Featured Video
Video: UM QB Kyle Wright talks about the upcoming season
Blog categories
Recent Flickr Photos
Social Media
Posted: March 31, 2009
A crappy internet connection at the hotel made sure I didn’t get to update during the conference. I was way too tired at night to do it anyways, but I didn’t want you to think I forgot. On Saturday I attended a panel about video journalism, JavaScript libraries, Adobe CS4 and how they’re working to make the designer/developer relationship easier and typography.
Integrated Multimedia Video Journalism
Speakers:
David Gyimah made some the following major points and characteristics of video journalism:
- Small camera means a more intimate feel
- Alternative news and a move to hyperlocal topics
- Swifter turnaround: a journalist only needs to ask one question and can leave
- Destroys union jobs because journalists are having to do more
He of course touched on many of the things I’ve read and said before like how the picture must drive the narrative. An interesting point he made was that the Web has yet to be colonized with an idea of how to do news.
Tips he gave:
- Shoot for the edit
- Mimic a photographer (fly on the wall, use the picture to drive the narrative)
- Diversity in subject/content is key
- It’s not the gear, it’s the videographer and his training that make a good video
Gyimah’s most-interesting idea was his decree that an anti-aesthetic movement has made its way to the forefront. The underproduced look apparently will do wonders to capture the younger audience.
Links from Gyimah:
More Secrets of JavaScript Libraries
Speakers:
- John Resig, Mozilla Corporation
- Andrew Dupont, Prototype JavaScript Framework
- Nate Koechley
- Becky Gibson, IBM
This panel was quite full. The first installation of this panel was very popular last year. I think the popularity of these panels on JavaScript correlates with the growing interest in the ease and accessibility of free JS libraries. There were easily 150 people in the room.
Each speaker’s nugget of information:
Koechley: More files increase blocking. Check out the YUI Loader Utility at github.yui/
Dupont: Narrative JS for Google Caja allows you to turn non-JS into JS.
Gibson: There are more things to think about than meets the eye in terms of JS and accessibility. ARIA Roles (Accessible Rich Interface Applications) underlines the importance of the keyboard
Resig: He had a list of links about JS loading time:
Posted: March 13, 2009
I got my big bag of swag this morning and waited around before I met up with some other UF folks. I didn’t really have time to go to the panels I planned on though I did sit it on two. The first was part of a series of quick talks about books by their authors, and the second was about usability testing for video games.
The Principles of Beautiful Web Design by Jason Beaird
Let me start by saying that his book is great. He had a few interesting things to say. First and foremost, he assured the crowd that all of the big wigs in Web design around SXSW would be very approachable and courteous.
His talk, however, was about the principles of Web design and how you don’t need to have an art degree to be a great designer. He added of course that he has an art degree from the University of Central Florida and after polling the crowd, it was determined that about 30 percent of it was made up of graphic designers that went to art school.
Beaird said he learned a lot about art history in college but didn’t even touch a computer for the first two years of art school. The second two years were spent learning logo design and creating an identity.
In the end he explained that what he learned in art school isn’t what made him a good designer, although he did admit that one understands art better by knowing the art of the past.
Beaird insisted that it comes down to two things:
When asked, he mentioned http://veerle.duoh.com/ as a good example of Web design. You can follow Beaird on Twitter.
Funologists Live and in Person
The panel was a bit dull, but had some interesting parallels with Web design and user testing on the Web.
- Know your audience and know your team before starting a project
- Games are made to have a perfect flow between difficulty and depth of story. I suppose Web design must flow between visually stimulation and depth of content.
- Search Google for your site + words like “trouble,” “confusing,” etc. and see what other people have to say about what makes your project or site confusing or difficult.
- Start the feedback process as quickly as possible.
Posted: March 12, 2009
Made it safe to Austin. I got my badge and am ready to go. Here’s a couple of panels I’m looking at for tomorrow. All of my information and descriptions in this post are from Sched.org.
Everything you know about Web design is wrong
Just as early filmmakers struggled to break free from the conventions of live theater, after 10+ years Web designers are still trapped in the structures of the past. Forget pages, linear text and other archaic vestiges of design’s print ancestry; the separation of content from presentation has already changed everything.
Oooh, that’s clever! (Unnatural experiments in Web design)
Find inspiration in the ridiculous. See technological quirks as opportunities. Try something previously unheard of with your site design. Laugh in the face of convention. Use and abuse CSS in ways never before imagined. Get away with it. And if it doesn’t work, try something else instead.
The principles of beautiful Web design
Tired of making web sites that work absolutely perfectly but just don’t look nice? If so, then The Principles of Beautiful Web Design is for you. A simple, easy-to-follow guide, illustrated with plenty of full-color examples, this book will lead you through the process of creating great designs from start to finish. Good design principles are not rocket science, and using the information contained in this book will help you create stunning web sites.