Issue #72 | Wednesday, November 21st 2012 | 124,431 subscribers | Previous issues
Table of Contents
01. Free Font. Big. Bold. Beautiful.
02. When User Interface Is Beautiful
03. Avoiding Common HTML5 Mistakes
04. 365 Days Of Hand Lettering
05. Selected Postage Stamps
06. Sheet: Snippets For Your Terminal Workflow
07. September Industry: Inspiring Graphic Design
08. Eye Candy From Long Forgotten Times
09. More Than Seven Dozen Images Of The Brain
10. Recent Articles on Smashing Magazine
11. New on Smashing Job Board
12. Smashing Highlights (From Archives)
1. Free Font. Big. Bold. Beautiful.
Slinkster is a bold and whooping font created by designer Will Ryan. Made up of overlapping equally-sized circles, its geometric, modular shape resembles the bouncy Slinky toy we all remember from when we were kids.
The switchover between light and dark areas lays focus on the links inside a letter and creates a hypnotizing, multilayered, nearly 3D effect. The larger the type is set, the more fascinating it gets. The typeface includes letters, numerals, punctuation, accented characters and a few extras. Slinkster works best for large-scale applications like headers and logotypes. You can download it for free via MyFonts (just add the free font to cart and proceed to the checkout). (cm)
2. When User Interface Is Beautiful
We all collect interesting and innovative examples and design solutions we find on the Web. These examples are particularly useful when featured in case-studies, i.e. articles that provide insights into the actual progress of a design from the very first mockup to the final release. Yet often what we are after are just original ideas we find elsewhere.
Daniel Nelson loves beautiful user interfaces. On his GUI Pinterest Board he has collected dozens of original interfaces and mock-ups from Dribbble, Forrst, Behance and others. If you are looking for more examples, check other UI boards as well. Now if that doesn't help you get inspired, what will? (vf)
3. Avoiding Common HTML5 Mistakes
HTML5 provides us with excellent opportunities to create a meaningful and clean markup which is easy to maintain. However, every now and again you probably find yourself being trapped between the various options that you have for your markup. When exactly should you use hgroup? Is nav the right element to wrap all kinds of lists of links? Is every image a figure?
Back in 2011, Richard Clark published the article Avoiding common HTML5 mistakes, yet his tips are still quite useful and relevant today. Apart from the issues outlined above, Richard discusses why section shouldn't be used as a wrapper for styling, what are common incorrect uses of form attributes and when header is overused. An oldie yet goodie—definitely an article worth reading and bookmarking. (vf)
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4. 365 Days Of Hand Lettering
Frequently, new technologies can create the opposite effect on what might be considered beautiful, original or even creative. With the number of typefaces available online, a real artist shows her talent by merging illustration and hand lettering.
Lisa Congdon shows her (hand-) drawing talents in one of her current projects called 365 Days of Hand Lettering, in which she daily dedicates an image with a motivating message to the world. By clicking through the days, you might get inspired with the lines the artist selected for us. (tts)
5. Selected Postage Stamps
Postage stamps are among the top-ten list of the most collected articles in the world. This hobby is as popular as it is old: since the first stamps were created (around 1840), countless people discovered their passion and started gathering and classifying them. Through a postage stamp, it is possible to identify facts about the country from which it was issued, through the date of issue and architectonical, scientific and political facts. Natural items such fauna and flora are favorite themes, as well as seasonal greetings.
Severnbiker's Photostream shows us a great collection of stamps, mainly from Great Britain. In the times of The Olympic Games, one caught my attention: the World Hockey Cup in London, 26 years ago. The illustrations have strong colors and show only a section of the chosen sport. But one item is seen everywhere — the profile of Her Majesty. It seems collecting postage stamps is in, more than it's ever been. (tts)
6. Sheet: Snippets For Your Terminal Workflow
While many of us prefer visual interfaces, for some of us, Terminal is our favorite working environment. Being able to work fast and efficiently in this environment is therefore crucial to being successful. Sheet will help you to optimize your workflow by enabling you to easily create and access useful snippets of code, cheat sheets, references or anything else from Terminal. It's great for noting dev snippets that you often use, but for some reason can't remember. In a way, it's a great tool for creating your own personal wiki directly in Terminal.
