Overdue Theme Update

blog-o-sphere, ,

Unfortunately, during the last few weeks, I did not find a lot of time to update the blog. My backlog of interesting posts is increasingly growing, but I did not find the time to write them down. I also spend a ridiculous amount of time to browse through potential WordPress themes to find a suitable theme for a blog.

Most themes provide an insane overload of visuals – which does not come in handy when dealing with code snippets, screenshots and so on.

I also did not want to customize the theme as I did for our podcast site, where I had to write several hundred lines of CSS code to get the theme properly working with the content.

Eventually, I found a theme that provides a suitable set of features without a graphical overload with a clean layout, which is called Melos Minimal which is worth a try.

Link: https://wordpress.org/themes/melos-minimal/

Animated Icons

quick tips,

As you might know, I subscribed The Noun Project as my ultimate source for icons. I use them for presentations, lectures and sometimes web sites. It’s a lifesaver for me.

Recently I received a newsletter which pointed me to a tutorial on how to create animated icons. It’s quite a good tutorial and if you are in the need to create animated icons this might be something for you. As I am not very gifted with these tools, I just leave it here in case I need it at a point later in time.

Link: https://blog.thenounproject.com/how-to-create-animated-gif-with-icons-a9eb757948b3

Pixel Art Palettes

cool stuff, ,

When looking for a nice design the colour palette is one of things I usually fail epic.

Lospec is a website providing a pixel editor, pixel art tutorials and more important to me some hundreds of colour palettes based on a wide range of 8- and 16-bit games.

The Lospec Palette List is a database of palettes for pixel art. We include both palettes that originate from old hardware that could only display a few colors, as well as palettes created by pixel artists specifically for making art. All palettes can be downloaded and imported into your pixelling software of choice 

I like using these palettes when creating a logo (also I am not good in this discipline) and presentations when not bound to any corporate identity.

The palettes can be downloaded as png image or even as Adobe Photoshop, Paint.NET or GIMP file to be used in your favorite application.

Link: https://lospec.com/palette-list

Can’t Unsee – A Game about the Visual Details

visualization,

In my recent lectures about interactive systems, I talked a lot about standards and guidelines for visual design. When I learned about Can’t Unsee,I had to share this with my students at once. It is a little game where you can learn quite a lot about the details of visual design.

It shows you two alternatives of designs differing only in a few or even one detail. The further your get, the harder the challenge becomes. While the differences are obvious in the beginning the details are getting harder to realize by time.

Can't Unsee Website

I can y recommend to play this little game, if yo want  increase your sensibility to the little details of visual design.

Link: https://cantunsee.space/