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Jamie

About Jamie

He is Filipino.

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A real nonsensical headline about a product in today’s Fry’s Electronics newspaper ad

I’d rather be challenged by somebody, rather than have somebody say, ‘Dude, where are you going to have drinks after the show?’ I love a spirited debate as much as anybody. I even like being wrong, if something can make a good case … on something. In a lot of ways, that’s what I do professionally, traveling. I’m confronted by my own ignorance or misunderstandings all the time.


Anthony Bourdain, Chicago Tribune interview by Kevin Pang
mystery.jpg

More on selling your by-products: The Dum Dum mystery pop is a mixture of two flavors (the end of one batch of candy meets the beginning of the next batch). Our candy lines are continuous and the switch over from one flavor to another results in some pops containing both flavors. Source: Dum Dum FAQs

Behind the scenes: Basecamp to-do email design

Jamie
Jamie wrote this on 21 comments

I’d like to share the design process that went on behind the scenes for the recent Basecamp email redesign. In this case we started at one point and wound up with a very different design in the end.

All of the conversations happened with me, Jason Fried, and Ryan Singer in our Campfire chat room. I would upload a design to the room and Jason and Ryan would give feedback. This process lasted for 1 day — start to finish.

I created many different iterations during this process. Here I’m showing the main shifts, so you’ll see “Version 2” followed by “Version 6”. You’re not missing anything.

Original plain text
We still send this out if you don’t want to get HTML.

Version 1
Here I tried to emulate the actual to-do page in Basecamp.

Version 2
Jason thought the checkbox in the email was confusing. If you finished the to-do would you click this checkbox? The checkbox wasn’t actually functioning too. It was fake. Let’s get rid of it.

Continued…

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.


Arthur Schopenhauer, German philosopher (1788 – 1860)

If you set your goals ridiculously high and it’s a failure, you will fail above everyone else’s success.


James Cameron, director of Terminator and Titanic, from The New Yorker

Behind the scenes: Haystack

Jamie
Jamie wrote this on 31 comments

Last week we launched Haystack, a new way for clients and web designers to find each other. We designed early concepts for Haystack this past spring/summer. I thought you’d be interested to see some of the designs that we didn’t use, but helped get us to the final launch.

The Webdev Pages
Initially the idea was to base Haystack on the Yellow Pages. Designers, Programmers, and Agencies could create a free text-only listing. There would be multiple tiers of ad space that would sit prominently above those free listings. The consensus: Too broad: let’s focus on Web Designers. Not visual enough.

Haystack v01
See a full-sized version

Company Cards
The design started to gel once we decided to focus on Web Designers. We created the company card. A quick glance gives you an idea about the designer’s work, location, and typical budget range. The company cards in a grid looked great, but all the cards were the same. We needed a way to differentiate Pro accounts from Free accounts.

Haystack v02
See a full-sized version

Continued…