Author Archives: Tom

Can you be a web designer without knowing HTML & CSS?

photo credit: Török Gábor (nyuhuhuu) I only listen to one podcast regularly*—the 37signals semi-monthly offering, which provides insights into the thoughts and processes at the seminal web shop. The last three episodes from the 37signals podcast have been a design roundtable discussion with Jamie Dihiansan, Jason Fried, and Ryan Singer. In actuality, this three-part series has been [...]
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Jumping back in

photo credit: Anamorphic Mike I’ve been back in the States for about two weeks. It’s been great. And tiring. Seeing friends and family has been like a non-stop amusement park. I landed in Chicago, immediately went to a wedding in Des Moines, spent the week in Minneapolis, flew to New York, came back to Minneapolis, went [...]
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What else you can learn from Panic’s approach to email marketing

Campaign Monitor wrote an inspiring post titled “What you can learn from Panic’s approach to email marketing” after Panic’s recent email regarding the release of Transmit 4. I highly recommend checking it out, as the always-informative David Grenier illustrates some of the cutting-edge approaches that Panic used in the recent email. I also recommend reading the post [...]
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Two years of blogging

It’s been two years since I started blogging. You can read my first post here. Updating a blog regularly isn’t easy—it can feel like a chore at times. Those of you with blogs I’m sure understand. As such, I’m proud to have kept mine going for two years, and to have added at least one post [...]
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BadWords filtering AS3 class

photo credit: timsnell I’ve worked on several projects in the past where I needed to filter out swear / naughty / bad words that are input by the user. Finally, I got around to making a class so that I didn’t have to rewrite the filtering each time. If you have a need to filter out [...]
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Behind the new website design

Most mornings before my courses, I check through my emails with a cup of coffee. Since the time zone difference between Spain and the U.S. is pretty significant, I usually get a good idea of how the day ended back in the States, and then a few hours in class to think about what I [...]
Posted in Websites | 5 Comments

Thinking versus doing

photo credit: dreamsjung One my favorite parts about designing and developing web projects is that the end result is something. A shiny new site layout, a functioning web app–it’s gratifying. But it’s essential not to get haphazardly lured into a project because of this gratification. If I dive in and fire up Coda or Fireworks, I’ll undoubtedly waste a [...]
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New website for a good time, a good cause

This past Friday, the relaunch of the Flip Cup World Championships’ website was completed. I’ve been a participant in this event for the past several year and it is easily one of the highlights of my year. It’s a great time, for sure, but it also serves a good cause–over $125,000 have been donated to [...]
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Ryan Singer, 37signals podcast

photo credit: cln_finch Ryan Singer, product manager and designer at 37signals, talks about the company’s design process. Download the MP3 I found this interesting as 37signals’ process relies on everyone pitching in at a variety of levels–information architecture, user experience, design and back-end development. At times, I’ll hear that these types of a role demand a person with [...]
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North, South, East … Zest?—Guided by the brand compass

photo credit: rutlo Shopping in a grocery store in a foreign country is a scary, intimidating and often mysterious experience. You don’t have your bearings. Not because of differing store layouts. I’ve circumnavigated U.S. stores like Safeway, Harris Teeter, Ukrop’s, HyVee, Wal-Mart, Lund’s, Schnuck’s, and Rainbow like my name was friggin’ Cristobol Colon. Shopping abroad is intimidating [...]
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