Five Days of DesignHope
I’ll just come out and say it. DesignHope has taken way too long. What started as a great idea with support from some of the coolest companies out there turned into a long drawn out process that still isn’t finished. Scott, we’re sorry, man. I hope you haven’t minded being the guinea pig. We still have big plans for DesignHope, but obviously we need to get …
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Visual Recipes Design Process
After a long wait; we're excited to be able to show you a really cool project we worked on several months ago. Visual Recipes is a site with a great idea: Take pictures for each step of your process when making a delicious dish and post it online. Great for visual learners (like myself) and great for the users who get to share their recipes.
The site already got quite a bit of traffic, but it's age was starting to show. They were ready to overhaul it inside …
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Use ImageSizer to Scale Lightbox Gallery Images in ExpressionEngine
I still remember the day I found the ImageSizer plugin from Lumis. "Holy crap, I can upload any file and this thing will crop it and resize it on the fly in multiple places throughout my whole ExpressionEngine site?" To say I was psyched would be an understatement.
We often use ImageSizer in conjunction with the FF Matrix FieldFrame field type to let users add as many images as they want with captions. Then we pull at the first one and give a link to …
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Three Years and Thank You’s
I have often heard people say, “She’s got a case of the Mondays.” Meaning of course that that person might be a touch grumpy because the work week has come around again. Today, I find myself with a case of “The Thank You’s.”
I woke up this morning nearly in a panic because I wanted to make sure that one of our client’s new campaigns launched successfully. I exchanged a few emails and made sure things were running smoothly, which they were. And as I settled into my morning routine, …
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Photoshop Tools In Real Life
I have used Photoshop for years. I mean, a long flippin’ time. While I am always learning something new, I’ve grown quite familiar with it’s tools and feel comfortable working with it. As such, I’ve found myself wanting to use PS’s tools in the world around me to fix something. Then I laugh at myself and say something like, “Man, you’ve been at the computer too much lately” and go about my business.
This thought stuck with me and I’ve decided to take a look at a few of the main …
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DesignersMusic.com: Find & Share Great Music with Other Designers
First off, let me say that we're psyched to finally be able to share this project with you. We believe that side projects don't work unless you're passionate about them. Well, guess what? We love music and we love design. They go hand in hand, really. So we decided that there should be a place where designers can find new music recommended by other designers: DesignersMusic
Go play with it now …
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What Happens When We Try to Make a Video
One of our super cool secret projects is very, very close to launching so we decided we would make a short video promoting it. The problem is that we can’t keep our lines straight for more than two seconds, especially me (Nate). I am pretty sure I screwed up every single line I had. We thought it would be fun for all of you to see the stuff that doesn’t make the video.
Challenging the Status Quo
Felt like a poem of sorts today. Enjoy:
Don’t give up. Don’t give in. Don’t subdue that voice in your head that keeps telling you to ask “why” and “how” and “if.”
We’re the disrupters, the button pushers and the strange ones who don’t take “It’s always been this way” for an answer. Because maybe – just maybe, there’s a better way.
And if we don’t keep pushing to find that better way, who will?
Don’t give up. Don’t give in. And don’t ever stop challenging the status quo.
Inspired …
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More Dirty Spy Rock! - The Problem Solver
Jump into your Aston Martin and don’t forget the cuff link grenades because there’s more huge riffs and mumbly rad rhythms headed your way! See yourself walking calmly through a hail storm of enemy fire while unleashing your own semi-automatic barrage of cooly menacing munitions only to stop, raise an eyebrow, and then shoot the sniper out of the window behind you without looking. Oh yeah, it’s that kind of a song.
What are you waiting for? Get your Dirty Spy Rock! Download …
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Design Hope - Homepage Design
Now that we’ve finally have a logo, it’s time to get to the fun part, the design! Scott had given us a solid direction for the look and feel. He wanted a clean, simple design that showcased a current app and also provided a few more options for people to jump into the different content areas of the site. We went with a mono color scheme in order to really showcase the app and make the different headers and content launch points stand …
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Keep Trying to Get Better
I would guess that 90% of the people you meet deal with the same problems they’ve dealt with their whole life. Maybe they’re workaholics (lifting my own hand). Maybe they have anger issues. Maybe they’re lazy or maybe they lack self esteem.
