WordPress Blue » Designers

Evernote Site Memory for WordPress AND other platforms

jonathansoroko — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 18:00:01 +0000

Slocum Design Studio, and a member of their design team, Jonathan Desrosiers, have developed Evernote Site Memory, which allows users to clip a blog post to Evernote in, by my count, two mouse clicks and without having to navigate away from the post. And it may prompt some readers to clip who, in their excitement about the post and shouts of “Eureka!” forget to note the URL. (If you’re getting that excited about posts on this blog, you probably need more R&R).

Slocum’s portfolio is outstanding, and it’s clear that they exploit each other’s talents to good effect. A look at the staff portraits makes the point well: each of them is outstanding, and is the visual anchor for each staff member’s “About” page. In fact, it makes a strong case for engaging a team, whether it’s an established full-time team, or an ad hoc team assembled for a project, for even relatively simple projects. The simplest statement of the principle is that no one should proofread or edit their own copy in any text that matters.

My installation of the WordPress plugin was entirely snag-free [plugin page on WordPress repository]; what’s more, the people at Slocum took the time to provide a clear and detailed entry in the WP Plugin Repository. NB: if you install via the WordPress dashboard, there are several other similar-sounding plugins, with similar descriptions of functionality. I tested Mr. Desrosier’s plugin first because it was featured prominently on the Evernote website. What you’re looking for is “WP Evernote Site Memory,” with a credit in the description field for Slocum and Mr. Desrosier.

Other developers have produced Site Memory functionality for Joomla and Tumblr, and Evernote also provides information for developers; it’s all readily navigable on the Evernote Site Memory page.

One other Evernote plugin for WordPress, EverPress, is essentially the opposite of WP Evernote Site Memory.

EverPress is an automatic RSS posting plugin primarily designed to integrate with the information capturing service, Evernote. This plugin allows Evernote users to automatic post their shared notebooks to WordPress. [EverPress also supports]post scheduling – by day, week or month, and time of day; [and]post settings – set the author, category, status (draft, public and private) and tags.

EverPress is the creation of Martin Hawksey; we hope to have tested and reviewed it in short order.

Originally posted on Discovery Strategist.

Evernote lets you save all the interesting things you see online into a single place. Access all those saved pages from your computer, phone or the web. Sign up now or learn more. It's free!

Douglas Bowman/StopDesign

jonathansoroko — Sat, 15 Jan 2011 17:30:09 +0000

StopDesign is the personal site of the designer Douglas Bowman, whose work most of us have been seeing for years. For my part, I didn’t realize who he was, although I certainly saw his WebMonkey icon more times than I can count. WebMonkey is, the web design education portal of Wired.com (oddly, there’s a link on Wired’s home page to Webmonkey, but not in reverse. But my supposition is that it has to do with the conservation of monitor real estate).

NB if you’re not inclined to read this long post – at least do yourself a favor and look at Bowman’s work – in depth at StopDesign - and more briefly, at his personal website, DBowman.com – which has a spot-on landing/index page.

This isn’t Bowman’s only eye-catching logo/identity work. Check out the Cocktail logo at right, also done while Bowman was at Wired.

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Cocktail Logo by Douglas Bowman [link to Mr. Bowman's online portfolio

And his invitation for a party, in two parts at lower left, also done at Wired:

Douglas Bowman - Wired New York Invitation (1 of 2)

The elegance – in the sense of aesthetically pleasing without waste or excess – of these designs becomes even more pronounced in two user interfaces designed in whole or in part by Mr.Bowman. The first is his own site – StopDesign. Note that the top nav bar has plenty of space, and that the description of each subpage has a concise description (one word) and a slightly more elaborated description (two words).

Douglas Bowman stopdesign.com navbar

Now the navbar on the “About” page - same layout, absent the pencil image, but a different color combination:

Douglas Bowman stopdesign.com - "About" page Navbar

Now the “also | of interest” page navbar:

Douglas Bowman - navbar on "of interest/also" page at stopdesign.com

Note that there are actually several complementary navigation processes which tell the user that she or he has arrived at a different page:

the content, layout, and background color of the navbar
and the page itself change.
The large-type announcement, just underneath the navbar using the one-word page description (“home,” “portfolio,” about,” and “also”) each tagged as Heading 1

In other words, color and cognitive function (language) both work to help users navigate the site. I’m not sure how to quantify it – but Mr. Bowman’s site fits what seems a large amount of information into four easily navigable pages. This is like Henry Dreyfuss’s use of three variables – size, shape and color – to distinguish between controls on a tractor. (citation/illustration coming in planned update).

