Een unieke dag in London met sprekers over ontwerp, innovatie en samenwerking. Vanuit verschillende oogpunten worden de onderwerpen besproken in uitdagende sessies met grote interactie met het publiek.

Interviews and background stories covered in this book: Orientation & Identity by Erwin K. Bauer.

A look into the characteristics of the Havana environmental graphic design and city wayfinding system.

A review of the renewed book Wayshowing > Wayfinding from Per Mollerup.

designworkplan zoekt per direct een grafisch ontwerper voor onze wayfinding studio in Amsterdam

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This is not the post I had planned for resuming my blog. I had in mind a lengthy article about design and its role in communication at this point in digital evolution. Deep. Thought-provoking. But I know that it’s better to start with ideas that are a little less ambitious in scope. Plus, to tell you […]

The internet holds a lot of potential for non-profits to get their message out, build an audience and raise money. Using the web to tell stories about helping people in need can be very effective for a non-profit organisation looking for new avenues to generate income and build support in other ways such as a […]

A poster campaign has recently caught my attention and I’m impressed by the impact of the message it contains. The elements that work well here can be as relevant to business.

When you’re putting together information (for customers, or your target audience) how much is too much? Details, details. Is it better to go light or heavy on the details? You want to be open and forthcoming with information, but on the other hand you don’t want to overwhelm people, do you? Here’s a good way to […]

What should all businesses do at least once, and do properly, and (like the title of this blog post suggests) designers need to do repeatedly? The answer is: Understanding the target market they’re catering to. Sure, that makes sense—but why are graphic designers any different? Why do this repeatedly? When you’re in business, you’re in the […]

Hello! I have updated this very popular post to include a free downloadable PDF of this checklist.  Preparation is key to successful management of any project, and design projects are no different. The more preparation that both client and designer do right at the start, the more smoothly the work will go. I find checklists […]

An illustration created for a Christmas message for clients of Tracey Grady Design, and for use on social media.

I'll admit I was late to the HTTPS party.

But post Snowden, and particularly after the result of the last election here in the US, it's clear that everything on the web should be encrypted by default.

Why?

0. You have an unalienable right to privacy, both in the real world

Today's processors contain billions of heat-generating transistors in an ever shrinking space. The power budget might go from:

• 1000 watts on a specialized server
• 100 watts on desktops
• 30 watts on laptops
• 5 watts on tablets
• 1 or 2 watts on a phone
• 100 milliwatts on an embedded system

That's

There is much I take for granted in my life, and the normal functioning of American government is one of those things. In my 46 years, I've lived under nine different presidents. The first I remember is Carter. I've voted in every presidential election since 1992, but I do not

Of the many, many, many bad things about passwords, you know what the worst is? Password rules.

If we don't solve the password problem for users in my lifetime I am gonna haunt you from beyond the grave as a ghost pic.twitter.com/Tf9EnwgoZv

— Jeff Atwood

When I wrote about The Golden Age of x86 Gaming, I implied that, in the future, it might be an interesting, albeit expensive, idea to upgrade your video card via an external Thunderbolt 3 enclosure.

I'm here to report that the future is now.

Yes, that's right, I paid $500

We've read so many sad stories about communities that were fatally compromised or destroyed due to security exploits. We took that lesson to heart when we founded the Discourse project; we endeavor to build open source software that is secure and safe for communities by default, even if there are

It's been a while since I wrote a blog post, I guess in general, but also a blog post about video games. Video games are probably the single thing most attributable to my career as a programmer, and everything else I've done professionally after that. I still feel video games

I didn't choose to be a programmer. Somehow, it seemed, the computers chose me. For a long time, that was fine, that was enough; that was all I needed. But along the way I never felt that being a programmer was this unambiguously great-for-everyone career field with zero downsides. There

Remember "cybersecurity"?

Mysterious hooded computer guys doing mysterious hooded computer guy .. things! Who knows what kind of naughty digital mischief they might be up to?

Unfortunately, we now live in a world where this kind of digital mischief is literally rewriting the world's history. For proof of that,

I sometimes get asked by regular people in the actual real world what it is that I do for a living, and here's my 15 second answer:

We built a sort of Wikipedia website for computer programmers to post questions and answers. It's called Stack Overflow.

As of last month,

When we started Discourse in 2013, our server requirements were high:

• 1GB RAM
• modern, fast dual core CPU
• speedy solid state drive with 20+ GB

I'm not talking about a cheapo shared cpanel server, either, I mean a dedicated virtual private server with those specifications.

