Recently I started work on an iOS game. I decided not to use the Core Animations framework provided by Apple and instead experiment with some third party game engines. I chose Cocos2D as it is an all in one package. It gives you the ability to add and control sprites, add cool graphics and animations, access to a sound engine and also 2 physics libraries.
You might imagine that this subject would be rather straight forward and hardly worthy of an article of any sort. Unfortunately, you would indeed be imagining. Adding an HTML signature to Mac Mail is not as simple as pasting the html directly into the signature field of the client like in Gmail or Outlook. With Apple Mail pasting HTML or images directly into the signature field just doesn’t work very well. In fact, the process for setting an html signature with images in mac Mail is remarkably un-Mac-like.
Being a designer in the tech/web industry, it is very important for me to stay up to date with trends. If you are new to the industry, you might be overwhelmed by the amount of information you find on the Internet.
I would like to share with you a handful of websites I frequently visit to learn as well as to find inspiration.
Our most recent in house project was a fun children’s game called Whack Attack, and was built with Unity 3D and released for iPhones and android devices. Unity is a great tool, but it is definitely (and obviously) more geared for game crafting in the third dimension. Our game deals mostly with two dimensional sprites, although they are set in a pseudo 3d environment to attain some basic perspective.
The Mystical 9 patch
You Do What Android Want = Android Do What You Want
Part 1: The Mystical 9-Patch
I recently encountered some blank stares from some colleagues regarding certain aspects of the 9-patch.
Granted, there doesn’t seem to be all that much documentation out there explaining the ins and outs of nine patch, possibly adding to the mystique, but then again, maybe there isn’t all that much to explain.
Here I’ll outline the basics of the 9-patch, and you can comment as to whether it indeed makes simple sense… or instead, communicate your own blank stare with some scathing criticism below in the comments section.
Recently I have been using Omnigraffle for creating wireframes. I like using Omnigraffle because it offers a lot of flexibility in terms of styling the wireframes, while being quite simple to use.
Another great thing about Omnigraffle is the Graffletopia stencil library. This extensive resource includes many commonly used design elements and icons – you can download it from http://www.graffletopia.com.
A decade or so ago the idea of running a full 3D software suite on a mac laptop was pretty much unheard of. Processor speed and memory were the greatest obstacles, and the aggregate of 3D software for the Macintosh platform was rather limited, as well as expensive.
In this week post I decided to do something a little different. Being a designer, I am used to drawing more than writing. So, here I am drawing. . . I hope you guys enjoy.
Typography (from the Greek words τύπος(typos) = form and γραφή(graphy) = writing) is the art and technique of arranging type in order to make language visible.
wikipedia
Typography is an under-appreciated art form which is used most often and probably understood the least. Typography is of high importance for printing and screening, as well as for websites. Some of you are probably wondering just why I am making such a big deal about typography and why should folks in the web industry, like us, care about typography. Let me tell you this: “web design is 95% typography“.
You might not be aware of it yet, however SFMOMA (the San Francisco Museum Of Modern Art) is currently hosting Dieter Rams’s “Less but Better” product exhibit.
You might also not be aware of who Dieter Rams is, since he is not directly related to the software industry.
Indeed, for almost 40 years Dieter Rams was Chief of Design at Braun’s: he designed record players, razors, radio sets, etc.