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Cool Hunting

  • Lunchables: Ten Lunch Boxes And Accessories

    In the spirit of the back-to-school season, this week we highlight a few products to help keep you organized and productive as you resume your routine. With a national obesity epidemic and failing economy, now is the time to go healthier and cheaper by bringing your own lunch to school or work. Avoid brown bag blues by upgrading to containers with better design and...

  • Five LED Task Lights

    In the spirit of the back-to-school season, this week we highlight a few products to help keep you organized and productive as you resume your routine. It's no secret that LED technology is paving the way for a brighter, more energy efficient future for lighting. Within the past several years, designs for LED lamps have come a long way and prices (for the most...

  • Ten Back To School/Work Bags

    In the spirit of the back-to-school season, this week we highlight a few products to help keep you organized and productive as you resume your routine. A well-designed bag can protect your valuables, keep you organized and even relieve muscle pain. We are a bit obsessive over which bags we use, so it's only fitting to kick off the back-to-school season with our selection...

  • Playing the Building

    In conjunction with Creative Time, Playing the Building is an installation by David Byrne that transformed a 9,000 square foot abandoned room in Lower Manhattan's Battery Maritime Building into an instrument for the summer. An antique pump organ controls devices that create sounds using the building's infrastructure, including heating pipes, metal beams and pillars. For a special event last month, curator Mark Beasley invited...

  • Mctega Jewerly

    By Ezra Natalia By using the mass production techniques of industrial chemistry on a much smaller scale Sarah McLellan and Kristina Ortega are able to create one of a kind pieces of jewelry for their new line named Mctega. Inspired by their pre-med educations and organic chemistry more specifically, the duo use materials known for their ubiquity to handcraft necklaces that are both creative...

AdPulp

  • Blog Me In St. Louis

    Just discovered AdSaint: The St. Louis Ad, Marketing and PR blog. It's published by Walt Jaschek, the Owner & CD of Walt Now Advertising and Branding. A good resource for anyone interested in the ad scene out in the Gateway City.

  • Old Man Shakes Some Salt

    One Size Fits One blogger, Anjali Ramachandran, spoke to AdScam's George Parker and kept from laughing long enough to write some of it down. Here are the parts I like best: Q. Given that you've spent over 30 years in ad land, do you think the BDA's have any hidden nuggets of gold up their sleeves at all? In other words, are there any lessons to be learnt from them? A. The number one lesson is don’t sell yourself to a conglomerate. Eventually you will be fucked, and turn into a BDA. That’s why Wieden continues to prosper and do good work. The only one who has got away with it so far is Goodby. ‘Cos Jeff and Rich have got Omnicom to trust them enough to leave them alone. Q. Which country or region has the best body of advertising work you've come across so far? Name some of these campaigns, and tell us what other countries/regions can learn from them. A. Some of the best work that’s ever run has come out of Sweden… Also Stockholm has the ultimate Ad Wankers hang out. The Café Opera Bar… Which is chock full of seven foot tall, blonde women, who if they like you, will buy you a drink. What the fuck is wrong with that? For the best work that’s never run… Brazil. You can see it every year at Cannes… Fucking douchenozzles!

  • Will Tweet for Greenbacks

    First there was a Tweet. And thanks to it, we now have a Cherp, an agency that proposes to manage social media campaigns on Twitter. Chris Brogan, for one, "is all for nifty social media projects," but this one has him wondering. The first person to comment on his post also wonders why you'd ever outsource the brand's social media duties. Here's the agency's pitch: Anyone can tweet. Our Clients Cherp. There is a difference... We want to guide you to social network marketing success. That’s our entire focus at Cherp - better strategies, better tools, better outcomes. There is no better time to get started on Twitter. Social media marketing isn’t going away and it’s not easy - it requires knowledge of and experience with the technology, the networks, and the way consumers engage the site. Anyone can buy ads on Facebook or Myspace. The real success in social media comes from interacting, and Twitter provides one of the best ways to accomplish this. Don’t just tweet...Cherp! Visit Cherp's Twitter page for more.