We all have personality traits and tendencies that we’re not proud of, but that’s no excuse to accept them.
The first step is admitting you have a problem, right? Or maybe in this case becoming aware that you need to change something. Depending on what the problem …
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Dirty Spy Rock! - Free Music
One night, as I sat in the office/studio, I was overcome with the desire to write a song. A spy song. I grabbed my guitar and began to pound out the sneakiest riffs and rhythms I could muster. Yes, yes, this would do.
If I were a spy this music would play every time I was chasing a car around the winding Swiss mountain roads, or single handedly besting the brutish thugs of my arch nemesis.
Spy dialog motto: it doesn’t matter what you say as long as you sound cool …
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Creating a Tell-a-friend Pop-up Form with jQuery and ExpressionEngine
I recently had a reader ask about the pop-up contact forms and lightbox scripts we've used on some of our client sites - were they built into ExpressionEngine and how did we get them to work? Well the answer to the first question is generally no. EE lets you setup whatever js effects with whatever libraries you want. So can choose exactly how you use it. It really is a different way of thinking about putting together dynamic websites, especially if you're used to most of the other CMS's …
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Do We Serve Ourselves or Our Clients?
I fired one of our first clients last week. It was messy and no fun for everyone involved. I also managed to get a lecture from the president of that company on how to run my business and better serve the needs of my clients.
While the initial reaction for any of us would probably be thoughts of a Chuck Norris roundhouse to the face (in slow motion, of course), the whole incident made me think hard about what 47m is at it's core, and what it truly means to serve …
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EECI2009 Slideshow and Presentation Notes - From Design to Dynamic, Rapid EE Development
Hello from the Netherlands! The EECI2009 conf is in full swing, and we're having a great time! This entry is more of a companion piece to my presentation (you can check the slides out below). So if some things don't make sense, read through it. Someday when I have time I hope to write a more detailed version, but for now this is what we've got! For those on the fast track, this is how we setup EE …
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Design Hope: Final Logo
Folks, we have a winner! Scott has officially declared the final logo to be Number 3 from the last round minus the tilting. Though not apparently obvious, this version was completely redone, ensuring spacing and alignment was perfect and optimized where necessary. The Solutions font was beefed up a bit, too. Good call on that one, loyal readers! Not much else to say here, really. Since we’re starting from the ground up and have such a strong and simple mark, …
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Dear Small Businesses: Some Advice
I would wager that the majority of web designers end up doing work for small to medium-sized businesses. And I'm sure we all have a fantastic story of how ludicrous they can be sometimes. After a few "interesting" experiences, I've had this one rolling around in me for a while. Small business people; we love you, but pay attention, alright?
We Understand it's Your Baby
If anyone can sympathize with a small business owner it's a small web design shop. We know you busted your tail, working night and day to …
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Speaking at the ExpressionEngine and CodeIgniter Conference
I’m pleased to announce that I’ll be doing a workshop at the ExpressionEngine and CodeIgniter Conference in Leiden, Netherlands October 22-23, 2009. I’m really excited about this trip because 1.) I’ve never been out of the country and 2.) The group of people at this conference are amazing. Honestly, I’m quite humbled by the lineup. How did I get to be invited again? I can’t even list them all here, but include household names …
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Design Hope: Logo Design Round 3
Welcome back everybody! I have a good feeling about this round. Like we might just have a winner. Lots of great input from everyone on the last round. Except for that one guy. Sigh. There’s always one isn’t there? Thanks to those of you sticking up for us and keeping things positive. Moving on!
The first version was still the favorite, with some requests to stack it as to cleverly put the dog “under” the under. So I tried a few versions of that. Scott liked #2 from …
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Secret Passageways!
This post has nothing to do with web design. In fact, the link I’m about to give you is to a horrible flash driven site. This company specializes in building secret passageways into your house! So, take a break you hardworking web designers/developers/ninjas and check out how you can finally get that secret lair you’ve wanted since you were 9. The staircases are my favorites. What’s yours?
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- Use ImageSizer to Scale Lightbox Gallery Images in ExpressionEngine
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