Startups and Other Short Lived Things

Internet startups flare and burn like meteorites in the digital sky. Some live longer than others. Some seem so obscure or pointless one finds it difficult to figure out why they were built in the first place. Product Hunt is a good place to see them going by. Also features trending tech industry news, podcast episodes and live chats with industry players.

Primer Promotional Lessons from Google

As the biggest seller of advertising space in the world, Google knows a thing or two about marketing. They have distilled some of that knowledge into a series of lessons. Topics include "Create  a Landing Page that Lands Customers", "Segment Your Customers to Reach the Right Ones" and "Keep Customers Interested with Email Automation".

“We assembled a small team of our own marketers and challenged them to build a product they would use. The result is Primer.”

Museum of the World

Only the British Museum could bill itself as the Museum of the World without straying too far into hyperbole. With the fruit of centuries of acquisition (imperial or otherwise) at its disposal, the BM has allied with Google to showcase some its most impressive items online. Users can scroll along an interactive timeline and drill down to objects of interest. Along similar lines to their very successful "A History of the World in 100 Objects" collaboration with the BBC.

Font Use Across the Internet

Despite the advent of web-served type, Arial is still Queen of the Internet. 616,000 of the Web's top million websites use this rather unexceptional typeface. Fontreach gives an useful snapshot of font use.There are several old standards originally commissioned by Microsoft, a few freebies served by Google and finally, further down the list, some interesting new typeface designs.

A Minus for Website Grader

Website Grader puports to analyse all aspects of your website's performance, mobile readiness, SEO and security. Enter your URL, offer up your email address, it loads your site and in a few seconds, rates it on a number of metrics. It is probably quite valuable for spotting large issues, but for finer granular reporting, one would have to look elsewhere. The site's main function seems to be to nudge users towards the parent service, HubSpot Website Platform. But it is beautifully designed, fun to use and readable, so test away.

An Accident of Birth — Comparing Countries

A quick way of checking one nation's vital signs against another, and what they would mean if you relocated from one to another. The relatively minor differences between the industrialised democracies stand in stark contrast to the massive divide when comparing them to under-developed countries afflicted with corrupt and repressive regimes. Overall, a well-designed website that vividly demonstrates the work to be done in ensuring a better outlook for a large fraction of the Earth's population.

Fonts on Fire — Tinder for Typefaces

With the Ashley Madison hack in the news, comparing a font matching service with a dating service is probably not a great move. Fontflame brings the matching aspect of Tinder to typefaces. At present all of the typefaces matched are from the Google stable. This means they are free for any use, but the overall selection is rather limited. Also, the type sample shown on screen is rather small, making it difficult to make an informed selection. A more full-featured service would be great, with typefaces from large and small foundries and the ability to input one's own text string. That would be very useful for designers looking for inspiration.

Surfing Selfie

Capture a thumbnail sketch of your freewheelin' web-surfing self. Mine was rather email and work-oriented, perhaps yours will tend toward something more idiosyncratic.

Typography for Lawyers (and everyone else)

Matthew Butterick set out to school lawyers in presenting their printed and online material in the most readable, transparent way possible. That online campaign has morphed into a body of advice applicable to all who want their message to assisted rather than impeded by their use of type, white space and other elements of design. Butterick has even designed typefaces for use in legal and other high information content contexts. When Erik Spiekermann is on board, you know his approach and advice is solid. Highly recommended. 

Select any text on any website — Project Naptha

This interesting Chrome browser extension attempts to liberate text in images on websites. It can "highlight as well as copy and paste and even edit and translate the text formerly trapped within an image". Modern web designers tend to leave as much text "live" (and therefore available for search indexing) as possible, but in all other cases, Project Naptha might save users from having to retype text. It has robust handwriting recognition and is also good at character recognition against busy backgrounds.

Microstock Photography is a Hard Way to Make a Living

An interesting article detailing the thinking behind the very successful microstock photography service Shutterstock. Submitting artists find it surprisingly hard to get into, which is great for users (most stock art sites could do with a much higher bar to entry). The most successful photographers and artists on Shutterstock reputedly earn six figure incomes, but keeping up with the image search zeitgeist must be a somewhat stressful way to earn a living.

Project Naptha Finds Text in Images

This interesting Chrome browser extension attempts to liberate text in images on websites. It can "highlight as well as copy and paste and even edit and translate the text formerly trapped within an image". Modern web designers tend to leave as much text "live" (and therefore available for search indexing) as possible, but in all other cases, Project Naptha might save users from having to retype text. It has robust handwriting recognition and is also good at character recognition against busy backgrounds.

Country Music from the Heart

Musician Tony McKenna wanted a mockup of his website that he could take to a developer for implementation. We designed a logo and related header bar, and worked with a three column grid and colour scheme drawn from the landscapes loved by our client.