How to Get Hired

At Rosetta Stone, we're looking for a senior-level Interaction Designer to help us out on the Web Strategy team. This isn't a call for resumes or anything, but if you do happen to be interested or know someone who is, by all means send them this way. At any rate, as I've been receiving and screening candidates, I've been disappointed with the quality of candidate resumes and portfolios and thought I'd offer some tips to help job-seeking designers maximize the possibility of getting an offer of employment.

When I'm involved in the hiring process, the interview begins the moment I get a resume. Then it continues as I explore your personal site and peruse your online portfolio. Finally, the interactive part of the interview process kicks in when I actually speak to you on the phone or in person. Interestingly, two-thirds of the process happens before we ever meet. You, the prospective designer, are responsible for all three components of the interview process: resume, portfolio, and interview.

The Resume

The resume is usually the first encounter a hiring manager has with a candidate. Like the saying goes, "You never get a second chance to make a first impression." A well-written and smartly designed resume is a great way to make a good first impression.

Resumes are at the same time extremely important and potentially meaningless. If a resume is well-designed and thoughtfully constructed, it gets remembered. It gives the hiring manager confidence that he/she is dealing with a professional. Conversely, your resume can be potentially meaningless if all the "expert at this" and "proficient in that" are not supported by the other two components in the process. If you claim to be an expert in HTML and CSS, but your personal website/portfolio shows the opposite, then the words on your resume just lost their value.

If you are a designer, I think it is imperative that you "design" your resume. Sometimes you may not have control over the format of your resume if you have to input the information into a website or if you're only allowed to upload a text version. Personally, I think a PDF makes for the best resume format, but even if you create it with Microsoft Word, you can make it look good.

You should take advantage of the opportunity to prove that you have a firm grasp of typography, readability, information design and creativity. If you're sporting a resume built from a Word template, complete with Times New Roman font, you won't be getting a call from me.

The Portfolio (or Personal Website)

The next component of a successful attempt at landing that dream design job is your portfolio. The first thing I look for on a candidate's resume is a link to their website, where hopefully, I'll be impressed with the site and continue to like what I see as I go into their portfolio.

If you're a serious web designer, it is imperative (seriously - a must have) that you have a portfolio, personal website or blog or something online that showcases your skills and proves that you have talent.

I will be the first to say that portfolios are extremely difficult to do well. A portfolio is a complex set of content and interactions. When possible, provide links to projects that are available online. Many of us have pieces in our portfolio that are inaccessible to the public for one reason or another and that's fine. At least provide a few screenshots (obscuring sensitive information) that allow a peek into your abilities.

Use discretion on what you actually show in your portfolio. Show only work that you are proud of - avoid including older work that doesn't have quite the same quality just to "have more". Another thing that is helpful is some type of description of the work and what role you played, the tools you used, etc.

The Interview

I've learned that its risky to put too much emphasis on "interview skills" alone. Some people are just great talkers and can easily give the impression that they are competent. Sure, you have to be well-spoken and give intelligent, thoughtful answers to questions, but the interview is only one slice of the pie.

Speaking of giving intelligent answers, be prepared. Surely you can anticipate the types of questions you might be asked. Take some time before the interview to think about how you would answer questions like "tell me about yourself" or "where would you like your career to be 5 years from now" or "what's the hardest project you've ever worked on" and so on.

When answering interview questions, remember this - the interviewer (possibly your future boss) is trying to get to know you. They need to know as much about you in the small window of time they have. The more information they have at their disposal, the easier it will be for them to make a decision. You only have a limited time to show the real you, so take advantage of it.

When you're asked the dreaded question, "So, tell me about yourself." Don't just spout off your work history. They already know that - its on your resume. While you definitely want to keep it professional, tell them about you, the person, not the employee. Hobbies, interests, what makes you tick, that kind of thing allows them to get a sense of who you are rather than "what you've done".

Let me give you an example. I believe I cost myself a job offer once by being too sterile, generic and not giving enough about me, the person. I was asked, "So, what do you have to offer the company that you feel puts you ahead of others applying for this position?" I proceeded to ramble on about things that were already on my resume - my skills and abilities. Looking back, I feel like I would have been offered the position if I had mentioned some of the intangible qualities - my passion for design, how I value loyalty and teamwork, described some of the things I've learned through the school of hard knocks in years past, etc.

