Category: Free Advice

  • Cold Storage

    Cold Storage

    Good UX is what companies do when they have to. A company that has your stuff locked away doesn’t have to.

  • How do you spell success?

    How do you spell success?

    Working in tech means being comfortable with change and uncertainty. Successfully working in tech means not letting change and uncertainty paralyze you. Forge ahead on the best information you have, and be prepared to change…

  • My weekend project

    My weekend project

    By controlling what I listen to, and the order in which I listen, I’m slowly designing an infinite collage of my evolving musical tastes.

  • Of Books and Conferences Past

    Of Books and Conferences Past

    Of books and conferences past: A maker looks back on things well-made but no longer with us.

  • The More Things Change… (or: What’s in a Job Title?)

    The More Things Change… (or: What’s in a Job Title?)

    I’m designing for the web. The infinitely flexible web.

  • Just add water.

    Just add water.

    Quick, before everyone else thinks of it. Set the word “SUCCESSION” in Engravers Gothic and export it to a transparent PNG. Download photos of confederate general Mitch McConnell and Republican Johns Thune (R-S.D.), Cornyn (R-Texas),…

  • Algorithm & Blues

    Algorithm & Blues

    Examining last week’s Verge-vs-Sullivan “Google ruined the web” debate, author Elizabeth Tai writes: I don’t know any class of user more abused by SEO and Google search than the writer. Whether they’re working for their…

  • Position Wanted: Front-End Director

    Position Wanted: Front-End Director

    WE have creative directors and design directors, but we don’t seem to have any front-end directors. And maybe we should. For years at big companies, people in different silos have written CSS with no information…

  • Shopify Partners Program wants you—and so do I!

    Shopify Partners Program wants you—and so do I!

    Apply now to join the next round of Shopify Partner Studio!

  • The Year in Design

    The Year in Design

    Mobile is today’s first screen. So design responsively, focusing on content and structure first. Websites and apps alike should remove distractions and let people interact as directly as possible with content. 90 percent of design…

  • 2010: The Year in Web Standards

    2010: The Year in Web Standards

    WHAT A YEAR 2010 has been. It was the year HTML5 and CSS3 broke wide; the year the iPad, iPhone, and Android led designers down the contradictory paths of proprietary application design and standards-based mobile…

  • iPad as the new Flash

    iPad as the new Flash

    iPad. Never have so many embraced a great product for exactly the wrong reasons. Too many designers and publishers see the iPad as an opportunity to do all the wrong things—things they once did in…

  • Web Design and Fitness

    Web Design and Fitness

    Three times a week I work out hard with a trainer at a gym. It’s like sex. I don’t mean it feels good. On the contrary, it hurts. And I don’t mean there’s cuddling after.…

  • Free advice: show up early

    Free advice: show up early

    DELAY happens. The train is late, the flight is cancelled, the traffic is murder. Travel is the leading edge of entropy, and entropy is the universe’s final comment on the meaning of it all. If…

  • Free advice: buy a dongle

    Free advice: buy a dongle

    There is still no Wi-Fi on the northeast corridor Amtrak trains that carry hundreds of thousands of business travelers each day. So quit whining and get a USB 3G modem. It’s free with monthly service,…