Weâve decided to turn the beginning of this year into Girl Power tGIF! Spotlighting inspiring female artists and creators every Friday for the next few weeks.
Double the Girl Power this week with duo Kitchen Ghosts aka Daria Khoroshavina & Olga Kolesnikova. Both Russian photographers, theyâve been featured everywhere from the Creators Project to This is Colossal. Combining the art of cinemagraphs with food photography, they document recipe cooking and other food related moments in beautiful and hunger-inducing animated photos.Â
Weâve decided to turn the beginning of this year into Girl Power tGIF! Spotlighting inspiring female artists and creators every Friday for the next few weeks.
We have the ever impressive Christina Rinaldi for GPtGIF! As the founder and CD of Prima Creative, Christina is well known online for her beautiful, subtle photo based work as well as for being a major influencer when it comes to nail art. She had an award winning gif displayed in Saatchi London and has also worked with clients such as Tom Ford, Bing Bang NYC, and New York Sunshine. Her modern take on what photography can really encompass is refreshing and genre-bending, we canât wait to see whatâs next on her nails!
(GIF edited for tumblr-ising, original animation here)
A video posted by Prima Creative (@thisisprima) on Oct 13, 2015 at 12:23pm PDT
Sorry, weâve been hoarding all the fun finds from our #designamo Slack channel, but weâre back with another roundup of our favourite design and design-ish related finds!
Donât be afraid to toot your own horn!
Literally...! We are loving Trump Donald, this interactive horn blowing website. As Canadians, we arenât really sure whatâs going on south of the border in this yearâs presidential candidacy run, but we do know that we are enjoying this website.
Want what they have?
Minimums is a beautifully designed website, showcasing interviews with interesting people in many fields, and the stories behind their most treasured possessions.
Live like you were Victorian!
Always creating amazing online experiences, the V&A Museum has built this super fun and educational Victorian wig builder so you can show off just how you would have styled your hair âback thenâ.
Not that we want to replace developers....
Weâve stumbled across some interesting prototyping tools recently that we are excited to share with you. Principle is built to create animated and interactive UI designs and can give you a beautifully realistic design prototype that really wows your clients. Webflow helps designers launch dynamic and responsive websites without having to know how to code. Web flow can actually function as a CMS as well.Â
How can we make working together easier?
Figma is a collaborative interface design tool, letting multiple people work on one file simultaneously. It works cross-platform and can sync up with your teamâs Slack channel to make editing your design easier. Weâre torn as to how much we would actually need this simultaneous design feature, but are agreed that it is showing just how forward thinking we can be as designers!
Just for fun... Remember learning how to type properly in school? We donât. (JK) Even though we spend every day on our keyboards, we werenât convinced that we werenât losing our skills... Check yours out: TypingTest.com. (I got a solid 82WPM, apparently Iâm a pro!)
Weâve decided to turn the beginning of this year into Girl Power tGIF! Spotlighting inspiring female artists and creators every Friday for the next few weeks.
Weâve decided to turn the beginning of this year into Girl Power tGIF! Spotlighting inspiring female artists and creators every Friday for the next few weeks.
Stephanie Davidson is a designer, illustrator and art director living in Brooklyn.  She has worked for clients like GE, Red Bull, Toyota and Fanta. Her style is smooth, minimalistic, with flowing line work and a great deliberate use of colour. In addition to her illustration and design work, Stephanie also created the company Zombabiez, a place where you can buy costumes for your babies... torso-only zombie costumes for your babies.Â
Last week, remoters of the Dynamo kind descended on Montreal. The hour had come to all pack into several vans and head into the wilderness of Quebec for a winter retreat. This is always a chance to relax in the mountains, drink a few beers, remember if anyone can ski, and bond with the team as a whole. The bonding experience is a great way to connect, reconnect and sometimes disconnect from the whole Dynamo team. The only problem that tends to arise out of all this fun is that as remoters, we usually stick around and work a few extra days in the Montreal office.