This goes back to letting the real you shine through. Don't be a robot and give boring, predictable answers. But don't be a robot that says stupid things either. ;)

I hope this helps someone out there be better prepared for their next interview. If you have additional tips or advice, feel free to continue the discussion in the comments.

Note: These tips are specifically targeted toward designers looking for senior-level positions. If you are just starting your career in design, go here for a healthy dose of sage advice.

Gradient Grunge Wallpaper

What follows results from the convergence of three serendipitous occurrences: 1) the desire for a new desktop background, 2) the revelation of the Gradient Grunge style and 3) the discovery of Wordle.

As I was playing around with some different word cloud arrangements in Wordle, I thought - why not use an image of one of these word clouds and throw it in between some layers in Fireworks, where I had already been experimenting with some gradient grunge concepts. So there the idea was born and a few days later, I had a new desktop background. Feel free to download one for yourself - Rainbow (1680x1050 | 1920x1200) or Lightning (1680x1050 | 1920x1200). I kinda like Rainbow myself.

Happy Independence Day!

The Button Element

I've been doing a lot of thinking about buttons lately. I've even gone so far as to come up with a Button Theory. I know - this is heady stuff, but don't worry, I'll go slow.

First things first

My Button Theory can wait for another day. The purpose of this post is to talk about the <button> element.

If you're the type that likes to use native browser buttons, more power to you. Nothing wrong with that. But if you prefer to create images to replace the native browser buttons, then you may want to consider using <button> instead of the familiar <input> tag in your forms. Last year some time, I read an article by Particletree showing how they had "rediscovred the button element". At the time, I instantly wanted to try it out. Alas, I am just now getting around to it.

Before I get into "why", let me show you what I did and how I did it. I've replaced all my <input> tags with <button> tags in my forms. On the surface, it looks like this:

I'm a button!

A similar button replaces my Submit buttons and the Search button (see search field in header above). The implementation was actually much easier than I anticipated. The HTML is academic:

<form>
  <button class="send" type="submit">Send Message</button>
</form>

The CSS is where you can really do some nice things. I chose to keep it simple and apply a background image and a :hover property (without Javascript), which I was able to achieve with only two style rules:

button.send {    background: #D1E9F4 url(img/plane.png) no-repeat 5px 50%;    color: #007CB3;    font-weight: bold;    font-size: 12px;    padding: .7em 10px .7em 40px;    border: 1px solid;    border-color: #F1F8FC #88C3DD #88C3DD #F1F8FC; }

button.send:hover {    border: 1px solid;    border-color: #88C3DD #F1F8FC #F1F8FC #88C3DD;    color: #004767;    text-decoration: none;    cursor: pointer; }

I have tested this in Safari, Firefox (both Mac and PC), Camino and Internet Explorer 6.

So, why did I bother?

I mean, the <input> tag works fine, right? Why change it up? A button is a button you say? Perhaps, but ...

• I like learning new things about HTML, so I thought it would be fun to try this out.
• You have a wide array of styling options available, as you can put any code inside the <button> tag, such as <span>, <strong>, <em>, etc. Alex Griffioen shows an example of this flexibility.
• It allows you to make site-wide changes to your site by updating a couple CSS rules rather than having to modify several image files.
• From a functional standpoint, it behaves the same way as a traditional <input> tag. For example, you can tab-select to the button to give it focus, then hit the space bar to submit the form.
• Another reason is that I feel like it helps keep things straight a little more between the CSS I have for form fields and the CSS for buttons, rather than having both of them tied to the <input> tag.

Hopefully this has been somewhat helpful for someone looking for creative inspiration regarding buttons. I also hope that someone does not find some hole in my markup or style that would render me a fraud. Of course, your mileage may vary, but let me know if you have any issues with the <button> element.

