Archive for the ‘research’ Category

Seen a font and want to know what it is? Check out What The Font.

Tuesday, June 1st, 2010

Over the course of my career I’ve been asked (or have asked) “do you know what this font is?” hundreds of times. MyFonts.com has solved this problem by creating What The Font, a simple online tool that can identify fonts. You upload an image of a font, double check to make sure it recognizes the letters in the image properly, and click a continue. The font has been identified you are presented with buy links, the ability to rate the font, or the option to submit the font to the site to have it matched manually. The app works best when the font is isolated from other images or background texture, but in my experience it has proven very reliable.

Check out What The Font.

what the font

Usability Assessment of MySpace Apps Leaked

Thursday, April 29th, 2010

MySpace has never been know for its simplicity or usability. Fortunately for users they were trying to do something about it. Unfortunately for MySpace those documents leaked online. MySpace was seeing poor install and retention rates for their apps compared to Facebook and hired a usability team to make some web design and user experience recommendations. It’s more pixel pushing than redesign, but a very interesting look into one do the largest sites on the web and how they strive to improve their business.

Click here for a link to the document.

CSS iPhone – Showcase of iPhone Formatted Websites

Wednesday, April 28th, 2010

CSS iPhone is a great resource for well designed iPhone formatted websites. Good for anyone researching mobile web design and looking for inspiration.

Check out CSS iPhone.

css iphone

Flash Runtime Written Entirely in Javascript

Monday, April 26th, 2010

Gordon is a open source Javascript based Flash Player written by Tobey Tailor that allows users to playback Flash content without having the plugin. It currently only supports Flash 1 & 2 so Actionscript users are out of luck. Right now browser support is pretty limited but it’s an interesting project worth keeping your eyes on if you are hoping to playback Flash animations on platforms (Apple) that don’t support the plugin.

Check out the project on GitHub.

Helvetica and Alternatives to Helvetica

Tuesday, April 20th, 2010

Alternatives to Helvetica

Fontfeed.com has a great article on Helvetica and it’s alternatives, reviewing several fonts that have a similar clean feel to Helvetiva without feeling so repetetive.

Read the full article here.

Mobile Awesomeness

Thursday, March 11th, 2010

Mobile Awesomeness is a design showcase for the best mobile formatted websites. Submissions can be voted on and the gallery can be browsed by category or searched. Mobile Awesomeness also has a great list of links to mobile resources, as well as a blog focusing on mobile innovations and announcements. A must visit site for anyone designing or building smartphone formatted versions of their websites.

Check out Mobile Awesomeness.

Mobile Awesomenes

Iconfinder.net – Icon Search Engine

Monday, February 1st, 2010

Iconfinder is a search engine for (you guessed it) icons. It’s a great source for graphic designers to get inspiration or even download icons for commercial use. A search for “music” yielded 12 pages of results, the first of which is displayed below.

The site’s functionality is fairly basic but does allow you to change the color behind the icons to see how they work on multiple backgrounds, filter by the type of license, and filter by size.

Try out Iconfinder here.