Normally this wouldnât be much of an issue however, many of the remoters donât work in an office on a regular basis. We find ourselves holed up in our houses, sitting at our coworking desks or at random coffee shops staring at the walls. The office, or any office for that matter, can be a buzzing hive of distractions. Each one eating away at a remoterâs productivity over their time there.
I felt this more than ever over this past trip. Struggling to find a space to get into any kind of zone can be a bear for anyone. However, if you are unfamiliar to an office (open or cubed) this âzone of unproductivityâ can become unbearable.
Over the course of the last 10 months, I have actively tried to combat this challenge by spending small amounts of my week at a local coworking location. Like any common office, there are people to grab your attention, temperature settings that are out of your direct control, and a sense of randomness that you donât encounter in a more controlled environment. Much like how Westley fortifies himself against poison in the Princess Bride, I sampled these distractions hoping that acclimatizing myself slowly to office life would make the time in Montreal that much easier.
So far this method fell rather flat. Not only had I increased my time spent in a coworking location prior to arriving in Montreal but, I actively attempted to work in locations that were busier and more distracting. All of this in the hopes that my time at the office would be just as productive as my time in my home office. Looking back over the week, it wasnât all bad.
Working closely with peers puts you into a zone that isnât comparable to what you get working alone. There is a much closer sense of âonenessâ and flow that can be challenging to garnish from reading pull requests and Slack. In the end, not all was lost. But Iâm left thinking that there must be a better way to prepare oneâs âremote selfâ for the rigors of office life.
If you struggle with switching back and forth from remote work to office work, feel free to tweet to @dynamomtl. Iâd love to hear your tips, tricks or strategies from folks who have conquered this challenge.
Weâve decided to turn the beginning of this year into Girl Power tGIF! Spotlighting inspiring female artists and creators every Friday for the next few weeks.Â
This week we have kyttenjanae, a self-described media artist and avatar that lives and works in LA. Experimenting with many programs to create her work, including Cinema4D, Blender, Unity3D and Processing, her work is a mash up of bright colours, technology, other-worldy experiences and a hint of reality, making us awkwardly aware of the human form in all itâs graces. In addition to animations, she also creates and performs visuals at shows and concerts and has been featured in many museums, galleries, festivals and shows including Coachella, Check Your Ponytail International Tour and FILE Sao Paulo 2015. Most recently she was commissioned to create Animal Collectiveâs latest music video for Floridada. Check her out!
Weâre back!! We took a little winter siesta and now we have returned in full force to bring you giffy wonder for your Friday intake! This week we are featuring Christina Lu, New York based animator and designer currently at Huge and previously at IBM and Buzzfeed. Her style wavers between hand rendered illustrations and a 3-D computer generated style and she has done work for places such as Fast Co., MTV, Playstation and Nike. We love the variety of work she does, check it out and enjoy!
I used to scoff at the thought of listening to a podcast. This relatively-seasoned (circa 2006) form of digital entertainment has an innate snooze factor built into its name - does anyone still use iPods to justify the word âpodâcast? Nonetheless, this was a breakthrough year for podcasting, with the runaway success of Serial, these audio-only morsels are now the main topic at any office water cooler/slack channel. After Dynamoâs Andre Valle suggested Podcasts as a theme for one of our Dynamic/MTL events, within the past few months, I took a voracious deep dive into as many podcasts of interest as I could find. Iâve discovered many favourites, but for the purposes of this blog Iâm focusing on design and creativity shows available through your favorite podcatcher.Â
1. The Observatory ( 25min. episodes/ release schedule is sporadic)
Michael Beirut and Jessica Helfland are the most perceptive and sharp designers and design criticism voices of our time. Their joint podcast, an audio extension of Design Observer, serves up shows covering the current cultural zeitgeist through the lens of design. Theyâve discussed topics ranging from Hotline Bling, Beirutâs reluctance to give up his flip phone, design for refugee camps, and virtually any relevant current event seen through a design lens.
