A little recap
December 6th, 2005 by James Muspratt
Jeff, Tim, Martin, and Michael - great job liveblogging. Since my rickety iBook didn’t do so well in the competition for wi-fi earlier today, I thought I’d post a few general thoughts about the event.
Highlights
- All of Zeldman’s talks. Seriously, he is an excellent speaker. He knew what he was going to say, how to say it clearly and concisely, and what examples would illustrate his points well. Two of my favorite presentations were his talk on “Textism” (clear copywriting and labeling on the web) and “Finding brand narratives” (creating an appropriate and effective brand experience for the user). He also threw in some smart advice about working with clients: as designers, we have to balance exercising creative control with a reasonable amount of flexibility.
- Jason’s discussion of the redesign of A List Apart. I especially liked hearing how in the early stages of the process he took his cues from print design and formal typography in order to convey the value of each issue article. He’s succeeded in branding ALA as a a true online publication, not just a front-end to a database of good articles.
- Eric Meyer’s CSS tips. Eric is famous for knowing CSS inside and out (both the spec and all the bugs), but I was expecting it to be pretty hard to communicate that kind of knowledge in a conference format. He got around this by peppering his discussion of layout strategies with some new, extremely practical tricks - for example, I hadn’t heard of Alex Robinson’s One True Layout or Eric’s use of it
on the A List Apart site. (Wrong again, James: see Eric’s comment below).
Happy Hour
I also enjoyed meeting and talking with the people at the happy hour after the conference. After a few PixelPints it became apparent that there was a huge diversity of backgrounds among the attendees: Simon Jessey, who hails from Tim Henman’s village in Surrey and came to the States a few years ago, codes in PHP4, PHP5, and actually knows the difference. Michael Prell designs and writes the copy for his company’s email newsletters, and they validate. And Lisa from Imageworks Studio (I think) Matrix Group is an information architect who has succeeded in bringing standards-based designs to her company’s projects over the past two years.
All in all, an awesome and educational day.
Lisa Hoppes Says:
Hey, it's the Lisa mentioned in the last paragraph. I'm not from Imageworks Studios; it's Matrix Group International, Inc. in Alexandria, VA. James, it was nice talking to you.
James Says:
Sorry about that!
Dave Says:
Hey guys - I sat right behind you which is how (sorry) I found this site. I joined the PSO, looking forward to meeting the group!
The Bar Project Project Says:
An Event Apart, Redux
Well, it’s finally here - my watered down post regarding the recent An Event Apart. While I won’t go in to too much detail, the event itself was definately worth the time and money, and I learned some things that I’ll be able to ...
Jeff Louella Says:
Dave,
I am glad you found us. We are still a young group and growing everyday. Thanks for joining and see you at our January get together.
Eric Meyer Says:
Thanks for the great blogging of AEA, folks! It's always interesting to go back and read what were "real-time" impressions of the day and the content.
And just a small correction: I haven't used the "One True Layout" on the ALA site... yet. My presentation of it with a local copy of the ALA site was meant to show how it could be used in the real world. If you go to ALA as I write this, it's still using Faux Columns (as is the AEA site). In the near future, that may change.