Wacom Cintiq 22HD with Ergotron LX arm

I got a Cintiq 22HD for various reasons (after trying the 24HD touch). But I really wanted a more ergotronic drawing position, so I got the Ergotron LX arm. Here is a tutorial I wished I had when I was making the decision.

Here is my final setup for drawing:

How to Setup

Take the Cintiq off the stand and place on a cloth:

Unscrew the mount:

 Notice the black washer:

 Split the mount to take it off the cable:

 Move the cables down:

 And now open your ergotron lx box:

 Mount the Erogotron using the four provided screws:

Mount it on the desk:

 Put the tablet on the desk mount:

 And you are golden:

 I prefer to have to dropped all the way down for added stability:

 Use as dual monitors:

 Later on I decided to remove the extension for even more stability and added desk space:

And we are in business:

Web Design Resources : Color

Coming up with a color palette for you design is one of the harder parts of web design or any graphic design for that matter.

Nowadays we live in a wonderful world of sharing and caring and here are two websites that deserve mention :

Color Lovers 

http://www.colourlovers.com/ This website seems to be the github of color. Definitely keep this bookmarked.

Adobe Kuler

https://kuler.adobe.com/ A great effort by adobe. Just sweet to browse through. 

Enjoy your typography

If you enjoy typography here are a couple of links to bring a smile to your face.

First of all is the famous "So you need a typeface?" infographic.

(The original author has his website here : http://julianhansen.com/)

Next up there are the really hilarious shorts by college humour called Font Conference and Font Fight.

And if you have 50 minutes here is a nice talk by Rob Conery and Scott Hanselman with Bill Hill (the creator of cleartype) that you are sure to enjoy.

And if you want to have a deeper understanding of why typography matters here is "Magic of reading" by Bill hill in Microsoft Word format : www.billhillsite.com/osprey.doc
(Source http://billhillsblog.blogspot.com/2008/02/magic-of-reading.html)

Here is a short description of how cleartype works:

For a detailed discussion Wikipedia has an excellent article. Also interestingly WPF renderes all text in cleartype. But so does every windows by default starting from Vista.

Enjoy!

Ensure all caps in silverlight as a part of design process

Look at the picture of the silverlight cosmopolitan theme :

Notice how all the labels are ALLCAPS. It is probably done by typing with the CAPS lock on but there is  a blend behavior available that can do it for you on the content presenter.
Check out the sample + code for this behavior here : http://blogs.msdn.com/b/esthetique/archive/2010/08/19/sltv-theme-demo.aspx

Enjoy!

Nice outline to follow when working on application design

What are the things you do to get the final design prototype of a software project?
Well according to Robby Ingebretsen these are :

• Creative Brief :
  You ask the customer to fill it out. Should contain questions like : project summary , statement of intent, competitive positioning, research summaries, notes about tone / personality etc. 
• Pitch:
  This can happen anywhere in the design timeline. This is the first response to a creative brief to show one or more possible directions for the design. It can include other documents mentioned below in the design process. "This is what we are thinking, tell us what's right and what's wrong"
• Wireframe:
  Express the information organization in the application a.k.a Information design (e.g. navigation / information panes structure ). Wireframe, interaction spec, motion guide might be in the same document (e.g. a sketchflow project) but it is useful to be aware of the distinction. 
• Interaction Spec:
  Not that different from a functional specification. Basically what in the user interface does what. But limited to smaller elements e.g. user should be able to drag and drop clothes on a dummy etc. 
• Motion Guide:
  A guide to the personality of tome of the animation. 
• Visual comp
  This is the pixel perfect outcome. This should be with gradients / images ... everything. Typically this is what the client wants to see first. This is not always the best idea. 
• Prototype
  A complete or semi-complete sample of the final design. 

Recursive Function Design 101

Everyone has his approach to how to start writing a function. For a recursive function as soon as you identify that the problem can be simplified by recursion, heres how you should structure your code :

• First write for the simplest case and return. This would be the boundary condition on the function call. e.g. for factorial write the code for case when input == 0 || input == 1  
• Build up from there. 

Basically if you put down the simplest case first and test it so you are sure it is reliable writing the rest of the recursive function becomes super easy. 

Enjoy!

Expression design: Pen Tool

There are great video tutorials provided by microsoft over here:
http://expression.microsoft.com/en-us/cc197142.aspx

Here are some of my footnotes:

Pen Tool
From video:
http://expression.microsoft.com/en-us/cc188984.aspx

Pen tool (P)
Select fill and stroke
Start by clicking at the point of origin.
Click and hold to make two curve handles at the next point.
Click the last point added to delete the forward handle (a point without a forward handle is called a cusp point).
Press alt while on a handle to edit the two handles separately.
Click while on an anchor point to delete an anchor point (or use the - key to activate the tool).
Click while on a line to add a new anchor point (or use the + key to active the tool)
Shift+C  to use the convert anchor point tool which will allow you to add handles to existing anchor points


Pen is the heart of expression design. Learn to use it well.