Periodical

A Dozen Questions for Ms Hische

Jessica Hische is an illustrator, typographer and designer living in Brooklyn, New York. She shot to internet notoriety through her Daily Drop Cap series, where she continues to share her exquisitely hand-crafted letter forms “for the beautification of blog posts everywhere”.

With a commitment to, and love for, typography and more recently letterpress, her work harks back to a golden age when type was crafted by hand. Her work is often infused by the aesthetics of the nineteen hundred and fifties, when the art of the letterer was last at its height.

As one of the headline acts of the fringe events at this year’s Build Conference in Belfast, we felt it pertinent to find out a little more about her before her visit to our fine city.

We asked Ms Hische a dozen questions.

Where did you learn your craft?

Mostly at Tyler School of Art and in Louise Fili’s office.

Who inspires you?

All of my awesome illustration friends that are way more motivated and talented than me. Many of us have studios in the same building in Greenpoint Brooklyn (The Pencil Factory) and it is endlessly inspiring to be surrounded all the time by talented folks that are also genuinely nice people.

I’m very inspired by the work students are doing now and since I only graduated a few years ago it fills me with fear and excitement to think of what they’ll be capable in a few years.

What are your influences?

Working for Louise was my major influence, but I’m also an avid internet scourer and could look at fancy type and illustration all day on sites like FFFFOUND!, we love typography, and LetterCult. I also find crap television and heavy brunches to be very influential.

You’re operating somewhere along the ‘Designer-Typographer-Illustrator Continuum’. Where would you place yourself on that continuum and why?

In the past I’d probably have placed myself dead center but I’m much more in between typographer and illustrator now.

I find that, while I love design, typical design projects aren’t as thrilling to me as they were in the past. The design industry is very different to the illustration industry in terms of who you are working for and how you promote your work.

As an illustrator and typographer, I’m generally working with art directors and creative directors, people used to working with artists, so the projects tend to go much more smoothly (or at least predictably). With design work you can be working with someone that has never hired a designer before, so there’s a lot more hand-holding and you have to be very assertive about your role in their lives and theirs in yours.

A great deal of your work has a feeling that it belongs in a different era; is there a decade, or indeed a century, that you would have enjoyed working in?

I think I would love to vacation to a different decade but not necessarily work in one. I think a lot of the opportunities that I had wouldn’t have been present in other decades and there would have been far more hurdles and road blocks along the way.

I would of course have loved to design in the golden era of album covers or to do lettering in the early 20th century when literally everything was hand-lettered, but I’m pretty happy to stay where I am and just be influenced by these rich periods instead.

You’re well known for your beautifully crafted work on the Daily Drop Cap. What’s the people’s favourite and if you had to pick just one letter which would it be and why?

Judging from print sales, the favourite seems to be the C from the second alphabet (with birds and leaves). The ones that seem to get the most love online though (through Tumblr likes and reposts) are the more illustrative letters such as the O made out of an LP or the V made out of a slice of pizza.

If I had to name my favorites (so far), it might be the L from the first alphabet because it reminds me of old story books and the U from the third alphabet.

How has the industrial and craft heritage of Brooklyn, where you’re based, affected your outlook on the design process?

I think it hadn’t affected me much until recently since I’ve fallen in love with letterpressing. Letterpress is less of a product of Brooklyn than of Ohio or some of the mid-western states, but because it is so prevalent here now that there are spaces to print at such as The Arm in Williamsburg, I tend to look at new projects with a “will this letterpress well” point of view.

You quite rightly have strong feelings about the question of plagiarism. Did you ever create your letterpress ‘Certificate of Valor’ to send to other designers and illustrators that point out plagiarists to you?

I haven’t yet, but it’s always in the back of my mind. I think in the end it might become some sort of “neighborhood watch” membership badge or something. I’m so thankful for all the internet eagle eyes that keep the plagiarists in check!

Your comprehensive FAQ ¹ ensures that writing questions for you is a challenge; we’d appreciate if you’d allow us to plagiarise one. Will you send us high-res images of your work for us to print?

Ha! Isn’t this for online publication?

What’s your favourite typeface?

My tastes in typefaces change all the time, but if I had to name a few standards they would be: 1. Almost anything H&FJ produce (Archer, Gotham…); 2. Several of Alejandro Paul’s typefaces (these are great to recommend to people that have no budget for lettering since he and I have some similar script aesthetics); and 3. Engravers gothic set very small.

What’s your favourite plain text editor?

I use TextEdit, but just because it’s free, not because I like it.

What’s your favourite tea?

Jasmine Tea or Earl Gray with Lavender.

1280437980 · Web Standardistas · Follow Us on Twitter

HTML5 ≠ Safari

Whilst it’s encouraging to see Apple throwing its considerable weight behind HTML5 and the development of open web standards, it’s unveiling late last week of an HTML5 Showcase was, to put it mildly, somewhat disingenuous.

The copy is well written, careful to mention that what’s being promoted, is being promoted in the context of, “the latest version of Apple’s Safari web browser”. (As an aside, it’s interesting that Apple announced this just days before Safari 5 was released.) Apple state:

Every new Apple mobile device and every new Mac - along with the latest version of Apple’s Safari web browser - supports web standards including HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript. These web standards are open, reliable, highly secure, and efficient.

Standards aren’t add-ons to the web. They are the web. And you can start using them today.

However, to herald the benefits of web standards in a showcase that requires Apple’s very own Safari browser to access, is so contradictory that one wonders who in Apple thought this might be a good idea. (Not least as it comes hot on the heels of Steve Jobs’ open letter outlining a number of Thoughts on Flash which was openly critical of Adobe championing “100% proprietary” products.)

Moments after the announcement, @beep (Ethan Marcotte) summarised the Apple HTML5 Showcase ironically as follows:

I love Apple’s new ‘download Safari’ page: http://www.apple.com/html5/

This was just the tip of the proverbial iceberg and the backlash that has followed has been widespread with articles published in, amongst others: Webmonkey, TechCrunch and Electronista.

In a thoughtful piece, writing on Intellectual Honesty and HTML5, Christopher Blizzard (who it should be noted works as an Open Source Evangelist for the Mozilla Corporation) stated forcefully, “It’s time to expose the emperor,” (the language he uses is telling). Blizzard goes on to state:

Apple [has] come out with something that [is] so brash and misleading it deserves a good tear-down.

