Mark Bult Design: San Francisco, CA, Established 1988
Web design and development for small and large business, e-commerce, b2b, b2c, SAAS, and community websites. User experience design and usability testing.
In web design and development there is almost always a desire to surface as many items of content and functionality above “the fold”* as you can possibly cram in there: Top news, latest blog posts, branding, primary navigation, secondary navigation, customer testimonials, carousels, search box, Twitter stream, log in box, and of course at lease a couple ads.
Below is a brief catalog of the many years of user research that debunks the concept of the fold.
Let us be free of this burden once and for all. Our users already are.
* The fold is the viewable area of a web page seen by a visitor upon first landing on the page, without having scrolled. The concept comes from newspaper design. Since newspapers had to be folded in half to fit in racks or on newsstands, the attention-grabbing headlines and photos had to be placed “above the fold” to entice people to pick up the paper.
Sharing Information With Executives
A good read covering the following Executive Pet Peeves: 1) Numbers That Don’t Tie Out, 2) Misaligned Objectives, 3) Loyalty, 4) Errors, 5) Agenda. Written especially for analysts in the tech world, but containing some good advice for many workplaces. And indicative of many of the reasons to hate the corporate world. Or just people. [via MJ]
The weekly Thursday Top 5 lists the five most notable, interesting, funny, outrageous, cool, or simply strange things of the week. It is intended for distractionary purposes only. Do not take orally. If ingested, seek a doctor’s advice. If you like it, share it with others, or check out the long list of previous entries.
NPR’s “To the Best of Our Knowledge,” on fonts
Great show including an interview with Jonathan Hoefler and Tobias Frere-Jones, who created the font Gotham, recently popularized in the Obama campaign (and incidentally the font I use for my new site design, although I chose it before Obama’s team did). Also an interview with Matthew Carter, who designed Verdana and Georgia, two of the most prevalent fonts in the Internet. Listen to an RM stream here, or download the podcast MP3 here.
The weekly Thursday Top 5 lists the five most notable, interesting, funny, outrageous, cool, or simply strange things of the week. It is intended for distractionary purposes only. Do not take orally. If ingested, seek a doctor’s advice. If you like it, share it with others, or check out the long list of previous entries.
Posted by espd at 7:08 PM |
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Thursday, October 01, 2009
Thursday Top 5
Redwoods: The Tallest Trees
Photographer Nick Nichols spent a year planning the nearly impossible: a top-to-bottom photograph of a 300-foot-tall redwood tree, featured in a five-page fold-out in the October issue of National Geographic Magazine. It’s on newsstands now. Buy it!
Amazing new design technology
Whoah, I need this app!
Bert and Ernie tries Gangsta-Rap
Is dey West Coast or East Coast?
I Will Derive!
For the math dorks.
Western Spaghetti by PES
Quirky animations by PES. [via Fwegan]
The weekly Thursday Top 5 lists the five most notable, interesting, funny, outrageous, cool, or simply strange things of the week. It is intended for distractionary purposes only. Do not take orally. If ingested, seek a doctor’s advice. If you like it, share it with others, or check out the long list of previous entries.
Report non-humans Teaser for the film District 9, which came out last week. The science fiction film looks like an interesting take on racism. [Sorry about the auto-play, can’t disable it.]
10 Things You Mother Should Have Told You About Photoshop Some good Photoshop CS4 tips here, some of which I knew, but a few of which I always forget about. Good to have reminders about Masks and the new(ish) Adjustment Layers capabilities. I really should use those more.
The weekly Thursday Top 5 lists the five most interesting, funny, outrageous, cool, or simply strange things of the week. It is intended for distractionary purposes only. Do not take orally. If ingested, seek a doctor’s advice. If you like it, share it with others, or check out the long list of previous entries.
Randy Rhoads: Last Train Home documentary trailer leaked When I was 13 I first heard the song “Flying High Again” and my life was changed forever. I quickly became a huge Ozzy Osbourne fan, and one day I asked my fiend Dave, who had introduced me to this music, who the guitar player was. He told me about Randy Rhoads, who had just recently died in a plane crash. I was dumbstruck. I couldn’t believe I would never hear any more music from this amazing musician. Even after his death, Randy Rhoads continued to be a massive influence on thousands of musicians, and the two classic albums he co-wrote and performed on with Ozzy are two of the most popular rock albums to this day. An indie documentary has been in the works for several years, and I recently came across an early trailer. The producer hadn’t secured all the photo and music rights yet when this trailer was leaked, so it might get taken down. Watch it now, before it’s gone.
Tunak I may have posted this video before, but this guy is so rad I had to do it again. You’re welcome.
