TIFI: 19-25 March

Some of the things I found interesting between the 19 and 25 March. Sadly, having roughly 100 tabs open between two windows in Firefox tends to quite seriously bork things, and I lost more than half the tabs I had open. Which, if nothing else, is a reminder that I should clean out the tabs more often. But anyway, on to the good stuff.

• Metamorphosis by Glenn Marshall. Absolutely stunning.
• 20x200. Affordable art. So very tempted to splash out on a few prints to brighten up the batcave.
• Brynn Shepherd. A lovely design portfolio.
• Miles Dowsett. Another inspirational site.
• Showcase your Workspace. I love seeing where other people live/work.
• Rainbow cake. Fabulous.
• The Hungry Cupcakerpillar. Continuing the SwissMiss cake theme with even more awesome. Reminded me of The Very Hungry Smartiepillar.
• Oooh, that's Clever! Paul Annett's presentation from SXSWi 09. I really wish I'd been there to see this live.
• SXSW Sketchnotes. I loved these last year and this year they're awesome again.
• Typography Served. Bursting full of inspiration.

TIFI: 18 March 2009

• Fifty People, One Question. Great concept, beautifully shot videos and a gorgeous site to boot. Love these. My favourite is probably the London one (above). The answer given by the guy seen in the still is a heartbreaker.
• Crush + Lovely. The people who did the Fifty People, One Question website. Stunningly gorgeous site. Very inspirational.
• The Big Picture. I love this site and wish I'd been at the SXSW panel. It's my favourite example of accidental accessibility, and I really should write more about why (note to self).
• Authonomy. Books and block printed lettering. Heaven.
• Sexy Web Design by Elliot Jay Stocks. From what I've read so far, this is a great book. I downloaded the sample chapters, then had to buy the book. It's gone straight to the top of the reading pile.
• UI Pattern Factory. Great resource (via the Sexy Web Design book).
• Elliot's Inspiration Collection.
• Chris Messina's Design Pattern Collection.
• Talking about Design on Huffduffer. Great collection of audio files tagged with Design. I would totally Huffduff stuff if I ever found any audio files while browsing around the web.
• Unofficial Landmark Trust Search Page. Matthew Somerville does it again. I'll definitely be using this to book my next Landmark holiday (and there will definitely be a next, and a one after that, and so on - staying in a Landmark is just the most amazing experience).
• André Da Loba. I particularly love the shoes in the middle of the maze.

TIFI: 16 March 2009

• Rediscovering my Sigma 24mm f1.8 macro lens, which, shamefully, I'd entirely forgotten I owned and taking it for a walk which resulted in few flower photos.
• The Basics of using the Adjustment Brush in Lightroom.
• More on the Adjustment Brush in Lightroom.
• Pattern Tap. Great collection of interface elements for inspiration.
• Research on ARIA roles exposed via MSAA by Windows Browsers. Great work from Steve Faulkner and the Paciello Group.
• Word It. I'm tempted to give it a go and submit something.
• jQuery for Designers. I've tried dipping my toe into the waters and now I'm ready to dangle my feet. I think.
• We Tell Stories. Six Authors tell six stories in six weeks. Lovely site too.
• What goes into a good web design contract. Good info, this.
• Twitter sucks, so change your friends.

TIFI: 12-15 March 2009

Things I found interesting between the 12th and 15th of March 2009.

• Forever's Not So Long from garrettmurray on Vimeo
• Brand New. Great blog about branding.
• L2 Design Collective. Some gorgeous printed stuff.
• How to have fun when all your friends are at SXSW 2009. I love the little details on this. I wish I'd said Hi to Dan Rubin when I saw him sitting in the airport lounge heading home from SXSW 2007.
• The Medium Blog.
• The Playing Card. Gorgeous. Never thought I'd find a set of playing cards so interesting.
• The Daily Beast. I've been a fairly frequent visitor over the last few months, but every time I go, I'm reminded how much I really like the design. The content is pretty good too.
• The Dieline. My favourite packaging pr0n blog gets a sexy design refresh.
• One Black Bear. Love the flourishes.
• Pull & Press Design and Development. Lovely, simple design.
• Conditional CSS. A great reference.
• Typography blogs. Smashing Magazine does it again.
• Enrich black without affecting overall contrast. Another great tutorial from Digital Photography School.
• Jon Stewart vs Jim Cramer: Uncut. Jon Stewart is just on fire. Cramer didn't stand a chance.