The second example of Douglas Bowman’s brilliant user interface work is the design of the Google Calendar (For a direct look at the Google Calendar, a free app which is part of the ever-growing suite of Google services, see http://calendar.google.com/)

Check out these images:

Evernote lets you save all the interesting things you see online into a single place. Access all those saved pages from your computer, phone or the web. Sign up now or learn more. It's free!

Beautiful logo from Angie Bowen at Arbent.net

jonathansoroko — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 01:00:37 +0000

Isn’t this a nice piece of work? By Angie Bowen of Arbent.Net. You can see more of her work there.

Evernote lets you save all the interesting things you see online into a single place. Access all those saved pages from your computer, phone or the web. Sign up now or learn more. It's free!

18 sites to kickstart logo design from OpenJason – plus much more

jonathansoroko — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 21:03:49 +0000

18 Sites to help you create your logo from OpenJason, a developer, who, when he lists, he rules. Lots of smart and helpful stuff in diverse categories – here are a few that I thought were useful (thus exposing the weaknesses in my skill sets)

13 Alerting Sites (as in “watchdog,” or “infobot” – not as in “scary,” or “alarming”
25 Start Pages to Get You Started
Knowledge is Power – Here’s 200 sites that give you power.
50 Content Management Systems
100 Twitter Tools
36 TV Media Websites to watch anything you want
32 Time Tracking Tools for Freelancers and businesses.

OpenJason is also the proprietor of Daynger Interactive, a soup-to-nuts kind of web presence creation outfit which is either the most persuasive website I’ve seen in months or is using IP mind-control to make me write this.

(If there’s an OpenJason, shouldn’t there also be OpenArgonauts?)

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Randa Clay delivers the goods

jonathansoroko — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 22:08:26 +0000

Randa Clay, an excellent designer, is also an apparently infinite source of freebies, and useful advice. A few of her recent offerings:

Randa’s 10 favorite free fonts
The Ultimate Premium Theme (I’m not telling – and it’s a complicated answer, anyway)
If you need some inspiration – check out Randa’s portfolio

RandaClay.com

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Check out Bing Design: Matt Langford’s other venture

jonathansoroko — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 15:47:18 +0000

Yesterday we posted about Matt Langford’s MattFlies, and his 100 resources for Thesis Theme users.

We neglected to mention Bing Web Design, which itself is very well-designed, and where Mr. Langford appears to be gainfully employed with co-conspirators Sarah Thibodeaux and Wayne Bunner. Their current portfolio is light, I think, on live client links, but I suspect that will change over time. Look at what they’ve designed for themselves, however, and their design/code/business chops are apparent.

Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)

Related posts on Bing Web Design
how to optimize your web site for bing :: web design hosting seo …

Related posts on Matt Langford
Customizing Thesis Theme
10 Questions to See if You're a Social Media Power | MattFlies.com
A Loyal AT&T Customer Feels Jaded | MattFlies.com

Related posts on MattFlies
Customizing Thesis Theme
110+ Thesis Design Customizations You have to See to Believe
Hanging Out on Tumblr

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Alex Denning/WPShout.com: Biblioteca theme

jonathansoroko — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 11:37:42 +0000

Alex Denning of WPShout released the theme Biblioteca a few weeks back; and has also recently released InstantWordPress, a theme framework or system.

Here’s a screenshot.However, given the number of configuration options available, this may not be a “typical” front page – perhaps here isn’t even a single “typical” style for the front page. mber configuration options available. Dashboard screenshots after the jump. And – we hope in short order- we’ll test Biblioteca here on WordPressBlue.

Denning’s theme NomeBlog is bears examination, as do his posts/tutorials/hacks. Some examples:

And – while it’s bound to be controversial – looks like a well-reasoned hypothsis to me Free WordPress Themes? Forget it. It’s Over.

And here’s more of the inside of Biblioteca – which suggests some of its flexibility.

And the SEO page:

More on Alex Denning, WP Shout and his other work when time permits.

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A Way Back – the weblog of Amrinder Sandhu

jonathansoroko — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 04:38:33 +0000

I found these sites via WPEngineer. amd MakeBetterWebSites.com – which took me to “A Way Back,” the blog of of Amrinder Sandhu, a freelance web designer from Punjab.

A Way Back is quite beautiful and simple, using only a single color (other than black and white) – and that only for headings. His portfolio is at Design by Anaami, which I’m guessing is just the business name or the designer’s nickname.

From the Portfolio of Amrinder Sandhu.For MaggentoCommerce.com.

More after the jump. And a few more:

Gurbakhsh Singh website/blog by Amrinder Sandhua

And even the direct pitch is beautiful:

"Your Project" by Amrinder Sandhu

Amrinder Sandhu. Portfolio on this site, DesignbyAnaami.com.

Evernote lets you save all the interesting things you see online into a single place. Access all those saved pages from your computer, phone or the web. Sign up now or learn more. It's free!