Aaron White

May 12

May 03

Early Stage Styling Done Just Right

Many times stakeholders or clients are more concerned with logos, colors and fonts.  When the main focus of the design process should be on workflows, content and wireframes they are more concerned with the look and feel.

Style Tiles Just right

Most often you’ll go ahead and open photoshop and style the crap out of your wireframes.  This is fine, because sometimes you don’t have any other options, but most likely this will slow down your wire framing.  When wire framing all focus should be put on layout, content, workflows and UX.  If you’re in photoshop worrying about what color that button should be or how much shadow to put on that container the thought being put into workflows, content and UX will most definitely suffer.

Although I wasn’t able to go to ConvergeSE this year, I did keep a close eye on my Twitter stream during the conference.  There were several gems that came through the stream and one of those was Style Tiles.  Style Tiles allows you to present interface choices without making the investment in multiple photoshop mockups.  

As the put in on their site.  “Style tiles are for when a moodboard is too vague and a comp is too literal.”  To me, this is the best of both worlds.  Appropriate focus can be put on layout, content, workflows and UX when working on the wireframes because you can put all visual elements in the Style Tile.

Style Tile

What could be included in a style tile?


Clients and stakeholders will always be excited about the visual style of the site you’ll be building for them.  They should be.  That’s why they are having you design their product, because your a kick ass designer.  So make sure neither deliverable is neglected.  Give them a well thought out wireframes and the beautiful style tiles.

(Source: styletil.es)

May 01

WorkFu + Find work opportunities, discover talent: When I get a cold sales e-mail from a random service, I'm like -

Sales emails suck. There’s always a catch, we’re always suspicious, we’re always out in the desert shaking our heads and throwing out death stares.

But look at that shaking cowboy head and imagine it’s you looking at the amount of time and money your company spends on hiring.

Then check…

(Source: runningastartup, via work-fu)

Apr 30

Apr 25

[video]

Apr 24

[video]

The Naive Optimist: We work a 4-day week and just raised $4.75m -

ryanleecarson:

I think there’s something messed up about the startup culture in the USA. The belief is that you have to work 6-7 days a week and spend all your mental cycles on your company. Nothing but pledging your soul to your startup yields success, right?

Not in my experience.

We work a 4-day week at

(Source: ryanleecarson)

The Naive Optimist: I don't have nice stuff anymore -

ryanleecarson:

I’ve bought some pretty nice cars over the years including a brand new Audi A6 and a Range Rover Vogue. I also purchased a Breitling Navitimer Montbrillant Datora, which is an expensive (and heavy!) watch.

I now ride a bike and wear a Casio watch.

What changed?

Thankfully my pay has gone up a…

(Source: ryanleecarson)

Apr 23

Adobe Unveils CS6 Headache Pricing -

luclatulippe:

parislemon:

These charts, and really this entire idea, confuses me.

Just sell Photoshop through the Mac App Store at a reasonable price — read: a one-time price, not some made-up subscription fee for nothing — and I’ll buy it.

Sincerely,

The Consumer

Ditto this.

(via luclatulippe)

Apr 16

[video]