how the fuck did snooki get preggers?
Good design is often about figuring out the right questions to ask. I guess this question could be re-configured to this: who would fuck snooki in the first place?
But seriously, I'm surprised she didn't get pregnant sooner.
who are your favorite designers online and how/where do you follow their work?
Interesting question, I actually don't follow specific designers anymore. There's this way the design community tend to riff off of itself. Design goes through trends apart from the actual theory and it has only sped up now with everyone being connected on the internet through social media. It kind of gets exhausting, I felt like I was following trends and became a slave to them. Most designers are also terrible people in general; very grumpy, very arrogant. I found it frustrating to follow them on a close, social level and stopped, but I still kind of keep my ear to the ground to see what the community is up to these days.
Designers I used to follow:
Jeffory Zeldman, the Godfather of Web Standards. He runs Happy Cog
link and if you haven't heard of him, shame on you.
He also runs a site called A List Apart
link, an online magazine for web standards and design. Lately, the magazine has kind of had a narrow focus on specific details of design, like ways to do responsive images, but every now and then, they have a great, high-level article on how to problem solve and think differently or they have conceptual design ideas.
Greg Storey. This guy used to have his own shop called Air Bag Industries
link. He now actually works for Happy Cog. I respect this guy, but honestly started to think he was full of shit from a visual design standpoint after a while. There's making great, clean code, and then there's making an entirely well-designed user experience that "feels" great and visuals are a huge part of this. I really don't think Greg gets it.
Jim Coudal. Great guy actually; has a very informal feel. I remember a particular speech Jim was about to give and the guy introducing him said, "You should closely study this guy, because he gets it... he really knows what he's doing." and then Jim got up and said, "I have no idea what the fuck I'm doing." Coudal Partners
link. They have a great feed on their site full of interesting, inspiring things. I actually don't know why I don't follow these guys now, I should probably start doing that again.
Where I tend to look now is on the fringes of design, like illustrators, animators, and video games these days.
Joshua Smith aka Hydro74
link. This guy is a Grand Master of Adobe Illustrator and I pretty much learned how to use Photoshop by looking at the old ads this guy used to do 9 years ago and trying to deconstruct how he did certain things in Photoshop and how he used certain filters. This guy has become a huge dick lately though, but his work speaks for itself.
Tyson Hesse link, illustrator of webcomic Boxer Hockey and Diesel. Great guy, works hard, puts out some interesting work.
Bobby Chiu link. Real standup kind of guy. Conceptual illustrator, comes up with really imaginative stuff.
Some sites I check out to keep up on stuff:
Smashing Magazine link. This site used to be a real shithole of posts that were like, "30 Great Real Estate Website Designs" but lately they have put out some pretty high-quality articles.
Motionographer link. Motion graphics site, pretty inspirational for seeing how design is implemented into moving and interactive designs.
PSD Tuts link. Seriously, I learned more on this site in one month than I did in the 4 years I went to Design School and 3 Photoshop classes.
Cartoon Brew link. Recently started following this site. The animation they post is top-notch and very inspirational.
Comics Beat link. Great site to see what's coming out of the comics/pop-art sector.
The goal with these sites is to get inspired and have some sort of original thought or design that can be used to set a trend or create a unique experience as opposed to following the trends closely in the design community.
Do you see projects like bootstrap being good or bad for designers? On the one hand, I can see less work being required to start a project, but on the other, people might not think they need a designer anymore, if bootstrap is "good enough".
Okay, so this was a huge concern in the print design world when things like Microsoft Word came out and desktop publishing rose up back in the late 80s.
What actually happened is people learned how terrible they were at designing from a conceptual/thought-level standpoint and even though they had tools now, albeit shitty ones, they couldn't make design that looked high-quality. It actually made designer
more desirable.
Bootstrap is a great little tool for churning out mobile apps and whipping up some nice-looking designs quickly, but it'll never replace a designer's eye and thought-process. Even more so, I can't tell you how many friends I have, even print designers, that automatically think simple things like HTML and CSS are "far beyond them." One of the great things about web design is there's an established barrier to entry. In the print design world, people are so familiar with writing and using Word that they don't see a reason to hire a designer
until they start a business or do anything professional. Generally speaking, the clients that have valued my designer's eye and expertise also tend to make great business decisions and are successful, while the clients who come to me just to build out a logo their wife scribbled down on a napkin don't last. I hope that doesn't sound arrogant, it's not like I'm some genius shitting out gold left and right, but it says a lot about a business owner that values the expertise of the people he hires instead of just using them like computer monkeys that have access to Photoshop or Illustrator.
