Unit Interactive

If the Shoe Fits…

by Angela on 11.19.08 | Comments (2)

SeaVees has announced an exclusive collaboration with Pantone, the world–renowned authority on color. With the creation of the 09/63, SeaVees celebrates the founding of Pantone, and the release of the first PANTONE MATCHING SYSTEM in September 1963. For the first time in their 45 year history, Pantone has allowed an external design team into their hallowed archives. SeaVees has selected seven vintage colors from the original Pantone color guide. The series production has been restricted to 1,963 pairs and is not yet available to the general public.

Define Design

by Andy on 11.17.08 | No Comments Yet

A static definition for graphic design is a non sequitur. That which graphic design creates is something that does not exist until a person or group interacts with it. Just as music that goes unheard has no meaning or impact; it otherwise does not exist and has no definition. At the moment someone experiences or interacts with design, the design exists. At that moment there is good design or bad design, and the definition, context, and experience for each differ greatly. This is why there can be no consummate definition of our work, and why graphic design can never be a commodity. Those who regard graphic design as a commodity are unknowingly referring to something else.

As designers, the results of our work are not found on the page or on the screen. That is where the artefact lies, but not the design result. The design result is found in the perception, consciousness, and experience of the viewer or user. The design result is found in the facility or failings our work eventuates. Observing the artefact of our work, it can be evaluated according to criteria, but design must be evaluated according to what happens next; after that artefact gives us a shove and compels consciousness into motion.

Delicious Design

by Angela on 11.13.08 | Comments (2)

I recently picked up a copy of the premiere issue of Food Network Magazine and I’ve really enjoyed what I’ve seen. Not only are the recipes enticing, but the design is just as mouthwatering. I especially love how they’ve used the food imagery as infographics to display data like the table of contents and measured ingredient list below:

Making InnerHTML and Internet Explorer Get Along

by Nathan on 11.7.08 | Comments (6)

I had been wrestling with this a couple of days ago, and thought it might be nice to share. You see, not only does Internet Explorer (all versions through 7 at least) mangle CSS, but seems to have a special interest in making Javascript applications exceedingly difficult as well. Mainly, it takes any code provided by Javascript’s innerHTML property and capitalizes all of the tags before spitting it back out in the desired element. This sounds harmless enough, but by my standards, IE should have no business rewriting my code. Therefore, I devised this little script, using a bit of Regular Expression goodness (» represents line breaks):

newElement.innerHTML = element.innerHTML.replace(/<.([A-Za-z]*[A-Za-z0-9]w*)?(?=.*>)/gi, » function(w) {return w.toLowerCase();});

Now that I had that solved, I had a new problem: IE runs a rather vague error when trying to place HTML in to <p> tags. Specifically it is an “Unknown Runtime Error”… specifically. Now, I know that innerHTML is not specified by W3C, and IE is probably just doing what it thinks is best, not allowing HTML in to a non-block level element, but what about an anchor tag, or a <strong> tag? Well, with a little help from the DOM, I came up with this:

// oldElement being the element you want to place HTML in to...
var replacement = new Element(oldElement.tagName);
// now, copy all of the attributes of newElement to replacement...
for(i=0; i<$oldElement.attributes.length; i++) {
   replacement.setAttribute(oldElement.attributes[i].nodeName,» oldElement.attributes[i].nodeValue);
}
// put some code in to replacement...
replacement.innerHTML = "<a href='#'>Place some <strong>code here</strong>.</a>";
// and then pull the old switch-a-roo!
oldElement.parentNode.replaceChild(replacement, oldElement);

Well, you would think that would be enough to tame ol’ IE, but no: the folks at Microsoft have cooked up one more obstacle. All versions of IE that I have encountered will rewrite all relative urls to absolute urls on page load. I have yet to find an answer as to why, or how to stop it. This, again, crosses my ideal that the browser has no business rewriting my code, and makes for the handling of certain tasks very difficult. At this point, I throw myself on the mercy of our readers… any ideas?

Microsoft Chooses Tricks over Treats

by Angela on 10.30.08 | Comments (3)

A new Microsoft development has occurred for me this week - I can no longer access my free Hotmail account through Entourage 2004. I realize this is not a new thing for most. According to an Entourage help site:

“If you have a free Hotmail account, Entourage may or may not work for you. People who have had free accounts for a long time were grandfathered access with Entourage. Newer subscribers do not have access with Entourage. A Hotmail Plus account would guarantee you access with Entourage 2004.”

I guess they decided to un-grandfather me in this week. I was hoping the free Hotmail access would continue to work as long as I didn’t upgrade to Entourage 2008, since I knew if I decide to spend the money to upgrade my software, I’d definitely not have access.

What really perturbs me about this event is that both Hotmail and Entourage are Microsoft products. So not only do I have to purchase their software, but if I want to use their email with this software, I have to pay for that, too. Yet, I can set up a Gmail or other Pop/IMAP accounts in Entourage just fine. Does that make any sense?

I realize I’m probably one of the last to experience this particular shortcoming from Microsoft, so its like they did me a favor, right?. Guess its time to switch to Gmail…

Wired Infographics

by Andy on 10.28.08 | No Comments Yet

The November 2008 issue of Wired magazine is a packed issue containing, among other things, a very nice infographic-y section on world food production and trends. Here’s just a taste of the graphic coolness.

Have a look at all of the graphics in this article here.

Project Launch: y|Factorial

by Andy on 10.21.08 | No Comments Yet

We’re excited to announce the relaunch of yfactorial.com this week. This is the second time we’ve worked with Ryan Daigle in designing for his company. This time we redesigned the y|Factorial logo and website to better reflect the company’s expanding service offering, particularly with regard to iPhone app development services.

Unit Interactive accomplished the logo redesign, website redesign, front-end development and scripting, and the ExpressionEngine CMS integration. Working with y|Factorial was a treat, again, and it’s nice to see a friend’s enterprise expand and grow. If you’re in need of iPhone app development or Ruby/Rails Web development, get in touch with y|Factorial .

Ugly Websites = User Flight?

by Andy on 10.16.08 | Comments (1)

People are seemingly programmed to flee ugliness. Moheb Costandi’s article in the October issue of Seed magazine takes a look at how human perceptions and concepts of beauty are being investigated in the field of neuroaesthetics. There may be relevant links to website aesthetics in all of this, too.

By the way, if you’ve not seen it, Seed is a winner of a magazine (the print version!); with as much attention paid to design as to the quality of the content. This one is a true gem.