Favorite Projects of 2008
Raise your hand if you can't believe it's almost 2009 already. Yep I've got mine up! It's amazing how fast time flies when you're having fun. The last year has definitely been an interesting one, and we're looking forward to this next year with great expectation and excitement. I can honestly say that God has blessed us with the best jobs and families in the world. What more can a guy ask for?
I thought about writing some sort of "resolution" or goals post for the new year, but instead I …
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The Gory Details! - Recording Little Rooms
Up until a few days ago, you probably only knew FortySeven Media as those guys that make kick-awesome websites. But before there was a FortySeven Media, there was rock! (Insert Jack Black-like air guitar solo here.)
You see, back before Jon and I started FortySeven Media, we started a band with a couple of our friends. We wrote lots of songs, played more shows than we could keep track of, and didn’t record nearly enough. In fact, only one full length album and …
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How We Use ExpressionEngine: Templates and Global Variables
Continuing in our series of how we use ExpressionEngine, I thought it would be cool to show you the power and flexibility of the templates in conjunction with global variables.
One of the main reasons we started using EE was it's flexibility. Other CMS's make you cram your design into their pre-defined templates and make you dig around in huge PHP files. Not so with EE! We code every site from scratch by hand, first creating a static version …
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FREE Song Download from Heroes or Ghosts New Album
It’s been one crazy year here at 47m, and we’re doing our best to go out with a bang! It may come as a surprise to you, but we do more than design cool websites. We also make the rock and roll. And we finally have some of the rock and roll to share with you. Now between the two of us, I’m not the engineer so I’ll leave the gory technical details to Nate, but I can honestly …
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Web Designer Wall Lists 47m in Their Best of 2008 List
We meant to post this a little earlier, but we’re happy to report that Web Designer Wall has listed our site in the Top 50 best CSS designs of 2008! We’re honored to be among the company of the others chosen; every single one is just amazing. If you haven’t already, go check out Nick La’s amazing resource site for web designers.
It’s been an amazing year and we’re looking …
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Inspiration Is Everywhere
Sometimes I just get stuck when I’m trying to develop colour schemes. I just can’t seem to find the right complement of tones to work with. It’s at these moments when I start to look for some inspiration.
It can be the view from my window, a great photo I’ve seen, the weathered buildings of the aging community centers around, or the left over milk from a bowl of Lucky Charms®. The point is not to miss out on a spark of imagination from the world around you. I’ve …
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How We Use ExpressionEngine: Add-Ons
In case you hadn't noticed, we love ExpressionEngine. Some may consider it an unnatural love, but we don't care. The flexibility and plain english programming is head and shoulders above everything else.
Lately we've been coming across some awesome plugins, extensions and modules that extend the functionality of EE even farther, and we had to share them with you. Most of these are free, but I know many of the developers take donations. If you find these useful, consider helping them …
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Top 10 Tips for Successful Startup Businesses
We're coming up on our second year of calling 47m our full time job so I thought I'd share some things we've learned along the way. I'm attempting to shorten my Top 10 lists...not by number but by content. Otherwise it wouldn't be a Top 10 list now would it? So without further ado, the slimmer Top 10!
1. Don't Go in Debt
Ten years ago you needed a detailed business plan and a hefty loan from a bank to start a business. But web based businesses have changed everything. You …
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New Music From Apryl Lynn
If you’ve been reading the blog, you might remember us posting about some of our top secret media projects. Apryl Lynn’s With This Breath is the first of those projects that we are releasing out into the wild.
Apryl isn’t your average singer/song writer. She avoids the whiny artist who complains over a couple of chords stereo type, and gets straight to into the soaring rock choruses. Or was that electro-disco-rock beats? She isn’t afraid to give the song what it …
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Yesterday I Drew A Monkey Riding A Pumpkin
After seeing such a title, I imagine you might be wondering how I’m going to pull this together into some kind of amazing post to inspire you and provide you with more awesomeness than before you read this. Instead, I recommend abandoning such thoughts and embrace the sheer simplicity of the primate-gourd form. Monkey. Pumpkin. Together.
Technical Limitations = Your Fault Every Time
I went to Food City to buy some groceries today, tried to slip through the self-checkout because I was in a hurry and guess what they don’t accept there? Their own gift cards. Seriously? So I have to cancel my order and walk 5 steps to a register with a person behind it. And then guess what? I use the exact same credit card processing machine and the cashier never touches my card!
Ok, let’s back up a bit. I have to give them a bit of credit. The …
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Bigger is Not Always Better - Says Scared Care Bears and Hemingway!