Proximity Matters

On a recent road trip, we drove past a sign that looked like something like this:

At first glance, it is hard to tell if Proximity is to the left or to the right; or if you should go right or left to get to Matters. Perhaps after a more careful look, you can figure it out, especially if you're familiar with the territory, but it should be much easier. And it would be much easier if only the person who designed the template for this sign (and others like it I'm sure) understood how proximity can impact usability.

Dictionary.com defines proximity as "nearness in place, time, order, occurrence, or relation". When two "things" are placed near to each other, it demonstrates a relationship. Understanding this principle is critical to good design.

Not all signs are like the one depicted above. A couple of good examples can be found here and here. This one is not so much of a good example.

So, back to the sign in question. Maybe this particular sign could be improved by using a line to separate the two city listings. That might help - what do you think?

I'll admit that is a step in the right direction toward improving the readability of this sign. And this is a pretty common treatment if memory serves me correctly. But I think it could be better. This is a road sign meant to direct people driving in a car and needing to make a decision — usually a pretty quick decision. This is no time to provide ambiguous clues for the driver.

Confusion can be avoided by paying attention to proximity. In my opinion, the city name should appear next to the arrow that it belongs with. And the position of the arrow being next to the name instead of below/above it is what clarifies the relationship. Like this:

The same principles apply to interface design. Labels should be noted next to the item they describe; buttons should be positioned next to the fields they relate to; photos should appear next to the content they support.

This is a concept that is easy to get right and you don't see many examples of poor use of proximity in the wild. But when you do come across one — like the one I saw on the side of the road — they really do stand out.

Two Dot Five

Last week I saw some screenshots previewing the new WordPress 2.5 admin interface. As soon as I saw the screenshots, I knew I was going to like using the interface. The design and information architecture was done by the very talented Happy Cog people, so it is not surprising to know that the interface works well, is intuitive to use, looks fantastic and makes it fun to manage your blog.

What did surprise me, however, is how easy it was upgrade to the new version. Upon seeing the screenshots, I was immediately excited about upgrading, but figured the new version wouldn't be released for awhile. Much to my pleasant surprise, it was released over the weekend (I'm guessing). However, I remembered how installation-challenged I am when it comes to configuring software. These developer people make it sound so easy, but if you're a developer, it is easy. But not to me - usually, that is.

I know Dreamhost gets its fair share of criticism, but personally I have never had anything but a good experience with them. I really love their one-click installs - it made it really easy for someone like me to set up and configure my blog, databases, etc. I was hoping that they also had something like "one-click upgrades" but thought that would be too good to be true.

As it turns out, they do have a one-click upgrade feature for certain software. Fortunately for me, WordPress was one of the available upgrades. Maybe I'm easy to impress, but I was surprised it was as easy as clicking and following a couple of links. They even created a backup file of my blog directory for me. Much different than it was back in the old days when I set up my first blog (2003). To me that really demonstrates the power of what must be a very technically elegant codebase.

The only snag I had was that for some reason the new software version did not like the way I was calling include files in PHP. I was using <?php get_filename(); ?> to call includes. All I had to do was change that to <?php include "filename.php"; ?> and it everything worked like a charm.

The best thing about the whole process? It took less than 10 minutes, including the time it took to modify the PHP include calls.

Thank you, Dreamhost and THANK YOU, WordPress! Kudos to Jason, Jeffrey and Liz at Happy Cog, as well.

Career Path: The Scenic Route

In a recent job interview, someone asked me to explain how I got into web design. I guess he was a bit curious, given that I have a degree in Horticulture. As I recounted the long, winding path I took to get where I am today, I realized again - for the umpteenth time - how bizarre it must sound to others. Since I don't think I've ever taken the time to do so here, I thought I would go ahead and document the milestones along with a visual map to help tell the story. Knowing the risks of sounding like a self-consumed Me-Monster, I'll try to keep this as concise as possible </disclaimer>.

Circa 1995 ...

When I was in college I had delusions of graduating and getting a good job making lots of money. How that was supposed to happen with a degree in Horticulture, I had no idea. Ideally, I would find a job designing landscapes and working with customers to select plants and materials for the project, while the laborers that worked for me dug holes, got calluses and sweat a lot. That was the vision.

