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Table of Contents
1. DesignersMX: What Tunes Keep Designers Rolling?
2. The Secret Life of Punctuation
3. Mr. Stacks: On-the-Fly Layer-Comp Storyboarding
4. User Interface Patterns for Mobile Apps
5. Anatomy of Typography
6. An Illustrated Guide: Picture Books Reviewed
7. Providing Keyboard Navigation With a jQuery Plugin
8. FlockDraw: A Free, Collaborative Group Whiteboard
9. Smashing Network Highlights
Editorial
Dear friends,
One year ago, we sent out our first Smashing Email Newsletter. From the very first issue on we wanted to make something special and exclusive. Since then, we've worked very hard to make every issue valuable and interesting, helpful and entertaining. Until now, over 50,000 smashing readers have subscribed to the newsletter. That's a lot, and we sincerely appreciate your support, time and trust.
To celebrate this special day, we'd like to give away some remarkable books on Smashing Magazine. Besides, in that article we look back at the last year and present you a selection of the most interesting articles from our previous issues. Also, we'd love to hear your feedback: what can we do better next year? What's your general impression about the newsletter? Please let us know in the comments to the post or on Twitter!
1. DesignersMX: What Tunes Keep Designers Rolling?
Music. Design. Inspiration. The three have gone hand in hand ever since homo sapiens have walked the earth. DesignersMX is dedicated to finding out which tunes keep designers around the globe rolling and get their creative juices flowing. Blake Allen and Josh Sullivan kept it simple: just sign up, log in and share your own compilation of fresh beats and bright tunes. Let the world out there know what music is worth playing during those brainstorming sessions and periods of focused concentration.
Every featured compilation consists of 10 tracks. All of the tracks are playable on the website, so you can cycle through the playlist or enjoy the entire compilation. Last but not least, the designers' reviews of album art are worth a glance or two. (sp)
2. The Secret Life of Punctuation
Punctuation is a huge part of communication. Without it, the thoughts we attempt to express in written form would be a giant garbled mess. And yet, how many of us know any of the history behind the punctuation marks we use? Where did the comma come from? Or the colon? Or rarer punctuation marks such as the pilcrow and interrobang? Any typography junkie would likely be curious about the origins of their favorite punctuation mark.
Shady Characters is the blog of Keith Houston, and it aims to shed light on the history of both well-known and outlandish marks of punctuation. So far, he's covered the pilcrow (in part), but more entries are sure to follow. It's an interesting study in the stories behind the punctuation we use every day. (cc)
3. Mr. Stacks: On-the-Fly Layer-Comp Storyboarding
For us designers, an effective workflow is all about having a solid collection of little time-savers, each of which eliminates some mundane task and helps us focus fully on more pressing and creative responsibilities.
Mr. Stacks is a tool that helps exactly with this. It is a small Photoshop script that can quickly generate storyboards, stacks and PDFs for project CDs, client presentations or anything else — right from the Layers Comps in your Photoshop file. The script would be useful for a series of animations, storytelling elements in a design and advertising.
You can take any normal-sized banner and spit out paneled storyboards in just a few clicks; or you can use it to email the latest PDFs of your work to clients (although an installed version of InDesign is required for that). To use the tool after installing it, go to "Scripts" in the File menu in Photoshop and select "Mr. Stacks." Unfortunately, the script works only in Photoshop CS5. (vf)
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4. User Interface Patterns For Mobile Apps
Design patterns are reusable solutions for recurring problems. They are found in many areas of our lives and also exist for mobile user interface designs.
Mari Sheibley has put together a comprehensive set of examples of Mobile UI Patterns. The collection includes examples for check-in screens, activity feeds, notification screens, user profiles and more. With all of the examples provided, designers will be able to better select patterns that address the needs of their users. (tb)
5. Anatomy of Typography
Understanding the anatomy of type is a big help when you're trying to figure out how to select or combine typefaces in a design. If you understand the variations in the basic construction of typographical characters, then you will be able to better match typefaces that, at least on the surface, appear to be wildly different. But many typefaces are visually complex, and nailing down exactly what makes them complex or different can be difficult without a starting point.
