Tips, Tricks & Hints
Every good designer and web developer has a few tricks up their sleeve. For that matter, so does every good writer, project manager, UI architect and…well, you get the point. All of us here have been doing what we do for a while, and we’ve learned lots along the way.
Rather than keep it all to ourselves, we want to share it with you. We figure we’re not the only ones who have to tackle photoshop or any of the other tools we use during the day, so if you read something here that saves you time down the road then we’re happy.
Check out the posts below. And if you’ve got a better solution than what we know, drop us a neighborly comment so we can all share in your skills. That’s what it’s all about.
Translating Higher Ed-Speak from US to UK
NewCity does a lot of work in higher education. We've done a few projects in the UK in addition to our customer base in the US. One of the most fun aspects of that work is learning to translate between Higher Ed lingo in the US and the UK.
It wouldn't be so hard if it wasn't for the fact that we use a lot of the same words to mean different things! George Bernard Shaw's maxim "England and America are two countries separated by a common language," holds true in higher ed.
Melissa Beaver…
Illustrator Tip: Duplicate a shape along a circle
Making a shape mathematically duplicate itself along a circle sounds like something illustrator would handle flawlessly. Well it is, if you can find it. This not very well documented procedure I have the need for maybe 3 times a year but every time its a challenge to make Illustrator do what I want it to do. That is until I discovered this little method. Follow these easy steps to duplicate a shape along a circle perfectly every time.
Someone Else’s Code
Head down, fingers tapping and teeth gnashing, that’s how you’d find me if I was working on someone else’s code. I want to rewrite it. I mean, it’s awful just look at it. There are no comments and there are ternary operators where they shouldn’t be and they aren’t used where they should be. And to make it all worse, the code is littered with tons of inane variables like temp and iter.
Faking a print piece from a flat working file
Imagine that you just got done comping a print piece and now it''s time to show the client via web conferencing. You want it to look as real as you can, but something is missing - it looks too flat. Here's a simple & fast way to suggest what it will look like when actually printed.
Sometimes it IS the Destination…
It’s Not the Destination, It’s the Journey
It’s a nice thought. Put it on a t-shirt or on the bumper of your car.
But on your website, The Destination is what it’s all about. What do you want people to DO, really, on your website?
Unless your website is a wiki or if you just want to provide information to site visitors, as a…
Tools of the Trade - Development
"Every craftsman starts his or her journey with a basic set of good-quality tools. A woodworker might need rules, gauges, a couple of saws, some good planes, fine chisels, drills and braces, mallets, and clamps. These tools will be lovingly chosen, will be built to last, will perform specific jobs with little overlap with other tools, and, perhaps most importantly, will feel right in the budding woodworker's hands ... the tools become conduits from the craftsman's brain to the finished…
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