Issue #78 | Tuesday, February 19th 2013 | 131,392 subscribers | Previous issues
Dear Friends,
Back in 2006, Smashing Magazine started out as a random blogging experiment initiated by two like-minded lovers of the Web, which has now become one of the world's leading online publishing companies in the field of Web design and Web development. We think it is high time that we present to you a Smashing mascot that represents our passion and what we stand for today. Ladies and gentlemen, please meet Cody!
Cody is a passionate little book that cares a lot about top-notch content just as much as we do. Perhaps some of you have already noticed: Cody is now to be seen in Smashing Magazine's footer, and also to be found in many other places—but we'll let you discover his hiding places yourself ;)
If you enjoy reading our articles, you'll love the Smashing eBook Library, where you can get immediate access to all the Smashing eBooks (70% off the regular prices!) and vote on the topics you'd like to learn more about. Subscribe today!
All the best,
The Smashing Editorial Team
Table of Contents
01. Freebie: Kitchen Cooking Vector Set
02. Designing An Underground Map: Moscow Metro (Case-Study)
03. Celebrating Every Minute Spent Outside
04. Seeking New Adventures In 2013
05. Manufacturing Processes Showcase
06. Blacklisting Malicious Code, With 5G Blacklist
07. A Mild Case Of Borderitis
08. Docverter: Converting Text Documents On The Fly
09. Cancel Your Account Or Subscription For Good: WikiCancel
10. Trails In The 'Star Wars' Galaxy
11. Smashing Highlights (From Archives)
12. New on Smashing Job Board
13. Recent Articles on Smashing Magazine
1. Freebie: Kitchen Cooking Vector Set
If you find yourself working on a project that could use vector illustrations of kitchen utensils, the search for good ones might turn out to be quite time-consuming. Well, not if you know exactly where to look for them.
James Michael Viola has been releasing a series of free vector illustrations on his blog, and next to a wilderness survival kit, a sci-fi pack, a bicycle set and a nautical set, he released a Kitchen Cooking Vector Set with common utensils such as cheese grater, knives, rolling pin, egg beaters and pasta strainer. All vectors are available in .EPS and .AI formats and are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License. You don't really have to search for a similar set ever again, do you? (vf)
2. Designing An Underground Map: Moscow Metro (Case-Study)
How would you design an... underground map? Well, drawing maps per se can be a quite sophisticated task, and if you consider designing metro maps, you can easily add a few levels of difficulty to it. Not only the "visible" parts of the network have to be shown on the map, but also their connection to an invisible counterpart, the underground city area, which has to be clearly presented on a very compact area with a relatively small size.
The design case study on Moscow Metro Map 2.0, by the well-known Russian design agency Lebedev Studio, shows the steps of the elaborate process of designing an underground map, including small decisions on which angles, lines, connectors and colors to use and how to represent rivers, tourist attractions and even a bit of the landscape. The designers briefly discuss decisions made and rejected and explain how the design evolved through a series of iterations. An inspiring process worth looking into, with the map's evolution shown in 95 images. (tts)
3. Celebrating Every Minute Spent Outside
The moment you are reading this might be on a Tuesday at 11:44 am. It might be any other day and time. You might be inside. Do you have the slightest idea of what other people are experiencing, right now, beyond the borders of your own microcosm, outside? If you think you are ready to find out, then have a look at the REI 1440 Project.
As you explore this interactive 24-hour timeline, the likelihood is high that you will get itchy feet and a serious thirst for adventure. The REI 1440 Project features photos of people in the outdoors — based on the minute of the day the shots were taken. It's a place of happy, shiny moments from all kinds of people hiking, snorkeling, jumping, playing or doing whatever else — outside. Feel like taking part? You can submit your picture directly from your mobile device or from Instagram or Facebook. (ea)
4. Seeking New Adventures In 2013
What other better way is there to spend the long cold winter evenings than to watch a movie or (even better!) listen to a conference talk from your very own living room couch. We have released some more Smashing Conference 2012 talks: You can now watch Lea Verou, Andy Clarke, Josh Brewer, Stephen Hay, Rachel Andrew, Jeremy Keith and Brad Frost in action on stage!
This year, we'll also be running a series of full-day Smashing Workshops in our home town Freiburg (Germany) with the most talented, skilled and passionate experts in the field of Web design. Here's a quick overview of the upcoming workshops in early 2013:
The workshops will convey practical tips and techniques that will prove to be very useful and valuable in your regular work. Trust us—you won't be disappointed. (il)
5. Manufacturing Processes Showcase
When you see a handmade object, a piece of art or a drawing do you ever wonder about it came to be, and what its production process was like? Are you eager to know what techniques the manufacturer applied to achieve the final product design? If the answer is yes, then Kontribit Documentaries Videos might help you satisfy your curiosity.
In this growing video collection, you will be able to watch short, concise films about the production of screen printing, letterpress, drawing with dots, design prototyping, woodturning, shaping of knives and swords, designing a photo camera case, among others. And, if you are an artisan yourself, you might as well add a documentary of your own working process! (tts)
6. Blacklisting Malicious Code, With 5G Blacklist
If you take a couple of minutes to look into the logs on your server, chances are high that you'll discover some quite surprising and... exotic URL requests that hit your website. Spammers and hackers are becoming better at finding and targeting evil exploits, bad requests and other nefarious garbage with the purpose of getting their hands on your data. Well, you can make it more difficult for them with a couple of extra directives in the .htaccess file.
