AU Blogspot

Jonathan Ive is arguably the most ingenious designer of the last decade.  An analysis of Ives’ portfolio requires almost a suspension of belief to comprehend.  The term portfolio could easily be replaced by “culture” in this case, since the products of Ives’ masterful mind have literally altered the way all of us, collectively, have learned to communicate, conduct business, entertain ourselves, etc.  Well, if you haven’t heard of Jonathan Ive, I’ll go ahead and reveal why his multifunctional industrial/graphic/technical design talents are recognized in the same scope as a Leonardo DaVinci.  Ives is the principle designer of the iMac, iPod, and iPhone.  He is currently the VP of Industrial Design at Apple.  The video I’m sharing today consists of a short interview with Ives in which he discusses the overall arch of his design style.  It’s simply an introduction that I hope will inspire you to reach your creative potential as you progress through your program studies.  I look forward to hearing what you think.  Stay focused!

Ryan Rode
Interactive Services Manager
Ashworth University

                           Thanks to Paul Jackson for permission to use this Photo.

If you haven’t heard by now, Microsoft has created a customized version of Office for the Mac. Based on their sometimes contentious relationship over the last decade, this collaboration may come as a surprise to many, but these two giants actually have a long history of integrated development dating back to the early 1980’s. It seems that Apple’s softer and smilier aesthetic has leaked into Microsoft’s current “simplify your work” campaign. Their website is user-centric from a navigational persective, with a design emphasis on intentionally amateurish animation.  I’m interested to hear how successful you think Microsoft was at conveying a looser image through this website.

Ryan Rode
Ashworth University

          Thanks to Robert Marinkovic for permission to use this Photo.

Cascading Stylesheets, or CSS, can be pretty awkward at times. It allows you total control over the presentation of a webpage within a browser; but having the resulting webpage look identical in each different browser (IE, FireFox, et al) can sometimes be difficult. Here’s a selection of handy tips I’ve found - see if they help you too.

100.01% Font Size

CSS: Getting Into Good Coding Habits says:

This odd 100.01% value for the font size compensates for several browser bugs. First, setting a default body font size in percent (instead of em) eliminates an IE/Win problem with growing or shrinking fonts out of proportion if they are later set in ems in other elements. Additionally, some versions of Opera will draw a default font-size of 100% too small compared to other browsers. Safari, on the other hand, has a problem with a font-size of 101%. The current “best” suggestion is to use the 100.01% value for this property.

Link Styling: “Love/Hate

Link Specifity says:

All of them can apply to a hyperlink, and in some cases, more than one will apply. For example, an unvisited link can be hovered and active at the same time as it’s an unvisited link. Since three of the above rules apply to the hyperlink, and the selectors all have the same specificity, then the last one listed wins. Therefore, the “active” style will never appear, because it will always be overridden by the “hover” style. (more…)

Does Apple even have a strategy for the future? Was the iPod/iTunes success a fluke? Did they know they were creating a unique platform for innovation that would generate sustained growth and revenues? Does it matter? Until the introduction of the iPhone to the product mix, I don’t think any of the questions mattered because the iPod/iTunes package did indeed create a platform and you cannot always predict what the outcome of a product in the market will be until it has been there a while. This visual from an earlier WSJ article that maps the product line against Apple’s share prices also shows the slow uptake of the now ubiquitious iPod.

So what changed with the iPhone? (more…)

One thing I’m impressed with about Apple’s new system GUI in Leopard is the “inset effect” on the text in combination with the new window chrome. Several people asked me about my opinion on Leopards GUI and I thought I combine this with another question I received on how to create this “inset effect” on text.

So I’ve decided to investigate this subtle effect further via Photoshop layer effects as well as Illustrator’s effects. (more…)