We were OK with that,

When I wrote about App-pocalypse Now in 2014, I implied the future still belonged to the web. And it does. But it's also true that the web has changed a lot in the last 10 years, much less the last 20 or 30.

Websites have gotten a lot … fatter.

While

I've never thought of myself as a "car person". The last new car I bought (and in fact, now that I think about it, the first new car I ever bought) was the quirky 1998 Ford Contour SVT. Since then we bought a VW station wagon in 2011

In an electric car, the (enormous) battery is a major part of the price. If electric car prices are decreasing, battery costs must be decreasing, because it's not like the cost of fabricating rubber, aluminum, glass, and steel into car shapes can decline that much, right?

On an electric scooter

Hard to believe that I've had the same PC case since 2011, and my last serious upgrade was in 2015. I guess that's yet another sign that the PC is over, because PC upgrades have gotten really boring. It took 5 years for me to muster up the initiative to

This post outlines the steps I took to create a block-based theme version of Twenty Twenty. Thanks to Kjell Reigstad for helping develop the theme and write this post. There’s been a lot of conversation around how theme development changes as Full Site Editing using Gutenberg becomes a reality. Block templates are an experimental feature … Continue reading "Creating a Block-based Theme Using Block Templates"

Global Styles is an aspect of full site editing that will have a major impact on theme development. To further my understanding of this feature, I explored adding support for it to the block-based version of Twenty Twenty that Jeff Ong recently shared. Some background: Global Styles aims to bring site-wide controls for things like … Continue reading "Exploring Global Styles"

Block patterns are unique, predefined combinations of blocks you can use and tweak to create stunningly designed sections of your website.

We recently completed a bright and engaging new website for one of Fort Myers Beach’s most popular and well known...continue reading

We recently completed a full rebrand and website design project for Enterprise High School, a charter school located in Clearwater,...continue reading

In Spring 2016 after a meeting in Fort Myers, Florida, we were selected by the Judges’ group representing all County...continue reading

We created the program identity and website for this City of Sanibel initiative.

Located in Downtown Fort Myers, just steps from the Caloosahatchee River and a short drive away from the Gulf coast...continue reading

We’re delighted to launch the first ever website for this local irrigation company that has been around since 1989! Automated...continue reading

PLAN is a referral network program of 250 volunteer physicians, community clinics, hospitals and other affiliated health care providers who...continue reading

We recently completed a website design and development project for Family Health Centers of Southwest Florida. This National Health Service...continue reading

We recently launched a redesigned website for Jeff Wilson Pool Service in Naples, Florida to continue to expand on their...continue reading

The Cheese Monkeys is the coming of age story of a teen boy (who we only know by his nickname, “Happy”.) As he enters a midwest state school to study art in the late 50’s. First off, I’ll admit that I’m a fan of coming of age stories. All the good ones usually follow a protagonist who […]

We’re working on redesigning the Pagebreak Podcast website and decided to get some caricatures of us made by Ricardo Gimenes.Check ’em out! We’re SO CUTE!

Earlier this week I met up for coffee with a client of mine. The two of us originally met when his employeer was my client and after leaving that job he hired me to customize his personal blog and we formed our own client/designer relationship. I was excited when he emailed me last week with the […]

Refresh Seattle – February 2014 First off, what is Refresh? According to their website… Refresh Seattle is a community of designers and developers working to refresh the creative, technical, and professional culture of New Media endeavors in the Seattle/Puget Sound area. Promoting design, technology, usability, and standards, Refresh Seattle is a part of Refresh and […]

This Friday I attended the first day of She’s Geeky here in Seattle. It was my first experience of the Unconference Format and I had no idea what to expect, but ended up having a GREAT TIME. Discussions that I joined in on throughout the day included subjects such as Impostor Syndrome, Diversity Groups, Side- […]

It says it right there in my Twitter bio, I am a Sex Geek. It’s a term that was coined and made popular by renowned sex educator Reid Mihalko and I’ve been one since before there even WAS a term for it. A Sex Geek is much like a geek of any other flavor. Geekiness […]

I have been running CMD+Shift Design since 2008. In those 7 years I learned a lot, I made a lot of mistakes, found some amazing clients, did some really fun projects and made some good money. I’ve had ups and downs and these past 2 years have been tough… really tough. Part of it has […]

Today was my very first one-on-one business mentorship meeting with Marie Poulin at Digital Strategy School. This was the first of what will be monthly 1 Hour sessions with Marie during the 6-month Digital Strategy School course and I can already tell these next 6 months are going to be a whirlwind! The course officially […]