It?s important to take serious stock in the idea that e-mail has replaced the phone, singing telegrams, and in-person meetings as our primary form of business (and general) communication. Let it sink in: 75% of our lives consist of human email machines talking to one another via non-human email machines. Thinking of this makes me feel like we should treat email with nearly the same respect we do face-to-face interactions. In what I hope will be a three-part series, I?m going to talk...

We recorded a special episode comprised entirely of questions from our customers. On August 14, we held the UIE Virtual Seminar - Galleries: The Hardest Working Pages on Your Site. During the seminar, we received far more questions than time would allow answering. As is tradition, we put together this follow-up podcast to answer even more of your excellent questions.

“ Sanserif, looked at in detail, is admittedly capable of improvement, but there is no doubt that it is the basic form from which the typeface of the future will grow. Other individual expressive possibilities of type have nothing to do with typography. ” —Jan Tschichold, Die neue Typographie (1928) Born to a German sign painter and designer in 1902, Jan Tschichold later became one of the most public practitioners of the “new typography”, a design...

This is my personal blog. I don’t run my draft posts by Google’s PR or legal team, other than maybe 2-3 times when I thought a post might have legal implications. But I have learned a few hard-won lessons. So, when someone recently asked me for tips about talking to the public, I couldn’t resist. [...]

Interview with me about Web standards and design at Design Interviews in which I mete out advice I should apply to myself (isn’t it easier to give it?) “Embrace change, value life-long learning, allow your passions to show and if at any moment you are no longer having fun or gaining something personally important from doing [...]

It?s that time again, when you can vote for the panels for the next edition of SXSWi. Since 2006, I?ve traveled to and attended this big event in Austin, Texas. I like going to SXSW, not only because I get to see most of my overseas friends but also because I always have the opportunity to meet new creative people, learn new things, and share ideas. SXSW is really an event for connecting with people. This year I didn?t join a panel, but for next year Cindy Li asked me if I was interesting in...

In 2004, Dave Shea took the CSS rollover where it had never gone before. Now he takes it further still?with a little help from jQuery. Say hello to hover animations that respond to a user's behavior in ways standards-based sites never could before.   Hide Your Shame: The A List Apart Store and T-Shirt Emporium is back. Hot new designs! Old favorites remixed! S, M, L, XL. Come shop with us !

The rise of the social web demands that we rethink our traditional role as builders of digital monuments, and turn our attention to the close observation of the spaces that our users are producing around us. It's time for a new metaphor. Consider cartography.   Hide Your Shame: The A List Apart Store and T-Shirt Emporium is back. Hot new designs! Old favorites remixed! S, M, L, XL. Come shop with us !

I'll be heading to Tokyo this November for latest installment of the Web Directions conference series, along with Eric Meyer , Andy Budd , Jeremy Keith and Jeffrey Veen . The site for the show has just launched, featuring super mega turbo lifestream speaker pages . #

. . . unless existing and new open source font projects gain momentum and critical mass.

I remember reading Disk is the new Tape earlier this year and how much it resonated. That's probably because I was working for Yahoo at the time and hearing a lot about their use of Hadoop for data processing. In fact, I even did a couple videos ( 1 and 2 ) about that. Anyway, I recently faced the reality of this myself. When I wrote about The Long Term Performance of InnoDB I'd been beating my head against a wall trying to get millions of records out...

We’ve received some interesting comments about last week’s article on site maps as design cop-outs. Christian & Michael both asked: Why is it a cop-out to provide a site map anyway? Christian explained that they are easy to create and maintain, so what’s the big deal? It’s a good question. While creating a site map is [...]

Because I’ve always been fascinated about how other designers do their thing, I thought I’d share a bit about my organizational setup on my computer and how it plays into my work. On my desktop, 99% of my time in the last 6 months were dedicated to the following folders and files: Karakoram is just the [...]

In Beethoven's Heiligenstadt Testament: A Study in Capability vs. Capacity , I explore what I consider one of Ludwig van Beethoven's greatest "works" and how it helps answer the question, "What does it take to go from good designer to great designer?" (More about the layout of this article here .)

The second day of An Event Apart San Francisco is drawing to a close. The day opened with my talk, Patterns in the Process . You can download the slides if you like—Creative Commons licensed, as usual—but just looking at the slides is like trying to listen to a presentation by putting a glass against the wall of the building next door. When I was giving my talk, I thought it was kind of rambling and incoherent. But it went down well and lots of people told me they liked...

I was thinking there was something odd about this logo?then it hit me and it brought a smile to my face. Oftentimes we look at the the world’s problems and think about what can “I” do about them. The emphasis is always on me, the individual. We Can Solve It seeks to change our focus on fighting problems from a “me” to a “we”-based perspective. By combining our collective power, we can do something to change what’s going on. Stop...

Blue Flavor is a Mac house, and we use a lot of tools to get stuff done. Far and away, the best tool I and others here use is Textmate . Eight Reasons why Textmate is super-fantastic-awesome Small Footprint . Textmate has a small footprint. It opens files and saves them quickly. Generally, we edit straight off of FTP , and Textmate does a great job of opening and saving files for quick-edits. Bundles . Textmate bundles are control centers, which allow you to do...

Last weekend afforded an opportunity to explore the Lembert Dome Hike in Yosemite National Park. Lembert Dome is the monolithic dome that dominates the eastern end of Tuolumne Meadows in Yosemite National Park. It's a justifiably popular ascent, particularly among day hikers in the area, with the summit offering magnificent views of Tuolumne Meadows to the west, the Cathedral Range to the south, and the Sierra crest to the east. The trail starts out a bit steep but the views are...

Ok, so the name won't win any awards, but let's be honest: neither will this mini-tutorial, or the idea itself (nothing groundbreaking here, move along...). But after throwing together a quick little (you guessed it) hover/tab/thingy for my previous article , I thought I was fun enough to share, in case you find a need for it someday.

We’ve got a unique and exciting UIE Virtual Seminar coming up in September: Testing Your Critiquing Skills: Site Navigation Date: Wednesday, September 24th, 2008 Time: 1pm ET / Noon CT / 11am MT / 10am PT When looking over someone else’s design, how do you ensure you’re delivering valuable insights that bring new perspectives to the table? The best critique [...]