If only I'd waited an extra day, I could have included both links in one post. Oh well. Here's part 2 of Web Design Trends of 2009 from Smashing Magazine...

So I had been thinking that Palatino Linotype was a common enough font to be used on Windows and Macs, but it turns out it's not really as common as I thought. A lot of Macs will default it to Georgia, and as a certain boss-like person was heard to say recently, "I hate Georgia Bold!"

This led me to dig in and do a bit more research about common web fonts. I found this pretty handy chart of common fonts that also includes Unix fonts, for what it's worth. That page led me to a site which contains surveys of most common serif and sans serif fonts installed on Macs and Windows machines. (alternately broken down here by all Mac or all Windows fonts.) While the sample size is kinda small, it was still interesting to see... For instance Palatino on Macs came it at just under 80%. So what would people say is the right threshold to consider a font common enough for general use? 90%?

...and just when will we design a site using only Comic Sans and Impact?

In case you haven't seen it yet, here's part one of Smashing Magazine's Web Design trends for 2009. (Of course we want to be trend-setters and not trend followers, but it's always good to see what may be hot this year.) In particular, I found the trend of 'the magazine look' to be of interest. I'll keep an eye out for part 2 since it's supposed to be posted this week...

For the stylesheets, you need to specify "Lucida Grande" before "Lucida Sans Unicode".

The reason for this is because FF3 on Macs picks up the Lucida Sans Unicode and makes it a lot more bolder and blockier than usual. If we have Lucida Grande before, MACs will pick that style up whereas for PCs, that first font will be ignored and then will move onto using Lucida Sans Unicode.

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I discovered this when I was doing a newsletter design and got really annoyed with how Lucida Grande didn't look like Lucida Grande whenever we used it in a site design. Tada!

"Newsletter design should be challenging, not limiting" -

Anyways, check out this link from Campaign Monitor featuring newsletter designs: http://www.campaignmonitor.com/gallery/.

Just announced this morning - the 2009 finalists are:

Nutrition Business Journal - Design & Premium site

ChiefMarketer - Redesign & Blog


Congrats to everyone for their hard work!

Here's a great article from Jared Spool about the impact of the "Register" button on an ecommerce site. I wonder if this has any relevance to regular community sites... http://tinyurl.com/6sqar7

BTW, Terry, definitely check this out since you're working on some ecomm (so I hear)!

I realized I haven't added to the blog yet so I thought I would post some links to show where I am coming from, what I like, and some projects I have worked on.

Culturestrike
My Drupal based pet project

MF Videos
Some video work I did at Men's Fitness.. Hopefully my redesign of this site may live one day.

Lucien Lagrange
I love a nice functioning portfolio done with pure CSS.

Mandarin Design
An ugly site with great CSS tricks.

Azure Magazine
While not perfect, this site has some interesting approaches to a magazine site..

That's it for now. I look forward to posting some work and getting your input.

Thought this was an interesting article about the meanings behind different color choices.

A Guide to Choosing Colors

They are 99% leaning towards the left nav version. Here it is w/ some minor edits from yesterday's meeting. The publisher is very pleased so far so we'll see what the final feedback is when he opens it up to his team. I am digging the way the Current Issue stuff is displayed at the bottom (stole that idea from Tiffany's FI). I am wondering if there is a way we can combine the Current Issue box w/ the big yellow subscribe box (from Terry's Windows IT Pro) into one module.

I know... I know. This is a tired cliche post, but I wanted to spur on some activity and thought it would be a good idea. You don't have to share your personal resolutions, but what are your professional ones? What are your goals for this year? (See image at right for Jennie's response.)

Here are mine:

My personal resolution is to be a better and more dedicated friend this year. Last year, I focused in on my family more and stopped my habit of letting work get in the way of family. This year, it's time to make sure that I make time for my friends as well.

My professional resolution is to focus on execution this year. Reducing waste in time and effort can create the efficiency needed to succeed in this economic environment. I want to use those efficiencies to continue to pursue excellence in the face of an industry threatened by collapse. Where others may cut corners to save costs, I want to deliver unparalleled value (which will hopefully become easier as they cut corners).

My goals for this year are to launch two to three new b2b online communities, with most of them generating over $300k in revenue. While not a goal, a hope of mine is to buy one of them from an established player.

OK... your turn!