  • Daddy's Credit Card Accepted Here

    Roughly 18.3 million students will enroll in U.S. postsecondary institutions this fall, up 26% from 14.5 million a decade ago. The discretionary spending of these 18- to 30-year-old students is estimated to reach $53 billion this year, a fact which is leading several aggressive retailers to establish pop-up retail locations on college campuses. According to The Wall Street Journal, flip-flop maker Havaianas, a brand owned by Sao Paulo Alpargatas SA, plans to set up a temporary "pop-up" store on five campuses in the U.S. Victoria's Secret's Pink, a young women's clothing brand of Limited Brands Inc., this fall is opening its own pop-up store at about 12 schools, up from 10 last spring. Sustainable-clothing brand RVL7 is installing a bamboo-clad temporary ministore at six to eight campuses this fall, including the University of Colorado at Boulder and Arizona State University. These stores are brand builders, but they also move merchandise. Kiehl's Since 1851, a skin and hair-care company owned by L'Oréal SA, says its college pop-up stores perform "on par with what our normal store would do" in daily sales per square foot.

  • Blogging Gets Its Turn At The Plate

    Major League Baseball is spending $65 million this fall to advertise its postseason action, according to The New York Times. When Major League Baseball was looking for a pitchman last year for the postseason, it turned to the social networking site MySpace and found that Dane Cook, the comedian and actor, had a lot of friends. This year M.L.B. and its playoff and World Series broadcast partners, Fox and TBS, decided to showcase a different aspect of life on the Internet: blogging, which will be a common thread in the 20 or so advertisements. Each spot is a juxtaposition of baseball history and new media, with bloggers conjuring up moments like Bobby Thomson’s “Shot Heard ’Round the World,” Carlton Fisk’s walk-off home run in Game 6 of the 1975 World Series and Kirk Gibson’s hobble around the bases in the 1988 series. The message is meant to be that even if your favorite team is out, you can tune in the playoffs to see something potentially historic.

AdFreak

  • Pickens puts his mouth where his money is

    The problem with T. Boone Pickens' campaign to make America less dependent on foreign oil (a campaign that's riled up NBC's networks) is its reliance on T. Boone Pickens. I keep accidentally typing Slim Pickens while writing this—it's driving me...

  • Old Spice takes LL Cool J from zero to hero

    This spot for Old Spice's Swagger, by Wieden + Kennedy, has opened a window into LL Cool J's adolescence.

  • Your rooster wants to play in the nighttime

    Cryptic ads urging me to "silence my rooster" have been receiving heavy play during the convention coverage. But what are they for?

  • Advertising in Toronto spans earth and sky

    Thanks to agencies Zig and Bos (who should team up for an Adult Swim show), you can't look up or down in Toronto without seeing an ad. For radio station CFRB 1010, Zig poses controversial questions that the broadcaster might...

  • One look, and the ads know what you need

    Let's hope Facial Recognition Technology, intended to recognize customers by scanning their faces and serve in-store ads based on their past purchases, doesn't malfunction.

....HOW ADVERTISING SPOILED ME....

  • Wonderbra!

    An interesting viral ad for Wonderbra!

  • Wonderbra!

    An interesting viral ad for Wonderbra!

  • Pepsi - Dare for more!

    Titles: "Surfer", "Climber" and "Boarder"Creative Directors: Veikko Hille, Sebastian Hardieck, Toygar BazarkayaArt Director: Michael PlückhahnCopywriter: Dietmar Neumann Beratung: Heike Flottmann, Annika LauhöferArt Buying: Birgit PaulatProduction: Stefan Kranefeld Imaging, DüsseldorfAgency: BBDO GermanyThey´ve just won the Grand Prix at the Epica Awards. The motifs are inspired by the famous Pepsi-Logo in red, white and blue and show adventurous pictures. Thanks Markus for sending me the ads.

  • Jump higher!

    Advertising Agency: Advico Young & Rubicam, Zurich, SwitzerlandExecutive Creative Director: Urs SchrepferArt Director: Marietta AlbinusCopywriter: Martin StulzPhotographer: Markus WeberVia: I believe in adv

  • 'Good things come to those who wait'. - Guinness C…

    Title: Tipping PointAgency: AMV BBDO

Design Observer: Main Posts

  • Topanga, I Hardly Knew Ye

    I’ve always wondered why anyone with taste would pay thousands of dollars to publish one of those text-heavy, type-awful, full-page magazine advertisements void of any semblance of graphic design nuance or sophistication.

  • Design Observer Party: Denver, October 12

    It is now a Design Observer tradition to host the best party at the AIGA Biennal Conference. This year's event is in Denver at The Milk Bar @ The Shelter. Friday, October 12 from 9:00pm to 2:00am. 1037 Broadway, "South of Colfax Nightlife District."

