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ralphsaunders

45 karma · joined November 7, 2010

Designer, front-end developer, and student at Bournemouth University.

Articles and other stuff: http://ralphsaunders.co.uk/

submissionscomments
ralphsaunders··on Test-Driven Django Tutorial
The lines are far too long, it would certainly benefit from more leading, larger sizing would be nice, and a typeface with a larger x-height (times is so tiny), would greatly improve readability.
ralphsaunders··on Europe's Square
In an Apple store they're often portable.
ralphsaunders··on OpenShift by Red Hat
But what's the catch?
ralphsaunders··on Dress code: blue tie and male
I employ the 'readable' bookmarklet for situations like this. http://readable.tastefulwords.com/
ralphsaunders··on "Adobe has released Adobe Photoshop CS6, which addresses these vulnerabilities"
It's just unbelievable, really. Can you imagine the outrage if Microsoft did this with Word?
ralphsaunders··on Incredibox - Background music for programming.
Fun to have a little play around in, although I'm not sure how much programming I'd get done playing with this ;).

http://www.incredibox.com/?music=4F9B48F2E5B02

ralphsaunders··on Desktop First
I've spent 5 minutes looking around trying to work out what your app does and I still don't really know.
ralphsaunders··on Notch live coding 0x10c
Minecraft is still in active development. It may yet (if it isn't already).
ralphsaunders··on Dear Jim Gaffigan, Louis C.K. paid $35k for his website. We'll do yours for $0.
Your new startup designs websites but doesn't have a designer? I don't think you've thought this through.
ralphsaunders··on Walter Isaacson’s ‘Steve Jobs’
There really isn't. Getting the thing to work is the bare minimum.
ralphsaunders··on Indie Game Music Bundle (Pay what you want)
Well, if it's coming from more than one source (multiple trackers) it could rather simply have been tampered with.
ralphsaunders··on Indie Game Music Bundle (Pay what you want)
Yes, would have much preferred a torrent with a passworded .zip or something similar. Would have been faster too.
ralphsaunders··on Indie Game Music Bundle (Pay what you want)
Just purchased and look forward to listening but requiring me to only download 4 albums at a time is rather poor.

"Please only download 4 files at a time or you may be disconnected from the file servers."

ralphsaunders··on Peter Thiel: "I Don’t Consider [The iPhone] To Be A Technological Breakthrough"
Do they teach about what Ford did today?
ralphsaunders··on Show HN: My weekend project, MealMogul.com
Don't know what the idea is and it's asking for access to information I have on facebook. Sorry, but no.
ralphsaunders··on 3D printed coffee cups
Somehow I think it's more likely that they'll get a flawed product and will have to buy a replacement from a store.
ralphsaunders··on Codecademy and the Future of (Not) Learning to Code
I taught myself to code (HTML, CSS, and a small amount of PHP — Wordpress) while I was doing a Graphic Design ND. I think the hardest part for me, like Audrey, was trying to understand what a lot of the terms mean and also the concepts behind them.

I distinctly remember following a basic HTML & CSS tutorial and not being able to work out how to get the CSS to style the HTML. The example code worked fine, but the relationship between the two wasn't explained so when I wrote my own it didn't work.

I only learned of semantics 12 months after starting with HTML + CSS. It would have made a massive difference if someone had pointed me to a beginners guide (online & free, of course) that explained the way the web was born and how HTML is a way of assigning meaning to a document.

I think a lot of the problem is the people writing the tutorials and resources for this kind of stuff want to teach people something, while the people looking for this stuff want to learn it. Perhaps this is why a lot of Google's results for these kind of things are forum threads and other discussions (usually filled with outdated or plain wrong information, I might add).

ralphsaunders··on Design, motherfucker, do you speak it?
It's more that inexperienced designers, generally, approach critique from a subjective perspective, rather than an objective one.
ralphsaunders··on Kickstarter being sued for patent infringment.
I guess the first reason that springs to mind is that spec work is of poor quality. Most designers - I can't speak for artists, but I wouldn't be surprised if they shared a similar sentiment - look at products and think about how they could be improved. To see a company not only facilitating poor quality work, but for it to also be pleased with the result is rather... depressing, really.

