On October 12 & 13, The church will be holding a technology conference presented by the Information and Communications Systems department of the LDS Church.
Presentations will be made by Church employees and guests speakers on a variety of technology related topics, including project management, software development, quality assurance, and interaction design.
The conference is primarily for church employees and affiliated organizations, but a few spots have been made available for those who are not employees and may have an interest in attending.
If you are interested, please contact me (John Dilworth – dilworthjp [at] ldschurch [dot] org) immediately, as registration will be closed shortly.
Check out FontShop’s educational materials. Downloadable PDFs with tutorials and tips on typography.
North Temple designer Jared Lewandowski shares insights from real world project experience and tells us how to do more with less time in his recent article featured on UX Magazine.
Local filmaker Issac Goeckertz will be premiering his latest film at the Worldfest Houston International Film Festival.
Details of the film and the trailer can be viewed on the film’s website.
“Pimp This Bum” details the life changing events of Tim Edwards, a Houston man living on the streets. After being approached by a father son marketing team about a unique charity idea, Tim agreed to participate. The Agreement: fly a cardboard sign at a busy intersection with the words, “All Major Credit Cards Accepted www.pimpthisbum.com”. What erupted from this internet experiment was a media campaign that traveled the globe in the expanse of a few days. Donations came pouring in and within three weeks, $75,000 had been raised to help Tim get off the streets. Pimp this Bum tells the inspiring story of Edward’s life in the wake of this unexpected turn of fortune and his courage to begin a new life.
case study
New Perpetual Education Fund Website
Today we launched an update to the Church’s Perpetual Education Fund website. The new website features selected stories from over 40,000 individuals who have been able to better their lives through education opportunities made available to them through PEF loans.
While researching for a current project, I came across a vintage folio on Human Factors in design by Henry Dreyfuss. The book contains a collection of charts and graphics developed to provide anthropometric data for the aid of the industrial designer in creating products.
A forward to the collection contains the following creed which provides a great lesson in how to determine the success of design.
“We bear in mind that the object being worked on is going to be ridden in, sat upon, looked at, talked into, activated, operated, or in some other way used by people.
When the point of contact between the product and the people becomes a point of friction, then the industrial designer has failed.
On the other hand, if people are made safe, more efficient, more comfortable—or just plain happier—by contact with the product, then the designer has succeeded.”
I also liked the fact that the aim of the book was actually about human factors, how people are. It seems that many books on the subject today are not about people, they are about how machines should be.
I appears that there is an updated version of the same text available with updated and additional charts.
Be sure to check out the Web Font Specimen featured in today’s issue of A List Apart. This looks to be a very useful tool for anyone wanting to experiment with the brave new world of web fonts.
Thirty Conversations on Design is a collection of interviews with some of today’s leading designers and creatives. Each were asked the following questions: “What single example of design inspires you most?” and “What problem should design solve next?” There are a number of interviews live right now, with more coming during the month of November.
Why Stylesheet Abstraction Matters (just realized that I didn’t post a link to the previous quote by Chris Eppstein) – interesting information for those who design and develop with CSS.
“CSS is the weakest link in the web developers toolbox. The problem goes deeper than CSS’s lack of variables. Unlike the “function” in programming, CSS has no fundamental building block.”Chris Eppstein, the author of Compass writes up a solid argument for the need of abstraction in stylesheets. I’ve been toying around with Compass and the Sass language over the past few weeks and things look very promising.
“The content that sits inside of our design framework is often the final arbiter of success, yet we sometimes diminish its importance and separate ourselves from it. The more we separate our design activities from content development, the greater the risk of design failure.”Christopher Detzi writes about The Content Conundrum, a very nice and well thought out article covering a problem every web designer must face
iQ font - When driving becomes writing.
I know for certain there are a few guys here at work who wish their day were a bit more like this.
The Human Centered Design Toolkit was created by IDEO and the Gates foundation as a free open-source toolkit to assist organizations providing services for communities in need.
“Think of it as FFFFound for all things type, typography, lettering, & signage.”The new site from John Boardley ( ilovetypography.com ) looks like it will be a good one. Go check it out: welovetypography.com.
BumpTop releases for Windows.
“I won’t miss a design philosophy that lives or dies strictly by the sword of data.”Stop Design Stops Google
The Dexo UX design conference survey might help you get an idea of what that conference you plan on attending will be about. I can’t verify the accuracy of the data, but it looks like it has potential to be an interesting and potentially helpful resource.
“No good book or good thing of any kind shows it best face at first. No, the most common quality in a true work of art that has excellence and depth, is that at first sight it produces a certain disappointment.”Thomas Carlyle (1795 – 1881)
northtemple journal of design ~ March Issue
If we can all agree that we like things that are beautiful, we should also agree that we should try to make things beautiful. But what does that even mean?
An interesting post from PK at BibliOdyssey with pictures from Stammbücher or “Friend’s Books.” An interesting custom from the 17th century where a person would carry a book with them containing sentimental inscriptions, quotes, and memories from one’s friends. PK calls it: Facebook in the 1750’s