Blog moved to new address

My blog has moved to a new address since Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) blocked the entire domain blogspot.com I, like other Pakistanis are unable to view my blog.

New address of my blog is http://ahmedsdesignblog.wordpress.com/

World First Banner Ad

Nothing fancy but this launched million others.

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BBC Report on UK Gamers

Report on UK gamers released by BBC Creative Research and Development.

Link [PDF] (via BoingBoing)

Patterns & Web Development

An article on patterns in web application development.

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My Blog Link in Designers Who Blog

My blog being added to Designers Who Blog. Search for 'Ahmed' on homepage.

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Linotype 2005’s Top Fonts

Linotyope's Most Requested Fonts from 2005. There are various fonts categorized as 'business' or 'casual' fonts. Frutiger, Syntax, Palatino, Linotype BioPlasm are personal favorites.

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Microsoft Hires User Interface Guru

Interesting news bit.

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MIT Courses Online

MIT's OCW courses online for anyone to use. Designers can find many useful insight with various courses that are offered.

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A Shameless Promotion

My own bare-bone portfolio is online now.

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The Anatomy of Web Fonts

Article on what make a good web font.

Link (via Slashdot)

Don't Hate Me Because I am Digital

Miss Digital World 2005 contest's 15 finalists.

Link (via Slashdot)

Quotation Marks Discussion

A discussion on Typophile about using large quotation in composition.

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Packaging Going Digital

Wired News link to shape of packaging in the near future.

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Future Desktop Interface

An article titled "Where Computer Interfaces Are Going : 3D Beyond Games" on desktop interfaces of the future.

Link (via Slashdot)

Style vs. Design

An old article but still holds true today.

Link (via Daily Report)

Elements of Design

A great article on fundamentals of great composition.

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Sotryboarding Rich Internet Applications with Visio

As rich Internet applications comes of age the challenge to document rich interactions arises. B&A article provides hands-on guide with Visio to tackle this issue.

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Storyboarding Rich Internet Applications with Visio

As rich Internet applications comes of age the challenge to document rich interactions arises. B&A article provides hands-on guide with Visio to tackle this issue.

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AJAX Primer

IBM DeveloperWorks published part 1 of AJAX primer. For those who are waiting to start AJAX can get their feet wet.

Link (via Slashdot)

Fresh Ideas In Brochure Design

"Fresh Ideas In Brochure Design" book available for download.

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Personal Evaluation Toolkit

A handy tool from Unilever for charting our career paths.

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NetObject Fusion 9

I haven't tried it myself. NetObject announced new version of their web designing tool.

From their website;

NetObjects Fusion 9 is simply the easiest, most complete way to build, manage, and promote websites on the market. Perfect for designers at any level, whether you are a novice with no HTML knowledge or a seasoned Web developer. Fusion 9 is equipped with the latest features and allows you to grow as a designer as your skills progress.

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Web 2.0 for Designers

Article on how Web 2.0 is going to play out for designers and what designer need to do for this new paradigm.

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Web Reloaded

You probably heard of Web 2.0 recently in media lately. You can read all about Web 2.0 in Tim Oreilly's article.

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The Physics Textbook

Huh? Yup, free Physics textbook. Maybe this will come handy for your 3D graphic escapades.

Link (via BoingBoing)

TypeFlake

Neat site and a Flash Film finalist.

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Flex Is For Designers as Well

Read this story and more in Macromedia Newsletter.

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Soviet Era Stamps

Stamps used in Soviet Era.

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ALA: Design Choices Can Cripple a Website

Shocking results, I know : |

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3D Video Podcasts

3D Video podcasts of Disney's park rides.

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Contemporary Ligatures

Another Typophile posting about creating ligatures for words like "WTF" and "LOL".

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GIMP Splash Screen Contest

Splash screen contest on occasion of GIMP's 10th anniversay.

Link (via Slashdot)

Packaging from Older Europe

I forgot if it was from Czech or Russia but here is the link anyways.

Link (via BoingBoing)

Ads of the World

Collection of really good advertisements from all over the world.

Link (Thanks Ozair)

Designers Who Blog

I am not alone .... MUWAHAHAHA!

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Icograda Feature: Six Guiding Principles for the 2005-2007

Interesting read.

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Videos Online Becoming Mainstream

More and more companies are adding video to their marketing messages online. Sapient one of them.

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Top 25 Web Design

Wow Web Design Top 25 designs.

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Top 10 Beginning Photography Tips

Good for people who work with photographs, this will help in seperating good photos from poor ones for their comps.

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PIA Memorabilia

Collection of memorabilia from good ol' to spanking new days Pakistan International Airline.



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New Microsoft UI Font Coming

Took two years to develop, Segoe is Microsoft's addition to its corporate fonts which will be making to its Windows Vista and Office 12.

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Design Considerations for Web-based Applications

Research paper by Luke Wroblewski & Esa M. Rantanen on guidelines for web-based applications.

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Darker Hello Kitty

Paintings depicting darker sides of Hello Kitty : )

Link (via BoingBoing)

Apple Mac OS X on x86: A First Test

ZDNet's article on running Mac OS X on x86 (Intel, AMD, etc chips).

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NewWebPick E-Zine '03

A free but a really great e-zine. Some great illustrations in there worth checking out.

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How to Manage Geeks

Interview of Novell CEO to FastCompany.

Link (via Slashdot)

Ambient Gaming

Immersive gaming to be taken to a newer level.

Link (via Slashdot)

Sony's Bouncing Ball Ad

No GPUs were harmed in making this ad ; )

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Manafacturing Posters

Some manufacturing posters.

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Noise

Haven't tried it since its MAC-only. If you are a mac user you can try this app that masks background noise.

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Frankenstein meets DaVinci

Worth1000 contest entries worth checking out.

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Gestalt Principles of Perception

In last post of "The Two Things" there was mention of Gestalt Principles of Perception. Found some good info on them.

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Link 2

The Two Things

"The Two Things" is about two most important things that one needs to know about a particular profession. Rest is all application of it.

The Two Things about Graphic Design according to the site is;

The Two Things about Graphic Design
1. Gestalt Principles of Perception
2. Visual Hierarchy
-Dina

The Two Things about Graphic Design:
1. Elements of Design: Line, shape, texture, value & color, space
2. Principles of Design: Movement, balance, emphasis, unity
-Dina

Link (Thanks, Mubashir)

Eid Mubarak!

Introduction to User Journeys

Many websites tailor specific contents to the different type of users, e.g. SAS homepage shows "Recommended Starting Points" for Executives, IT Professionals, etc. In this new Boxes and Arrows article explains this concept in detail.

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AJAX Applications

Some AJAX based applications mentioned in a ZDNet blog posting.

From the post:

Writely - "The Web Word Processor" (note that for creating documents, it uses an HTML editor and then converts to Word format)
FCKeditor is also an MS Word-like web app. It's open source too.
gOFFICE - "a browser-based online word processor and desktop publishing program"
Num Sum - web-based spreadsheets - except only the author of a spreadsheet can edit it.
Kiko - Online calendar solution powered by Ajax.
Gmail and now the new Yahoo! Mail (Microsoft is rumored to be working on a Hotmail upgrade, codenamed Kahuna)
called S5 - web-based Powerpoint
Webnote - web-based version of Microsoft's OneNote
thinkfree - online Office suite
Openomy - online file-system
Bindows
Gliffy
Meebo
Zimbra

Link (via Slashdot)