Creative outlet of Douglas Bowman
Part 2 of 2 (here’s Part 1)
Yesterday was my first day at Twitter.
Yes, it’s true. After reading a bit of speculation over the past few weeks, I’ll confirm here that I am, indeed, joining Twitter. I don’t remember ever being as eager or excited to start a new job as I’ve been with this one. (Thus, why I only took one week off between jobs.) continued
Part 1 of 2 (here’s Part 2)
Today is my last day at Google.
I started working in-house at Google almost three years ago. I built a team from scratch. I was fortunate to hire a team of a very talented designers. We introduced Visual Design as a discipline to Google. And we produced amazing work together. I’m very proud of my team, and I wish them well. They have a lot of challenging work ahead. But for me, it’s time to move on. continued
Paul Boag lays it down. A must read.
You need to take control of the design process. It’s your site and you should get the design you want. The role of the designer is to implement your idea. Do not allow him to drag you down into endless discussions about ‘users needs’, ‘accessibility’ and ‘usability’. These are all distractions from the primary aim – to impress your boss and earn that next promotion.
Ok, I’ll admit, it took me reading past the first point to calm down and avoid jumping through the screen to grab Paul’s throat.
Until some future version of HTML gives us new native controls to use in a browser, at Google, we’ve been playing and experimenting with controls we call “custom buttons” in our apps (among other custom controls). These buttons just launched in Gmail yesterday, and they’ve been in Google Reader for two months now. The buttons are designed to look very similar to basic HTML input buttons. But they can handle multiple interactions with one basic design. The buttons we’re using are imageless, and they’re created entirely using HTML and CSS, plus some JavaScript to manage the behavior. They’re also easily skinnable with a few lines of CSS, which was a key factor now that Gmail has themes.
I thought it would be interesting to provide a portion of the background on our buttons here, and discuss some of the iterations we’ve been through so far to get to the current state. continued
The practical, down-to-earth, and beautifully-designed book, A Practical Guide to Designing for the Web, written and self-published by Mark Boulton, is available for purchase and download (as PDF) as of today.
Truth as I know it: this design would not be what it is — nor would I be the designer I am nor care as much about what I do — without the inspiration, critiques, guidance, mentorship, contributions, camaraderie, encouragement, and support of certain people with whom I have crossed paths in my lifetime. continued
With a bit of humility and even a little nervousness, it’s time to take the wraps off a new design I’ve been working on for nearly a month. My hesitation comes not from revealing the new design, but from my decision early on to make the site more personal, and feel less like an “agency”. I also hesitate because of the elephant in the room: the fact that, up until now, my writing here trickled down to a few entries a year. continued
Andy Rutledge walks through the redesign of Unit. My favorite part of the redesign: their contact form.
It’s rare these days that something pulls me out of the woodwork to write something here on Stopdesign. A few recent posts by Jason and David at 37signals (Why we skip Photoshop and Web designers should do their own HTML/CSS, respectively) got me thinking though. This post began as a response on an email thread at work. I’m expanding it here to a wider audience. continued