2. 99% Invisible (18min. episodes / weekly)
Roman Mars and his crack team of reporters uncover the fascinating back stories of unnoticed objects in our daily life. Recent episodes feature the worst smell in the world, an NYC skyscraper that almost collapsed due to poor design choices, the origins of âcentral castingâ in Hollywood, expiration labelling on groceries, and many more seemingly dull subjects that are surprisingly fascinating.Â
3. Start Up (30min. episodes/ seasonal & weekly)
A bootstraps-to-term sheets chronicle following the unlikely success of an ex-NPR host creating a podcast network called Gimlet. The 1st season offers a step-by-step guide to Alex Blumbergâs process of bringing partners and funders on-board, honing his elevator pitch, having second thoughts, and anxiety-ridden conversations with his wife. Blumbergâs recorder is always running - capturing very real moments of a business being born. Look out for the design sprint episode with our friends at Google Ventures.
4. Monocle 24: Section D (30min. episodes/ weekly)
This show is the most design-centric offering from Monocle magazineâs radio network. The shows snags high-profile guests and covers global trends in architecture, industrial, fashion, and graphic design. Section D is firing on all cylinders in its long-form interviews with rarely-heard icons, like Mirko Bosche, Lance Wyman, Yves Behar, and Daniel Liebeskind.Â
5. Buzzfeedâs Internet Explorer (30min. episodes / weekly)
Internet culture moves at an incredibly fast pace, most adults over 30 probably canât keep up, that is unless you listen to Ryan Broderick and Katie Notopoulosâ Internet Explorer podcast featuring the high, and more frequently, the low points of web culture. Theyâve covered Facebookâs true detectives, Vine stars, Russian troll farms, bodybuilder web forum lingo, and of course, Jason Derulo.
6. Design Details (1hr. / weekly)
Brian Lovin and Bryn Jackson interview graphic designers working in interactive and tech. Design process and management strategies are often topics of discussion, making this podcast essential listening for any designer wanting to improve their company culture. A few of the interviews transcend common valley talk, offering profound life advice for anyone creative (gateway episodes: Mike Essl, Elle Luna, Jon Lax).
7. Benjamin Walkerâs Theory of Everything (30 min. / bi-weekly)
Benjamin Walkerâs work is hard to pin down. His podcast is a mixture of prose and poetic reportage on the dangers of disruptors like Airbnb and Uber, offering linear stories from the field and full-fledged radio plays interchangeably. Walkerâs 2-part story on the sharing economy in San Francisco is as fascinating as his surrealist childhood flashback to 1984.Â
8. Design Matters with Debbie Millman (45min. / monthly)
Debbie Millman is a seminal design broadcaster hosting the worldâs first design podcast. Design Matters began in 2005 and has published over 236 episodes. Debbie is a master interviewer who thoroughly researches each guest, resulting in a deeper look into individual guestsâ creative histories. Over the years, sheâs spoken to Isaac Mizrahi, Steven Heller, Irma Boom, Maria Popova and many more.
The podcast stratosphere is constantly growing so it wonât be long before a Pt. 2 of this article surfaces with more recommendations. Donât forget that we have our very own Dynamo Podcast as well.
