Friday Design Fun

Happy Friday! Are you ready for the weekend? I was ready for the weekend on Monday night so I’m quite looking forward to relaxing this weekend. First though we should talk a little about design, mobile devices, reading, and writing.

It should be apparent by now, dear readers, that I have a weakness for good design. I love well-designed products, processes, and beautiful visuals. So I was rather excited about Lifehacker’s article, learn the basics of design this weekend. Just ignore most of the comments on the article, most of them are quite unhelpful to those wanting to learn design, but the comment by Ignition on the “hipster” nature of the other commenters is great. And if you have any favorite design resources, please share them in comments. I always like to learn more about design. One of my favorite design resources is Before & After. Their book, How to Design Cool Stuff is a great resource for anyone who wants an easy to understand explanation of design that you can apply to projects almost immediately. And never underestimate the value of playing around with Photoshop, Gimp, or Aviary. I’m a big believer in clicking buttons and seeing what happens. Not exactly scientific, I know, but very fun.

And you can apply your newly found/improved design sense on designing for mobile devices. You should also really check out this great slideshow, Designing Mobile Experiences. It is one of the best I’ve seen at describing the mobile design process and the factors to consider when planning, designing, and implementing experiences, be they native apps or web apps, for mobile devices. It’s really worth going through the entire slide deck.

After you get through the slide deck, check out the article, Is mobile affecting when we read? However, if you are reading this on your iPad, you’ll probably save this article to read for later. No matter. It is still a very good read.

Finally, check out Lifehacker’s why you learn more effectively by writing than typing. Seems to make sense and anecdotally, writing out notes instead of typing them is what got me through my undergrad years of studying biology.

Now, on to the last bit of fun for this Friday post, check out this great video, Every Doctor Who Story 1963-2008 (thanks to Hanna for sharing):

Have a wonderful rest of your day, a fantastic weekend, and I’ll be back next week with more interesting bits of news and fun.