During my senior year I found out that if you wanted to be a Landscape Designer, you had to get your master's degree in Landscape Architecture, which meant about 3 more years of school. At this point, I wanted no part in more school, so that option was out. I decided to just get my Bachelor's degree and take my chances with that.

After graduation, I realized all those good jobs (you know, the ones where you don't sweat and that pay more than minimum wage) I had envisioned were non-existent. I had to start earning money somehow so I took a job as a Landscape Foreman and figured I'd "work my way up". On my first day I was dropped off at a Wal-mart parking lot with a Hispanic gentleman named Anselmo and was told, "Prune all the trees". I quickly realized that things were not turning out as well as I had once imagined. After spending the first week out in the cold and rain and learning that being the "Foreman" really only meant that I got to drive the truck, I realized my career outlook was bleak.

Yes, I can write!

After a few months, I mastered the art of driving a truck and attached trailer and had become quite deft at handling a weed-eater and even learned quite a bit of Spanish from my friend Anselmo. But, after 8 months of digging holes, getting calluses and sweating a lot, I knew there had to be a better job out there. I stumbled across a listing in the newspaper classifieds (remember those?) for a Horticultural Writer. All they required was some knowledge about plants and the ability to write well. Well, it was a job hand-crafted for me!

I became a Horticultural Writer for Horticultural Printers writing copy to be printed on tags like these. I loved this job. It expanded my knowledge of plants and allowed me to learn about stuff like databases, spreadsheets and desktop publishing. However, after working there one year, I realized that I was already at the ceiling in terms of income potential. Money is not all that matters in life, but being a newlywed with plans of having children, I knew I would need to earn more, which at the time happened to be just above the poverty line.

About this time I had a friend that worked at a mortgage company in downtown Dallas. She said she could get me a job there. All that was required was a degree, it didn't matter what type of degree as long as you had one. This mortgage company was hiring Loan Counselors at a starting annual salary of $27,000. At the time, I thought it was too good to be true - I couldn't imagine earning THAT much money!

I really enjoyed that job. It was a great company with a great corporate culture, good benefits and really good people. I would spend the next 8 years there, enduring two major corporate reorganizations and an acquisition by a larger company. My computer skills (if you could have called them that at the time) positioned me for special projects. One of those special projects was the task of querying the database for end-of-month numbers and importing them into Excel for inclusion in the Monthly Management Report. This was my favorite part of the job and I soon realized I had a knack for formatting reports better than most and was called upon many times to "make this report look good".

Promotion

After being a Loan Counselor and then Supervising Loan Counselor for a couple of years, I saw a posting on the internal job board for a new position: Communications Manager. The company had offices in 3 different cities, hiring was at all-time high and there were dozens of new projects and initiatives throughout the company. With all this going on, it was becoming harder and harder for everyone to know what was going on in other departments and very hard for management to consistently communicate with all the employees.

The Communications Manager would have 3 main responsibilities: handle all the monthly management reports, write a monthly newsletter and build and maintain a corporate intranet site. Even though I had no idea how to create an intranet site, I decided to apply for the job and was selected, much to my surprise and joy. The weekend before my first day as Communications Manager, I went to a used bookstore and purchased Microsoft Frontpage 98, which looked very intimidating, but also very interesting.

I spent the next two months building the new intranet site. Looking back on it, it really was a horribly designed and coded piece of junk, but it served its purpose well and everyone seemed to like having it.

It was around this time that I remember thinking, "This is what I want to be when I grow up!". I was smitten. I couldn't get enough of this new thing called "web design". I purchased a couple more books, read as many articles I could find and even acquired my first copy of Fireworks, which is much better than MS Paint, as it turns out.

In November 2003, I was fortunate enough to attend a Web Design World conference. There was this guy there named Jeffrey Zeldman that was talking about Web Standards and Cascading Stylesheets. From that point on, design would never be the same for me and I spent even more time reading articles and blogs and teaching myself modern, standards-based web development.

Over the next couple of years, I went from a single contributor to managing a small communications team. Those were fun years. I learned a lot about managing people and was able to start teaching others what I had learned about design and development. But as the team grew larger, I realized I was spending less time doing what I really loved and more time managing people, writing communications pieces for management and making reports and presentations about team goals and objectives. To me, that was all boring business stuff that took away time that I would rather have spent messing with CSS files or creating new graphics for the newsletter.