Sites [like this] entirely miss the point of the web, interoperability and standards… The demos that they put up are just filled with stuff that Apple made up, aren’t part of HTML5 and are only now getting to the standards process.

Whilst it’s true that standards don’t always lead - and with the increasing role the WHATWG is playing in evolving HTML5, standards are, in some cases following browser innovations - the manner in which Apple has presented its showcase, as a signpost to the benefits of standards (implicitly the benefits of open standards over closed, proprietary systems like Flash) is contradictory.

Blizzard summarises his thinking neatly, noting that there’s nothing wrong with browser vendors showcasing browser-specific innovations as long as they are labelled as such, stating: “Apple’s message is clearly meant to say, ‘we love the web’, but the actual demos they have and the fact that they actively block other browsers from those demos don’t match their messaging. It’s not intellectually honest at all.”

That this showcase, “isn’t intellectually honest at all,” goes to the heart of the matter. It’s the paradox - of ‘standards’ that are ‘browser-specific’ - that lies at the heart of the reaction that Apple’s showcase has given rise to.

Writing at Webmonkey, Scott Gilbertson states, “Apple’s HTML5 Showcase is less about web standards, more about Apple.” This sentiment is also echoed by Charles Arthur in The Guardian, who writes, “Insisting that people have to use Apple’s Safari when plenty of other browsers can cope with HTML5 isn’t the best way to persuade people that you’re pushing a standard, is it?”

Apple deserves to be celebrated for its relentless innovation within the browser space, but should take care in how it highlights this innovation. There are few web designers that aren’t excited at some of the Safari specific innovations that Apple is developing, but all look forward to the day when these innovations are truly standards: written once and delivered, seamlessly, to any browser.

1276026240 · Web Standardistas · Follow Us on Twitter

A Dozen Questions for Mr Collison

Simon Collison is a designer, speaker, author and bon viveur with a passion for Victoriana and assorted miscellany. He lives and works in Nottingham.

A co-founder of Erskine Design, he recently left the company to pursue gainful employment in a freelance capacity. A regular public speaker at international design conferences, Colly, as he is affectionately known, has been invited to share his experience at events worldwide including: The Future of Web Design, DIBI and @Media.

A gentleman that stands by his word, it is a measure of his dedication, that he answered our - admittedly late - questions at 10,000 feet, somewhere over the Atlantic between Manchester and New York.

We asked Mr Collison a dozen questions.

Where did you learn your craft?

I needed a web site for my art stuff back in 2000, so I made one, and it was shit. Later my knowledge blossomed whilst employed at an agency for a few years. For the most part, I have worked my arse off way beyond the 9 to 5, year after year; learning, experimenting, reading, listening, playing. Later, I learned about the business side of things whilst building Erskine.

A lot of what I value comes from art school in the 90s. It’s one thing to learn how to use Photoshop or craft exemplary CSS, but designers need to know about the fundamentals - balance, composition, colour, patterns, textures, movement - and how to react to the real world.

Who inspires you?

Manic creative people who just have to get it out of their system. Take Nottingham’s own fashion designer Paul Smith. He takes influences from everywhere, scrapbooking the world he sees, appropriating all of this into his designs. His studio is a treasure trove; he’s like an excited child showing off the things he’s collected and is inspired by. A brilliant man.

Simple Scott; the man who designed Obama. Listening to him speak so passionately about his work, his belief, his motivation, the detail. I couldn’t get a word in edgeways, but I didn’t care.

It’s the ones who push the boundaries, look at things sideways, have artistic sensibilities. So, plenty of Jason Santa Maria, a bit of Brendan Dawes, and a sprinkle of my good friends Greg Wood and Malarkey. Lately, Trent Walton for his effortless design sensibilities. I often think that what the best people do is ignore a lot, and exploit a little.

What are your influences?

Art and design movements like Modernism, Futurism, Abstract expressionism; German and Russian design schools, Swiss design; painters and theorists like Picasso, Miro, Kandinsky, Klee, Peter Lanyon, Richard Long, Olafur Eliasson. Modern design classics; Mini Coopers and bakelite goods, Peter Saville.

Popular culture. TV and film. Humour is a huge influence. Music — lots of music, all the time. Alt stuff, noisy melodic bands. New Order’s ‘Substance’ and ‘Technique’ albums (visually and aurally) made me want to be professionally creative.

The real world. I can’t stand looking at the internet for too long. Mountains, rivers, rain, buildings, tiny little details. Everything that happens above the shop fronts in our cities.

Your recently redesigned personal web site is a firm favourite of ours. There are clearly some Victorian influences in evidence, both visually and in tone of voice. What would be your favourite, hitherto unexploited, era to pillage for design inspiration?

Is anyone exploiting Neolithic? Cretacious? What about The Plague? One thing I like is that I do see quite a bit of stuff inspired by the Industrial Revolution, the idea of machines, foundries, letterpress etc., although I’m not sure the designers themselves are always aware of that influence.

Language is a fundamental component of the designer’s toolbox. Can you tell us a little bit about the role it plays in your process?

Some people fail to design with language at all, fail to think about words. I often go on about rhetoric, and using language to persuade, win an argument, perhaps at the expense of the facts. We can be incredibly creative with words, with intended and perceived meanings. We can play tricks, impress, amuse, disappoint, force emotional responses. I love all that. I’ll sometimes lose a whole day labouring over the infinite variations of one sentence.

One of the fundamental principles of Modernism is the importance of ‘truth to materials’; that the nature of the material shouldn’t be hidden and, equally importantly, shouldn’t pretend to be something it’s not. Can you see this principle applying to web design?

Absolutely. I think web designers have strong Modernist spirit. Think about how the architects of the 20s and 30s would marvel at the simple functionality of the water tower, its clean lines and honesty of construction. We’re like that, us web designers. We love the grid, we love rhythm, we produce very self-referential work at times, we ‘show our working’ as maths teachers would say. We admire our own building blocks and we’re not afraid to show them off.