Fighting the Good Fight: How Conflict Can Spark Ideas and Strengthen Your Team
When I was in college, I worked as a specialist at the Apple Store. Apart from learning how to manage the expectations of hundreds of people waiting in line for shiny, new iWhatever, this part-time job instilled in me two very valuable lessons. The first is that you should always strive to under-promise and over-deliver. The second was a concept called âfearless feedback.â
This concept affords all employees the opportunity to clear through the clutter of managerial hierarchy and encourages collaboration and discussion. Itâs simple, really: everyone on the staff is invited to provide feedback to their peers. Generally, the comments are thoughtful, constructive and designed to help you do your job better. Not only does it make for an open working culture, but also levels the playing field and helps employees rise to the occasion each and every day. After all, a rising tide lifts all boats. I admire this practice a lot but also recognize that feedback and criticism arenât always easy to give or receive. So, how can we get better at it?Â
Over the course of my life, Iâve expended a lot of energy trying to avoid conflict. Itâs uncomfortable. Second only to my fear of heights, the thing that scares me the most is the first time that I have to offer critical feedback to a colleague or friend. Thereâs no way for me to know what kind of headspace a person is in, how theyâll take it or if Iâm being clear enough. Perhaps it stems from being overly-sensitive, and a past history of taking every piece of criticism as a sign of personal failure (Iâve changed, thank goodness). It feels like someone is punching you in the stomach while simultaneously poking your eyeballs with blunt toothpicks. Iâm not sure if this is everyoneâs reaction to providing feedback, but personally, I find it quite distressing.Â
Unfortunately, I have found that in order to do my job well, I have had to learn to lean into conflict. My career is a series of critiques: between team meetings and client feedback, thereâs not a whole lot of room for discomfort. Over time, I also realized that I rarely regretted engaging in these types of dialogues. If you think about it, some of the richest conversations that we have are the ones where divergent perspectives are presented. These discussions have the power to expand our horizons, elevate the quality of our work and strengthen the teams we work in.Â
The truth is, when we engage in conversations that expose and reinforce our differences, the conflict is what pushes you harder and forces you to evolve your idea into something even better. Additionally, if you can learn to debate effectively as a team, it can help generate new ideas, push concepts even further and help you defend your work when the time comes. Â
So while the anticipation of conflict still makes an insecure and surprisingly introverted person like myself want to hide in my officeâs supply closet, I have found that not only is strife necessary, but it can also be hugely liberating.
A significant body of research now suggests that conflict among teams is actually really good, especially when that fighting is focused around creative ideas. If everyone on a team is always in alignment it can mean that ideas are stagnant, or that a team values cohesiveness over conflict. Either way, agreeing can sometimes stand in the way of producing outstanding creative work.
There is, however, one important, golden rule before you embark on the path of most resistance: you want to know what it is youâre fighting for. You also want to make sure that itâs absolutely worth it. This is not about being contrarian, disagreeing for the sake of starting an argument or being a troll. Conflict is exhausting, so before you take the time to gather your arsenal and go into battle, you want to ensure that the scrapes and scars youâll get along the way will yield the results and impact you desire.Â
Whenever youâre fighting about ideas, itâs important that youâre engaging in the âright fightâ â criticizing a personâs ideas or work, and not the person himself. This type of conflict is what researchers call âintellectualâ conflict, and it must be done in an atmosphere of mutual respect. Also, for whatever itâs worth, I try to temper my feedback with something I think my peers are doing well. I donât do this for the sake of being nice, but instead because I think there is always some inherent value in what is being presented, and itâs important to recognize that.
When a project is being considered or developed, criticism and constructive conflict are vital to assessing the quality of your ideas. The old adage that there are âno bad ideasâ may work during the idea generation phase, but wonât prove useful when itâs time to start evaluating the concepts to push them further.
For the animators at Pixar, conflict and debate are a part of their morning routine. Every day, the teams gather first thing to review their work from the previous day. They examine each key frame, and, in turn, criticize nearly everything about it. No detail is too small to critique, and no one is prohibited from arguing against the work of someone else. Everything, from the angle of the lighting to the timing of certain sound effects is brought into question and discussed. At Pixar, they call this âshreddingâ, and though I imagine it must be draining, the process is vital to their ability to release quality work again and again.Â
We work a lot like this at Dynamo, and itâs one of the aspects of my job that I find the most enriching. Sure, the conflict isnât always fun, but it always leads to something better. We often take the time to sleep on our ideas and let them marinate. We arenât too quick to make decisions, and we try to ensure that everyoneâs voice is heard. I always feel that my colleagues are as respectful and constructive as the situation allows, but rarely at the expense of the work. Sometimes, this creative back-and-forth can be difficult (especially on a deadline), and it certainly presents challenges to the decision-making process, but Iâm certain it yields results that the team can be proud of in the long term.
The biggest thing that I have learned about dealing with conflict is that itâs fundamentally about a mindset. Explicitly embracing conflict actually allowed me to take control of it. Not only has it helped me develop a thicker skin, but itâs also made the work I produce better and allowed me to present work more confidently knowing that it has stood up to our rigorous internal  standards.
