The Sketchbook of Susan Kare, the Artist Who Gave Computing a Human Face
Kare’s work gave the Mac a visual lexicon that was universally inviting and intuitive. Instead of thinking of each image as a tiny illustration of a real object, she aimed to design icons that were as instantly comprehensible as traffic signs. There was an ineffably disarming and safe quality about her designs. Like their self-effacing ...
Mobile Design Patterns
Good collection of mobile patterns: http://mobile-patterns.com/
The iPad Arrives
As I’m sure you know, tech and geek news has been buzzing for weeks about the arrival of the iPad and today was the day for pre-orders to arrive by UPS and for in-store purchasing. We went by the Apple Store on Stockton Street here in SF this afternoon and saw Jonathan Ive as he ...
iPad Templates and Stencils
While consumers await the arrival of the first generation iPad on April 3, designers and developers have been working on apps in anticipation. Here’s a list of free iPad templates and stencils that we’ve been using at Ideacodes to get you started: iPad Stencil for Omnigraffle by iA Contains backgrounds, title bars, buttons, selectors, and ...
Sliding Labels with jQuery
I twittered this link a while back but wanted to post it here as well. CSSKarma has a nice example of sliding labels for form fields using jQuery. Rather than have the label vanish onclick in the field, it slides to the left to continue providing context. Get the code and see the version 2 ...
Sketch Templates and Stencils for UI design
Good collection of printable sketch templates for wireframing at Geekchix.org. Particularly love the UI Stencils.
Iconic Icon Set
Iconic is a minimal set of icons consisting of 84 marks in raster and vector formats — free for public use.
Google Chrome OS
Google demonstrated Google Chrome OS for the first time on Thursday in Mountain View. Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks. Later this year we will open-source its code, and netbooks running Google Chrome OS will be available for consumers in the second half of ...
Mockingbird: Wireframes on the Fly
As a UI/UX designer, I’m constantly looking for new tools and methods to allow me to more rapidly create initial user flows and to prototype an application. Mockingbird is a new online tool that let’s you create and share wireframes quickly and with interactivity. It uses a simple drag and drop UI library, gives you ...
UI Experiments by Andrey Yazev
Randomly came across these great experiments by Andrey Yazev of 389.com. Fluid scrollbars: try it for yourself here (you’ll have to be on Safari 4 or Google Chrome to see it).
10/GUI Concept
10/GUI is an interesting take on a possible multi-touch system by R. Clayton Miller. The concept re-imagines the desktop UI by proposing a multi-touch system that doesn’t rely on the screen, but adapts a multi-touch replacement for a keyboard. I like the idea, except I’m not convinced the proposed linear model of “stitching” windows together ...
Google Wave First Look
Gina Trapani at Lifehacker has a good write up on the current state of Google Wave.
The Browsable Grid
Several sites, including my own PicoCool, are taking advantage of the grid view as a fast way for users to browse content. Designers have been relying on the grid for generations as a layout technique. Lots of data-driven sites (eg. product comparisons or search results), web 2.0 services and blogs let users toggle their view ...
Helveticize Your Web
It’s been fun to see new scripts and themes developed to “Helveticize” the web, starting with Google Reader, then Google Calendar, Gmail, and now Twitter. If you’re a Helvetica lover, you’re in luck. Get rid of multiple fonts and cluttered interfaces and give your apps a minimalist makeover. It is just a visual makeover, though, ...
Google Updates Search Box
Google‘s home page is well-known for its minimalist approach, and the search box itself has had minor adjustments over the past decade. Yesterday, they increased the size of the search box and the font sizes for text input and auto-suggestions. It’s an incremental but good change given increasingly high-resolution monitors, as well as longer search ...
iTunes 9.0 App Management
Finally! The new iTunes 9.0 has an app manager. It’s fairly easy to use but as Steve Rhodes pointed out on my Flickr page, “it is a pain if you want to move several apps from one of the first pages to one of the last pages, but it is much better than doing it ...
TiltShift Generator for iPhone
Takayuki Fukatsu of Art&Mobile gave me a sneak peak of his new TiltShift Generator for iPhone, which stylizes the miniature effect on photos. Just like Art&Mobile’s other great products, including QuadCamera (see my post) and ToyCamera, TiltShift Generator is easy to use and has a slick and minimal UI. There are controls for blur levels, ...
Snow Leopard: Smaller, Faster, Better
The Apple and tech blogs have been buzzing with this week’s early arrival of Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, available this Friday, August 28, 2009. We’ve already pre-ordered our family pack upgrade. If you haven’t yet, it’s worth the upgrade at only $29 for an individual (or $25 at Amazon; $43.99 for the family ...