Another is that encouraging people to work for free is rather questionable. Arguably it's preying on people who might be rather desperate for money when their time would be better invested in other things.

But most of all, is that the term 'designer' now includes people who produce that poor standard of work as well as, for example, the very talented people who work at Apple. It cheapens the term, and I think that's a lot of the reason you see new job titles appearing regularly from within the industry - a "user experience" designer didn't really exist 2 years ago and it basically means "generalist" or "designer".

A lot of clients evaluate design based on aesthetics, which is obviously only half of the solution. It can be very difficult to differentiate yourself from the 'designers' who churn out lots of ill thought through work, especially if you're new in the industry and you don't have lots of client experience to write about.

ralphsaunders··on Kickstarter being sued for patent infringment.
Design and art aren't really viewed by most designers and artists as a commodity, which is what sites similar to 99 designs try to put accross.

99 designs and similar are at the very low end of the market and the argument is that it becomes harder for skilled designers/artists to find high-paying work as more companies opt for the cheap route. There are more reasons to hate it from a designer's/artist's point of view, but that's the core of it.

That said, kickstarter certainly doesn't fit in that category, if anything it brings more paying work to designers/artists.

ralphsaunders··on "How much does a website cost?" – a survey of web designers
Asking "How much does a website cost?" is a bit like asking "How much does a car cost?", and of course the answer is "it varies, how much are you looking to spend? What do you want of the car/website?". Surveying various designers under the pretense of addressing this question is price fixing.

The fact that the designers were asked their prices on the criteria that "All prices are for design only, i.e. they don’t include any sort of coding (no HTML, no CSS, no Javascript, no PHP, etc.)." is rather telling with regards to experience.

Design doesn't stop at the mockup stage — anyone who has designed & built the front-end of a website knows that the design continues to evolve outside of Photoshop. The nature of the web dictates a website must be flexible so it can accommodate different browsers and resolutions. It's very difficult (read: expensive) to design for a dynamic medium in a static work space, and it's disingenuous to call a static, non-interactive image a website.

This post would be better titled "How much can one charge for a website mockup?"

ralphsaunders··on Show HN: I built a webapp to help web "designers" create logos and fonts quickly
Show HN: I built a webapp to help web "designers" create logos and fonts quickly

FTFY

ralphsaunders··on Bootstrapping / startup-life-hacks we’ve learned (so far)
A great designer would not be seen near such a place. Heck, any self respecting designer would do their best to avoid it. You're buying the time of kiddies equipped with photoshop, nothing more.
ralphsaunders··on 14 Days Later: What I’ve learned in the first 2 weeks of my startup
You might find this bookmarklet useful then: http://readable.tastefulwords.com/
ralphsaunders··on This is how you demo your product... make it insanely easy
Frankly baffled me. Context is everything.
ralphsaunders··on Spin.js, a pure JS spinner
Getting around 20% to 35% on Chrome 15
ralphsaunders··on Unsolicited Redesigns (Khoi Vinh responds to NYTimes redesign)
That simply isn't true.

> Since news is accessed only via subscription, most of the ads can be eliminated from the pages. Story pages could still have one or two tastefully-presented ads, but preservation of the content is what will keep readers happy, engaged, and willing to continue paying their subscriptions…just like in olden times.

http://andyrutledge.com/images09/newsSite/nyt-redux-article....

ralphsaunders··on Unsolicited Redesigns (Khoi Vinh responds to NYTimes redesign)
If you read the first four paragraphs of Andy's article you'll realise the piece looks at digital news as a product, so it must address the business model as well as the design.
ralphsaunders··on The Problem with the iPhone's Home Button
I don't have an iPhone, but I thought holding the homebutton down returned you to the homescreen, making this a non-issue?
ralphsaunders··on Hi, I’m a UX Developer - You’re a what?
You're a wizard Harry...