Today I came across these sweet wireframe stencils for OmniGraffle.  OmniGraff’ing is a bit of a hobby of mine. 

OmniGraffle Wireframe Stencils (via Konigi).

Today one article that came across Twitter started me down a vicious rabbit hole of Theory of Design and much, much more.  For kicks and because I believe they are read-worthy, I’ll try and trace that track:

1. “5 options when website budgets get slashed” -great article, sent me to the following sites:
   1. “Good Designers Redesign, Great Designers Realign” - This A List Apart by the famous Cameron Moll says “The desire to redesign is aesthetic-driven, while the desire to realign is purpose-driven”. Sure it’s great to have a fresh new image, but sometimes shifting does better than redesigning. Design-wise, I personally tend to want to flatten and start with a clean slate, but that’s expensive and sometimes it’s just a couple of functional tweaks that make the difference, like in the next article…
   2. $300 Million Button - Amazing article on how changing up 1 thing and understanding user perspective can make you millions… literally.
   3. Laws of Simplicity - I didn’t know this site existed, but it’s the personal blog of RISD President John Maeda who I’ve watched on TED before. This guy just oozes niceness.
      1. “The Laws of Simplicity” - This is a subsection and the thesis of John Maeda’s site. It’s a condensed version of his 100 page book. Almost all the articles in the site link-to or highlight themes chapters covered in his book, which I added to my Amazon Wishlist.
      2. Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) - I followed the our.risd blog and watched some videos of teaching staff speaking and I fantasized about going there until I realized that It would involve a) moving across country and b) lots and lots of money. But, what a beautiful opportunity it would be to become an expert in design - design not in the “pixel pushing” sense, but in the functional innovative sense.

I’ve read so much and was so inspired I’m feeling pretty enlightened. Like I read the whole Bible in a single word. Maybe that’s to esoteric or imaginative, but I really do feel like I’ve gotten a fresh revelation on what I do, and what we as Paravel do best. We’re not just a Design Team. Websites are just the tip of the iceberg of what we want to do to make businesses better.

 today i was trying to comment on a friend’s new Blogspot blog and had a tough time figuring out this captcha.

My presence in the Twitterverse has recently blossomed.   Family and friends from all over are beginning to adopt it.  As a result, it’s my new go-to for connection.  140 characters is all the communication I can handle.  It’s ideal.  But as people adopt Twitter in various facets, I have come up with a short list of guidelines about THINGS THAT TWITTER IS NOT.

Twitter is not RSS

A growing trend among mainstream blogs and users with blogs is to start serving links to your posted content via tweets.   An automated plugin that posts to Twitter every time you post a blog post.  This is not what Twitter is for.  This is called “RSS”.  It was all “the craze” 3 years ago.

Follow my logic.  If I was into your website, I would have subscribed to your RSS feed already.  I follow you on Twitter so that I can get insight into your life or company.  I do not follow you to subscribe to content that I ultimately have to read in my web RSS-enabled browser anyways.

If you still feel that your content MUST be served over Twitter, how about you write a custom post that highlights your best recent content?  How about de-automating it?  Giving it a personal touch?  This is actually a good idea.  Your blog should be doing this.

Twitter is not Facebook

This is just a personal pet peeve I suppose. Not internet law.  I know it’s hard to maintain 2 narcissistic things at once: a Twitter account & a Facebook status.  And not all your friends have Twitter, so you gotta use the fall on Ocham’s razor and go with the thing that makes the most sense.  So you set up a Facebook app to synchronize.  Unfortunately the answer to Twitter’s question: “What are you doing?” is NOT

is upset about yesterday’s football game.

Ergo, Twitter is not Facebook, purely based on a grammatical basis. Are they totally different?  No.  Should Facebook buy Twitter? Yes.  Should you stop automated apps?  Yes.

As a last argument against this: For those of us who use handy apps like EventBox, you subject us to both your facebook status AND your duplicate Twitter status.

Twitter is not iChat

Sometimes @replies go on and on forcing innocent bystanders to sit through 2 people having what is ultimately a private chat.  Etiquette suggests that this conversation can be moved privately simply by typing “d username some private message”, or it can be done via email.

Thankfully my friends have a lot of sensibility, but occasionally it leads to awkwardness.  

Twitter is not a Polling Device

This is my final one.  Especially around the election time, there were various Twitter polls going around for voting on the best candidate.  10 times out of 10 I can confidently say that Barack Obama won in a landslide 70%+ victory.  I can sum in one sentence why Twitter is not a reliable polling device:  My dad doesn’t use Twitter.

Only a small, elite (”leet”) subset of our great country uses Twitter and chances are they are younger, more liberal, more tech savvy, and adventurous than their elderly conservative counterparts.

The actual election was 52%-48%.

Tip to all “web designers” out there… If your online portfolio says you built a site using dreamweaver, what you are really saying is that you have no idea how to effectively code an HTML page.  Now, I know we all start somewhere and I will happily admit using the handy dandy software in the early days of Paravel.  I just think that if you are going to call yourself a web designer, or start a web design business you should be able to open up a text editor and code a basic HTML page.  

The point here is that even if you do use dreamweaver to build all your sites, it isn’t a good idea to broadcast that.  How would you feel if your surgeon’s experience failed to extend beyond a few hours each week playing Operation.  Granted, no one needs a PHD to build a website, but you should know what you’re working with.