Typography Deconstructed is a useful guide that breaks down the anatomy of typefaces. Everything is presented visually and in alphabetical order, so finding what you're looking for is easy. In addition to its resources, the website also offers a letterpress-style poster of the anatomy of typefaces that is not only beautiful, but a great quick reference for designers. (cc)
6. An Illustrated Guide: Picture Books Reviewed
Many of those old picture books from our early years are still worth a look once in a while. An Illustrated Guide reviews some of the most notable picture books out there. Guide's authors, Catherine and Matthew Buchanan, have collected many of them from the last decade.
The books are categorized according to cover art styles (traditional, digital, mixed media, etc.) and reading level (junior, wordy, dark, etc.). The authors invite readers to submit picture books for review. Each review comes with a direct link to Amazon or the Book Depository for convenient ordering. (sp) (ik)
7. Providing Keyboard Navigation With a jQuery Plugin
A lot of websites, especially Web-based apps, now incorporate keyboard shortcuts into their navigation. So, a plug-in that makes keyboard-based navigation easier to set up was bound to be developed sooner or later.
mapKey is a jQuery plug-in that does just that. Call a function or target any link on your website easily with a single keyboard character. It makes it incredibly simple to implement keyboard navigation, which, when done properly, greatly improves the user experience and usability of a website. (cc)
8. FlockDraw: A Free, Collaborative Group Whiteboard
Drawing is a multifaceted artistic medium. It captures the world by simultaneously recording its minutiae and abstracting it on a flat surface. Some people draw to kill boredom. For others, drawing is a pure delight, a mode of self-expression, perhaps a religious act or means of meditation, or simply a way to satisfy a basic natural instinct. In prehistoric ages, people painted on rock walls; nowadays, artists create digital drawings for posters, book covers, illustrations, video games and even Hollywood blockbusters.
In the last few years, advances in hardware and software have made it much easier to produce high-quality digital images. FlockDraw is a fancy online drawing tool that is easy to use and, generously, free to use. FlockDraw offers the artist various goodies. An unlimited number of users can draw on a canvas at the same time, enabling you to be part of a community at anytime. (cs)
9. New on Smashing Magazine
- Desktop Wallpaper Calendar: March 2011
- Why Wait For The Opportunity? Create Your Own!
- Designing For Start-Ups: How To Deliver The Message Across
- Using HTML5 To Transform WordPress' TwentyTen Theme
- Examining The Design Process: Clichés and Idea Generation
- Five and a Half Habits of Highly Effective Designers
- CSS: Innovative Techniques and Practical Solutions
10. Smashing Network Highlights
- CSS3 Progress Bars
- 11 Top WordPress Plug-Ins Every Blog Should Have
- User-Friendly SEO
- Useful Photography-Related Tutorials
- Why You're a Bad PHP Programmer
- Unit Testing 101: Are You Testing Your JavaScript?
- How to Become a Better Reader
- The No-Pressure Introduction to CSS3
- The Do's and Don'ts of Contacting Designers
- My Preferred Syntax Style for HTML5 Markup
11. Smashing eBooks
All eBooks are available as PDF, ePUB and Mobipocket and are DRM free.
- eBook #7: Professional Web Design, Vol. 2, $9,90 (new)
- Smashing eBook Bundle (3–7) - $39.50 (new)
- eBook The Lost Files, (free)
- eBook #6: Getting The Hang of Web Typography - $9.90
- eBook #5: How to create selling E-Commerce Websites - $9.90
- eBook #4: Mobile Design for iPhone and iPad - $9.90
- eBook #3: Mastering Photoshop for Web Design - $9.90
- eBook #2: Successful Freelancing - $4,95 (reduced price)
- eBook #1: Professional Web Design - $4,95 (reduced price)
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