Jeff Croft

Link // 11.30.2007 // 1:34 PM // 0 Comments
Blue Flavor Job Opening: Content Producer/Community Manager

We’re looking for some new to join our little family in Seattle. If you can write and are interested in editing, blogging, and event a bit of project management and event planning, check out the job description and apply! The position is in our Seattle office, so you must be local (or willing to relocate).
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Photo // 11.30.2007 // 11:01 AM // Seattle, WA // flickr

Blue Flavor art installation?
Link // 11.30.2007 // 9:49 AM // 0 Comments
The Rissington Podcast

Wow, this is a really beautiful site by Oxton and Hicks. If you’re going to do a liquid layout, this is how it’s done. I haven’t listened to the podcast, but I’m confident it’s quite good, given what I know about John and Jon. Congrats, guys.
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Link // 11.29.2007 // 10:07 PM // 0 Comments
James Bennett: Where is Django’s blog application?

People ask me this question all the time. The answer, in general, is, “there’s really not one.” Building a monolithic blogging application for Django kind of goes against the grain of most of the best practices for Django development — and James explains this in detail. It’s a good read if you’re curious about the design of Django apps.

What’s more, most of the Django blogging applications that do exist were generally built by a single person for their own personal site, and tend to be customized to that person’s needs, making them less likely to be suitable for your needs.

And, quite frankly, writing a simple blogging app in Django is so damn easy that it just doesn’t feel worth it.
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Link // 11.29.2007 // 7:24 PM // 0 Comments
Jon Swift: Journalism 101

Ridiculously accurate. And funny, too.
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Link // 11.29.2007 // 7:11 PM // 1 Comment
Blog of Subvert Marketing Inc. - The world’s top 10 interactive agencies

According to Subvert Marketing, Blue Flavor is one of the top 10 interactive agencies in the world. That’s awesome, but I think the list might be more aptly titled “The world’s top 10 interactive agencies who focus on web standards-aware development.” Everyone on the list is a great choice, but there are few that probably should be there, as well — nclud and Behavior both come to mind.
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Link // 11.29.2007 // 6:30 PM // 0 Comments
Snoop Dogg: “Sensual Seduction” music video

Aww yeah. Now that is what I call bringing sexy back. As if the old-school soul vibe and blaxploitation stylings on the music video weren’t enough, the Dee-oh-double-gee is rockin’ the talk box, pretty much my favorite musical sound ever since I first heard a Roger Troutman record (although, it has been a bit overused lately — I’m looking at you, T-Pain). Awesome. Love it. Thank you, S. :)
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Photo // 11.29.2007 // 2:27 PM // Seattle, WA // flickr

Latest addition to the Blue Flavor office
Link // 11.29.2007 // 9:46 AM // 0 Comments
Jonathan Christopher: Closing this Chapter on CSS Frameworks

Jonathan has a nice follow-up to the CSS framework discussion here. At one point, he says:

It seems for many of the arguments either for or against CSS frameworks have a related counter-argument, which could be the reason this debate has been circular for so long.

Indeed. What it boils down to is that the decision whether or not to use a CSS framework (or whatever you want to call it) is a personal one. Therefore, it’s probably a bad idea for anyone to say definitively, “you should/shouldn’t be using CSS frameworks.” It’s roughly the same as saying, “you should/shouldn’t be using Fireworks instead of Photoshop” or “you should/shouldn’t be using the CSS shorthand properties (i.e. background instead of background-image and background-repeat).

They’re all just tools, and which one someone choose to use or not use is just personal preference. We should all probably just let people have their preferences in piece.
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Link // 11.29.2007 // 9:41 AM // 0 Comments
Garrett Murray: Development Inspiration & Motivation

Garrett gives some helpful tips for staying engaged and motivated throughout a development project.
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Link // 11.28.2007 // 11:52 AM // 0 Comments
DesignInterviews.com: Lea Alcantara

Helen at DesignInterviews.com talks to my pal Lea about various aspects of web design, as well as creating a personal brand (something Lea knows a thing or two about, as evidenced by her FOWD NYC presentation).
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Link // 11.28.2007 // 10:30 AM // 0 Comments
Email Standards Project

The battle for web standards in browsers has largely been won — browsers are much better than even, and even those manufacturers that still have room to improve appear to be making sincere efforts to do so. But, the same can not be said for e-mail clients. Some (like Mail.app and Thunderbird) mooch off existing rendering engines (WebKit and Gecko, respectively), and therefore do a great job of rendering HTML and CSS e-mail. Others do a ridiculously poor job.

