Sorry for the broadcast spam, but I’m trying to track down an issue with Google reader and it has come to this!

I have to admit that I’ve become a little obsessed with type in the last 6 months. This, I think, is a completely justifiable obsession for a a UI guy. Type carries a massive amount of information sharing potential. In addition to the text it carries, the type itself is a potent tool for talking to your user, establishing information hierarchies, creating a mood, establishing order, etc. It’s a tool you, as a UI guy, want to keep sharp.

So, here are some of top-of-mind resources that I’ve stumbled upon.

Helvetica (the film)
Start here. This is a fun movie for anyone who can appreciate a geeky obsession of any sort and it’s also a great way to kick off your new found type interest. You’ll finish it saying the word “typeface” in a lot of situations where you used to say “font.” You’ll also realize that type designers have managed to keep a lot of old world charm in their always up and coming craft.

Typography Blogs
There is no shortage of these, but a few that I like are I Love Typography, Typographica and Typophile.

Free Fonts
Pad your fonts folder with this incredible list of really beautiful (and free!) fonts from Smashing Magazine (another great place to find some good information about type).

Typography Books
In fairness I have only ordered (not received or read) these books, but they come from a reliable source and were billed as “quick reads”: First, A Life in Typography by Ruari McLean and, second, Designing Type by Karen Cheng.

Last of all, some slightly more esoteric links are: The Penguin Paperback Spotters’ Guild and the International Typographic Style group, both on Flickr and on Wikipedia (here and here). And of course the requisite catch-all: someone else’s much more comprehensive list of type resources can be found here.

I really like Jason Fried (of 37 signals) and pay attention when he has something to say.  So that’s exactly what I did when I read this post yesterday about why they skip a Photoshop (or visual comp) step in their development process.  He makes a number of salient points: Photoshop isn’t interactive, it’s not very collaborative, it doesn’t ever look the same as the finished product (esp. the text) and it’s awkward (for him at least).

While well reasoned, something about his post didn’t jive with my experience.  When I take the time to build out a “roadmap” for a design in Photoshop (or whatever design tool makes me most comfortable), experience tells me that things end better.  I get to make mistakes early.  I also end up pushing things further (visually or even at the interaction level) because the tool gets me there quicker.  I invent things that may look improbable (or even impossible) to actually pull off and then by the time I get to code, I actually pull them off!

I can respect both sides of this issue, but apparently I’m not the only one who disagreed and Jeff Croft’s thoughtful response was illuminating.  Does a “photoshop” step help out with your workflow?

Just came across a new Ben Fry (data viz wunderkind) exploration piece.  All Streets is a street map of the lower 48, but one that contains each and every of the 26 million individual road segments found therein.  Check it out and notice how geographical and cultural details emerge from the image.  While you’re at it, don’t forget about Ben’s book on data visualization and, if you haven’t already seen it, check out the related zipdecode.
 

Form what I can tell, you’re going to want to make sure it’s all lowercase…at least if you’re putting it a *nix box.  That’s how it went down for me, anyway.  I had initially named it CrossDomain.xml and was getting errors.  After the name change, things work super smoothly.

I took some flack for my (arguably polemic) thoughts on the Silverlight control templating model so I was happy to see the second to last paragraph of this post where John shares some of my views (albeit less dogmatically).  Granted, he’s among the guys making those decisions so he may have a bias.

More importantly, in spite of a little advocacy for the PART/STATES model in Silverlight, he also mentions that “in the future, when [they] add Triggers into Silverlight,” blah blah blah.  Awesome!  All I heard was the part about forthcoming Silverlight triggers.  Now that’s something we can all get excited about!

Regardless of your politics, I’m pretty sure that you can get behind Scott Hansen (Mr. ISO50 / Tycho Music). He’s a brilliant designer. His print work, in particular, is a major fount of inspiration.

I saw this morning that the Obama campaign has commissioned him to do a poster, presumably a follow-up to the iconic image done by Shepard Fairey.

This kind of blew my mind. Partially because it’s a weird convergence. I didn’t really know who was paying attention to ISO50. I knew he was big but, you know, big the same way that James Doohan might be big at a Star Trek convention or the former quaterback might be big at a high school reunion. So it was strange when all of the sudden he had been commissioned by Barack Obama who is big like running for President big.

It also blew my mind because I had just assumed the previous poster had been a lucky fluke for Mr. Obama. And it may have been, but the campaign embraced it and apparently are looking for a follow-up. When I read that the Obama campaign had contacted ISO50 and asked for a poster, it got my attention. Is Barack Obama (or someone on his campaign) really that in touch with the power of a designer like Scott? Unless the design geek demographic is more important than I realized, something is going on here. Scott’s design does have broad appeal and it’s definitely evocative, but I wouldn’t call it mainstream by any means and a presidential campaign is about appealing to the masses.

That’s what gets me excited. Is the mainstream shifting? Is great design like this seeing it’s day? Is this an acknowledgment of the real power and appeal of a great design and a great designer? Apparently, the first poster is doing some good. I can’t wait to see what ISO50 has created for the second.

Get it here!  Unfortunately, that’s the only change and it’s pretty beta, but really cool!  It’s a real Silverlight surface too.  There are some issues (thus the beta).  I still haven’t, for example, worked out an up-to-date Silverlight schema file and there are some issues getting images to load.  If you have ideas, definitely let me know.

Once you install the beta, you’ll need to open a Silverlight tab to get Silverlight working.  Do that with the shortcut key Ctrl+L or choose "New Silverlight Tab" from the File menu.

Thanks to the dozens of you who have sent emails about bugs, feature suggestions, etc.  I really do appreciate the interest.  I’ve tried to respond.  If I missed yours, I’m really sorry and you can certainly feel justified in resending.  Oh, and Chris, I did add support for local paths.  Still no assembly loading.  That’s coming soon though.

That’s it for tonight…more details a mañana.

If "stop being afraid and learn to love regular expressions" was a New Year’s resolution for you, then Grant Skinner just made things a whole lot easier for you.  Seriously, if the System.Text.RegularExpressions namespaces isn’t part of your repetoire, then you’re missing out.  It’s part of the Silverlight CLR too.

Looking for something to get those data visualization creative juices flowing?  Look no further.  This probably isn’t a comprehensive list of every cool data visualization I’ve seen in the last 2 years, but it’s really close.