Thinking about the materials we use, I guess it’s all about that Modernist view of the machine and mass production, and the need to avoid useless decoration. What we make is made of pixels, on a screen, actioned by chips and electricity. I, and many others, have enjoyed the fakery of web design, the pretend coffee stains, decaying stickers and labels, the websites made of masking tape and paper and so on. I actually love that collaged, hand-made approach, but so often it looks like it’s been cobbled together thoughtlessly, and I hate that.

I’m not suggesting we take the web into an austere and drab future, I’m just keen that when it comes to the motivation for our designs, we think twice about exactly what we’re trying to achieve. If it’s a handmade, nostalgic direction, then great, but why exactly? Why make a site look like it was made in 1874? For the sake of it, or because it’s sympathetic to the subject, and there is a well-considered, potentially exciting motive? Ultimately, people will do whatever they want. Like cats.

Your departure from Erskine Design was, to many, unexpected. You’re now operating in a freelance capacity, allowing you to rediscover your love of designing, writing and speaking. Do you ever see yourself returning to a company, or does the freelance lifestyle hold too strong an appeal?

So many people tell me it was a huge surprise, but if you’re not happy, you have to change something.

To directly answer the question: no, there’s as much chance of The Beatles reforming as there is me employing even one person in the future. I’m always interested in short-term collaborations and partnerships, but chiefly I’m settling for a simpler, more focused, liberated life now, and can’t imagine compromising that for anything. I’ve got my mojo back.

You’re just back from FOWD London where you took the stage to predict the future. Can you give those readers unable to attend a brief summary of the state of web design in 2012?

I found the topic of the FOWD presentation difficult, so I decided to suggest my own personal view of the future I might like to see.

The essence was that I feel we are at a super-congested, very busy phase of web design right now, with so much going on, so many new things to try and cram into our work. So, I was banging on about how we’ll begin to simplify, reduce, and distill. How we’ll perhaps think about relaying meaning with less, be more economical.

We have an opportunity to throw out all the crap, and move forward only with what we need. For decades, new industries have appeared, blazed forward without thinking, misappropriating and stealing ideas, only to forget everything that previous industries learned. For example, it’s not simply about learning from print design, it’s about learning from the mistakes made in print design.

You drive a 1977 Datsun 120Y. Is it good for picking up chicks?

The Datsun is not really an effective chick magnet, which is a shame. Well, maybe a few have fallen under its spell.

Mainly, it tends to attract taxi drivers. For the previous generation of Asian immigrants, the Datsun was the car of choice, so I find taxi drivers start talking to me at traffic lights, shouting about how their Dad had a 120Y, and they sometimes offer me money for it on the spot, or follow me home.

Most rusted away in the 80s, so you never see them any more, thus mine gets people talking wherever I go. People are easily pleased. It’s shiny black and chrome, and therefore an absolute bastard to keep clean.

What’s your favourite typeface?

Being a fan of all things modernist, I love the good, honest everyday-jobbing grotesques. So, classics like Akzidenz Grotesk, and lately I discovered Founders Grotesk (especially the Bold in uppercase), which I want to use in the new book somehow.

I don’t have an all-time favourite. Horses for courses. Other typefaces I use often in my work are Clarendon, Trade Gothic, Franklin Gothic, plus good old Georgia. Oh, and Times on my site, though I’m first in a queue of one on that.

What’s your favourite plain text editor?

TextMate. I’ve been persuaded to try numerous things since, but I’ll stick with Textmate, thanks very much.

What’s your favourite tea?

I recently discovered that caffeine was making me ill, and there’s loads of it in tea. I feel better without it. So, for the past two months I’ve fallen back in love with fruity blends, and any minty teas. I’m also partial to some good old Russian Caravan. I’m on a plane to the US right now, and I can tell you that I have a bag of Strawberry and Mango teabags in the hold; looks like a bag of drugs.

1275075000 · Web Standardistas · Follow Us on Twitter

A Dozen Questions for Mr Kember

Elliott Kember is a freelance web developer with a passion for the colour pink. New Zealand’s third most famous export, he now lives and works in Bath.

Working predominantly in Rails, he is noted for the countless web applications he has built; applications distinguished by their balance of creative thinking, design sensibilities and flawless execution.

Kember’s eye for design is equally finely honed, his fine-tuned design style more often than not resorts to an elegant blend of 32pt Georgia, sometimes in italic and printer’s primaries, often in #FF00FF.

Kember also writes about his practice at think pink, where he has written about, amongst other things, failure and his love of the App Store approval process.

We asked Mr Kember a dozen questions.

Where did you learn your craft?

I played around with HTML a bit when I was young – I remember using Netscape Communicator, which helps date things a bit – after that, not much for a while, until I started working with a friend of mine writing PHP and CSS.

I was fortunate enough to work with some great developers back in New Zealand, which was a big help. I did some computer science at university, but left when I started doing contracted dev work; the money seemed worth it, and it was fun.

All the work and training I got was through people I met. One person knows someone else, who knows someone else… soon you find you’re talking to someone really cool and interesting, and then you’re working for them. Getting to know lots of people is the most important thing you can do, especially if you ever go freelance.

Other than that, I taught myself. The resources are all there, and once you’ve started it only takes a little bit of input by someone much better than you to help steer you in the right direction.

Who inspires you?

Anybody who mixes great work with personal flair; I miss _why. Conversely, I also enjoy designs that are wall-to-wall - applications that keep up a flawless façade of design, without revealing the hard work going on in the background.

I was blown away by Divvyshot, for example - which was bought by Facebook recently - and I also love Dribbble. (I bet you thought I was going to say 37signals! Everybody’s inspired by 37signals. It’s pretty hard not to be.)

I have a few friends who are doing great things too: Adam Cooke, who runs Codebase; and my hugely talented designer friend Hector Simpson; not to mention Tim Van Damme; and Paddy Donnelly. All constantly churn out excellent stuff.

What are your influences?

I don’t really know, this is more of a designer’s question. I don’t spend nearly as much time reading other people’s code as I should. I look at stuff that I really like using, and I try to pick up bits and pieces from there.

If you look at everything with a critical eye, you start to get a feel for what works and what doesn’t, and why. Then, when you create something, you can throw in all the tiny tips and tricks you’ve learned. This also works if you see things that you hate, or even just tools that don’t quite fit your needs.

