This project, based on OpenStreetMap, looks great:
OpenFreeMap lets you display custom maps on your website and apps for free.
You can either self-host or use our public instance.
I’m going to try it out on The Session once there’s documentation for using this with Leaflet.
My talk, Building, was about the metaphors we use to talk about the work we do on the web. So I’m interested in this analysis of the metaphors used to talk about markup:
- Data is documents, processing data is clerking
- Data is trees, processing data is forestry
- Data is buildings, processing data is construction
- Data is a place, processing data is a journey
- Data is a fluid, processing data is plumbing
- Data is a textile, processing data is weaving
- Data is music, processing data is performing
A nice little collection of very simple—and very lightweight—SVGs to use as background patterns.
The forbidden symmetry of Penrose tiles and quasicrystals.
Almost every technological innovation over the last 300 years has had side effects which actually increase the number of opportunities for employment. The general trend is that the easier something is to do, the more demand there is for it.
Cameron looks at the historical effects of automation and applies that to design systems. The future he sees is one of increased design democratisation and participation.
This is actually something that designers have been championing for decades – inclusive design at all levels of the company, and an increase in design thinking at all stages of product development. Now that we finally have a chance of achieving that it’s not a time to be scared. It’s a time to be celebrated.
When I was in Porto a few weeks back, I took lots of pictures of the beautiful tiles. They reminded me of the ubiquitous repeating background images that were so popular on the early web. I was thinking about abstracting them into a collection of reusable patterns but now it looks like I’ve been beaten to it!
How style tiles can work great in combination with content prototypes:
Surprisingly, it helps clients understand the HTML content prototype better. They now clearly see the difference and the relationship between content and design. In general it helps me explain the content-first process better and it helps them make more sense of it.
See, when I first heard about background-repeat: round; I thought it was something to do with making things circular. But no, it’s about tiling a background image so that nothing gets cut off. The amount of tiling required is rounded to the nearest whole number.
Now I get it.
Literally a library of patterns: y’know, for tiling background images. Old school!
This is rather wonderful: a DevFort project for navigating interweaving strands of history, James Burke style.
Samantha does an excellent job of explaining how useful style tiles can be for visual design and iteration.
Beautiful new map tiles from Stamen for use with OpenStreetMap data. The “watercolor” tiles are particularly pretty.
Samantha put together this handy one-page site to explain Style Tiles as part of her South by Southwest presentation.
Samantha gives the rundown of a hands-on use of Style Tiles.
Aaron's lovely visualisation of Flickr's shapetiles.
This is certainly the most backwards-compatible JavaScript library out there.