the home page, which creates plenty of layout, usability and navigational challenges for the designer. The lessons that can be learned from examining how news websites address these challenges can be valuable for designers who work with other types of websites ...

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/11/11/newspaper-website-design-trends-and-examples/

A little detective work from VIGET on the 'Save For Web' color-shift mystery:

"Fellow designers: Somewhere between PSD and JPG, Photoshop is draining our colors of their life, like some horrible, RGB-stealing vampire .. If I "Save For Web" an image from Photoshop, open that image up in a browser side-by-side with the original, I should see identical colors."

http://www.viget.com/inspire/the-mysterious-save-for-web-color-shift/

Article about goal oriented copywriting from A List Apart:

"... anyone who touches copy can make a difference by insisting that every chunk of text on the site is doing something concrete. And alas, “selling product!” doesn’t count: “selling” is a muzzy, undefined process, so you can’t tell if you’re doing it properly just by looking. Copy needs specific goals to accomplish."

http://www.alistapart.com/articles/writingcontentthatworksforaliving

From SEO Book site:

"Design is about facilitating a process. It's about the way people move around and follow steps. A web site that makes that process complicated will not work, no matter how good the presentation."

Read more:

http://www.seobook.com/why-web-design-matters