Tamara Olson Designs

abby bernstein site featured on gallery kreativeshowcase

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 11:58:00 -0500

my new year's resolution: i will use jquery more often

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 10:42:00 -0500

from a functional standpoint, subtle fades and cool i-can’t-believe-it’s-not-flash effects aren’t really that important. or are they?? because from a “damn this designer is gooood” standpoint …. they are.

my new year’s resolution? i will incorporate more neato jquery effects into everything i do. starting with adding neat jquery fading to my navigational sprites, all the time.

effective form layouts

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 16:11:00 -0500

call me a dork, but i can actually recall wondering on more than one occasion if there’d been any research done about most effective form layouts (when i’m not wondering why my layout looks slightly off in ie6, that is). surprisingly … there has been.

czech it out.

the findings?

vertical forms are better
left-aligned labels are clearer
avoid bold labels
color or share grouping labels only if important
don’t use asterisks; make optional fields clearer (make value of input “Optional” until user replaces it)
important messages need to be SUPER bold or people will go RIGHT to the form
real-time tips should be at end
justify length of inputs (helps see alert messages)
users like progress indicators / knowing how much is left for em to complete

Mint

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 23:45:26 -0500

in an effort to be more productive with my time, i successfully wasted a good two hours this evening researching and sampling time management and budgeting tools. my golden find of the evening? mint. it allows you to manage ALL your finances, and like a good pesky, motherly accountant, scolds you when you’ve gone over-budget. aside from the slightly creepy feelings it evokes when i think about an external site having all my financial account user IDs and passwords …. mint is great!

graphics and textures and fonts, oh my!!!

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 16:53:00 -0500

this blog post is to serve as a resource for me. and for you. i’m keeping a list of links to all my favorite geeky designer resources. have at it!

photos

places to find free photos

textures

fonts

(individual fonts)

after much deliberation ...

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 22:40:50 -0500

after several agonizing hours jumping between firefox tabs from pcmag to cnet to bestbuy to amazon and back again, and making declarative statements like, “i’ve decided on a d-slr!” and then revoking them five minutes later, i finally made a decision on my camera purchase [that i can’t wait to write off as a business expense]. meet my new baby: the canon s90, the camera with picture quality that rivals the d-slr but qualifies as a “compact.” in an effort to become a quasi-photographer, i’ll be updating my flickr albums over the next few months to show off my new baby’s skillz. stay tuned.