  • Rest in Peace, Herbert Muschamp

    Officially published for the first time as a posthumous tribute: a loving parody of the writing of the late, great architectural critic Herbert Muschamp.

  • A Plea to The New York Times: Index Your Art

    Why does the art that adds so much to the texts published in The New York Times disappear? Why cannot The New York Times simply index the art that it publishes, at least leaving the bibliographic tracings of the work in their newspaper?

  • Wood That We Could

    Remember back in the late 1980s, when Minneapolis was a hotbed of creative energy? Back when brochures were tied together with braid and twigs? Minnesota was making a play for the next big thing: the North Woods look. Well, it's back...

Authentic Boredom

  • Job description interestingness at Authentic Jobs

    So, this month I figured I'd do something a little different to expose some of the great job opportunities found at Authentic Jobs. I've plumbed through most of the listings currently on the site, and I've made note of some of the interesting job descriptions, perk benefits, and stuff I personally find appealing. Full-time (International) Not only is it probably the best email campaign software available online, but Campaign Monitor also offers one of the most enjoyable user experiences I've had with any web app. They're seeking a Web/Interface Designer in Sydney, Australia, one who's passionate about continuing to create enjoyable user experiences. Full-time (U.S.) Quiksilver is seeking a Graphic Designer in their internet marketing department in Huntington Beach, "the largest stretch of uninterrupted beachfront on the West Coast" (H.B. City official website). TripAdvisor, which Suzanne and I are using to help prepare a possible trip to Europe next year, needs a Lead Web Developer in Boston. Located in downtown "Nashvegas", paramore|redd needs a Designer/Developer with a sharp eye for design and the ability to code XHTML/CSS like a champ. Send portfolio work to canihazjob [at] paramoreredd.com. HUGE is seeking an Art Director in Los Angeles who will work hard with a great lineup of clients, and then play hard with 15 paid days off, 10 company holidays, and your birthday off. I'm especially fond of university websites, having designed a few myself, so it's a pleasure for me to encourage you to head over and apply for Web Adminstrator/Developer position at New York University. Best Buy needs an Associate Creative Director for bestbuy.com -- a pretty prominent position, IMO -- for a variety of efforts: directing internal and external resources, leading brand positioning, assembling and assigning team members, and more. Position is in Richfield, Minnesota. Cisco Systems (San Jose, CA) is looking for a Frontend Engineer with expert knowledge of CSS1 through CSS3(!), among other things. JavaScript guru? Apple needs a UI Engineer. Chronicle Books, an independent publisher in San Francisco, is looking for an Interactive Designer with wizardry in the development of web pages, Flash promotional movies, email newsletters, banner ads, blogs, landing pages and mini-sites. (Whew!) Merge (Greenville, South Carolina) wants to find a Web Designer Extraordinaire with a "portfolio that would make your mother proud" and one who is competitive enough to endure the "mandatory Nintendo Wii bowling tourneys." UnitOneNine needs a Rockstar Designer in Chicago, and this pretty much sums it up: "If you're currently at a job that doesn't have much room for freedom in design, office environment, or just being able to wake up late and come to the office when you want, contact us." Post a job or find one at Authentic Jobs.

  • Beethoven's Heiligenstadt Testament

    In Beethoven's Heiligenstadt Testament: A Study in Capability vs. Capacity, I explore what I consider one of Ludwig van Beethoven's greatest "works" and how it helps answer the question, "What does it take to go from good designer to great designer?" (More about the layout of this article here.)

  • Upcoming speaking events

    So, I began 2008 with a goal of minimizing my travel this year following two years of continuous speaking events, and I've done a pretty good job of sticking to that goal. I'll wrap up this year with a couple events in Utah, a web radio interview, and another appearance at An Event Apart. AIGA Salt Lake City August 14th, 7pm This event will be held just across the freeway from me at the Art Institute of Salt Lake City (Draper, Utah). I'll be speaking on striving for design excellence individually and as a team. Admission is $5 for students and AIGA members, $10 for guests. Couch Cast web radio interview August 18th, 12pm MST Anyone is welcome to listen live or call in by dialing (347) 324-3797 during recording. WordCamp Utah September 27th To be held in Provo, Utah with WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg and others. I'll be presenting Good vs. Great Design. An Event Apart Chicago October 13th and 14th I'll be speaking on a new topic, The In-House Designer. Use promo code AEAMOLL and save $50 on registration.

