Fresh

Monday is a great day to seek out a bit of inspiration.

Check out Urban Sketchers. They started as a Flickr group in 2007 and the blog grew as an extension. It chronicles the sketches of their 50-or-so correspondents from all over the world who, “draw the people and places of the cities where they live and travel to.” Here’s my favorite so far:

(sketch by Stephen Gardner from “McSorley’s“)

The blog is inspiring on a couple levels for me right now: The art is awesome, and seeing images from around the world also makes me happy. It makes me want to grab my Moleskin and head out into the city to sketch!

I’m getting ready to build a sweet new WordPress site, and to prepare I decided to create a little bookmarks folder for all the plugins I use on every single WordPress install.  In the folder I put links to all the WordPress plugins I use on every site, so I can right-click on the folder (which I named “WP Plugins XTREME”)  and select ‘Open All in Tabs’ and then start downloading the latest versions of them all in one swoop.

I know I already wrote a post listing ‘plugins every WordPress site should have‘ but there were quite a few I didn’t mention – just because I personally like the plugin and use it every time doesn’t mean it works for everybody in every situation.  But I love these SO much and I’m just worried that some poor WordPress developer doesn’t know about them, so what else can I do but write about more plugins?

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I’m a subscriber to Ancestry.com. It’s a paid subscription site that focuses on genealogy, family trees, history etc. They have a really well designed website, with amazing functionality and resources; but that isn’t what I want to show you. They do a killer job on the design of their email. Every time I get one of their messages, I am delighted by the level of attention to detail, design consistency and engaging content.

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To preface this post, I have to admit I am a huge fan of the design-dude-at-issue.  I check his blog daily, and am hugely inspired by his typography sensibilities and love of/eye for classic, timeless iconography, packaging, identity and graphics as a whole.  Fanboy gushing aside, I feel it necessary to share the man’s site with those unlucky enough to still be snoozing.  Ladies and Germs, Aaron Draplin and the DDC.

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Gosh, we sure are lucky to be making websites for the world wide internets these days.  Not only do we have advanced CSS, widgets, and fancy javascript doohickeys, but we have an audience with broadband connections, modern browsers, higher screen resolutions and bigger monitors!  Which gives us all the reason in the world to design sites with BIG, BEAUTIFUL BACKGROUNDS.

No longer are we trapped by solid colors or boring repeating 1kb GIF backgrounds (not that people don’t do amazing things with simple backgrounds).  Now we can slap gigantic JPGs or PNGs (or SWFs) on our body tags or wrapper divs and get away with it.  And you don’t even have to be building a fancy artist site, either.

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Plazm Magazine is a fantastic resource. It’s one of those magazines that you never get rid of. Topics range from music, painting, poetry, politics, social commentary, illustration, to design. It comes out annually. It is so rad that SFMoMA has the entire catalog in their permanent collection.

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Got a designer’s wet dream for ya, people. Some great stuff here. A while back I was trying to come up with some ideas for wedding invitations (I’m getting married next year). The usual hand-made stuff off my home printer (which is pretty decent) was just not going to cut it. I decided I wanted to learn how to use letterpress and take it up a notch.

In the hunt I came across an amazing Portland resource, the IPRC (Independent Publishing Resource Center). In their own words, “Since its inception in 1998 the center has been dedicated to encouraging the growth of a visual and literary publishing community by offering a space to gather and exchange information and ideas, as well as to produce work. The IPRC is an Oregon 501(c)(3) Nonprofit organization.”

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The Adobe InDesign user group has moved their event to PSU and is sponsoring this launch. The event will include an unveiling of Adobe Creative Suite 4 Design Premium and a presentation from Lisa Niday of Adobe Systems. Whether you design for print or the web, the information presented should be exciting and useful. Learn more about this event at the Portland InDesign User Group.

Monday, November 10, 2008, 6:30pm
Location: Portland State University, School of Business Auditorium, 615 SW Harrison, Room 190, Portland, OR

I love horizontal-oriented/scrolling sites. When well done, they feel so intuitive to navigate. It’s akin to reading a book. I like the change of pace that it offers, too; we’re so conditioned to seeing vertically oriented sites, it’s nice to see something unexpected. The examples I am about to show are all fashion oriented (some full e-commerce experiences).

1. Pull and Bear (thanks FWA!)
Navigate into the “showroom” section of Pull and Bear to see a lovely example of navigating horizontally. I usually find music to be way too distracting, but for some reason it works for me here.

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This graphic from Patrick Moberg speaks volumes via some of the basic elements and principals of design: the use of repetition, dominance, balance, line, movement, contrast, value, and of course… color.

Very moving, inspiring and beautiful!