dispatchEvent » Graphic Design

Leopard 10.5 supports 512 pixel icons

Mims Wright — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 16:22:37 +0000

While playing around with Icon Composer in the newest version of XCode Tools for I noticed that Leopard now supports 512×512 pixel icons - much larger than the older 128×128 pixel icons. I assume this has to do with the Cover Flow view for the Finder which displays icons much larger than the other views. Sure enough, Apple have redesigned all their icons for the new format and they look gorgeous. I took some screen grabs of my favourites. Click the thumbnails to see the details. Notice the small text in the iTunes and Dictionary icons and the textures on the truck and the guitar. Hawt!

Click for full size

Dictionary

Garage Band

iTunes

TextEdit

Transmit

Napkintop web design for maximum impact

Mims Wright — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 23:11:08 +0000

This link is an oldie but a goodie. It has helped me remember to KISS countless times and to focus on the needs of users when designing sites. Check it out.

An Introduction to Using Patterns in Web Design [37 Signals]

How Ironic - Aviary is a CS3 competitor built with Adobe products

Mims Wright — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 07:36:18 +0000

Aviary is a platform ecosystem for people who create. It is organized around a suite of Flex-based rich internet applications geared for artists of all genres. From image editing to typography to music to 3D to video, we have a tool for everything.

Sign up on the site for an early preview invitation. These tools, if not truly competition for CS3, at least look very interesting on the surface. It’s hard to imagine developing so many tools at once.

Thermo makes us all a little less dumber

Mims Wright — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 16:02:57 +0000

It’s the classic story in Flash development. A designer puts hours and hours of work into a Photoshop document or a Flash animation that ultimately gets thrown away and rebuilt when it comes time to develop the application. I’ve often wondered if this could be fixed by having information architects do their wireframes in FlexBuilder’s design view. Apparently, Adobe are on the same line of thinking and are taking a crack at solving this problem.

The solution they’ve come up with is a Dreamweaveresque WYSIWYG editor that can convert Photoshop elements directly into functioning Flex code. They call it Thermo and here is a sneaky video preview of it.

Makibishi Comic

Mims Wright — Sat, 28 Apr 2007 19:36:15 +0000

Makibishi Comic is a beautiful, silly, and very strange Flash based puzzle game. The objective is to find the 5 ninjas who are hiding from you by clicking through riddles. The puzzles are just challenging enough and the illustration is amazing.

Warning - You may be tempted to spend an hour playing this game, as I was.

Napskin

Mims Wright — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 16:53:20 +0000

This guy who doesn’t have an about page talks about creating a custom skin in Flex based on numbers he’s received from ladies (your mom) at bars.

On Reflexion

PhotoShop CS3 Public Beta Drops

Mims Wright — Fri, 15 Dec 2006 22:41:08 +0000

I know what you’re thinking, “that’s so 6 hours ago.” But nevertheless, Adobe has just released a public beta of the new version of PhotoShop. It offers a load of improvements to non-destructive editing, a redesigned UI, and support for new Macs and Vista.

Go get PS!

Taking a back seat to PhotoShop is the somewhat less glamourous release of JSEclipse, a plug-in for the Eclipse tool (upon which Flex Builder is also built). Also, a new update to the Spry framework. Both could be very interesting. I’ll probably end up using the JSEclipse plug-in to write WPF/E code. LOL

Go get JSEclipse!

Go get Spry!

See the full review after the jump

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On the Importance of Kerning

Mims Wright — Fri, 28 Jul 2006 04:01:28 +0000