  • Linkification

    This is something that's been on my mind for some time now, probably a few years: How do we select the particular words that are linked within a sentence or paragraph, and does it matter for the user? Here's an example: John Coltrane’s 'A Love Supreme' is on sale at iTunes for just $7.99. How would you choose to link that up, and why? Is one more "effective" than the other, however you define that? A) John Coltrane’s 'A Love Supreme' is on sale at iTunes for just $7.99. B) John Coltrane’s 'A Love Supreme' is on sale at iTunes for just $7.99. C) John Coltrane’s 'A Love Supreme' is on sale at iTunes for just $7.99. D) John Coltrane’s 'A Love Supreme' is on sale at iTunes for just $7.99. E) John Coltrane’s 'A Love Supreme' is on sale at iTunes for just $7.99. F) John Coltrane’s 'A Love Supreme' is on sale at iTunes for just $7.99. G) John Coltrane’s 'A Love Supreme' is on sale at iTunes for just $7.99. Cast your vote (or suggest an alternative) with a supporting argument.

  • The In-House Designer

    An Event Apart Chicago is just a few months away, and I'll have the privilege of speaking on a brand new topic, "The In-House Designer": The fundamental principles of design remain constant irrespective of organization size, technical discipline, and the like. Yet within larger organizations, the dynamics of applying these principles, the ability to produce quality output, and overall job satisfaction are a challenge at times. Learn how to hone your technical skills, and, more importantly, your soft skills, to effectively grapple with the politics and red tape that are common to larger organizations—or, for that matter, to client services work. In my mind, this is a subject that's long overdue for being addressed in conferences, and I'm excited to take a shot at addressing it. But I'd like your help. What are the issues common to "larger organizations"? I'd be willing to bet the majority of you reading this work at companies larger than most agencies and startups and therefore have experience and an understanding of the challenges I speak of above. So, help me start a list of things I may address in the presentation. I'll start: Uninspiring workspaces Passionless employees An abundance of paperwork needed for anything and everything Legacy methodologies (e.g. waterfall software development) ... What can you add?

Typographica

  • Review: "Dangerous Curves" by Doyald Young

    Young describes the context in which the design was developed, and the motivations that drive decisions to completion – ranging from a client's desire for "something bolder still," to thorough discussion of the limitations of a Bodoni. ...Possibly the result of never drawing a typeface or the percevied barrier a mouse creates between the hand and work on screen, it's rare that designers take such care and liberty to modify type.

  • An Interview with Cyrus Highsmith

    And I should note that John's idea of "good" handwriting was not akin to that of our school teachers in respect to being "neat" and traditional, but more interested it seemed in the energy and personal style of the handwriting. ... CP: You work on a wide range of kinds of typefaces (scripts, display, text, novelty), and I know that you've said that this is very important to the way you work as a type designer. Cyrus Highsmith, design, interview, type

  • Our Favorite Typefaces of 2007

    Typographica’s fourth annual review showcases the best in new typeface design. Twenty four of the world’s brightest graphic and type designers selected their favorite font releases of the year.

  • Urbana by Cesar Puertas

    This rightness comes in part from an especially assured use of the Dwiggins inspired visual trope of a round curve and cut curve on the interior lines of the letterforms. ...But I think in time designers will come to appreciate the solid reliability of it’s design along with it’s quiet novelty that draws and maintains the reader’s attention.

  • Taz III by Luc(as) de Groot

    What makes me so particularly fond of Taz and other de Groot typefaces is the care with which they are made, and most of all, their excellent spacing and kerning. ... Spacing must be one of Luc(as) de Groot’s obsessions, not only expressed in the actual work but also in presentations and interviews which repeatedly emphasize the need not only for kerning pairs but for kerning triplets (thanks to OpenType, this is possible now).

Jeffrey Zeldman Presents The Daily Report

  • Running woman and madman

    Two incidents mark my morning walk to work.

  • ALA 266: next generation sprites, metaphors

    CSS Sprites, the next generation. Cartography, the next metaphor for webmaking. Dave Shea and Aaron Rester aim high and score in Issue No. 266 of A List Apart, for people who make websites.

