So for those of you who don’t know what a slow day of design is like, or those who do and enjoy the stories revolving around those days, here’s a segment that you find entertaining as my college chum Melissa, who’s a designer in the Jacksonville, FL area, and I struggle to work on a day where things just aren’t going to happen. Just as a warning, I have no real issue with Mormons, cashews, Ellen DeGeneres, Whoopie Goldberg, Kelly Rippa, or The Osmonds… well, maybe The Osmonds, but it’s nothing personal.

Melissa: I’m going to tell you something, and it might rock your world.

PMA: Uh oh

Melissa: Thus changing the way you view daily life. Are you ready?

PMA: wait a sec… ……. …..okaaaay………. *deep breathe*….. Go!

Melissa: Warning label on peanut butter. “Warning contains peanuts”

PMA: …….I’m let down

Melissa: Oh God you took me seriously?

PMA: No, but I thought it be something grander.

Melissa: Oh, no, sadly.

PMA: Tisk, www.petermichaelsallen.com/laialpha/index3.html

Melissa: Just chunky peanut butter contain peanuts… hmm… What if it had said “contains nuts”?

PMA: See, now THAT blows my mind a bit

Melissa: Then that would be shocking! I’d be like “What other nuts you putting in my peanut butter!”

PMA: THOSE DAMN BASTARDS!!

Melissa: Well what do you think of the bigger boarder?

PMA: or some other ridiculous nut, like cashews. Boarder? You’re talking about adding a boarder?

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I am an utter Mac geek, but I fall short of zealot. I want MacBook Pro, I want Leopard, and Time Machine, and Time Capsule, and iPhone (I heart my iPod Touch just the same) and many a glorious toy that would make my life a seamless gradient of white and gray with black outline. I do however leave a smidgen of room for Windows to impress me. It’s deep somewhere in the dankest, most dreadful hollow on my heart located somewhere between my secret enjoyment for karaoke and the memory of an Emily Rose impersonation I preformed on a bar last year. So yes, somewhere between embarrassment and vomiting lies my open mind of Microsoft. Read the rest of this entry »

In an effort to improve my aesthetic diversity, I have been combing around online for examples of improved methods of user interface design. Javascript, which I understood in conversations with my developer friends to be as lively as Latin, still presents some very sexy, open source applications that do just that. My favorite can be found at Read the rest of this entry »

For those of you who in whatever visual design, call yourself a Graphic Design, Web Designer, Multi-Media Fat Pants, or whatever you want; if you design for the web you have likely encountered what I deem: The Two Celestial Spankings. These being:

1. Thou shalt not use more than 72 colors, lest ye hast uber badass CSS skillz.
2. Thou shalt not use more than 6 font families, lest ye be sIFR endowed.

Since all Web design began, we have been warned that this is the proper, compliant means of communicating to our audience; and anything grander would make Gabriel piss himself. Read the rest of this entry »