9th March 2010
HBO's Hung debuts in New Zealand
Well endowed men and women have been the focus of ad campaigns since, well, forever – but rarely are billboards more provocative than this.
Hung like a billboard
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Work for Manifest!
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2010 has started with a bang for Manifest. So much so that we’re looking to expand our team. Read more on Manifest Blog
Social Media Tools 101: Delicious
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The delicious icon is made up of the four key colours of HTML.
Delicious, or del.icio.us as it used to be known before it was revamped when it was bought by Yahoo! in 2005, is a social bookmarking site. Now, there will probably be 10% of you nodding your head saying, “yes, I know that already thanks,” But the vast majority are still getting to grips with social bookmarking (certainly compared with the numbers embracing social networks). The fact is that not only are social bookmarking and folksonomy tools the most useful things you’ll ever use during a day’s browsing, they also have a wealth of opportunities for brands looking to tap into the communications potential of the web. Read more on Manifest Blog
Fonts! Fonts! Fonts!
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Last month I chipped in my two-penneth about what fonts we’ll all be seeing a bit more of in the new year. Well, it’s a brand new year, and my word new fonts and new type trends have just kept on coming.
This week has seen the launch of Commercial Type. A joint venture between Paul Barnes and Christian Schwartz, who have collaborated since 2004 on various typeface projects, most notably the award winning Guardian Egyptian. Type foundries are kind of the unsung heroes of the industry, toiling away thinking about ligatures, with most of the attention and glory going to cutting-edge designers who dabble in type.
Now – i’m using ‘dabble’ very loosely here, as I love Non-Format’s experiments with type (especially OTTO), and Si Scott’s ‘Hunter‘ is fantastic.
BUT. I am never going to use these on anything I lay my hands on between 9 and 6. What’s great about Commercial Type is it’s place in modern day corporate design. Most of the faces available here are a refreshing alternative to the Helrutiger escape route, most of us are guilty of taking (I need to design a logo. If I use Helvetica, my work will be considered clean and tight).
I’m particularly fond of the Stag collection and it seems that 2010 is going to be the year of the slap serif. It’s been coming for a long time. Check out Adelle from FontShop. Packs a punch.
Another foundry brought to my attention this week is Radim Pesko. According to the website “RP is new small scale digital type-foundry established in 2009 by Radim Peško. The foundry is focused on development of typefaces that are both formally and conceptually distinctive.”
Personal favourite has got to be the Mercury font.
If you’ve got to this point of the post, you’re either my mum, wife or a fellow typophile, so well done. Here’s some freebies.
Smashing Magazine’s 25 New High Quality Free Fonts (check PT Sans & Tribbon above all else).
P.S. Ever seen a font and not known what it is? Here’s the handiest resource you’ll find this side of a glyph.
Will the Apple iTablet be a bitter pill for your website?
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Will your website work on the new Apple tablet?
So, it’s just one week before we finally get to see the Apple iTablet/iBook/iPad/iPallette/iSlate/iDontcarewhatitscalled (probably) at their event on the 27th. Exciting stuff. But unless I’m missing something then there has been surprisingly little mentioned about how the rise of tablet computing (it isn’t just Apple developing a tablet computer) might affect the way we build web resources.
For instance, the iPhone doesn’t work with Flash and according to most people in the know about these things, nor will the tablet. Why? Primarily because it dissolves battery at an alarming rate (as highlighted to me by the Guardian’s tech editor Charles Arthur on Twitter today). It’s also quite buggy. I should say now that I’m not actually the Manifest London web nerd guru – that title goes to Mike Francis, but for me it seems the rise of tablet computing (and indeed the mobile internet) could therefore have a big impact for a lot of content-heavy websites.
We noted in our 2010 predictions that Javascript frameworks such as jQuery and Mootools will increasingly rival Flash (and software in general) in terms of creating dynamic page content – but as more and more people access the web via smartphones or tablets, surely we will also become less motivated to use Flash? How much of your website content uses Flash? Have you considered what your site looks like on an iPhone, or how it will look using a tablet computer? I don’t think Flash will disappear anytime soon, but there will certainly be an impact for sites that rely too heavily on Flash content.
Other growing considerations will include content dimensions – the iPhone has very specific dimensions (which will likely be shared by the forthcoming tablet) which could cause a headache for those using other proportions. Apple’s proprietary software will all use iFrame for video rendering and content that doesn’t use this will have compatibility issues (however slight). As an aside, very few video cameras render video in iFrame, meaning quick editing on iPhoto is more difficult and precious battery will be used converting the files in the editing process.
Anyway – all of this is pie-in-the-sky until the 27th so we’ll just have to sit tight and wait and see. But if what I think is true, then we’ll see a rush from brands to create websites that perform to their optimum on a tablet. For those that don’t have the budget to create a dedicated app or an alternate mobile site, it could prove a headache.
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