Burning Man photo policy controversy The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) (which Velma and I support financially and otherwise) has criticized the highly restrictive photo policy of the Burning Man organization (Velma and I are heading to BM in a week or so), which has responded with a thoughtful rebuttal and an honest plea for ongoing discourse and suggestions of ways to evolve the policy. Plenty of comments have ensued over at the BM rebuttal, as well as from the readers of BoingBoing. Strangely, the EFF’s original post doesn’t seem to allow comments. I have been aware of the restrictive photo policy since my first year of attendance, since I read about it in advance. It’s a tad complicated, but amounts to this: You can only take photos for “personal use,” and any commercial use or published use must be okayed by, and will be administered by, the BM org. This is done, so BM says (and I believe), to protect 1) the BM logo, name, et al from being tarnished by commercialization, and 2) to protect BM participants from having their picture unwittingly appear (in the nude, for example) in an ad, magazine, porn website, etc. Some critics argue that an unstated third reason is so that the BM org can be the only one to commercialize the name and therefore reap the financial benefits. I’m generally not in favor of policies that are as vastly worded as BM’s, but this is indeed a special event and a special case, and as I’ve never intended to use any of my BM photos for commercial purposes, it hasn’t been all that important to me to find injustice in a policy that I’m grateful protects me just as much as it inhibits me. I am, however, glad to see the discourse and the sincerity with which BM seems to be asking for help in improving the policy in future while still providing the protections it values.
The weekly Thursday Top 5 lists the five most interesting, funny, outrageous, cool, or simply strange things of the week. It is intended for distractionary purposes only. Do not take orally. If ingested, seek a doctor’s advice. If you like it, share it with others, or check out the long list of previous entries.
Posted by espd at 6:13 AM |
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Thursday, July 09, 2009
Thursday Top 5
Resonance This is a really interesting and well produced video on design strategy, made by product design firm Continuum in LA. I couldn’t embed so you’ll have to go to their site to view it.
Street Sweeper Social Club, “100 Little Curses” I guess I haven’t been paying attention, because I didn’t know Tom Morello and Boots Riley started a band called Street Sweeper Social Club. Pretty good song.
Possibly the best complaint letter ever A passenger on a Virgin Atlantic flight from Mumbai to London wasn’t exactly thrilled with the in-flight meal, so s/he wrote a letter to Chairman Richard Branson: “...You don’t get to a position like yours Richard with anything less than a generous sprinkling of observational power so I KNOW you will have spotted the tomato next to the two yellow shafts of sponge on the left...”
The weekly Thursday Top 5 lists the five most interesting, funny, outrageous, cool, or simply strange things of the week. It is intended for distractionary purposes only. Do not take orally. If ingested, seek a doctor’s advice. If you like it, share it with others, or check out the long list of previous entries.
Posted by espd at 7:45 AM |
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Thursday, July 02, 2009
Thursday Top 5
New Gay Pride flag designs Public radio program Studio 360 asked listeners to submit a new design for the Gay Pride flag. They also asked the progressive design and marketing firm Worldstudio to come up with some new designs. I like Worldstudio’s circle flag as a pure design, but the concept behind listener Carl Tashian’s flag is compelling: Each state’s star would be added to the flag when it passes a law allowing same-sex marriage. Finally, one day, it would become the U.S. flag.
Deadline Post It stop motion. Very cool.
“Dance Anthem of the 80s” If you don’t know Regina Spektor by now, you oughta.
Baron Vaughn I was watching this bit by comedian Baron Vaughn and he mentioned going to the KKK’s website, so naturally I had to go check it out. It features such gems as WhitePride.tv, T-shirts, ceramic KKK statues, jewelry, bible prophesy books, creationism science [sic] books, and other “novelty items,” under headlines like “America, Our Nation is Under Judgement from God!” Seriously. While I’m not particularly happy giving them Google juice by linking to them, I think all Americans should be informed about the sort of ingrates we continue to breed in this country.
Aaron
Alexis
Anne
Anya
April & Matt
Ari
Bo
Brian
Bryan
Chris
Cousin Carol
Dave & Terri
Dave H.
Debby
Drue
Fibu
Four Waters
Fwegan (aka Ynnej)
Gary
Holly
Hilary
Internet Rockstar
James & Eric
Jason
Jen
Jesse
Jessica
Joey
Kansinee
Karl
Kelly
Laura
Leah
Marc
Martin
Matt
Mike
Morgan
OkayDave
Olya
Paco
Peter
Rick
Rocky
Ryan
Stellah
Tatum 
Trent
Velma
Veronica
Whiskey Media
Yuliya
Yu-Po