ScaryNoises Blog

Category: Tricks of the Trade

  • Pixel-Perfect.

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    Brad Becker
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    ustwo, an agency in the UK, recently released a great little guide for working with pixel-aligned imagery when using photoshop. It also has some other good tips that are worth reading before pushing pixels around.

  • Solarized

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    Brad Becker
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    Over at Ethan Schoonover’s site, he has a very useful color palette set up for code hinting. This particular palette uses 16 colors designed to look pleasing, reduce eye fatigue, and remain appropriately legible, whether used with a light or dark background. http://ethanschoonover.com/solarized

  • UX design for startups

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    Brad Becker
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    I like this adaption of the Lean Startup ideas for UX design with the pivot that you should start the process with learning before building. It’s a very typical dev temptation to code first and ask questions later. A temptation worth resisting unless you like to throw away code. I also agree that paired design…

  • A Typography Primer

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    Brad Becker
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    This is a great little starter tutorial on the considerations for typography. It discusses how size, color, font face selection, and other choices lead to better typographic contrast and readability.

  • Design Police | Bring bad design to justice.

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    Brad Becker
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    This is great — Chris Bernard passed this on.  It’s a “Visual Enforcement Kit” that you can use to tag bad design–ideally at work with wayward coworkers and not on public signage at stripmalls or something. My favorites are “Legible from space” (although that’s rarely a problem on the web) and “Comic Sans is illegal”.…

  • Halo 3: How Microsoft Labs Invented a New Science of Play

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    Brad Becker
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    This Wired article about Halo3 is actually work-related for most of you. I promise. It’s interesting to see usability testing as the savior for bet-the-business initiatives and to see heat maps and other UX design techniques applied to such a visceral experience. (Plus those of you not in the beta test can learn about the new…

  • Fireworks XAML Exporter

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    Brad Becker
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    Infragistics has put together a Fireworks panel that allows exporting to XAML for those of us more used to Fireworks than Photoshop or Illustrator. (Hey, it’s called “PHOTOshop” for a reason and I rarely need to edit photos…) Now there are several choices for those looking to create XAML graphics for use in WPF or…

  • On Being a Press Expert

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    Brad Becker
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    Since moving into product management, I’ve become initiated into the world of PR and national press. I stumbled into this article today and thought that some would find it interesting to see how this wacky world works. One footnote from me–who you are (or who you work for *cough*cough*microsoft) can have a radical effect on…

  • A Compendium of Interfaces

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    Brad Becker
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    Very cool site/blog that demos “next generation web interface and interaction design”. Great catalog of pieces of web interface innovations. They promise: “Unlike previous design review sites, DesignDemo will feature online demo movies of working interaction design, UI elements, and trends and best practices in web 2.0 user experience.” Max Kiesler – DesignDemo – Web…