Screening screens: why you don’t want to buy a Cinema Display (edited).

With getting a new Mac Pro, I was skimming the market for a good, affordable TFT screen that had some decent specs for designing. The most obvious choice that I see a lot with Mac Pro’s is the Apple Cinema Display, of course, the most iconic display Apple’s made to date. It’s also perhaps the least updated Apple product in the last 5 years, with only a few price drops in recent years.

I thought it would be nice to share my process of finding my perfect monitor; make a little comparison of the specs of all sorts of displays that would fit into my price range, regardless of brand or appearance, and draw my conclusions. My requirements are very simple; I’m not going to get a screen over € 700,-, it should be able to be reasonably good in delivering a full color gamut (high contrast and gamut), it has to be a TFT (LCD) screen, and it would be nice if it doesn’t look awful.

Edit: It’s wise to read the comments of this entry to get a balanced view of things. I am no expert on LCD panel types, and for a the type of panel the Cinema Display carries, it’s a very affordable display.

Continue reading Screening screens: why you don’t want to buy a Cinema Display (edited)….

MDR 04 discusses interface design.

Although already out for a solid four days, I just got around to listening to the lastest episode of the Mac Developer Roundtable, in which Scotty, Andy Matuschak, Dave Symonds, Dave Nanian, Rich Siegel and Marcus Zarra discuss interfaces and interface design. Some interesting related experiences and opinions are also thrown over the table.

A listening recommendation for any developer. Grab it here, or subscribe to iTunes while you’re at it.

Cleaning it up.

Well, the old Cocoia.com has been retired forever. For the sake of history, here’s the old website design, which I did in the third quarter of 2007;

In its place will be this teaser page, until the new, dynamic combination of Icon Designer and Cocoia will be opened. I will assure you, it will finally be a logical place where you can easily find a lot of downloads and resources to download. The release be accompanied by the release of my Forgotten Mainframe and Orion Extended set - and oh, some extra’s.

Check out the new design and my favorite internet places on Cocoia.com - and I’ll see you all when the new site goes live!

Visualising malware.

Fortunately, not the Mac kind, but these prints for a security company by digital artist Alex Dragulescu are interesting generated visualisations of software that wreaks havoc on Windows systems.

Via Information Aesthetics.

The Origin of the Inimitable Icons.

I got some astonishing material in my hands today. It’s Apple’s material, and it is quite old - but I can assure you that the images are no less revealing and eye-opening. What I can’t figure out, for the life of me, is why Apple did not include this in the latest incarnation of their Human Interface Guidelines, as it is probably the best insight into the design of Aqua icons ever. Get a glimpse of the inception of Aqua inside.

Continue reading The Origin of the Inimitable Icons….

Making a Picturesque Icon.

I was contacted by Acqualia - the creators of the Apple Design Award-winning application Picturesque - to design a new icon. Picturesque, an application I already use on my blog, is stunningly simple in its purpose and product; it beautifies images, but not in the typical Core Image-filter like fashion you see most of the time. The true power is the simplicity; there’s no ugly distorting filters to get in your way, but a few tools catered to your needs which provide instant satisfaction.

Read on for the inside process in this ‘Making the Icon’ post.

Continue reading Making a Picturesque Icon….

Apple updates Human Interface Guidelines.

It’s nice to see Apple finally updating the canon of Mac inteface design - the HIG, or Human Interface Guidelines - that you can read or download in PDF form here. I particularly liked the revamped section on icons, including a ‘Creating Icons‘ (albeit very basic, gives a good idea of the process of adding realism to icons) and the ‘Designing Toolbar Icons‘ section. A good read either way, as it’s very low on jargon and very high on interesting gotchas.

The Airport Disk Debacle.

I got a nice Airport Extreme router, with gigabit ethernet, 802.11n-draft wi-fi, and a shiny USB port. Since I also keep most of my stuff on my external USB drive, I figured it wouldn’t be a bad idea to hook up my movies and music to the router, so I could watch movies and listen to my music wherever I went, and regardless of the computer I was on. I set up the Airport, plugged in the disk, and walked back to my laptop.

Continue reading The Airport Disk Debacle….

The Wait is over.

I had a MacWorld countdown on my Mac because of this, but now it can go.

The new Mac Pro. If only the store would go back up - I am getting one of these puppies.

the Xerox equation.

I’m not sure how I missed this, but it’s… unique.

Brand New has a nice writeup, but there’s an equally nice equation to the logotype in the article you simply cannot miss. x + x + x (III) = ?