Dan Rubin's SuperfluousBanter

Month: May 2004

First Publication

We are pleased to announce the availability of our first eBook, in PDF format, entitled “Budget Design: Increase Profit by Improving Process.” We postponed launch several times due to our busy schedules — but Dan e-mailed me last night to announce that the web site was live and that downloading can start as of now. Many thanks to Dave Shea for adding his stamp of approval by way of contributing the foreword.

The best part? We offer it free for 7 days! Yup. Free. So get it for free while you can. After 7 days we will charge $9. That’s still a bargain. The payment phase will be an experiment of sorts, to see what kind of interest there is in this sort of publication. Please let us know what you think. Leave a comment here or send us a message.

As for me, I’m somewhere in Europe waiting to catch a flight to Greece. Vacation indeed. Dan e-mailed me that he was catching a flight too (nice timing, eh?) so I decided to find a moment to write up this entry. See you all again in 10 days.

May 28, 2004
Contrasting Vision

In one of my previous posts I encouraged people to abandon #000 as copy text colour in favour of lighter shades such as #333 or even #666, for example. In retrospect there are two things wrong with that post. First, I should not tell people what, or what not to do, even if my words were meant as a somewhat ironic, very much tongue-in-cheek statement. It is never my intention to communicate with such an attitude. Second, I wasn’t joking — even if ironic, I was somewhat serious. But was I right to make such a statement?

(more…)

May 22, 2004
Weekend Reading (21)
- NextFest: The
  Shape of Things to Come Wired
  Magazine
- The
  Power Of Design Bruce
  Nussbaum â€” BusinessWeek
- A
  Design Epiphany: Keep It Simple Jessie
  Scanlon â€” The New York Times (Free Registration)
- Annals
  of Academia, Part I: What I Didn’t Learn In Graduate School Annals
  of Academia, Part II: Graphic Design and The New Optimism Jessica
  Helfand â€” Design Observer
May 22, 2004
Design Eye for the Usability Guy

If you have to name one usability guru out there that is in desperate need of
a design makeover, who would you name? But of course, none other than Jakob
Nielsen. Therefor, in the spirit of sharing, Andrei Herasimchuk decided to
gather up some knowledgeable designers and help Nielsen with a little bit of design
advice. The Design Fab Five.

What a team we make: Andrei Herasimchuk,
D. Keith Robinson, Cameron
Moll, Greg Storey and myself. My role?
Illustration and graphics. Time to spice up that content a little. But that’s
not all — we’ve done the impossible: combine Nielsen and Flash (it
even feels odd putting those two in the same sentence.) But what am I waffling?
Take a look yourself and read
this most entertaining and useful piece.

May 19, 2004
Weekend Reading (20)
- Attitude
  or Aptidtude Justin
  Goodlett â€” skinnyj
- Revised Pricing Structure
  for Movable Type Personal Edition Jason
  Kottke â€” Kottke.org
- They Rule ia/
  blogs
- Technology’s
  Too-Small Sisterhood Alex
  Salkever â€” BusinessWeek
May 16, 2004