TIFI: 11 March 2009

• Spring has arrived in my wee corner of SE22, and very welcome it is too.
• Natalie Downe's slides on practical, maintainable CSS. I wish I'd been able to be there for the actual presentation.
• The Fluid Grid system. I remain unconvinced that fluid is the way to go for all sites, but for those where it is appropriate, this could come in really handy.
• Designers are not programmers.
• Need a napkin? I know I do.
• Birds on a wire. Beautiful.
• Hampus Jageland. He's got some great stuff in his portfolio. I particularly like the branding work for Reading is Fundamental. It's modern and minimalist, but it's got a kind of classic, Penguin-esque feel to it.
• Yerba Mate tea. Haven't tried this before, but I spotted some in my favourite wee deli when I went out for a wander earlier and thought I'd give it a try. It's apparently some kind of miracle tea. So far, all I can say is that it's a bit of an acquired taste (and colour), but it's not unpleasant.
• Spring 2009 Knitty is up!
• The Yarn Harlot on brit TV. Stephanie (who is in Canada) spoke to Greg Kinnear (the actor) while he was on the Graham Norton show (in the UK). Confused? It's a long story, but a very funny one. The links are there for following.
• Happy Cog are working on Redesigning Mozilla and doing the whole Design by Community thing. Hope it doesn't wind up looking more like a camel than a horse.

TIFI: 10 March 2009

• Gorgeous packaging for ballpoint pens. I'd buy these just to look at the boxes.
• Font Stack Builder.
• Stunning tube photos. Via @christinebpc.
• The Happy Cog redesign of Maryland Institute College of Art.
• Lewis Hamilton and the RC Office Grand Prix.

TIFI: 9 March 2009

• The fabulous Cut Copy Poster. Another thing for my wall.
• Great article by Rachel Andrew on Developing CSS for IE6 and 7.
• Great post on food, body image and other people from Girl with a one track mind.
• Samantha Warren's lovely blog.
• Bad paintings of Barack Obama. Does exactly what it says on the tin.
• The Telegraph Blogging Style Guide.
• Lauren Luke's Guardian column and video make-up lessons. I had no idea she was a phenomenon, but she is utterly awesome and I wish her every success.
• Design Assembly. File under "inspiration".
• Neil Crosby's collaborative Spotify playlist. Fabulous. Do throw a track or two his way.

TIFI: 7 and 8 March 2009

• The Telegraph Gallery of Christian Faur's awesome crayon art. And by crayon art, I mean art made up of thousands of crayons arranged and photographed, rather than drawn on paper using crayon. Fabulous.
• Scene 360 illusion. The site where I found the link to the Crayon Art, and a whole bunch of other stuff besides.
• Books arranged by colour. Fabulous. Also via Scene 360 illusion.
• How to calibrate your zoom lens to capture what your eyes see.
• Sunflowers for iPhone.
• A lovely set of Jack Vettriano iPhone wallpapers.
• These gorgeous spoon prints. I want these for my wall.
• The heroic data collecting efforts of Ellie Harrison. I'm not sure I could record my thoughts while drinking tea for a day, never mind for three years!
• Last but absolutely not least, Disability Heroes, a site aimed at helping parents explain disability to children. This is so necessary. Especially in the wake of the recent nonsense about Cerrie Burnell.

TIFI: 6 March 2009

• The poster for Objectified, the new film by Gary Hustwit. Do want.
• This awesome YouTube video showing Augmented Reality. I wasn't convinced that it was actually real, so I had to try it out for myself. It really works! See the evidence of me augmenting reality.
• I'm not sure I'd ever choose an orange carpet on purpose, but this one is really striking.
• Just when I make peace with not going to SXSW this year, I find out they're holding a Burlesque Cupcake Cookoff. Life just isn't fair sometimes.
• I continue to be transfixed by What Katie Wore.

TIFI: 5 March 2009

• My purple and lime button necklace (shown above), which I love beyond reason, and came from Noodlefish.
• How to squeeze decent photos out of an iPhone.
• Opera Fingertouch (which isn't as rude as it sounds).
• The beautiful and moving Rebuilding the man.
• The combination of Moroccan Mint tea (Green tea and Mint) and Rage Against The Machine turned up loud. It had a most intriguing effect on my design brain.