Lastly, itâs important to remember that people donât give you feedback if they donât care: if someone is taking the time to let you know how something can be better, listen. Your team, whether it be your peers, employees, colleagues or bosses, are there to help, guide support and elevate you and the work you produce.Â
At the end of the day, I still find conflict is super scary. Itâs uncomfortable. But what I have learned is that itâs one of the most effective tools at pushing forward, meaningful, creative work.
From time to time, many developers have pointed out how disconnected or close they are to their code. Let's try to figure out all the actual causes that lead you to write your pieces of code.
You became a developer either by passion, or attracted by the potential of this career. Perhaps, you simply tried it and liked it so much that you made it your profession. During your journey, from school to work, you've learned different coding languages. Or maybe not so many. Perhaps you decided to stick with the language you learned at school. Maybe you were curious enough to learn others. By choosing your language, you've discovered communities, different cultures and paradigms. You adhered to some of the values promoted here and there. Or did you totally reject them? "Let me code the way I want!" you declared to an older generation of developers .
Along the way, you met people. Some of them evangelized specific techniques, attitudes, and workflows. How many of them did you take into account? It's important to improve your skills. After all, once youâre over 35 years old, they say your employability as a coder is significantly reduced. Or maybe you just didn't care. Life goes on, your code is good enough.
Amongst many job opportunities, you've chosen your company. Or maybe you stuck with the position the very first company granted you. How tolerant were you with hierarchy, with the job (almost?) done. Do you prefer the freedom of coding over the formalism dictated by "architects"?
Just as a novelist writes, the code that you write today is the reflection of who you are, at a certain moment. A succession of choices and an intimate reflection of how you personally deal with constraints. What code will you publish within a deadline ? Do you hate deadlines so much that you've moved to company with a different pace just so you never end up delivering badly-crafted code?
So you see, you are your code. And it's totally fine.
Now, what matters is how you react when confronted with the imperfections in your peer's work, and in a more global way, how you interact with your peers. Will you be humble enough to understand and accept others? Will you help others to improve, as you strive to improve yourself? Just like Jeff Bezos mentioned once, acts of kindness are more important than cleverness.
On a slightly more whimsical note, this weeks tGIF pick is Cindy Suen, a Hong Kong born, NY located illustrator, animator and gif artist. Having done work with clients like Tumblr, Skippy Peanut butter, Google, Kit Kat and more, Cindyâs style is distinct and playful, cheerful and informative all at the same time.
December in Montreal is always a mysterious thing, will it be cold? Will it be warm? Will there be snow all over the streets or will we be wearing sneakers, revelling in the non-wet sidewalks? No one can predict this! This weeks artist is Archer from Into the Continuum. A mystery wrapped in an enigma, this artist creates all their animations using Mathematica software, exploring the areas where math, science and art combine and how one influences the other. Each animation has the Mathematica code following it, so you can make it yourself as well.Â
âThis animated GIF is 20 frames long and takes 2 seconds to repeat itself, but if you pick any point and follow its motion continuously it will take 2000 seconds (about 30 minutes) for the point to return to the same location it was in when you started watching it! How long can you follow a single point?â
Accessibility is More Than Code: Takeaways from the Future of Web Design SF Conference 2015
At the end of October I attended the Future of Web Design conference in San Francisco, Future Insightâs first time hosting this event in the Bay Area. As a popular and well-known conference for those in the digital industry, I was excited to see what they would bring to the table in this West Coast expansion. Over two full days I had the opportunity to immerse myself in the realities of being a designer in such a fast paced industry - where our use of the medium changes so quickly. After two days I walked away with new knowledge, networks and couldnât wait to put everything I learned to use.