You’re known for a number of free, personal projects - Spreadtweet, Chatrbox and Speckle, to name but three… Is this simply to answer an urge to create or do these projects fit into some kind of grand masterplan?

It’s a bit of both. I love making new projects, and they’re great for productivity and for exposure. Every new project is more practice, and each time I figure out some new tricks. It’s great fun, everybody should do it. Working on several projects at once helps keep you from burning out.

The grand plan is that, with a bit of luck,one of them will be useful enough for people to use it - then I can do a bit more here and there, and turn it into a really useful app. We’ll see, I guess.

Which of your projects has seen the most success and why?

That depends on how you define success. Monetarily, none of them have been successful, but for me the most successful one so far has been Spreadtweet, my Excel Twitter app. It was a fun app, and it’s free - but it’s still being talked about on Twitter now, and people are still discovering it. I didn’t spend much time making it, so in the overall scheme of things the juice-to-squeeze ratio was very high! It was in the New York Times, which was very cool.

Has the Kember Identity Hash been found?

Ha! No; my $100 is pretty much safe. The conservative timeframe estimate was around a billion years, so I think we’re more likely to see the heat death of the universe. Some guy set his CPU on fire trying to calculate it, I know that much. There’s only a 30% chance the damn thing actually exists, anyway.

Is Twitter important?

On a personal level, Twitter is as important as you want it to be. Personally, I’ve found it to be really important for my work - I promote all my apps using Twitter, and I also use it for support questions. Also, if you’re working from home it’s great to be able to talk to other people in the industry.

I do think there are some people who attribute too much importance to Twitter, or try to make money off it, but that’s bound to happen. I’m not a fan of Twitter politics, though - to me it’s all just slacktivism. Fickle, too. Everything’s interesting for two minutes, and then we move on. In my opinion, real change takes elbow grease and shoe leather.

So yeah, Twitter’s important to me, but it’s not as important as recycling. It’s all relative, like West Virginia.

We had the pleasure of first meeting you at Build, and you’re shortly speaking at DIBI; what’s the appeal of the small, boutique conference?

So far it seems like the smaller conferences are way better. My inner armchair-economist says it’s a recession thing. Small conferences are less about making money and more about the community. There’s less advertising, and more fascinating content. Andy McMillan did an amazing job at Build, and DIBI’s shaping up to be really good too.

FF33FF or #FF00FF?

A designer will say #FF33FF because it probably looks better, but #FF00FF is an absolute value.

I like to think that developers are more vector-oriented, while designers are bitmap-based. Everything has to line up for a developer which is pretty much a crutch for not having any artistic talent. We’re paid to be logical, and design is illogical: what makes #FF33FF better than #FF32FF, for example? That’s an impossible line of reasoning.

What’s your favourite typeface?

For writing Ruby code, Monaco. As a sidenote, I think some of our language preference comes with typeface association, which sounds silly but actually makes sense. I saw some Python in Monaco recently and suddenly I saw the language differently. I’m used to big chunky letters, so reading Python like that was an easy transition. Usually for me, Python’s all thin and spindly.

From a design perspective, I love Fontfont’s Meta Serif, and Fontsmith’s Clerkenwell (Elliot Jay Stocks used Clerkenwell for a talk once and I’ve been hooked ever since). From a web perspective, I’ve been seen flirting with Gill Sans and there’s a place in my heart for Georgia, but Helvetica’s my go-to gal.

What’s your favourite plain text editor?

I use Textmate for writing. I use it all the time anyway for Rails, so it’s familiar and easy enough. I quite like OmmWriter for long blog posts, but I usually forget to use it. If I’m just writing things down, I use Notey. That was very much a plug; I wonder whether it’ll get edited out.

What’s your favourite tea?

I’m more of a coffee man.

I buy Extract coffee from the local farmer’s market when I can be bothered, and Illy from the local shops when I can’t. I feel like a smug coffee-hipster when I buy from the farmer’s market, like I know something you don’t. In truth, I don’t know whether it actually comes from Indonesia, and I don’t really mind as long as I can show you the packet while I’m making one. It may just be the satisfaction I’m tasting, but it’s great.

Tea-wise, I’m a fan of green tea - the proper stuff which comes as scrunched up leaves and you buy in a big tin. I think it’s supposed to be good for you. It’s got electrolytes.

1272054420 · Web Standardistas · Follow Us on Twitter

A Dozen Questions for Ms de León

Yaili – full name Inayaili de León – is a web designer, writer and Hipstamatic evangelist, with a passion for handmade web design. Originally from Portugal, she now lives and works in London.

When not working for brand consultants FoxLand, Yaili runs the highly regarded Web Designer Notebook, an invaluable resource for anyone interested in standards based web design, HTML5 and CSS3.

Not afraid to dive deep into the most esoteric specification documents, Yaili has a talent for translating even the geekiest module specification into human, and explaining its relevance to her audience of web designers and developers. She’s proven this talent (over and over again) in her articles for, amongst others, 24 Ways and Smashing Magazine.

We asked Ms de León a dozen questions.

Where did you learn your craft?

All the knowledge I use on my day-to-day job I’ve learned from the web: reading blog posts, viewing source, reading books, listening to those who have something to say and teach, and asking questions. Sadly, none of the things I’ve learned in school proved useful.

Who inspires you?

People that truly love what they do. It doesn’t have to be people that work on the web; it can be a fashion designer, a shoemaker, a coffee shop waiter… anyone that exhibits happiness while working – that’s how I want to feel.

What are your influences?

Tough question! I like to find inspiration in places like: Flickr; fashion and graphic design magazines; people in the street; the bits of design that are scattered around the streets that you usually don’t look at, or don’t think about; the music I’m listening to… I guess that means I like to be influenced by the world around me.

How does it feel to have the entire front page of Google? ¹

Ha ha! :) It’s a bit scary. Having an unusual name makes every single thing you say online discoverable, so I have to be careful with what I post on forums, blog comments, etc. — these things don’t go away.

It makes it easier to hand out business cards with just my first name on them though, and my username is always available!

Why are there so few women in web design?

I guess, in general, there are fewer women than men in technical jobs, not just web design. I have no scientific explanation for that, but I’m sure there is one. It’s not something I think about, to be honest.

You seem to have an intense passion for your subject; what fuels that passion?