  • Photos from An Event Apart San Francisco

    Take a dip in the Flickr photo pool from An Event Apart San Francisco 2008. Day Two is about to begin.

  • Jubilat!

    Darden Studio has relaunched its website and released Jubilat, a fabulous slab serif. We've been beta-testing Jubilat all year; it's my principal typeface for An Event Apart in 2008. (Last year's principal An Event Apart typeface was Darden Studio's Freight Sans.) New to Joshua Darden's work? Try Birra Stout, a free font.

  • In the bag

    Early tomorrow, I leave for San Francisco. Headed into my laptop bag, along with my MacBook, are… An iPod Classic containing 8624 “songs” (I like music) and 46 “movies.” Sample titles: A Mighty Wind, A Night at the Opera, Helvetica, Kiki’s Delivery Service, Lost in Translation, North by Northwest, Rushmore, Spirited Away, Stardust Memories, Stranger Than [...]

hicksdesign - journal

  • The Dell Hybrid

    Ye gads, Dell have shocked the pants off me with this tasty piece of industrial design! The diminutive Dell Hybrid PC comes with optional coloured sleeves, but in particular I rather love the bamboo sleeve version: This kind of thing adds warmth and organic feel into something where normally only cold industrial aluminium or cheap black & grey plastic was before. Granted, there may well be cheap plastic in there, but this is a Dell that I would be proud to have on my desk. The specs also show it would make a good TV media centre – if only I could install OS X on it! More details on the Hybrid here Maybe I’ll buy a bloody Dell after all.

  • Listen with Delia

    Delia Derbyshire has long been considered ahead of her time. One of the earliest creators of electronic music, she is most famous for her work with the BBC’s Radiophonic Workshop in Maida Vale, at which she created the haunting original Dr Who theme, in an age without synthesizers: A lot of modern musicians like Orbital, Stereolab and Spacemen 3 cite her work as an influence, and it’s easy to to see why. What sparked this blog post was the news that more of her work has been discovered, some 267 tapes to be exact! All of this is going to be digitized and made available, but in particular was this experimental dance track that she created in the 60’s. Made decades before ‘electronic dance music’ really happened, and yet it sounds like something created today. This clip from a BBC Four documentary gives some insight into how she created music with reel to reel tapes: Sadly she died in 2001 at 64, just after rediscovering her love of electronic music, working with Peter Kember (Spacemen 3, Sonic Boom), of which she said: “Working with people like Sonic Boom on pure electronic music has re-invigorated me. He is from a later generation but has always had an affinity with the music of the 60s. Now without the constraints of doing ‘applied music’, my mind can fly free and pick-up where I left off.” Discover more about her life at delia-derbyshire.org

  • Geneviève Gauckler on CBBC?

    I’m big fan of the French artist/illustrator Geneviève Gauckler, having discovered her work via the Guardian Angel Room project. Now, I’m not sure why, but I was really surprised to see her work (or at least her style) in the backgrounds of CBBC, the site for BBC’s youth output. I’ve tried to do a bit of searching, but no information is forthcoming, and I can’t see a credit anywhere. I’m surprised, can anyone tell me if these really are her work? There’s also wallpapers available too:

  • Opera Web Standards Curriculum

    Gawd Bless™ Chris MIlls and Gawd Bless™ Opera, for together with authors like Norm they have begat the Opera Web Standards Curriculum. I linked to this in my sidenotes a couple of days ago, but really felt it deserved a bit more attention, considering the extraordinary amount of work that has gone into it. Opera’s new Web Standards Curriculum, released in association with the Yahoo! Developer Network, is a complete course to teach you standards-based web development, including HTML, CSS, design principles and background theory, and JavaScript basics. It already has support from many organizations (including Yahoo! and the Web Standards Project) and universities. The first 23 articles are currently available, with about 30 more to be published between now and late September. Finally, there is non-reference resource to point people to, where they can actually learn in stages what web standards mean, and how to adopt and use them to build a better web. Heartily slapped backs to all of the contributors!

