2nd in a series of wordpress admin Balsamiq patterns. This pattern is for the WordPress 3.0 Beta admin comment list.

Download the Pattern: Comments List.bmml

For updates, release information and tips about Shane’ & Peters open source wordpress plugins or redmine core ux/ui, ipad or the freelance lifestyle, follow Shane on twitter @justlikeair and visit http://tri.be.

The thing is, just about anyone can express music to some degree. Anyone can make a picture, or cook a meal. It might not taste very good, but perhaps that’s simply due to a dearth of tricks in the cuisine bag.

Baby Steps

Every day I learn some new tricks and do my best to remember them. Eventually I become competent and even successful at the things that I study.

What I most appreciate about this perspective is that it makes the extraordinary digestible. It is granular. Great artists are great because of the amount of passion they bring to their art. However, the passion is never devoted solely to the finished product. It has to be for the process as well.

It’s like a beaver building and patching the dam. I know that beaver isn’t as excited about being a dam builder as she is excited about doing a good job of patching that hole or placing that log in particular. The beaver is a great dam builder by virtue of loving the process of building a dam.

Or take the example of a parent and a child. We don’t have kids with the intent of making a masterpiece. We have them so that we may enjoy every stage of their growth. The more thoroughly we engage in every day of their lives, the more likely the child is to grow up healthy, wise, and loving.

Cross Platform

What blows my mind is how this can be applied to anything. Just as a true artist is one who brings art to anything she does, the concept of a bag of tricks can be applied to everything.

• Cooking
• Cleaning
• Singing
• Thinking
• Communicating
• Loving
• Etc…

My sister, Sadye, was struggling with an essay for school. We talked about it and worked out an approach to essay writing: learn each part of the process of writing an essay and add it to your bag of tricks. Adopt each essay writing skill as your own, and grow to be comfortable with it. No one becomes an expert over night. But over time Sadye is becoming a fantastic writer.

Your Bag

Everyone has a bag of tricks. In fact, everyone has a bunch of bags of tricks. What’s your bag?

What happened to my colors???

I tried messing with my Color Settings, the Document Color Settings, and even my monitor settings and yet when I went to save for web, the colors always shifted.

It turns out that the solution is buried under a simple, ambiguous, poorly labeled button in the Save For Web panel:

Caveat: I’m not sure if changing this will have negative effects on cross platform compatibility…. Do you know?

Universal Principles of Design: 100 Ways to Enhance Usability, Influence Perception, Increase Appeal, Make Better Design Decisions, and Teach Through Design by William Lidwell, Kritina Holden, and Jill Butler. Out of every book on my shelf, this is the one I find myself returning to time and again. This is an amazing little hardcover that breaks the entire world of design into 100 distinct, easy to follow concepts that will focus the way you think about anything that’s been designed (and that could be everything, but I’m not here to debate religion). If you’re to buy one book on this list, this is the one. Useful, practical, easy to read.

Soak, Wash, Rinse, Spin by Tolleson Design. This was one of my first design books, and still one of my favorites. Chalk full of useful information about the process behind successful design projects.

Screen: Essays on Graphic Design, New Media, and Visual Culture by Jessica Helfand and John Maeda. For anyone who’s ever complained that there isn’t enough relevant, contemporary, erudite writing about modern design dillemas, I submit exhibit A. As one reviewer on amazon put it: “Things we all were thinking… only worded much better”. This tiny book packs a whallop of mind-bending analysis.

Noise Four by Attik. Often called the “big white book” or “the design bible” (although I would disagree), this 5lb book is a visual feast of experimental design pieces. Great resource if you’re seeking a quick entry into modern experimental graphic design or just some inspiration to break up the monotony of cut and paste projects.

Visual Creativity by Mario Pricken. Great analysis of the mental processes behind “visual imagination”. This book systematically breaks down different types of visual imagination and provides lots of great excercises that one can practice to enhance their own capacity to blow people’s minds. Oh, and it catagloues some of the greatest pieces of advertising in the last couple years on high quality glossy paper. Perfect coffee table fodder for the budding graphic artist.

Typography 27 by the Type Directors Club. Really, any book from this series is worth its weight in gold. If you’re going to follow one series of design annuals, this is it… phenomenal from every aspect.

Grid Systems in Graphic Design by Josef Muller-Brockmann. THE definitive guide on grid systems in graphic design. A fantastic guide for solving just about any design problem with a grid. If you haven’t cracked into grid systems yet, this is the book; if you’ve backslidden in your ways, now’s the time to reaffirm your faith.

I’ll be adding lots more in the future… I pride myself on a library of great design books and magazines. For any budding designer looking for a way to go beyond the standard textbooks, books are a great way to get started (and I would argue that these are perhaps a better, more robust form of education than the textbook variety).YouWorkForThem.com and Amazon are great places to pick them up on the cheap too.

Good UI does the work for you.

Interacting with a messy UI means working hard to figure it out. I think that it is exactly because you are forced to see more and work harder than is necessary that a complex and messy UI could be perceived as having higher value. Maybe in the same way that 10,000 pennies feels like it’s worth more than 100 bucks. But who wants to walk around with 10,000 pennies?

A good UI not only answers your questions, but it also helps you understand what questions you should be asking. It considers its user before it considers its coders. It makes you feel happy and inspired. A good UI does the work for you.

-p

Icon Repositories

Deviant Art – for icons select customization/icons from the browse drop down.

Iconaholic

Icon Archive

bartelme

Stock Images

Stock Xchange – 100% free stock images & a decent selection

IStockPhoto – royalty free $1-10 stock images and videos

Maps

National Atlas

Perry-Castaneda Library Map Collection

Forums & Other Lists

List of Copyright Friendly & Public Domain Images, coutesy of the Springfield Highschool Library

Pixel 2 Life