I think I saw that semi-meme post title somewhere around the ‘nets…
Well anyways, without further ado, I present you my almighty reading stack for the spring of 2008:
My reading stack, consisting of 5 books
These are:
The above marks are given according to how useful I’ve found the book as a web designer. All in all, they’re all great books, it’s just that Designing for Interaction was kinda disappointing in my humble opinion.
design, web design, books
Wireframes, mockups, you name it: if you’re a designer, you know what they are.
They are these ghastly but pretty in their simplicity and grayness images that are used to form a framework on which your design is built.
Wireframes are the first stepping stone of a good design, because since they’re so flexible they allow a myriad of changes without real cost.
So, wireframes are fun. But doing them in Photoshop is not always fun! I’m looking for an application (preferrably a Mac one, but a good Windows one will do too) which exists exclusively for this kind of work. It doesn’t need to be fancy, just pleasant to use and effective.
I checked out OmniGraffle but well, it’s mostly targeted to GUI designers and less to web designers. I’ve also downloaded the trial version of Axure for Windows, still haven’t used it though.
Photoshop is my bread ‘n’ butter, it pays the bills, but it’s not the easiest tool of the trade for wireframing.
Any other suggestions by fellow web designers?
wireframe, photoshop, web design, axure, omnigraffle
If you read my blog even a little, you’ll probably have guess by now my unhealthy obsession with the 37Signals way of thinking, working and doing. To be frank, this wasn’t always the case.
When I first approached a 37S product, namely Backpack, I signed up for a free account and used it for about a half hour. Then I dropped it. Smacked it, to be precise. I was in the “trying-every-app-that-moves” era, so I didn’t like it, because it was too restricting, it was lacking features, it was too simple and yada yada. Or so I thought.
After a few months I decided to give Backpack a second chance. It had matured, it had collected raving reviews, it was holding a high rank among the GTD crowd, so I succumbed. Then I found out, in my surprise, that Backpack works, after all.
Just give it time. Sure, it seems to lack features. And Ruby on Rails can be laggy at times. But it has found a niche in my digital life that no other online tool has managed to fill.
Interesting links that pop into my screen while at work and need some “private” time: Backpack Inbox for later. Work todo lists and notes and drafts and mockups and files I want to share, @Work. Stuff that I wanna buy someday, an image gallery @Shopping. Blogs posts and drafts and ideas, @Blog.
A sample Backpack page
It’s a terrific tool for the day-to-day digital notetaking, while the new multi-user features that were recently added make it a solid small company Intranet solution, with calendars, whiteboards, shared editing.
Thing is, I don’t think I ever fell in love with this product. I never had an infatuation that faded after time (I tend to do that a lot with applications, both online and offline). My Backpack love grew after quite some time of working with it, so I don’t see us getting a divorce anytime soon.
It’s not only the finished product, it’s the 37S way of thinking: declutter, simplicity, straightforward are some of the words that pop in your mind while using its products, be it Backpack, Basecamp or Highrise.
Give Backpack a try.
P.S. The Backpack links above are affiliate, but what I wrote are my true feelings on this product.
37signals, backpack, basecamp, highrise