Jeff Starr's 5G Blacklist 2013 is a simple, flexible blacklist that checks all URI requests against a series of carefully constructed directives. It works well with WordPress, helping conserve bandwidth and server resources while protecting against malicious activity. To use it, include the entire 5G Blacklist in the root .htaccess file of your site. Make sure to backup your original file before making any changes.
If your site runs on Apache and you're familiar with .htaccess, the 5G is an effective way to secure your site against malicious HTTP activity. (vf)
7. A Mild Case Of Borderitis
The use of boxes and borders is a popular and common visual technique for structuring content on a website or showing hierarchy and relationships of items. These boxes usually serve their purpose very well, yet sometimes they can be counter-productive and create new design issues rather than solve them. And before you know it, your usability tests might suddenly diagnose your site with borderitis, a layout that is more complex and difficult to scan than necessary — just because too many boxes and borders are visible.
In the article "A Mild Case Of Borderitis," Dmitry Fadeyev raises a point about visual clutter often being introduced by too many boxes and borders converging, and he takes a closer look at solutions to this issue. By taking the example of Gandi's website, Fadeyev discusses how we can avoid border overkill and keep the website's interface lighter and less cluttered, as well as how to simplify the structuring of sections without losing any information. Agree? How many converging borders have you had in your recent design projects? (ea)
8. Docverter: Converting Text Documents On The Fly
If you ever needed to quickly convert a text document into a different format, you might have stumbled upon this open source tool that can save you lots of headaches and time. With Docverter, you can convert text documents into advanced formats with simple REST API calls. Essentially, it's a document conversion server with an HTTP interface.
The tool wraps several popular open source projects such as pandoc, calibre and Flying Saucer. Among the input formats are HTML, Textile, Markdown or LaTeX. The library can convert input files into PDF, Microsoft Docx, OpenOffice ODT, ePUB, Mobi and MediaWiki, just to name a few. Conversion normally takes less then ten seconds depending on the output format.
But how does it work? Easy. When making an API request, Docverter runs your input documents through pandoc. Depending on your output selection, it then runs it through the particular converter (HTML → PDF or an eBook converter) and — voilá — a beautiful rendered document is generated and delivered to you. Worth bookmarking. (ml)
9. Cancel Your Account Or Subscription For Good: WikiCancel
In our industry, there is a tendency to subscribe to pretty much everything and then keep your account, even if you don't actively use it. After all, you never know where your next big project or contract will come from. Meanwhile, in the real world, people join LinkedIn or Meetup.com on a lark, but realize after a month that they don't use it. Or they want to finally remove their Facebook account for good. Then after an hour of attempting to close their account, they call you, their Web geek BFF. Now, you could try your hand at the labyrinthine unsubscription process, or you could just take a look at WikiCancel for the easiest way to go about it.
This wiki project's goal is to make unsubscribing from newsletters, closing accounts and cancelling contracts much easier. The website already has the step-by-step process for some of the bigger companies, but your additions to the list will be greatly appreciated. So be a hero to your friends and either pass on the link or reap all the glory and describe how they can finally close that Facebook account once and for all. The project is a work in progress and contributions are welcome and encouraged. (jc)
10. Trails In The 'Star Wars' Galaxy
"That's right, Artoo. We're going to the Dagobah system. I have a promise to keep... to an old friend." For those of you this quote just sent on a quick jaunt to Never Never Land, there's a new, wonderfully detailed map of the "Star Wars" Galaxy.
Reddit user DrPoole has created a (very) detailed and quite comprehensive digital map of the Star Wars Universe (2400 × 1695 pixels). Track the epic journey of Han, Luke, Chewie, Leia and the other heroes of George Lucas's galactic saga. The map also shows the routes taken by the characters in each movie sequel. Now, if this wouldn't make a great wallpaper for every Star Wars fan, what would?! (jc)
11. Smashing Highlights (From Archives)
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Design Process In The Responsive Age
An insightful look into an evolving design process that Drew Clemens has been using with some promising new deliverables and tools. This should provide a starting point for you to freshen up your own process and bring it into the responsive age.
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iCandies: Free Icons For Your User Interfaces and Apps
60 high quality icons that provide crisp, attractive visuals for your modern and fashionable-looking interfaces. Available in 64×64px, 48×48px and 32×32px (.EPS, .AI and .PNG).
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Applying Macrotypography For A More Readable Web Page
This article focuses mostly on a few simple macrotypographic techniques—with a dash of micro—and on how to combine them all to build a more harmonious, adaptable and, most importantly, readable Web page.
12. New on Smashing Job Board
Here are the job openings published recently at our very own Smashing Job Board:
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Web Design Rockstars - Long Term Freelance at Kinetix Design (Remote - USA Only)
Kinetix is a rapidly growing web and e-commerce design agency. We're searching for creative web design rockstars to join our team as freelancers. We are looking for long term relationships with talented designers, with the opportunity for part-time or full-time positions in the long run.
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PHP / Social Media Programming at CityBlast.com / SocialHP.com (Remote)
SocialHP and CityBlast are pioneering a technology we're calling "mass social media publishing". We're pushing the envelope of what's possible with social media which means you'll be pushed to your personal limits too! We're a team of 7 from all over the world (Canada, United Kingdom, Portugal and United States) and it's a pretty laid back environment but obviously we are focused on the quality of code that we deliver.
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Web Designer at FusionCharts (Bangalore, India)
At FusionCharts, we build data visualization components that spread delight, a good part of which is visual delight.
13. Recent Articles on Smashing Magazine
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