Seeing that, even with so many freely available information on the web, people still: do things the wrong way and have no interest in changing that; I still receive markup from seasoned web designers that makes me cringe; and I realise that there are people genuinely interested in reading more about the subject.

You’re well known for pushing the boundaries of what’s possible with CSS; what is the source of your magic?

I’m not sure I push the boundaries. I think one of the things that works in my favour is the fact that I’m more than happy to read what most people classify as “boring specs” and translate them into a more human piece of text and working examples — something less scary and more practical and friendly.

The stuff I’ve been writing about lately is stuff I’ve known for a long time, just because I took a little time aside to read and experiment.

You enjoy writing. What role does writing play in your overall strategy to take over the world?

I really do love writing. As I mentioned above, I like to take a little bit of a scary specification and make a simple and understandable example out of it. It’s not rocket science, but I like to know I’m helping someone by doing that.

I also enjoy writing less technical posts; they’re actually quite enjoyable to write since you don’t have to keep making sure all of your markup is working cross-browser, you can just let the words flow as they come into your mind.

I have no interest in taking over the world though, I’m sure that would bring a whole assortment of worries that I don’t really need.

You’re quite the internationalist; how, and why, did you settle in London?

It happened so fast, I had nothing planned! I saw a job opportunity in London that I liked, I applied for it, I got the job and I came to London. It all happened in a matter of two or three months, if I remember correctly.

I had always wanted to live in London though, it’s my favourite city in the world, and I feel happier just by being here.

What’s your favourite typeface?

Today? :) I’ve been obsessing over Microsoft’s ‘C’ fonts - Calibri, Cambria, Candara, Constantia, Corbel - for a few weeks (perhaps months?) now.

What’s your favourite plain text editor?

Oh dear… I use Dreamweaver — in code view, of course — and I’ll defend it fiercely. I’ve tried others, like Coda, Espresso, CSSEdit, Textmate… but I always go back.

What’s your favourite tea?

I’m in love with Yumchaa’s Raspberry Vanilla blend, with a hint of honey — yum!

1269529800 · Web Standardistas · Follow Us on Twitter

Twitter Is Watching

Earlier today 37signals’ Jason Fried posted a note to the company’s influential and well-travelled Signal vs. Noise blog, proposing that 37signals “eat its own dogfood”, as he put it, and choose a firm from Sortfolio to undertake the blog’s redesign. Fried stated:

It’s been too long since we redesigned this blog. Years and years. It’s time for a complete redesign. We thought it would be a good idea to eat our own dogfood and choose a firm from Sortfolio to do the redesign.

Sortfolio, one of 37signals many products is designed to match clients with potential designers or, as the company puts it, “Find the right web designer for your next project.” All good so far…

It might be argued that the firm’s decision to use its own service to source a designer is to be celebrated, however, a closer look at the budget and the conditions for entry make for a little less comfortable reading. To be eligible for the $8,500 project 37signals stipulated only designers with Pro accounts would be considered. A Pro account costs $99 a month. That’s $99 a month 37signals earns.

86 upgrades equals one new Signal vs. Noise design. Seen in those terms, with 37signals on both sides of the table - as client on the one hand; and as company potentially set to profit considerably from the project on the other hand - and the picture looks a little less rosy.

Within hours of Fried’s post announcing the project, Oliver Reichenstein of influential international design firm iA had tweeted:

37 signals pays you $8,500 to redesign their website. Every pitch participant needs to pay $99 to compete. Seriously. /via @jasonfried ¹

Moments later, he’d followed up with:

Also, the winner of the Signal vs. Noise redesign campaign gets a free baseball cap and a VHS copy of this video: http://bit.ly/ahFVE ²

Clearly, with a series of tweets in swift succession, Reichenstein was surprised by the decision 37signals had reached and how it might be interpreted, adding:

Read it again to make sure that I get this right before nominating @37signals for the Stingy King Awards. ³

Stinging comments from a respected designer. Reichenstein’s comments were swiftly followed by another equally influential designer, Mark Boulton. Equally baffled, Boulton tweeted:

I don’t even know how to think about that. It’s like paying to play for bands. ⁴

And so it evolved, until Fried himself interjected, responding directly to Reichenstein:

Why don’t you call me on my office hours right now and we can talk about it. Let’s air it all out. ⁵

An offer which Reichenstein was swift to accept, curious to hear Fried’s reasoning. Every aspect of the conversation, however, had been played out in public.

There’s no question that 37signals, and Jason Fried, are extremely talented. Their products and their writing - both at Signal vs. Noise and in their books - are well thought through. They’re well known within the industry for their meticulous attention to detail. One can’t but help question the thinking here, however, and it will be interesting to see how the discussion evolves.

One thing is undoubted, the market is now a conversation, something presciently written about over a decade ago in The Cluetrain Manifesto, subtitled ‘The End of Business as Usual’. It’s a book that’s well worth rereading, or picking up for the first time if you haven’t read it (not least given the fact that it’s now available for free). In the context of the above its themes are pertinent. As Doc Searls and David Weinberger put it:

[The web] is a bazaar where customers look for wares, vendors spread goods for display, and people gather around topics that interest them. It is a conversation.

In this new place, every product you can name, from fashion to office supplies, can be discussed, argued over, researched, and bought as part of a vast conversation among the people interested in it.

These conversations are most often about value: the value of products and of the businesses that sell them. Not just prices, but the market currencies of reputation, location, position, and every other quality that is subject to rising or falling opinion.

Consumers, and in this case peers, are quick to air their thoughts in public and those thoughts - good or bad - can very quickly take hold.

In an age on instant - and very public - communication, every decision a company makes is open to scrutiny. The conversation can quickly get out of hand, potentially damaging a company’s reputation. Throw Twitter into the mix and the results are potentially volatile (good and bad).

No doubt the discussion will evolve as Reichenstein and Fried have the opportunity to discuss 37signals’ thinking. Both are frequent, and open, writers, it will be interesting to see the conclusions, if any, they reach.

1266472200 · Web Standardistas · Follow Us on Twitter

Experience the Rainbow That Never Ends

When does a design cross the line from ‘inspiration’ to… something a little less comfortable than ‘inspiration’?

Some might call it ‘influence’, some might it call it ‘theft’; one thing is certain, a fine line is all that separates the two.

