An icon can represent a thousand different words, and that is precisely the problem.
This is just one quote of a thousand I could copy and paste here. A great article by iA about the question(s) why or when to use only icons or only labels or a combination of both. It’s not an article about pro or contra the use of icons or labels only, but it gives you some good advice to think about when you use what.
Thanks for writing this, iA.
The icons you use need to be handled with maximum care. You cannot invest enough time in getting your icons right. Icons need to be recognizable by themselves, they need to illustrate the notion they represent clearly, and they need to work together with all other icons and notions you use, in context.
I just stumbled over this nice link on the Website of Charlotte Jackson. She points to a post by Alice Bartlett in which she give some very useful, basic advise to set up your slide deck for a presenation.
More than two years ago I had the idea to start my own podcast. Well, it took me some time, but finally I got to the point to start it. Yesterday I released episode one of TWUMBLE and my guest was Bastian Allgeier.
The podcast and the website are in German, which does not mean, that some guests will be from English speaking countries. Just keep an eye on it … ;)
The lovely chaps of the Working Draft Podcast recorded a new revision of their show during beyond tellerrand 2016 in Düsseldorf. They got PPK, Chris Heilmann and later Jeremy Keith to be part of their show.
I just mentioned on Twitter, that I switched this site to https. But I did it the lazy way and got a SSL certificate at my hosting provider Host Europe, implemented it and made sure that all source links point to an https-link. All in all this took me an hour maybe.
Screenshot of the Flashforum from the last day with last stats before closing.
I was thinking about what I did within the last couple of days for such a long time already. But I decided it was about time to do this now. If you don’t feel the love and the passion for something anymore and also are not able to justify any time you put into it (not to speak about money), then – I think – it is about time.
The Flashforum and FFK (the Flashforum Konferenz) have been a big part of my life from 1999 up to 2010 (and longer even). It was the home of many people in the German Flash community. With over 115000 members, over 266000 threads with over 1703000 posts and sometimes between 1500 and 2000 people in the forum at once, it was a platform for everybody who was in the Flash-, Design- and Web-Scene in Germany.
From 2001 to 2010 we also organised an event for and around this community with sometimes around 500–600 visitors and even 1500, when we did the Flashforum and Studio 8 Tour in 2005.
The Flashforum never was just about Flash and questions about how to do something or Tutorials and alike. It was about the people as much as about things left and right from Flash. Many talented designers used it as a tool, many careers started in and with the Flashforum and many friendships had been build during all those years.
But if something wonderful like this slowly becomes something that is more like ball and chain, then you should better stop it and take all the good memories with you.
This is what I did now after thinking about it for month, if not years. I was thinking about the possibility to keep the content alive at least, but up to now I haven’t found a good and cost effective solution. Therefore I made a backup of the database and the project folder and downgraded the whole server to a simple one-page website.
With a happy-sad feeling I say good bye to you, my good old Flashforum. Happy to have so many lovely memories. Sad to let you go.
Thanks for a fantastic time and all the wonderful people I got to know because of you!
Sascha Wolter and me at the Flashforum Konferenz 2003 in Offenbach.
Tim Brown has written a pocket guide about “Combining Typefaces“ for Five Simple Steps. Now, that they sadly closed their doors, Tim is making this book available as free download for everybody. I recommend you to go and get it.