There were many talks that struck chords with me, but none so much as Jennison Asuncionâs talk about digital accessibility. I have to say sheepishly, that before this talk, digital accessibility was not something that I ever prioritized or even designed specifically for, nor has it been something a client has ever mentioned as a priority⊠But as someone who strives to be a thoughtful, considerate, inclusive person and designer I thought âMan, why havenât I been thinking about this?!â I think that it all boils down to not knowing where to start. In this blog post I want to give some quick information bytes about digital accessibility and easy ways to start becoming more inclusive with our work, some things that we may already do but not realize their impact on accessibility!
As the senior staff technical program manager handling digital accessibility efforts at LinkedIn, Jennison is a major force in the digital accessibility movement. As the co-founder of Global Accessibility Awareness Day, the founder of the Bay Area Accessibility and Inclusive Design meet up, and the co-director of the Adaptech Research Network, he is leading the way people approach accessibility on many levels. I also have a feeling that he was the only other Canadian at this event, so there was a little home-country connection too.
What is digital accessibility??
The first and most important thing is to define what we are really trying to accomplish. Jennison uses the W3C definition of âDesigning and developing UX that everyone can independently consume.â The everyone refers to: people with mobility problems, cognitive disabilities, sensory disabilities, even aging adults, people with short-term disabilities and people who simply only use keyboards.Â
A key principle of web accessibility is that the designs, in the end, should be flexible and meet many different user needs, situations and preferences. This is a more familiar concept to us as designers and developers, but in my case and Iâm sure many others, the question is:Â where do we start?
Who is this meant for?
As described above, accessibility means that everyone benefits. According to the Board of Internet Accessibility, building a website that is inclusive can improve SEO, protect and improve your brand image as well as expand your reach in growing markets (eg. the senior population). More than a numbers game, accessibility is a way of empowering people and making sure that everyone has the same access to information, shopping experiences and whatever else they use technology for. A question we should ask ourselves, as designers and developers, is âHow many peopleâs UX can we positively impact?â I think the answer is obvious.
Fun fact: most blind people use Windows PCs and Internet Explorer as their browser. This is because it is the most compatible for many programs and softwares meant for disabled people.
What does this mean?
While Jennison set up a live demo of JAWS, the screen reading software that helps him, as someone who is  blind, navigate the internet and use his computer, he challenged us to book plane tickets on the United website using only our keyboards. To be honest, I didnât even know where to start. I stared at my computer for a few minutes and then pressed some keys and made zero headway before the challenge was over. It had been so long since I had not had access to a mouse or trackpad that I didnât even know how to get going.
This was my first time seeing how a screen reader actually worked, as seemed to be the case for many others in the audience. For those also unfamiliar: it is a software that reads out what is on your screen. Using your keyboard, you navigate through links and text, buttons and images. Itâs surfing the web, just through words and keyboard clicks. When you use a screenreader to browse a website, you end up searching and navigating through different lists (such as lists of all the links, buttons, form fields or first words in paragraphs). On the United website, we saw that because of the fake drop down menus and the nested selectors within them, a person using a screen reader would not be able to buy a ticket for more than one person and would only be able to fly economy. From there, they would not even be able to choose a flight or continue purchasing at all as the selection process is not navigable for screen readers or by keyboard. The greatest takeaway was that intentional form-follows-function design decisions are essential to accessible design.
Where do I start? Best Practices to keep in mind.
I think itâs important to state that making a separate accessible version of a website is the opposite of inclusivity. Why should someoneâs UX be inferior?
While creating something totally and completely accessible is an involved process that really needs to start from the top, there are many little things that you can start doing to immediately work towards building inclusively. If anything, youâll be surprised at how much these principles actually already apply to good web design.
- Make sure there is enough contrast between the foreground and background. This includes text on top of images, buttons and gradients in the background.
Image source: Snook.ca
- Donât rely on colour to convey information.
- Be deliberate and consistent with your naming. This refers to buttons, links, titles etc. A person using a screen reader will most likely pull up the list of links to quickly navigate, this means a link saying âCLICK HEREâ means nothing without context.
- Keep your navigation consistent and clear through your website, including naming, positioning and styling. You need to make sure your users understand where they are on your website. Offer more than one method of navigating your website, this can include having a site-wide search function or a site map.