Moving Out (and up?)

I realized that if I ever wanted to be a "real" web designer and work on web projects all day long, that probably meant another career move. As much as I loved working at Homecomings, a position as a real web designer at EDS lured me away.

For some reason, the design aspect - creating graphics, visual layout, color theory, etc - has always come easy for me, but at it was at EDS where I really learned how to master CSS and how to build large-scale websites. I'm thankful for everything I learned there and was able to take an expanded skillset and knowledge base with me to two other companies.

That leads me to where I am today. Now, I have a bit fancier job title - Interaction Designer, which means I get to solve problems with my design (graphics) and code (xhtml, css) skills. Not a day goes by that I don't stop and thank God for leading me this way and for how fortunate I am to be one of those few people in the world that gets to do something they absolutely LOVE doing and gets paid to do it!

If you're looking to get into the exciting field of web design and user experience, I definitely would not recommend this particular career path. Although it has been very fun and rewarding for me, they offer degrees for this type of work nowadays. And just about any other path you choose to get here would probably be easier.

And lastly, as an added twist to my already winding road, I will be leaving Sabre after 5 short, but very educational months. On February 19th, I will be returning to work at Rosetta Stone, in a new role as Interaction Designer on the Web Strategy team.

So, if you've read this far, thank you! I hope you've enjoyed this crazy-but-true tale of career path acrobatics.

Meeting Pet Peaves

I started this post a month ago and have written and re-written it numerous times. I've been trying to come up with eloquent ways to talk about how to improve meetings. But I seem uninspired by that and would rather just pine about the things that bother me instead. What I think would improve meetings the most would be to infuse some rigorousness into the way we schedule and conduct meetings. Without further adieu, here are my top-5 complaints about meetings:

1. Let's Begin! Isn't it annoying when you take time out of your busy day to walk down to a conference room (or call into a bridge line) and then have to wait around until everyone else decides to show up (call in)? I worked with a guy once that began meetings exactly at the scheduled time regardless of who was or was not in attendance. That's pretty rigorous, but I admire that.

2. Wake up! I am the first to find humor in the fact that a colleague is desperately trying to stay awake - droopy eyes, head bobbing, the whole bit - but it also frustrates me. Seeing that just makes you wonder if the whole meeting is just one big waste of time.

3. Pay attention! This includes me. Having people not paying attention, especially while on conference calls, is a real meeting downer. If people are not paying attention it usually means one of the following is true: the meeting is going too long, the meeting has lost its focus, there are too many unnecessary people involved or all of the above.

4. Do we really need a full hour? I think by default most people just schedule meetings for an hour. Perhaps some people view meetings as a reprieve from real work, so an hour break appeals to them. I'm not sure, but I do know that most meetings could be held to 30-minutes, if appropriate rigor is applied.

5. Time's up! No one likes a meeting that will not end. Not ending a meeting on time shows a lack of consideration for everyone's schedule. To me, this is most annoying when it is a meeting at the end of the day that makes me late for getting home.

I'm not proposing a militant working atmosphere, but I do think applying some measure of rigorousness to the whole meeting process would help us have fewer meetings, shorter meetings and get more out of the meetings we endure.

Refactoring

This website is only about 6-months old, but I decided I needed to make a few changes. I've received a tremendous amount of positive feedback and for the most part, I've been pretty pleased with the design and the organization of information. In spite of the positive feedback, there were a few aspects that bothered me and some small adjustments were necessary.

Item #1: Content strategy

For starters, when I originally published the site in May 2007, my intentions were to dive into full-time freelancing in the near future, so the site had a distinct "this is Oaktree Creative, the company" approach to it. Much of the content of the site was written to reflect that approach and (unintentionally) the homepage was little more than a glorified splash page. It looked nice, but seemed empty to me.

Solution: Completely rebuilt the homepage to show a featured blog entry, a list of recent entries in one column and the Murmurs (RSS here) list in another column. I moved the portfolio links to the bottom above the footer. I also rewrote the About page, making it more personal and less "about Oaktree Creative, the company."

