Alcides Fonseca

The first one is not a tech one, but still geeky. Randall Munroe is the author of xkcd, a fantastic comic about romance, sarcasm, math, and language.

The second one is indeed technical. Håkon Lie and Michael Day present PrinceXML and CSS design for printing. A really cool presentation to learn a bit how to style you webpages to generate an handsome print layout or PDF file.

Must resist this consumerism temptation that flows around every Xmas. But if anyone feels I’m some lonely geek, feel free to offer me some emotional LED-powered companion.

Whenever I have some work that envolves design, I usually have to find some source of inspiration. I usually bookmark websites that have unusual or interesting design. Appart from blogs, I also follow the work from some companies. Three of them follow, and all from Portugal.

SenteDesign

SenteDesign is a design & communication company based in Aveiro. They do photography, illustration, corporative image, video, advertising, webdesign, you name it. For examples of their work, check out their portfolio. You should also check their backstage, a company fotolog, and their sentetube, where they keep their videos.

Burocratik

This one is from my hometown, Coimbra. This design and multimedia studio has some pretty good work in webdesign, branding, illustration, just to name a few. I follow them mainly through their blog that is a almost daily inspiration source.

WigWag

The last one, from Algarve, is also a marketing/branding/design company, but what I love the most is their webdesign. The sites they build have a very clean and simple design, but leaves a pretty good impression on the visitor. They also have a passion on mac’s and that will surprise everyone anytime soon!

I’ve always been a great fan of Fireworks because of its simplicity. Adobe Photoshop is a lot more powerful, but it is a bit less intuitive. I’ve also tried GIMP, but I have given up just for the interface I just don’t like. It remembers me of the old Photoshop style with a lot of windows. It is just not easy for me to work with it, and I’m glad GIMP team noticed this and they are brainstorming for the new UI.

In my opinion they should implement the MX style, one window with all the stuff. Canvas in the middle and optional toolbars on the side. As a webdesigner, I want to take full advantage of my screen-resolution, so if possible, I’d like the toolbars to auto-hide so I can see my project in 1:1 zoom. For old-school GIMP users, making the toolbox to float around too would be a nice thing.

Another good thing that I would be nice to see is a nice integration with webdesigning tools like bluefish, ajunta, eclipse, etc

Well this are just my basic ideas, and probably I will send an email to gimp.brainstorm at gmail.com with “GIMP” as subject and an imaging showing my ideal graphic tool. If you do have nice thoughts on this, feel free to contribute too. Good ideas will be posted on the brainstorming blog. Opensource UI design :)

I've been a The Dandy Warhols fan for a long time. A few days ago I was checking their website and I was amazed by the designed used. It made me wish I had one of those 3d glasses so I could see the stereoscopy effect.

I think it was a great idea to make the website design like this, so it would stand out from the rest of websites. Mainly bands pick up good artists to make their website, because they like their visual art. However designers tend to be bad web designers. They lack the geekness needed for professional websites. In my work, I’ve dealt with designers that are good in traditional paper design, but when it comes down to the web, they just lack some skills.

If you notice the Dandy's website, although it has RSS and validates the code. It’s still displayed inside tables and iframes. This sucks when viewing the page in small screen devices like IE mobile, Opera Mobile and Mini (which you can test here). Web designers should know this stuff and how to get around that.

I gave Dandy Warhol's Website example as i could give a lot of them, and you probably know it by yourself. In my work I’ve dealed with a lot of designers, and when they “draw” something, they don’t even think how it would be displayed, if it’s even possible to do those effects, if it will run on mobile devices, if it would be accessible to disabled people and so on… It’s terrible to work with them if you can’t change the design and you know it’s bad.