Honda discovered this in 2003, when Wieden+Kennedy’s award winning Honda advertisement Cog was widely accused of plagiarism, due to its similarities to Swiss artists Fischli and Weiss’s 1987 fine art film Der Lauf der Dinge. The accusations were widespread, and not unfounded, with Creative Review interviewing the Swiss artists who insisted they would never have given their permission to use their work as inspiration:

Of course we didn’t invent the chain reaction … but we did make a film the creatives of [Cog] have obviously seen. We feel we should have been consulted over the making of this advertisement.

Companies have asked us [for] their permission to use the film on several occasions, but for this reason we have always said no.

Though Fischli and Weiss never filed a lawsuit against Wieden+Kennedy or Honda UK, aware that there was little hope of success under UK copyright law, it’s worth noting that the advertising agency eventually admitted to, “copying a sequence of weighted tires rolling uphill.” The controversy surrounding the work was blamed for ultimately denying Cog a Grand Prix at the 2004 Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival.

What goes around comes around.

There’s no question that Skittles’ Experience the Rainbow web site, just launched by digital creative agency Big Spaceship, is a very well crafted piece of work, and the metaphor of “experiencing the rainbow” fits well with Skittles’ strapline.

However, there’s equally no question that it bears more than a passing resemblance to Poke London’s award winning 2007 web site for Orange, Good Things Should Never End.

At the heart of both sites is the idea of a web page never ends; a simple idea, arguably, but one that - when well executed - creates a talking point, or social object, that the brand can use to generate a conversation, raising brand awareness. A social object with considerable value.

Poke London’s ‘Good Things Should Never End’, created for Orange UK’s ‘Speak Easy’ pay as you go mobile plan, was shortlisted for a number of awards for its creativity, highlighted in the Interactive category of The Brit Insurance Design Awards 2008. The idea was simple, as Poke state:

You don’t always have to go over the top wrapping up your ideas in loads and loads of complicated messaging. Quite often, the simple ideas are the best ones.

A never ending web page felt like a good, simple idea. The kind of thing that the world would like to see. So we made it.

The design also centred around a ‘rainbow’, as Poke put it, “There’s a rainbow in the TV ad. That’s integration.” Simple. Ingenious. Effective.

Three years later…

You might be forgiven for experiencing déjà vu. Big Spaceship’s ‘Experience the Rainbow’ web site for Skittles, whilst well executed, seems all too familiar with the user scrolling down a never ending web page as they ‘taste the rainbow’. Coincidence?

A never ending web page? A never ending web page that’s also a rainbow?

Where does ‘inspiration’ begin and ‘inspiration’ end? You decide.

1265431200 · Web Standardistas · Follow Us on Twitter

A Dozen Questions for Mr Keith

Jeremy Keith is a web developer, based in Brighton, UK (home to a decidedly healthy geek scene).

In 2005 Keith founded influential design firm Clearleft, along with user experience extraordinaire Andy Budd and typographer extraordinaire Richard Rutter (Keith is described at Clearleft’s web site as ‘Lineman for the County’). Their work for an international roster of clients, along with the conferences they organise, including UX London, have helped to shape the industry.

Keith is the author of two books: DOM Scripting, an excellent introduction to JavaScript and the Document Object Model (DOM), and Bulletproof Ajax, a comprehensive guide to the creation of… well… bulletproof Ajax.

We asked Mr Keith a dozen questions.

Where did you learn your craft?

I learned from viewing source. I also learned an enormous amount from people who were generous enough to publish what they knew. Zeldman’s ‘Ask Dr. Web’, Jeff Veen on Webmonkey, and Steve Champeon’s WebDesign-L mailing list were incredibly useful.

Who inspires you?

Well, Jeffrey Zeldman, Jeff Veen and Steve Champeon for the reasons mentioned above. More recently, the people I work with are pretty damn inspiring. Actually, the entire Brighton geek scene is a pretty inspiring place to be.

What are your influences?

My DNA and my peers. As to which is the more influential … that’s the eternal ‘nature vs. nurture’ question, isn’t it? Most of the evidence seems to point to nature, much as we would like to believe that the answer is nurture.

I am also influenced by my diet, my sleep patterns, and my involuntary exposure to popular culture and pervasive advertising.

You’ve gained notoriety for several personal projects: Huffduffer and Adactio to name just two. Your personal projects seem like a place to experiment: Machine Tags, CSS (X)HTML, JavaSript… what’s next on your experimental agenda?

There’s certainly a lot of stuff out there to experiment with. With all the APIs, frameworks and open source tools available to us, the barrier to entry for ‘Making A Thing’ is really low.

That said, what I really need to do is keep iterating on the things I have already launched. The Irish music website I started over a decade ago is starting to feel quite long in the tooth. There’s a lot more I could be doing with it. I need to set some serious time aside in 2010 to refactor the code and redesign the interface.

If you were independently wealthy, affording you the luxury of a life pursuing personal projects, would you keep your day job? (If so, why?)

I would keep the day job – Clearleft is a good environment for me – but I would definitely enjoy having more time to work on personal projects.

With WHATWG’s HTML5 Specification at Last Call what one thing would you add or subtract from the specification?

Last Call! doesn’t actually mean anything with regards to WHATWG. Last Call! for W3C specifications; that’s a different matter.

I certainly don’t think I would add anything to HTML5. There are a few things I would like to see removed.

I’m not convinced that there needs to be a separate article element as well as a section element. I think the time element is unnecessarily restrictive in that I can’t mark up months (such as 2010-01 for January 2010). I also think that the new restriction imposed on the cite element so that it no longer applies to people is a mistake.

Is 2010 the year HTML5 takes hold?

2010 and every year thereafter. As browsers start implementing features, those features will get used. Dates for Last Calls and Candidate Recommendations are mostly irrelevant.

HTML5 has already taken hold. Remember that most of HTML5 already exists in HTML 4.01. In fact, the name of the specification over at the WHATWG has been updated to simply be HTML to make it clear that it encompasses all previous flavours of markup, not just the new stuff in HTML5.

Whatever happened to Microformats?

Whatever happened to RSS? Or Ajax? Seems like everyone was talking about them a few years back.