Item #2: Blog entries limited to full articles

Occasionally, I come across a good article or see something on the web I'd like to comment on or point out. The way this blog is set up, it doesn't lend itself to a short, link-blog format.

Solution: I've been looking for some way to integrate that type of content on the homepage and wanted an easy way to implement it without having to write a bunch of code. I also wanted it to be easy to publish when I found something interesting.

A friend of mine pointed me to (and helped me set up) a nifty little tool called Simple Pie. Simple Pie is a PHP script that pulls items in from an RSS feed. In my case, I'm pulling items I've tagged as "murmurs" in my del.icio.us bookmarks.

Item #3: Horizontal Banding

Another thing that bothered me was this concept of "horizontal banding" that seemed to visually dominate each page - again, especially the homepage. What I mean by horizontal banding is that each "section" of the site was separated visually by colors and border treatments. So it gave the site a "banded" feel to it. An orange band at the top for the header, followed by a brown band for the navigation, followed by a wider, white band for the "main content" and then a larger tan section for more content and then a final band (darker tan) at the bottom for the footer (see graphic).

Solution: I was able to remove two "bands", which I think helps make the site a bit more visually fluid and less "compartmentalized". I got rid of the navigation band; it now blends in with the header. Also removed the footer band; it now blends in with the bottom portion of the page instead of being set off in its own section.

While I had the hood up and my hands greasy, I decided to make a few other cosmetic changes. Some are more obvious, like the color palette and the header graphic. Others were more subtle like text size adjustments and a few new icons.

All in all, I'm pleased with the changes. Mostly, I'm excited about the Murmurs, which will give me a chance to keep the content more dynamic around here. If you're interested, grab the RSS feed to follow the updates and by all means, feel free to chime in with your feedback.

(There's still a few things I'm working. A couple of the newer portfolio links at the bottom of the homepage don't work yet. I know about it and I'll be fixing that soon.)

Let's Be Honest

Recently, I was reading the bios of the "executive team" for a local web design/development firm (undisclosed) and saw that a couple of them had "over 20 years experience" in the web industry. An acquaintance of mine at a different company states he has "over 10 years experience" on his bio. If that's true, then he started doing web development when he was 14. I guess that is not unfathomable, but honestly, how realistic is that? And what type of web projects were the other two guys working on back in 1987? Not saying it isn't true, just really wondering about the robustness of truth in those bios. Perhaps we're all a little guilty of this from time to time.

After reading all this, I started to wonder about a couple things.

I know we want clients to view us as professionals and give them the comfort of knowing we've "been around the block before", but why do we think that the number of years experience is a key factor in providing that comfort level? Do we think our clients, colleagues and web-based social network friends will think better of us?

I think I've indicated that I have 7 years experience on a few bios I have floating around out there. Technically, this is true, because I started designing websites in 2000. However, does it really matter that I spent the entire first year building web pages with Microsoft FrontPage 98? It wasn't until 2002 that I understood how to use CSS and grasped the idea of how to build web pages according to web standards. And it wasn't until probably sometime in 2004 that I had a clear proficiency of HTML, CSS, information architecture, usability best practices and graphic design.

Ah, yes, but "over 7 years of experience" sounds much better than just three. If we're honest with ourselves, I'll bet we all have similar learning curves that make our all-powerful "years of experience" seem a bit watered down.

Wait Just a Second!

I know what you're thinking. All experience is important because it shapes what we've learned up to this point and helps us make better decisions today. That's definitely true. In all matters of life, things we have experienced in the past make us who we are today. Mistakes we made yesterday can make us stronger for tomorrow.

We don't have to start the "years of experience clock" at the moment we stopped making mistakes; or when we started doing things a new way or when we had this job title or that training class. I think in all of us there is a sense of knowing when it all "clicked" and when you first considered yourself a "web professional" without feeling guilty. I just think that's how it goes with a profession such as ours.