The tool stores your sheets in text files which you can modify and edit, or easily put them into version control to share them across multiple systems. The tool uses either pbcopy or xclip to copy the content of a sheet to the clipboard, so it's necessary to make sure you have one of those installed. Sheet is developed by Oscar Del Ben. You are welcome to contribute to the project on GitHub, too. (ml)
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7. September Industry: Inspiring Graphic Design
Inspiration for visual art can be found in many sources: movies, galleries, nature, books, etc. Nowadays we can also resort to curated online magazines, which are perhaps one of the best ways to get quick references on graphic design.
September Industry shows a thoroughly researched selection of high-quality artworks on graphic design and communication, such as: corporate sets, photography magazines, architecture websites and even a collection of print material that belonged to Paul McCartney. Curious? Great — this is the first step to opening your mind to creativity. (tts)
8. Eye Candy From Long Forgotten Times
Get ready for a journey through time! The OBI Scrapbook Blog features an impressive and constantly growing collection of vintage illustrations that will get you inspired. Originally published between the 18th century and the first quarter of the 20th century, engravings, etchings and lithographs carry you off into a world when technical progress was still made by the steam-machine.
Discover squiggly art nouveau ornaments, precise brush strokes that make plants and exotic animals come alive, mechanic details of tiny gear wheels and funny nonsense pictures. You can either browse the collection by topic or take a look at the list of featured illustrators. (cm)
9. More Than Seven Dozen Images Of The Brain
Neuro Images is a blog by "Neuroscientist turned writer" Mo Costandi, who showcases fascinating illustrations related to the brain, from stained tissue samples and handcrafted drawings and paperworks to computerized simulation and diffusion images, on the fine line between grotesque, bizarre and beautiful.
The site also posts a video called Synaptic Plasticity, which is a playful demonstration on how new connections are made in the brain of a video-game-playing kid. And if you've always wanted to know what the brain of a genius looks like, discover a box with microscope slides containing ultra-thin sections of Einstein's brain. (ea)
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10. Recent Articles on Smashing Magazine
11. New on Smashing Job Board
Here are the job openings published recently at our very own Smashing Job Board:
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Lead Visual Designer at Houzz (Downtown Palo Alto, CA)
We are looking for an outstanding visual designer to join our family and be part of our entrepreneurial team. You will take high level ideas and help transform them to live pixels, viewed by millions of homeowners and professionals from around the world. You will work with Houzz's founders and a small engineering team to design an innovative Internet service that is moving the home design and remodeling industry to the 21st century. You will help turn marketing and branding concepts into original web, email and print products.
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Web Designer at Spiceworks (Austin, TX)
Spiceworks, an Austin-based startup, is on the prowl for a web design superstar with HTML/CSS skills and a cutting-edge style. Are you someone who feels like a kid in a candy shop when you see snippets like "strategic design," "progressive enhancement," and "multivariate testing"? Are you a design guru who can mock-up creative concepts in a flash and craft the code to turn them into realities? As a web designer at Spiceworks, you'll do just that as you build digital promos for Spiceworks and the powerhouse tech brands who advertise in our revolutionary app.
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Senior Web Designer at Verold (Toronto, Canada)
Imagine a future Ferrari website where the user gets to experience the thrill of driving the F12berlinetta, integrated into the browsing experience. Or a Winnie the Pooh site implemented as a world where discovering features of the show happens while exploring and being guided by the characters from the series.
12. Smashing Highlights (From Archives)
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In Search Of The Perfect CAPTCHA
This article follows the search for the perfect solution to the problem of increasing amounts of human-generated spam. We'll look at how and why CAPTCHAs are used and their effect on usability in order to answer key questions: what is the perfect CAPTCHA, and are they even desirable?
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Redesigning The Country Selector
This past summer we set out to redesign the country selector. This article focuses on the four design iterations we went through before arriving at the solution (free jQuery plugin included).
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Quick Course On Effective Website Copywriting
Many dismiss copywriting as something that ad agency people do. Truthfully, all of us need to pay close attention to copywriting if we want to achieve our business objectives.
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