IconFinder圖標的搜索引擎

Iconfinder是個圖標搜索引擎(search engine)。所以，如果你不想自己做新的圖標，你可以很快找新的圖標。你可以把那些圖標tag起來，也可以下載ㄧ個Mac OSX Dashboard的Widget從這裡: Icon Finder Widget.

台灣的彎彎上電視廣告

我以前寫一篇文章有關於台灣的彎彎(cwanny), 她的blog在這裡。她現在有電視廣告，你可以在下面看到。在那個廣告裡，她用ㄧ台蘋果電腦，不知道她是不是真的用Mac可能是吧！

Apple Computer Form Factor Evolution

這裡有關於蘋果電腦硬體的進化，有從1976到2007得每個模型。我以前不知道蘋果有那麼多電腦。我第ㄧ次用Mac是Mac Mini G4所以我是新Mac用戶（雖然我在高學的時候用過OS8/9)。

彎彎 Colour Palettes

最近我的中文老師給我們一些圖所以我們可以學情感的字。我最喜歡這些圖的顏色所以我決定做這些圖的色表。

這些圖的畫家是彎彎

Recently in Chinese class we were given a series of pictures so that we could learn words for emotions and feelings. I liked the pictures so much that I decided to make a few sets of colour palettes from them.

All of the images are by the Taiwanese illustrator 彎彎, cwwany

Wet 濕 ㄕ (shi1)

Busy 忙 ㄇㄤˊ (mang2)

Cold 冷 ㄌㄥˇ (leng3)

Dizzy 暈 ㄩㄣ (yun1)

Photoshop Colour Profiles

A quick tip for anyone wondering why their images appear washed out when ’saving for web’ in Photoshop - Check you are using a web colour profile.

I had never found this to be as big an issue when using Photoshop in Windows XP and it only caused enough of an issue on the Mac as for a recent project I’ve been using more vivid colours.

This Design Geek article explains why this happens, and how to correct it. It also explains that Windows has a higher gamma than OS X, meaning colours appear darker - which probably explains why It’s only just become an issue for me.

Ensure you’re using a web colour profile by going to Edit -> colour Settings, in Photoshop, and change the colour profile to one that has ‘Web’ in it’s name, and that the RGB working space begins sRGB followed by a series of numbers.

Edit: It seems the solution to this problem is not so simple. Somehow I’d managed to check the ‘Desaturate Monitor colours By: 20%’ option in colour Settings - which makes images in photoshop appear exactly how they appear when exporting for web. With this option unchecked, having a Web colour profile barely makes a difference to the working space colours.

There’s some helpful discussion in the comments of this blog post about colour profiles and OS X but apparantly no definitive solution. I’ve set the gamma on my Macbook to 2.2 to match Windows and that somewhat helps but is not ideal

Does anyone have any input on this?

YouTube and Internet Protocol T-Shirts

I’ve just been to the local Carrefour supermarket, next to Love River in Kaohsiung City Taiwan, and saw these internet protocol t-shirts. They were on sale at $199NT (about £3.20 or $5 US). It wouldn’t usually be noteworthy but it just surprised me to see them in such a mainstream store, what is essentially the Taiwanese Tesco or Walmart.

I bought a HTTP, FTP and Avatar shirt, although it was the YouTube one that caught my eye when walking by.

Where to get design/CSS inspiration

Everyone has the places they go online to get inspiration for their latest web design/print/CSS projects. Online resources are a great place to get ideas for colour schemes, layouts, design techniques and other elements. The following is a list of sites I visit I’m when working on a new project and need some inspiration to get started. If you have any other sites please add them in the comments!

Color Lovers - Allows users to browse and share colours and colour palettes. There are thousands of colour palettes to browse making it the perfect site for choosing a scheme for a new project.

Net Cocktail - This is a CSS design gallery that takes beautiful designs and extracts the main colours from the site’s colour scheme, great for seeing how certain schemes are put to use

Design Meltdown - An invaluable resource with lots of articles exploring colour usage, design element/technique usage, and also tutorials on graphical techniques and CSS development. The designs of various site genres are also explored.

The following sites are all CSS design galleries, I won’t describe them in too much detail individually as they’re all very similar, but each one is good resource for quality design.

• CSS Remix - CSS design gallery with user voting
• CSS Import - The “no frills” CSS gallery
• CSS Beauty - A selection of tagged and categorised CSS sites, also featuring a design forum and web design news
• Inspiration King - A CSS design gallery organised by site category. Also featuring web design news
• The Daily Slurp - A new selection of CSS designs everyday
• CSS Mania - CSS designs organised by site category
• CSS Allstar - CSS designs voted on by users
• CSS Princess - Beautiful CSS sites with a “woman’s touch”

A few design related sites that recently made the homepage of Digg.com and caught my eye include -

China HTML W3C SItes - This is an absolutely huge collection of CSS based sites all crammed onto one page

The Bluesfear Worm - An amazing example of collaboration by designers from the Bluesfear design community. There are lots of design styles, colour usage and other techniques demonstrated.

There are more than enough sites here to get you started thinking about a new project, or even just for browsing to see what makes good web design.