Perhaps we feel the number of years of experience somehow offset the fact that most of us don't hold a Bachelor of Science in Web Design. Therefore, we need to augment our resumes and bios with important sounding experience and how we've worked on large, complex projects. Guilty as charged, your honor. But I think this thinking is misguided. The internet, as an industry, is still so young and things have and continue to change so quickly. I think its OK if you’ve only got a few years experience. There’s nothing wrong with that.

What Really Matters

Consider this an open plea for candid representation in bios around the web. Yes, I’m sure clients and prospective employers would like to know that you didn’t just start your career on the web last year. But I say let’s be comfortable in our own skin, confident in our skills and let our portfolios do the talking.

I’ll go out on a limb and predict that clients, et al, are more interested in seeing examples of our work and getting a feel for how we work than knowing how long we’ve been working.

In my book, its not the number of years that counts, but how you’ve used those years to get where you are today.

What's in Your Bookstack?

I've been tagged. Stephen is wondering what's in my "Bookstack".

Every now and then I'll pick up a book, usually a novel, that sucks me in to the point I can't put it down and I read cover to cover in a short period of time. But more often than not, I get a new book, read a few chapters and then before I finish, I'll start reading a different book. This happens a few times and I start stacking them on my desk or next to the bed to read whatever interests me at the moment.

The books in the photo above (from top to bottom):

• Osgood's Progressive Reader, by Lucius Osgood
• Laws of Simplicity, by John Maeda
• Missionary Stories with the Millers, by Mildred Martin
• Designing the Obvious, by Robert Hoekman, Jr.
• Grace Based Parenting, by Tim Kimmel

One day soon (????), we'll have a tool to track and share what is in our Bookstacks. Until then, I'll tag a few others (Cori, Christian, Josh and Andy) to find out what kinds of interesting things they're reading.

CSS Fluency

On Saturday, I had the privilege of speaking to the DFW Adobe Users Group (DFWAUG) about CSS and modern, standards-based web design. After several weeks of mounting anxiety about my first public speaking venture, I nervously delivered a presentation entitled CSS Fluency: Speaking the Language of Cascading Style Sheets. The premise behind CSS Fluency is simple. In the programming world, there’s a common axiom, “If you can describe it, I can program it.” Although not a programming language, the same can be said for CSS. If you can learn to speak the syntax using natural language to describe style rules, then you’ve begun the journey of mastering CSS.

Much to my surprise, the talk was well-received and it seemed that everyone in the room learned something new, particularly me. The members of DFWAUG are a warm, friendly bunch of people, which really helped put me at ease and we ended up having a great conversation about CSS and web design. I’d like to thank everyone at DFWAUG for having me there on Saturday and for being a great audience and asking a lot of relevant and intelligent questions.

You can download a PDF version of the presentation although it may or may not be useful unless you were at the meeting. The example page for demonstrating the CSS techniques is also available.

Overheard at Webmaster Jam Session 2007

Last weekend I had the good fortune to attend the 2007 Webmaster Jam Session. I enjoyed the experience of learning from some great speakers, meeting some new friends and hanging out with old friends and new co-workers. I haven't had the mental bandwidth to sit down and comprehensively write down everything I learned and how it will shape my future. But I did take a few notes and thought it'd be good to share something, so I put together a list of "one-liners" from my notes of a few of the sessions I attended. These really aren't in any particular order - more of a mind dump, if you will.

Successful interface design ...
integrates the user and the business
is invisible
is multi-disciplined
is cultural
- Jared Spool

The internet is smarter than you are. - Brian Oberkirch

Flat is boring. - Dan Rubin/Bryan Veloso

Change what you do everything 3 years. It keeps you intelligent, funny and relevant. - Michael Lopp

Make all visual distinctions as subtle as possible, but still clear and effective. - Tufte's "Smallest Effective Difference" Principle, quoted several times by different speakers.

The funniest thing for me was when I was thinking to myself why they call it the "Webmaster Jam Session". I mean, do people call themselves webmasters anymore? Not 5 minutes after I thought this did a guy stood up and introduced himself: "Hi, I'm ________________, I'm the Webmaster for Rockwall ISD." Who knew?

If I had a good camera or had a clue how to take good photographs, I'd post a bunch of them here. But I don't and I didn't. However, you might like to check out some photos snapped of the event here, here and here.