Be Aware 12

Enjoy the first Be Aware of the year, #12.

Donovan Beery: Web Tips

When designing for the screen, always keep in mind the typical screen resolutions used by your viewers, and the amount of area taken by a browser’s attributes such as its scrollbar. Currently, the typical size to design for most audiences is an 800×600 pixel screen, as the old 640×480 monitors have sadly/wonderfully (your choice) been disappearing. According to The Web Site Style Guide, an 800×600 pixel monitor has a ‘safe area’ of 760×410 pixels. When designing a site that photographers are the main audience of, and considering every photographer I’ve met has a monitor the size of my living room, it’s probably safe to bump it up a notch.

Travis Gray: TypeWatch

Some interesting type related links for everyone to enjoy at the beginning of the new year:

Typographica’s Favorite Fonts of 2005 – Yes, I decided to hop on the bandwagon and link to this like everybody else.
Veer’s Top Typefaces of 2005 – What the heck is up with the script fonts?
DAIRY – A sweet time-lapse font experiment done in Flash.
TypeBase – A bucketload of typographic website links.
Movie Titles Designed by Saul Bass – A must for the motion typographer.
Alvin Lustig Typographic Gallery – The rest of the site frickin’ rocks as well.
Bembo’s Zoo – A typographic picture book for children.
Slanted and TypeMuseum – And a couple of German type/design websites thrown in for good measure.

Adrian Hanft: Alternative Photography

Leaves are sensitive to light, and it isn’t a coincidence that they call it PHOTOsynthesis. Here is a link to a tutorial that explains how you can use the light sensitive properties of leaves to make a photographic print on a geranium leaf.

David Kadavy: Design and Technology

The Elements of Typographic Style Applied to the Web relates principles of Bringhurst’s book to the web medium. So far (it is being updated periodically) I think it has done a good job, but some of the details would be nightmarishly tedious to implement on a large-scale dynamic site.

Tom Nemitz: Awesomely Bad Website

www.superbad.com

I’m going to tell you a story now, maybe its true and maybe its not, maybe its funny and maybe its not, but maybe its true…Some time ago, I was in the mountains with a goat, two chickens and a backpack of hay. I chanced to bump into a wise man riding a hornless unicorn and brandishing an invisible cane made of good strong hickory, who told me “Chuck Norris can touch MC Hammer.” He also told me to go to superbad.com — leaving me to ponder whether I had just encountered a most bizarre form of viral marketing, a deranged Chuck Norris fan or just a guy upset that he only got 2 bucks for “Please Hammer Don’t Hurt Em” at the used CD store a scant 10 minutes prior.

I learned that day that there is really nothing so fierce as a wise man scorned. So because I live in fear of the fierceness of invisible hickory sticks weaponized by old wise men, I spread the Awesomely Bad message of Superbad to you. Listen to me: Click everywhere, anywhere, all of the time, and the only guarantee I can make — as I’ve journeyed to Superbadia many times myself — is that every journey to Superbadia will be different than the last.

You bet.

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