All of those technologies are now ubiquitous. The reason why we don’t talk about them all time is that it would be weird. Kind of like greeting your neighbour with, “I see gravity is working well today.”

Microformats are everywhere now. Every result on Google Maps is an hCard. Google are indexing and displaying hReviews. But what is there to talk about? They’re so simple that, once you’ve grasped the basic concept, that’s it. You start using them and they become just another part of your workflow.

It’s kind of like the situation with accessibility: you don’t make a big deal out of the fact that you build accessible websites because it’s a given.

If someone is building a website for their client and they don’t mark up contact details using hCard or events using hCalendar, they’re doing their client a great disservice.

JavaScript was cool once, then it wasn’t cool at all, and now it’s cool again. Where to from here for JavaScript?

More of the same but faster. It’s kind of fun to watch browser vendors compete on who has longest di__ who has the fastest JavaScript. It’s all good.

It’s great the way that JavaScript is now being taken seriously and it’s great the way that libraries are making it so easy to work with JavaScript and the DOM.

What I don’t want to see happen is that ‘proper’ programmers come in and try to ‘fix’ JavaScript. There was a proposal on the table for a while there to make JavaScript more like Java. I can’t imagine a worse scenario. JavaScript’s relative simplicity is its greatest strength … kind of like HTML.

Server-side JavaScript is starting to look more and more attractive. Node.js looks quite exciting. Maybe that’s where JavaScript is heading.

What’s your favourite typeface?

Ooh, that’s a toughie. I think that just about any typeface can get tired when it’s over-used. I’m getting kind of sick of seeing Gotham everywhere, for example, (Obama has a lot to answer for). On the other hand, a good designer should only need one or two typefaces so asking for a desert island typeface isn’t such an unrealistic request.

Hmmm … much as I love Futura and Clarendon, I’m not sure if I could look at them forever. So I think I’m going to have to go with something classic like Bembo, Garamond, Baskerville … wait, I can only choose just one, right?

Let’s say: Mrs Eaves.

But if you were to ask me again tomorrow, I’d probably give you a different answer.

What’s your favourite plain text editor?

Textmate. I used to use BBEdit but Textmate has left it in the dust. I use CSSEdit for CSS.

What’s your favourite tea?

Thé de constructeur.

1261174500 · Web Standardistas · Follow Us on Twitter

Built

A week ago the inaugural, and much-anticipated, Build Conference kicked off in Belfast.

We were delighted to be a part of the lineup, taking the stage alongside a stellar cast of presenters, to deliver a thoroughly enjoyable and event-filled workshop on Getting Started With HTML5 and CSS3. (More on that to follow in a separate post (with free - yes, free - downloadables)…)

As educators based in Belfast with a significant stake in the web design and development industry both locally and internationally, we were looking forward to what Andy Good - Build organiser, and all-round human dynamo - had described as a conference created for “obsessive-compulsive” designers. We had high hopes.

We were not to be disappointed.

Andy didn’t let us down. Build ran effortlessly, largely thanks to a huge amount of effort behind the scenes, both by the human dynamo himself and a dedicated team of assistants, led by the singular Ciaran Madden.

After a day of dedicated workshops, which also covered usability with Andy Budd of Clearleft and accessibility with Phil Strain of Ecliptic, the conference kicked off at Belfast’s Waterfront Hall. In the spirit of the conference’s title, ‘Build’, the six speakers - by intention or fortunate accident - covered a cross-section of topics that built upon each other seamlessly into a well-rounded day’s content.

Tim Van Damme kicked the day off with a passionate talk on the importance of ‘Passion’, begun, appropriately with a carefully modified homage to Steve Ballmer’s famous chimp impression: “Designers! Designers! Designers! Designers!”

With the audience primed up for the day, Andy Budd took to the stage ably assisted by Flight of The Conchords. Delivering an excellent presentation on ‘Seductive Design’ (with a few dating pointers thrown in) Andy hammered home some well made points. It was, indeed, Business Time.

The final morning session was delivered by Mark Boulton who introduced the audience to the potential and perils of ‘Font Embedding’ (with an all too brief foray into the tricky topic of car park design). Along with a comprehensive overview of typography’s role on and off the web, Mark stressed the importance of a well considered fallback font stack to minimise the effects of a Flash of Unstyled Text (FOUT), increasingly an issue as web fonts take hold.

Kicking off the afternoon with an epic basketball metaphor, Ryan Sims outlined the importance of practice, destroying ‘the myth of talent’ and stressing that ‘Practice Makes Pixel-Perfect’. His session really got the audience thinking and proved an excellent introduction to the Dreyfus Model of Skill Acquisition (not as dry as you might think).

Asking the question, “Are you a designer or a developer?” Wilson Miner took the audience on a leisurely stroll around the topic of ‘Design/Build’. Introducing himself as, “a designer with code skills or, if the situation requires it, a coder with good design sense,” he made a case for professionals within our industry embracing both skill sets and adopting a hybrid approach.

The closing keynote was delivered by Eric Meyer, a true gentleman and one of the undoubted giants of the web. Speaking on the topic of ‘A More Tangled Web’, Eric demonstrated how ‘The Web Has Won’, illustrating how its simplicity and extensibility has taken the web to every corner of our lives. It was a fitting and appropriate end to a riveting day.

Andy has been rightly praised left, right and centre and he deserves all the praise he’s received. It’s worth rounding up some of the plaudits he has received. They’re certainly well earned and draw out some common themes.

Inayaili de León, better known as @yaili of the excellent Web Designer Notebook, states:

The future looks bright for Build. If the speakers’ lineup is as good as this year’s and the same care goes into the planning, I’m sure a lot more people will be interested in attending.

The fact that it was in Belfast, in my opinion, contributed to its character as a smaller high quality conference. So, I’ll make mine Andy’s words and say that, indeed, Build was, “fucking lethal.” Bravo!

Sam Brown, an “extremely talented jackass” (in the words of Tim Van Damme), states:

Build was [Andy’s] biggest undertaking and he absolutely over-delivered in every aspect – this was especially evident when he got a standing ovation at the end of the conference day.

We could go on.

The praise is well-earned and well-deserved. Andy deserves a great deal of credit for having the self-belief and confidence to bring an internationally respected roster of speakers to Belfast. His work, along with the work of many others promoting similar design events in Belfast, is helping to place the city on the international design map. A place it deserves to be.

