Pop Art Blog

About six month ago, we launched the first version of Stop the Usual Defects , a microsite for LP to promote the launch of their new engineered wood product, LSL. The concept was to showcase the strengths of LSL by portraying defects in traditional lumber in the style of The Usual Defects. We just reworked the site for the addition of a new trailer, and the redesign is pretty cool. The idea is to look like a detective’s corkboard with strings connecting photos of various suspects, or in our... Read More...

Pop Artist A: "I think it might be more interesting if we had several people talking in the video instead of just one." Pop Artist B: "Yeah, maybe have them talking on the roof?" Pop Artist C: "Drinking beer!" Pop Artist D: "In fact, forget the video!" Read More...

We recently launched a microsite for Leatherman’s new Bionic Lobster ad campaign. The idea is that a lobster lost his claw during a struggle with a Sea Captain, but stole his Leatherman at the same time. He tied it onto the stump, and became a kind of lobster superhero, freeing his fellow crustaceans from restaurant lobster tanks and such. The site is goofy and fun, featuring the comic book and a commercial, plus a link to the Bionic Lobster’s facebook page. My favorite part is his big... Read More...

About a month ago, we launched the new Detroit Diesel redesign. We were working on this site when I was first hired at Pop Art, and while I’m proud of the code we wrote the first time, our standards have evolved a bit over time. The opportunity to revisit the site and kick it up a notch was very exciting. The design team and I worked closely on a bottom-up approach, where we put a lot of effort into the templates and underlying grid structure for all pages. By focusing on these aspects of the... Read More...

I’ve managed to attend An Event Apart every year so far, and this year was particularly exciting because the nearest location was in San Francisco. I went to Seattle the last two times, which was fine, but I know Seattle pretty well, so the opportunity to play tourist in a new city was very appealing to me. Luckily, my coworker Libby was coming with me, and she used to work in “the City” so I had the advantage of a guide. (While I was there, I took hundreds of photos, and even after... Read More...

The guys over at A List Apart have posted the Survey for People Who Make Websites 2008 . Despite the awkward name, this survey is worth your time if your job has anything whatsoever to do with the web. The results from last year’s survey were really interesting, and now that they’ve refined the questions a bit, this year’s should be even more informative. Calling all designers, developers, information architects, project managers, writers, editors, marketers, and everyone else who... Read More...

One major annoyance between the Mac and PC versions of Firefox 3 is the position of the “Done” button on the Add Bookmark dialog. On a Mac, the button is on the right. On a PC, it’s on the left. I won’t comment on which is better, just that the difference breaks my muscle memory and is driving me up the wall, and causing me to lose bookmarks that I think I’ve saved. The only saving grace here is that “Done” is the default action on both, so what I really... Read More...

Has anyone seen this problem before and have any idea how to solve it? In firefox, the text wraps around both floats correctly. In IE6/7, the text only wraps around the second float. Read More...

I sent an email to the Creative Team suggesting an exchange program where a Development Team member would attend their team meeting. I ended by asking when and where their next team meeting would be. I got three replies. Ben Fogarty : "Hey Man... We're creative. We meet on a whim. Where the wind blows us. Our sails are filled with unicorn tears and our fists the thunder of zeus." Thom Schoenborn : "Midnight under the Burnside Bridge, west side, upon the ninth moon in the year of... Read More...

WebVisions is a Portland-based web conference that I’ve attended twice before . Sadly, due to a crisis at the office, I was only able to attend the first day of sessions this year, which means I missed Andy Baio’s presentation on internet memes and Jeffrey Veen’s keynote . What I did see was good, but not great. In a nutshell, I think that WebVisions is a B-grade conference that’s trying desperately to become an A-grade one. It has moments of greatness, and manages to attract... Read More...

When we first moved into our new building, Dave wrote "Door-Close button in elevator does nothing" on the maintenance list, and the handyman replied "Button functions as intended" or something along those lines. Well, turns out they're BOTH right. I was reading an article that Kottke linked to about elevators, and there was a little bit in there about how the door close buttons don't do anything in modern elevators! "In most elevators, at least in any built or installed... Read More...

"I print out all my e-mails and tape them to the inside of my clothes. I know Levi and Justin use their iPhones to access e-mail outside work, but my clothes come with me everywhere, and they don't set off airport alarms. I have a DD hat, a Freightliner jacket, a Leatherman belt, and a Screaming Circuits beanie. It works for me." -- Dave, responding to a discussion about email sorting methods Read More...

Hooray! The feedback from the web development community convinced the IE development team to change their minds about the default setting for version targeting in IE8 (as I discussed in a previous post ). “In light of the Interoperability Principles, as well as feedback from the community, we’re choosing differently. Now, IE8 will show pages requesting ‘Standards’ mode in IE8’s Standards mode. Developers who want their pages shown using IE8’s ‘IE7 Standards mode’ will... Read More...

Previously on Web Developer Controversies: Aaron Gustafson from the Internet Explorer development team announced that IE8 will use a META tag to kick the engine into standards mode by targeting a specific browser version, something that was previously done by using a valid DOCTYPE. A lot of people, including Jeremy Keith, think this is a bad idea. Here are some of the more interesting points that have been raised in the discussion so far. “If IE8 acts like IE8 by default, then IE8 might break... Read More...

In 1998, Jeffrey Zeldman co-founded the Web Standards Project to fight for better support of web standards from the browser manufacturers and web developers. It was a success, if for no other reason than it provided a flag to rally behind. This year, the Email Standards Project was founded to rally support for web standards in email clients. The Email Standards Project is about working with email client developers and the design community to improve web standards support and accessibility in email... Read More...