Thinking for a Living Relaunches

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A new and improved site for Thinking for a Living has launched! The site, in my opinion, is at the forefront of interactive design. It’s a great example of why Flash isn’t the only means of creating a dynamic interactive experience.

The site was designed by BBDK and Frank Chimero and built by Jedi Knight Ian Coyle. It features keyboard navigation, a fine grid, and a ton of original and inspirational content.

I’m super excited and proud to be a part of this fine network of people and sites. TFAL is a must read for any creative type.        

Welcome to The New AisleOne

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It’s finally here, after months of on and off work I’m proud to present the new AisleOne. Before I jump into some of the new features I want to give a MASSIVE THANK YOU to Emil Olsson for all the development work and for making this possible. Without him this new site wouldn’t exist. Words can not express how grateful I am for all his help. Not only is he ridiculously talented, he’s a super nice guy. So now onto the new features.

This site utilizes keyboard navigation to enhance the viewing experience. Use the up ? and down ? arrow keys to scroll through the site, which takes advantage of a nifty infinite scrolling feature. The site also has two viewing modes that can be accessed by pressing the (g) key for grid mode and the (l) key for list mode. And finally there’s a dashboard that can be opened and closed by pressing the (d) key. It contains other goodies like Twitter Hastags, inspirational links, featured articles and more.

For the design I wanted to keep it very simple, pushing site interface in the background and making the content the focus. I didn’t want to over do it with design elements that distracted you from the content. Based on the site stats over 85% of A1 viewers have screens larger than 1024 × 768 and 96% have a window width of 968px. Armed with that data, I decided to move beyond a 960px width to 1202px. Having an extra 242px to play with makes a big difference. The grid is made up of 10 columns, each 96px wide with 22px gutters between them. I usually build my grids based on the rule of thirds but this time I didn’t follow it. Mainly because I wanted to work with an image width of 450px since the previous design made use of that size.

You’ll also notice that AisleOne is now part of the Thinking for a Living Network, which will be launching a new site very soon. The Network is an alliance of like-minded individuals who are experimenting with publishing and education through a series of topic specific sites, conferences, workshops and publications. The Network includes Thinking for a Living, The Grid System, AisleOne, The Design Manifesto, Design Facts, More Substance, and Thought & Theory and is organized by Shane Bzdok, Antonio Carusone, Frank Chimero, Ian Coyle, J. Ellis and Duane King.

So that’s the new site. Please look around and let me know if you see any issues or if there’s anything you don’t like about the site or you want to see improved. This site is for you so I want to make it the best it can be.