  • The Stolen Earth Punditry

    This is for those who watched (and care about!) Dr Who episode 12 The Stolen Earth, so be warned – there are spoilers! This email landed this morning: “I’m surprised to not see a Dr Who post on your blog. Are we going to get one? Will David Tennant be staying? Did you feel a pang of sadness at the thought of losing our current doctor?” Ah, go on then. I don’t think this is when David Tennant leaves, and I base that solely on the fact that he’s been seen filming the Christmas Episode! However, some points against that though: It’s possible that the production team kept his leaving secret – after all they had planned that Rose would be coming back, and managed to keep it secret for a couple of years. Catherine Tate did put her foot in it by saying this was his last season, after which there was an air of ‘she let the cat out of the bag’ The scenes for the Christmas episode may be flashbacks, or some other ‘Time-Crash’ style plot device. Or even a complete Red Herring. Ood Sigma telling him that his “song may soon end” (although I take this to refer to Professor River Song – too literal?) Still, my feeling is that next year’s special episodes will be his last. 3-4 years is the usual reign for a Doctor, and I’m sure that he would want to move on soon. He’s a great actor after all, and wouldn’t want to be typecast no matter how much of a fan he is. I hope he doesn’t go though – he makes even a bad script magic to watch. So if this isn’t his last story, as I’m reckoning, then that leaves some issues. Will they back out and do some cringey plot device about how he regenerated but ‘came back the same’? Hopefully not, but here’s my theory: There was a brief mention to Donna that she ‘had something on her back’ – referencing the previous episode (Apparently Dextrus says this to Donna in ‘Fires of Pompeii’, but I missed that reference). There is still a Time Beetle™ on her back, and once some other choice is reversed, it will undo all these events. Anyway, we’ll see come Saturday!

Dave Shea's mezzoblue

  • Sneakernet SVN

    I've gotten myself used to checking all my projects into a pair of USB key subversion repositories. Here's my setup.

  • OpenDNS

    I'm wading deep into unfamiliar water here, so take my assessment with a grain of salt because I'm not sure I'm describing it totally accurately. But this strikes me as a Big Deal that needs to be disseminated as far...

  • Domain Registry Scam

    This morning's mail brought me a renewal notice from my domain registrar. Except, wait.

  • Design Notes

    Time to dive back in to the Bright Creative redesign I wrote about last week, and focus on some of the good stuff that came out of it. Most people got it; but for anyone who misinterpreted my laundry list...

  • Design Rants

    Last night I launched a long-needed redesign of my business site, Bright Creative. The site had been languishing for years, but fact is, it is a business and I do keep my contract work at arm's length from what goes...

Signal vs. Noise

  • 37signals Affiliate Program Update

    Just a quick update on our new 37signals Affiliate Program. We launched it about 90 days ago and so far we’ve seen about 1000 new product signups referred by 37signals Affiliates. Basecamp leads referrals, Backpack is second and Highrise a very close third. Some people are working harder than others. The top affiliate has potential earnings of over $1300 already! If you’re an affiliate, thanks for representing our product to your clients, colleagues, friends, and family. If you’re not, please consider becoming a 37signals Affiliate today. It only takes 30 seconds to get started and there’s no cost to you.