- Interactive elements, such as links and buttons, should be easily identifiable. This can be as basic as creating unique styles for different link states. The key thing is that styles and their respective names should be consistent throughout the whole site.
- Keep proper hierarchy with proper use of headlines and body copy. Text size and line height should be at appropriate and readable sizes. This means using responsive font sizes that scale, not set point sizes that wonât zoom in older browsers. This also should reflect in the code, meaning that logical reading order should be taken into consideration when placing content.
- Forms should have clearly associated labels. Descriptors for text fields are usually found on the left or above the input field and then on the right for radio buttons and checkboxes. You should also associate labels for every form control. To help avoid user mistakes you can include examples or suggest corrections.
Image Source: Mailchimp
- Alt text in images is not only good for when the image doesnât load but lets people who use screen readers to experience them as well. This also means that we should not use images to convey too much important information.
Image Source: Phase 2
- If you have an autoplay slideshow, you should include a way of controlling it: to turn it off and on, and buttons to go forward and back.
I hope that everyone realizes just how easy it is to start building or even retrofitting existing sites for inclusiveness after reading this list. The great thing is that we most likely already think about many of these things in one way or another in our design/development processes. It is simply a matter of being deliberate and intentional with our actions. Digital accessibility is not as intimidating as it sounds like! Iâll leave you with a few wise words from Jennison : Â âNothing builds better than empathy.â
Resources:
Web Accessibility Initiative - A great place to get information, user studies, project plans and more regarding digital accessibility.
Easy Checks, a First Review - Also from W3C, a quick checklist on how your website holds up to some basic points.
BAD: Before and Afters - Again, from W3C, an example of retrofitting a website with accessibility and just how little actually ends up changing.Â
#A11Y - The hashtag that is used for anything related to accessibility, The Accessibility Project is a great resource with patterns, how-toâs, checklists and more.
Screen Reader Demo - This is a great video walking through how someone uses JAWS, the most popular screen reading software, to navigate the internet. Itâs very useful to hear the order in which things are read,  described, and taken in, as well as how links are accessed. The creator of the demo also really speaks to what should be considered when making a website for people that need to use this kind of software on a daily basis. Â
Wow, itâs already the end of November... Does the time go by quicker because we are counting by Fridays? This week we have illustrator Joe Maccarone. Based in Baltimore, his work remains whimsical and off-hand even when touching on slightly darker and more serious topics. His tumblr is filled with his unique style, and not just gifâs so you should check them out!
As the temperature begins to drop, settle in for the weekâs best finds, curated by the #Designamo team.Â
Treasure Map
Inspired by Borneo and British explorer Tom Harrisson, weâre obsessed with this customizable map motif sweater from Christopher Raeburnâs SS16 collection. Drag, drop and have some fun.
Go Analog, Baby
Our love affair with digital interfaces is out of control. From the boardroom to the bedroom, screens have taken over our lives. In The Best Interface is No Interface, Golden Krishna (currently designing at Zappos, ex-Samsung and Cooper) challenges our screen-based obsession and demonstrates how we can build a technologically advanced world without digital interfaces.
In The Bag
With eComm this delightful, you wonât have buyerâs remorse. Bartaileâs home on the web features bold swipes, bright blues and a carefully-considered product details page that make us wish weâd dreamed up such an innovative shopping experience.
tBS
This month, TBS awkwardly re-imagined their identity and it looks eerily similar to MTV in itâs heyday. The result is clunky, odd and completely off-kilter (which may be a nod to their programming schedule). Nevertheless, the âBSâ close-up on their brand applications was an unfortunate choice and gave us a good LOL around the office.
Gorgeous, to Boot
Very rarely does our #Designamo round-up so perfectly sum up the categories of want and need. The Buca Boot offers secure, flexible bike storage that is so damn beautifully designed, we can hardly contain our excitement. Not only are we lusting after the container itself, we canât get over their gorgeous site. #Wishlisted.
discoholicmusic
theartofmadeline
izzy806
baratheonpilled
andulkaphoto
snowghoul
jacobvanloon
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