From Writing
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Living Can Kill You
“Living Can Kill You” first appeared as a chapbook poems in 1994, before being the name used to describe a regular blog starting in June of 2000.
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Haven’t heard that before
So, as HTML 5 begins to spread beyond the academic discussion phase, and into the fringes of the Web design community, an all too typical culture clash has once again emerged. The perfectionists and pragmatists are publicly at it again.
But, there are a few things you can always take for granted in the world of Web design:
- there will always be that one browser that will make your dream design a nightmare to execute;
- the cache will never work in your favour when you need it to;
- if you could change that one piece of markup, everything would fall into place, but, of course, you can’t;
- the pragmatists always find a way around the puritans.
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Terminal City celebration
Were it my city, I’m not sure what I would have thought. But it isn’t my city, and it was definitely an unforgettable experience.
When first moving to the West coast, Lee and I had passing thoughts of attending the Olympics. Then the tickets seemingly sold out and we forgot about it all. Months later, through our friends, we ended up with tickets to a Canadian hockey game. And then, through yet another friend, we found a place to stay.
If you’re within driving distance, take a day or two and head to Vancouver (or Whistler). Trust me. Even the most skeptical will find it worthwhile (if only for the Neil Young Project).
Despite (and because of) the hundreds of thousands cheering fans on its streets, Vancouver exuded a positive spirit. Everyone we met was genuinely happy, from the police officers to the bus drivers (when a bus was full, its sign changed to an apology for waiting passengers). The entire city exuded pure fun — including the one day it rained on us.
As much as I love Toronto, I’m not sure it would have reacted the same way. Nor would I expect the same from my current hometown, even though it’s only a three-hour drive south of the city.
Best:
- Celebrating Chinese New Year on Pender
- Witnessing thousands of people participate in the Women’s Memorial March
- Talking to the the artists and gallery owners during the Downtown Eastide art walks (both ArtWalk and Bright Lights)
- The lamb shank at Boneta (and the staff were above and beyond, too)
- Seeing Canada win its first gold while standing in the Bay
- Being at Canada’s first men’s hockey match (never have I seen so many Canadian flags)
- Crossing the border (both times) faster than it took to get a cappuccino in Deep Cove
Worst:
- Getting soaked looking for Wilco for more than an hour
- Having no idea where anything was (without Internet access)
- Paying insane roaming fees
- Having Bell Canada be Bell Canada (in this case, by deactivating, without notification or remorse, a phone number used for more than eight years)
- Witnessing the complete gentrification of Gastown and the Eastside
- Worrying what happens after this is all done
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Don Watt, brander of No Name
One of my earliest memories of design involves wandering aisles filled with uniformly yellow packaging of different shapes and sizes. Each item was labelled with the same, tightly kerned, black typeface and was always set in lowercase.
This carefully designed unbranded branding strategy was conceived of by a man named Don Watt. The “no name” products for Loblaw’s grocery stores transformed the retail industry (he went on to develop brand design strategies for Walmart and also designed the Home Depot logo and store experience). Coincidentally, considering the imageless design of the “no name” products, Watt was also one of the first designers to use photo-symbolism on packaging. His work there became iconic, as well:
a red mug sitting in [a pile of coffee] beans
.In his career, he helped design the Canadian flag preferred by the nation’s first Nobel Peace Prize winner. He also did design work for another Canadian legend: the Avro Arrow.
Don Watt died, unexpectedly, last week at the age of 73. His minimal, acutely Canadian, “no name” aesthetic — and its use of Helvetica — will nevertheless endure as a lasting influence on my design sensibility.
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Accessible Web video
For a medium that was designed to share scientific papers, the Web does a good job at delivering video to mass audiences. For the past months, msnbc.com has been building an entirely new way to share that video to its audiences.
Released at the start of December 2009, the first of the new msnbc.com players allows anyone to embed NBC news related video clips into a site. While msnbc.com has been began making a concerted effort to improve the video experience online for more than two years, this new player is the result of a complete rethinking of what is possible.
Along with the numerous performance improvements, there was dedicated design effort to create an interface that was simple, intuitive, and able to integrate unobtrusively with almost any Web design style.
More importantly, the player was conceived to allow it to easily scale to include new features. One of the first tests was to offer something few mainstream player do: accessibility.
Every clip can be controlled by some de facto video keyboard controls:
- Space
- Play or pause
- → (right arrow)
- Skip ahead 5 seconds
- ← (left arrow)
- Skip back 5 seconds
- ↑ (up arrow)
- Increase the volume
- ↓ (down arrow)
- Decrease the volumne
- m
- Mute the volume
In the coming months, you can expect to see subtitles with almost every video clip drawn from closed captioning information, and where available, show transcripts. As these new features come to be, they will include universally consistent keyboard commands.
All this is a part of the goal to make msnbc.com content easily available to anyone who wants to access it, and to do so by offering the best designed news products online.
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Repositioning the news
Something is in the air on the second day of National Newspaper Week, as two major Canadian media sites redesigned along with one American blog. Meanwhile, the Economist thickened its pay-wall and Canwest is seeking bankruptcy protection.
Bankrupt CanWest
Last things first: CanWest seeking protection is not much of a surprise as the company has been gorging on newspapers and local TV stations while not taking care of the debt. Unfortunately for Canadians, the restructuring of the company will lead to an even thinner coverage about the cities and towns where they live.
Gating The Economist
The Economist, meanwhile, knows its audience is willing to pay for its content in magazine form, but sees many of its online readers aren’t print subscribers. By tightening its paywall and making its content available for free for a shorter period of time, the plan is to make its online readers more valuable to its business. The logic is the same as has been used by many newspapers in the past to the determinate of their bottom line, and The Economist, despite being an elite publication, will need to commit to a five-plus plan if they hope to convert their revenue stream.
Redesigning a round Boing Boing
BoingBoing, after nearly ten years online, has done a fairly dramatic overhaul of its site, with two of the most notable changes being the logo update and the use of a rounded, sans-serif as its headline typeface. Once a loyal reader, but no longer one now, the design strikes me as being an good match to the tone while managing to balance the business needs of one of the most popular online-only publications out there.
Reinvigorating Radio 3
Shortly after Boing Boing began publishing online, CBC Radio 3 launched its first sites. These award-winning efforts were some the most innovative experiments in online content and rich-media design. Unfortunately, they were also about five years ahead of the curve. Now, after languishing with an awkwardly framed site, the Radio 3 site has redesigned to emphasize the social aspect of music. Additionally, it better caters to the splintering genres the make-up Radio 3’s playlist. The player seems much better although it wasn’t working for me (likely either a firewall or geolocation thing), but it still is strangely difficult to link to particular pages on the site.
Reimaginging the Star
Finally, the Toronto Star. When I hear smart, seasoned, and savvy people across my social networks literally raving about the redesign, it’s always worth a look. Especially when its about a site I have never been impressed by (and this goes back a long time, my first critique was in 1996). Things are different this time with this latest version of TheStar.com as designed by Teehan & Lax.
The result is a successful attempt to break the news design ghetto, even if the visual design is cautious. TheStar.com now was four distinct ways to view the homepage content: the standard view, a pictorial grid, a text grid, and a timeline view reminiscent of feed readers. In fact, may of these design conventions draw from feed reader UIs which suggests the Star is looking to grow its audience by acting as a news buffet for audience sourced, in part, by links shared on Facebook. Glad to see TheStar.com make the effort to push news design conventions in interesting directions, and it will be interesting to see how these play out over the coming months.
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