So the other day my wife and I spent the afternoon at Dollywood. We had just finished a roller coaster when I saw this huge machine, that had this huge claw, that housed these sweet little care bears looking at the claw in terror (particularly the yellow bears). I had never seen such a huge claw game in all my life.
It was no surprise to see it though because it seems that "Super Sized" is the cool thing to do now days. …
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The Designer’s Dilemma: Efficiency
Efficiency. The word that strikes fear in the heart of designers everywhere. Somehow along the way to becoming our artsy selves, we've managed to throw all structure out the window. "We're above that sort of thing; we're creatives!" we say.
It's ok, we've all been there. I know it started with good intentions: we knew if we had a little more time or a change of scenery, it could make the difference between something good and something amazing. But then somehow it turned into an excuse to take longer to finish …
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Media Creation - More Than Just Websites
If you have been following us for some time or had a look through the portfolio section of the website, you might have noticed that our media section is mysteriously blank. This isn’t an error or some server malfunction. It is, however, a place holder for some of our longer running media projects. Over the next couple of months you’re going to see some things start to pop up there. What kind of stuff?
I’m glad you asked.
In a …
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Top 10 Tips for Kick Awesome Web Application User Interface Design
We've done our fair share of web app designs here, but often don't get to share them for NDA reasons or the simple fact that the developers are still working on them somewhere! No worries, fair reader. For we shall approach these diplomatically as to protect the innocent. Behold, the top 10 list of yore!
1. Text Text Text
Web apps are huge, complicated beasts, even if you try to keep them simple. …
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Troy McNeil - FortySeven Media’s Newest Web Ninja!
It is my great pleasure to introduce to our good friend Troy McNeil. Troy is our is our web ninja in training and his kung-fu is excellent. He may look like a mild mannered scooter enthusiast, but lurking under that calm exterior is the heart of a code warrior! He’s stealthy too. He has already been at work on some of our projects and you didn’t even know! But that time is past, today we welcome Troy to our blog. He’ll …
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Making Accessible CSS Buttons Look Awesome
Buttons. They're those little things that people really like to click and push. I personally think they're pretty important to help guide a user through the actions they need to perform. But I'll be the first to admit I've made my fair share of image buttons. Totally inaccessible; just an image with some alt text. Now depending on your site design and the type of site, that might be ok. For instance, if you're dealing with a simple marketing site that's kind of …
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Photoshop Tutorial - CBOO (What is that?!)
You don’t know it yet, but you’re about to learn one of my favorite and most used Photoshop tricks. You’ve seen this everywhere but might not know it. It has, in some form or fashion, saved more lifeless photos than anything else. What is this awesomeness I speak of? I speak of the CBOO. But that’s Mr. CBOO to you.
No, I haven’t lost my mind. I just had to think of something to call “thing that I do.” CBOO stands for: Copy, Blur, Overlay, Opacity.
Here’s …
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FortySeven Media Gets Social!
Want even more 47m? Well now you can have us!....no wait that's weird. What I mean is we're officially on Twitter and Flickr now so you can follow us or check out our portfolio elsewhere.
- Jon: http://twitter.com/necker47
- Nate: http://twitter.com/natecroft
- 47m: http://twitter.com/47m
- Heroes or Ghosts: http://twitter.com/heroesorghosts
Flickr
So there you go; follow us if you dare!
Smashing Magazine Loves Us - Again!
I was just informed by a Google Alert this morning that Smashing Magazine has listed us in their latest article, “Retro and Vintage in Modern Web Design. Awesome! Not only did they list us, but they used our site for two of their 15 examples of common graphic elements. Gotta say, guys we’re honored you would list us with so many other amazing designs. Thanks for the mentions! There …
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Recent Articles
- Favorite Projects of 2008
- The Gory Details! - Recording Little Rooms
- How We Use ExpressionEngine: Templates and Global Variables
- FREE Song Download from Heroes or Ghosts New Album
- Web Designer Wall Lists 47m in Their Best of 2008 List
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Popular Articles
Rolando is the most radbadical iPhone game ever. Check it out: Rolando!
A great list of iPhone Tips.
Very cool barrel art/designs (not sure what to call them).
Versions, a great Mac Subversion Client, is out of Beta.
Wow, great list of links for ExpressionEngine from Smashing Magazine.
Great set of updates to ExpressionEngine today.
@jfloyd hahahaha
@LanceACooper Oh yeah, that's pretty much my fave quick Japanese place ever. A bit far to drive from Chattanooga though.
ExpressionEngine
The best Content Management System for designers. Feature rich, completely customizable, and easily extendable.
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Basecamp is the smarter, easier, more elegant way to collaborate on your internal and client projects.
