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www.kathrynwarwick.com
work Thursday 14th of May, 2009
Another day, another Wordpress theme — this time for my lovely girlfriend Kathryn. Her new blog is a bit sparse at the moment, but I am assured that she intends to fill it with tasty recipes (as well as more general musings). As a regular benefactor of Kathryn's cooking, I can assure you that these are recipes that are worth a look.
I also spent an hour messing with the site's front page (as I had accidentally deleted the previous version's stylesheet without noticing). Mmm... Microformats.
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Sarah France - Work in Progress
work Saturday 9th of May, 2009
A little while back, I put together this Wordpress theme for the awesomely talented Sarah France. She was in the process of moving her blog from Blogger onto her own site, and had asked me to help her set up a downloaded theme. I suggested making a custom theme — it didn't seem right that a designer with such an interesting, distinctive portfolio was going to be stuck with a generic layout. I tried to keep it simple, readable, and generally nice to look at and use, while also reflecting Sarah's love of modernist grid-based design.
Fast forward a couple of months, and Sarah has finished packing up her old blog, and is officially launching the new one. Go check it out!
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Today I die
link Friday 8th of May, 2009
Today I die is a Flash game. It's also short, thoughtful, and a little bit beautiful. Its creator, Daniel Benmergui, has also made a bunch of other short, thoughtful, slightly lovely games in Java and Flash, mostly as experiments in ultra-minimal storytelling.
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BakerTweet
link Saturday 2nd of May, 2009
A simple, smart idea, BakerTweet is the brainchild of POKE on behalf of their neighbouring bakery. Basically a bakery-proof Twitter notifier, it can be pre-programmed with a list of baked products which can be scrolled through using the dial on the front. When a batch is just about to come out of the oven, a press of the button will notify the bakery's Twitter followers that freshly baked goods are now available.
On a technical note, BakerTweet is built using the extremely interesting (and open source) Arduino prototyping system. The possibilities of this kind of system — extending eminently hackable web apps like Twitter even further, into the realms of hardware — are the sort of thing that makes me glad to be working on the web right now.
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NES Mouse
link Saturday 2nd of May, 2009
Sadly not real. The best things so rarely are.
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9 0 0 0: Invaders
link Wednesday 29th of April, 2009
Had a few chuckles when this image turned up in my feed earlier (via Made in England). It's part of a pretty amazing stream of illustrations by the mysterious 9 0 0 0 — and I urge you to check it out.
The aforementioned chuckles were due to fond memories of a first-year project I did in college, designing (and selling) a bunch of one-off t-shirts. One of my favourites (and the one I wish I'd kept)...
Great minds and all that.
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Classic Adventures in Javascript: sarien.net
link Tuesday 21st of April, 2009
Sarien.net is pretty cool — several of the original Sierra graphical adventure games, entirely emulated in Javascript. Clever as fuck, and commendable both for the technical achievement and for allowing people another chance to play these great games. Currently playable are Space Quest 1, Leisure Suit Larry, and Police Quest — games I have fond memories of, even if my own Golden Age of graphical adventures happened a few years later.
Sadly, considering how text-based these games are, the text is letterspaced so badly as to be almost unreadable. Hopefully this'll get fixed soon — although I suspect a user-defined stylesheet might do the trick just as nicely!
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Spy vs Spy: New York
link Thursday 2nd of April, 2009
I've never read Mad Magazine, but I remember Spy vs. Spy's microcomputer appearance very fondly from my childhood. This window display is a great idea, put together beautifully. I'd love to see the interior displays!
(Via Monoscope).
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Ruth Pearson
link Wednesday 1st of April, 2009
Some great packaging design from third-year student Ruth Pearson. I especially like the aesthetic of the self-initiated Tesco Value rebrand. There's something really fit for purpose about the look, even if the idea itself is probably flawed — prices in supermarkets fluctuate so wildly that you'd need to reprint the labels constantly, I would have thought.
Via the Die Line, which has been turning up some really excellent packaging design recently.
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Albert-Jan Pool: The story of FF DIN
link Wednesday 25th of March, 2009
“ When you tell people something about type design, they would always come up with the idea that Futura is probably the best legible typeface, because people understand how the forms are being made — this is a circle, this is a triangle... People think that if they can understand how letters are being constructed, they can also read them easily, but that is nonsense. One doesn't need to understand the way letters are made before one gets to read them. ”
A great interview with Albert-Jan Pool, on the creation of a typeface I'd dearly love to own.