Add Build’s star-studded lineup to the numerous recent guest speakers, across the design spectrum that have been hosted at the Art College in Belfast - Nicholas Felton, Poke London and Adrian Shaughnessy, to name but three - and it’s clear there’s a lot going on in the city.

It feels appropriate to close with the words of Mr McMillan (to credit him with his real surname), who states:

We built it, they came…

Indeed they did. Indeed they did. Well done Sir.

1258060860 · Web Standardistas · Follow Us on Twitter | 12 Comments

A Dozen Questions for Ms Holzschlag

Molly E. Holzschlag is a writer, teacher, public speaker and opera singer based in Tucson (who enjoys a paycheck from Norway and a life at 35,000 feet…).

An author, with a hand in over 35 books related to the craft of web design - including Transcending CSS and The Zen of CSS Design: Visual Enlightenment for the Web - she has inspired many of those at the forefront of today’s Web Standards movement. A movement she has continued to passionately lead since her recent appointment as a Web Evangelist at Opera Software.

There are few evangelists working within any industry known simply by their first name alone. Molly is one.

We asked Ms Holzschlag a dozen questions.

Where did you learn your craft?

I lost my roadmap, took a turn, and ended up here. What happened in between, I honestly cannot remember.

Who inspires you?

People who demonstrate courage, which is displayed in such a variety of ways, it’s difficult to categorise. I suppose I’m interested in anyone who challenges the status quo with a reasonable argument.

What are your influences?

Alan Turing. And sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll.

In ‘[Why] Web Standards Aren’t’ ¹ you reference the standards that ease the lives of engineers on oil rigs, stating by comparison that, “What we have today, on the web, are not standards in the truest sense.” How important are standards, and can you envisage a time when web designers will enjoy standards in the truest sense of the word?

Web Standards are the closest form of organised anarchy with the goal to keep the web open and as free or low-cost as possible. It’s a mandatory fight.

Without a Web Standards movement, proprietary formats would move in too quickly at this sensitive time of the web’s life. This doesn’t mean proprietary formats are bad, it just means we need practical tools to carry out the true vision of the web, which is for everyone.

Which is more important: “valid and conforming” or “useful, usable, accessible and [what] really works”?

The latter. What works should always trump what’s specified. It goes back to the organised anarchy idea. Even if it’s <blink> or <marquee>. Would we have progressed to a richer web without them?

The W3C’s recent announcement that, “work on XHTML 2 is expected to stop at the end of 2009 to focus resources on the development of HTML 5,” sparked a great deal of - at times very heated - discussion. As a web standards advocate, what are your views on this announcement, the subsequent reaction(s), and its impact on the direction the web might take as a consequence?

This is the ‘elephant in the room’ question.

If I were a fortune teller of merit I would give you an answer, however, my honest answer is I have no idea what these changes will bring.

What I do know is that XHTML lost momentum despite its promises. In some ways, this is due to lack of browser support for XML MIME types, but in other ways this is due to no clear pathway as to what “Extensible” really meant. So I could write my own DTDs? I liked that idea, to be honest. I don’t want XHTML as XML to die per se. I’d like to see it really work and then make a decision.

But like it or not, HTML 5 is here, and as I said, and have said before, what is implemented trumps what is specified. HTML 5 is being implemented. XHTML, other than 1.0 or 1.1 served as text/html, is not a cross-browser answer, despite over nine years in development.

HTML 5 represents a move beyond markup, what implications do you envisage this will have for designers and developers working on the web?

Ideally, HTML 5 will enrich the web by providing developers with a strong application and rich web platform. There’s elegance in HTML 5, but also chaos and confusion. I fear the latter, I embrace the former.

As a web standards advocate you’ve spoken about the importance of interoperability and being platform agnostic. In your role as a Web Evangelist at Opera Software - a company innovating within the browser space - do you believe interoperability is a goal that can be attained?

At night I often dream of a world where all platforms and user agents perform equally, if uniquely magnificently, and leave everyone satisfied with their experience. Then I wake up.

Universities are often criticised for being too slow to react to the rapid pace of change on the web. As an educator, do you believe web standards can be taught?

Absolutely. Just add students.

Universities are slower to move toward new requirements, usually. In the US we have state and community colleges, and often they are more capable of responding quickly to new curricula.

This is an enormous issue, however. At Opera Software, one of the tasks we have is to address this very thing, which we do in tandem with WaSP Interact Curriculum and Opera Web Standards Curriculum, run by Chris Mills and many other colleagues.

What’s your favourite typeface?

All of them. Except for Comic Sans. Unless a child sends me something in Comic Sans. Then it’s OK.

What’s your favourite plain text editor?

vi.

What’s your favourite tea?

Assam first flush brewed at least three minutes and served with 2% milk. Although Earl Grey strong and then iced and served with lemon and orange slices is very refreshing during Arizona summers.

1248919380 · Web Standardistas · Follow Us on Twitter | 1 Comment

The Periodical

The most recent entries in the Periodical and Reviews sections:

• If you're a typographer on the web, Tal Leming and Erik van Blokland's '.webfont Proposal' is well worth reading...
• As the dust begins to settle on the XHTML DOA WTF debate, it's worth pausing to reflect upon what this means to web designers and developers moving forward.
• Tim Van Damme is a designer, writer, public speaker and superhero, based in Machelen. We asked Mr Van Damme a dozen questions...

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HTML and CSS Web Standards Solutions

Learn how to build hand-crafted web pages using well-structured XHTML and lean and efficient CSS. By embracing a web standards approach, HTML and CSS Web Standards Solutions enables you to create web sites that not only look great in all modern browsers, but are also accessible to a wide variety of audiences across a range of platforms - from those browsing on everyday computers, to those accessing the web on the latest, emerging mobile devices.

Get it at Amazon.

The Authors

In addition to their role as lecturers in interactive design at the University of Ulster at Belfast, where they have been active in promoting a web standards-based curriculum, Christopher Murphy and Nicklas Persson are practicing designers and digital artists. Their work has featured in a variety of design books and magazines alongside numerous internationally respected designers and they are regular speakers at design conferences and workshops worldwide.

Get in touch.