Love it or hate it, HTML e-mail is here to stay, and I’m glad to see someone setting out to solve the rendering problem in e-mail clients much the same way the web standards movement solved the rendering problem in browsers. The client tests alone are worth bookmarking this site for.
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Link // 11.28.2007 // 10:21 AM // 0 Comments
Keith Robinson: Consensus is for losers.

Following-up on a point he made at FOWD in NYC, and also in his latest post on the Blue Flavor blog, Keith gets into some detail about why Design by Committee is almost always a really bad idea.
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Link // 11.28.2007 // 10:20 AM // 0 Comments
Blue Flavor: What makes a great design?

Keith continues the Blue Flavor blog publishing blog onslaught with a really great post on what constitutes great design (particularly on the web).
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Link // 11.27.2007 // 11:35 PM // 0 Comments
Hillman Curtis short: Pentagram07

A nice video detailing the history and business model of Pentagram. Hillman Curtis’ shorts are always good, so be sure to check out the others on the site while you’re there.
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Link // 11.27.2007 // 11:01 PM // 0 Comments
Fimoculous.com: 2007 Lists

If you love end-of-the-year lists like I do, you have to check out Rex’s list of lists, which he’s putting together yet again this year. Thanks, Rexy!
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Link // 11.27.2007 // 9:57 PM // 10 Comments
Mark Vallen: Obey Plagiarist Shepard Fairey

I”m a fan of Shepard Fairey, so I am no doubt biased. But, I don’t see why it strikes anyone as surprising that Fairey uses other people’s imagery in his work.

To me, Fairey is much more graphic designer than he is artist. Us designers make quite a little habit of compiling graphics, type, photos, and the like from disparate sources into new compositions. It’s what we do.

Fairey shouldn’t try to pawn off the appropriations of other people’s work as his own any more than Dr. Dre should claim that he wrote the musical hook for California Love (he didn’t, it’s from Joe Cocker’s “Woman to Woman”) or Notorious B.I.G. should claim he created the groove for Big Poppa (it’s a sample from The Isley Brother’s “Between the Sheets”) — but that doesn’t mean he shouldn’t use it. Borrowing bits and pieces of material and working them into a new original composition is hardly plagiarism.

Fairey samples, just like musical artists do all the time. What’s the big deal?
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Link // 11.27.2007 // 8:47 PM // 0 Comments
Blue Flavor: Getting Started in Information Architecture

My co-worker and good friend Tom Watson covers the basics of information architecture in this post at the Blue Flavor blog. The Blue Flavor blog is more active than ever, with new articles about web design and our industry being posted every week. Subscribe, yo!
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Link // 11.27.2007 // 6:26 PM // 0 Comments
Nolan Caudill: Zen and the Art of Software Design

An absolutely wronderful post regarding the prevelance of silly arguments about tools and technologies in our industry. A few choice quotes:

On the web, whenever there is no clear advantage of one technology over another, conflict arises. You have people entrenched on both sides of the debate of which technology is better. What is not seen is that neither side is inherently right or wrong. Rightness is only determined by what creates tranquility in the person using the tool.

And…

The main goal is not to choose some arbitrarily correct right tool, because what may be the bee’s knees to one developer may be chopped liver to another. It’s usually not that extreme, but the point is that often arguing over particular technologies is like arguing over favorites colors. The only winners are the ones that choose the tools that suit themselves the best.

Amen.
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Link // 11.27.2007 // 6:18 PM // 0 Comments
My ideology, from the mouth of another

Jon’s post is really good and worth reading, but I’m actually linking to Joe Clark’s comment on it, in which he states, “Jeff is getting craftier at restating his ‘Real code isn’t all that important’ ideology.” I’m not quite sure what “real code” means, but I found it amusing to hear Joe put words in my mouth.

Since I don’t know what he means by “real code,” I can’t speak to whether or not he’s accurately paraphrasing my thoughts. The only code I can call myself any kind of expert on is HTML and CSS, and in the case of those, my only “ideology” is to write clean code that is as semantic as possible (in the case of HTML) and as valid as possible within the constraints of a given project (budget, timeframe, etc.). I can only presume this is what Joe’s referring to.
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Link // 11.27.2007 // 4:31 PM // 0 Comments
Ask 37signals: Getting real breaks a stalemate

If you ignore the tired “getting real” brand masturbation, there are some really good thoughts in here.