  • Behind the scenes: Redesigning and coding the High…

    I’ve wanted to redesign the Highrise sidebars for a long time. They’ve felt cluttered and messy to me, and as we add more features to Highrise the mess will only multiply. So I was glad to have the chance this week to redesign the sidebar modules. The visual side of the redesign was straightforward, but implementing the design in code required a few tricks. Here’s a look behind the scenes at the coding decisions we made for the new Highrise sidebars. “Subjects” in Highrise Which sidebar modules am I talking about? In Highrise you can keep track of People, Companies, and Cases. These all have the same basic code and UI. You can keep notes about them, set tasks for the future, and manage some common types of metadata. Since People, Companies and Cases share so much plumbing, we’ve abstracted them as subjects. A subject is anything in Highrise that you can attach notes and tasks to. When you look at a subject’s page, you see a sidebar with some modules for adding or editing metadata such as contact information, background information (a kind of static text description), dates to remember for that subject, and more. The screenshot below shows a subject page with the sidebar modules highlighted. Redesigning the modules Each module has a header like “Contact Bob” or “Dates to remember” and data below. In the original design, modules can be either “active” or “empty” based on whether they have any data in them. Empty modules have a grey header and an “add” link floated right. Active modules have a light blue header and an “edit” link on the right. We made this distinction so your eye would more easily catch active modules when you’re looking for information. The idea was good, but the original implementation looked messy with its mix of grey and blue, scattered red action links, and lack of separation between modules. For the first redesign (above) we cleaned up the modules. Active modules are now wrapped entirely in a light grey box with a tiny drop shadow. We killed the blue header style, relying instead on the space between modules to separate them. Empty modules no longer have a header. They are grey boxes collapsed down to a single link to add the content relevant to that module. Finally we replaced all the red links with grey links in order to put the focus on the data within active modules rather than all the possible actions. One last tweak: we changed the text for “About [subject’s name]” to “Add background information.” We’ve gone back and forth a number of times on the language for this feature, and at this stage we decided to try “background info” on for size again. The first redesign was a big improvement. But we didn’t like the way active and empty modules looked mixed together. The dim bar in between those two active modules creates a kind of striped look that we want to avoid. The problem was worse on subjects with more sidebar modules, like companies or cases. So we decided to group all the active modules together on the top, and then group the empty modules on the bottom. The result is much cleaner, and it’s easier to scan when you load up a subject in order to quickly grab some info like an email address or birthday. The re-ordered sidebar was a winner. But it came at a price. We couldn’t just change the CSS and call it a day. Now we also had to write code to re-order the sidebar modules dynamically based on whether they were empty or active. Ruby’s power and flexibility really came in handy for this job. The code I said earlier that people, companies, and cases are handled by the same plumbing because we abstracted them as subjects. The result of this abstraction is that whether you are looking at a person, a company or a case, the sidebar is rendered by the same template: subjects/_sidebar.rhtml. (This kind of “view polymorphism” has been subject to a lot of internal debate since we first released the app. It makes maintenance both easier and harder because the code has less repetition on one hand but on the other it is less intention-revealing due to the abstractions and indirection.) This is what the original template code looked like to render the subject sidebars: in app/views/subjects/_sidebar.rhtml: <% if @subject.is_a?(Party) %> <%= render(:partial => 'parties/contact_info') %> <% end %> <% if show_company_contact_info?(@subject) %> <%= render(:partial => 'parties/contact_info', :object => @subject.company) %> <% end %> <%= render :partial => 'backgrounds/show' %> <%= render :partial => 'contact_dates/index' %> <% if @subject.is_a?(Kase) %> <%= render :partial => 'kases/parties' %> <% end %> <% if @subject.is_a?(Company) %> <%= render :partial => 'companies/people' %> <% end %> Don’t worry too much about the individual partials and conditions. The key point is that each partial is a sidebar module, and each module is conditioned based on the particular subject we are rendering. A different mixture of partials will be rendered depending on whether the subject is a person, a company or a case, but they’ll always render in the same order. We want to re-order these partials dynamically based on whether each module is active or empty. That means we need to represent the possible partials, the conditions for displaying them, and also the conditions for determining whether they are active or empty within some kind of data structure. So we popped open our Rails subjects_helper.rb and represented this information in an array. in app/views/helpers/subjects_helper.rb: def sidebar_modules_to_sort returning [] do |m| # partial to render module_is_active? options render the module for this subject? m << ['parties/contact_info' , show_contact_info_module_on_top?, {} ] if @subject.is_a?(Party) m << ['parties/contact_info' , true , {:object => @subject.company} ] if show_company_contact_info?(@subject) #necessarily true per the condition at right m << ['backgrounds/show' , !@subject.background.blank? , {} ] m << ['contact_dates/index' , @contact_dates.any? , {} ] m << ['collections/parties' , @subject.parties.any? , {} ] if looking_at_collection? m << ['companies/people' , @subject.people.any? , {} ] if @subject.is_a?(Company) end end The helper method sidebar_modules_to_sort returns a parent array full of child arrays, one for each module with an element for the template path, a true/false value to show if it is active, and an options hash for the render method. The conditions that used to determine whether each partial should be rendered now determine whether each child array should be included in the parent array. Thanks to that boolean in the second element of each child array, we can partition the parent array into two groups: those where the second element which represents that the module is ‘active’ are true, and those were that element is false. We use another helper method to partition and reassemble the array into groups. in app/views/helpers/subjects_helper.rb: def sidebar_modules_in_order active_group, empty_group = sidebar_modules_to_sort.partition {|m| m[1]} active_group.concat empty_group end Finally we return to our sidebar template to do the actual rendering. in app/views/subjects/_sidebar.rhtml: <%= sidebar_modules_in_order.map {|m| render sidebar_module_partial(m)}.join %> This line in the template takes the sorted array of sidebar modules and replaces each element in the array with the rendered partial. Then the join method converts each element to a string and concatenates them. sidebar_module_partial is a call to one more helper. This helper assembles the arguments for render out of the elements provided in the array. It looks like this: in app/helpers/subjects_helper.rb: def sidebar_module_partial(m) m[2].merge({:partial => m[0]}) end In the snippet above, sidebar_module_partial takes the third element of each module array, which is either an empty hash or some special options for render, and merges a key specifying the template path onto that hash. We definitely could’ve hidden these rendering gymnastics behind a helper, perhaps called render_sidebar_modules or something similar. However we’ve decided for style reasons to avoid calling render from within our helpers. Therefore we decided to use a helper to merely fill in the arguments to the call to render within the template itself. In the end, we have a new sidebar design and some clean and intention-revealing code. This was a fun chance for me to expand my Ruby knowledge by dipping into the nuts and bolts of arrays and hashes. Thanks to Jamis for reviews and advice when I knew there had to be “a better way.” We hope you enjoy the new sidebar modules in Highrise. Related: What belongs in a helper method?

