I was really excited to see the launch of Fever yesterday – a new web-based application from the uber-talented Shaun Inman.
Let me start by saying that this is neither a critique of Shaun or his new app. Shaun is both a very talented web designer and an innovative developer, and his work is held in high regard – and rightly so. Fever looks like a really great app which looks to be a beautifully conceived idea which opens up all sorts of new ideas.
Studio Daily have an excellent article about Pierre Michel’s process for creating the opening trailer for a French film festival, Polar dans la ville.
The whole 40 second sequence took three weeks to complete, and was created mostly in After Effects. What’s most interesting is the approach he took to dealing with high resolution images in a short timeframe.
We just launched an exciting new initiative called North. It’s going to be a creative conference taking place in South Cumbria this coming Summer, and we have some really great plans for it.
I’ve recently experienced a web design epiphany.
It’s funny how you work with stuff for so long, and you become very entrenched in a certain way of doing things. You follow the trends because that’s the consensus. You ocassionally push the boundaries in small ways, to create distinct designs and user experiences. But there are certain guidelines you set yourself; basic rules you adhere to. Many times it’s subconscious: you do things a certain way because, well, you’ve always done things that way, everybody else does them that way, so there’s no reason to change.
I’ve been using grids in my CSS designs for quite a while now, inspired by frameworks like Blueprint CSS. Although I don’t use Blueprint for production work (using a CSS framework starts to get a bit restrictive, and I prefer to build from scratch, rather than trying to override someone else’s default), I do use the methodology in my own CSS to create structured, grid-based layouts, and consistent typography.
One of the clever things that Blueprint introduced was the idea of displaying the grid while you’re working – this proves to be an invaluable aid as you try to refine CSS rules. But I’ve found that – as good as the theory is – it has a few drawbacks.
Isn’t it weird how sometimes you’re thinking about how you’re missing something in your work life – I’m talking specifically about a tool, a piece of software, maybe even a workflow? You’re sat there thinking about how much easier life would be, trying to imagine how you would go about filling the void to make life easier? And then, moments later, the exact thing you’ve been dreaming of appears before your eyes?
Rands has written a really interesting post all about cadence, and more specifically how the tone of language used on the Web has a direct impact on our trust.
Semiotics. I’d forgotten all about it. I remember it being part of my studies when I was at university, and no doubt I’ve been applying the theory throughout my work over the years, but I hadn’t ever given it a passing thought until recently. The subject had stayed dormant in my mind until it came up during a gathering of friends on Halloween. We’d had a trio of classic thriller movies playing silently in the background – Scream, American Werewolf in London and The Cat & The Canary – the kind of films which lend themselves well to the discussion of semiotics, since they’re loaded with clichés and visual signs.
I’ve had the chance to play with a new filter in FCP called SmoothCam. It’s great, and creates delicious results.
It’s basically a camera stabilisation filter which has been ported from Shake. It processes your footage to create a vector map of all of the objects and movements, then using that data to manipulate the original footage to create smooth camera motion.