In fact, that could be said about pretty much every post on SVN.
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Link // 11.27.2007 // 11:37 AM // 0 Comments
December 1st Django Sprint

This Saturday, Djangonauts the world over will come together, physically and virtually, to “sprint” towards Django 1.0. Django had a sprint back in September, too, and it was hugely productive. Looking forward to see what comes of this one.
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Photo // 11.26.2007 // 3:04 PM // Seattle, WA // flickr

It's the only blue beanie I gots.
Link // 11.26.2007 // 10:35 AM // 0 Comments
The “Millennials” Are Coming

Great article about the generation of folks just entering the workplace — those born between 1980 and 1985, give or take. I’ve definitely noticed this sense of entitlement amongst some of these kids. Besides all the reasons discussed in the article, I think some of it comes from seeing the success of the Mark Zuckerbergs and Kevin Roses of the world. Young people in our industry sometimes believe they are a saviour of sorts, and expect it means they won’t have to start in lower-level positions, won’t have to pay their dues, and won’t have to do as they’re told sometimes. As anyone who’s worked with me know — I’m all for rocking the boat when it needs to be rocked — but you do sort of have to work your way into boat-rocking position.

Or maybe, after 11 years of working full time in this industry, I’m just getting old.
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Blog entry // 11.25.2007 // 3:40 PM // 63 Comments
It’s not the tool, it’s how you use it.

Today, as I was looking through the referrers for this site, I found a comment from my now-co-worker D. Keith Robinson, dated December 4th, 2003. A few excerpts from the comment:

It’s an age old debate. Flash vs. HTML vs. CSS — blah, blah, blah. I’ll hammer a few more nails into this dead horse if it’ll help get the message across. It’s not about the tool, it’s about what you do with it. … The problem usually is that some designer or developer latches on to a certain technology (it could be CSS, it could be Flash, it could be anything) and thereafter tries to solve every and all problems with it. … Flash is a tool, CSS is a tool. If you are working on the Web you’d probably want to have both in your “toolbox” and know how and when to use each. … A carpenter doesn’t try to build everything with a hammer, does he? Why should a Web designer be any different?

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Link // 11.24.2007 // 11:48 AM // 0 Comments
The Top 10 Rap Songs White People Love

“Having studied White People for 27 years, my authority on the topic is absolute; this list is damn near bullet proof.” Well, I’m not going to argue with him!
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Link // 11.24.2007 // 11:37 AM // 0 Comments
Raincity Studios’ Forecast is Bryght

A couple of our friends to the North (and Blue Flavor’s two parters in the annual North by Northwest party at SXSW), Bryght and Raincity Studios, have joined forces. Congrats to everyone involved. Killer team up there!
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Link // 11.23.2007 // 7:43 PM // 0 Comments
Pixelsurgeon is Dead.

A melancholy “happy trails” to Jason, Richard, and Sam’s Pixelsurgeon, one of the most long-standing and personally influential web design sites on the ‘net. I met Jason Arber when I was in London — he was moderating a panel I was on — and found him to be incredibly nice, funny, and smart. I’m sure the other guys are the same. Jason seemed like exactly the sort of guy that would have the balls to shut a site down while it was still fucking great, rather than watching it wither away.

Well-done, guys. The site will definitely be missed.
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Photo // 11.22.2007 // 11:25 AM // Seattle, WA // flickr

Michelle
Photo // 11.22.2007 // 11:24 AM // Seattle, WA // flickr

Me
Photo // 11.22.2007 // 11:23 AM // Seattle, WA // flickr

Jim lookin' sexy (and Meesh poking in)
Photo // 11.22.2007 // 11:23 AM // Seattle, WA // flickr

Meesh
Photo // 11.22.2007 // 11:22 AM // Seattle, WA // flickr

Birthday Boy
Photo // 11.22.2007 // 11:21 AM // Seattle, WA // flickr

Mike and Chelan
Photo // 11.22.2007 // 11:21 AM // Seattle, WA // flickr

Jim Ray, a 40, and a koozie
Photo // 11.22.2007 // 11:20 AM // Seattle, WA // flickr

Keith looking scary
Photo // 11.22.2007 // 11:19 AM // Seattle, WA // flickr

Tom and Chelan
Photo // 11.22.2007 // 11:19 AM // Seattle, WA // flickr

Me, Jim, and Meesh
Photo // 11.22.2007 // 11:18 AM // Seattle, WA // flickr

Hanging out for Tom's birthday
Link // 11.21.2007 // 1:19 PM // 0 Comments
Stephen P. Anderson: In Defense of Eye Candy

Stephen’s presentation is really great — he does a nice job of explaining why “pretty pictures” are a lot more valuable then you might initially think. Besides the slides, the accompanying blog post is also really good stuff.
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