  • Activation fees are obscene

    Wanna feel ripped off today? Sign up for an online virtual service that charges a one-time activation fee. It’s a special feeling to hand over $35 for nothing. I’d almost understand if there was actual work involved. Or hardware was manually set up. Or someone had to climb some stairs and walk down a few halls to flip something on. But to charge me $35 to “activate” my account by adding a few records to a few databases, well, that feels like… You know what that feels like.

  • Product Blog update: Highrise boosts magic site, f…

    Some recent posts at the 37signals Product Blog: Highrise Top magic site thrives due to Highrise and Getting Real “The real crux of our system is Highrise. We use it in managing projects, production, post-production, and marketing. We use it to stay organized. We use it to manage our authorized retailer clients around the world. And we couldn’t breathe as well or sleep as well without it.” Backpack All about tags in Backpack A tag is a simple label or keyword you can use to categorize your Backpack pages any way you want. Then when you click a tag you can see all the other pages that have that tag. It’s a great way to keep your pages loosely grouped in ways that make sense to you. Scottish wood floor company runs its business using Backpack “Our first task was to store documents that we use on to our ‘Important Documents’ page. Traditionally these documents were stored on our company server but it was sometimes problematic accessing these via a VPN if we were working from home or abroad. Accessing them on the cloud via Backpack has simplified this task and we are now working faster and with less hassle.” McKay Hardwood Flooring, a Backpack customer, installed the flooring throughout the National Galleries of Scotland. Basecamp Embedding a tutorial video into a Basecamp project “I used the same idea to embed our Camtasia videos into our Tutorials project… solves a huge issue for me since before I could only add a link to the video … I have attached a image of how it looks. It was a great help.” Subscribe to the Product Blog RSS feed.

  • The danger of laughing at your customers

    The other day I went to sell some books at The Strand bookstore. They have a separate desk in the back for selling books. I brought in a bag and two clerks started sorting through them. Then another guy lined up behind me. One of the clerks said to him, “You here to sell books?” He said, “Yes.” The clerk responded, “Wait in the line outside.” The guy went outside. Thirty seconds later he was back. The clerk repeated, “Wait in the line outside.” The guy said meekly, “There is no line outside.” The clerk sighed, looked at the other clerk, and sarcastically said, “There is no line outside.” The other clerk said gruffly, “If you can’t figure out the line, then you can’t sell books here.” The potential seller walked back outside meekly. A minute later, a girl walked up with books. “Wait in the line outside,” said the clerk again. She walked outside. A few moments later, she was back. “What are you doing?” She said, “Selling books.” He said, “The line is outside.” She walked outside again. The clerks laughed. “Let’s see if the Mensa society out there can figure out how the line works!” And they laughed some more. As if both these customers were complete morons. Lucky for me, I had arrived moments before these other two. Because I sure had no idea there was a place outside to wait in line. Or that “there’s a line outside” actually means “form a line outside.” I think a lot of people who work in customer service make a similar mistake in laughing at customers or making fun of them behind their backs (PEBKAC comes to mind). It can be a dangerous trap. Sure, any one customer might be stupid. But if multiple customers are repeatedly making the same mistake, maybe it’s not a mistake on their part. Maybe it’s a mistake on your part. If no one can figure out where to wait in line, maybe that’s a sign that you’re not doing a good enough job explaining it.

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